Whyte
To easily detect the footprints of tears blurred out with many layers of make-up and see a person’s sincere hunger for laughter is a familiar scene in her dreams.
As Ehi laid in bed last night with her petite frame wrapped away in a blanket of gloom, this scene replayed again in her head. She imagined she’d successfully convinced herself to visit Irene two nights ago.
This thought gave way to a soliloquy.
“If I did, I would have talked her outta depression and we won’t have lost her! But no, I wanted to be indoor all evening. Listen to country songs, write a poem or two and catch up with my online guitar classes. Ehi…”She called her name as a tear trekked down her cheek.
“But you cannot give what you don’t have, my friend” that was Blessing, she must have been eavesdropping. She always does that.Ehi did not remember to bolt the door. She didn’t even realize when the door creaked and delivered her nosy flat-mate.The two, do not talk often except when they had to clean the apartment or something that required synergy.
“Don’t say that Blessing, I replied, “a kerosene lamp illuminates a dark room but it cannot see its base because itis so enveloped with darkness.”
Blessing had by now pulled a chair and made herself comfortable. She didn’t say one more word after my illustration. That meant only one thing- affirmation.They both knew Irene. The girl would visit them with packs of home made vegetables with plenty of fish and pomo. She’d ask us to make eba and have us eat with her.
After which Irene and Blessing would talk movies and fashion while Ehi was lost in an anthology of poems. But she always knew that the glow of Irene’s light skin and the smiles which sprout on her full lips did not have a taproot. Somehow she felt that even a not-so-strong wind would root it out completely. Yet Ehi did not go out of her way to help.
Irene asked her to her place on the same night, what seemed like minutes before she gulped the contents of a bottle of snipper and perhaps writhed in pain till she passed out. But Ehi was quick to make an excuse,
“Irene, I have a deadline to beat tonight.” She lied.
Irene replied with a cold ‘okay’ and hung up.
The next day, her phone rang and it was Irene again. Ehi hissed and cussed in pidgin “this girl noh know say mouth dey heavy me? Which kan’ early mor’ mor’ call be this?”
“Hello” She said, with feigned warmth when she answered the phone.But it was a man on the other side. A familiar voice that was, perhaps Peter’s, Irene’s next door neighbor.
“Yes… Good morning Ehi”
“Where is this Irene of a girl?” She asked.
Then silence hit her. She took her phone from her ear and checked to see whether the call had ended.
“Ehi,” Peter said softly, “Irene is gone”
“Jesus!!!” Ehi screamed and immediately went silent.
Both Ehi and Blessing were at Irene’s funeral last weekend. Clad in sparkling white knee-length gowns, hands folded across their chest, they stood by her graveside.
Blessing was crying- no- wailing so loudly that Ehi was beginning to feel like her heart was hewn from an igneous rock, especially as her eyes could not shed even a droplet of tears.
Perhaps it was the shock that the reality of a lifeless Irene lying stiff in a casket with wool in her ears and nostrils that left her feeling numb.
Ehi flipped through her writing pad. On the last page was a micro poem, a tribute for Irene. She read it again and again like she did the night before.
“Irene, this would have been an elegy
but many tongues drip dirges already.
This pen is drunk with sorrow & grief
it staggers from the furrows of my fingers
I can’t write- I can’t write!”
The priest was up and about his business. His robe getting stained with red earth by the lips of Irene’s soon-to-be new home. “… God gives and takes. May the souls of the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace and even in the bosom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
As the pallbearers lowered Irene’s remains, her mother let out an ear rupturing wail. Tears rolled down her cheeks, a puddle of mucus had formed on her upper lip. Her wrapper loosened and fell to reveal her long black gown.
“God!!!!!!!!! Take me too.” The woman screamed, broke free from the hold of two women and ran towards the grave.
Tears welled up in Ehi’s eyes. It was only then that she began to see what pain there was in scooping sand grains with the same hands that nursed a child and feeding it to the child’s grave.
“Irene should have taken pity on this woman, the same who death rendered a single parent over a decade ago. She’s been everything to her two children, hawking sometimes and doing some unwomanly things.
By now Sam, Irene’s only brother and sibling was kneeling before his mum. His gestures seemed to say ‘mum, stay here for me, please!!’His red swollen eyes overflowed again as they both, in a warm embrace wept.
But suicide is not what happens when a man walks into the arms of death- it takes a lot of courage to do so. On some days, death tiptoes into a person’s room, becomes another copy of the person, kills him/her and goes away unnoticed. Death does not always make noise!
