The Great Tamarind Tree

Jane and David waited and watched the sunrise, and immediately went under the tamarind tree near a lake. Jane's buttocks clapped in perfect unison as she walked. She had a piquant face with appealing eyes. She was voluptuous, too. And her bewitching smile had charmed David the first day he saw her. David wore a short and a loose shirt – the kind of shirt he usually wore to sleep at night or the one he might give to their gate guard pretty soon. The tamarind tree was close to the lake, about two hundred metres behind a Presbyterian church. The lake was still cool despite the turbulence – a perfect natural scene. There were about seven tents built with thatch beside the lake. There used to be a ‘classy’ traditional restaurant there, about the time David was younger, and those conjugated thatch houses had been built for shelter. And he had come there many times with his parents to eat nkwobi (a food prepared with mainly boiled goat head, potash, spices and native utazi leaves) and palmwine.

“Daddy, I command that you forget all about the way you saw Jane and I this morning.” He pulled a strand of hair from his eye lashes and dropped it on his head, then pulled a strand of hair from his head and dropped it on his eye lashes while Jane looked at him in bewilderment. He told Jane to do hers; they were the two parties involved.

“Darling, I command that you forget all that happened between David and I this morning.” She said, and struggled to pull a strand of hair off, close to her forehead because she had plaited cornrows, and placed it on her lashes. She groaned a little when she pulled off a strand of hair from her eyelashes, then placed it on her head. They held hands tightly and sat in a wooden bench in one of the thatch houses.

“I want to go to the bank, withdraw some cash and buy food for us. I’m starving.” David said after a few hours of discussion – feeding each other's ears with terrifying thoughts of his father and Jane’s husband, Fred about what they had done.

“I can’t stay here alone. Let me follow you.” She said standing.

“Like this?” She looked at herself, wearing a night gown that exposed her thighs and cleavage. “Besides, this place is not really lonely. There’s a church few metres from here. Anyone in the church can hear you scream,” he chuckled. “But, nothing will make you scream.”

“And you’ll probably enter the bank to use the withdrawal slip?” She scowled.

“I wish we had a choice.” He licked his forefinger and relaxed his eyebrows, straightened his goatee and left. Jane sat quietly in the thatch and tried to induce somnolence. She wished that she’d overcome the fear of whatever might happen to her there by sleeping, and would finally, awoke with David next to her. 

When David was 12, his mother had always told him that the wine whose bottle was silvery and shiny was the costliest that she had ever bought, and was meant for very special guest. David never liked alcoholic drinks, but that very expensive wine meant for special guests made him crave for it. When he came back from school, alone with the house help, Eno, he climbed a small wooden chair and collected a bottle of wine from the bar, poured a small quantity in a glass, drank a little and coughed. It took him about twenty seconds before he swallowed the remaining, slowly; he thought that the high alcoholic content of the wine might burn his chest if it didn’t mix well with saliva, perhaps, for dilution. The old rickety chair that he brought from the kitchen which Eno usually sat in with her fat butt shifted when he was about to return the drink to the bar, he fell and the bottle broke, with a loud pop sound. Eno dashed in. 

“Abasi!” Eno shouted. “David, David! You go put me for trouble o.” She said out of confusion. 

David became cold like ice, and told Eno that mummy would kill him. They both knew how his mother was quick to anger and difficult to pacify. And might even end up doing something she might later regret.

“Na me she go kill, no be you.” She rolled his eyes at him. “Abeg, tell am say na you break am.” David went to his room, changed into his house cloth and wore his backpack.

“I’m going to Michael's house.” We planned to study for a test.

“You don chop food?” 

“I’m not hungry.” Eno became more scared that her madam would blame her for the broken wine and David not eating his food when he returned. She swept the broken bottles carefully and cleaned the area where the wine had splashed. She heated his food in the microwave and ate it.

David's aim of going to Michael’s was to tell him about what had happened. Michael was his age, and was the person that took him to the tamarind tree to command words for his mother to forget the wine’s worth or about the wine entirely. There, Michael told him to pull off a strand of hair from his head and brows, and exchanged them. At first, he was mystified, but decided to buy it. He asked David to wait till sunset, from then only, would she forget it. 

“My mother comes back very late around 9 pm.” He told Michael.

That night, his mother came back exhausted, went to the bar and drank Elliot. She never noticed that her expensive and special wine had gone missing, even days after. And weeks after. How happy Eno and David were because she never noticed it.

“Wetin make am forget that wine?” Eno asked. He didn’t tell her so that she wouldn’t use the spell on either him or his mother or father someday. Subsequently, David used it once on the same Michael who taught him that, and then, twice on his mother before she died in a plane crash.

*     *     *

It was 4:30 am when Jane woke up in her short milky silk night gown, her husband was snoring, and that was the loudest she had heard for two years she had been married to him. He was very tired; he had worked on his laptop till 3 am. Jane knew he had slept late, and expected him to wake up late. She checked his alarm set for 5:30 am, switched it off, went to the restroom and immediately dashed out to David’s room on the ground floor. David was sleeping in his bed, facing up, his penis stood erect and turgid. From the way she viewed the prints in his short, it was smaller than what she had felt the previous week they first had sex in the kitchen, standing. They were both 29. And David’s touches, energy and passion were in no way compared to his father’s. Jane became David's step-mother when she married Fred, her former boss at the consulting firm. They had understood each other’s feelings for a long while, until Jane got lost in David’s arms when he came to collect peanut butter from the kitchen. Jane's sight at his print overclouded her thinking, so she left the door ajar. When she held it and caressed it, He woke up. She continued, and it almost doubled in size.

After an hour, Fred awoke, and weak, but needed to meet with a client that morning, decided to walk around his compound to start-up his day, went downstairs, walked through the lobby that led to the sitting room and to the verandah, saw his wife riding his son’s penis, moaning softly, and David, fumbling and sucking her nipples. They still had their clothes on. Perhaps, they couldn’t spare a few seconds to take them off. He stood there for a few seconds until David was about to feel something close to grace, He pulled her over, lay on top of her to go in intensely, Jane’s eyes met her husband’s vaguely, and then vividly. The look on Fred's face was terrifying. Fear gripped her body, she beat David’s back, he turned and saw his father. Immediately, Fred ran upstairs to get his inhaler; he had felt instant breathing difficulty. They heard their hearts beat, and teeth jammed in coldness because Fred had had many histories of hurting people badly out of exasperation. They wore their slippers, David picked his phone from the table, collected the spare key to the gate from were it was from a cabinet, opened the gate immediately and they both ran out of the building. The gate guard came out from his room, looked in oblivion, locked the gate and went back to his room.

Fred sat for a few seconds in bed, held his inhaler and went to the kitchen, carried a pestle, looked for them in the building, but didn’t find them. They had feared Fred because of the severity of the punishment he might give to them: Jane feared divorce; she might lose the good life she had won herself. Her irresistible natural endowment had won her a wealthy sixty-one-year old man. And Fred feared that his father might disown him forever this time. When he was on campus, he had ceased his allowance because he added an extra zero to the cheque he gave him and forged his signature against the correction. He was asked to refund it, but he had used it to sponsor his girlfriend's birthday party. He seized communication with him for almost a year and told him to return when the session ended. There was nothing they could think of to pacify Fred's rage, except for the wonders of the tamarind tree. And the closest to their house that David knew was the one beside the lake, the same one he visited several times when he was still a kid. But now, it was farther than it was, two kilometers away; they had relocated to their new house after his mother died. It sounded stupid to Jane at first, but she followed. David, too wasn’t even sure that the tree was still there until they walked to the place or whether the tamarind tree would still do the wonder.

*     *     *

David came back with two plates of jollof rice and snacks that he had bought from a restaurant. They ate, waited for the sunset, became bored again after some persons who came to the lakeside to cool off had left. They had to make sure they waited till sunset. So, they walked around the area, saying rubbish – how frustrated she was with Fred in bed. And just after the sunset, Fred called David on phone.

“Dave, I won’t be coming back today. Please, tell jenny. I’ve been calling her, but she hasn’t picked up.” The service was breaking, so David struggled to hear. Jane felt relaxed, and exhaled heavily. They hugged each other tightly and later, found their bodies on bare sand, rolling, laughing and kissing. His face wore a make over of excitement, his hands trembled as he caressed those hardened nipples and fondled her breasts. With an intense feeling of love, and with much ardour, they shagged. Sleeping where one really isn’t supposed to is the most enjoyable. So, this time, they relaxed their nerves. 

Jane stood while David was still on the ground, admiring her from behind. Night was approaching already, she saw the moon reflect off the lake.