I had wanted a settled life and a shocking one. But
I am not sure anymore. Because I thought by now I’d be able to say, if woken up
at midnight, in the middle of a burning building, what I was doing here on
earth. I thought by now, I would have a center that would hold, one that I
could return to. To rest. To nurture me. To always remind me about growing up,
but never quite feeling like it’s happened- to take me back to those days when
I had no limits to where and how my dreams existed. But I had failed in that. I
am fraudulent. If you peeled away my looks- the sharp hook of my jaw, my
habits- the way my eyes wont meet yours at the end of a lie, you’d find an
empty spot where the self ought to be. It had seemed like a secret. Now its
out.
It is the eve of my birthday and silence fills my
room like a saturated sponge. On the corners are shelves filled with my worries
and fears- the same ones I had dragged like a stubborn goat, from childhood,
when I had longed for and feared life at the same moment. Here is the smell of
my tired skin on the curtain tails. Outside this room is the familiar smell of
bodies I have come to associate with home- everything is safe here, I do not
need much when I breathe around them. They are the ones I have loved without a
sense of duty; to whom I surrender the particulars of each day. Who have loved
me too, in return. They have maintained a present I can always return to, when
the future thins out on me. A place that refuses to crack- at no point does
injustice, bitterness, envy, hardheartedness provide an opening through which I
could walk out blamelessly into another way of being. Because I do not know of
any other way to be myself. Because I feel protected by its smallness; there is
hardly room enough here to feel lonely.
I had offered people bits of myself, my devotions,
so willingly, the way a kite offers itself to air; a dancer, with her
outstretched arms, twirling legs, catching fistful of airs and throwing them in
different directions – because it seemed to be all I had. This damned, purulent
flesh. Still, it hadn’t been enough for them. And gradually, I became
everything I feared: that they would take my love for granted, that I would be
loved for all the wrong reasons. And they did. And I was. Those loves
birthed by circumstances, by convenience and laziness; loves which breathed for
a while before perishing like a plant taking a dirt nap, on the altar of my
uncertainty. I thought I had been armored for them, abreast with certainty, and
yet with each whistle, I had to take cover.
Tonight I remember the times I had looked around
and saw that I was in a play. But I had only a small part. A pedestrian on an
expressway. A passerby. A flower, abashed with the warmth of sunlight. A
landscape on a road that leads out of town. When I felt my hours- the unhurried
sameness of it- didn’t add up to whole days. There had been times too I had asked
if God –the one who mama said saw, heard, smelled and spoke at the same time,
to all of the 7billion people- was really there at all. Lonely as the ring from
the bottom of a cold coffee cup. Had I stood alone? It was a big enough
umbrella, how was I the only one getting wet? Or was God so limited and light
that I just could not detect her skipping stride? Those damned days.
Outside, as the earth rolls, slowly lightening its
embrace into morning, I watch three birds fly high through my window, with the
pale blue moon on their wings. I know I haven’t found my bearing yet, but now I
am persistent in my demand for the liberties I had been too submissive to dream
of acquiring. I ask for things so heedlessly, so powerfully. The right to love
whom I want and how much I want. The right not to be left languishing in
solitude, battling painful memories of the past. The right not to lose, at any
cost, my faith in the goodness of humans. I feel like tree in wind. Dust in the
corner of eyes. Smoke coiling like fluffy clouds.
Now I live in a quiet celebration of the greatness of little people and
the littleness of great people. I live with the imperfect act of haunting
streets, seeing everything, filling myself up with stories, and translating
that ball of passion and fire quivering inside of me like a flame atop a candle
in a cool breeze, into mere words. I live with an x-rayed vision into the
layers of human consciousness, in a world that nurtures us, but does not
entirely care about us. I live with the remains of the loss of that idea of a
former self- one who believed would slip through, who’d be happy with
panhandled change. I live within the fences I have put up, tall and firm as the
shoulders of warriors, knowing that love, sometimes, does not need a whistle,
does not need a push that could break walls, that it will arrive silent as a
mute shriek of grief, imperceptible as a light cutting deep into darkness.
It’s never easy saying goodbyes, because sometimes, -most
times- the byes are not good; they are sad-byes and make-you-weep-your-eyes-out
byes. Sometimes they shatter our glass-hearts; sometimes the byes serenade our
existence, because it’s in saying those byes that our eyes are open to the
possibility of newness. Of a sun, so bright and proud, making its way out of
the blue clouds wavering above our heads.
Another thing quite nefarious about goodbyes are its
unexpected happenings. We always never prepare for them; though, we quite feel
the need to. But it never happens. Some people always wait for the right time
for it to come; never knowing the time has come; that the time comes every
second; that everything is now or never. By people, I mean me, myself. Never
preparing for this moment when I have to say goodbye to the matriarch of my
family, my dearest grandma!
There was something that happened the
few days after my grandma passed. It was in the moments when I unconsciously
forgot to remember her. Those moments in-between work or sharing a laugh with
my friends, it was in those moments that the distance between the times I last
thought of her grew longer. Then, later, when I do remember to miss her again,
- when I’m bored-stuck in the heat of Lagos traffic and randomly realize that
there is no one else that would pray so fervently for me- there is a stabbing pain
that pierces my entire being. And then I have guilt, such guilt, because it's
been too long since I last thought about her.
And then slowly, sneakily, like the
rash on a baby’s skin, that guilt starts to spread out, starts to wrap itself
around my neck, and starts to choke me. It tries to form an eternal sunset of
what I am now, of what life is now without mama…only if I would let it. But I
won’t let it. For I know that if grief and death are strong, then I am
stronger, -that we the living are stronger, because it passes away and we
remain.
How peaceful it was, that early
Wednesday morning with the light morning breeze stirring the small leaves of
the guava tree in the compound, how lovely of the wind to eavesdrop against her
wooden window, to hear her heart so faint and yet so fulfilled, beat to it’s
stop. How magnificent, the physics of falling leaves, the rash scent of food
spices, the color of the sky, black coffee and the warmth of cashmere,
literature and hums of the subway trains. It would all seem like that was what
she wanted: the calm of dying at home, surrounded by the ghost of good and warm
memories, the smell of a familiar bed sheet and with all the angels of
laughter. I want to believe that the insects that clustered around the electric
bulb in the veranda, making the shadows move and change on the titles below,
watched as angels lead her in.
I won’t say many words. Words are so feeble when the world
seems sort of empty- when all the dreamers and warriors and dancers leave with
aches of joint and all the artistes crack their knuckles. Words
are sacred when faced with the loss of someone and you cant fathom just how
tiny we all are in this big world; tiny, that the world doesn’t seem to stop to
help us grieve; that the days carry the living along and the dead are left
behind. Words are bullets and iron knives when people are hovering around you,
waiting for you to say something, and so it becomes disconcerting to know that
no matter what I say, everything will go on without Mama. That the world will
keep turning, the seconds will keep ticking. That the sun will come up and go
down, that the audacity of the wind will still cause the avocados to fall, that
the birds will sing, the stars will wheel overhead exactly as they had before.
But still, even if I choose to speak a silence
that deafens; every space in my house and in my hometown and in all the little
corners of my community will still be left empty in a way that could never be
filled.
My grandma is too much of a strong
woman to be thought of as nothing but shovels full of brown sand already
scattered over a dug hole; or as a broken link, some sort of eternal withdrawal
from a reality that now dwindled through a white hollowness. My grandma is
strong enough to be in my memory forever, still obscurely alive, breathing,
moving and praying for me, till the sun goes red over my head.
I do know that occasionally, the
presence of her absence will hit me like a blow to the chest, and it would
evoke so many feelings within me. But eventually, this will happen less and
less as time goes on. I will think of her wisdom, the kindness of her soul, the
warmth of her smile, her loving scolds, her praying tongue, her guarding arms
and her love that knew no boundaries. You see, the difference between the guava
trees behind my grandma’s window and I is that the trees let go of their leaves
with seasons. I will keep holding onto mine- all the memories of you, of us- forever.
But I shall mourn. I shall drain the
bitter dregs of mortality. I shall say goodbye to my grandma like we were two
people who met in a café by the street corner, and coincidentally ordered the
same thing on the menu, and shared a lifetime of stories while we ate and
laughed and cried, and later left, feeling fulfilled yet wanting more, but
knowing we’d meet- anywhere, somewhere, somehow- again.
And so with closed eyes, a heart not
beating, but a living love; I’m sure my grandma is up in the sky. Somewhere
with color and light and air.
Goodbye my loving Grandma; all my love, all my heart, all our memories.
K.
SONG BENEATH A SONG:
August came yummy with music!
So, I got two albums that I'm absolutely obsessed with: The Civil Wars' self titled sophomore album "THE CIVIL WARS", and Andrew Belle's sophomore album- after 3 years damn it-, BLACK BEAR.
These albums are well crafted and beautifully written, also with flawless production; so I decided to share my stand-out tracks from each. Please do listen and support these amazing artistes.
That call that breaks the darkness in
the room at night and wakes you up from sleep; I’ve always dreaded it.
My grandpa passed on in the wee hours
of Monday morning, and before then, I was already mourning the demise of the erudite professor, Chinua
Achebe. These are two men, of the same age who I admired and looked up to all
my life. Achebe is like god; I was so sad and overwhelmed when I heard the news
and I started reminiscing of the days I read Things Fall Apart and knew I
wanted to be that great a man. Or half. I remember especially one night,
reading it with a flashlight because I shared a room with my siblings and I
didn’t want them to wake up. And it was in that blackness of the night, with
the sighs of frogs and hiss of the winds that I knew I wanted to tell stories.
There are so many things everyone must seek to emulate in this great hero
Achebe: his integrity, the audacity of his truth; his impeccable will to not
compromise. Achebe told stories when they burned like tea slurped without
bread; he stood and spoke the truth when the birds hovering over his head held
nsi in their buttocks, and he sat, gentle with the poise of royalty when he
couldn’t stand no more and told all that he had held back in There Was A
Country.
Chinua Achebe’s books
and essays were instrumentals in giving a voice to the dead and dying of
Africa, to histories that we are often ignorant of. It's like that unspoken
thought people have when hearing of fresh tragedy in China: oh well, there're
too many people in China already, they can afford to lose a few million. No one
will say it aloud, but it hovers there like a black cloud of superiority all
the same (in the same way as westerners always looking at China and India as
the real problem when it comes to climate change). There was a human story in every line Chinua Achebe had ever written,
aimed in bringing to life the different layers of the Nigerian society, giving
them back ownership of their African identity and heritage even while telling
the story of it being taken from them.
Last year, I coincidentally stayed in
the house Chinua Achebe lived in Nsukka. I was visiting my uncle who is a
Professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A faded colored detached house
sat, as if carelessly, in a big compound with picket fences and a decent green
area. I was to stay for three days. I could not sleep; I felt like some sort of
ghost would surround me and bestow on me the ability to tell stories that skip
through air. It was in this same house that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie moved
into, with her family, after the Achebes moved out. It was in this same house I
would imagine, Achebe wrote “Girls at War”; a book from which I learned the act
of telling short stories.
My grandfather’s death will not make
headlines or become a trending topic on social medias. But people will flood
our country home like rain on roads without drainage, they would wail and shake
heads and hold their shoulders high in a tensed manner. They will say, “Oh yes,
Nze was a greatman” and I would know it is not the voices of the empty bottles
of beer on the table in my grandma’s living room. I would know that if you stop
two villages away, and ask a young boy, the height of a maize tree in the
middle of May and say “Oh, I’m looking for Nze’s compound”, he would wipe his
hands on his round, exposed belly and point towards left and right, or right
and left, and the rain would not wash away your footprints till you get to the
compound surrounded by almond trees.
My grandfather was quiet; spoke
sporadically and ate with the grace of a cat. I remember his last visit to
Lagos, driving him to hospitals and to see his friends from Nigeria Airways who
retired and didn’t go back to the village. I remember the days before then,
when his visits to Lagos was frequent because the Nigerian government delayed
paying his pension. We would all go to FAAN, at Ikeja and wait. The air was hot every time; there was always an aura of grey around everyone. It was like a mist that wouldn't
rise. Everyone there
waited, most times for long hours and when they needed to stretch their bones,
they would buy groundnut from the young children under a tree shade. I remember
playing the Kenny Rogers record in the car because it birthed a different,
intensely fragile, depth of mind that I felt both of us could connect to. He
would grab the headrest of my seat and say “ka nwam, ji ri ya nwa yo”. Take it
easy, Lagos has been here before me and it is not going anywhere. My grandma
will rebuke him, and apologize to me. Maybe she thought I was offended by it;
maybe she thought her husband had forgotten that the only way to get through
Lagos was to hurry. But I would look at them from the rear-view and smile.
For so many reasons, my relationship
with my maternal grandparents was estranged for such a long time, and it
wasn’t till I was old enough to stop bathing outside with the ruthless
harmathan, that I realized why. (Story for another day, please). So, yes, I was
deprived of so many Christmas memories with him, and when I was ready to listen
to stories by his bedside, he grew ill. There was an overwhelming emptiness
with his presence each time he visited Lagos, and sometimes I didn’t know how
to react when his eyes burned at me unconsciously. I knew each time he stared
at me and I would make up his thoughts; sometimes I would want to tell him how
I learnt to ride a bike, or how I sometimes wish to hear stories of the Biafran
war from him. But I wont. He was worn out; weak most times to the tick of the
clock in the solitude of his room. But still, with that weakness, we danced for victory. We danced for misery. We danced for miscarriages. We danced in garbage, too.
I was left to make up memories of my Grandpa from what I thought would be; memories and stories of him holding me as a child and
remembering my birthdays and buying my favorite fruits from the junction,
holding the village to the city.But now I only hold two stories: one- which I will learn of after his death- is the story of how my grandfather became a
man; the other- which I saw through his sickness -is of how he became a child
again.
My grandma has been gracious. She’s as
slender as Nneoma and strong like a basket woven under the sun. But soon she
would be weakened; soon she would put her husband in between a thicket of long
almond trees, where the green seems to still have a hollow voice in the
branches, spreading out to catch the sun. She would try not to think about the
birds that soon would gather, and so we would all stay beside her, desperately
trying not to weep. Our throats would tighten. Our heads would pound like the throbs of heavy rain against a zinc roof. Everything
would hurt inside. Someone; one of us; all of us would try to take Grandma's hand. One
of us will, and would think it belonged to a glass doll.
And so we too would gather around, with
spades and shovels and set brown sands over Grandpa, trying our best to protect
him from the birds. We would pile heaps of earth gently on his stomach, his legs and
over his round face, until he becomes one with the almond trees.
Then we would all stand, and study our
work, feeling like these heaps of sands and rocks are on us instead. And my
grandma will tear her cheeks in grief, knowing that his flesh will rot away-
more birds than family flocking round his body.
I don’t know what I’m feeling, to be honest.
Writing most times puts me in check; of where I’m supposed to be and what
emotions I should process. I feel like when it comes to death, the most
interesting thing about it is grief. Grief is captivating; it is it’s own size
and it’s own boss and it’s own determiner. It’s not the size of love, or hurt,
or sadness or even anyone else who looses someone. It is its own size and it
comes to you when it sees fit. You understand? I’ve always loved the phrase
that someone was “visited by grief”, because that is really what it is and how
it operates. Grief is it’s own thing. It’s not like it is in me and I’m going
to deal with it. It’s a thing and one needs to be okay with it’s presence when
it finally arrives. If one tries to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at one’s
door.
But I’m indifferent. I feel like I
don’t own my emotions yet. It’s hard. But we are human; we all own our emotions at
a price. With indifference, I can sell my emotions out to the highest bidder: to
whoever can plough my thoughts, loot them and then drive me with them. I say,
here’s my worn out white sheet. I don’t want to sell it to the virgin and I
don’t want to sell it to the prostitute…so whoever finds it, please use it.
That is indifference. And meanwhile, a child just might come around and use it
to wipe the dog’s poop.
But it doesn’t matter who I sell the
bed-sheet to…the virgin isn’t always better than the prostitute. The most
important thing is that I can decide to sell it to one of them and defend my
sale with all my might. Because it is careless to leave an unused sheet
hanging.
So now I decide to be happy. Happy that
I was lucky to be born in the era of such a great man, Chinua Achebe; happy to
be able to look up to him and learn from his knowledge and be inspired by his
integrity. Today I decide to be happy for African literature; for its woes and
triumphs, its bitter histories and lost treasures; its glory and its unsung
melodies. Happy that when the white men found our culture to be like chaffs from coconut juice, Achebe gathered it all and used it to make candy. Happy that there are distant shouts in my head, of the pressure to
leave a remarkable legacy as these men did; to lay in, hands crossed in an open
coffin with a laced-up shoe too big for anyone to fit in. Happy that these men have paid the toll and the road has been opened up for greatness; that when I look in the mirror, it doesn't shatter with shame nor my face sour with disdain. Today, I’m happy that
a good man lived long and well, and that he passed by my window on his journey
home, and that he didn’t send me ahead of him when he should go first.
RIP GRANDPA.
RIP CHINUA ACHEBE.
Some of my favorite quotes from Chinua Achebe:
“I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there’s no way
you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there
will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are
standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I
think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public
arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not
stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena.
Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you
keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be
told—from many different perspectives.”
"The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his
religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now
he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He
has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen
apart.”
“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our
own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
“When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left
for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own
stool.”
“I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in
the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all
its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the
first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them”
“Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.”
“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history.
The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have -
otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”
My dear friend, Oluwafunmilayo Oyatogun (Rubayo Ibin) -the founder of Baliff Africa (www.baliffafrica.org)- is the well of my inspiration . We had talked( and we are literary twins separated at birth), and sought depth, but ended up getting lost in the simplicity of some life situations. She tells the story of the virgin and the prostitute poignantly. And her wisdom is unfathomable.
Here is the 3rd part! Sorry it took so long (as opposed to the weekly ritual), but I hope it's worth it. If this is your first time here, read the first and the second below on the blog). Enjoy!
Moving Clocks Run Slow: SECRETS.
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At night, four women lay with different secrets.
They all tried to sleep, somehow convincing themselves that
if they shot their eyes and hoped hard enough, they would drift away from the
reality of what they did till the light of morning comes upon their windows and
the rays of gold and honey cover them in the sweetness of dawn. But they
struggled with these secrets that threatened to choke them. One paced around
the balcony of her bedroom, and the second tried to distract herself with the
could’ves and would’ves and should’ves thoughts of a failed marriage. The third
watched the knife by the side of her bed glitter under the lamp while her
husband snored and the last tried to force herself to sleep, her secrets
clasped between her hands.
Still they vowed to cover them up, to conceal it; divide
these secrets in their souls into smaller and smaller bits and scatter them in
places no one would find them.
Tracy tried to cover hers with her day to day living;
dropping the kids at school in the mornings, catching up later in the evening
with her girlfriends at Ikoyi Club where they talked about shoes and expensive
hair extensions. That was what she did, and the last time she went to see her
parents in the village, the ladies she went to the stream with to fetch water while
she was still in the village beamed from molar to molar with hidden envy. She did
not tell them of the unbearable loneliness that sat in the empty seats of her
Prado jeep or the strangeness in her husband’s embrace. She smiled and gave them
all of her old shoes.
But that night as she lay on her massive bed
in the solace of her Luxurious home in Lekki, she thought of several things she
could have said to Sam and mourned the fact that her strength usually bloomed
late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to
midnight. It was her friend Joyce, that first told her about Ashley- the woman
she described as being so beautiful that it made the stars at night envious. Joyce
had seen them at the airport waiting to board an international flight, and it
was something in their eyes that gave her an assurance that they were playing
with each other’s hearts and body parts.
Joyce was the loud one; the not too
pretty lady who quit her job with the Insurance company to be a stay-at-home
mom. And her husband, a good looking man with broad shoulders who went around
town planting kisses on the necks of strange women. The women at the club that
evening in their Polos and skin-tight jeans thought her to be crazy when she
told them that she hired a woman to seduce and fall in love, or mutual lust,
with her husband. She was trying to save her marriage.
“No!” The women’s eyes burned with
shock towards Joyce. “How could you?”
“My sisters, isn’t it better that I
have a say in whom I’m sharing my husband with?”
Joyce was not remorseful.
“She’s doing her IT with the Insurance Company
and she needs some money to take care of her parents. It’s a long story of how
we met but it’s been on going for three years now”
Their brows were raised. “What has been
on going?”
“The relationship. Or love. Or lust. Or
contract. Or whatever.” Joyce round eyes shadowed a disinterest.
“She would take him from you completely!”
“The minute he decided that I wasn’t
enough for him, he ceased to be mine”
“But half puff-puff is better than none...”
“No be for woman wey dey watch im
weight” Joyce intruded. “I’ve had just about enough with Nkem and his
shenanigans. I’m currently watching how much more I can swallow before my
suitcases are packed.”
“No way!” The women chorused again,
with a little warmth in their eyes this time around.
“You can’t do that”, one of the women
said. “You will leave with nothing. This is not Hollywood, my dear shine your
eyes.”
Joyce looked at Tracy on the other end
of the table, who sat numb with her head buried, before she giggled. “My eyes
are crystal clear. Chidinma calls me about twice a week when they meet.”
“The girl, her name is Chidinma” she
added.
“Does she tell you when they…”
“Make love?” Joyce chuckled. “The shameless
bulldog gives it to her from the back.”
“You mean she tells you?”
“Every gory detail. I always insist,
its part of the contract”
“And it doesn’t get you jealous?”
Lately, jealousy wasn’t a temporary
state for Joyce any more. It had become an inherent part of her personality.
She found herself being jealous of a madman’s contended solitude and of
something as mundane as a dog following a stranger through the narrow streets
of Osborne estate.
“Not a vein in my body responds to it”
Meanwhile Tracy had kept quiet all
through as the other women talked and sipped from tall glasses. She listened as
the women lashed out advices and bible passages that fell through Joyce’s’
jeweled ears. And then they talked about their children and the impending
summer vacation they all planned to go on. Tracy made a decision that evening
that would change the course of her life.
Tracy followed Ashley from that day, and
in no time, knew everything there was to know about her. On Wednesdays was when
Ashley went to the African restaurant off Adeola Odeku, while she picked up her
laundry on Thursdays after 4pm, and she watched Sam’s driver pick her up every
Friday at 6pm. She would always leave the girls with Esther, the house-girl,
and run out just to watch the evening breeze get caught in Ashley’s hair as she
walked out down the stairs of her office building. And she didn’t do all these
with the thought that maybe if she tried, she could emulate Ashley and win her
husband back. Tracy did not feel threatened by her, somehow she felt relieved;
somehow along the line love wasn’t just enough for she and Sam. As a matter of
fact, it made them miserable; made them yell over little nothings while their
kids fidgeted behind closed doors. Most of loving someone that ceased to love
her back somewhere between three girls and a couple of added pounds made Tracy
feel powerless. She had gotten used to the late nights and sudden business
trips that happened frequently. And those nights when the other side of their
matrimonial bed was cold with his absence, it reminded her of the cold feel of
diamond against her neck. Even she herself wouldn’t deny the comfort of
Lorraine Schwartz jewelries.
Long before her husband’s affair with
Ashley began, Tracy had been trying to pull her worth from Sam. For so long she
had been trying to extract her beauty from his skin. She had been trying to
rescue her words from the layers of his mouth. She had been dying to be loved
by him again...but he will always leave her empty. Until that night he came
home, and she could taste the colors of happiness on his breath and the scent
of a strange perfume on his neck. Suddenly, she was free. Serving as the only
audience for his love and frustration, his anxiety and worries, his mistakes
and triumph, exhausted her. The buried thought that he might have found comfort
elsewhere was almost a comfort to her.
As Ashley forced herself to sleep that
night, she couldn’t help but notice the discomfort her sister was in as they
shared a bed. When Addison turned, she felt like she lay beside a heater in the
heart of a desert. If it wasn’t an expensive furniture, the bed was bound to
make squeaks from all the restlessness Addison exhibited. Still, Ashley shut
her eyes tight and hoped to a God she didn’t believe in that the morning would come
sooner. The morning was to bring her peace because the darkness in the skies seemed
to multiply her secrets like the stars that hung. It was not regret that she
felt that night because regrets don’t steal sleeps from people like Ashley who
are headstrong; it was a longing, a silent plea for her sanity.
It was just a night, she thought, each
time the light from Addison’s phone interrupted the darkness in the room. One
wrong, beautiful night shared between two people that wanted it and knew they should
never have shared it. It was two minds, being stimulated and engaged on a level
they have never experienced with another. There was easiness in the air and
they both could feel it; they could speak the truth about how they felt. They
were confused, attracted to the connection, but not wanting to mess things up
by taking it to the next level. There was no next level actually. Ashley knew
that whatever next step was taken would lead to a free falling from a mountaintop.
It was just that night, no next levels or second chances; just that moment when
they were alive, in tune, in the moment. It was in the blackness of that night
that two very different people met minds and shared one heartbeat.
It would be the third time now Addison’s
phone had began to ring in the dead of the night and each time she reached out
for it with, there was a certain urgency in her actions that worried Ashley.
She took the call and was quiet.
“Did you do it?”
“Yes” Addison replied in hush tones.
“I told you you could!” The person on
the other end sounded joyous.
“Yeah you did, and look where it landed
me”. There were no bubbles in her throat.
“Why are you whispering, who is there
with you?”
“No....” Addison looked by her side
before she continued in a much lower voice “Ashley is sleeping, I don’t want to
disturb her”
“Fair enough.”
They both dreaded what will come next
and neither of them was willing to say anything.
“I just wanted to find out how it went
with Denise since you said you would do it this night”
“Yeah, thanks, I would call you
tomorrow” Addison promised, and thought almost immediately, -if tomorrow would come.
“I’m at Bacchus, I just came out to
take a blunt and decided to check on you”
There was silence on both ends.
“Goodnight Di”
“Bye yo”
Sharon watched her husband sleep, her
secrets far beyond where his snores traveled. For so many years she had
cultivated the habit of wearing a face, a kind of mask that made it almost
impossible for Otumba to figure out what ran through her mind. She was proud of
this and it kept her marriage through two grown daughters and sleepless nights.
Now she wouldn’t sleep. She waited for
a call; her heartbeats corresponding to the ticks of the clock above their bed.
It took her so long to come to this decision; though it was unspeakable and she
vowed to take the secrets to her grave, it was meant to give her peace. Sharon
knew that a woman could not truly experience what it meant to be a woman till
she became a mother, and with all the screams of labor pains lay a vow to
protect that being till their last breath. She felt accomplished; she had held her own
side of the bargain and she couldn’t wait for her daughters to experience the
beauty of raising kids. Addison was doing exceptionally great at the law firm;
Ashley was at the bank, reaching her targets and getting promoted regularly. And
each time looking at portraits of when they were little in ribbons dresses on
the stairwell sprung up feelings within her, Sharon would go into her bathroom
and look at more old photo albums.
Then she would see those other two
people. God knows why she kept looking, but each time she would run her slender
fingers over their faces and trace back the memories in every cracked line in
their smiles. The wrinkles on her hand told her age and lots of memories; of
mistaken moments of peace and fleeting scenes of love; of shocking strides of
betrayal and diminishing rays of affections over the course of time. The
wrinkles allied with her veins and ran through her body like the long lines of
secrets that weighed down her soul. It was in the past, she would tell herself.
Many, many years ago and she was done with that phase. She was done.
But wasn’t it amazing? How she called
it the past and yet thought about it every minute of her life and had it
rubbing itself against her skin like the hairs on an old sweater.
The light from her cellphone was rude
to the room. She picked up before the second ring.
“Hello Ma.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to call
since, this is why I said you should give me your number that first time.”
“Trust me ma, me calling with a blocked
line is for our best interest.”
“Okay, how was it?” There was panic in
her voice. “How did it go? Did you…”
“Do it?
“Yes...”She tried to keep it together
but her voice wavered.
“Of course. I told you to consider it
done”
She wanted to feel a certain relief which she had hoped for, for thirty-five years since Otumba started paying
money into a strange account; to feel her chest lowered to the warmth of dew
grasses at a park. But it was a knot instead that formed.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Um, “
She thought it was the happiest thing
she could ever imagine hearing; that she would thank him and offer him more
money for a job well done and go down stairs and pour herself a glass of
Baileys. And that thought was what kept her on her toes throughout the day as
the clocks ran slow towards nighttime. Now she couldn’t feel anything.
“Okay, I just wanted to let you know.
It was nice doing business with you”
“Okay”
“So I’m going to hang up and we have
never seen each other before”
“Um”
“I need more than an Um madam, I have
never seen or spoken to you before, do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, I do. I neither.”
“Goodnight and wait for the news”
The voice went out on the other end of
the telephone and the room lay with just ticks and snores. And then she put
down the telephone next to the glittering knife under the lamp and waited for the little rays
of bright yellows to crawl through the clouds and shine their beauty down on
the ugliness of a broken world.
None of these women could find rest as
they struggled with their thoughts. They waited for morning with hanging
breaths and withering souls, and not one of them could think of the
consequences of their actions.
Each individually dug places far beyond
their souls and buried these secrets in little coffins. Coffins were for dead
things, things that birthed heartache and sadness. And so tomorrow they will put these
coffins in the little graves they dug and lace them with ribbons of plastic
smiles and charming eyes. They were women and they all had that single closet that
skeletons didn’t dance out from. Closets that held on its shelves an array of
faces and emotions they could wear to compliment their couture dresses and cold
diamonds and sky-high heels. But none of these women would know exactly which
face to put on tomorrow; none of them was ready for what came with the
sunlight.
As for the dresses, it would be a
Sunday morning and neither had a clue.
My favorite part of every blogpost! YAY! Well, I'm currently obsessed with these songs and strongly suggest you guys check them out. They are great and worth every muscle in your ears. :-)
Like i promised, this is the second installment of the story of Addison Pierce. Are we close to finding out who murdered her boyfriend, Denise Igbokwe? Who is guilty; who isn't? Share your thoughts please and expect the next part sooner than your next breath.
MOVING CLOCKS RUN SLOW. (Part 2)
The police
came in a rusty gray 504 Peugeot; the door hands had rusted and the seats were torn and
smelled of dried sweat and heavy dust. On that Sunday morning, the roads were quiet.
The hawkers were out of sight and the motor cyclists were few in numbers. The streets were adjourned with trees and with
the rising of the sun, their leaves glowed. The car was extremely tight; they
were four at the back seat and only two could sit comfortably. Ashley and the
other officer who hadn’t said a single word rested their backs, while Addison
sat out with the bald head police man. The stereo was playing the
hip-hop/high-life music of the modern generation: the beats were funky and the
entire song had only six lines and a repeated chorus. The female officer was
driving; moving her head to the sound from the radio while the fat Yoruba man stared out of the window; his hands were out, gripping onto the roof of the car.
Ashley
was staring at Addison too and she felt it. Addison felt the hot air of anxiety and
fear breathe down her neck. She wondered if Ashley knew the truth. The car wiggled from time to time and Addison thought she could tell her sister's thoughts with a glance into her eyes, and so the next time they took a pothole, she turned to know her fate. It was nothingness; her face was like a deserted stream at night that nurtured a forbidden secret. Looking into her eyes, they both seemed to have carved out something between themselves that no other person in the car could touch or feel. That something was either the truth, or something far more deadly.
"Have you called Sam?"Addison asked without looking at her.
"No", she whispered before raising her voice "I can't talk when I'm still struggling to breathe. Can't you see how packed we are? A little thing left before we start falling off like popcorn in a cinema bag"
The woman driving rolled her eyes at them through the rear-view.
"I'd call him when we get out of here" Ashley added.
Ashley's beautiful Malaysian hair fell to the side of her eyes and she thought of how calling her boyfriend was the least on her mind. Denise was dead; now mere ashes or like the dust that settled on the roof of the car, or, as the Christians will put it,- has gone to be with the Lord. Sam was married with kids and probably on his way to church wearing a matching lace fabric with his wife. She was not going to think of him or the way he made her feel things. She would not allow herself to feel guilty for ignoring him this past week. She needed her mind to be free from Sam; Denise was dead.
Sam was a billionaire; a very secretive, lying embezzler of the Lagos State government, but at the same time a very gentle and expert lover. Ashley was the petted, cherished young blood he needed on official trips; the desired mistress with a penchant for red lipstick, the worshiped,
perfumed goddess that brought men down to race with lizards. She was all these things to Sam- or so he made
her believe; sneaking her into his office and pining her hands down on the conference table during moments of brief but exciting sex; coming to have lunch sometimes in their house in Ikoyi. The first time he showed up to her house, Ashley was startled. And after she walked him out with anger and signed off to the delivery of a Cartier wristwatch two days later, she invited him over and introduced him to Addison.
"Meet my new friend." She said to Addison, standing not so close to Sam. "He's saving my sorry ass from not meeting my bank target."
"Nice to meet you" They both exchanged.
That night Addison made dinner and they all laughed and drank wine and talked about the rotting bank policies in the country and even Addison was marveled at how eloquent he spoke. He was so passionate about Nigeria; saying things in black and white on matter concerning foreign policy. Ashley sat in solitude, contended with a glass of wine in her hand as Sam and Addison bickered back and forth over the history of corruption in Nigeria. Sam argued that the white men birthed corruption, and just like every other thing they invented, we felt it; learned it and sunk teeth deep into it.
"When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way" He argued, "and we allowed them. We were fine with them sleeping with our women and sending our children across the atlantic to work tirelessly on plantations. We were fine with them doing all sorts of wrong to get by and acquire power and money; we watched hands behind our backs as this happened time and time after. Now its a way of life for us; doing whatever it takes to acquire power at the expense of anything."
Addison was charmed by his aesthetics. Ashley was proud. And there was no silence in the room but for the moments Sam churned a shot of whiskey down his throat. The cauterized liquid made him shut his eyes for a second or two, and then he continued talking about corruption, and foreign policy, and election rigging and all the numerous things that were wrong with Nigeria, till the stars were within their reach.
From that day, Ashley and Sam only met at the penthouse suit of WestFoster Harbour on Queens Drive, Ikoyi which cost a whooping two thousand dollars a day. Ashley loved walking to the balcony in the morning and staring at the blue ocean before the sun intruded; she loved waiting for the little fishes to pop out; waiting to be blown away by the aromatic presence of the waves. Sometimes Sam would want them to just stay in all day without a care in the world, without the strain of the everyday city life, just the stress of going to get the door when their room services delivers. And Ashley would remind him that she had a job with the bank. He would lay there on the bed, shirtless, expossing his round stomach and brag about how much money he had and how he could take care of her for the rest of her life. Still, Ashley constrained.
Walking through the high walls of WestFoster Harbour made Ashley feel powerful; the high roofs and lavish curtains sown with hundreds of yards of fabrics and embellished beadings threw a splendorous feeling on her total existence .To her, it felt like royalty. The walls swallowed her petite frame, but at the same time acknowledged her strength. And when the polished staffs greeted her at the massive lobbies with huge artworks eating up corners of the wall, it felt like walking the streets of Manhathan in a pair of Giuseppe Zanotti shoes. To her, that was what being a woman was all about; having a certain ability to bring men and everyone to scuffle like trees in a storm without saying a word. She didn't have to shrink.
-->
To Ashley, the most important part of seeing Sam every weekend wasn’t the fooling around or the lavish gifts his driver emptied into the trunk of her car. It was the few minutes they talked while
holding each other, the feeling of security she got with him, the feeling of trust- her mind being the temple of all the secrets behind the fuel subsidy. It was the feeling of
being understood and loved without the pressure of reciprocating those gestures that made Ashley agree to go on trips with him. Sometimes they went to Calabar or Abuja, and the other times the beautiful cities in Italy. It made her feel powerful. Before she met Sam, she wouldn’t have believed that she could cuddle up at night with a man who didn't star in her dreams during her teenage years and not be
totally preoccupied with sex. And it wasn't because the sex was awful- because indeed it was-, it was for the mere fact that since they met at a hotel lobby 3years ago, Ashley had never met any other man that had held her attention like Sam did. Until recently.
A heavy blanket of silence fell on the police car as Ashley's phone began to ring. All the officers couldn't peel their eyes away from her.
"What?" She yelled.
The officer in front returned his gaze to the road before they all chorused "Nothing oh"
"Who is that?" Addison asked without looking at Ashley.
"Mom"
"Mom?" She was aghast. "Do you think she knows?"
Ashley was silent.
"Are you going to pick?" Addison pressed.
Ashley froze.
"Can you text her and tell her we are in church or something?" Addison continued "she won't stop calling."
Ashley spoke after her phone stopped ringing.
"We are almost at the station", she squeezed her nose, reacting to a stench "Like i said, when we get there, I'd make use of my phone".
Addison could see the black police man's arm stretched over the back of Ashley's head. There was a patch, washed out with a lighter shade of black by the armpit tract and somehow this made Addison want to chortle, but she desisted and resolved not to pester Ashley anymore till they got to the station.
They both were already exhausted because the journey from Ikoyi to the Obalende police station felt longer than normal.
The traffic lights lasted longer; the pot holes that slowed cars down were
multiplied in dozens; everything seemed to drag on, as if to give the wobbly dragons enough time to catch up with Addison. As they drove, Ashley began to think of the unforeseen; the fact that they were on their way to the station just dawned on her. She wanted to freak out; allow the movement around her throat break free through her mouth; maybe caress her arms copiously to relax the hair sprouting from their tiny pores; but she had to be strong for her sister. Being strong was never a trait of Addison: the average woman of whom when a man told her he loved her, felt a feeling of accomplishment. That him loving her validated her existence and made her feel complete and powerful. Addison was an excitable woman who only tried to understand love through the intensity of its presence; a woman in whom
her feelings were much stronger than her reasoning. In the past she had always been so thirsty to experience love; that
only that feeling of loving someone had power over her. Any relationship she could not transform into painful, overwhelming and intoxicating love, she would let go. Ordinary love didn't and will never impress her. Addison only believed in
intoxication, in ecstasy. And in the past when ordinary love would shackle her, or when an intoxicating love would turn into an ordinary, trivial experience, she would escape. One way
or another. "No more walls", she would tell herself when it was finally over.
-->
The police men exchanged random conversations and once there was a joke about the President's wife and Addison could tell that her sister desperately wanted to laugh. Somehow Ashley now found a certain comfort in the triviality of the evidence. There was no case and truthfully, a colleague of Addison could get her out of there in no time. Or she could call up Sam. Still she worried each time there was a stop sign; each time a familiar billboard reminded her of the closeness to the police station. It was as though fear had crawled inside her head and burrowed itself into her subconscious. Her heart began to race.
As i mentioned last week, I'd be sharing the songs which i listened to as i wrote the story, and seeing as I made this during lunch at work, i have to pull a rain check on that notion. Nonetheless, here are incredible songs to sink into this weekend and unwind and basically just relax.
