Indeed, he was. Waiting. This heard-of Uncle Femi who had come, late in the action, out of nowhere, months before: winning solution to the problem of Where the Twins Should Go to High School, what with their father having hoofed it and the prep school fees too high. Alternatives included the very tony public high school that their mother chanced to visit on an unfortunate afternoon, pulling her car into the lot just as a bus of Metco students was off-loading fighting freshmen screaming swears and throwing blows. The most odious of options was to ask (her word, “beg”) that Olu’s high school, Milton Academy, review their eligibility for financial aid, despite the complicating facts that they had paid the full tuition for the three years he had been there and that no one had, say, died. Then out of thin air appeared an uncle in Nigeria with whom they might live, attending international school and avoiding potential indoctrination into a “pathologically criminalized culture” while their mother found her sea legs as a working single parent.
Fola, who had never once mentioned a brother, nor any other family, nor any of her past, had sat them down simply, him and Taiwo, in the kitchen. “I can’t manage at the moment,” she had started, then stopped. She shook her head, closed her eyes, covered her mouth, as if willing the hurt to stay put in her throat. He could feel her tears rising, a tide, up the middle, but stared at her, frozen, unable to speak. He wanted to say, “He’ll come back, Mom. Don’t worry.” He wanted to say, “Dr. Yuki threw him out in his scrubs.” But had promised in the Volvo, if you could maybe not mention—, don’t worry, I won’t, so said nothing at all.
Fola wiped her eyes, took a breath, shook her head again. “Excuse me,” she said.
Kehinde said, “It’s okay.”
Taiwo said, “What can’t you manage?”
“The four of you.” Her eyes and voice flat, “At least not for right now. My b-brother in Lagos, your Uncle Femi, has offered.”
“Offered what?” Taiwo persisted.
“To take you. For now.”
“Take us where?” Taiwo asked, her voice rising. “To Lagos? You’ve never even mentioned a brother before.” Then, “You’re sending us to live with a stranger.” She was laughing. “Is Olu coming also, and Say, or just us?”
Fola shook her head. “He’s a senior in high school.”
“And Sadie?!” Taiwo shouted. “She’s your favorite, is that it?”
Sadie had appeared at the door to the kitchen in pajamas, almost silent. Only Kehinde looked up. “No one came to find me,” Sadie mumbled, softly, sweetly.
“It’s okay,” Kehinde whispered. “Come here. We’re all here.”
“We are not all here,” Taiwo said, standing, voice trembling. “He left us with her, and she’s kicking us out.” She looked at their mother, who looked out the window. Kehinde followed her gaze to the edge of Route 9.
“He took it, he took the statue,” Fola mumbled, distracted.
“He would have never let you do this!” Taiwo raged, and stormed out.
Kehinde looked at Sadie and smiled warmly. “Don’t worry.”
Fola looked at Kehinde and shrugged. “What do I do?”
“Don’t worry,” he repeated. “It’s okay, Mom. Don’t worry. That was kind of your brother. To offer, I mean.”
He’d pictured this brother as a male form of Fola, so an older form of Olu. A Yoruba Daddy Warbucks. Instead, from his position on the fourth-floor parlor threshold, with eyes and feet frozen, refusing to move, he made out a figure, neither balding nor strapping, sprawled loosely on a leopard-skin waterbed, slim. The absurdity of the picture — of Femi there waiting as shahs await ladies-in-waiting with grapes ripe for peeling in an outfit befitting Fela Kuti at the height of the 1970s (it was 1994), in that room with its thicket of palm trees in vases and zebra-skin rugs on the white marble floor — was lost on him, Kehinde, for his shock at the portrait looming, gloomy, above the mantel, looking down on the bed.
He had never seen the subject — a woman, a young woman, a breathtaking woman — before in his life and quite literally could not take his eyes off her eyes, which were his eyes, and Taiwo’s eyes. “Who…? Who is that?” Taiwo was trembling, reaching instinctively for Kehinde. He squeezed her hand, feeling her shock and her fear. She took a step inward and pressed up against him. Neither stopped staring, nor moved to go in.
The figure was stirring, sitting up on the bed, twisting his torso to consider the portrait himself. A loud high-pitched laugh, without mirth, without warmth, broke the silence. He clapped with delight. “You don’t know?” He spoke with an accent very much like their mother’s (the strongest taste “England,” faint notes of “equator”) and softly, even gently, as one who has learned that in a land of shouters the soft-spoken man is king. “Niké, who is that?” He turned to his wife, who was clutching their shoulders like handlebars. “Mmm?” His eyes fell on Kehinde, who, feeling the shadow, extracted his own from the portrait and looked.
The uncle was watching him, standing up, smiling, his eyes hardened, blackened, at odds with the smile, to a hostile effect, as one luring a child left alone in a shopping mall, hard, sparkling black. Standing, he was striking, less attractive than eye-catching, lithe as a woman with long slender limbs, ramrod straight with lean muscle, at ease, like a dancer, but not at all beautiful, not in the face. The face was all angles and thick-lidded eyes too wide open and red-rimmed, a dull shade of brown, upturned nose, low-set mouth, the proportions the problem, thin cheeks far too narrow for features this wide. Almost ugly, thought Kehinde, though he used the word sparingly, and reverently, like beautiful, equally awed. It was a precious thing, ugliness, in humans, in nature; he noticed this, always, in airports, on trains: that for the most part most people looked fine (if unremarkable) with inoffensive features placed well, or well enough. He found he had to look to find ugliness, natural ugliness, no less than natural beauty, and trickier still, that no sooner had he found it and quietly thought a thing ugly than he found there in the ugliness a beauty of a kind. He’d stare at a face as at those Magic Eye stereograms where three-dimensional images emerge out of two-, and the beauty would rise out of nowhere, a distortion, after which he couldn’t recognize the ugliness again. He stared at his uncle, then, squinting, trying to freeze it, the mismatch of features and wanness of skin, but it happened as it always did. The optical illusion. Jimmy Baldwin morphing into Miles Davis.
“And you. What are you staring at? You like it? My outfit?”
Kehinde, realizing he was staring, blinked twice.
“Don’t you speak?” Auntie Niké, behind him, shook him roughly by the shoulder, but Femi was laughing, “Ehn, let the boy be.” He walked toward Taiwo, ignoring Kehinde for the moment. “And this one, and this one,” he repeated. “It’s her.” He stopped in front of Taiwo and took her chin, gently, the touch less aggressive than the look in his eyes, fingers cold, almost freezing, Kehinde felt. Taiwo shivered. Femi laughed. “Look, she’s frightened.”
“Don’t touch her,” Kehinde said.
A very soft sound, equally surprising to all of them.
Niké dug her nails in and sucked her teeth, “Ah-ah! How dare you address an elder in that manner?! Ki lo de ke—” but again Femi stopped her, erupting with glee.