Feeling the stir, D’Onah looks down at the sleeping figure in the bed. He smiles his welcome-back-to-earth smile. Nari slowly opens her eyes. It has been thirty-seven hours since the surgeons wheeled her out of the theatre, enough to get D’Onah thinking about her and nothing else.
“Took you long enough to come awake,” he says.
Nari smiles sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to…How long have you been here?” Ever the caring daughter he never had. “You didn’t go to work.”
D’Onah reaches to touch her hair as she tries to sit up. What is work when something greater than life itself is happening? He shakes his head no. “Just relax, no fussing. The doctors said you needed the rest.” She reclines back into the bed gratefully, a sigh forming around her mouth. “I have seen him. He’s beautiful.” At her look of incomprehension he hitches his head toward a corner of the hospital room. She follows the direction to the crib. “Now I have a grandson…” D’Onah pulls the crib closer to the bed and lifts out the baby.
“Can I hold him?” Nari asks shyly.
You’re really a child, aren’t you? D’Onah thinks. Out loud he says, “Of course. He is your baby, and he’s been waiting for some feeding for a long time now.” You had no business getting knocked up in the first place. But not it’s happened, he shrugs, what can I do about it? A child is a child regardless of how it is conceived, regardless of the father. Father. The word sticks in his crop like a stone. Son. That is even worse. Both words appear as one in his mind, and he detests the thought. Styne.
He passes the baby to Nari carefully, like he’s made of porcelain. It is a little disconcerting to imagine. First time he’d witnessed a birth had been that of his son, an awesome event that had along the years become one big regret; now it is his grandson, and the feeling isn’t even close to it.
“Papa…?”
It takes him some moments to realize someone is referring to him. He weathers Nari’s questioning gaze at him with concern as he snaps back to the present. He tries to look like everything is okay. “You look like the real thing, my dear girl.”
Nari isn’t fooled. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Did he…”
“No,” he says forcefully. His mind conjures up an image of Styne. Heaven forbid. He’s spent too much energy putting some distance between them and the man to think about that. He shudders to think the devil he’s running from is none but his flesh-and-blood son, the nightmare of his days and Nari’s. “Nothing of the sort,” he manages with a twinge of guilt. “Don’t worry. I took care of everything.” He gauges the fear rising in the young girl’s eyes. To his relief, the baby belches faintly, giving him time to look at something else.
The door squeaks open. D’Onah’s guilt builds slightly at the sight of the man now standing in the room. The gulf between them yawns, not just in personalities and goals but also in everything else.
“Sanmi, how do you do?” D’Onah says without condescension.
“Could you excuse me? I have to speak to my daughter,” says Sanmi without regard for anything else.
D’Onah’s paternal protective instinct rises. “I don’t think she is in a good condition to speak with you right now. She just got out of a major operation, and…”
“It’s okay,” says Nari in a small voice behind him. That is enough for D’Onah. It reminds him he’s not her father after all. He wants to feel hostility toward Sanmi but he brings himself in check. They have nothing in common, not even the three-piece agbada and perfumed cap that speak so much presence for Sanmi.
Sanmi looks down at his daughter a twinge of bitter regret buried beneath some helplessness and a desire to shake some sense into her. “Are you okay?” he watches her nod wordlessly. SHer cool goads him. “You can at least speak to me when I talk to you.”
“I’m sorry, papa…I don’t know what to say…the right thing to say. That last thing I want right now is to say something that would not sound right to you after everything that’s happened.”
The boldness with which she speaks startles Sanmi momentarily. He isn’t quite sure if this is the same little girl he’s known since her birth. “What has got into you, Nari? You were always a silly acting young girl, but…now…I am strongly tempted to…”
“Papa, I don’t mean to be rude to you, but at least, after everything that’s happened, I would be no doing no good if I didn’t at least speak the truth, or speak my mind.”
Sanmi’s voice hardens perceptibly. “You sure are speaking your mind. That’s what you get living with a man like…that.” He hitches his toward where D’Onah is standing by the door. “Does he also teach you to be sassy to your father? To run away from home…?”
“I didn’t run away from home, papa.” Nari rises to defend herself. “You said I couldn’t be your daughter anymore because I got involved with Styne.”
“No one who gets involved with a scum of the earth like that is worthy of being my daughter.” He rushes on as D’Onah makes no move to defend his son’s reputation. Nor does Nari. “I warned you from the first day what would happen if you got involved with a stupid boy like that, let alone let him get you pregnant. I wouldn’t even be here in the first place if it hadn’t been for your mother and sisters. I can’t believe that despite everything I tried to do for you and your sisters, despite all of that…”
“Papa, I never said…”
“Don’t you interrupt when I am talking,” Sanmi snaps angrily, glaring at her. “Doesn’t he teach you any manners at all, since you obviously haven’t learnt any before?”
“I think it is time you left.” D’Onah’s voice cuts through the moment like a knife through butter. “She’s had a rough day already, if you don’t mind, and I need for her to get some rest.”
Sanmi looks at him with a sneer. “I sure won’t be told what to do by you.”
“It’s for your daughter’s benefit.”
“Good thing you realize she’s my daughter. Why don’t you take your misplace paternal concern and mind your scum-of-the-earth son instead of trying to tell everyone how to treat their children? Your son needs it more. If it weren’t for him coming into this stupid girl’s life I wouldn’t be having this detestable conversation.’
“True.” D’Onah feels the admission drop from him. “I am sorry but I can’t be held responsible for my son’s transgressions. It is pathetic enough. The most I can do is try to make the best out of it, not bury my head in the sand. So if you have nothing more to say other than get her upset…”
Realization sinks into Sanmi. His voice drops to a hoarse whisper. “Are you out of your mind? Do you know the implication of what you just said? I should have you arrested until you produce that son of yours. I mean it…” He turns to Nari. “Okay, I have had enough of this dysfunctional family. Nari, up. You are coming with me. He can share the baby with his son.”
“No, Papa.” Nari is resolute, forcing her father to consider her closely.
“Did you just say no?” he asks unbelievingly. “What has he done to you to turn you against your own father?”
“He did nothing but accept me the way I am. Something you never had the time or patience to do.” Nari sits up, her gaze but reverent. “I know I made a mistake, papa, a mistake I can not forgive myself. But at least I hoped you would find it in your heart to forgive me and accept me. That is too difficult for you to do. I don’t want to go through the rest of my life feeling like a stranger in your house just because of one mistake I made in my teens, or have you throw that in my face at every slight opportunity you get. And if you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me, if my baby has no place in your life then I have no place in that life either.”
“Are you giving me an ultimatum?”
“You should leave,” says D’Onah quickly, before things start getting out of hand. “It’s better now.” He holds the door open for Sanmi. Sanmi battles against his pride, but his daughter resolute features tell him she is not going back on her word. He leaves her.
“Are you okay?” D’Onah notices the tear slide down Nari’s face. Just then she wipes it on the back of her hand and looks up with a smile and says she’ll be fine. “I have to rush home for some things. I will be back in the evening.”
“No need. You need some rest yourself….” Nari’s attempt at persuasion fails. Instead she says, “I’ll be fine. I am not afraid anymore. I know he won’t be coming, not here.”
When he’s gone Nari lets the nurse take the baby from her. She asks to use the bathroom. The nurse offers to check it before leading her into the stall.
Time just marches on endlessly. An eerie calm descends in the bathroom, so calm Nari could hear the sound distinctly. She listens hard, pressing her ear against the door.
“Nurse?” she hears nothing for a while. Then suddenly a bump and thud fall on her ears, strange noises for nurse. “Who is that? Anybody there?” she drags her hospital robes around herself and steps out the stall. The nurse is sprawled out on the floor of the bathroom. Her breath catches. It is happening again, she thinks, the stalking she’s been running from.
Styne is suddenly in front of her, barring her escape out the bathroom. He looks at her like she’s a long lost treasure. “Did you miss me?” he says in a menacing voice. She is speechlessly rooted to the grounded as her nightmares unfold. It all happens in a flash: she sees Styne’s fist come straight at the bridge of her nose and her head jerks back, then forward, and she feels everything blacken out.
She recognizes the surrounding. Only a couple of times had she been here with Styne. Styne…?
She feels like she’s drowning as the cold water rushes over her, plastering the unflatteringly shapeless hospital robe to her gaunt frame. The water shocks her senses to the sound of a wailing baby. Her baby. She struggles to side, cursing to hell the pain from the stitches the surgeon had had to put on her after the C-section.
Cold terror sweeps through her as she sees the baby in Styne’s arms. He doesn’t cut the figure of a father holding an infant. “I have a baby, a son,” he says solemnly.
Instead horror and maternal instinct force her out of the bed. She lunges toward him, reaching for the baby. “Give him to me.”
“He’s mine too.” It is a declaration. “Same as you are my woman.”
She covers her ears in denial. “No, I am not your woman, Styne. Give him to me.” as she reaches for the baby, he backhands her across the mouth, knocking her to the floor. She scrambles to her feet, tasting blood in her mouth. For now not even the pain from the stitches can deter her. She has too much at risk to fear. “Hitting me is not going to change my mind, Styne,” she challenges him, a mistake. “I’m not your woman, not anymore.”
She notices the change in him, sees the red come into his eyes, sees the pupils darken with mysterious violence. For an instant she regrets annoying him and begins summoning the courage to attempt an apology. His fist in her middle knocks the wind out of her lungs. She feels like her insides are about to go apart; pain rips into her soul as she goes down to her knees, clutching her belly.
When he punches her a second time he knocks her to the floor. She feels blood run into her head and out of her nose. She feels death, still as he whips out his pocketknife. Is he going to slash my skin life before? She doesn’t think much until the knife snips the hospital robe clean off her. Oh, God, save my baby, she implores, unable to utter a word. She’s too exhausted to scream as Styne invades her body.
“Say it,” he commands her menacingly, slapping her again and again. “You are mine, you’ll always be mine. Say it, you bitch.”
With him sex is incomplete without violence. She stills herself against his strength, not giving the satisfaction of even a groan of pain. She can’t even manage that.
Styne gets off her, miffed more than ever now at her at her lack of feeling. A consoling smile steals across Nari’s bloody face, only moment before he runs into the wall. She collapses in a heap. The smile is still on her lips as Styne’s booted foot comes down on her neck.
Somewhere in the space above and behind her, she hears the wail of the baby, her baby. She can’t move a limb, can’t do anything to rise and reach out to her baby. She tries to speak. Blood comes pouring out of her mouth and nostrils.
Her last thought is: God, save my baby.
The baby wails on. D’Onah reaches first for the girl. He lifts her limp hand, raises a bunch of blood-soaked hair from her bloody face. He retches heavily, with a sinking feeling of despair. He has no time to prepare before the chair whips into his back, rocking him forward. When he turns, his assailant is there on his chest.
“Styne, you piece of shit.” His voice hardens with rage and hate. “You killed her.”
“Yes? I didn’t mean to.” Just as the shock from the response begins to sink in, he adds, “And I’m not sorry. If we don’t stay with our son together, then neither of us will…She deserved to die.”
D’Onah has never so challenged in his life, so angry. “I regret that you came from my loins, Styne. I despise the day you were conceived. I detest every moment I spent in my life calling you my son.”
The anger spreads in Styne’s face. “That was exactly what got your wife killed. Yes…” he taunts as he gets his father’s attention. “Did you ever imagine how that accident under the tree happened? Branches don’t just snap off, do they? It takes more than the wind to do something like. Let’s just say I helped nature a little…”
He doesn’t finish the statement. It takes D’Onah a second to realize what he’s hearing. To think he’s just heard how his wife met her death, at the hands of her own son. He rushes into Styne with the full impact of his body.
Prepared, Styne swerves slightly then adds some force to shove his father into the wall. He catches him by the shirtfront, throwing a series of punches into the old man’s chest. When he lets go, D’Onah sinks to the floor, clutching his middle.
“Styne,” he manages through teeth painfully clenched. “You are a disgrace of a son…All my life…I hoped that one day…just once…you would turn out…better than what I thought…”
“Shut up.”
“Where did I go wrong? Is there something I was supposed to do as a father that I didn’t do…why has my life with you been filled with so much grief? What on earth could your mother have done to you…to cause you to kill her…?”
Styne comes over to him and pulls him up by his shirt. “How about I let you join her, old man, and put you out of your misery?” he drags D’Onah by the shirt…toward the window, a floor-to-ceiling pane.
Short of the window, D’Onah puts his weight behind Styne and rams the man into the window. He hears the sound of shattering glass, then a more distant shatter of glass as shards break six floors below.
Styne hangs to the floor of the room, his legs dangling beneath him in the air, outside the broken window. He looks up, an urgent plea in his eyes. “Daddy, help me up.” He grabs at a support; the glass lets loose in his grip. He transfers his support to a stout portion of the ledge from where the glass had been dislodged. His fingers hold onto the glass that cuts into his hands. He hangs on for life. “Daddy, please… You are not going to let me fall.”
“Says who?” D’Onah looks at him with running, burning hate in his eyes. Suddenly he is like a stranger. “Why should I help you? You wanted to kill me a while ago.”
He guffaws uneasily, teeth bared in anguish. “Daddy, did you really believe I would have done that?”
“I don’t believe a lot of things. But that isn’t one of them unfortunately. Seeing what you just did to Nari…” his voice catches in his throat. He looks at the lifeless body on the floor, then the wailing child in the bed. He walks to the edge of the window and looks down at Styne with a cold, haughty expression in his eyes. “Styne, I hate to tell you this. But I have thought about this for a long time and I have just come to a decision. I am sorry…but your son is better off without you.”
There is dismay in Styne’s eyes. D’Onah lifts one foot, and then presses it down on one hand that clutched onto the glass, pressing it further into the jagged edge. The pain sears the nerves and brain. Styne screams, hangs on for longer, enduring the pain. It is a battle of wills.
Then he lets go. Arms flailing, lips cursing, he descends through the air until a thud announces his arrival on hard earth six floors below.
D’Onah bends to move the bloody hair out of the Nari’s face. He touched the bruises. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs reverently. “You didn’t deserve any of this.” A tear formed in his eye. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. Sorry for everything you’ve had to go through.” He stands, goes over to the bed and picks up the wailing baby. A tear drops on the infant’s face. He cradles the infant close to his chest and whispers, “What is going to happen to us?”
