Her cheap perfume was acrid, and he sneezed as he watched her check her reflection one last time in the cracked mirror. He envied her this ability to prepare a face for the world. To change it any time she liked. Be different people just by a gentle hint of shadow here, a dash of color there. She could even change her hair to suit her mood: sometimes wearing huge Afro wigs that scoured the sky’s underbelly; other times, the elegant plaited stalks called mercy, as though they were stakes in a hunter’s trap, or the playful run of cornrows — his favorite.
“Why are you sitting dere daydreaming instead of going to breakfast?” she demanded in a shrill tone, shocking Elvis from his reverie. She was already at the door on her way out. “Come on!”
“I’m coming.”
As she clacked out on six-inch platforms, riding on the echo of her teeth kissing, he reached into the wastebasket for the tissue that wore her lip shape in distinct red. He pressed the paper lips against his, eyes closed, inhaling all of her. Dropping the tissue back into the wastebasket, he fingered her wig on its wicker stand.
“Elvis!”
“Coming!” he replied, grabbing his schoolbag and shirt and heading for the dining room. His father sat at the table reading the paper. The headline caught Elvis’s attention: MILITARY TO STEP DOWN. That was strange; Elvis could not remember when the military had not run the country. His father spoke often and nostalgically about his days as a member of parliament in the first republic, but to Elvis it sounded suspiciously like all his father’s stories. Like the one about being made to walk forty miles each way to school every day as a child. Or the one about hunting a lion with his father, Elvis’s grandfather, armed with nothing but native broadswords. Of course his father did not know that in general science, Elvis had learned that lions had been extinct in this part of the country since the twenties. But he never challenged him. That attracted an angry telling off, at best; at worst, a slap. His father could slap well too. The initial impact stung, and for hours after, a strange heat persisted, reminding you of your transgression all day until it burned out as a lumpy bruise.
“Who will run the country if the army steps down, then?” Elvis asked, stuffing a large piece of yam in his mouth and chewing noisily.
“Stop eating like a goat, lad. You have no manners,” Oye said. “Sunday, speak to your son.”
“Do what your grandmother says, boy, unless you want a beating.”
“Must you always threaten the lad, Sunday, eh?”
“I thought you wanted me to talk to him?”
“Talk. Not threaten.”
“Ah! Women!”
Elvis ate slowly, scrunched down in his seat, reading the back of his father’s paper.
“If civilians take over, will that be better?” Elvis asked nobody in particular.
Sunday Oke put down his paper, shoveled a piece of yam into his mouth, chewed contemplatively, then spoke:
“Good children do not concern themselves with adult problems.”
Elvis opened his mouth to speak, but Aunt Felicia got there first.
“Elvis, time to leave if you want me to walk you to school.”
As Elvis hurried out of the compound to join the other children streaming to school, he thought he saw Innocent lurking in the bushes outside. He looked unkempt, and even from a distance it was easy to see the blood on his clothes. Just then his father’s car nosed out of the gate, and Innocent vanished.
Voices, disembodied and distant, floated in to Elvis, waking him. He got up and stumbled outside to pee. The moon was full, washing everything in a white fluorescence. It was bright enough to see by, and he didn’t need the safety of the storm lantern he clutched in one hand while the other directed the piss stream away. Aunt Felicia’s nurse’s uniform, left out to dry overnight, flapped on the line, triggering his fear of ghosts. He scurried inside and hid under the covers.
The voices he heard earlier were still deep in conversation. They came from the parlor and meant his father had guests. He wondered who they were. Curiosity overcame his fear and he crept out into the dark corridor, heading as close to the curtained-off parlor door as he could. Light from the lanterns cracked through the gaps around the curtain; still, Elvis repeated the Lord’s Prayer softly to himself.
“We will cover all de campaign costs,” one of the men said. “It will cost you nothing.”
Another: “It is just dat you are de only one from dis town with a chance of winning. We really want a representative in de House of Assembly.”
“You have done it before. In de first republic”: still another.
The hand over his mouth smothered any screams, and the arm wrapped around him pinned his limbs tight. He was lifted bodily and carried down the corridor, fear locking him rigid. But Oye’s voice soothed him.
“You shouldn’t eavesdrop on conversations tha’ dinna include you,” she said, plunking him down on his bed. “Now sleep.”
“Come and vote for Chief Okonkwo and de People’s Party. De People’s Party is de party for de people and by de people, led by de people.”
The election campaigns had begun in earnest, Elvis noted as the van sprouting loudspeakers drove past the house.
“Where shall we put our mark? Next to de People’s Party! What shall we spit upon? All de other parties.”
The song was catching, and Elvis soon found himself repeating it. He hated when that happened. With a sigh, he returned to the paper. Reading the paper had begun as part of a homework assignment from Sunday. His initial resentment with the work was balanced by his happiness that his father was spending time with him, even if it was to ask questions about what he had read. But now his pleasure was singular and he looked forward to it.
The editorial, about one of the presidential candidates, claimed that he held the key to the Atlantic Ocean and that if provoked, he could unlock the sea and flood the whole country. Elvis laughed out loud. He thought it might be funny if the sea actually did flood the country in a couple of days. That would surely freak out the newspaper’s editor.
“Elvis! Where is your father?” a woman asked him.
“I don’t know,” Elvis replied, wondering who she was.
“Elvis, do you know where your father kept de flyers for de rally?” a man asked him.
Elvis shrugged and headed for the peace of a tree branch. Shortly after his father resigned his position as superintendent of schools and announced his plans to run for office, their home became a madhouse of thugs and media and other nondescript hangers-on, and it seemed like Elvis could never find a moment for himself. The cost of politics meant that they were swamped by hundreds of people who come by for free food and drink and to offer their support or services. Oye managed to hold a circle of sanity, though. Her reputation as a witch frightened even the vicious thugs that Uncle Joseph had hired.
The campaigns were held during the Harmattan, which was Elvis’s favorite season. Chilly winds from the Sahara blew a fine red dust that clouded everything in a shimmering mist, making the air dry and harsh. Everyone went around with chapped lips, and in some extreme cases, cracked soles. But there were also the heady scent of dry grasslands, new discoveries, bush fires and Christmas.
Harmattan fell between December and January, when the sun burned the cool season into a crisp before February. It was the season of rest. The harvests were over, and the next planting season would not begin until April or May, when the rains returned. It was as if everyone were on a long siesta.