Read Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun Online
Authors: Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Dawud is embarrassed at not knowing the woman’s name especially when she remembers his and even speaks a little of his language, so he hands her a flower.
‘As-salaam alaikum.
Beautiful flower for a beautiful woman,’ he says in anticipation of the pleasure his words will bring.
‘Bellissimo!’
she smiles, flirtatiously tucking it above her ear.
He chuckles, thinking that once upon a time she must have been stunning – such a tall woman with a fine ass, even now. She was probably even stylish, although now, at her age, all these bright colours with the pencil and flowers sticking out of her hair only made her look odd. And if she did buy something, which wasn’t often because she was one of those that preferred the organic place down the street, then it was always their cheapest flowers or a small packet of apricots. And this never made sense to
him because if she bought all that expensive stuff down the road, then why didn’t she also buy his expensive flowers? Amirah said the woman was just eccentric, but that was his sister being kind. Amirah never said a bad word about anybody, which is why he had to look after the family’s business, and that was a headache with the shop being so close to the Haight Ashbury with all the hippies and pot-smoking lazies.
‘Hey,’ he calls to a woman who has just arrived. ‘Can I help you?’ Not so much a question as a warning because he’s heard from the gym down the road that there’s an Asian couple going round, stealing phones – one to distract, the other to snatch. ‘One dollar seventy-nine,’ he says, ringing up the chocolate – one eye on the till and the other on the suspect.
The woman takes the change and drops it, all of it, into his box for Palestinian orphans.
‘Thank you, honey,’ he smiles. Okay, so maybe he misjudged? But more likely, the only reason she didn’t steal was because she saw him paying attention. She was probably thinking that $3.21 made a good investment if it meant that next time he wouldn’t pay attention. But he’s not that stupid. You don’t take a man uprooted from Jaffa and forced to walk with his family across the desert and expect him to know nothing. No. You can’t fool a man like him. He knows what people are like, which is why his sister ought to listen when he tells her that a chain of falafel stores is what they should be doing. He knows these things. He senses them. They could make it here in San Francisco just like the French restaurants in Russian
Hill, the Mexican restaurants in the Mission, or the Italian ones all over the place. Why not Palestinian? They could call it Jaffa, or Falafel Meister, or whatever sounded good to Amirah. It would be cheap, good, healthy, and even organic. Low fat, vegan, raw, paleo, whatever people wanted, they could do it – cheap, easy, fresh. And once they made it in San Francisco then Oakland and then to LA and then to New York. To everywhere! But instead, what did Amirah want? Who the hell was gonna buy cakes in this neighbourhood? Expensive cakes, forget it. Cheap cakes maybe. But expensive cakes, no way. Why? Because women in this country were always dieting, and real men, like real men everywhere, didn’t eat cake. Falafel yes, but not cake. Maybe birthday cakes for kids. But even then, think about it, Amirah. One kid would want a train cake, then another the clown cake, and then another’s gonna start crying for a cake in the shape of a ballerina. And who’s gonna make those sort of cakes? Not Amirah. She wanted the fancy ones with honey and pistachios like back home, but the problem was that Americans don’t like those cakes. Too many nuts. Nuts, he kept reminding her. It made no difference that this was the home of peanut butter. Americans had a problem with nuts, and God forbid that one day some kid decided to have an allergic reaction to one of Amirah’s cakes, then what? Then the business would be finished, that’s what. He shakes his head and sighs as he returns to the bucket of flowers where the African still stands.
‘For you, honey,’ he says, handing her a second cutting.
Dawud’s flower, when I brought it to my nose, smelled strongly of his aftershave, and this was what reminded me
of Walid. In the early 1950s, before I was sent away to an English boarding school, we lived close to a Lebanese family. None of the family’s children went to my father’s church, but a few attended the church school, one of which was Walid. He had bright green eyes, just like Dawud’s, and whenever it was his turn to lead morning devotionals he would do so with gusto, reading always from the Song of Songs. So of course I fell in love, and because Walid conveniently lived next door it was easy for me to meet him after school without my parents knowing. Once, I accompanied him to the room in his house known as ‘the men’s room’, with low couches and heavy carpets hanging from the walls. The older men eyed the two of us through puffs of cigarette smoke. No doubt they were wondering, as I would later, how it came to be that a young African girl, attached in some manner to one of their young pubescent sons, came to be in their midst listening to the sing-song of their Arabic language and breathing deeply from the mingle of sweet cologne and tobacco. Or perhaps they didn’t care. Perhaps they took it for granted that one of theirs would sow his wild oats with a black girl. In any case, as for Dawud, he ought to understand that for all his sweet talk and pleasing scent, it takes much more than tired sprigs of lilac to impress me. Although I know, of course, that he’s not really trying to impress me. He just thinks he’s being charming to an old lady. And yet, had he seen me in my youth – even in my middle years, things would have been different. Back then he would have had to work hard to get my attention.
‘Really, I remind you of someone?’ Dawud smiles. He likes Nigerians and plays soccer with three of them on Sunday
afternoons in Oakland, but Morayo’s already moved on. ‘You know it’s my birthday soon,’ he overhears her saying to his sister, to which he rolls his eyes because he could swear this woman had a birthday every six months.
‘You tell me what you need,’ he hears Amirah offering. ‘I’ll make you a cake. Anything you need, honey.’
‘Anything you need,’ Dawud mutters, shaking his head at his sister’s naivety. He sighs while watching birthday woman walk back to the bucket of short-stemmed tulips, which aren’t his cheapest flowers today, but not the most expensive either. The woman leans in as if to smell, but he knows her well enough to guess what she’s really doing. She’s inspecting, trying to decide the best value for her money. But then she surprises him by picking two bunches instead of one – one purple, one pink. She shakes off the excess water, takes them to Amirah, and pays.
‘Organic!’ He calls after her, winking when she catches his eye.
‘Shukran!’
she calls back.
I resume my walk down Stanyan Street, puzzling for a moment over Dawud’s words. His jovial exterior doesn’t fool me because I know he’s led a hard life. He’s been divorced, he suffers from back pain, and Amirah has told me that it was political trouble that caused their mother to send him out of Ramallah. I imagine him as an angry teenager, throwing stones at Israeli soldiers; but nothing more serious, for how else would they have given him refuge in America?
‘You look awesome,’ says a stranger, startling me from my thoughts.
‘Well so do you,’ I smile, noting the man’s carefully manicured lime-green fingernails. I enjoy this sort of attention from San Francisco’s gentlemen. It’s one of the things that I love about the city. And because of men like this, men not sexually attracted to women, I find this city
gentler than most. And what’s more, here in San Francisco, both men and women seem to admire my sense of style. Whereas if I were back in London or certain parts of New York, where buba and gele are commonplace, I know that I wouldn’t turn heads, not at this age at least. And back in Nigeria, where so many are dressed like me, I wouldn’t draw any attention at all. So I treasure this city with its bright morning sun and brilliant blue skies. I love the way the fog rolls in late in the day, tumbling over Sutro Forest, to cloak my part of the city in soft white mist. But it’s the people of San Francisco, so often quirky but always friendly, that makes it feel like home to me. And then I hear a car that roars the way mine does. Which reminds me. What the hell will I do if I don’t pass the eye test? It’s not the first time I’ve fretted over this, but previously I’ve always managed to talk myself out of worrying. I turn left now on Parnassus to sit for a moment at the bus stop and catch my breath. I perch on the edge of a red plastic seat, clutching the tulips tightly to my chest, considering my options – public transportation or a chauffeur. Is that really all there is? And public transport isn’t as convenient as it is in London. I’ve had drivers in the past, but in a different context, different country. In San Francisco a driver will be expensive. And anyway, I want to remain independent – to be able to take off whenever I feel like it. It’s not just a question of getting from A to B, but the freedom to do as I choose.
I must have walked several blocks before noticing the homeless man in front of me. Seeing how dejectedly he moves, it makes me feel selfish for having worried so much about the DMV. I drop back a step and watch as the man’s
dog follows, the leash trailing behind. I’m reminded of a summer in Lagos when an American preacher came to Nigeria and walked around carrying a cross on his back. It was the year that Caesar was in between his Delhi and Paris tours and just a few years into our marriage, when I discovered that Caesar had another wife. I was in such shock that I considered leaving Caesar that very day, picking up my own cross and following the preacher. I stare now at the back of this man’s legs, muddied and clad in the remnants of blue jeans.
On the man’s backpack is a tangle of straps and tags flapping angrily in the wind and when the puppy stops to squat I pass discretely in front of them both, keeping my distance in case of lice or some sudden outburst. I expect him to smell badly but he doesn’t, and, glancing back, I see that he’s actually a she and shockingly young to be carrying such a load. Seventeen or eighteen judging from the slenderness of the girl’s arms; except that when I stop to look again and glimpse those steely, tiger-blue eyes, I’m no longer sure. She could be in her thirties, maybe even forties. I watch as the woman stops, reaches into a nearby trashcan, whips out some newspaper, and tears off a sheet before turning back to where the puppy’s just been. She scoops up the steaming black pellets then chucks them in the trash. ‘Come on, Stupid,’ she mutters to the dog.
‘You okay, love?’ I ask.
‘Yep,’ she says, then turns at Fredrick Street and yells ‘you fucker!’ to a young man just arrived with skateboard in hand. A flurry of insults rain down on the poor man’s
head for having left her on her own to deal with the puppy and backpack. Startled, but then bemused and wishing I’d had more of the woman’s spirit when I was younger, I say to the man in the car that has stopped for me at the zebra crossing, ‘Did you hear that woman? Did you see how tough she was?’ To which the driver only waves me on, but I’ve just looked up and spotted a stracciatella sky, dappled blue and white. ‘Consider the birds in the sky,’ my father used to say, ‘that neither sow nor reap and yet your heavenly father feeds them.’ So why worry about a driving licence? I ask myself.
‘Cross the fucking street, would you lady!’ shouts the man in the car.
The bakery on Cole Street is my favourite because of its walnut bread and the pain au raisin that’s not too sticky, not too sweet and almost as good as the ones we used to buy in France when we lived on the
rue de
what-was-it-called in the 15
th
arrondissement.
But it’s not just the food that’s good here: it’s also the chance I have to chat with friends. Here, for example, is where I meet Alonzo and Mike who park in front of the fire hydrant where parking is not generally permitted. They swagger in, hands on hips, just like in the movies with baton, handcuffs and pistols swinging from their waists. They tuck their crackling radio devices into chest pockets while chatting to those in the cafe. I say Alonzo and Mike because they work as a team, but it’s Mike that I’m closest to. He’s writing a novel, you see, so we talk about books. When he’s done with his first draft, I’ve promised to read it and give him feedback. He helped me, years ago, get out of a ticket for an alleged traffic offence. Bless him.
The incident happened at month-end, which, if you’re familiar with San Francisco, is when the city goes on the prowl for extra money. This would explain why the cop who pulled me over was hiding round the corner, trying to catch people out for traffic violations. I thought I
had
come to a full stop at the four-way intersection, but I didn’t argue. I wasn’t as fearful as I would’ve been were I younger, but I still knew better than to court a policeman’s anger when he repeatedly asked me if I was the owner of such an expensive car. I could tell he was suspicious, so I sat quietly as he wrote out the ticket. A few days later when I saw Mike, I recounted what had happened. ‘Let me take care of it,’ he offered. And he did. And at first I felt triumphant. It was like being back in Nigeria where, because I knew someone, I was able to work the system. Mike’s parents came from Italy and I’ve always thought there is much that binds Italians with Nigerians. Not that I approve of corruption, but in this case, where I knew I’d done no wrong, I felt vindicated. And yet the following month when I went to the courts to hear that my case was dismissed, instead of feeling happy, I felt ashamed. So many young black men were at the courts – some of them going out of their way to give me a hand up the stairs. They even let me pass in front of them in the queue to get my papers. They gave me preferential treatment as they would their mother or grandmother and yet I didn’t deserve it. I had connections. I had
‘le piston’
to get me out of there, but they possessed no such social capital. They didn’t have the means or the connections to wriggle out of paying fines as I had. Many, I could tell, were already stuck in the system and would never get out.
Mike isn’t here today, but there’s the white fellow who always wears Sikh turbans and silver bangles with one of his stupid birds on his shoulder. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to forgive me. I cannot, as a good Nigerian, approve of such a thing. If Selvon’s Sir Galahad had been around, I bet he would’ve eaten all of these birds for dinner. It’s bad enough that the street pigeons feel free to waddle in through the cafe door and that the bird lovers won’t shoo them out, even when they keep returning, greedily waddling back for seconds with their heads jerking to a cocky hip-hop beat. So that’s bad enough, but this business of bringing birds into a restaurant on your arm or shoulder, well I really can’t be dealing with that. No Nigerian would. Nor an Italian, I’m sure.
I’d come to the bakery to talk to my new friend, the cashier, but because she isn’t here I buy some bread, linger for some minutes in case someone else arrives. When nobody does, I leave. I was hoping to invite my friend to the birthday party because I find that parties in which everyone is the same age aren’t much fun. I can’t have a party just for older people, and in any case, chronological age aside, I don’t feel old. Or at least I didn’t until I started noticing the absence of younger friends, which got worse once I stopped teaching. And that’s another problem with this city. It’s harder to make young friends here than it is in places like Lagos or Delhi. In San Francisco, people tend to stick to those of their own age set. And though I know that my friend, Sunshine, will come – one youngster won’t be enough. I was also hoping to give my new friend some tulips, but now I suppose I’ll have to keep both. I look around, thinking of the young homeless woman and then,
for a moment, of Mrs Dalloway and her delphiniums. Mrs Dalloway chose stiff and stately flowers for her party whereas I’ve opted for tulips that arch and curve and keep growing after being cut. Fairly apt I’d say, on a day that started off with the DMV and all that jazz.
I take Cole Street home and on my way back I say hello to Mrs Wong who lives at the corner of Alma and Cole. At this time of year old Mrs Wong, dressed in bedroom slippers and pink dressing gown, spends much of the day sweeping leaves. Every few minutes the wind whips up new leaves and blows more off the trees. Mrs Wong’s appearance is unfortunate – her terry cloth dressing gown and her hunched posture make her look much older than she probably is. I offer her my extra bunch of flowers which she accepts with effusive thanks, dropping her broom to hug the tulips and then me. I smile and draw back my shoulders. Nobody will ever call me a
little
old lady. When I get home, I punch in the code and push my way through the heavy front door, resting for a brief moment to catch my breath before climbing the stairs. There’s a box on my doorstep filled with bright yellow Meyer lemons. ‘Such a lovely man,’ I smile for I know who this is. My neighbour from downstairs is persistent; I must give him credit for that. But he’s a Republican and he owns a gun so he stands no chance with me. No chance. I balance the bread and the flowers on top of the box of lemons and then with my free hand I search for the keys in both pockets of my bra, only to find that the front door is already open. Forgetful me! I pick everything up, glance around to make sure nobody else is here, then carry the box to the kitchen table and select a lemon to
rub between my fingers. I love the fresh smell of citrus so I place some in my white fruit bowl and take them to the living room where I set them on a shelf.
As you will see, I no longer organize my books alphabetically, or arrange them by colour of spine, which was what I used to do. Now the books are arranged according to which characters I believe ought to be talking to each other. That’s why
Heart of Darkness
is next to
Le Regard du Roi,
and
Wide Sargasso Sea
sits directly above
Jane Eyre.
The latter used to sit next to each other but then I thought it best to redress the old colonial imbalance and give Rhys the upper hand – upper shelf. I turn from my books for a moment, distracted by a noise, but it’s only the familiar thwack of tennis balls and the shudder of basketballs against backboards coming from the primary school across the street. Coming back to the bookshelf I pull out a book at random and a postcard falls out. It’s one of his, of course. Fulani woman with bronze earrings. I flip it over again and trace each crafted line with my forefinger, then bring it to my nose and smile.
‘Eu te amo.
Antonio,’ he’d signed, with the arrow of the last ‘t’ pointing achingly off the page. I sigh, trying to remember what he looked like. I remember his eyes, which were light brown. And his hands, I remember those. I remember the first time he touched me, taking my hand under cover of dark. We sat in the cinema watching Lord only knows what, for his thumb was tracing circles in the centre of my palm and it took all my concentration to stop from moaning out loud. He was always so gentle, except when he wasn’t, which was sometimes even more thrilling. But it was his words
above all else that drew me to him and his love letters, brimming with tenderness and desire.
I return to the kitchen and make myself some tea. Standing by the sink in
tadasana,
I gaze across the city, I think of Mrs Manstey in her solitary New York apartment. And then as the neighbour’s washing machine thumps to the end of a spin cycle, I hear the noise again; only this time the sound is unmistakable. I’m surprised at first, not in the noticing of it but in the wave of desire that grips my body as I put down my green Harrods mug and step quietly out of the kitchen into the living room. The whimpering has grown louder, as does the quickening thud that gives rhythm to the couple’s lovemaking in the apartment next door. I make my way to the couch where I lie on the futon, smiling as I sweep around my mind for a suitable person with whom to enjoy this unexpected surge of feeling. It’s Dawud that joins me first, smelling of falafel and lilac as we lie together, legs intertwined. I kick a cushion out of the way and then it’s the neighbour that takes Dawud’s place, his calloused hands gently cupping my breasts as he massages my nipples. But soon, inevitably, it’s Antonio whose fingers slip between my thighs, his breath tickling my neck. I close my eyes now as I whisper his name and then, letting go, I abandon him for the warmth that my touch has kindled. Only later, when I’m lying still, do I think again of Antonio and wish that he were here lying next to me. The two of us, pressed together. I bring my arm down from where I’m surprised to find it, flung above my head, and clasp my hands across my breasts. I must have then dozed for a little while because when I
awake, everything around me is quiet. I get up, re-tie my wrappa and plump a cushion back into shape. I find my glasses on the kitchen counter and smile as I catch my reflection across the belly of my silver kettle. I peer closer, remembering how Antonio used to call my eyes his ‘love crumbs’. Poetry, he told me, stolen from Cummings. As I wait for the water to boil, I remember some of our secrets and I miss him. But then I remind myself that perhaps it’s less him and more the idea of him that I’m missing. How often I have felt lonely even when with someone. Lonelier sometimes than when I’m on my own. I lift the teabag out, squeeze it and plop it down on the saucer by the side of the kettle. Gently, like the touch of Antonio’s thumb, I stir and stir until there’s no more sugar at the bottom of my mug. ‘Wanna little sugar in my bowl,’ I hum, dancing playfully towards the bedroom to take another look at my new shoes.