The Backyard
Photo: Zoe Holling
Read by the author
On its own, time has no meaning. It is void of emotions, predictable and stable. It is humans that are restless, wild, and uncontrollable. We stain the perfection of time with our sentiments—and desires. We cling to moments in our lives and hang them on to time like a tree with extended, unending branches. Our memories give it structure, our pain buries its roots deep beneath our skin, and a whisper of nothingness becomes the bedrock of civilisation and the currency of life. That is why we celebrate birthdays, an ironic countdown to our time of death, the whisper of nothingness.
You thought that you understood how it worked. Its predictability made you dependent and fearless—except anchoring yourself to something without meaning risks you being thrown into a world of questions and never enough answers. Your fingers itched to scratch at something as you walked to her backyard. It was just after dawn, and you could see the dew gather on the tiny patch of grass allowed to grow there. Her backyard wasn’t cemented over, but it was not a garden either. The red clayey soil spotted weeds, and sometimes it was generous enough to sprout a few pawpaw seedlings, which never grew past your calf. You had spoken to her about this many years ago—when you both still spoke to each other.
“Why do you still let these things grow?” You pointed to the sickly pawpaw leaves hanging over their stalks, turning from green to yellow and then brown.
“So I should be going around uprooting them?” she said, bending over to pull out the dying plant. “Are you okay now?”
“Not really.”
She sighed. “Everything grows here,” she said, pulling out more weeds. “If it’s strong, it lives. If not, then it dies.”
“So why not just plant pawpaw trees?”
“I think Daddy has enough trees.” You heard a tinge of amusement in her voice.
“So why do you keep throwing the seeds here when—”
“Do you want to be our gardener?” she interjected, raising an eyebrow at you.
“No, I . . . I just think your backyard could look better.”
“Maybe,” she nodded in agreement, “but I am not in the mood to take care of it, so unless you want to plant these things yourself . . .”
You got the message.
She held your hand and pulled you farther into the backyard. Her father’s compound was fenced. Not the image of sophistication, the gate, not sky high, barely human height, showed how big her father’s compound was. Allowing visitors to either knock or jump over the fence, depending on what they were there for. The ground was sandy and usually got so dusty during the dry season that you had to wear a wet handkerchief over your nose just to visit. The edge of the compound had large trees. Some bore fruit, and a lot did not. Her father had bought the land and only mapped out a portion of the forest, at the time, to be burned to allow for the building of his family home. So the trees stood at the side of his house like a canopy. It was quite lovely and would be lovelier still if they did something about the weeds and the pawpaw and watermelon seeds that kept littering the compound. Since the topsoil had been parched, it could no longer grow anything save the tenacious lemon grass for a few weeks. The dying plants looked horrid to your eyes, so you took them from the ground and allowed her to pull you toward the far edge of the fence of her backyard.
Her hand was warm and still had the sand from the weeds she had pulled. It scratched your forearm, but you did not complain. You didn’t want her to stop holding you. She tied a purple silk scarf on her head, and you watched it flap and shift on her back as she stepped around the overgrown shrubs and invisible stones leading up to the place you and her visited every day.
You reached the old stony fence overrun with green algae. It strangely didn’t affect you as much as the dying plants did. As you watched it, you thought it was kind of beautiful. The worn edges of the wall were blanketed by the algae making it less sharp and more like a cushion.
“You know one day Baba Ahmed will carry cane to pursue us,” you said as she walked to the stones you had both rolled on top of one another like steps in front of the fence.
Her back was all you could see, but you knew she rolled her eyes before saying, “Daddy says that if his fruit falls in our compound, then it’s ours.”
“So wait for the fruit to fall.”
“So the sand can season it for us?” She placed her hands akimbo as she turned towards you, her brows furrowing and her neck doing that thing where it danced as she spoke. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not an earthworm.”
You snorted and folded your arms, following her gaze to the agbalumo tree. Every day you both came to harvest the fruits of another man’s labour, telling yourselves that it would be your last. But after being careful the first few days, picking only two or three at a time, you had gotten bolder and did not leave until you couldn’t carry anymore. She hurried up the stones, and you caught your breath every time she wobbled, but as always, she sorted her footing, focusing more on her hands getting the fruit than on her feet being firmly planted. You were both getting careless. She reached a little higher and slipped, just as you feared; you saw the stone beneath her scrape her shin as she struggled to find balance.
“Be careful,” you hissed when she stopped wobbling. It was half a whisper and half a scream.
“Do you want to do it?” You blanched as she looked at you. “As I thought. All you know how to do is make mouth.” She gathered herself, gingerly dusted her scraped shin, and looked up again. You saw the wince, but she was either too confident or embarrassed to make a deal of it. You both looked at the agbalumo she tried to reach, its delicious juice already seeping out the small red fruit, the drops suspended at the very bottom, almost like they were about to fall, teasing.
“Every day you both came to harvest the fruits of another man’s labour, telling yourselves that it would be your last.”
She steadied herself, paying more attention to her footing before reaching for the fruit again. You were anxious and tentatively straining your neck as if that would help her hand go farther.
“You wu’ave come again,” Baba Ahmed’s voice boomed through your ears. You felt your legs shake and made to turn around before noticing that she was still straining to reach the fruit.
“Aminat,” you let out another whisper-scream at her, “don’t be daft. Let’s go!”
She ignored you and reached farther for the fruit. You could hear Baba Ahmed’s footsteps getting closer to the fence.
“What’s wrong with you? Get down!” You didn’t bother whispering this time, and again she ignored you. You reached for her hand; she forcefully shoved it away. Baba Ahmed was at the fence now; you could feel it. You saw a stick with leaves swipe through the air and heard the crack that soon followed, all before you could blink. Aminat’s hand snatched back, and she lost her footing, falling on you.
“Don’t let me see you here again o. Or you will also see me in your compound!”
You heard him walk away; Aminat was still on you. You tried moving your arms and realised you had instinctively held her around her waist when she fell. She was on top of you and yet did not move. You did not complain either but let her warmth seep into your skin, feeling the rhythm of her heartbeat on yours. You were breathing a little harder now, her scent wafting around the air; you felt like a butterfly drawn to nectar. She chuckled, her shoulders vibrating, breaking the spell.
“Do you think he’s still there?” she whispered, still lying on you on the sandy ground.
“Probably,” you replied though it sounded more like a question.
“We should check—”
“So he can flog you again?” This time she got up and dusted herself. You lay on your back and forearms, looking at her. Your clothes were already stained, so there wasn’t much need to get up in a hurry. “You just like looking for trouble. Like, I’m not even the one plucking the fruit, but I’m scared.”
“You’re always scared,” she muttered, thrusting her right hand to your face. Your eyes crossed, and you blinked to get her fingers in focus.
“But how? When?”
“Just before he hit me,” she said, swaying happily. Cradling the red fruit in front of her face as she said it.
You frowned and finally got up, reaching for her hand, “Where did he hit you?”
“It’s fine,” she said, pulling her right hand behind her. “It’s not even paining me.”
You sighed, exasperated, and threw your hands up, walking back to the house without bothering to dust off your clothes.
“Fine. But we are not going back there again. So enjoy that fruit because it’s your last.”
“You’re so dramatic.” She laughed, catching up with you. “We can share it.”
“Why? You got flogged for it.”
“Because it’s very delicious.”
“You haven’t even tasted it yet.”
“I know because I worked for it—”
“Stole it.”
“—and I have the scars to prove it.”
“I thought it wasn’t paining you.”
“Can’t you just eat something without complaining, ehn?”
You smiled as she handed you the sticky red fruit and rested her hand on your inner elbow, hopping back to the house.
And now you are back at that agbalumo tree just at the start of the dry season. No fruits are hanging from the branches yet, but if there were, you wouldn’t need stone steps to reach them. Your hands are now long enough to pick a dozen fruit with ease. It wasn’t just you that grew; the tree’s branches are longer now, and despite being planted in Baba Ahmed’s compound, it extended into Aminat’s, like a dare. “Come pluck at me,” the branches said. You wish she were here. She should be here, where you planned to tell her. And now you feel time laughing at you. The cruel whisper of nothingness.
You make her appear beside you; your imagination makes her glow even under the hot and bright sunlight. The glowing Aminat chuckles as she turns to you.
“It’s too bad there is no fruit yet. Baba Ahmed would have probably given up chasing us, and you’re tall now, so maybe you would put in some work. Or,” she raises a dark eyebrow at you, “you will spend the whole time whining about it. If you were in charge, we’d never be able to get anything.”
“Because we shouldn’t be stealing,” you hear yourself say.
“But you will still eat it.”
“It was already stolen, so what do we do, give it back?”
Her fake-real laugh sends warmth from your chest to your toes, her dark lips a brilliant contrast to her white teeth. You hold that moment, making her laugh over and over until the hurt sets in, and you can see the blood on her face. You shake your head, and she disappears. Conjuring her like that is always bittersweet, but to have her speak to you again is worth it. You stay away from thoughts of her and let the sound blowing through the fruitless Agbalumo tree rush through you, through the wound of her absence. You enjoy it.
“Why did you do it?”
Stunned, you whirl around and see her standing there. Your heart forgets its rhythm; you feel dizzy. Aminat? Is she real? You had been careful not to imagine her lest you remember.
“You wouldn’t even touch the fruit on this tree, so why?”
You struggle to think how old she might be now. Thirty, maybe thirty-one. She looks at you, and you feel your breath catch when the dry wind blows tears from her eyes. She is beautiful. Your eyes move up to her dark woolly hair she always kept tied in a scarf. You laugh to yourself when you remember how much she complained about it but never even dreamed of cutting it. They had a love-hate relationship, Aminat and her hair. She tended to it when she was anxious. Training her fingers to gingerly work through the tangles and curls of the thick strands and setting them into tight curls that fell to her shoulders. You want to run your fingers through them but stop yourself. Is she real?
“You did not complain either but let her warmth seep into your skin, feeling the rhythm of her heartbeat on yours.”
“What were you thinking?” The fat tears fall to the ground and her with them. Her gasps and groans grate your ears; you don’t care if she is real or not, you rush to hold her, and as always, your fingers slip right through.
The sound of wheels scratching through the rail blast through your vision. The train was slowing down, but there weren’t any stops for another hour and a half. In fact, there was no person or building in sight. The travellers started mumbling, and some stood up and looked around, asking questions.
“What’s going on?” You felt your teeth clench and back straighten.
“Probably ran out of fuel,” Aminat said, raising her head from your shoulder. She had slept most of the way, making herself comfortable the moment you sat next to her.
“It’s a train.”
“And we’re in Nigeria,” she replied. “It won’t be the weirdest thing to happen.”
No, you thought, it wouldn’t. Still, something was not quite right.
“Oh, calm down,” she said, snuggling closer to you, her hair tickling your neck. She yawned lightly, and you could smell the Sprite she drank that afternoon. “Try not to do that thing you always do.”
“Worrying isn’t always a bad thing.”
“It is when you do it.” You started to laugh, but your ears pricked up and the tension in your neck tightened.
Aminat noticed the change in your disposition and sat up. You heard before you saw the crowd push through the tiny aisle. You spotted a child running in front of his mother, saw him trip and fall, and watched the other passengers run over mother and son as she stopped to pick him up.
“Okay,” came Aminat’s voice near your ear, “you can worry now.”
Aminat made to stand, but you held her back. Joining the chaos would be more harmful than good.
“What?” she yelled over the panicked crowd rushing past the both of you. You moved her farther down her seat, close to the window. “Are you serious? You want to stay here when everyone else is running? We should—”
Her voice faded when the pounding of your heart reached your ears. Closer to the window now, you saw them, herdsmen, a notorious group of nomads who left decapitated bodies in their wake in the fight for more pastoral land. They had never attacked a moving train. Your muscles shivered as you realised the train had stopped right in the middle of nowhere.
The crowd that had initially run past you to the back of the train had turned to run in the other direction. They were frantic now, no longer relying on the tiny aisle of the train but jumping over the chairs to get away. The herdsmen were positioned at every exit. The one at the front carried a machete, and the one from behind, you suspected, had a rifle. The fact that most people ran the other way meant they probably assumed that they had a better chance with the machete. You thought you heard someone yell, and then the bullets came.
Aminat screamed as the crowd scrambled above her, running this way and that. You felt the elbow of someone connect with your eye, and you shuffled farther away from the aisle. With your one good eye, you saw the machete wielder barreling forward, slicing through the crowd like a game, shaking body parts off the blade like a butcher in an abattoir. You felt her tremble violently beside you and knew it was only a matter of time. If the machete didn’t get you, a bullet will, right before a stranger’s feet became a little too familiar with your face. For the first time, you realised that you had never told her, never even said it out loud, but you hoped that she would hear it. You pushed her further between your seats and the one in front, then encouraged her to huddle on the floor of the car. She was still exposed. The bullets had stopped, but the slicing drew close. You felt the fear consume you. You clenched your teeth so hard, it ached. You turned in the tight space to look at her. Her chest to her knees, knuckles clenched, and eyes closed. She was crying and her lips trembling. You felt your muscles relax as the machete wielder got closer still. You caught her eyes snap open and go wide just before you threw yourself over her.
Her tears are dropping slowly on the parched soil. You are entranced as with every drop that makes the soil darker, the sharp, dry wind makes it light again. Her sobs had subsided. She had moved from yelling and pulling roots to shouting curses at you and, now, apologising. You wish she wouldn’t be so sorry. That hurt you more than the curses did.
“You know you really made me think you were a coward,” she says to you, but only because you stand in the way of her and the tree. “Made me call you all sorts of names when I was the real coward.” More silent tears. You say nothing. Not because you know she can’t hear you but because you are scared she might. So you sit there and pretend to hold her gaze, memorising the new lines on her face. The guilt would fade, and she would remember what it is like to live again. You will wait, and if you had any say, it would be for as long as possible.
Time . . . means nothing.
About the author
Huwa Okoyomoh is a Nigerian performance poet and podcaster currently living in France. While working as a content creator, she built a platform with just storytelling and poetry, with about 100,000 followers on Instagram and 530,000 followers on TikTok. She self-published her first book of poems, The New Song, in 2021. You can find her on Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter.
