My Sister, the Serial Killer - oyinkan braithwaite Page 0,49
wife, she is leaning against the wall of the corridor. Her shoulders are trembling, but no sound escapes her lips. Did no one tell her it is painful to cry silently?
She senses she is not alone; her shoulders still and she looks up. Her eyes narrow and her lips twist into a sneer, but she does not wipe the snot that is trailing from her nose to her lip. I find myself taking a few steps backward. Grief can be contagious and I have enough problems of my own.
She hitches up her dress and pushes past me in a flurry of lace and a fog of Jimmy Choo L’Eau. She’s careful to catch me with the sharp point of her bony shoulder. I wonder where her brother-in-law is and why he is not by her side. I try not to breathe in the pungent smell of perfume and sadness as I head into room 313.
Muhtar is seated on his bed, with the remote control pointed at the TV. He puts it down when he sees me and flashes me a warm smile, though his eyes are tired.
“I saw your wife on the way here.”
“Oh?”
“She was crying.”
“Oh.”
I wait for him to add something more, but he chooses to pick up the remote control and continue flicking through channels. He does not seem surprised or disturbed by what I’ve told him. Or particularly interested. I may as well have told him that I saw a wall gecko on the way to work.
“Did you ever love her?”
“Once upon a time…”
“Perhaps she still loves you.”
“She does not cry for me,” he says, his voice hardening. “She cries for her lost youth, her missed opportunities and her limited options. She does not cry for me, she cries for herself.”
He settles on a channel—NTA. It’s like watching television from the nineties—the reporter has a green-gray tint and the transmission flickers and jumps. We both stare at the screen, at the danfo buses zooming past and the passersby craning their necks to take a look at what is being filmed. He’s muted the sound, so I have no idea what is happening.
“I heard about what happened to your sister.”
“News travels fast around here.”
“I’m sorry.”
I smile at him. “I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
“She tried to hurt someone again.”
I don’t say anything—but then he didn’t phrase it as a question. On the TV, the woman has now stopped to interview a passerby and his eyes continually flit between her and the camera, as though he is unsure whom he should be making his case to.
“You can do it, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Free yourself. Tell the truth.”
I can feel his gaze on me now. The TV has started to blur. I blink, blink again and swallow. No words come out. The truth. The truth is that my sister was hurt on my watch because of something I said, and I regret it.
He senses my discomfort and changes the subject. “They are discharging me tomorrow.”
I turn to meet his eyes. He wasn’t going to be here forever. He isn’t a chair or a bed or a stethoscope; he is a patient, and patients leave—alive or dead. And yet, I feel something akin to surprise, akin to fear.
“Oh?”
“I do not want to lose touch,” he tells me.
It is funny, the only times I ever touched Muhtar was when he was sleeping or at the gate between life and death, when it was necessary to move his body for him. Now he turns his head back to face the screen on his own.
“Maybe you can give me your number and I can WhatsApp you?”
I cannot think of what to say. Does Muhtar exist outside these walls? Who is he? Besides a man who knows my deepest secrets. And Ayoola’s. He has a strangely European nose, this keeper of confidences. It is sharp and long. I wonder what his own secrets are. But then I do not even know what his hobbies are, what his shackles are, where he rested his head at night before he was carried into the hospital on a stretcher.
“Or I can give you my number and you can call anytime you need to talk.”
I nod. I am not sure he sees the nod. His eyes are still fixed to the screen. I decide to leave. When I get to the door, I turn around. “Perhaps your wife still loves you.”
He sighs. “You cannot take back words, once they’ve been spoken.”
“What words?”
“I divorce you. I divorce you.