September 12, 2018

DARKNESS!

It was Ada’s usual way of thinking. When she thought, she imagined the words floating around in her head. Strings of white graphic, struggling to find space in a black planet. She dreamt in white and black. She had heard people say they dreamt in colored. She could not just imagine it. Once your eyes closed, it was darkness, how could anybody dream in colored.


She was sitting across the table from her man. Watching him gallop down a glass of chilled Guinness stout, her glass of smirn off ice untouched. He was trying to make light conversation with her, and she had lost her voice because there was so much darkness in her head. She just watched him and thought darkness!


The waiter came and started to take away the bottle he had drained. She stopped watching her man for a moment, and watched, the waiter. She was sexy, the waiter, but not in a way that made her jealous. Her figure was like a coke bottle, the waiter, and she had this arse that went, left, right, up down, out of control in her clinging uniform. She gave it to her, the waiter was sexy but not in a way that made her jealous.


She returned to watching her man, just as the waiter unintentionally spilled a drop of Guinness on the right sleeve of his immaculate white kaftan, then rushed for her breast pocket and produced a clean white handkerchief and started to clean him. He weakly tried to stop her, but she insisted, apologizing profusely, so he just stopped, amused, and watched the waiter, while she cleaned him, caressed him. The waiter was flirting with him.


She was flirting with him, the way a waiter would flirt with a man knowing he wasn’t much interested in the girl by his side.


It amused her dark thoughts, how some women would flirt with anything, anybody. Some would go to bed with anybody, as long as he was handsome, handsome like this one. Then she thought about herself, how she was different from most women. How she loved to know her man, know them deeply, know them in spirit, know them in soul, then know them in body. She loved to know everything about her man, just as she knew this one.


Yes, she knew this one, knew him from years ago when he had lived next to her, lived just next to her, for fourteen long years.

He lived with his father, next to the room where she lived with her father in the big man’s boys’ quarters. Thin walls separated them. They used to rub their hands hard against the walls, to see whose hands was first to produce blood. Roughly plastered walls, no paints, chipped plaster.

They did everything together. Sometimes they ate together, the children of his family and the children of her family, they dipped their hands into the same pots, even though their hands would often get stuck in the little pots, and the fish would always disappear.

They visited the communal taps together, old saclux paints buckets balanced on cloths on their heads, and whenever hers would fall off her head, because the weight was too much for her frail neck, he would walk all the way back to the tap with her and fill it up again.

They fetched firewood… they stole firewood together, because their fathers had no farmlands. And the day the villagers caught her mother, in another woman’s farm, he held her hand, as the village woman stripped her mother, and flogged her all about the village, as they do to a firewood thief. They watched together, the night her mother died because she could not recover from the beating.

Yes, that was how much he knew her. He knew her shames, and the things that still made her wince in the dark. Stuff she would die than admit to even herself that it happened. He knew them, just as she loved her man to know her


They played in the moon light together.
He played ten-ten with her. A game for little girls, where they clapped their hands and moved their legs trying to repeat the same movement. And She played the Biafran war with him, a game for boys, where they fashioned guns from sticks and tried to take the life their partner.


He was her playground bodyguard; nobody dared touch her, for fear of his wrath. He was her everything. When her nails grew, he bit it off tenderly with his teeth, sometimes he pulled her cortex, until she had whitlow, then he helped her apply awolowo leaf on the wound. When there was sand on her hair, he helped her remove it.
Even though he was an innocent child and beauty meant nothing to him, he loved to touch her skin, to hold her hands. He always knew she was beautiful.


It was together they realized, as children must one-day do, that the world is made of two deeply opposite shades. Shades as extremely opposite as white and black. They had to walk their one-mile trip to school, while his father drove the big man’s children to school.

They were motherless and they cooked and washed for themselves but the rich man’s children were motherless, and her father cooked for them, her father washed for them.

Together, they grew very envious of the big man’s children, together they decided they would grow up to be rich, richer than the big man, the richest in the world.
The villagers called them ‘husband and wife’. When they were not together, they would ask her ‘where is your husband’, they would ask him ‘where is your wife’.

Then one day when they played Biafran war, and he found her hiding inside the mmagha leaf, the leaf they boiled and drank when they had malaria, the day he found her hiding behind the leaves, and the flower was falling on her head, he said, without even bothering to shoot her dead

‘You look like somebody doing wedding, I would put this flower on your head, on our wedding day’
He said he would marry her.


At nights when they were not together, when they had gone to their rooms, she would listen, listen for every sound he made from his room. She heard the loud kpoi kpoi when he pounded his mother’s crooked mortar, helping his mother prepare dinner. She loved the swish swish from his tongue, when he licked the achara soup that ran down his fingers. She heard creaking on the bed when he and his mama went to bed, then She would wait to hear his papa’s heavy footsteps across the veranda, and his papa’s heavy hands on his mother’s back.

That was how much she knew him. She knew his shame and the things that make he would never admit to any flabby-arse, big breasted coke bottle. She knew them all. She could never be jealous of a woman, when it came to him.


In those days, he would always creep soundlessly to her window, and tap so lightly so as not to wake her father. But he always did wake him, but he always allowed her to creep out and comfort him

‘Tomorrow I would hit him back’ he would say to her, every time his father had hit his mother.

Every day, he planned to hit him back tomorrow. However, tomorrow never came. Because she left him, she ran away.

He came to her window and he said
‘She has gone, I know she has gone’ and she watched tears run down his face. And She said in her mind.

‘Don’t worry, I would be your mother’ She said it in her mind, but She knew he heard her. She was a child without a mother; She knew how to be a mother. She was a mother to her four siblings, a wife to her father.


And from then She kept her promise, he would pound the thin mortar, and her little hands prepared the soup. An even when the oil rose and the water lay low, and the achara danced around the water like frustrated children masquerades, he ate it. He ate it, she ate it and his papa ate it.


And the days he starved, he and his seven siblings. He was very troubled, he wanted to take care of his younger ones, to be their father, but he had no money.

She told him not to worry, because She was his mother, she would provide for them.
‘Where do you get it’ he would ask, only after he had eaten to his fill
‘I steal from my father’ She would say
‘I wish I could steal from my father too’ his eyes would say ‘but he does not have any money’.


Then She would make another silent promise, to take care of him. And She always took care of him, because he was her brother her big brother. The one She loved…


He would call her to the window at night, and touch her body, caress her sprouting breasts and lie on top of her. She used to like it.
Yes, he thought she really used to like it, and he truly used to like it too. Until the day he caught them.


She remembers the day he caught them, and how he had fought for her, hit his own father, because of her. His muscles were bulging, the day he saw them. She with his papa, on their creaking spring bed. He hit his papa with that crooked pestle. As he had always longed to do. He hit his papa until he fell. He hit him.


Then he cried out for help, he took his papa to the hospital. And though she had seen him hit his papa, she told a lie for him. She said she knew nothing, that he had come home drunk as always.

No doctor would treat him; his papa had no money for the doctor. He brought him home and he watched him die. He was asleep beside him, the night he died, and he crept to her window and said

‘He is stiff nwanne, he is not moving’ he said it and he cried. He was big then but he cried like he did the night his mother left. He hung on her shoulder and cried. And in her mind she made him a promise.


‘Everything would be alright’ she said in her mind and she knew he heard. He heard and he believed her.


She was interrupted by the waiter. Her black thoughts stopped to flow, as she watched the waiter. She was coming back to their table, uninvited again. She was asking him, if he wanted another bottle, she was almost touching him again. But she was not jealous. She would always be his woman. The only one that he ever had. What is a man who would not tell you about his past. The murderer in him, and the baby in him who cried at night. No woman would ever know him, like she did.


He smiles at the waiter, and now Ada is irritated by the glow on the waiter’s face. What does she think she is. What is the worth of a woman, if she cannot find out, that what she thinks is a smile on her man’s face, is not a smile. Yes, Ada knows him well enough to know that that thing on his face is not a smile. It is like a sickness. Like how the buttocks of a sick chicken folds in sickness, that is how this man’s face is folded in sickness. It is not a smile.


He says ‘yes’ to another bottle, and the waiter smiles. An ugly smile. Her body is sexy and her face is ugly, spoiled by hardship, or maybe ageing, or bleaching, Ada cannot quiet say. But that face was ugly and spoiled. Another reason she is not jealous of her. What is an ugly face on a sexy body. The waiter saunters off and she resumes her dark thoughts, where did she stop .


Now fate had never been their friend. For everything broke apart after he had buried his father.
Her belly started to swell.
He was the first person she told. She still remembers the fear in his eyes and the question on his mind. ‘Nwanne, you are still a child, we are still children’
‘I am not a child’ She said to him. ‘I am fourteen and you are seventeen, we are not children’
But deep within, she knew the reason for his fear. He was afraid of being a father. Maybe She should have told him right then, that there was no reason to be afraid, that the child could belong to anybody
It could have been his own
Or his father’s
It could have belonged to the man of the big house whom their fathers served
It could have even been her own sister, if one night of drunken love with her father, could make a baby.


That it was how she got the money. The stipends she spent on feeding him. She did not steal from her father, her father had no money. Rather she crept into the creaking beds of mischievous men, and they gave her enough to feed him.


But She never got the chance to tell him. Because the next morning, she could not find him. She searched everywhere, and She could not find, and She searched everywhere, and She could not find him.


But She really wanted to see him. To cry by his window as he always cried by hers. To tell her how afraid She was. For her swollen tommy. For the wrath of her father, for what people would say, for herself, she was so afraid, she searched for him, and he could not be found.


She told herself it was for his good. That he would come back for her when things were good. He had run away for his good, because nothing good could ever happen within their thin, plastered, paint less walls, so he had run away for his good. She was happy for him, but still She searched for him.

Her mind returns to the present as she stumbles on another reason why she is not jealous of the waiter. The waiter has no idea of how his betrayal smells.

Or how terrible it was to encounter the coward in him. The one who runs away at the end of the road. It would take her by surprise, if she thought you could just pick a man by the restaurant and go straight to his bed.


She knew this man. Too much about him, perhaps in a way that was unhealthy for anyone at all, to know someone.


She had searched for him, desperately, until she had given up. Given up on him, on love, on humanity.

And five years to come, she stumbles on him quite by accident
She calls him Chukwudi and his face abruptly acquires this folded look, like the buttocks of a sick.

They sit down to a drink and both of them are tongue tied.

She is tempted to think maybe it is a natural phenomenon, that when you meet a person with whom you have so much to discuss, you remember nothing

But she knows it is more of the coward in him, who has run away from the past and wants to keep running.

She wants to tell him that she still takes care of his younger ones, she has always been and she still is a mother to them. Even though he had made enough money to look after them, she still does it for him, because it is a promise she made to him.

And now She knew She would do it forever, now She knows he would never come back, now She knows he would see any of them, any of his siblings and say to them with his nose turned up like that

‘I cannot quite place your face’ as if he does not remember


She wants to tell him that for a long time after he left, the thoughts of him were the only thing that kept her alive. She wants to tell him of how her father had also left them in death. And how she had suffered, she and her siblings and his siblings, until the rich man took them in, and finally married her.


She wants to tell him of the darkness over her head that never leaves. Of how her thoughts come in black and white. She wants to ask him if he is among the foolish people that think in colors.

She even told herself that if she could find him, remember these things together with him, then She can breathe them out, let them go.
Because sometimes her mind tries to play tricks on her, to make her wonder if all these truly happened.


But seeing him now, she knows that he does not want to go there. He has made a new life for himself, and he does not want her to infect it, stain it, like how the stout stained his white caftan.

She still does not know the father of her first child.

On the days when her mind seems like it wants to break forth in madness of thoughts, she would often find peace, by going to the cemetery. The place where his Papa was buried, where her papa is buried. She finds her peace in that place. In the silence of the dead. And she wonders, how healthy it is, for both of them, to find peace, in silence.


She lives in that big house now. She married the big man. New people live inside their thin walls, and She would often like to stare at them and imagine they are them. Her and him, all grown up with children, she always thought that was how it would all end.


But years later, she have found him, quite by accident, in a big city, in his fancy Kaftan, and fine car, he is soaked in rich perfume but all she can smell on him in sand and cassava, that is the way he always smelt. She recognized him, not just his face, but his smile, and his smell, and without thinking she had called out to him
‘ Chukwudi’


and with that sick smile, he had said
‘I can’t quiet place your face’


She knew it was a lie. A big lie. She knew when he lied. Another reason she was not jealous of the waiter. He was a liar


She has money now, her English is as fine tuned as his own. It is a life anyone would want. And she knows he wonders,
Why does she think it wise to re-open the past, the past, nothing but a can of stinking darkness?

Why does she think talking to him would take this twelve year weight off her chest?
She is like a coffin maker, praying for a customer, a professional mourner wishing for good business


She wants them to play Biafra again, just her and him, and she wants him, this time to shoot her dead with a real gun. Yes, she dreams of it, she thinks of it, she wants it.


She wants for a great wind to blow, and blow open the bottom of this sick chicken on his face.


She knows that he wants to tell her, that there is no need going there after all.
That it feels like they are playing oga again, and try as he may, he cannot repeat the same pattern as she.


They have gone two different ways, ways that never meet. And now she knows they would never meet again.

He seems afraid of her, afraid of the darkness within her, that threatens to erupt, ticking like a time bomb, threatening to explode and infect the light he have built for himself.


Her dark thoughts come to an end, and all of a sudden she gets tired of sitting, waiting for him to come to her, and caress her thick hair like in the past, and tell her that he remembers her, that she is his nwanne.

Suddenly she knew he would never do that. She had always known it, he was a coward. He had not always been a coward, but from the day he ran away, he became a coward, he would always be a coward.


Suddenly, she sees herself standing. She is walking to the counter, where the waiter stood flirting with another man. That should have discouraged her, but the pull was stronger. He turned to watch her as she left, and she knew he thought how mad her eyes looked. She reached the counter and roughly shoves the man, then she looked into the waiter’s ugly face and said


‘You do not know that man, that black man in a white caftan, you do not know him at all, but I do, I know him’.


The waiter is looking at her, terrified. She knows she was thinking that she is mad, so she stops talking, it was no use, talking to the waiter, or talking to him, talking to anyone at all. No one would understand these thoughts which refused to take any lighter color. So she walked away, out of the doors of the restaurant.
And she knew they watched her, the waiter, and her man, and any other person who had noticed. She knew they thought she was mad. But deep within her she was convinced she was not mad. She was just someone who thought in black and white.