Green Eyes – A Short Story by 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- By 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- Published August 25, 2009
- Fiction
-
Rating:
'Namdi Awa-Kalu
I am a law student at the London School of Economics, but I grew up in Lagos and have missed Nigeria for every one of the six years I have been away. I try to communicate this sense of displacement and relocation in all my work at present. I write for a generation not unwelcome abroad but nonetheless missing parts of the spirit that are forever entangled with home.
T-Black taking OOVVEERR!
Eke whooped loudly for the new Corper that had started playing on the radio request station. A popular Nigerian artist, DBlock, had just come on and he danced to the centre of the dorm room, eager to demonstrate his mastery of the steps that went hand-in-hand with the song. His narrow hips and shoulders snaked in and out as he improvised, legs a ceaseless flurry of motion.
“This T-Black guy is on POINT!”
“O boy, FORGET!”
Tokunbo smiled to himself as he watched his dorm mates wriggle about in unbridled celebration. It was the third week of camp and he was getting used to the banal expressions of his fellow Corpers. Sometimes it was not so different in cadence from Jay’s rowdy Baltimore lingo. He now understood when he was asked why he was voking when somebody used his things (he had been tight- lipped in annoyance when somebody had used his toothbrush and claimed it was accidental); he guffawed at the fatuous but light-hearted anti- Yoruba and anti- Igbo jokes, happily hybrid; and he did not narrow his eyes in confusion when Eke wanted to know if he was chiking Tokini.
“You know her pops is a big man in telecoms. His name is Idah right, whether George or James Idah or so. Rivers guy. Might even be on the Forbes list or so” His voice was reverent, which was unlike Eke, who jested at everything and everyone. He looked hard at Tokunbo, protuberant eyes turning reddish yellow orange as he flipped the roll of weed he was smoking into an overflowing bin. “Don’t fuck with that babe, my guy. I mean, fuck her by all means but don’t start flying to the moon like an astronaut, like you’ve seen the cosmos or something, inugo, you heard me?” Tokunbo heard him because Eke only peppered his words with Igbo when he was serious, which was not often. “I know her type.” Eke said in response to the questions scrawled across Tokunbo’s forehead in worry-lines and tipped his bottle of beer to his mouth to drink what was left of it. Tokunbo sipped on whisky- med school had brought with it a taste for hard liqueur- and slipped on his shirt. It was a cool July night in Bwari. The temperature was lower than usual and the sky, gathering clouds like a mother drawing in frightened children to her bosom, was dark and ominous. Tokunbo had slept with Tokini everyday since the first day he had helped her bend camp rules. He figured there was something in the water at NYSC camps that made Corpers horny. He preferred Tokini’s word for it- grag. She text it to him at night when her roommates were off on their own trysts and he would sneak into her dorm and bang her like a jackrabbit. She mouthed it to him when her platoon marched past his in the mornings. She whispered it as they ate at the mammy market and she slipped a surreptitiously forked tongue into his ear. I’m grag.
Tokunbo was a medic. He saw certain telltale signs in the body and he diagnosed accordingly. But a woman’s fever cannot really be understood by the mere press of a hand to the face, her fickle spirit does not resolve itself into rash or discoloured skin. It just switches direction, gets up and goes just like that, without any warning detectable by men, with their Y chromosomes and lack of intuition. Tokunbo’s fingers squeezed on Tokini’s nipples, his palms gripped her soft firm buttocks, and his eyes rolled over the delectable bends of her lissome figure, but he could not sense her restlessness, rooting itself deeper in her bones every time his tongue unwittingly curled out throaty Iloveyous against her breasts after yet another joyous sex session.
One afternoon, Tokunbo was walking with Tokini to his car, settling for an arm around her waist because she had shoved her fists into her pockets. He had taken to driving her home when she needed to get off camp. In fact there was little he had not done at her asking. He’d even chopped off his ‘locks- eight years in the making- when she complained that he looked ‘a little like a vagrant’. He had laughed but administered scissors and clippers a few days later.
Her skin was exuberant in the glow of sunlight, arms and legs exposed in a vivid red sundress. Tokunbo opened a door for her and was waiting for her to get in when he heard the sound of clapping. A dark-skinned Corper wearing dark designer sunglasses was standing a few paces away mock-applauding Tokunbo. He was one of those people whose wealth announced itself. His Caesar haircut was so sharp Tokunbo could not doubt that the edges had been finished off with a serrated dagger. Little waves rippled over his scalp in perfect concentric circles.
“And they say chivalry is dead” He was tossing a bunch of keys up and down in his left hand. Tokunbo resented this immediately, but found that he was hypnotically drawn to the rise and drop of those keys. Toss. Fall. Toss. Fall. “I’m Tosin Martins; you guys might know me as T-Black from the radio.” Pause for effect. Achieved. “We’re doing interviews with all the contestants in tomorrow’s Miss NYSC show. Hottie, I know you’re competing and if you are, all bets are off!” He had a curious grin, very self-possessed, it did not stretch much wider than the incisors in front, and its lack of charisma presumed that the watcher was already bowled over by other elements that made charisma redundant. Tokunbo looked at Tokini and conceded that she was, indeed, already charmed. She was smiling very shyly, still perched on the precipice of the passenger door, having never made it into the chivalrously prepared Toyota seat.
“Big man, I know you won’t mind me borrowing this chick for a while. We’re recording in DBlock’s studio in Maitama today and I’m driving there now.” He jerked his head in the direction of a BMW Jeep, headlights on, that was waiting at the camp gates. Tokunbo opened his mouth to say that he could drive Tokini there no problem, no need to tap your watch like I can’t tell the time. He was not aware that she was already drifting towards T-Black even though only last night she called the Miss NYSC show a parade for wannabes thankyouverymuch. She was impelled by forces of attraction that had no basis in physics. None of that magnetic opposites bullshit. This was like-and-like coming together that upturned fundamental scientific theory. She shushed him with a sexy finger on his lips, said that she would be back soon. Then she sashayed towards the rhythmic rise and drop of the BMW keys and left Tokunbo staring at his Toyota, dirty and now very old-looking, not needing to tell him that she was going to fuck T-Black in his car on his leather seats at some point that evening. She would be tossed and dropped just like those keys.
He knew that the stirring demon that twisted its tail around his thudding heart was jealousy. He had felt it before but it wrenched at him now with savagery, it gnawed hungrily at every heartbeat and grabbed hold of his thoughts. He watched her, Delilah, Desdemona, her voice dropping tinkling bells all the way to T-Black’s car, her arm effortlessly linked in his as they walked. He was stunned for a minute, then red mist descended as the trail of dust from the BMW swirled poetically towards him like smoke without fire. As his chest heaved, he remembered the new car he had seen last week at the Garki house, the freshly delivered Mercedes that had been a gift to his father from the hospital for outstanding service. He could see it in his mind’s eye now as he dove into the Toyota, silver and shiny and new. He didn’t even see Eke jump sharply out of the way of the slamming door or hear his muttered expletive (“Don’t be a fucking astronaut!”) as the car, throttled aggressively, barked dust into his face. All he could hear was the self- satisfied voice of T-Black, the rev of the BMW as it drove out of the gates, Tokini’s laugh like a disappearing mirage.
When he got to the house, his father was standing in the driveway with a woman that he was sure he recognized. He stared at her warily, and found himself strangely dizzy again. His ears were full of static, blocked as if he was on a plane. His father’s eyes were somewhat vacant, his fair skin was abnormally translucent like gauze as he observed Tokunbo’s shaved head.
“Nnanna, you have come home.” His voice was rachitic and Tokunbo saw that he had been getting feebler since he came back from the US. “This is Anu, your Aunty Enitan’s sister” he was very solemn, standing very upright. Anu was tying and retying her wrapper and Tokunbo thought back to Aunty Enitan who he had not seen in nine years, her big earnest eyes and warm conciliatory smile, the way she hung on to the ‘m’ in mad when she scolded him. He looked sharply at Anu, and recognized her. She was the same woman who had slapped him on the plane, the expression of knotted bitterness on her face was unchanged, and he wondered if she remembered him too. She nodded and uttered something as she walked past Tokunbo’s car. Neither of the men noticed her smear something black and ugly and formless across the white Toyota. Neither was watching as she muttered again, eyes closed as if in incantation.
“Papa, I need your car. I’ll bring it back this weekend.” He knew that his father would not ask questions. He trusted Tokunbo implicitly especially since he knew that he was never impetuous. His father looked right through him as if he could not see him. There was something definitely wrong with him. But Tokunbo was not paying any attention to his father, if he had looked into the older man’s green eyes he would have seen the flare of jealousy that contorted his own face. He grabbed at the keys that Emeka Okorie proffered for the second time in two months and slid into the Mercedes, the silver beast that sparked to life almost soundlessly like a big cat. All he wanted was to show that T-Black, to really show him. He knew he was being irrational but it did not really matter just then, nothing else did. He would deal with his father this weekend, maybe get him looked at. He did not care that his father was still standing on the same spot in the driveway, not right now, that did not matter, nothing else did.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I am so so sorry” Tokunbo’s only living grandmother was still crying, the tears flowed uniquely, down both sides of her face and joining underneath her nose in confluence, like the meeting of Rivers Niger and Benue. It was already a full month after his father’s funeral. She had surfaced again, Nicodemusly, on the doorstep of their Garki house when she heard of his father’s death and had paid for the funeral, attending with the few relatives from his father’s side of the family who bothered to turn up. She wept uncontrollably when Tokunbo explained that his father had gone to his clinic the day after he took his new car and died in a crash with a lorry at Wuse market when the Toyota’s brakes failed. She screamed when he blamed himself and writhed with her head in her hands when he spoke of his guilt, the guilt that stabbed at him countless times as he looked into the green eyes at the morgue and identified his father’s dead body. He had ignored his father’s paleness when he came home and found him conversing with that fat woman. If he had just been more attentive, he could have maybe prevented his father’s death. Maybe it was whatever was afflicting him that had slowed his reflexes. I mean, I’m a doctor for Chrissakes. I should have seen he was in no fit state to be on his own. If he hadn’t taken his fucking car…
She wept. She asked him who the fat woman was. Aunty Enitan’s sister. Then she wept harder. She mopped at her eyes with the edge of her glorious purple wrapper, and chewed on the end of lips that were so similar to Tokunbo’s when she spoke.
“My son. I am so sorry.” She looked into his eyes, Abby’s eyes through and through, little squint lines so small you could barely see the eyelids blink. He looked back at her and saw the carbon copy of the mother he had never known, with long hair though now grey, and single- toned, velveteen skin. There was strained feeling steaming out of her eyes then, condensed into salty tributaries spilling down her face relentlessly. Then she steeled herself and started to speak in that way that people talk when they are forcing out the words through the stiff small tunnel of buried emotion.
“My son, if anybody is to blame, it is me. This is all my fault” Tokunbo was not following. Weeks later, he was still wondering what could have been wrong with his father; he hadn’t found any medicines in his cabinet apart from the usual dietary supplements and pain killers. What was this old woman talking about? “I was very angry Olatokunbo. I was very angry that your father took my Abebi, my only daughter away. I was mad. I was angry. And then she died. Just like that, pa pa pa. Even your dad could not explain it. She just died. We had begged her, warned her, threatened her not to marry him. I did not know his people and they were not Yoruba anyway” She smiled wryly at him here “But most of all, some people had said he had juju, whether he was the son of Amadioha or so. I wanted a reason to hate him so I let myself believe it even though I knew it was not true. Your father would have been the last person to believe in or use that type of thing. When Abby died,” She paused here, shaking with a fresh stream of tears “I sent Enitan to your dad. You see, Enitan was the girlfriend to Kazeem, this boy who wanted to marry Abby. He impregnated her and just left her like that when he came to us for her hand. I did not want to turn to any babalawo, any medicine-man myself. Because inside me I knew that would not be fair. Your father was already suffering enough and my husband had destroyed him so I did not want to be directly responsible for anything. But people said Enitan was a bringer of bad luck. Some said she was born abiku, and little things like that. I, on my own part, knew just one thing, that she was a woman scorned and your dad was a part of the reason why. So I hinted to her to make sure that he paid for it”. She shook her head slowly, as if unable to believe that she could have been so petty. Tokunbo was enthralled, still not sure that this had any bearing on his father’s death but hungry for these little morsels of his early life that he did not know about. The identity that had been kept from him for so long.
“Enitan was no match for your father. The man is irresistible it seems and he lives up to his nicknames. One look from his green eyes and any woman would crumble. And he has a way of surviving everything you throw at him that nobody can explain. She fell in love with your father before she knew it. The cat still had one more life in him. She fell in love with you too, you know. But she soon realized that he did not and could not love her. So she left. And then all this while, all this while later, her sister showed up. You see, Enitan died just before you came back from the US, that’s what Anu went to tell your father. She herself just returned as well from the US. I mean Anu. Enitan died husbandless and unhappy and Anu was angry about it. She blamed your father for it and in the Yoruba way… in that our, what is the word, impulsive way, she wanted him too to suffer like her, as if the poor man had not seen enough. It was Anu who put charms in your car because she wanted you not your dad to die. It was Anu who killed your father. And it was all my fault.”
Tokunbo laughed. He threw his head back just like his father and laughed. He laughed at the irony of this woman telling him that his father, a medical doctor, had died from the charms of a medicine-man, a local spiritualist who made a living by lying to gullible narrow-minded Nigerians. He laughed at himself who had rushed back from the rationality of the West to this nonsense, to watch his only parent die, to chase green-eyed after a girl who could offer him nothing. He laughed for Nigeria, at Nigeria. This backward gaddem mess where old women believed in charms and young women in money. He laughed and laughed and laughed because he had forgotten how to cry when a thug slapped him at three months old.
“Mama, thank you for paying for my trip back to the States. I’m truly grateful. One day I’ll pay you back. Thanks for being there all this while even though I know it’s been hard going for you” Tokunbo was still laughing “I can’t wait till I’m gone”.
His grandmother would be glad too. She looked at the beautiful young boy walking away to his room, the boy who looked like his mother and walked exactly like his father, the boy she almost could not stand to look at. She searched her handbag for her mobile to call her husband and tell him she was on her way home, before he would begin to worry about her. She did not want to be on the receiving end of his temper now she remembered him running after Emeka Okorie and cursing him, saying that his son would laugh while he rotted in his grave. Her hand closed around something black and ugly and formless, something she had pressed into first one sister’s hand then the other’s when the first proved useless, something she had had to part with temporarily for her own peace of mind when she heard that her grandson was coming home, who filled her with grief and with jealousy every time she looked at him because his father could enjoy what he had taken away from her all those years ago- a beloved child. She prayed to Sango for forgiveness for the death of an innocent.
© 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
Eke whooped loudly for the new Corper that had started playing on the radio request station. A popular Nigerian artist, DBlock, had just come on and he danced to the centre of the dorm room, eager to demonstrate his mastery of the steps that went hand-in-hand with the song. His narrow hips and shoulders snaked in and out as he improvised, legs a ceaseless flurry of motion.
“This T-Black guy is on POINT!”
“O boy, FORGET!”
Tokunbo smiled to himself as he watched his dorm mates wriggle about in unbridled celebration. It was the third week of camp and he was getting used to the banal expressions of his fellow Corpers. Sometimes it was not so different in cadence from Jay’s rowdy Baltimore lingo. He now understood when he was asked why he was voking when somebody used his things (he had been tight- lipped in annoyance when somebody had used his toothbrush and claimed it was accidental); he guffawed at the fatuous but light-hearted anti- Yoruba and anti- Igbo jokes, happily hybrid; and he did not narrow his eyes in confusion when Eke wanted to know if he was chiking Tokini.
“You know her pops is a big man in telecoms. His name is Idah right, whether George or James Idah or so. Rivers guy. Might even be on the Forbes list or so” His voice was reverent, which was unlike Eke, who jested at everything and everyone. He looked hard at Tokunbo, protuberant eyes turning reddish yellow orange as he flipped the roll of weed he was smoking into an overflowing bin. “Don’t fuck with that babe, my guy. I mean, fuck her by all means but don’t start flying to the moon like an astronaut, like you’ve seen the cosmos or something, inugo, you heard me?” Tokunbo heard him because Eke only peppered his words with Igbo when he was serious, which was not often. “I know her type.” Eke said in response to the questions scrawled across Tokunbo’s forehead in worry-lines and tipped his bottle of beer to his mouth to drink what was left of it. Tokunbo sipped on whisky- med school had brought with it a taste for hard liqueur- and slipped on his shirt. It was a cool July night in Bwari. The temperature was lower than usual and the sky, gathering clouds like a mother drawing in frightened children to her bosom, was dark and ominous. Tokunbo had slept with Tokini everyday since the first day he had helped her bend camp rules. He figured there was something in the water at NYSC camps that made Corpers horny. He preferred Tokini’s word for it- grag. She text it to him at night when her roommates were off on their own trysts and he would sneak into her dorm and bang her like a jackrabbit. She mouthed it to him when her platoon marched past his in the mornings. She whispered it as they ate at the mammy market and she slipped a surreptitiously forked tongue into his ear. I’m grag.
Tokunbo was a medic. He saw certain telltale signs in the body and he diagnosed accordingly. But a woman’s fever cannot really be understood by the mere press of a hand to the face, her fickle spirit does not resolve itself into rash or discoloured skin. It just switches direction, gets up and goes just like that, without any warning detectable by men, with their Y chromosomes and lack of intuition. Tokunbo’s fingers squeezed on Tokini’s nipples, his palms gripped her soft firm buttocks, and his eyes rolled over the delectable bends of her lissome figure, but he could not sense her restlessness, rooting itself deeper in her bones every time his tongue unwittingly curled out throaty Iloveyous against her breasts after yet another joyous sex session.
One afternoon, Tokunbo was walking with Tokini to his car, settling for an arm around her waist because she had shoved her fists into her pockets. He had taken to driving her home when she needed to get off camp. In fact there was little he had not done at her asking. He’d even chopped off his ‘locks- eight years in the making- when she complained that he looked ‘a little like a vagrant’. He had laughed but administered scissors and clippers a few days later.
Her skin was exuberant in the glow of sunlight, arms and legs exposed in a vivid red sundress. Tokunbo opened a door for her and was waiting for her to get in when he heard the sound of clapping. A dark-skinned Corper wearing dark designer sunglasses was standing a few paces away mock-applauding Tokunbo. He was one of those people whose wealth announced itself. His Caesar haircut was so sharp Tokunbo could not doubt that the edges had been finished off with a serrated dagger. Little waves rippled over his scalp in perfect concentric circles.
“And they say chivalry is dead” He was tossing a bunch of keys up and down in his left hand. Tokunbo resented this immediately, but found that he was hypnotically drawn to the rise and drop of those keys. Toss. Fall. Toss. Fall. “I’m Tosin Martins; you guys might know me as T-Black from the radio.” Pause for effect. Achieved. “We’re doing interviews with all the contestants in tomorrow’s Miss NYSC show. Hottie, I know you’re competing and if you are, all bets are off!” He had a curious grin, very self-possessed, it did not stretch much wider than the incisors in front, and its lack of charisma presumed that the watcher was already bowled over by other elements that made charisma redundant. Tokunbo looked at Tokini and conceded that she was, indeed, already charmed. She was smiling very shyly, still perched on the precipice of the passenger door, having never made it into the chivalrously prepared Toyota seat.
“Big man, I know you won’t mind me borrowing this chick for a while. We’re recording in DBlock’s studio in Maitama today and I’m driving there now.” He jerked his head in the direction of a BMW Jeep, headlights on, that was waiting at the camp gates. Tokunbo opened his mouth to say that he could drive Tokini there no problem, no need to tap your watch like I can’t tell the time. He was not aware that she was already drifting towards T-Black even though only last night she called the Miss NYSC show a parade for wannabes thankyouverymuch. She was impelled by forces of attraction that had no basis in physics. None of that magnetic opposites bullshit. This was like-and-like coming together that upturned fundamental scientific theory. She shushed him with a sexy finger on his lips, said that she would be back soon. Then she sashayed towards the rhythmic rise and drop of the BMW keys and left Tokunbo staring at his Toyota, dirty and now very old-looking, not needing to tell him that she was going to fuck T-Black in his car on his leather seats at some point that evening. She would be tossed and dropped just like those keys.
He knew that the stirring demon that twisted its tail around his thudding heart was jealousy. He had felt it before but it wrenched at him now with savagery, it gnawed hungrily at every heartbeat and grabbed hold of his thoughts. He watched her, Delilah, Desdemona, her voice dropping tinkling bells all the way to T-Black’s car, her arm effortlessly linked in his as they walked. He was stunned for a minute, then red mist descended as the trail of dust from the BMW swirled poetically towards him like smoke without fire. As his chest heaved, he remembered the new car he had seen last week at the Garki house, the freshly delivered Mercedes that had been a gift to his father from the hospital for outstanding service. He could see it in his mind’s eye now as he dove into the Toyota, silver and shiny and new. He didn’t even see Eke jump sharply out of the way of the slamming door or hear his muttered expletive (“Don’t be a fucking astronaut!”) as the car, throttled aggressively, barked dust into his face. All he could hear was the self- satisfied voice of T-Black, the rev of the BMW as it drove out of the gates, Tokini’s laugh like a disappearing mirage.
When he got to the house, his father was standing in the driveway with a woman that he was sure he recognized. He stared at her warily, and found himself strangely dizzy again. His ears were full of static, blocked as if he was on a plane. His father’s eyes were somewhat vacant, his fair skin was abnormally translucent like gauze as he observed Tokunbo’s shaved head.
“Nnanna, you have come home.” His voice was rachitic and Tokunbo saw that he had been getting feebler since he came back from the US. “This is Anu, your Aunty Enitan’s sister” he was very solemn, standing very upright. Anu was tying and retying her wrapper and Tokunbo thought back to Aunty Enitan who he had not seen in nine years, her big earnest eyes and warm conciliatory smile, the way she hung on to the ‘m’ in mad when she scolded him. He looked sharply at Anu, and recognized her. She was the same woman who had slapped him on the plane, the expression of knotted bitterness on her face was unchanged, and he wondered if she remembered him too. She nodded and uttered something as she walked past Tokunbo’s car. Neither of the men noticed her smear something black and ugly and formless across the white Toyota. Neither was watching as she muttered again, eyes closed as if in incantation.
“Papa, I need your car. I’ll bring it back this weekend.” He knew that his father would not ask questions. He trusted Tokunbo implicitly especially since he knew that he was never impetuous. His father looked right through him as if he could not see him. There was something definitely wrong with him. But Tokunbo was not paying any attention to his father, if he had looked into the older man’s green eyes he would have seen the flare of jealousy that contorted his own face. He grabbed at the keys that Emeka Okorie proffered for the second time in two months and slid into the Mercedes, the silver beast that sparked to life almost soundlessly like a big cat. All he wanted was to show that T-Black, to really show him. He knew he was being irrational but it did not really matter just then, nothing else did. He would deal with his father this weekend, maybe get him looked at. He did not care that his father was still standing on the same spot in the driveway, not right now, that did not matter, nothing else did.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I am so so sorry” Tokunbo’s only living grandmother was still crying, the tears flowed uniquely, down both sides of her face and joining underneath her nose in confluence, like the meeting of Rivers Niger and Benue. It was already a full month after his father’s funeral. She had surfaced again, Nicodemusly, on the doorstep of their Garki house when she heard of his father’s death and had paid for the funeral, attending with the few relatives from his father’s side of the family who bothered to turn up. She wept uncontrollably when Tokunbo explained that his father had gone to his clinic the day after he took his new car and died in a crash with a lorry at Wuse market when the Toyota’s brakes failed. She screamed when he blamed himself and writhed with her head in her hands when he spoke of his guilt, the guilt that stabbed at him countless times as he looked into the green eyes at the morgue and identified his father’s dead body. He had ignored his father’s paleness when he came home and found him conversing with that fat woman. If he had just been more attentive, he could have maybe prevented his father’s death. Maybe it was whatever was afflicting him that had slowed his reflexes. I mean, I’m a doctor for Chrissakes. I should have seen he was in no fit state to be on his own. If he hadn’t taken his fucking car…
She wept. She asked him who the fat woman was. Aunty Enitan’s sister. Then she wept harder. She mopped at her eyes with the edge of her glorious purple wrapper, and chewed on the end of lips that were so similar to Tokunbo’s when she spoke.
“My son. I am so sorry.” She looked into his eyes, Abby’s eyes through and through, little squint lines so small you could barely see the eyelids blink. He looked back at her and saw the carbon copy of the mother he had never known, with long hair though now grey, and single- toned, velveteen skin. There was strained feeling steaming out of her eyes then, condensed into salty tributaries spilling down her face relentlessly. Then she steeled herself and started to speak in that way that people talk when they are forcing out the words through the stiff small tunnel of buried emotion.
“My son, if anybody is to blame, it is me. This is all my fault” Tokunbo was not following. Weeks later, he was still wondering what could have been wrong with his father; he hadn’t found any medicines in his cabinet apart from the usual dietary supplements and pain killers. What was this old woman talking about? “I was very angry Olatokunbo. I was very angry that your father took my Abebi, my only daughter away. I was mad. I was angry. And then she died. Just like that, pa pa pa. Even your dad could not explain it. She just died. We had begged her, warned her, threatened her not to marry him. I did not know his people and they were not Yoruba anyway” She smiled wryly at him here “But most of all, some people had said he had juju, whether he was the son of Amadioha or so. I wanted a reason to hate him so I let myself believe it even though I knew it was not true. Your father would have been the last person to believe in or use that type of thing. When Abby died,” She paused here, shaking with a fresh stream of tears “I sent Enitan to your dad. You see, Enitan was the girlfriend to Kazeem, this boy who wanted to marry Abby. He impregnated her and just left her like that when he came to us for her hand. I did not want to turn to any babalawo, any medicine-man myself. Because inside me I knew that would not be fair. Your father was already suffering enough and my husband had destroyed him so I did not want to be directly responsible for anything. But people said Enitan was a bringer of bad luck. Some said she was born abiku, and little things like that. I, on my own part, knew just one thing, that she was a woman scorned and your dad was a part of the reason why. So I hinted to her to make sure that he paid for it”. She shook her head slowly, as if unable to believe that she could have been so petty. Tokunbo was enthralled, still not sure that this had any bearing on his father’s death but hungry for these little morsels of his early life that he did not know about. The identity that had been kept from him for so long.
“Enitan was no match for your father. The man is irresistible it seems and he lives up to his nicknames. One look from his green eyes and any woman would crumble. And he has a way of surviving everything you throw at him that nobody can explain. She fell in love with your father before she knew it. The cat still had one more life in him. She fell in love with you too, you know. But she soon realized that he did not and could not love her. So she left. And then all this while, all this while later, her sister showed up. You see, Enitan died just before you came back from the US, that’s what Anu went to tell your father. She herself just returned as well from the US. I mean Anu. Enitan died husbandless and unhappy and Anu was angry about it. She blamed your father for it and in the Yoruba way… in that our, what is the word, impulsive way, she wanted him too to suffer like her, as if the poor man had not seen enough. It was Anu who put charms in your car because she wanted you not your dad to die. It was Anu who killed your father. And it was all my fault.”
Tokunbo laughed. He threw his head back just like his father and laughed. He laughed at the irony of this woman telling him that his father, a medical doctor, had died from the charms of a medicine-man, a local spiritualist who made a living by lying to gullible narrow-minded Nigerians. He laughed at himself who had rushed back from the rationality of the West to this nonsense, to watch his only parent die, to chase green-eyed after a girl who could offer him nothing. He laughed for Nigeria, at Nigeria. This backward gaddem mess where old women believed in charms and young women in money. He laughed and laughed and laughed because he had forgotten how to cry when a thug slapped him at three months old.
“Mama, thank you for paying for my trip back to the States. I’m truly grateful. One day I’ll pay you back. Thanks for being there all this while even though I know it’s been hard going for you” Tokunbo was still laughing “I can’t wait till I’m gone”.
His grandmother would be glad too. She looked at the beautiful young boy walking away to his room, the boy who looked like his mother and walked exactly like his father, the boy she almost could not stand to look at. She searched her handbag for her mobile to call her husband and tell him she was on her way home, before he would begin to worry about her. She did not want to be on the receiving end of his temper now she remembered him running after Emeka Okorie and cursing him, saying that his son would laugh while he rotted in his grave. Her hand closed around something black and ugly and formless, something she had pressed into first one sister’s hand then the other’s when the first proved useless, something she had had to part with temporarily for her own peace of mind when she heard that her grandson was coming home, who filled her with grief and with jealousy every time she looked at him because his father could enjoy what he had taken away from her all those years ago- a beloved child. She prayed to Sango for forgiveness for the death of an innocent.
© 'Namdi Awa-Kalu