Julia Akpoti | Our Sun

The journey from Kineka to Ahoi was a silent one. It was a cold evening, and the heavens poured light showers on our bare backs every second of the way. Little Bene drew close to me, his teeth chattering, and I held him tightly for comfort. Nobody complained. Even in my teenage mind I could tell the significance of the rain: washing away our dirt and pain; washing away Kineka.

My father sighed from time to time. I could see through him clearly as we walked, dragging along our little luggage. He wasn’t a happy man; he hadn’t seen laughter in years. He was a tall, dark man, with strong muscular arms and an expressionless face. He had just one good eye, and my uncles used to say he lost the other fighting a bear. It was my favorite tale to hear as a child. For the first twelve years of my life, I thought of my father as a hero, and not even the subsequent realization that it was a lie shook my mind’s representation of him. The truth, I learned from my mother, was that he had challenged a strong wrestler to a fight one day. The wrestler, Abam, had been making passes at my mother, and my father, intoxicated by Ahoi palm wine and wanting to prove himself a man strong enough to keep his home, challenged him to a fight. It was a messy one. My father lost an eye, but Abam lost a lot of teeth. If there was a winner, my mother did not say.

#

The most reoccurring image of my mother that my mind presents is her in her favorite dress, smiling down on me with a hand on her bulging stomach. I struggle to remember her now: her light skin and dreamy eyes seem like flashbacks from a previous life; so far away. My mother had god-like skin and golden hair that stood like a halo above her head. She was an albino, the most beautiful one I had ever seen. Toma, my big brother once joked that she looked that way because she was an angel. Although we laughed about it, it was the perfect analysis. A golden woman with a golden heart—she had to be an angel. She was the glue that held us all together, keeping my father happy.

The last time I saw my father smile, he had my mother wrapped up tenderly in his arms. She was his sun, he said, and it was poetic just how much she brightened up his life. She brightened up all our lives. Despite being constantly haunted by the fear of being called weak, he was never too ashamed to express his love for her. He bought her the most expensive gifts; the most beautiful wrappers and beads, as if perpetually trying to compensate for something, even though he knew he didn’t have need to. She loved him wholly. It didn’t matter that he had just an eye; or that his own sons found him frightening. She loved him completely, as he loved her.

#

I was nine years old when Bene was born. I didn’t know much about childbirth, but I had heard from Toma that the birth process had been strenuous. My mother fell ill afterwards, spending weeks in bed and forcing smiles to keep us from worrying, even though it was impossible not to. She was frail, too weak to feed her little baby; too weak to feed even herself. We watched as our father sunk deeper into his shell, taking her from healer to healer, from priest to priest. Every time we felt there was an improvement she relapsed, and Bene grew older as the years went by.

Bene didn’t grow up with my mother’s warmth, or my father’s patience. My father had begun to lose faith in the healing process and it took a toll on him, pushing him farther away from us than he had ever been. Without my mother’s love as a bridge between us, our relationship with our father quickly blurred, and in those years all I felt was pity for Bene, who did not know what my mother’s skin looked like in the sun, or what my father looked like with a smile.

#

One day, when I was fourteen, I walked into my mother’s room and observed a familiar bulge on her stomach. She was lying on her back, smiling like she felt no pain, but her beautiful face told me all I needed to know. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she squinted as she talked, struggling to catch a proper glimpse of my face.

“Kenan, you will finally have a sister. She is growing inside of me, can you see?” She murmured, and for a minute I could not recognize her voice.

I couldn’t bring myself to share in her joy. She was slipping away from our hands, and I knew that it was merely a matter of time until she was gone. The baby, when born, would endure a childhood as miserable as Bene’s: empty. I longed to tell her this; to tell her how badly we needed her to be fine and how much things had changed since it began, but I didn’t want to break her heart, so I responded the best way I could: “I can see it, Mama. It is wonderful news. I will send words to Toma.”

Toma did not like the news, even though he was expecting a child of his own. He had married a young girl from a neighboring tribe two years after Bene was born, and started life as a family man in his own land at the far end of town. As distant as he now was, he still paid regular visits to my mother and spared some hours with Bene, relieving me for some time of the sole responsibility of taking care of the little man.

Toma said my father was insensitive to have touched her while she was in that state, and didn’t fail to express his disappointment to him personally. It was one of my favorite things about him: his ability to always express himself, no matter who was listening. I watched them argue for hours about the situation until I saw that a fight would follow soon and stepped in to calm the storm. It didn’t matter what should or should not have been done, all that mattered was that it had happened, and we needed to keep her alive and strong. Both men swallowed their pride, along with the hundreds of words they had to say to each other, and decided to put my mother’s health first.

The weeks that followed saw my father smiling again and humming loudly as he worked. My mother was not getting any better, but she was getting closer to delivery, and I understood his joy. It was a girl. It meant someone he could channel all his love to when my mother finally lost her strength. He would have his wife reborn, this time as a daughter, and he would cherish her with every fibre of his being. He resumed his gifting, this time buying more for the child than the mother. His excitement was almost repulsive, and I wondered if he ever thought of how difficult it might be for my mother, pushing out a child when barely able to walk or talk.

#

I was fifteen years old when the sun went down and never rose again. I stood by the door as my mother took her last breath, slow and heavy, with the baby lifeless between her legs. I watched as my father broke down, wailing and tearing down the walls of her little room, and I led little Bene out, shielding his eyes from the horrific sight. It smelled of blood, of sweat, of pain. I could not bring myself to cry, maybe because I had begun to mourn her months before her light went out. I knew it was a matter of time, I just wished the baby had stayed back. She had my mother’s golden skin and hair, and even with her eyes shut I could tell that she was just as beautiful.

When Toma walked into the room, my father had the baby in his arms, crying bitterly. I could read the disgust on his face, although he made no efforts to hide it. With slow, calculated steps, he walked to my mother’s bed and gave her a kiss on the forehead, letting a tear drop from his eye to her red cheek.

“You killed her. You killed the both of them. You knew she couldn’t do it. You killed them,” He repeated over and over. His eyes were on the lifeless baby, but we all knew who the words were addressed to. I was never bold enough to say it, but I felt the exact same way.

#

The journey to Ahoi began a month later. It was too difficult to remain in Kineka after all that had happened, and my father wanted peace and a new beginning. It was a transition that we knew would not be easy, but it was one that we all agreed was needed. We walked silently all the way, each of us holding back the tears and pushing away the memories of a life that was once perfection. Our sun would never rise again, but we had to live.

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