I did not go into the family bathroom, because my brother had cleaned it.
You must understand what that means. Derrick Jackson is thirteen years old, a year younger than I am, and he has a talent for becoming the Clean One. He scrubs the family bathroom every Monday and Thursday with the dedication of a priest, and then he stands at the door like a guard, daring anyone to enter and leave a footprint.
I peeked in from the back door. The tiles were gleaming. The sink was dry. The towel was folded in thirds, which is how you can tell a person has too much free time.
There was a note taped to the mirror.
JJ: DO NOT USE. I MEAN IT. – D.
Underneath, in smaller letters, as if he had thought of it later:
THAT INCLUDES THE TAP.
I read it three times. I could not decide whether to be hurt or impressed. Derrick has a gift for a certain kind of clean unkindness, the kind that comes with a laminated sign.
"I'm sorry," I told the note. "I will go away."
I did not know where I would go. The yard tap was on, but there was a crowd of mosquitoes round it, and the moon had not yet come up, and I had a very clear memory of the last time I washed outside and my father had come out and said, Do you want the whole street to see your dirt?
So I did the only sensible thing. I went and knocked on my sister's door.
* * *
Jesse's room is the best room in the house. I say that without jealousy, because jealousy is expensive. It has a bed with a flowered cover, a shelf of schoolbooks arranged by height and a small window that looks onto the pawpaw tree. It also has the only private bathroom, a thin cubicle that smells of lemon soap and is always spotless.
She is nine, and she has the manner of a very small bank manager.
"What do you want?" she said, from the bed, without looking up. She was reading her primary school textbook with a pencil in her teeth, in the pose of a woman auditing a business.
"Can I use your bathroom?"
"No."
"I'll be very quick."
"No."
"I promise to wash it afterward."
That made her look up. She regarded me over the top of her book, her head tilted, her eyes narrowed in the cool, measuring way of a person who has been taught to count change.
"Wash it?"
"I'll scrub it."
"With what?"
"With the little brush. And the soap. And my hands, if I have to."
She scanned me, head to toe. It took a while. There was a lot of me to scan. When she had finished, she let out a long, patient sigh, the sigh of an adult forced to accept something unreasonable from a child.
"You'll leave the floor dry."
"Yes."
"You'll fold the towel."
"In thirds."
"You'll not touch my shampoo."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"I'll check."
"Of course you will."
"And you'll wash the drain." She pointed her pencil at me. "If you leave one hair in my drain, JJ, I will take you to court."
"Which court?"
"I'll find one."
I believed her. I do not think there is a court in County A she could not find.
"You better remember your promise," said Jesse, and went back to her book.
* * *
I washed. I want to tell you that it was a lovely wash, with steaming water and floral soap, but in truth it was a quick scrub with a cold trickle and a sliver of green bar that smelled of old rain. But it was clean, and it was private, and when the dirt began to wash off me and run down the drain in a long brown stream, I felt something I had not felt for days.
I felt like a boy.
I looked at myself in the little square mirror above the sink. For once, the face that looked back was not the little mad boy. It was a thin, tired, twelve-year-old face, with a wet fringe and a chin that was slightly too sharp. Two grey eyes looked out of it, large and clear and wary.
I did not look terrible. I looked, I think, like somebody who could have been somebody else.
If I were rich, I thought. If I had a house and a name and a pair of shoes.
The thought was so ridiculous that I laughed out loud. The bathroom swallowed the sound.
I scrubbed the sink. I scrubbed the floor. I washed the drain, with two fingers and some courage, and found three hairs, which I disposed of with an apology. I folded the towel in thirds, and put it exactly where it had been, and I pulled the door shut, and I did not look back.
I was halfway across the corridor when Jesse called, without raising her voice:
"JJ."
"Yes?"
"Thank you for the drain."
I stopped, feeling my ears heat up.
"It's all right."
"I mean it. It was the worst part."
"I know."
"And you didn't ask for a biscuit."
"I thought about it."
"Good." A pause. A page turned. "Mum left supper in the kitchen. She said you could have the rice."
She did not look at me. She never does, when she is being kind. It is like her blood runs a degree too cold to do it directly. But I stood in the corridor with my wet hair and my clean face, and I felt a small, firm warmth settle in my chest, like a coin dropped into a box.
"Thank you, Jesse."
"Don't be soppy," said my sister, and turned another page.
* * *
Dinner is not a happy meal in our house. It is a quiet one. We sit at a long wooden table in the dining hall, under a lamp with a cracked shade, and eat in rows, like soldiers.
My mother sat at one end with her hands in her lap. Derrick sat beside her, upright as a boy in an advertisement. Jesse sat beside him, tiny and composed, with a napkin over her knees. And at the far end of the table, in the big chair, sat my father.
I do not say much about my father. It is not because I am being polite. It is because I do not know what words to use.
He is a tall, heavy man, with a square face and big hands. When he walks, the floor knows. His hair is cropped short and greying at the temple, and he has the kind of eyes that look through you at something behind. He does not drink every night, but when he does, he drinks like a man putting out a fire.
Tonight, he was drinking.
I could tell by the way he held his glass. It had water in it, but he held it as if it had something else, and kept looking into it, as though he thought he might find an answer at the bottom.
"Sit," he said.
I sat. I took my rice, a small, white, plain pile, with a spoon of stew on top. I did not look at anyone.
I swallowed everything fast. I know it is bad manners. But if you are a boy like me, speed is a form of safety. The faster you finish, the sooner you leave, and the less time anyone has to notice you.
It had almost worked. I had my spoon in the last grain of rice when my father said, in his low, level, dangerous voice:
"Janah."
I froze.
I have a trick for these moments. I think of a very small object. A pebble. A bean. I hold it in my mind, and I stare at it, and I do not feel anything else. It is not a good trick. But it is all I have.
"Yes, Father?"
"Where were you today?"
"At school, sir. Then at the empty plot behind the pharmacy. Then the park."
"Why the park?"
"Danny's football."
"With that Okoro boy."
"Yes, sir."
"The one with the family." My father's eyes narrowed. "Does he know who you are?"
It was a strange question. I have thought about it many times since. Does he know who you are. Not who his father is. Not who the Okoro family are. Who I am. As if I were somebody else.
"He knows I'm JJ," I said carefully.
"Good." My father stared at me. For a long time, it seemed, he did not blink. His hand, on the table beside his glass, was a closed fist, and the knuckles were white. "Good. Keep it that way."
He got up. His chair scraped. He walked out of the dining hall without another word, and a moment later I heard the heavy sound of the bedroom door.
No one spoke.
Finally, very softly, my mother said: "Eat, Derrick."
My brother looked at me across the table. He had put down his fork. In his thin, tidy face was a thing I could not quite name. It was not scorn. It was a kind of frightened, fascinated frown, like a boy who has watched a stranger walk into a lion's cage and walk out again.
"Why did he say that?" he whispered.
"Say what?"
"Does he know who you are."
"I don't know."
"It's weird."
"I know."
"JJ."
"Yes?"
"You didn't do anything today, did you?"
It was the first time Derrick had ever asked me that. Not what did you do. Just did you.
I met his eyes.
"I swear I didn't," I said.
He looked at me a moment longer. Then, slowly, he nodded. He picked up his fork and ate, in small, careful bites, and did not say another word.
But under the table, very quietly, his foot nudged mine. Once. It was so slight I might have imagined it.
I did not move. I did not smile. But I sat there in the lamplight, with the last grain of rice in my mouth, and the sound of my father's door still ringing in my ears, and thought: In this house, that was almost a hug.