We long to be Children again
Photo: Jude Beck
In the beginning, when he was still a child and his papa’s hut was the palace of a king, life was simple—unruffled like the pages of a new book. Papa was his king, the man he reverenced. Any time the Clergyman spoke about God and he tried to picture his majestic being in his head, all he could see were Papa’s features. And why not? The world always seemed to lay out flat on Papa’s palm. Papa was like a wall made of clay—the strong wall of the barn at the back of the yard which he built when Mama was still a new wife.
These days, whenever he read a letter from his parents, he felt detached—like a man looking at the world from a distance. It was as though his spirit and soul were no longer housed by his body. Perhaps it was some sort of defense against Mama’s curses but it also meant that he did not notice the deep-seethed grief of the man whose face he once saw when he thought of God.
***
He still remembered the night when everything changed. They were eating dinner—pounded yam, vegetable soup and bush meat. Papa rinsed his hands and began to talk, Mama interlacing his words with hers, filling in the spaces whenever he paused.
His siblings ate silently averting their gaze from his. Papa left and Mama followed.
He watched their distorted shadows on the wall till they became smaller and disappeared although their words remained, leaving a lump in his throat.
He laid on his bed, blinking rapidly, holding back the flood of bitterness coarsing through him, as he made his plan of running away from home. Away, far away, to the city.
And run away he did, in the thick of the night when even the spirits were still asleep. The city welcomed him with open arms and he settled in rather quickly and seamlessly.
But he could never forget home. A few weeks in and he was already nostalgic. Everything he saw in the city reminded him of home. The driver whose bus he boarded in the mornings had Papa’s gait. Even his co-worker spoke like Uncle.
So, he wrote his first letter home.
He got the first reply some weeks later. Papa’s handwriting was unmistakable. Again, it was interlaced with Mama’s like she was snatching the pen from him at intervals. They both pleaded with him to return home. But it was only the first letter that was soft. The second came with harsh words. The third was accompanied by Mama’s curses. She was swearing by her right breast, it said. He must return to the village or the gods would strike him. The curses did not stop even after they came to accept that he was never returning. Mama still rained them, this time because he sent empty envelopes back home when other kids were sending bulky envelopes to their parents. He understood well what Mama meant by an empty envelop so he stopped writing. He had barely enough for himself and couldn’t afford to send money home.
He could only picture their disappointment after eagerly tearing open the envelope only to find a piece of paper drop to the mud floor; Papa would be disappointed and Mama would curse again with her right breast before storming off in anger. Papa’s disappointment would only be fleeting. As soon as Mama had disappeared, he would sit on his rocking chair and read the letter carefully, his jaws slowly grinding kola.
Tunde, come home to do better things with your life; your younger brothers are excelling. You are the first child; you should be the pillar of this home.
A fixed postscript of their letters. They kept writing even though he had stopped replying.
After reading the letter and reciting the postscript like an old primary school poem, he would pull up his mattress and toss the letter into a little bag.
***
Sometimes, the night seemed so short that he could barely sleep a wink. Other times, so long that he could barely wait for daybreak. But, today felt different. The night was neither long nor short. It seemed like there was no night. He woke up with heavy eyes and aches all over.
It was the chatter of the children on the street that woke him, the chatter that brought back memories of his childhood days when nothing was questioned and Papa was like a god.
The sun was out and its heat had licked up all that transpired the night before. The murder and blood.
He could see it coming back to him as it happened. The oozing blood splattered all over the white jacket making it look like an artist's canvas. The agony on his friend’s face as he drew his last breath. How he tried in vain to stop the blood spurting out of his friend's stabbed chest.
He vaguely recalled how the fight had began. He had dismissed the arguments as the usual night club drama. He was either distracted by the girl with the wide hips and thick pointed nipples giving him a blowjob on a couch at the dark corner or he was light-headed from too much drinking. He had thought that it would end like the usual fights over girls and drinks. It would never escalate to the point of losing his friend. If only he knew.
They had attended church together on Christmas Day. They listened to the preacher’s long sermon about the birth of the Saviour, his death, and his visit to hell. And they enjoyed the Choir’s melodious Christmas songs together. They even felt reborn together.
He remembered the preacher’s tirade about brimstone and fire and sulphur and serpents and scorpions and death. Of his many questions about religion and divinity, he had put aside the thought of death and the life after. But that night as he held the hands of his friend and tried to keep his two eyes open, frantically pulling up his upper eyelids, he knew he had gone somewhere far away from his reach. His body went numb and cold; he died in his hands.
A surge went through him like a black pool of pain and sorrow. Where would his friend be? He wished he could go rescue him, snatch him from the hands of death, from its boat before they sailed to the end of the river that separates earth from the world beyond.
Like a movie with a bitter ending, the memory of him running away from the village played in his head, he wished he had been caught. The tale would have been different, and this growing pain wouldn’t have been his.
He pulled up the drapes to look at the bustling bus stop that his two-storey building gave him a good view of—humans hurrying to places, conductors with sleepy eyes, cracked lips and deep voices, drivers in faded shirts. He looked at new, old and dented taxis; a woman got out of one and hurled up a crying child, patting its head. The woman had a frame that reminded him of his aunt, but the shortness of her hair, packed into a little bun on top of her head, told him it wasn’t her.
***
His nostalgia grew as he peered through his window at tourists. They reminded him of home—now a distant memory. Here he was, like a prisoner gazing at the beauty of life from behind bars. He longed for for his childhood, craved the ignorance and bliss that he had lived in.
There were lots of children roaming the streets in their New Year dresses, holding hats and wearing spectacles. In them, he could see a buried part of himself. Then he looked at himself, the one pulling up the drapes, staring at the scene on the street. A lot had transpired through the years and today, a new year had brought to him pain he will always live with.
His gaze shifted from the street to the floor where his friend’s wristwatch, sneakers and the blood-stained jacket lay. He had managed to remove them before he left him and taken pictures of them, to keep this last piece of the dead with him. Only if he too would stay.
He picked up the rope he kept in a corner, walked out of his compound and kept walking. In the bush, tall trees swayed to the harmattan breeze; dry leaves crushed under his feet; birds sang above his head. They are mourning me, he thought, and they will fly home to tell Mama and Papa that the city ate me too.
About the Author
Damilola Omotoyinbo believes in the power of the pen and the positive difference it can make in our world. She has published works in Kalahari, Pelleura, Praxis, Parousia e-magazine, The Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, and elsewhere. Damilola is a 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, a YALI Alumna and a fan of Àsá. She studied Biochemistry and blogs at damilolaomotoyinbo.wordpress.com. She may be reached on Facebook @Damilola Omotoyinbo.