The sound of rain holds a thread between my teeth and strokes my spine. Every fucking time, it reminds me of things I hope to forget: my father; the way his brown, chipped teeth chewed at groundnuts, his large lips gathering themselves into the many shapes of pride a man carries from knowing all his children are things to brag about. He died on a cold night in June, on his chair, which had then lost an arm, like the cat which had been disturbing Mama’s basin of sun-dried fish. I was not there. But Adesola says, from the varenda, where he spent his evenings; where he welcomed Tanju, where he broke the last kolanut to complete my marriage rites, he called to my mother. She says his voice had been weirdly feeble all five times, as though he had suddenly acknowledged what he had truly become: old; as though he acknowledged that the farmer in him, who lived through years of Mama’a scolding, of Barawo’s threats to stop sending him money Ademola would have to covert to Naira if he didn’t stop tilling the land behind his house, was ready to let go and truly drown. Mama rushed to meet him; she let out a sigh as though her shouting had the power to snatch Papa’s floating soul and force it into his body. It was all a stupid blur. Two days after, she too, died. I had been driving when the call came in. I pressed at the brakes, slowing the car until it halted under a large tree. Its engine let out a tired sigh. Like me, the car was tired. It had spent four hours on the road already, and at top speed, because I was afraid the insurgents hiding in Eastern Nigerian bushes could decide to go mad.
“Hello, Ademola.” I had expected her to ask where I was, or at least to cough up a sorry for how she had spoken to me earlier when I said: “Now that Papa is dead, will you find husband?” She was twenty three then, I was twenty seven, and the joke could have slipped past. But she held it at the tail, yanked it until it died, and splashed its blood on my face. “You think you have made it because you are married? You are funny.” She then called me things I can’t tell our brother Tanju. Not in this life. If he hears such, there will be another death. Another band of men digging graves and smoking hemp. That’s by the way. The point is, Ademola was crying, and Mama was dead. I arrived when the body had lost most of its heat. It rained as we drove to the mortuary. And rained all night as we talked about death. The next morning, blood spilled on the floor announced the death of my child. My husband almost lost his mind. It rained every night he had a melt down; it rained the night I confirmed that I was pregnant again. It is raining tonight; my water just broke.
About Ugbòwò
Ugbòwò has a forthcoming master’s in English. She writes from Benin, Nigeria, where she lives in a dark house she never leaves. She hides.