I KNOW WHY DEATH COMES
Loosely
based on a true-life event. A story of loss and grief as seen through the eyes
of a boy with curved sometimes flat mouth.
There’s a screen door, the kind with wooden
frames and mosquito netting. There’s a young boy laughing with his eyes and
dancing Michael Jackson. There’s a man and his children watching Super Story on
a shaky antenna, a tall lanky boy comes and adjusts it from time to time.
Screechy sounds. “Is it better?” No. Screechy sounds. “now?” We’ll manage.
Lanky boy goes back inside. There’s the memory of the sound of two lovers
touching, the slap-slap of skin against skin. There’s a young girl of seven
maybe, her head tucked between the thighs of a hair plaiting woman, who smells
of firewood and onions and Soul-mate hair cream. Rowed weavings are matted on
her head in neat demarcations. Shiny oiled skin in straight paths like corn
rows.
He watches these things, he remembers too,
the boy with faded skin and mahogany coloured mouth, flat and curved sometimes,
most times. He waits for her, the girl with dark matted corn rows on her head,
his sister. It had rained the day before, the red sands were redder, mushier
and held holes filed with red water, and the world’s muddled reflection. There
is a once white Volkswagen on the other side of the road that had never moved, but
always sat there every week he would accompany his sister to the hair plaiting
woman to have her hair weaved again. He touches the smoothness of his recently
shaved head and watches the fly that perches on his sister’s dark arm, dark
like charcoal, smooth and shiny. Above them, grey-black clouds form like heavy,
angry balls of cotton wool pregnant with water.
“Almost finish Ma?” He asks.
“Last one.” She replies, her eyes fixated
on black hair nicely running in corn rows.
She finishes soon after, and collects the crumpled
hundred naira note from the boy in green shorts and a curved sometimes flat
mouth.
“Fine girl.” She says to the boy’s sister.
A sucking sound emanates from her throat and she spits out sputum on the red
sand, balled and milky green. Packing her wooden chairs and plaiting tools with
the crisp hairstyles advertising paper hung on the screen door with the wooden
frame and mosquito netting, she joins her family inside to watch Super Story.
Large eyes and a shiny forehead stare at
her brother, she touches her head and smiles.
“Ugly hair.” He says. She swats his arm and
they laugh.
“Benny knows how to dance Michael Jackson.”
He tells her.
There is a chorused dismaying chatter from the
plaiting woman’s house. NEPA just took the light and Super Story has not ended.
Light before-rain breeze starts to fill space.
They pass the flat with the small veranda
and women’s underwear hanging on a thin rope tied to a pole –a brassier, some pants.
He covers his sister’s ears, he does not want her to hear the slap-slapping of
skin against skin, of touching lovers. There is no slap-slapping anymore but he
covers her ears still until they are a safe distance away from the flat. She
shrugs his hands away from her ears, and ask with her eyes what game he was
playing. It’s a secret. His eyes say back to her.
Hand in hand, charcoal coloured girl with
large eyes and shiny forehead and boy with faded skin and curved sometimes flat
mouth totter home before the pregnant cloud would deliver.
In their two-bedroom flat with memories and
ceiling fan sounds, their mother turns yam flour on the stove.
“Baby, you’ve finished your hair?” Their
mother calls from the hot kitchen with yam flour smell and stock fish and
Ogbono.
“Yes Mamo.”
“Tell your brother to give you your medicine
eyy? Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Okay Mamo.”
Curved sometimes flat mouth boy, arranges
the pills, and gives them to his sister one by one. The routineness of it, her
small bobbing throat as she swallows pill after pill. Yellow, white, off-white,
red, orange and white again. She smiles, he smiles. Fragile, not sick. His
mother had told him once when he asked why she consumed so many, so different
pills. Fragile, not sick. Jesus had healed her. She drank Jesus in the
yellowish anointed Goya olive oil Mamo gave her every night before bed, half a
cap full and yet she was still fragile.
Sister and brother play Made in China Ludo
game afterwards, with the Made in China table lamp watching over them. Two
lives, common joys. A fragile not sick sister and a curious disbelieving
brother. They eat dinner before Daddy comes home, then they dance to Danfo
driver on the small silver radio. Outside, tiny raindrops drizzle on the soft
earth.
After homework, they lay in bed and wait
for sleep. Sister and brother, in a room that smells of damp clothes and
Johnson baby talc powder. A large black cockroach clings to the edge of a wall
and watches with its black dot eyes. NEPA brings the light and the boy watches
the steady breathing of his beautiful charcoal coloured sister. Up and down
chest movements and warm air, he holds her hand and falls into sleep dreaming
of dancing Michael Jackson like Benny.
There is a small lime tree a few yards from
their flat. Caterpillar cocoons hang from them like shrivelled fruit seeds.
Brother is dressed in his Sunday wear --Khaki trousers, a purple short-sleeved
shirt with lilac polka-dots and long black pointy shoes. He hated them like he
hated the stupid polka-dot shirt and his almost bald haircut. Sister wears a
bluish Calico dress with lace edges and flowery buttons. Colourful beads hang
on the ends of each plait on her head and her shoes are a creamy princessy
beauty.
“Tie my belt for me?” She says to pointy
shoes boy. He bows it neatly behind her like he had seen his mother do so many times.
They go to church in Daddy’s black Audi
with shaky bolts and nuts like a staggering drunkard making its way to
salvation, to Jesus. They listen to the thin-boned Pastor Isaac in over-sized
second-hand coat and even more longer and pointier black shoes. Every now and
then he would dab his brows and soak his formerly white handkerchief with more
sweat. Almost bald headed boy and princessy shoed girl wonder why he does not
take off the oversized coat and stop pacing and shouting so much, maybe then he
wouldn’t suffer the handkerchief more hell than it had seen.
After service, Pastor Isaac would touch
princessy shoed girl on her head and pray for the devil to leave this daughter
of Christ be, of his disguise to plague her blood cells be shamed by God almighty.
They would all say Amen, Mamo and Daddy and almost bald headed boy and Death
would watch them like a hawk bidding it’s time, bidding its prey.
There is a burden in breathing when you
listen to your breath, a labour of continuous inhaling and exhaling. Sitting in
his chequered blue and white uniform with ashen knees, he listens to his
breathing. Brother waiting for his sister outside her classroom to give her the
half of her pocket money. The bell rings and the commotion of happy frolicking
students run out of the class eagerly. He sees her before she sees him, large
eyes and a shiny forehead in chequered blue and white pinafore.
“Why don’t you just give me my money? Must
you follow me to buy snacks?”
“Mamo says I must make sure you don’t buy
nonsense.”
“But you buy nonsense!” she says
accusingly. Ashen kneed boy wants to tell her it is because she is sick, she
was not allowed to buy nonsense. No Jolly juice or saccharine ice-cream or cold
kunu zaki.
“I’ll not buy again. Two Caprisons Ma, and
two crackers.”
“I’m tired of crackers.”
“There’s nothing else.”
“There’s plenty else!”
“I’ll tell Mamo you’re giving me trouble.”
Shiny forehead girl in pinafore scrunches her face and snatches her snacks from
her brother’s hands running away to join her friends and watch them play
Who-is-in-the -garden. He sits and watches her watch them until break is over.
Ashen kneed boy would never see his sister
in her chequered Pinafore again, never hear her complain about crackers or
Caprison. She slipped and fell on hard concrete on her way to class, she was
bleeding bad and rushed to the general hospital.
He sat beside her bed, a large patch of
hair on her head was gone. A hole in a field of black corn rows. Mamo said they
needed to find a vein. She cried when she told him, mucous running down her
upper lip. A child did not need to go through life like this, a child did not
need to witness such suffering. Daddy had held her and she clung to him as her
body shook. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he stared from the
green and black slipper on his feet to the rubber tubes sticking out his
sister’s charcoal coloured arms. He prayed to God almighty to spare her, to
take him instead. He asked Jesus to shame the devil and he cried. Boy with flat
sometimes curved mouth cried for the things he could not control, while Death
hung on the hospital ceiling and dangled every Nonsense at the charcoaled
coloured girl with tubes sticking out her arms.
After two months of prayer vigils, a
brother’s looming bargain with God, and treatment, charcoal coloured girl who
now smelled like Dettol and looked like a shrunken cocoon would follow Death
because her blood had refused to clot amongst many other complications. Her
brother would scream and curse and cry but she would be forever gone.
He ran fast for a boy of ten, his Pata-Pata
slippers slapping the earth. He ran down the road, his throat burning for air and
his eyes sore from crying. He ran past the house of the two lovers, past the
hair plaiting woman’s house with the screen door and shaky antenna, past the
white Volkswagen that never moved. He ran because he wanted to escape, escape
the thing that had wrapped around his neck and threatened to suffocate him. She
was gone but she still lurked in ordinary things, in the Johnson baby talc
powder and the silver coloured radio that played Danfo driver. She was
everywhere and nowhere, his beautiful sister with shiny charcoal skin and large
eyes. When he couldn’t run anymore, he fell to the ground and lay there
listening to his breathing.
“Sometimes God has a reason for the things
he does.” His Mamo said to him.
“When I had your sister, I had lost her
twice. Your GrandMamo said that she was a come-back child. And after she lasted
past her first year I knew she had come to stay. And I loved her triple times
for all the times I had lost her. When the doctors found the disease in her
blood, I knew I had been wrong and I loved her even more because I felt her
slipping away even while she was still here. You loved her, it is all that
counts. You cannot control whom death chooses. God gives and God takes.” She
hugged him, the flat mouth boy with a new-found hatred for a God that took the
things he gave.
And as he drifted in many ways sitting
there in the empty room with the ceiling fan swoosh-swooshing and without a
breathing sister all he thought about was that Death was a hunter and they its
prey, whenever it was hungry, it hunted and there were preys like his sister
whom God had created with lesser a chance to run.
For
reading this story, as always Ahinya.
7 comments
This is so heart felt and beautifully honest. I loved it especially how we never know any of the main character's names. Never read anything with this writing style. You are gifted.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, you're far too kind.
DeleteLeft me wondering if a full length novel could work with this style
DeleteI like to believe it could, although I do not really know if I have enough commitment to write a full length novel
DeleteYour telling stories section truly captivates me, as rare as that is in this era of short attention Spans on the Internet, it drowns everything else out and takes me into your story. If you wrote a novel today, I would undoubtedly buy it
ReplyDeleteAs always you just have the kindest of words too say, I really do appreciate you. I shall have to write that novel!
DeleteYour use of imagery is so appealing. This nearly brought tears to my eyes. You really need to write that book :-)
ReplyDeleteEager to hear your thoughts!