The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi Page A

her life these dream children had already taken. She knew so much about them, and so little about anything else. She had decided she wanted two boys and a gentle girl, the two boys to take care of the girl and keep each other company. And they would all love each other. I had some of these seeds, and –’
    ‘Where did you get them from?’ Aya asked, eagerly.
    With a wounded stare, the watchmaker said simply, ‘They are mine.’
    She raised her hand in apology. He continued: ‘I told her to plant and water them, and to wait and see. She came back to me one month later, shaking. “Those seeds,” the woman said, “are growing.”
    ‘I said, “Of course.” Her face –
    ‘She said, “Children. Children are growing from the seeds.”
    ‘I said, “Of course.” Then I asked her, because she wanted me to ask, what kind of children. But she shook her head. She just shook her head. She couldn’t explain. How many are there? Three. Just as many as she’d wanted. I saw such fear in her . . . she asked me what to do, then answered herself. She would leave them buried, her children; maybe that way they would die before they couldproperly draw breath. A cruel thing – I told her so. But she kept saying, “It is better this way. It is better this way.” ’
    The watchmaker stopped speaking – Aya saw that he was lost. She pressed his hand.
    ‘What kind of children are better left buried?’ he asked her.
    She tried to guess the end of his tale, the moral of it. ‘Did you dig the children up?’
    He did not.
    ‘Did she take pity?’
    ‘She dug them up in their ninth month, and they fled her. They must have known that she never wanted them to draw breath. Children know, and when they know. . . it is terrible.’
    ‘They fled her? How do you know?’
    The watchmaker gagged, gaped, put his hand over his mouth, then seemed to recover himself and pretended to wipe dust from his face. ‘I saw them.’
    Aya’s vanilla didn’t make the watchmaker’s seeds grow, and neither did plain water. When she dug up the seeds and pocketed them, she wondered whether it was because she didn’t yet know what she wanted.
    Dominique and I were good friends until we lost interest in each other. We had only really been friends because she lived two doors away. Then she moved, and nothing. Chabella was disappointed in us both: ‘You’re black girls, as good as sisters!’
    Chabella made me phone Dominique a couple of times. I wasn’t allowed to mention that I had phoned against my will. Dominique phoned me a couple of times as well. It was excruciating for us both, and then we were allowed to stop. Even after I stopped, it was awkward for a little bit.
    Dominique was in my class from primary school right up until we left sixth form for university. Either I had never looked at her properly, or her face receded beneath the swathes of her hair until I forgot it. Dominique is from Trinidad and she had beautiful hair, soft and thick, which her mother, like mine, banned her from straightening and helped her comb out into a fan. People teased her about it all the time and called her ‘picky head’. Dominique took the name calmly, without offering any insults of her own, which I couldn’t understand. But then some people give off a strange sense of preoccupation, as if there is something in their lives so important to them that they have to keep it silent, and close. And to keep this thing close, they make sacrifices.
    Of course, Mami loved Dominique’s hair. And she loved Dominique, who ate everything Mami served at dinner with genuine relish. Dominique tried to teach me some of her sunny, rolling patois. I couldn’t pick it up, but I offered to teach her Spanish. She said, ‘No thanks.’
    Dominique’s mum, Cedelka, was a cleaner; she became good friends with Chabella, and her stories about the everyday filthiness of the people she cleaned for rackedMami with guilt. Their conversations always ended with Cedelka assuring Chabella that