By: Ibukun Keyamo
It was the end of first term.
The three week holiday between first term and second term.
The Christmas holidays that I always spent in Lagos with my aunty and now, her husband.
On Boxing Day, while the smell of curry and fried chicken still lingered in the house and the kitchen was still a mess awaiting the maid’s hand. It was then that news of my father’s death was brought.
My breath stilled and my heart stopped pumping blood for a few seconds and then it started beating again but this time they were loud canon booms that made my ribs quake.
“What do you mean?” I whispered, fearing that it would become real if I spoke louder. My brother, Shayo’s face was blank; he was what white people would call ashen faced. He was looking at Aunty Kemi but his eyes were glazed. She sat between us, putting her arms around our shoulders and pulling us to her; whispering sentences in Yoruba into our ears until her voice became a dull murmur.
I would always remember that morning, the last time my life was relatively normal; while I sat cross-legged on the bed admiring the head-phones I had gotten for Christmas while Shayo lay beside me scrolling through his phone and no generators were on, before Aunty Kemi walked in, barefoot in her Ankara nightie, her curly weave-on carefully packed into a black hair-net and told me my father was dead. It became a moment I would look back to with wistfulness.
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The funeral service was short: shorter than I thought it would be. I stood in the biting harmattan cold by the grave dressed in the wine aso-ebi my mummy had insisted Shayo, Tomi and I wear. The Vicar of the church dressed in his white priestly garments, droned on and on.
I selfishly wondered if he couldn’t have read all of it in the not-much-warmer church than let us freeze to death. No pun intended.
I watched as if I was watching through somebody’s eyes; as if I wasn’t really there as Big Mummy suddenly flung herself to the ground in a true African way, dirtying the black lace aso-ebi she and my dad’s other relatives picked, and wailed loudly shouting at the heavens where she believed my Dad was. The two other sisters picked her up and after a few minutes of sniffling quietly, it would repeat itself.
I suddenly wished my cousin, Ada was here, she would have had something distractingly funny to say but none of my mother’s relatives had shown up. They hadn’t cared much for my daddy when he was alive, much less when he’s dead.
Mummy was staring blindly at the hole in the ground; her eyes still red and swollen from her crying. The Vicar finally finished reading and the dead’s immediate relatives were supposed to dump a shovel of sand into the hole, unto the empty casket.
Big Mummy took the shovel and started shouting in Yoruba at the skies again. It took some time before she finally dumped her sand. Mummy dumped hers; tears streaming down her face again; her chest heaving, Shayo dumped his, his eyes shielded with dark sunglasses.
I felt my heart clenching as I dumped mine but I didn’t cry. I hadn’t shed a tear since he died. Everybody was crying around me but I wasn’t; I couldn’t. I sometimes stayed awake all night, trying to will myself to cry but no tears came. I felt like a traitor; like I had betrayed Daddy by my inability to cry.
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Later at the house, people sat in groups whispering and gossiping. I sat in the sitting room with my little sister, Tomi whose crying had tired her out and was now lying asleep on my lap.
A woman in the same black lace as daddy’s sisters walked in. A small child was balanced on her hip while her stomach was round with a second one. She was ushered to one of the couches by Big Mummy and Aunty Yinka; daddy’s youngest sister. Her head tie was made of the same material as her black iro and buba and even though she was crying, she still had her pregnancy glow.
A ripple of whispers swept through the guests and everyone was staring at her. The little boy on her lap seemed oblivious to what was going on around him and was sucking his thumb; looking quite contented.
As soon as she sat down, the child began to wail and Aunty Yinka deftly picked him up and carried him into the kitchen but everybody had already noticed the baby. It annoyed me; how they just went through the house as if they owned it. The woman reclined on the chair, resting her head on the back and staring at the ceiling. Tears were silently streaming down her face.
“Bawo ni?” Big Mummy asked her; holding her hand.
“Aunty,” The woman raised her head to look at Big Mummy “Ki ni mo ma se?”
Big Mummy looked around and spotted me, “Opelenge, don’t you have any manners? You can see a family member and you can’t offer her even water?”
Family member? Whose family? Because I knew I had never seen her before. Nobody else had been served water. There was a big drum outside with water and soft drinks in ice and whoever wanted one, went to get it.
Nevertheless, I gently shifted Tomi off my lap and went to get a bottle of water for the woman. Aunty Yinka had returned and the baby was now on Big Mummy’s lap. I stretched the bottle out to the woman and when she didn’t collect it, I placed in on the stool beside her.
By the time I got back to Tomi, she had woken up and was glaring at the woman and the baby.
“Simi,” she tugged on my hand, “That boy looks like Shayo.”
She had tugged me down to whisper, but Tomi could only whisper like a 10 year old. The guests near us heard and a fresh wave of whispers started. It was true. The boy looked undeniably like a younger version of my brother.
What had my father done?
