Summer to summer

What makes summer so special?

I've come across books from overseas talking about summer being so adventurous, so fun, interesting. It's a big deceit. To me, summer isn't fun or adventurous, it's bland and annoying. It's packed, cramming lessons, church and trade, and being the average student, I apparently need those to make it in life.

Maybe summer abroad is different. Here in Nigeria, there's nothing special in summer. The heat is of course unbearable, but that's not new. Africa is tropic normally. Sweat trickles down my armpits underneath my clothes and my brother shifts opposite me, scratching the red patches on his legs. Mosquitoes and sandflies, I note, are working overtime. I have boils on my legs too.

The pages before me are written in signs I do not acknowledge. Struggling to string already prearranged words together seems even tasking to my tired brain, and the fly mocking the bane of my existence with a very annoying and prolonged drone from the wooden floorboards is making life seem even more dreary. I let my mind drift back into one of those old novels I found in my room. A small, cool breeze forces it's way in, disrupting the hot, stagnant air and tickling the nape of my neck. It sweetly whispers into my ear, in the familiar raspy voice I know too well not to be it's own, telling me to go to sleep. My brother is struggling to stay awake, his eyes keep closing of their own accord. He yawns. Shakes his head. Stands. It's all I can do to keep from letting a smile plaster itself across my face. He looks at me with a mundane expression. I see that his eyes are beginning to redden like a drunk. I mostly wish he were. I wish we were.

Back then, when I was innocent, I used to think I'd live from day to day, hour to hour, second to second. But I've come to realize I have lived from summer to summer. And in return, all my summers have been like palindromes. They read back and forth and even in between. You know, like saying "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" endlessly. No matter how the loop is arranged, it's still the same. It's disfigured and you feel like if you could tweak some parts, you'd change it, but no matter how many times you try to fix it, it's still grotesque. Some things are meant to be destroyed, not fixed or rearranged. I found this out last summer, when I pushed Ola out this very same window.

Back then, I used to run away from the tree house to hide from Ola. Nowadays, I come back to visit. Back then summer afternoons were spent in hiding, now I'm liberated. Everything begun at the beginning of summer. Everything ended at the beginning of summer.

"Do you want to see if we could jump out the window?" My brothers voice cuts through my thoughts. His voice breaks at the end. Is it puberty or emotion maybe? I turn from the book to look at him full in the face, ending up with only his profile and mass of extremely curly hair. I can tell he's tired too. But he tries. I know he tries to end my pain. It's been years. I close my eyes and sigh. I'm no longer eleven years old. Ola is nineteen now. I know that by the time I open my eyes, Ola will be here. I can hear his shallow breathing. Maybe I should jump through the window and end my misery.

My tee shirt is damp from sweat. It clutches to my skin, as if reluctant to let go for fear of death. I'm sure Ola can see the outline of the peaks on my chest. I don't care. It's nothing he hasn't seen before. Opening my eyes, I lock gazes with eyes similar to mine. But isn't it always similar? Everybody here has eyes so similar, I could look into the eyes of almost any random Nigerian and see myself in them, see my mother in them, see my ancestors in them. Lifeless eyes. I pull at a strand of thread from the right knee of my fraying trousers. A lonely bird calls in the distance. I want to stand, but I am held fast by a seemingly strong force. Like hands that pinned me down to this same floors summers ago. I'm struggling to escape back into my imaginations, but reality is in the summer breeze that brings along with it memories.

"Do you care?" I open my mouth to ask, but all I can produce is a strangled cry. Wherever the hell my brother is, I'm sure he'd hear. I can hear the distant patter of my mother's feet as they rush to the tree house. The wind is calling. I hear Ola whispering too, his voice carried by the static air, hand clamped over my mouth “It'll be okay, just stay still...” It's disgusting. With the back of my palms, I clean every trace of emotion that has snaked its way down my face. The familiar shake and sway of the treehouse tells me that mother is coming. When she enters, I'm on the floor again, reading. Ola is standing by the window, invisible to everyone but me.

This scene is strangely familiar.

"Eni, how are you?" Mother is not afraid to show her feelings. She doesn't wipe them away. It's quite amusing as well as disgusting the way she's so weak. She clutches at my arms asking who I'm talking to. I shake my head. I don't look into her eyes because I know I'll see myself in them. And Ola. Whoever said that eyes were the windows to our souls was most probably demented. But who am I to judge? So I stare at the patch of grass beneath the tree house. Somewhere, under that grass and earth, Ola and my brother are laid.

When you are molested, you'd like think to spend your free time living life rather than dwelling in the fractures of seconds it takes for the appointed times to arrive. You'd think you'd be able to close your eyes and sleep and move into dreamland as quickly as possible. You'd even think that you could forget if you actively tried. That you wouldn't expect, not as a necessity, but as an inevitable, the events which have surrounded your life and have so encompassed the shrivelled inanimate object you once called life. You may scream so loud, you become deaf to your own cries. Back then, I used to live with my brother, until the summer after his first year in highschool. Then last summer, Ola and my brother disappeared with just a simple shove from the window of the tree house. I had to take Ola away, but in order to do that I had to take away my brother too.

Some things are unforgettable. Some things are irreversible. But we move along anyway. Time, as is lauded, heals all wounds. And I'm ready to move on from summer to summer punctuated by a rapid stillness of the voices in my head.