Muscle Memory

🎆💃CHAPTER SEVEN🕺🎆

He felt like everything that could go wrong that day went wrong. From the Grace throwing a massive pulmonary embolism, to Susan’s arrival (apparently she is Grace’s best friend, a lawyer), her rantings and threats just at the sight of him; to Queen overhearing something that may or may not be the real reason for her not coming for dinner.

Madam Silva didn’t look pleased when he came stag with a bottle of champagne he had bought on his way but passed it off as Queen’s and explained her absence as due to a last minute’s surgery, quelling that primitive fear that his lie must have caused harm requiring the surgical attention only Queen could provide some innocent kid somewhere. He saw the misgivings in her mother’s face, stern look, a tightness in her jaw, and the quick smile it all resolved to the moment her stare left him.

His father seems happy to see him, smiling approvingly and patting him on the back while he intimates him with how the campaign has been going over the meal. Grandma was around, which means the rule of not talking over meals gets thrown out the window for a change, leaving Madam Silva seething at her seat, taking it out on the cook. She muttered something about the Kpomo being too peppery.

“the kpomo is fine, my dear.” Grandma lazily said—not looking pleased by the distraction from her conversation with Dave’s father as she gestured at the tasty hunk of sliced deliciousness, with the glass in her hand. She picked some more into her plate and gestured at Dave to do the same. “dig in hon, don’t be shy.”

He didn’t know Grandma Stella was in Abuja, Madame Silva didn’t mention it, which made him shirk at the thought of Queen unwittingly stepping into what might have looked like a family ambush.

Where Mother was a velociraptor, well, Grandma Stella had quite a reputation to prove that all things being equal, a tree is never far from the proverbial fallen apple. Though that was not the case in all respect on closer understanding of mother and daughter.

Madam Silva smiled at him, that smile when her kind eyes focus on you telling that she had dropped the act that you were invisible. She had finally accepted his lie. “what a shame.” She murmured, this was followed by a long drawn silence Grandma would kindly break.

A question of why he had actually come here for the first time in months dug up the answer clearly in his mind: He was here for one reason and that was that he didn’t trust himself alone elsewhere, possibilities abound, for instance binge drinking and a brawl fight when shit hits the roof. His family kill circle was better, especially now that fortune (or misfortune, depending on whose side you are viewing it from) had spared Queen.

“I really don’t understand why someone as busy as you would want to settle for another surgeon, my son.” Grandma Stella, the yeye oge of Lagos herself commented over a glass of martini. “I told my Richard, to cut down and settle for a desk job if things were going to work, it took a lot of convincing, but he did, things worked.” She raised a glass as if to toast—showing off a ring neither Dave’s parents had agreed to acknowledge—with a mischievous smile that spoke the unspeakable. He had been told to have same smile. Madame Silva shifted uncomfortably. His father looked amused, evidently, at the effect the talk of ‘My Richard’ still had on his wife. Richard is an immigration officer, nearly half the age of Grandma Stella, he’s her boyfriend and they seemed happy despite the disapproval of Madame Silva, who is still hard press that Richard is just a gold digger. From the lush Brazilian hair, the sumptuous painted lips and heavy makeup, to the see-through lace and magnificent gele on her head, Grandma exuded the air of a woman not yet ready to resign to age. She was always fun to be around, though she was rarely around during Dave’s childhood. She had her own business and societal responsibility as the traditional title, yeye oge, dictated, and was rumoured to hate kids. She however, had that free fun-filled spirit that contrast her with Madam Silva’s take-no-hostage, all-business vibes. Madam Silva’s frown followed the diamond ring on Grandma Stella’s hand as she touched Dave’s hand. “you understand, don’t you, oko mi?”