The Churning

‘Kenera?... Kenera?’ followed by two light taps on my leg. I jerk back to a blurry consciousness and I instantly feel light headed and weightless, like I have just been pulled out of deep sleep. I am in a speeding car and someone is driving. For a second I am not sure who it is but through my foggy vision that feels like looking through a misty glass, I recognize my mother, in a flowing gown, her steady hands on the wheel, eyes on the road but occasionally stealing worried glances at me. 

‘Is it that eye-drop? The doctor said it would blur your vision but he never mentioned anything about mental aloofness.’

Eyedrop? What doctor? I try to think back but my mind jams, like an android without memory space. And then I see myself with a beard, an unkempt one, and bulging bags under my eyes, and I am overcome with a deep feeling of sadness that sinks into my stomach and settles there, making me feel sick. I bring my hands to my face but it is bare of hair. 

‘Did you hear me?’

‘What?’

‘I said Thank God we didn’t see anything in the test. At least now we know it’s not Glaucoma.’

‘Glaucoma?’

‘Yes now.’ Confusion runs across her face before she continues. ‘Just make sure you take those drugs diligently sha. At least we know subsequently the eyedrop will blur your vision less as you get used to it.’

The blur is already lessening, and through its loosening fog I stare at her, that sadness stirring in my stomach. I want to hold her and hug her. I reach for the ring that Feyi gave me, to run my thumb around it the way I usually do when I need comforting, but it not on my finger. Surely there’s no way I lost it. I search my memory for why I don’t have the ring on and all I see is him giving it to me, a bearded me, as we lie naked in his bed.

‘Mummy?’

‘hmm?’

‘Did I shave recently?’

‘Ah ah. What do you mean did you shave recently?’

‘I mean…my beard. Why isn’t it on my face?’

‘Hian!’ she exclaims, laughing. ‘Nekwa nwa o. You’re asking me like I’m the one operating your shaving stick. Has your father not been asking you to grow out your beard because it makes you look more mature, and you said no. That you like looking young.’ She looks to me for a response, but I don’t know what to say. 

‘My own is that nobody will want to marry a man that looks like a boy o. Didn’t you see the caliber of men that came for Chika’s wedding on Saturday?’ I don’t remember any wedding, but I don’t say that.

‘Speaking of Chika,’ she continues, ‘You know her husband came back from Canada to marry her?’ she tears her eyes from the road to look at me. I nod a lie, and in my mind I am grasping for memories of the wedding, of my trip to the hospital, of myself beardless, but it is like trying to catch air. 

‘…because that is what a lot of Nigerian men abroad do these days. They come back home, marry wives, and then leave them here, only coming to visit twice a year. Let us hope her husband is not like that sha. He better take her with him as he is going back.’ I grasp for something to say.

‘What if they don’t give her visa?’ I hear the stupidity, but I press on. ‘You know they’re not giving any of us visa these days.’

‘Why won’t they give her? Is she not married to a Canadian citizen? They won’t separate her from her husband now. Infact I’m sure that her baby, the one that she tried to hide by wearing that big for nothing ball wedding gown—she thinks we are mumus, that we won’t notice, she’s going to give birth to the baby there.’

I laugh. The sadness is slowly dissipating. I think I just need to sleep.

‘Yes you do,’ she says, startling me, ‘Don’t worry we’ll soon get home.’ She rubs my lap reassuringly. Outside, darkness is slowly blanketing the streets of Lagos. The street lamps on this express mostly don’t work so my mother has to turn the lights up to the highest. I settle into the seat to slip into sleep when my mother suddenly says, ‘I told Amanda to cook Jollof rice when she comes back. I just hope that island traffic won’t hold her on the road.’

Chimamanda−My sister. She occupies my thoughts now, in haphazard flashes of cohesionless memories that feel untethered and foreign to me, like I did not live through them; like this one where she is crying into my father’s chest, both of them staring at me accusingly or this one where she is congratulating me on my engagement to Tife, her eyes refusing to meet mine. And then my father, there are memories of yelling and screaming and crying, calling me an abomination, saying it’s my fault. It’s your fault its your fault. You did this. What is my fault? what did I do ?

‘Kenera!’ My mother tears into my maddening. ‘You’re mumbling.’

There is a wetness around my eyes, like I want to be crying.

‘I think something is wrong with me.’ I confess finally.

Worry creases her face, or maybe she’s just squinting. Her night sight isn’t too good afterall. 

‘Wrong with you how?’

‘I…I don’t know…I think…it feels like…like parts of me are, I don’t know…missing’

‘ha! I have to call this doctor. You can’t keep taking these drugs.’

I can’t help it. I laugh. ‘Mummy I don’t know if it’s even the drugs o’

‘it’s now what? You were fine before you took them. There are people that don’t know how to handle drugs. It’s not normal, but it’s not completely abnormal. Maybe your body cannot handle the medication.’

‘Ha! Mummy this your medical diagnosis sef. It’s not even my body it’s more like…my mind.’

‘And your mind is where?’ she asks expectantly, her eyes twinkling, and then we both chuckle. 

‘You see this is why you need a woman in your life,’ she pipes on, ‘You’re not eating well, that’s why your body is weak and frail and cannot handle small medicine.’ She stares at me, smiling, before turning to look at the road.

I turn my head to the window and mumble lazily, ‘Why would I need a woman when I have Tife?’

‘Ah ah. Tife?’

‘Yes now.’ I answer frustratedly. I want her to stop talking now so that go to sleep, or maybe now I will just let her voice lull me. 

‘Mrs. Folake’s son from church? That fair, fine man that you were talking to at the wedding?’

I smile at the way she describes him; fair, fine. Mine. 

‘ha, mummy yes now.’

‘No but why is he cooking for you? Do you pay him or what?’

I cannot understand why she is asking me these things. ‘When you and daddy were engaged did he pay you to be cooking for him?’

‘of course not.’ She retorts sharply. ‘But we were engaged.’

‘And so are we.’ She knows now, doesn’t she? I reach for that memory, the one where Chimamanda was congratulating me on my engagement. We are in the sitting room. She draws me into her a hug and in my ear she is congratulating me and calling me brave. My father is splayed across the blue three seater sofa, forcing a smile. My mother is not there. 

I look at her now, looking at me, her face mauled by horror and mine, softened by realization. We hold like that for a moment, as though waiting for the other person to laugh, recant, say I’m just playing with you. 

‘Are you a ga−’

The impact is sharp, silencing her, shattering her windows so that shards of glass are sent flying and cracking the windscreen. In that moment, we are not seeing and we are not hearing and we are not knowing. We are not understanding. The truck sends us flying sideways−one, two, three times, flipping flipping flipping. We are in a car, not a cat, so we do not land on our feet but on our hood, upside down, like my whole world, near a tree by the side of the road. And it is in these moments that everything comes back to me, that that part of me is no longer missing, that I remember that I still hate beards and tife and I are still just friends and I am not yet engaged, that I have not even attempted to face my family’s homophobia. Blood trickles down my neck and into my mouth, a cloying copper, and the one still inside my body is flowing to my head. I turn slowly, to look at my mother and before I glimpse her awkwardly bent neck, the blood rolling into her hair, I know. I knew; that sadness that has been swarming in my stomach, is now a living thing growing into every part of my body, complete with its jagged edges forged from guilt: I did this. 

Tife will hold me and tell me it’s not my fault, that I couldn’t have known that she didn’t know, or have predicted her reaction. I will not believe him, but I will believe my father. ‘This is your fault. You did this.’ I will let those words mesh into my skin and become one with it like a tattoo and that churning in my stomach will not go away from a long time. He will look at me and hate me for being the one who lived and I will wish I had been the one driving so that it would have been my side that had felt the worst impact. Chimamanda will try not to blame me, but she will not succeed. She will blurt out blame one day and will try to make up for it by acting like my sexuality is not a big deal, while secretly offering masses on behalf of my soul. By now a crowd has gathered around our car, with flashlights and cellphones, surveying the damage and trying to get us out and thanking God that they were not the ones in the accident. 

In my head I am replaying a memory of my mother, one so vivid I can almost reach out and touch it. We are at that wedding and she is helping serve food to the guests. She brings a heaped plate to me, one brimming with jollof and fried rice and salad and chicken and moin moin and plantains, and I am telling her that it is too much that I cannot possibly finish this, but she insists.

‘You better eat. No woman wants to marry a man that is thin like a broomstick.’