I was ten when Nana came to stay with us. Dark-skinned and skinny. But for her breasts, she would have passed as thin. As thin as I was. She narrowly escaped.
She had a lot of it. The kind that makes you think that God started from her head to create her, taking his precious time. Halfway, at her midriff, he got an urgent call for a miracle. One he could not ignore. Since he had already started, he thought it would be a waste to leave her that way. So he poured the bowl of creation on her and let the other features find their place. At least that should explain her broad shoulders, big bust and slim waist. And an even flatter butt.
“Nana is my cousin from the village,” Mum told us. “She just finished her SSCE. She will stay with us for a while. Until she figures out what next. “It must have been a difficult thing to do. Because Nana stayed on. Till it happened.
I liked Nana. She made the best moi-moi I had ever eaten. Her rice did not need mili anu to make you bite your fingers. Although we didn’t dare say it out loud to mom’s ears, we looked forward to her cooking. Dad came running home and I eagerly helped in the kitchen.
Mom gave up after a while of trying to act unaffected and soon joined us in the race home for dinner. I think she was grateful for the help though. It spared her enough time to close down the shop for the day. Mom and Dad managed a textile shop that recently began to see the beginnings of good fortune. On days we told ourselves the truth, we would agree that it was Mom who managed it. Dad…well was just dad.
I’ve always had a strange relationship with sleep. I must have called out to him too much as a child that he, disturbed, lost his temper and scratched my name off his list. Now I have to stare at the moon for hours, calling out to him, waiting for him to remember. For a child that spent most of his first few years asleep, mom got scared. And like every other problem I have, it was laid in front of the doctor’s doorstep first thing in the morning.
“Are his cells alright,” Mom asked the doctor? He stays awake all night.
He laughed her off. I am sure he was used to mom’s questions. Those were her favorites. Are his cells alright?
“Let him play more often,” the doctor said. “A child of this age can be energetic. Let him burn it off.”
Mom snorted. “How can I let my only child play with children of the street?” A sickle cell carrier at that. What if they hit him too hard? Or in the wrong place?
“Stay here and play with me,” she would say.
And sleep off.
I liked Nana even more. She didn’t mind. No matter how many times she cooked. Or scrubbed the floor. We played every night. If only it didn’t take the tiniest scrawl of the beginning of her name on the sleep list to send her to dreamland. Long after all the sane had slept, I would be alone listening to the crickets and the hoots of the nightbirds. Soon, I became friends with the moon. It smiled at me often and told me stories: the secrets of the night.
It told me of the lull of leftover dinner. Its conspiracy with sleep. If I could eat just enough to get me bloated, sleep would come. With Nana’s food, it was easy. My throat became a magnet, drawing it in. And my stomach, a thirsty desert greedily lapping onto it.
Mom didn’t mind my night cravings. So long as I made no noise. “Let’s see if you will add a bit of flesh,” she said.
That was the first time I heard them. When I tiptoed out of my room to answer the call of Nana’s moi-moi. Then, I heard her call in a different way. Her voice croaked like a broken drum looking for the right tune. I could convince her to play with me, I thought. But when I peeped into her room she was playing with Dad. I stood and watched. It was difficult to tell if she liked this play or not. I think she liked it. Her fingers clutched tightly to Dad’s back. I knew it would leave a mark. The room must be hot. Beads of sweat rolled down Daddy’s back. Maybe the play was too taxing for him. When he stilled, he panted like all the air in the world could not fill him up.
I walked back to my room. Even more silently than I came. I wondered why I didn’t tell mum. Maybe because somewhere in my mind I knew that it was not a play for children. That it would break Mama’s heart to know that Dad and Nana played alone. I didn’t eat that night. I didn’t sleep either.
But like Mum discovers my stolen meats, she soon discovered the night play. I don’t know how.
Nana’s malaria wouldn’t stop. And like every other problem, it found its way to the doctor’s doorstep. When they returned, the house stopped. And our story started.
Mum cried. Screamed. Cursed. And waited. When Dad came back, she began all over again. Grandma came the next day. She stayed awake with mom that night. Mom must be telling her a lot of bad things. She kept winding her hands over her head and snapping it as she screamed Tufiakwa! It usually accompanies every bad thing Grandma hears.
For the first time in my life, I saw mom cry. Mom that puts the business back together every time Dad runs it down. Mom that holds my hand through every surgery explaining why real men don’t cry. This mom looked nothing like that mom. Her body shook as she wept. I feared she would break.
“He had nothing when I married him,” Mom started. “Nothing! I started from scratch, mama. Even when he pulled it down, I started yet again.”
“How do I tell my son his father cannot provide for him?”
She wept even more. And shook harder.
“I sent his siblings to school. I built a house for him. For us.”
“What else could I have done? Shed my blood?”
“I would have done that, if I could. I would have given him all the children in my womb. Who cares if they are sickly?”
“But he said one was enough.”
“That is what he told me, Mama.”
And then mom broke down.
Those moments when mom would rush me to the hospital after the slightest fall just to be sure that my cells were okay and that I had enough platelets to help me heal seemed too foggy to remember. It was even more difficult to believe that I once gathered myself in her arms to seep her strength. She looked like she could use mine. A lot of it.
Her tears glittered under the moonlight, like the stream of the moon goddess. Grandma tried her best to keep them from flowing. When she gave up, she tucked mom under her chin and rocked her. I guessed she didn’t mind listening to mom’s monologue. Sitting there in the dark, they reminded me of what a pendulum would look like if we had one. I stood for a little longer peering from mother to mother and wondering the difference.
Later, I wondered why I resisted the urge to go to her that night. To hold her hands and tell her it was okay. To give her a little of my strength. Maybe because I also knew that it would break her even more to see me watching. Or because I danced a yes when Nana asked me if I wanted a brother to play with.
‘Another playmate,’ she whispered.
She said she would make the best moi moi for us every night. I couldn’t resist. If only I hesitated before I nodded my head. If only I had told mom sooner.
Thinking about it many nights later, the ninth month of the full moon, I felt my hair rise and shivers that had nothing to do with the night breeze washed down my spine. I felt lost in a world I thought belonged to me. Nothing changed. Mom still cried each night. Dad still stared on. Nana was getting married tomorrow.
—–
Grandma kept me busy all day. When I was sure my knees would give out, she led me to sit and gave me a big cellophane bag to pick money once the DJ began to play music for the couple’s first dance. I caught sight of Mom’s green ankara. I knew she chose it last night to match with the baby’s wrapper and Dad’s buba. Somewhere in the flutter of my heart, I knew it would never remain the same again. Just as I knew that if mom spared another glance at Dad, it would be because a fly darted across.
I stood when the music began to play. And the bride began to cry. They said it was tears of joy. Who would not kill to be the wife of an alhaji? What does it matter if she is the fifth? Or old enough to be her father? People have married for less.
When the couple began to dance, I bent, collecting drops of tears and shards of broken hearts.
—–
Image: Dall-E remixed