Mama died the day before Christmas, making it the least wonderful time of the year. Our relationship was not easy. I recall years as a teenager wishing I was someone else’s child. Daydreaming that my real mother would return. A mother with tales of why she had to leave me with this woman, this angry woman. But as I morphed into my mother in my late twenties, I began to feel sympathy for her. I was not an easy daughter; I was an angry one. The day Mama died, the pungent fumes of dried blood and Dettol threatened to suffocate me. I wanted the earth to swallow me. Open up its tectonic plates and consume me in its searing core, it was my fault, no it was yours, it was ours. That day, Bayo tried to hold me as the tears in my eyes and water in my mouth refused to fall. I could hardly see the hue of the blue nets covering the last of the Christmas hampers.
“I cannot breathe, I cannot live,” I said, screaming, wanting to break something, kill someone, end me. But death mocks such things. Death asks if I am still living, I say yes.
It has been four years since Bayo tried to hold me, three years since I saw home, two years since I saw you, my sister. Mama’s death was not the only thing I lost that year, but it was 2020. We all lost something. I lost Bayo also that year, I accepted; I shrugged as though my heart was not crushing to powder from its previously broken elements. I was always too busy binding up my wounds. I had no time to reveal them to him. They say when you feel blue, you should say it; I did not; there was nothing left to say. Each night, I turn my head on my pillow and weep. Weeping is a tradition for me. Tears are the hue through which I see my existence. I hear sirens on London’s turbulent streets and wish Mama had one. A blue siren that would have gotten her to a hospital on time.
An emergency phone that she could use to reach her daughters. The day she died, you and I fought. Instead of weeping, I called you names and threatened to kill you. We were angry and refused to follow our mother in delivering the hampers as was our tradition.
Papa said, “Forgive yourselves; if you were both with her, I would have lost you all.”
You glanced at me; we knew he would have recovered with ease. The doctor said she never had a chance, but we don’t know if death was instant. How long did the pain last? I wonder if she saw the people helping themselves to hampers before calling for help.
The first year Mama made hampers, she charged us to turn it into a tradition.
“My dear, you must continue this with your daughters; many people are in need. A little rice and tins of fish go a long way,” she said. Mama was wearing an adire dress, her favourite of all African prints. Cobalt blue with white marks that looked like the stripes on a donkey. Mama always looked good in blue, and she knew it. She would add blue to anything she wore. Blue earrings, necklaces, shoes, bags, and lapis lazuli; I am sure her robe in heaven is dyed blue. One year, we bought her blue lipstick for Christmas, and she wore it all day. Do you remember?
Mama said, beaming, “I have to indulge you. You know I cannot wear it to work. They will send me to the hospital if I do.” She embraced us as the warming scent of baby powder filled our nostrils. I rub baby powder on my body at night. It makes me feel like my mother is cradling me.
That year, our eyes were fixed on the shadow in the garden, evidence of our new neighbour, Tobe, going outside to read his Archie comic.
“Maiduguri, where is that?” you said the first day you met Tobe.
“It is in the north near Abuja,” I said, confident in my inaccuracy, “the capital is Borno.”
Tobe smiled as he often did; I never heard him correct anyone. I became friends with his older sister to get close to him. I wanted to know everything about him. She said he was the baby of the house, and their mother allowed him to eat, sleep and read his comics.
“Hi, Uwa,” he said one day while his sister Ada and I played with our Barbie dolls.
“I’m Alero; I can’t believe you don’t know my name,” I said, sorrow veiled as anger that fuelled me home as I disembodied my Barbie. I wept for days. I did not bother to go to their house, but you did; you got invited to the parties and had swimming lessons with them.
“Alero, forgive her. These things happen,” Mama said when you and Tobe became friends.
“Alero, won’t you go to Ada’s party?” Mama asked one day, weeks later.
“No, they only like Uwa,” I said, afraid, hopeful that my words weren’t true, as I cradled my one-armed doll.
“But they invited you both; I’m sure Ada misses her friend”, my mother said.
That day, I felt guilt, and shame in befriending Ada, though I only wanted to be near Tobe. On Christmas day that year, Mama gave me a Barbie doll house, and I ran to Ada’s house to give it to her.
“We will never talk about Tobe,” she said with a smile. I gave my friend my Christmas present; in return, she gave me the gift of her friendship.
Hamper Day always exceeded Christmas Day. Mama would wake us up early in the morning, to eat anything we wanted. One year; we asked for Fufu and Nkwobi. Mama looked at us like we were crazy but we had our desired food. The next thing was to pack the hampers, rice bags, fish tins, sometimes books or toothpaste. The most memorable of all were the stories she would tell. Each tale featured the origin of the tortoise’s balding. Each time, how he came to be bald was different. Some people’s parents tell them what to be, but Mama showed us how. Some people’s parents tell them to be good with money, but Mama showed us her monthly budget. After eating and a tale of Mr tortoise, we would wrap the hampers in blue nets and pack them into the car. Her budget could afford 12 hampers, and she stuck to it. As I grew older, my initial reluctance on delivering the hampers grew from sympathy into gratitude in sharing joy. That is what I miss the most: an opportunity to share joy in someone else’s joy.
The Christmas after Mama died, you continued the tradition without me but insisted I attend your wedding. When you spoke of your husband, you said, “Mama knew he was a good man just from the sound of his voice.” Although I had forced your hand into a wedding in London, you were radiant.
“I am not coming to Nigeria,” I said, insisting that you uproot your groom to London. My excuse was the pain of Mama’s death. But you and I know many who survived worse. My sorrow was about new beginnings, not merely the one gone. You agreed; you wanted me there; secretly, I wanted to be there too. I had turned into one of those people. The ones we didn’t like. People who had family in Nigeria who travelled to Dubai three times a year but never made it home to see their parents. But other than you, what was there for me in Nigeria? Just words spoken in anger to you that I could never withdraw, a life you stole from me that you could never return and memories of blue hospital walls stained in blood.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed Tobe arrive at your wedding reception. All eyes followed him as he walked, ate and swayed to candy on the dance floor. His navy-blue suit sat on his torso as though it was made just for him.
“Am I allowed to talk to you now?” He said.
“Sure,” I whispered, wishing I would turn to icing sugar, soft enough for him to inhale and swallow.
“You look amazing.” He said, with his breath the marriage of honey and cinnamon melted together. I guessed rum from the golden content of his glass, but his demeanour told me whisky.
“Thanks.”
“Alero, I–“
“Tobe, what are you doing?” Ada yelled from across the dance floor. She waddled with her pregnant belly to the bar. “I told you not to bother her; go away.” She shooed him away as I took him in again, wishing I had inhaled all of him.
“He is always asking me, Alero, this and that. Is she still angry? Are they doing the hampers? Don’t mind him, joor, something that happened 20 years ago!” Ada laughed.
Tobe was resilient. He returned after Ada left for what I teased was her 10th toilet break of the day.
“How are you feeling?”
“It’s been a wonderful wedding,” I said, my sigh a whisper.
“That’s not what I asked,” Tobe said. He leaned closer and placed his shoulders next to me as I leaned against the bar, wishing my head could make a home on his chest.
I recalled Mama’s prior advice about Bayo that day at your wedding.
“Alero, he likes you. I hope you are nice to him,” Mama said when Bayo started saying bye to me before he left the office.
“He is only being nice; if he likes me, he should offer to help me,” I said.
“Alero, ask him for help. Men like that, you know,” she said. I never took love advice from her because her marriage was in shambles, but now, as I look back on it, I see she was right.
Last Christmas, Tobe said I should send you a gift even if I didn’t call, so I did; I sent a ready-made hamper I bought off Instagram.
“You should send money for hampers, too.” He said.
“Why? She doesn’t need the cash.”
“What would your mother do?” He said with a sigh and whisper over the phone.
“Are you ever coming home?” Tobe said.
“There is nothing for me there,” I said. It was a lie; I hoped he didn’t believe me.
I never send you gifts because we always share.
But Mama always said, “Adam loved Eve. That’s why he ate the apple.” You and I must share; it is what makes us love. They say grief creeps upon you, like a stranger in the night or a sudden hug from a child. My grief stays with me. It is the hand on my heart that keeps it beating. Sometimes, I wonder what Mama would say, knowing I survived her death only to be alone. I promised to visit you this year, 2024, my Christ year. The one where I am supposed to overcome. To come home to meet your daughter. Her pictures make her look like Mama, with thick eyebrows and deep dimples; it helps that you always dress her in blue. You say your pregnancy was easy; she did not steal your beauty. I smile as I read your messages. There is a guilt in the way you reach out. My ignoring you has never prevented you from sharing. Tobe makes me see the world through lighter hues, than those of blue, now I want to share too.
This year, Tobe agreed to come with me to visit you and share the gift of hampers. My friends say I am alone because I can’t be vulnerable; Tobe agrees but clings to me anyway.
“I cannot love you if I don’t know you,” Bayo once said. I replied that he did not know me because he did not love me. I see now that we were both right. As I approached your door, my spirit told me Mama was right; you chose well. I saw a peak of you through the window, dressed in one of Mama’s blue boubous. It reminded me of the last time we heard her voice, her aching scream as she tried to soothe us while we argued over a group call when she was driving. That time you took what was mine, it had gone beyond sharing. I could never understand how you found comfort in the source of our pain. Tobe held my hands as though grief was going to consume me. But the grip of grief left when he touched me. You and Bayo opened the door and welcomed us in. These days, Bayo holds his 6-month-old daughter. It made sense that you would find love with each other.
The last time we spoke on the day Mama died, he said, “She is easy. She allowed me to hold her when she cried.”
As I allowed Tobe to hold me, I realised that Bayo wasn’t talking about your body but your heart.
………
Image: Brenda Barlow Pixabay remixed