Fauziya
“Daddy said Aaliyah is in heaven.”
My breath catches, and the knife I’m holding clangs onto the chopping board. I stare at Salim struggling with his tiny puzzle in his corner of the kitchen, oblivious to the weight of his words.
“Daddy told you that?” I ask, my ears pounding from the drums of my heartbeat.
He nods his little head and pouts, “When will I go to heaven?”
The thought of Salim leaving me too makes me dizzy, so I hold onto the kitchen counter to steady myself.
“Mummy,” he says, urging me to answer.
My voice is sharper than I intend it to be when the words leave my lips. “When you are 101”.
“So why didn’t Aaliy-”
“Enough!”
I always entertain his queue of questions, giving each as much thought as I can before responding. But Aaliyah is more than his mere curiosity. Sheriff’s laughter drifts from his study and immediately, my shoulders stiffen. How can he laugh? My own laughter is a memory.
My feet move on their own before my head can catch up to where I am being led. He is standing with his back to me, the sleeves of his mustard shirt rolled up to his elbows. He has one hand in the pocket of his brown pants while the other holds his phone to his ear. Nothing had ever been big enough to interfere with his love for colors. He laughs again, his shoulders shaking in response. If you gave a stranger a million dollars, they’d never be able to guess he just lost his daughter.
“What did you tell Salim?” I ask, my clenched jaw.
His shoulders rise and fall, and then he says, “Lawal, I’ll call you back in a minute”.
A minute.
“Good evening to you too,” he says as he turns around, his hands folded across his chest. His frown meets mine, his face losing all its tender edges. Sheriff’s frown has always been menacing, and I joked all the time that it made him look like a sexy villain.
I clear my throat and ask again, my voice breaking, “Did you tell Salim that Aaliyah is gone?”
“Fauziya, he is five, and he kept asking,” Sheriff says, throwing his hands in the air, like I’m the one being unreasonable.
“So, you decided on your own to tell him without informing me?”
He shrugs, “And when exactly would we have had that conversation? We don’t talk.” His accusation hits me like he intended, and I take a step back.
“You had no right to speak to him about Aaliyah,” I say, undeterred.
“It was time. It’s been almost a year.”
His response claws at my throat and I feel it burn.
“A year? Today is the 228th day, Sheriff! Ya Allah, you do not even know.”
“Fauziya,” Sheriff’s voice is tortured. He moves towards me and I step back. I take another step and another till I am out of his study, and back in the kitchen answering another one of Salim’s questions.
Sheriff
228 days. The number wraps itself around my heart and squeezes tight. If Aaliyah was here, she’d have slipped her hands in mine, and said, “Daddy, smile,” and I would have. It always bothered me how aware she was for her age. I imagine her tiny hands in mine, and I take several deep breaths.
“Daddy, it is at 2 o’clock oh. Don’t forget,” Aaliyah had said that morning, her hands around my neck.
“I will be there by 1:30 oh. I must be in front. Forget my own daughter’s first debate ke.”
She laughed and kissed the middle of my head. I wish I hadn’t playfully shooed her away. I wish Fauziya had not called for her to hurry so she wouldn’t miss the school bus.
I take several deep breaths again and go to the kitchen. Fauziya does not look up, and I do not expect her to. I watch her wash the plates with unnecessary force, and I wish I could put my hands around her waist, kiss her shoulders, her neck and get her to be still.
She pushes the plate of jollof rice on the slab in front of me, not bothering to look at me, and I wince.
“Thank you.”
She does not sit beside me and eat like she used to, instead she begins to walk away. She is in a bubu, the one she has worn for weeks, and I imagine that underneath it, she is all bones and grief.
“Fauziya, please stay and eat,” I choke out.
When she turns around, her eyes are already accusing. “I can’t” she says, “Neither can Aaliyah.” Her words feel like blades, scraping against my heart.
I take a sharp breath as I stare at the plate. This was Aaliyah’s favorite. We had many debates about which rice was better, and I always said I let her win whenever Fauziya scored her higher.
“That was mean.”
“No, Sheriff. You know what is mean? You speaking to Salim about Aaliyah, even when I asked you to wait. You know what else is mean? You laughing. You wearing stupid bright colors to work. You enjoying a darn football match with Lawal. Sheriff, you even whistle. What is there to whistle about? Yet, you have the guts to call me mean?”
“Aaliyah was my daughter too, Fauziya?” I say, my head hot, and tight, and heavy.
When she speaks, her voice is a harsh whisper, “Was? She is now was?”
“I lost my daughter too, Fauziya!”
“Then act like it!”
“Oh, I should take a cue from you, right? I should leave the house for two good months, abandon you and Salim, so everyone knows I am hurting. I should scream at Ladidi like a crazy person when she steps into Aaliyah’s room to clean it?”
“Stop it!” she screams, but I know that even if I try to, I cannot close this gushing tap I have opened.
“I should quit my job and stay in the room all day so you and Salim can starve. Or maybe I should stop eating completely so everyone can see my bones and know that I am in pain. Or better still I should begin to hate my wife of 10 years and move out of our bedroom because I cannot stand to look at her.”
Fauziya stands in front of me, her breathing heavy, her eyes wild. She shakes her head and runs upstairs. Not to our room. She sleeps on Aaliyah’s bed now.
I close my eyes, my hands massaging my temples. I wonder if I went too far. I think I did.
“Daddy, why are you fighting?” Salim asks.
I curse under my breath. We had forgotten about him.
Fauziya
I see a speck of dust on one of Aaliyah’s awards for first position and wipe it off quickly with my bubu. I look around the room, my eyes flicking across her various Disney posters. I had promised to take her to Disneyland when I was less busy. She didn’t wait for me.
I sit on her bed and pick up her small pink guitar. Aaliyah announced once over dinner that she now wanted to be a country singer. Sheriff had almost choked on his food, and I laughed. Aaliyah was always up to something new. If it wasn’t drawing, it was bead making. Or when she swore she was going to be the next Albert Eistein. I never doubted her once, except for the singing, of course. My Aaliyah.
Her school was just 15 minutes away. Why could I not drive her there myself? Why did I put her in that school bus? Was I deaf? Why did I not realize that the driver’s speech was slurred, and his eyes were narrower than usual? Why did I not hug her or kiss her before she got onto that bus? Did she go immediately? Ya Allah, I pray she went immediately.
I lie on her bed and hug my legs to my chest. The first night I slept here, I fell asleep crying, and I swear she came to me in my dreams. Her eyes were bright, but not brighter than her smile. She hugged me. And so, every night before I close my eyes, I pray to Allah that she comes again, but she hasn’t yet.
Sheriff knocks twice, and then walks into the room. I wipe my tears immediately and turn to the other side of the bed.
“Fauziya…”
I do not turn around. His words are imprinted in my head, and I am scared that if I look at him, I will see that he is hurting.
63 days after Aliyah, he left for Lagos for a business meeting. I packed my things in a fit and left the house with Salim. I cannot forget how he looked at me when he came to Papa’s house to ask me to come back home. I knew his heart was broken, and so I turned my face away, not bearing to look at him. I told him I needed time. Yes, I needed time, but what I wanted more was to be around another mother who understood what it meant to lose a daughter. And so, I clung on to Mama, drawing strength whenever she pulled me into her arms, wondering how she was able to cope when Amina had fallen sick and left us all.
Sheriff lies down next to me, his legs hanging over the edge of the bed frame. He turns me around and into his arms, and for a moment, everything stills. And then my heart swells. I can’t believe I’d gone so long without his touch. 228 days.
Sheriff
The first time I saw Fauziya, I stood in the busy mall and just stared. She wore a green two piece, and it shone on her skin. She had wrapped her hair in a gold turban, her wide hoop earrings looking so heavy for someone so petite. Her nose was pinched as she studied what appeared to be a birthday card, and I knew that I would regret it if I did not talk to her.
“His birthday?” I asked, hoping to God she didn’t have a boyfriend.
She looked up, and she was even more beautiful than I first thought. “Excuse you?”
“Word of advice. Men prefer birthday wishes from the heart. Not generic birthday cards.”
Fauziya looked around, and then back up at me. “Ever heard of the term ‘boundaries’?” she asked, shaking her head as she turned away.
“I’m sorry, that was a poor way of introducing myself. I am Sheriff.”
She said nothing, and just continued with her card mission.
“It’s my mother’s 60th birthday today, and I have no idea what to get her. I could do with some help.”
She turned to me like I was insane, and asked, “It’s her 60th birthday today, and you are just now getting her a gift?”
I smiled and she narrowed her eyes at me, trying to decide if I was telling the truth. “Fine, I’ll help you.”
I left the mall with gold jewellery, a beautiful bag, and Fauziya’ s number.
Aaliyah squealed when I told her how we met. She swore it was the most romantic thing she had ever heard, and I agreed.
Fauziya moves closer, her arms stretching out around my waist, and I close my eyes. I missed this. I missed having her close to me.
“If Aaliyah was here, she’d have said, ‘eww, get a room’” I say, and Fauziya laughs softly. I missed that sound too.
“She really was something,” Fauziya says, her words muffled against my chest. And then, even softer, “Did we fail her?”
My eyes begin to water as I shake my head fiercely. I cannot live with myself if I bear a single thought that I failed her. “I don’t know. But I know we were damn good parents, and she never once doubted that we loved her.”
I feel her arms tighten slightly around me, and we lay like that for a while.
“I’ll come back to the room.”
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