He wondered what he was doing there. The tree had been cut down several years before and someone had started a house there. For over ten years the house had remained uncompleted. He wondered how the girl could know about the tree that was chopped down when she was probably an infant. He moved up the street and decided to wait and see if she would know where the tree was when she came.

His forebears believed in reincarnation so much they named their newborns after deceased relatives.  But certainly this mysterious girl could not be the reincarnation of his mother, he thought. She might have been born probably around the period of his mother’s death but did that mean anything? How did she come about intimate details about him – things only his mother had known? The question had occupied him the last twenty four hours. But he did not believe it. That was why he came, to prove that it was just a tasteless, bad joke.

A little white butterfly fluttered about his face and he looked up to see the girl standing before the uncompleted building, smiling at him. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve – the time his mother died.

“I didn’t  think  you would come,” she said when he reached her.

He only nodded.

“The tree used to be here, didn’t it?” she asked, looking around her.

“What kind of tree was it?”

“I don’t remember, but it was huge.”

“You know what time it is? What happened by this time?”

She only smiled.

He repeated the question.

“You know,” she said.

They were silent for a while.

“Who are you, really? What do you want?”

“You know who I am, Ndagi.”

She had never said she was his long dead mother and he wanted to hear her say it, he was daring her to.

“Say it!” He demanded.

“Life is a mystery, Ndagi,” she began sagely, “there are things we long to know, questions begging to be answered, but sometimes, we never learn the truth of what we so desire to know. I cannot pretend I have all the answers because I don’t. How did this come to happen, how I am here now or why? I can’t tell you. All I know is that life is a mystery in motion, like twilight and mists; here now and gone again.”

He shook his head. “Things don’t just happen. There must be a reason.”

“Perhaps we can learn that in time.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“I know how difficult this is for you.”

“If this is a joke, I will skin you.” And he meant it.

They were silent a long time.

“So tell me, what did you get for me when I read my first word?”

She thought for a while. “I can’t remember but I think it was some whistle sweet.”

“That was for the quiz.”

“Quiz?”

He looked at her. “The school quiz, when I won.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“How could you not, you were so proud of me then you carried me on your back even though I was so huge.”

She said nothing. His eyes clouded. He was really disappointed she could not remember his favourite – she had bought him a pair of size seven Adidas boots and it was real leather too. He had worn them to school everyday and was the star among the boys, most of whom played football barefooted. She had made him stand out among his peers then.  But in retrospect, he realised those boots were the last thing she bought him before her death. She had been drenched by the rain on her way back from the market with the boots in her bag. The resultant cold led to pneumonia that eventually claimed her life.

“What was my father’s favourite colour?”

She thought for sometime and shook her head. He nodded, as if affirming that he knew she was a fraud all along.

“There was this time you had nightmares,” she began huskily. “It had something to do with a lizard.”

He thought hard, frowning, trying to remember.

“I don’t remember the details,” she went on, “but I think you shot a lizard with a catapult and I warned you that it would haunt you in your sleep.”

“Oh, not that!” he exclaimed. He remembered and told her more about the incident. She chipped in several details and their accounts blended. She also mentioned an incident at school when he got into a fight and broke a boy’s nose. She told him how she had taken him to the room and knocked him severally on the head, and how he had refused to eat in protest afterwards. He remembered that too.

“How do you know such things?” he asked her, amazed.

She shrugged and looked at the butterfly that perched on her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know, I guess.”

Things changed however when he showed her an old group photo of his extended family. The girl could not recognise his father. She pointed at a wrong man.

“You don’t know my father?” He was incredulous.

She squinted at the photo for a long time and finally shook her head. “I don’t remember his face.”

He snatched the picture from her and got up, angry that he had even started believing that some unexplained mystery had restored his long dead mother to him. She bowed down her head, away from his icy glare.

“You little cheat!” he snarled. “If I set eyes on you again, I will snap your skinny neck.”

He started off.

“Life comes like a shadow,” she began, “but it is nothing but twilight and mist.”

He paused when he heard those familiar words.

“Those were your father’s words when he felt like philosophising. You remember, don’t you?”

He did. Several times his father had said those words to him when he had done something wrong. He kept his back to her so she would not see his face.

“When you go by the old market, go down the road. There is a little house with an avocado tree in front. Ask for Ozioma. They will bring you to me.”

Angrily, he swiped at one of her butterflies darting before his face. “I don’t have the time for your silly games. I shall not come.”

“Remember, twilight and mist.”

And he marched away into the gathering dusk.

*

But his life could not be the same. He kept wondering how she could know such intimate details about things that happened long before she was born; things only his late mother knew. He kept wondering for two long weeks.

One evening, he was ambling by the old market, pondering about the girl with little white butterflies, when he came upon a house with an avocado tree before it. He stood a long time and then went up to the house. He was received by an elderly woman whose greying hair peaked beneath her scarf. She was the butterfly girl’s birthmother. She offered him a seat in the courtyard.

“Are you Ndagi?” she asked.

He nodded.

She went to the room and came back with a parcel. “Ozioma, my daughter, said you would come,” the woman said. “She asked me to give you this. That you would know what it means.”

“Can I speak to her?”

She shook her head sadly. “She roamed the markets looking for this thing she wanted you to have. She had an accident on the day she found it. I am sorry, we buried her a week ago.”

He was so shocked he could not utter a word.

“She was adamant that you should have the parcel,” she went on. “She spoke about you a lot, mumbling something about twilight and mist.”

He opened the parcel. It was a size seven Adidas boot.


(c) Abubakar Adam Ibrahim