2010 The BBC National Short Story award -My Daughter the Racist By:Helen Oyeyemi

2010

The BBC National Short Story award

My Daughter the Racist

Helen Oyeyemi

One morning My daughter woke up and said all

in a rush: ‘Mother, I swear before you and God that

from today onwards I am racist.’ She’s eight years

old. She chopped all her hair off two months ago

because she wanted to go around with the local

boys and they wouldn’t have her with her long

hair. Now she looks like one of them; eyes dazed

from looking directly at the sun, teeth shining

white in her sunburnt face. She laughs a lot. She

plays. ‘Look at her playing,’ my mother says.

‘Playing in the rubble of what used to be our great

country.’ My mother exaggerates as often as she

can. I’m sure she would like nothing more than to

be part of a Greek tragedy. She wouldn’t even want

a large part, she’d be perfectly content with a

chorus role, warning that fate is coming to make

havoc of all things. My mother is a fine woman, all

over wrinkles and she always has a clean

handkerchief somewhere about her person, but I

don’t know what she’s talking about with her

rubble this, rubble that – we live in a village, and

it’s not bad here. Not peaceful, but not bad. In

cities it’s worse. In the city centre, where we used

to live, a bomb took my husband and turned his

face to blood. I was lucky, another widow told me,

that there was something left so that I could know

of his passing. But I was ungrateful. I spat at that

widow. I spat at her in her sorrow. That’s sin. I

know that’s sin. But half my life was gone, and it

wasn’t easy to look at what was left.

Anyway, the village. I live with my husband’s

mother, whom I now call my mother, because I

can’t return to the one who gave birth to me. It

isn’t done. I belong with my husband’s mother

until someone else claims me. And that will never

happen, because I don’t wish it.

The village is hushed. People observe the

phases of the moon. In the city I felt the moon but

hardly ever remembered to look for it. The only

thing that disturbs us here in the village is the

foreign soldiers. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers,

patrolling. They fight us and they try to tell us, in

our own language, that they’re freeing us. Maybe,

maybe not. I look through the dusty window (I

can never get it clean, the desert is our neighbour)

and I see soldiers every day. They think someone

dangerous is running secret messages through here;

that’s what I’ve heard. What worries me more is

the young people of the village. They stand and

watch the soldiers. And the soldiers don’t like it,

and the soldiers point their guns, especially at the

young men. They won’t bother with the women

and girls, unless the woman or the girl has an

especially wild look in her eyes. I think there are

two reasons the soldiers don’t like the young men

watching them. The first reason is that the soldiers

know they are ugly in their boots and fatigues,

they are perfectly aware that their presence spoils

everything around them. The second reason is the

nature of the watching – the boys and the men

around here watch with a very great hatred, so

great that it feels as if action must follow. I feel that

sometimes, just walking past them – when I block

their view of the soldiers these boys quiver with

impatience.

And that girl of mine has really begun to stare

at the soldiers, too, even though I slap her hard

when I catch her doing that. Who knows what’s

going to happen? These soldiers are scared. They

might shoot someone. Noura next door says: ‘If

they could be so evil as to shoot children then it’s

in God’s hands. Anyway I don’t believe that they

could do it.’

But I know that such things can be. My

husband was a university professor. He spoke

several languages, and he gave me books to read,

and he read news from other countries and told

me what’s possible. He should’ve been afraid of the

world, should’ve stayed inside with the doors

locked and the blinds drawn, but he didn’t do that,

he went out. Our daughter is just like him. She is

part of his immortality. I told him, when I was still

carrying her, that that’s what I want, that that’s how

I love him. I had always dreaded and feared

pregnancy, for all the usual reasons that girls who

daydream more than they live fear pregnancy. My

body, with its pain and mess and hunger – if I

could have bribed it to go away, I would have.

Then I married my man, and I held fast to him.

And my brain, the brain that had told me I would

never bear a child for any man, no matter how nice

he was, that brain began to tell me something else.

Provided the world continues to exist, provided

conditions remain favourable, or at least tolerable,

our child will have a child and that child will have

a child and so on, and with all those children of

children come the inevitability that glimpses of my

husband will resurface, in their features, in the way

they use their bodies, a fearless swinging of the

arms as they walk. Centuries from now some

quality of a man’s gaze, smile, voice, way of standing

or sitting will please someone else in a way that

they aren’t completely aware of, will be loved very

hard for just a moment, without enquiry into

where it came from. I ignore the women who say

that my daughter does things that a girl shouldn’t

do, and when I want to keep her near me, I let her

go. But not too far, I don’t let her go too far from

me.

         The soldiers remind me of boys from here

sometimes. The way our boys used to be. Especially

when you catch them with their helmets off, three

or four of them sitting on a wall at lunchtime,

trying to enjoy their sandwiches and the sun, but

really too restless for both. Then you see the rifles

beside their lunchboxes and you remember that

they aren’t our boys.

‘Mother… did you hear me? I said that I am

now a racist.’

I was getting my daughter ready for school.

She can’t tie knots but she loves her shoelaces to

make extravagant bows.

‘Racist against whom, my daughter?’

‘Racist against soldiers.’

‘Soldiers aren’t a race.’

‘Soldiers aren’t a race,’ she mimicked. ‘Soldiers

aren’t a race.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

She didn’t have an answer, so she just went off

in a big gang with her schoolfriends. And I

worried, because my daughter has always seen

soldiers – in her lifetime she hasn’t known a time

or place when the cedars stood against the blue sky

without khaki canvas or crackling radio signals in

the way.

An hour or so later Bilal came to visit. A great

honour, I’m sure, a visit from that troublesome

Bilal who had done nothing but pester me since

the day I came to this village. He sat down with us

and mother served him tea.

‘Three times I have asked this daughter of

yours to be my wife,’ Bilal said to my mother. He

shook a finger at her. As for me, it was as if I wasn’t

there. ‘First wife,’ he continued. ‘Not even second

or third – first wife.’

‘Don’t be angry, son,’ my mother murmured.

‘She’s not ready. Only a shameless woman could be

ready so soon after what happened.’

‘True, true,’ Bilal agreed. A fly landed just

above my top lip and I let it walk.

‘Rather than ask a fourth time I will kidnap

her…’

‘Ah, don’t do that, son. Don’t take the light of

an old woman’s eyes,’ my mother murmured, and

she fed him honey cake. Bilal laughed from his

belly, and the fly fled. ‘I was only joking.’

The third time Bilal asked my mother for my

hand in marriage I thought I was going to have to

do it after all. But my daughter said I wasn’t

allowed. I asked her why. Because his face is fat and

his eyes are tiny? Because he chews with his mouth

open?

‘He has a tyrannical moustache,’ my daughter

said. ‘It would be impossible to live with.’ I’m

proud of her vocabulary. But it’s starting to look as

if I think I’m too good for Bilal, who owns more

cattle than any other man for miles around and

could give my mother, daughter and I everything

we might reasonably expect from this life.

      Please, God. You know I don’t seek worldly

things. If you want me to marry again, so be it. But

please – not Bilal. After the love that I have had…

you don’t believe me, but I would shatter.

My daughter came home for her lunch. After

prayers we shared some cold karkedeh, two straws

in a drinking glass, and she told me what she was

learning, which wasn’t much. My mother was

there, too, rattling her prayer beads and listening

indulgently. She made faces when she thought my

daughter talked too much. Then we heard the

soldiers coming past as usual, and we went and

looked at them through the window. I thought

we’d make fun of them a bit, as usual. But my

daughter ran out of the front door and into the

path of the army truck, yelling: ‘You! You bloody

soldiers!’ Luckily the truck’s wheels crawled along

the road, and the body of the truck itself was

slumped on one side, resigned to a myriad of pot

holes. Still, it was a very big truck, and my daughter

is a very small girl.

I was out after her before I knew what I was

doing, shouting her name. It’s a good name – we

chose a name that would grow with her, but she

seemed determined not to make it to adulthood. I

tried to trip her up, but she was too nimble for me.

Everyone around was looking on from windows

and the open gates of courtyards. The truck rolled

to a stop. Someone inside it yelled: ‘Move, kid.

We’ve got stuff to do.’

I tried to pull my daughter out of the way, but

she wasn’t having any of it. My hands being empty,

I wrung them. My daughter began to pelt the

soldier’s vehicle with stones from her pockets. Her

pockets were very deep that afternoon, her arms

lashed the air like whips. Stone after stone bounced

off metal and rattled glass, and I grabbed at her and

she screamed: ‘This is my country! Get out of here!’

The people of the village began to applaud

her. ‘Yes,’ they cried out, from their seats in the

audience, and they clapped. I tried again to seize her

arm and failed again. The truck’s engine revved up

and I opened my arms as wide as they would go,

inviting everyone to witness. Now I was screaming

too: ‘So you dare? You really dare?’

And there we were, mother and daughter,

causing problems for the soldiers together.

Finally a scrawny soldier came out of the

vehicle without his gun. He was the scrawniest

fighting man I’ve ever seen – he was barely there,

just a piece of wire, really. He walked towards my

daughter, who had run out of stones. He stretched

out a long arm, offering her chewing gum, and she

swore at him, and I swore at her for swearing. He

stopped about thirty centimetres away from us and

said to my daughter: ‘You’re brave.’

My daughter put her hands on her hips and

glared up at him.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow,’ the scrawny soldier

told her.

         Whispers and shouts: the soldiers are leaving

tomorrow!

A soldier inside the truck yelled out: ‘Yeah,

but more are coming to take our place,’ and

everyone piped low. My daughter reached for a

stone that hadn’t fallen far. Who is this girl? Four

feet tall and fighting something she knows nothing

about. Even if I explained it to her she wouldn’t

get it. I don’t get it myself.

‘Can I shake your hand?’ the scrawny soldier

asked her, before her hand met the stone. I thought

my girl would refuse, but she said yes. ‘You’re okay,’

she told him. ‘You came out to face me.’

‘Her English is good,’ the coward from within

the truck remarked.

‘I speak to her in English every day,’ I called

out. ‘So she can tell people like you what she

thinks.’

We stepped aside then, my daughter and I,

and let them continue their patrol.

      My mother didn’t like what had happened. But

didn’t you see everyone clapping for us, my

daughter asked. So what, my mother said. People

clap at anything. Some people even clap when

they’re on an aeroplane and it lands. That was

something my husband had told us from his travels

– I hadn’t thought she’d remember.

My daughter became a celebrity amongst the

children, and from what I saw, she used it for good,

bringing the shunned ones into the inner circle

and laughing at all their jokes.

     The following week a foreigner dressed like one of

our men knocked at my mother’s door. It was late

afternoon, turning to dusk. People sat looking out

onto the street, talking about everything as they

took their tea. Our people really know how to

discuss a matter from head to toe; it is our gift, and

such conversation on a balmy evening can be

sweeter than sugar. Now they were talking about

the foreigner who was at our door. I answered it

myself. My daughter was at my side and we

recognized the man at once; it was the scrawny

soldier. He looked itchy and uncomfortable in his

djellaba, and he wasn’t wearing his keffiyeh at all

correctly – his hair was showing.

‘What a clown,’ my daughter said, and from

her seat on the cushioned floor my mother vowed

that clown, or no clown, he couldn’t enter her

house.

‘Welcome,’ I said to him. It was all I could

think of to say. See a guest, bid him welcome. It’s

who we are. Or maybe it’s just who I am.

‘I’m not here to cause trouble,’ the scrawny

soldier said. He was looking to the north, south,

east and west so quickly and repeatedly that for

some seconds his head was just a blur. ‘I’m

completely off duty. In fact, I’ve been on leave

since last week. I’m just – I just thought I’d stick

around for a little while. I thought I might have

met a worthy adversary – this young lady here, I

mean.’ He indicated my daughter, who chewed her

lip and couldn’t stop herself from looking pleased.

‘What is he saying?’ my mother demanded.

‘I’ll just – go away, then,’ the soldier said. He

seemed to be dying several thousand deaths at

once.

‘He’d like some tea…’ my daughter told my

mother. ‘We’ll just have a quick cup or two,’ I

added, and we took the tea out onto the verandah,

and drank it under the eyes of God and the entire

neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was annoyed.

Very annoyed, and it listened closely to everything

that was said. The soldier didn’t seem to notice. He

and my daughter were getting along famously. I

didn’t catch what exactly they were talking about,

I just poured the tea and made sure my hand was

steady. I’m not doing anything wrong, I told myself.

I’m not doing anything wrong.

The scrawny soldier asked if I would tell him

my name. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You have no right to use it.’

He told me his name, but I pretended he hadn’t

spoken. To cheer him up, my daughter told him

her name, and he said: ‘That’s great. A really, really

good name. I might use it myself one day.’

‘You can’t – it’s a girl’s name,’ my daughter

replied, her nostrils flared with scorn.

‘Ugh,’ said the soldier. ‘I meant for my

daughter…’

He shouldn’t have spoken about his unborn

daughter out there in front of everyone, with his

eyes and his voice full of hope and laughter. I can

guarantee that some woman in the shadows was

cursing the daughter he wanted to have. Even as he

spoke someone was saying, May that girl be born

withered for the grief people like you have caused

us.

‘Ugh,’ said my daughter. ‘I like that sound.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.’

I began to follow the conversation better. The

scrawny soldier told my daughter that he

understood why the boys lined the roads with

anger. ‘Inside my head I call them the children of

Hamelin.’

‘The what?’ my daughter asked.

‘The who?’ I asked.

‘I guess all I mean is that they’re paying the

price for something they didn’t do.’

And then he told us the story of the Pied Piper

of Hamelin, because we hadn’t heard it before. We

had nightmares that night, all three of us – my

mother, my daughter and I. My mother hadn’t even

heard the story, so I don’t know why she joined in.

But somehow it was nice that she did.

      On his second visit the scrawny soldier began to

tell my daughter that there were foreign soldiers in

his country, too, but that they were much more

difficult to spot because they didn’t wear uniforms

and some of them didn’t even seem foreign. They

seemed like ordinary citizens, the sons and

daughters of shopkeepers and dentists and restaurant

owners and big businessmen. ‘That’s the most

dangerous kind of soldier. The longer those ones

live amongst us, the more they hate us, and

everything we do disgusts them… these are people

we go to school with, ride the subway with – we

watch the same movies and play the same video

games. They’ll never be with us, though. We’ve

been judged, and they’ll always be against us.

Always.’

He’d wasted his breath, because almost as

soon as he began with all that I put my hands over

my daughter’s ears. She protested loudly, but I kept

them there. ‘What you’re talking about is a different

matter,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t explain or excuse your

being here. Not to this child. And don’t say ‘always’

to her. You have to think harder or just leave it

alone and say sorry.’

He didn’t argue, but he didn’t apologize. He

felt he’d spoken the truth, so he didn’t need to

argue or apologize.

Later in the evening I asked my daughter if

she was still racist against soldiers and she said

loftily: ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re

referring to.’ When she’s a bit older I’m going to

ask her about that little outburst, what made her

come out with such words in the first place. And

I’m sure she’ll make up something that makes her

sound cleverer and more sensitive than she really was.

       We were expecting our scrawny soldier again the

following afternoon, my daughter and I. My

daughter’s friends had dropped her. Even the ones

she had helped find favour with the other children

forgot that their new position was due to her and

urged the others to leave her out of everything.

The women I knew snubbed me at market, but I

didn’t need them. My daughter and I told each

other that everyone would come round once they

understood that what we were doing was innocent.

In fact we were confident that we could convince

our soldier of his wrongdoing and send him back

to his country to begin life anew as an architect.

He’d confessed a love of our minarets. He could

take the image of our village home with him and

make marvels of it.

Noura waited until our mothers, mine and

hers, were busy gossiping at her house, then she

came to tell me that the men were discussing how

best to deal with me. I was washing clothes in the

bathtub and I almost fell in.

My crime was that I had insulted Bilal with

my brazen pursuit of this soldier…

‘Noura! This soldier – he’s just a boy! He can

hardly coax his beard to grow. How could you

believe –’

‘I’m not saying I believe it. I’m just saying you

must stop this kind of socializing. And behave

impeccably from now on. I mean – angelically.’

Three months before I had come to the

village, Noura told me, there had been a young

widow who talked back all the time and looked

haughtily at the men. A few of them got fed up, and

they took her out to the desert and beat her severely.

She survived, but once they’d finished with her she

couldn’t see out of her own eyes or talk out of her

own lips. The women didn’t like to mention such a

matter, but Noura was mentioning it now, because

she wanted me to be careful.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘You’re saying they can do this to

me?’

‘Don’t smile; they can do it. You know they

can do it! You know that with those soldiers here

our men are twice as fiery. Six or seven of them will

even gather to kick a stray dog for stealing food…’

‘Yes, I saw that yesterday. Fiery, you call it. Did

they bring this woman out of her home at night or

in the morning, Noura? Did they drag her by her

hair?’

Noura averted her eyes because I was asking

her why she had let it happen and she didn’t want

to answer.

‘You’re not thinking clearly. Not only can

they do this to you but they can take your daughter

from you first, and put her somewhere she would

never again see the light of day. Better that than

have her grow up like her mother. Can’t you see

that that’s how it would go? I’m telling you this as

a friend, a true friend… my husband doesn’t want

me to talk to you anymore. He says your ideas are

wicked and bizarre.’

I didn’t ask Noura what her husband could

possibly know about my ideas. Instead I said: ‘You

know me a little. Do you find my ideas wicked and

bizarre?’

Noura hurried to the door. ‘Yes. I do. I think

your husband spoilt you. He gave you illusions…

you feel too free. We are not free.’

*

I drew my nails down my palm, down then back

up the other way, deep and hard. I thought about

what Noura had told me. I didn’t think for very

long. I had no choice – I couldn’t afford another

visit from him. I wrote him a letter. I wonder if I’ll

ever get a chance to take back all that I wrote in

that letter; it was hideous from beginning to end.

Human beings shouldn’t say such things to each

other. I put the letter into an unsealed envelope

and found a local boy who knew where the scrawny

soldier lived. Doubtless Bilal read the letter before the

soldier did, because by evening everyone but my

daughter knew what I had done. My daughter

waited for the soldier until it was fully dark, and I

waited with her, pretending that I was still expecting

our friend. There was a song she wanted to sing to

him. I asked her to sing it to me instead, but she said

I wouldn’t appreciate it. When we went inside at last,

my daughter asked me if the soldier could have gone

home without telling us. He probably hated goodbyes.

‘He said he would come… I hope he’s

alright…’ my daughter fretted.

‘He’s gone home to build minarets.’

‘With matchsticks, probably.’

And we were both very sad.

My daughter didn’t smile for six days. On the seventh

she said she couldn’t go to school.

‘You have to go to school,’ I told her. ‘How else

will you get your friends back again?’

‘What if I can’t,’ she wailed. ‘What if I can’t get

them back again?’

‘Do you really think you won’t get them back

again?’

‘Oh, you don’t even care that our friend is gone.

Mothers have no feelings and are enemies of

progress.’

(I really wonder who my daughter has been

talking to lately. Someone with a sense of humour

very like her father’s...)

I tickled the sole of her foot until she shouted.

‘Let this enemy of progress tell you something,’

I said. ‘I’m never sad when a friend goes far away,

because whichever city or country that friend goes

to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a

suspicious-looking name on the map into a place

where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend

will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that

live around him, and then that’s almost as good as

being there yourself. You’re in several places at

once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far

as to say that the further away your friends are, and

the more spread out they are, the better your

chances of going safely through the world…’

‘Ugh,’ my daughter said.

The end