The Birthday Party

But now that Mum has placed a half iced cake on the dining table, Mary has barely begun to set the stereo speakers up. “Don’t forget to get the balloons”, she says to Kenny, who has just entered the living room, after getting the generator running – partially running, since according to him, its plug has developed a fault, therefore, can only power a few appliances at a time. “Go sit on the couch, Jerry”, she says to me. “You’re taking up the space we need to work here”. When I had woken up this morning to torrents of Happy Birthdays floating in from various parts of the house, as some cake with candles and “Happy Birthday” projections bathed my bedroom ceiling, I reckoned that the day had started out exhilarating. This was not how I imagined the rest of it would play out: a living room plunged into disarray, a kitchen avalanched in boxes and cartons and kitchenware, people scattered around the house ignorant of what to clean up first, people confused about what activities to handle first. Nothing about these scenes would have warranted any form of disparagement from me, if I wasn’t already frustrated, because all of them insisted that an elaborate birthday party was what I wanted.

“Bring that further out back, Peter”, Mum says from the dining room where she is still battling with the cake. “We need to get the backyard set up. Jeremy, stay out of the way, please? We need to work. Have you called any of your friends yet? The party starts at 2 p.m. Mary, leave the speakers, I need more carrots. We have none left . . .” Before the sentence is complete, Mary abandons the tangled stereo chords and zigzags into the kitchen, her hands in her pockets, her hair a nesting place for chickens. Mum sends her out almost as quickly as she walks in. Peter dashes past me carrying the canopy stands, gallops through the back door to the backyard, and I realize I haven’t seen Dad all morning.

Despite how it may seem, we aren’t a large family – a family of 6 can hardly be considered large, except, on rare occasions, when we’re placed in context with most of our extended family members – but sometimes, like today, it feels overwhelming. The last time we had planned a party was when Mary graduated from secondary school 2 years ago. Aunty Gertrude and her husband, Bill, had gifted her a new point biro, for good luck when she started classes at the university, and Dad had offered the wine he had been saving "for a special occasion" since 2000. Most of the parties we’d had had always been for the elder kids, Mary and Kenny, especially; this time, Mum felt it was my turn.

Across the street, Mr. Henry, who Mum often says looks quite mangled for a 65 year old, sits on his porch, while his dog, Buddy, scavenges his yard for bones, maybe? or squirrels, I’m not sure. I walk over to him and he offers me a stool; and together, we watch the chaos unfurling at my house.

“What’s the ruckus for?” he asks.

“It’s my birthday,” I say.

“Well, would you look at that? How old?”

“Eighteen.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping them set up the circus?”

“They won’t let me. Birthday boys are only allowed to watch.”

“I see.”

Three years ago, a fire almost threatened to leave Mr. Henry homeless. On that Easter day, I had been picking snails at our front yard (picking snails I’d realized early on was an incredible relaxant) when I’d noticed some smoke wafting through his kitchen window. His kids would get that, I had figured. But 10 minutes later, the smoke only intensified. I barged into his home and found him semi-conscious on his living room floor, while a pot of beans on the stove burned to a crisp. He had claimed, later, during one of our impromptu, stow away conversations that he had fallen asleep, and I needn’t have worried, but I didn’t believe him. I became too terrified that someday there would be a reoccurrence, and so I visited, at least once every day, and stayed for a couple of hours. And in those hours, we built a friendship.

His son died in 2015, I’d learned, at a resort in Australia. According to the reports he had been given, the cabin he had lodged in had caught fire, and before the management had realized that there was a problem, it had been razed. The fire had started at about 2 in the morning, they said, and the boy had suffocated in his sleep, his body, unrecognizable. The only thing Mr. Henry had been given of his son was a silver ring with J.C encrusted within it – the ring he had gifted him after he got his first job as an accountant with a top law firm in the state. Even though he had mentioned what firm exactly at the time, I don’t quite remember what it is now. “What of your wife?” I’d asked. Dead, he’d replied: a year after Jeremiah died – complications from a heart attack.

Mr. Henry springs up from his chair, follow me, he says. Once inside his apartment, he goes straight to his bedroom, and returns with a trinket box. He gives it to me, and inside the box, there’s a ring. I pick it up and search its corners, something compelling me to verify. I promise to keep it safe.

I slip into my room at around 2:30 p.m. when the guests have already begun to pile up in our backyard; most of them I recognize as Kenny and Mary’s friends. None of mine have arrived. None of mine will arrive. From my window I notice that Mary has finally set the speakers up, and Peter only managed to get one canopy up. I watch with the ring burning a hole through my right short pocket as Peter looks up from his phone and says, “Hey Mary! Have you seen Jerry?”