Happiness

Black Swan Theory. Still from Short film by Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu. Digital photograph. 12" × 18". ©2010 Kameelah Janan Rasheed.

Shylock was a man of few words, and then only when a nod or a shaking of the head would not suffice. Prosperous did not know anyone else less inclined to use their tongue. She told Agu this the first time Shylock came to their house, the friend of a friend, and so recently arrived from Nigeria that Prosperous swore that as soon as he walked in, her homesickness lifted because he smelt of home. She did not tell Agu that she thought Shylock looked like him: same high forehead, same roast coffee complexion, they could have been brothers.

“He has a lazy tongue,” Agu said. Prosperous said she did not trust a man who would not talk in the company of other men.

“Maybe he’s shy.”

She said she had thought that too at first when he answered her “would you like a beer?” with a nod. But the longer he sat there, in their sitting room, nodding and shaking his head to questions, listening to the other men argue and talk but contributing nothing, as if he were a sponge absorbing their voices, she began to feel that her initial assessment of him was wrong.

“He’s not shy. He’s sly. I could tell from the minute he walked through that door.”

“I can tell you from what I’ve heard that he’s a man of action.”

She could no longer talk to Agu of Shylock, could not tell Agu that she no longer thought of him as sly. But that was not the only thing she could not talk to Agu about. Prosperous hoped Shylock would not come today. Yet, she wanted him to come, to bring his silent self and sit in their sitting room, and nod his head. She was dicing okra in the kitchen, picking them one at a time from the strainer beside her, and then placing them, dripping wet, on the chopping board. She wanted to see him. She did not want to see him. He would come. He would not come. He would. He wouldn’t. If the next okra she picked out was good, he’d come. If it wasn’t, even if it was just the tapered end that was bad, it’d be fate’s message to her that he would not come. She shut her eyes and picked one. It was green, firm—though not as firm as she would have liked—okra, almost the color of home. She worked meticulously, first slicing the okra into circles, then semi circles, then quartered. Agu, her husband, stood in a corner of the kitchen, watching her work. He was in her way, but she could not tell him to move. Today was not the day to antagonize him.

Soon, their house would be full of people, men, fellow Nigerians, swelling up their small sitting room with their voices and their presence and their opinions about politics and religion and life. Their wives would be in the kitchen with Prosperous, their own voices muted, less enthusiastic, discussing the insufficiencies of their present lives, the children with them. Prosperous often thought that men adapted better to change, that they were better disposed to find happiness away from the familiar. Agu never complained of homesickness. He did not feel it the way Prosperous did, like a lump in her throat as if she was about to cry. He and his friends did not sit around, the way the women did, complaining that they could not buy achi anywhere to thicken egusi soup; that the prepackaged ogbono from the Tropical Store could not replace the fresh one from back home; that they would give anything for the taste of moi-moi wrapped in banana leaves which was impossible to find here. Men were like children. They were easily satisfied. They sat in front of the TV watching football and clips of P Square dancing azonto, and they ate the egusi not thickened with...