A Spell of Good Things

by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Recently she had begun to suspect that she would always be restless. Maybe she was one of those people for whom satisfaction lay only in the future, forever slightly out of reach.

Whenever she passed over a body of water, Bùsọ́lá spread her arms out like wings as though she were about to glide or take flight. She had done this since she was a child, even when she was so young she had to be carried.

It would be possible later to think of how this presence was nothing but his own fear, grown beyond what his body could contain, spilling out of him to form a second shadow that stalked him in the grass.

“Debtors will be?” “Flogged and sent back home.” The chorus was louder this time. Thunderous enough for Ẹniọlá to feel all those voices vibrate in his chest. Or was that his heart, thudding again as though he were still running?

It startled Bàbá Ẹniọlá that his son kept growing, advancing into life without many of the things he needed. There were several opportunities he had hoped to make available to his son, but most of them became redundant with each passing year. Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered.

While speaking to her husband about her intention to buy a plot of land had been followed by a family meeting where her in-laws accused Yèyé of plotting to kill their son, Adémọ́lá never argued when she asked for money to buy a new necklace. Sometimes he spoke about how vain she was in an almost admiring tone, and Yèyé responded by insisting she could not wear outdated jewellery. And as Aunty Bíọ́lá had instructed, she never said a word about the resale value of each item.

Yèyé had long made her peace with the idea that she would be found wanting in some way by her children. If they believed what everyone claimed—that mothers were peerless gods forged out of precious gold—how could she not fall short of their expectations? It was the destiny of gods to be toppled.

If all else failed, there was a stash of gold waiting for her daughters, tucked away now in that fireproof safe. And for all three of them, her share of the swaths of land she and her sisters had acquired together after she had wasted those first two years of marriage believing a man’s love was some limitless thing.

She had always marvelled at his calm assurance that everything good in his life would either remain the same or get better. He took good fortune for granted. As though it were impossible that it would abide only for a spell. She had never been able to shake the sense that life was war, a series of battles with the occasional spell of good things.

Now, years later, whenever he wanted to stand over his father and scream at him to get up and do something, Ẹniọlá would remember how the man had once longed to be dead. His anger often dissipated then; sometimes it was replaced by fear.

Two was just coincidence. But three? Thrice? Even though Bùsọ́lá was never sure if it was good or bad, she knew it was always an omen.