Friday. Under the stern but amused gaze of Oye and the excited, not-missing-anything nine-year-old intensity of Elvis, spread on raffia mats on the veranda, Aunt Felicia and her friends settled down to prepare for the weekend and the parties they wanted to attend. The formal year-long mourning period for Elvis’s mother had just ended. The entire family had performed the full rites, with the exception of his father. Igbo men didn’t mourn women publicly. It was considered bad taste.
The giggling girls had an air of excitement about them that blew through the mustiness of their grief with a welcome freshness. Gone were the unkempt hair and black clothes, and it seemed to Elvis that he had only just become aware of color, seeing it everywhere and in everything, vividly. From the radio in the corner, the Reverend Al Green crooned, “I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired …”
The girls plaited their hair into wild and wonderful shapes: sensuous cornrows that disappeared on the horizon of the head, holding the promise of love; straight fingers reaching up to graze the face of the sky; bangs that fell in spiral caress around their faces, or natural locks interwoven with cowrie shells and bits of silver and gold. Aunt Felicia had invented a plait called Concorde, complete with a Concorde-shaped aircraft taxiing down the crown of the head to the nape. She and her friends swapped makeup tips, tweezed eyebrows into thin whispers, hot-combed their hair into burned flat runs or Afro blowouts that eclipsed the sun every time they walked by, suffering as they singed, pulled, tied and yanked. Shaved hair from armpits and legs fell in among giggled methods of birth control, the most popular being to drink a bottle of bitter lemon after sex.
“Kills de sperm,” Aunt Felicia said.
Elvis longed to try on their makeup and have his hair plaited. Aunt Felicia finally gave into his badgering and wove his hair into lovely cornrows. One of the other girls put lipstick on him. Giggling, and getting into the game, another pulled a minidress over his head. On Elvis, it fell nearly to the floor, like an evening gown. He stepped into a pair of Aunt Felicia’s too-big platforms and pranced about, happy, proud, chest stuck out.
Looking up, he saw his father, Sunday, coming up the path. Aunt Felicia and Oye took in Sunday’s approaching figure with alarmed gasps and then looked back at Elvis’s cornrowed hair, painted face and dress, but it was too late. Elvis had kicked off the platforms and was halfway down the steps running to meet Sunday. He thought that somehow his father would like him better with the new hairdo. Sunday had not been the same since Beatrice died and he’d lost all interest in his son, except to reprimand or punish him. Sunday stopped and squinted as Elvis approached, face changing in slow degrees from amusement to shock and finally to rage.
Elvis ran straight into the first blow, which nearly took his head clean off. As he fell, his father grabbed him with one hand, steadying him, while with the other he beat him around the head, face, buttocks, everywhere. Too shocked to react, still out of breath from his sprint, Elvis gulped for air as his father choked him. Suddenly, Oye towered beside them. Sunday glanced at the steel of her eyes and dropped Elvis like a rag. She caught him, enfolding him into her as he sobbed himself into unconsciousness.
When he came to, he was cocooned in Oye’s soothing and healing smell. His lip was cut and he couldn’t see out of one eye, but he could hear his father ranting in the backyard, giving Aunt Felicia a rough time.
“No son of mine is going to grow up as a homosexual! Do you hear me?!” he shouted at her.
Elvis could not hear her mumbled response.
“When you have your own children, you can do what you like. But Elvis is my son. Son, not daughter …”
Aunt Felicia’s voice cut him off.
“Don’t interrupt me when I am speaking — otherwise I will beat de living daylights out of you!” he screamed.
“Sunday!” Oye called.
There was silence from the backyard as Sunday stamped out front.
“Stay out of my life, witch!” he shouted at her.
In one hand, flush with his thigh, was an open razor, its metal honed to a cruel edge. Oye took in the razor with a glance and, putting Elvis down slowly, rose to her feet. Never taking her eyes from Sunday’s, she reached out and pincered her fingers into a vise around his scrotum. He screamed in pain and dropped the razor.
“Don’t you ever threaten me, laddie,” she said quietly.
“I was not threatening you,” he whispered through tears. “I only want to shave de boy’s head.”
“Fine. But if ye hurt him again …” She smiled sweetly, letting go of him.
He sighed into the floor and squatted there panting.
“Put on your slippers,” he said to Elvis between gasps.
Elvis stepped into the plastic-and-foam flip-flops. He stood, waiting for his father to tell him what to do next, his breathing fast. Picking up the razor that he had dropped, Sunday stood and led Elvis by the hand out to the back. As they left, Elvis looked pleadingly at Oye. She smiled reassuringly at him and looked away. The echo of his flip-flops slapping the cement floor filled her mind.
When they got out back, Sunday pulled up a small stool for Elvis. “Sit dere,” he said gruffly.
Elvis sat. His father walked across the yard to the kitchen in the corner and lifted the large kettle of water that was always smoldering over the slow-dying coals. Elvis watched, shifting from side to side. Next, his father pulled a metal pail across the floor and began filling it with steaming water from the kettle. It reminded Elvis of the preparations made for plucking chickens, and as soon as his father’s back was turned, Elvis got up and began to tiptoe away.
“Sit back down,” his father said without turning round.
It was the quiet way in which he said it that had Elvis bolt back to the stool and sit down. He continued to watch his father as he mixed some cold water into the hot, testing the mixture with his elbow before bringing it over.
“Now sit still so dat I don’t hurt you,” he said.
Elvis nodded. Humming under his breath, his father mixed up some shaving foam in a cup and then, with a painter’s flourish, began to apply it with a brush to Elvis’s head. Elvis, eyes closed, began to tingle all over, like when the barber’s electric clippers buzzed lightly over his scalp. Once he had applied the foam, Sunday pulled up a chair and held Elvis tightly between his knees to keep him from making any sudden moves.
When the razor made contact, it buttered through the cornrowed hair with a sandpaper rasp. The pull of it was like the rough lick of a cat’s tongue, and Elvis felt himself relaxing into his father’s body.
“Stupid child, make sure you don’t fall asleep,” his father said gently. “For your own good,” he continued under his breath. “I’m only doing dis for your own good. It’s not easy to be a man. Dese are trying times. Not easy.”
When he finished, he washed Elvis’s scalp in the leftover warm water in the pail. After drying it, he applied palm-kernel oil. When he was done, he turned Elvis around and, holding his face in his hand, spoke slowly.
“I don’t want you spending any more time on dat veranda.”
It was afternoon and the sun slam-dunked onto corrugated-iron roofing and concrete, turning the houses into ovens, despite fans doing slow waltzes on ceilings. Outside, the tarmac roads turned to treacle. The adults were at work and Elvis and his friends were playing in the orchard. Apart from Oye, dozing in her wicker chair on the veranda, her snores loud enough to keep flies from settling on her open mouth, the house and compound were deserted. Efua was staying over, as she often did, and was asleep inside, as she was feeling ill. Elvis left the others playing and headed for the outhouse, one of those bucket affairs that had to be emptied regularly. Despite the powdered disinfectant scattered after each use, it stank in the heat and was home to tomb flies as big as helicopters.