10 DAYS - Episode 8

Njideka Ime

Supper is ready, but as is a custom in the house, it isn’t eaten until 7 pm. I anticipate tonight’s supper because of our guests. We hardly have people hang around long enough for supper. We all await the arrival of Julie. Butch is back with my dad and probably getting some fatherly advice. I’m in the kitchen rechecking that every single item on the supper menu, if there ever is a written menu for supper, is ready; and my mom?

Her absence in here is absurd. She’d always hang around long after the meals have been prepared, tidying up and checking that nothing was left uncooked. This is a culture I’ve been brought up to and albeit my mom should retire from it as I’ve come of age and can handle it all by myself, she wouldn’t drop it. Times when she was down with sickness, she’d still find the strength to sit in here – right in the chair where she’d sat stunned while Edisemi stormed out of the house in her fit of pique – and supervise the whole process.

I transfer fried plantains from a stainless-steel sieve to flask then go in search of my mom. I find her in my dad’s study looking out the window. My mom is a naturally bubbly person and doesn’t take things to heart, but siting despondently in dad’s chair and looking out the window like a victim of war, I know Edisemi’s words had gotten to her.

When she doesn’t respond to my calls, I shake her shoulder. She turns warily and smiles at me. It’s the best smile she can rally on her face but it as weary as her bearing.

“It’s alright.” She says, reading the question on my face.

“No, it’s not. You’re sad and your face screams it.” I draw the only other chair in the study and sit in front of her. “You’ve never left me alone in the kitchen to do the after-meal preparation process.”

“But we’ve done that nau.”

“Done ke? Stalks of Ugwu were scattered all over the sink, the pot of sauce was left open, the salad cream wasn’t brought out from the cabinet and kept beside the bowl of salad, the plantains…” These are things I’m expected to take care of alright, things I’ve actually taken care of, but she always assists me. “Come on, mommy.”

“You’ve not been telling me a lot lately.”

I know, or think I know, what my mom is trying to do.

“No, mommy. It’s not about me now, it’s about you.”

“What I’m saying is, we’ve been joking around about sexuality for a very long time, you should’ve told me I was beginning to overdo it.”

I greet this with silence. Mom has always enlightened me about sex. When I was sixteen and brought home a boy for the first time from legion after meeting, she’d sat me down after he’d left and explained the female reproductive system to me.

She’d told me how good I’d feel if a boy fondles my breasts, before it finally happened in the university. She’d told me how the first sex that breaks the hymen was usually a busload of pain and bleeding and maybe sweet or even mind-blowing if done by a patient, experienced man. She’d told me she was telling me these things so I don’t come back home pregnant from deciding to discover these facts/feelings first-hand.

When I got my first approved boyfriend at eighteen, we discussed my first kiss. She told me about her time as a teenager and the guys she explored sex with. At twenty-three and just having completed my NYSC, she condemned my prissiness and began recommending clothes and shoes for me. She began talks about getting myself a husband so as to get all the sex I want in the world. Just how am I supposed to tell her she’s becoming nasty when she’s always been this way?

“You know, it’s not proper for a mother to discuss dicks with her daughter. It’s lewd and a sin. True enough, sex makes life interesting. I’ll like you to have a man that can satisfy you sexually, just like your dad does satisfy me, but these are wishes best left in the silence of the heart than spoken out loud.”

“Mommy…”

“Think about it, your friend, what’s her name again?”

“Edisemi, and she’s not exactly my friend.”

“Okay, what tribe bears that name… never mind. She called me a filthy, stupid, mother-of-a-whore, and wasn’t she right to say that? I don’t know her upbringing. She could’ve had an upright mom who brought her up in the way of the Lord, unlike me who’s got my head wrapped around sex and…”

“Mommy, please stop, you’re the best mom ever.”

“Yes, I might not have failed as a mom, cos here you are, a wonderful daughter who never brought me disgrace; a graduate who’ll someday get a wonderful job and marry a good man. But in the presence of God, can I step out boldly to pronounce myself a wonderful, righteous mom?”

“Mommy, God knows that you’ve not sinned.”

My mom turns sharply to me like a woman seeing the ghost of her best friend whose body had been tattered shreds at death.

“Such blasphemy.” Her voice comes in low and scared.

“I know, but you have to understand that you’re over reacting. We are all sinners and we always seek the face of God, but even He wants us to be happy always. Edisemi is no saint. If only you knew her pompous ass half as I do.”

My mom begins to smile. She favours some words – ass, dicks and the like – albeit improper.

“If we’ve sinned by our discussion, she’s also sinned by her response. They were filthy and dirty and slimed with lewdness all over, even more than what she felt we’d bothered her ears with. In fact, for her behaviour towards an older woman and to Buchi who’d done nothing to earn him the slap, she merits a bigger clearing in the pit of hell.”

Mom’s smile broadens and I know she’ll burst into laughter if I continue with my analysis/rant. I don’t hope to stop. I need her back the way she was before Edisemi came with her poison. But then a knock comes on the door and without being told, we know it’s Julie. We shoot out of our seats like sprinters at the sound of the gun. We look at each other and burst into laughter.

“I’ll go for morning Mass tomorrow and I’ll have confessions. You’ll come with me?”

“I will.” I say, knowing she’s actually asking me to come and not asking if I’d come. “But you remain this way, in your cheeriest best. I don’t want Julie seeing some mom that isn’t mine.”

“I will.” She says.

I look at her for a period of forty seconds that feels like five minutes. I contemplate telling her that Julie is wild, lascivious, and probably a lesbian. That last will make her grow cold on the poor lady, who is in many ways sweeter than Edisemi.

“Let’s go.” I say. “I hope you like Julie.”

__

And she did like Julie.

“We pray oh Lord that you bless and sanctify this meal in Jesus name.” Julie prays.

“Amen.” We chorus.

We all make the sign of the cross while Julie goes ahead to dish rice for my dad.

“Not a catholic?” He asks her.

“I’m just a Christian.” Julie says and Butch’s lips spread into a grin. “I’ve been to all denominations except Cele.”

“Would you attend that if invited?” My mom asks in a tone of voice I can’t really interpret. It’s as if she’s rejecting the idea of attending Cele as well as luring Julie to attend, as she’s a Christian and Celestians are Christians. I bet it’s the same way a hook with a wriggling worm looks and feels to the fish in the river.

“Say Butch asks me to come over dressed in plain white satin dress without any shoes, just walk all the way from home barefooted to come and sing Jah-Jehovah-Emmanuel with him in a small building, why not?”

Butch’s grin splits and he explodes into raucous laughter. My mom who wasn’t expecting such response (as evident in her expression) joins Butch, and like a flu, we all catch it, laughing like we’d just seen President Buhari dancing Skelewu.

“But I won’t ask you to attend Cele.” Butch says as the laughter dies.

“So bad you won’t get to see me dance Jah-Emmanuel.”

Julie asks my dad the combination he wants. He requests the whole combination of rice, moi-moi, plantain, salad and vegetable sauce. He also requests that his piece of chicken be mounted on the heap spread with vegetable sauce. I smile at his ancient ways and pick a dish to assist Julie.

“How about I serve everyone?” She asks me, almost pleading.

“No, dear.” My mom says. “The dishing job is actually nothing to us, you’re our guest, we should treat you and not the other way around.”

“You all prepared the meal, I wasn’t there to assist. Allow me do this to make up for my absence.”

My mom nods at me to take my seat, her face beaming with proud smile. I read her mind. ‘That’s a well-bred young lady there,’ are the words boldly displayed there in green neon lights. Supper together as a family round the table has never been a silent affair and this evening’s is more loquacious. We jump from topic to topic, not entirely exhausting one before switching into another, and somehow – with itsy-bitsy scraggly remains of food on our plates – the conversation veers towards Butch and Edisemi’s failed birthday party.

“You mean she really picked up the mic and said, ‘Party Over guys, please take your leave now’?” My mom asked.

“Exactly.” Julie agrees, sipping water from her glass. “Many people didn’t know what happened, but Butch and I, we kinda started it – I mean, the trouble that led to the end.”

“Or the beginning of the end.” Butch added.

“Julie, she accuses you of having sex with Buch in her house.” I turn to Julie.

Julie smiles. “Wouldn’t that have been nice, Butch?”

Butch looks away and my mom shares me a look that seems to say, ‘what are these two up to?’ There’s amusement on her face too, the kind that was there while I narrated how my first kiss went with Bobby.

“Well, I had gotten drunk and went up to Butch, and he’d carried me into his room, which is adjacent Edisemi’s. He showed me the bathroom, I had my bath, and afterwards, I asked him to come wrap me the towel.”

“That is devilish.” My mom says, smiling coyly. “You were out to cause trouble, weren’t you?”

“Well, we were out to cause trouble.” She gestures to herself and Butch.

“Wait, I don’t understand. Buchi, were you looking to ruin your relationship with Edisemi? Don’t you love her?” My mom sits upright in her chair.

“It was a plan. I love Edisemi, but lately, I’ve been doubtful about a lot of things. I needed answers to some questions concerning our relationship, hence the plan…”

And Butch tells us the plan and how it’s been going smoothly until Julie actually gets drunk and goes really mushy on him.

“But I meant everything I asked for, Butch. I really love you.”

“Wow!” Mom screams, smiling from ear to ear. Dad clears his throat in his exaggerated fashion, which usually is either an indication that something interesting is about to happen or trouble is riding in fast on a galloping black horse. I don’t know which it is in this case but I think he’s still going to have some more words of advice for Butch in their private time. Butch shifts uneasily in his seat and wipes sweat off his temple.

“I didn’t mean to get drunk though. The girls were on this wicked game that’d send me right into their trap. Shots of dark rum was my only saviour. I had to take them.”

“The girls? What game?” Mom asks and I see she’s really into the story.

“Gist for another day.” I say and observe from the window that daylight is no more. “It’s night already.”

I intend to end the discussion and have a little private time with Butch before he heads back home. There are clarifications I need concerning his plan and from the way he’d looked at me while narrating it, I’m sure my role is more complicated than he explained. There’s also the question about Julie’s place in his life. There’s a certain chemistry that flows between them. I don’t understand how I feel about it, but I’ve never really understood how jealousy feels like.

What Julie says next stuns everyone except Butch, of course.

“The girls are my lesbian friends. We broke up today. I left one with a ruined lip before the police came to take them all.”

Captain Attah

The last nameless girl that left my house said I was cursed, that I was perpetually doomed to be a philanderer. I think it’s not true, therefore I’m striving to nullify her statement. Like, for instance, the naked nameless girl on my bed right now has been here since yesterday, walking around the house in her birthday suit. It’s the way I like it and if she continues this way, I’ll have no option but to marry her.

‘But you can’t marry her,’ the voice at the farthest corner of my mind says.

‘Why not?’ I respond in my head.

‘Because you’re a he goat and he goats chases every new she goat in town.’

‘But, she’s sexy as fuck, she’ll constantly blow my mind.’

‘Have you ever been held down by sexiness?’

Well, the answer to that isn’t good. My principle of not knowing their names is just so they don’t get clingy. Some months ago, I had to get rid of a girl that had decided to pitch her permanent tent in my house. Her name was Brenda. She was the last of my play girls I knew her name. My dad, who’d never stayed under the same roof with my mom for more than a day, had advised me (seeing that I had chosen to follow his path) to know the names of the girls I shared my bed with. Men have lost their lives and destinies because their penises entered wrong holes, holes of spirits without names. Brenda, however, had taught me the opposite; that not knowing the name of a girl you’re intimate with was the best way to get rid of her.

Brenda had stayed past her agreed two weeks attachment period and had gone silent about exiting my house. I sat her down and told her how I wasn’t comfortable with her continued presence in the house. She happened to be in every space in the house. I had no privacy. I couldn’t even bring home other girls without a word or two from my conscience. I had to detour them to expensive hotels that gave little compared to the luxury of my house. I felt homeless at the thought of returning home to meet Brenda sitting on the couch watching TV. She made food, she provided regular sex, she sprang up discussions on almost every topic and even did my laundry, but a man needs his space. This was something Brenda failed to understand. She always wanted to be around me. I asked her one day to leave my house and she said she was yet to see a reason why she should leave. Since she provided everything I needed in woman, I should want to keep her. I told her we never planned marriage and she said she wasn’t asking me to marry her.

“Then why the hell can’t you leave my house?” I screamed at her.

“Because you need a woman in your life. Every man does. I just want to be that woman.”

“Babe,” I said. “I like my life the way it is and will love it to remain this way for a very long time.”

“Captain, babe is not my name. It’s a name used to refer to sluts.”

“Babe,” I said again for emphasis, “I don’t want you in my house when I return.”

As you must have guessed, Brenda was right in the sitting room hugging my stuffed furry Tiger and watching African Magic when I returned. She even followed me to the room and helped me undress. Because I didn’t have the energy to raise hell, I changed into sweatpants and a clean white tee-shirt and left the house. I returned with two friends – girls – I met at the club I went to drink. Brenda went to sleep in the guest room and had to bear the sound of our raging sex.

After they left the next morning, Brenda came to me and said she had no problem with me bringing other girls to the house so far as she still got sex whenever she needed it.

“Babe,” I said to her. “You are on your own in this house. Both of us have no business again.”

“Captain, what happened to my name?” She asked, I felt her hurt from the tone of her voice.

“I can’t remember your name and since I have to call you something, babe…”

“Don’t call me that shit, you bastard!”

Yeah, nobody calls me bastards and goes free with it because in a way, I’m a bastard. But this was becoming fun. I was about to watch a real human (not a movie human) go into hysterics.

“Babe,” I said calmly in the voice of a mathematics teacher explaining the rules of circle geometry. “I don’t know if you understand the situation here…”

“The situation here is that I’m living with a man who doesn’t care about me, a man who brings girls to the house, girls that can’t cook, girls that can’t wash their pants and dirty bras, girls that can’t wipe their asses clean after using the toilet, girls that can’t fuck him better than me.”

“But babe…”

“Don’t call me that. Don’t you ever… Don’t you!” And then she was tugging at my shirt and sobbing. She tugged so hard the thin fabric got ripped. Then her fingers got to my skin and she began to scratch. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t!”

It wasn’t fun anymore. I grabbed her hands by the wrists and shoved her out the door. I locked it behind me and wondered if I hadn’t been living with one of the spirits my dad was fond of saying destroyed men. I mean, there are scratch marks brimmed with shiny red blood zigzagged across my chest.

The next morning, Brenda was calm. I let her into the house. She made us breakfast, apologised and we had makeup sex. After showering together, she asked me her name. It was right there at the tip on my tongue but I said:

“Babe, what does a name really matter?”

“A whole lot.” She said, and that was the last time I ever saw Brenda.

Since I didn’t want to keep any girl as long as I kept Brenda, I left out their names and never acknowledged when they gave it freely without being asked. All of them were for just a night and they rarely bothered, except the last play girl before this one. The one who’d said I needed to attend a strong church to break my curse.

I watch current nameless girl waltz out through the door, thinking how striking her resemblance is with Njideka. This is the sole reason I’ve had her in my house since yesterday. It’d be a miracle if I don’t start calling her Njideka. So far, she’s shown no attitude to help me get rid of her, and I’m thinking I’ll like to have her for a whole week. If I can get used to her, I tell myself, I’ll be fine. I won’t be able to think less of Njideka, I will in fact think more of her and psyche myself that I’m with her. That can work right?

‘When you don’t even know her name?’ Voice in the deepest part of my head comes again.

‘I’ll call her Njideka and tell her it’s a pet name.’ I reply in my head.

‘If she’s Igbo, she’ll know Njideka is a real name, and if she has her brain where it should be, she’ll know you’re mad about a lady with that name.’

‘Who cares?’

But I’m giving it more thoughts, meaning that I do care. Nameless babe comes in with a bowl of popcorn and I realise she’s got Telemundo on the TV. She nestles in beside me.

“I’m cold, but your body is just the warmth I need.” She says.

I silence the question of putting off the AC, which had just been ready on my tongue, and just then my phone rings. The caller is Edisemi.

“Hello, this is Captain.” I announce, in case she’d made a mistake. I get off the bed, away from nameless girl.

Ediesmi says she knows she’s calling me. Says she’s sorry for her attitude to me last night. Says she wishes more than anything to make up for it. Says she’s kinda lonely and needs someone to talk with. Says she’s kinda scared to sleep alone in that big house and she can’t call Butch because he owes her lots of apologies. She tries to say something else, hesitates, then says at last that she’s kinda horny too and would appreciate if I come over.

My senses stand at alert. I imagine what Edisemi looks like without the clothes. I remember Jude, who’d once dated a sexy Bayelsan, describe Bayelsa chics as fire. She was totally wild in bed and rode him to different clouds of ecstasy. I agree Edisemi is wild too. I feel hot all over. I glance over at nameless girl, she’s lost in her movie.

“Okay, expect me soon.” I end the call and exhale steamy air.   

Image Credit:

stronglittleblackgirl.com

gettyimages.com

ronetlcnaptown.wordpress.com

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