New Year Blues

 

The scene at club ten-o-six was a rowdy and jubilant one. She was on her second bottle of Star lager beer – her tongue felt wooden in her mouth and her eyes were narrowed into slits. She swayed unsteadily on her feet as she made her way into the already crowded dance floor. She raised the bottle into the air and swayed her hips in a seductive twist to Iyanya’s Your Waist.

Like butterflies drawn to nectar, the men’s eyes trailed her movements – then, they began to move towards her all at once. At first, she felt that familiar rush of fear spreading from her arms to the tips of her fingers. She drew in a rapid breath and muttered to herself – “It’s New Year’s Eve and nothing in the world would stop me from catching my fun tonight.”

It felt weird at first; the way he spooned her body with his from behind. But after a few minutes she felt so relaxed to the point of light-headiness.

“It’s must be the alcohol, I’ve never felt this comfortable with a stranger.”

The sweat was running in trickles down her back as her gyration gained momentum. Her blouse stuck to her back – some weeks ago she would have been irritated with the stickiness but now she just adored it. “If only he could see me now; I’m sure he would be repulsed and surprised altogether. He must be thinking I’m home alone – miserable.”

“Let’s move to the bar,” her dance partner shouted into her ear.  She nodded and allowed herself to be led there. Over two bottles of beer, they exchanged first names and nothing else important in the direction of personal information.

“Sola is my name, yours?” He said in a deep baritone.

“Ayo.”

 

***

“My breakthrough shall not pass me by in Jesus name! This is my year of fruitfulness! I come against every barren spirit in my life – Die in Jesus name!” She screamed at the top of her voice.

Everyone in the church was also shouting their New Year requests to God so no one took particular notice of the other – it seemed like they were all competing for God’s attention.

She had not missed a single service throughout the year. The pastor had told her there was nothing fasting and praying could not do. It could even cure blocked fallopian tubes that have obstructed conception.

“Mrs. Taiwo, I’m sorry there’s nothing else to be done after we’ve flushed your tubes. We can only wait and see,” the doctor had told her.

The pastor had countered the doctors. “Are they greater than God? You need to have faith!”

She trudged forward to the pulpit to receive the special anointing. As the pastor made the sign of the cross with the anointing oil on her forehead, she thought to herself – it must be this year or else!

 

***

Times had really become hard for him.  He didn’t understand why people no longer threw anything edible onto the dung hills. That morning, a wicked fat woman had chased him with a stick not even pitying his emaciated state. He remembered a long time ago when he had plenty to eat and a beautiful young lady used to rub him so lovingly. He wondered where she went to and how she forgot him so soon. He hung his head in dejection as he walked on.

Then, a strong whiff of a familiar scent was in the air. Could this really be true?

He ran towards it.

 

***

He looked different in the dim lighting of dawn. Ayo hitched the coverlet higher over her shoulders as the harmattan chills made her skin tingle. She did not remember getting into his bed or anything that happened before and after. She could only faintly recollect handing over her car keys to him at the club. A slight feeling of panic came over her – “What if he had been a ritual killer or kidnapper? I could have been dead by now.”

She jumped to her feet and began to dress in a flurry.

“Are you leaving?” Sola said, as he stirred awake.

“Yes, I have to go.”

“Can I call you sometime?” He asked.

“Well…you can but I’m not promising anything…”

Ayo was thinking about the wry smile on Sola’s face as she left – she wondered what it meant. That he had a nice time or she was plain boring? With her preoccupied thoughts, Ayo did not see him coming and she was so stunned that she gave off a loud shrill.

The dog wagged its tail frenziedly. She was the one – the beautiful lady that had cared for him so much.

“Bruno, you naughty little dog! I looked everywhere for you.” Ayo crooned in a mummy-to-child voice. Not minding the dog’s dirty appearance, she hauled him into her car joyfully.

***

Mrs Taiwo watched her as she alighted from her car.

“Happy new year, madam!” Ayo called out cheerily.

“Happy new year,” she replied stiffly. Under her breath she muttered – “Slut.”

Mrs Taiwo stood on the veranda of apartment with her arms folded across her chest; thinking about her neighbour – She must be so depressed, being unmarried at her age. Maybe, she has found another lover. I just hope she doesn’t bring this one to live with her. I can’t stand fornicators like her.

“I thank my stars, I’m not her. She must be so miserable – married without children to a man that rarely comes home to her.” Ayo reasoned as she opened her flat’s door.

It was a new year but only Bruno; the dog was truly happy.

N.B. – It’s a New Year and I hope you can find true happiness notwithstanding the circumstances around you.

My Clean Aunty

My first encounter with Aunty Liz was a bizarre one. She had such an enchanting relationship with the broom. Yes, the broom never left Aunty Liz’s hand. When we entered her house we met her sweeping and as we left, she barely raised her head to bid us goodbye. She was already sweeping away the imaginary dust of our feet on her light brown rug. Throughout the visit, I’d kept my hands tightly clasped in my lap. When they strayed to the armrest, Aunty Liz quickly came over to readjust the lace embroidery on it. I was awed by that visit.

“Daddy, why does Aunty Liz sweep all the time?” I’d asked. Father looked out of the window of the bus. He furrowed his eyebrows the way he always did when in deep thought. “Why do people sweep?”He replied. I hated it when people answered my questions with other questions; it made me feel silly. “To make things clean,” I answered in a hushed voice. I knew there was another answer and I was determined to find out what it was.

Some weeks later, Father told me to pack my portmanteau because I was going to live with Aunty Liz in Lagos. I’d passed the entrance examination into the Queens College but we did not have enough money to pay for the boarding fees. So, I was to live with Aunty Liz and attend school as a day-student.

“Put your bag here, fold your clothes here, and keep your shoes here,” Aunty Liz reeled out the instructions rapidly. The bed in the room was covered with a sparkling white sheet.  I wondered how I could sleep on it without staining it. Then, she came with a broom and told me to clean the room. I obeyed all her instructions even though I did not notice a speck of dust in the room. 

After I had finished settling in, my cousin; Remi peeped into the room. Remi always spoke in hushed tones almost as if she was afraid of her own voice. I soon found out that apart from my Aunty Liz’s hatred for dirt, she also detested noise.

“Will you like to play snakes and ladders?” Remi asked. I had never heard of a game where snakes climbed ladders – not that we did not have our own games in Okiti village. We played boju boju; a game of catch or lanka lanka where we hopped from one space to another on rectangular shapes drawn in the sand. Remi showed me the rules of the snakes and ladders and soon I was playing it quite well. We both fell asleep after playing several rounds of the game.

Aunty Liz shook us awake some hours later. “Food is ready,” she said. When I heard the word, food, my stomach rumbled.  I realized I was very hungry. There were two steaming plates of rice and stew on the dining table. I moved towards the food with ready anticipation. I imagined the savory taste of the meal as I inhaled its sweet aroma.

“You’re sweaty and dirty. Go and take a shower before you eat,” Aunty Liz said, stopping us as we pulled out the chairs.

“Yes Mummy,” Remi answered dutifully and left for the bathroom but I stood rooted on the spot. Aunty Liz noticed I was still standing before her – “What are you waiting for? You are not eating until you are clean.”

I went into the white tiled bathroom where I saw Remi already toweling herself dry. She smiled when she saw the confused look on my face. “Mummy says germs make us sick and that cleanliness is next to godliness,” she said. Her words sounded as if it came from a recorded tape or when a broadcaster read a prepared news bulletin – crisp and precise words.

The soap in the bathroom had a very strong smell and even after washing it away several times, the scent still stayed with me. I preferred the mild scent of the herbal soap we used at home. With every spoonful of rice I lifted to my mouth, the smell of the medicated soap followed it. I felt as if I was eating soap and rice. I pushed the half-eaten plate of food away.

“Is there anything wrong with your food?” Aunty Liz asked. I told her my stomach was already full and I could not eat anymore. “Then, take your plate to the kitchen and clean it,” she said. I cringed as I heard the word, clean again. That word was going to become a slogan throughout my stay in Aunty Liz’s house.

Aunty Liz lived alone with her daughter; she did not have a husband. “She’s a witch, that’s why no man can stay with her,” Mother said when I asked her about Aunty Liz’s singleness.

“I got to know she was a witch when I saw her killing a wall gecko in her house,” my mother explained further.  Mother believed that a house without cockroaches and wall geckos was doomed. “Those little creatures are part of a real house,” she concluded. For Aunty Liz, those creatures represented dirt and nothing else. So, when I arrived from Okiti, Aunty Liz had carried my suitcase to the balcony and shaken out all the clothes one after the other so as to get rid of roaches or any other dirt. After spending several minutes, she had decided that it would be best to wash the clothes. “Aunty, I won’t have any clothes to wear to school tomorrow because they will still be wet,” I’d said quickly before she plunged everything into a bowl of soapy water. 

 

Aunty Liz had a special show-glass in her living room. It contained a rare collection of things – not expensive art works but souvenirs from private moments. There were tins of Pronto, Milo and Ovaltine. There were also different colours of ribbons, brooches and hair pins. It was a sacred area and no one dared to upset the arrangement. One could only view it respectfully through the glass case which displayed it.  “Mummy says they are filled with memories,” Remi told me when I asked her about the show-glass. Every day, I stood before it and wondered whether the memories were physically present in the old tins. 

I never knew the feeling of embarrassment until I went to live with Aunty Liz. The first day I came back from school, my sandals were splattered with mud and the white socks on my feet were dusty. I’d carefully removed the dirty socks and sandals before I ventured into the house but I was stopped right at the door.

“Stay right there and remove all your clothes,” Aunty Liz ordered, watching me with her hawk eyes. I hesitated and looked around me. I saw the two boys who lived in the next flat straining their necks to catch a glimpse of me.  I removed my uniform and stopped, but Aunty Liz’s frame still blocked the doorway. So, I had no choice than to remove my underwear too. I covered my small budding breasts with my arms as I edged sideways into the house. I met Remi in the bathroom washing her school uniform. She looked confused when she saw my tears. 

“Why are you crying?” She asked. Remi’s chest was still flat; so I thought she would not understand the shame I felt. “I don’t like washing,” I told her instead. Remi gladly offered to wash my uniform. Her eyes danced merrily as she played with the soap suds. Remi loved soap just like her mother.

I could endure Aunty Liz’s cleanliness regimen in the house but I never looked forward to the outside embarrassment.  Aunty Liz’s always carried a set of white handkerchiefs with her wherever she went. She used a separate handkerchief to wipe her eyebrows, another one for her neck and the third one to daintily touch the corners of her lips at intervals.

 At a wedding ceremony of one of her church members, Aunty Liz was the cynosure of all eyes with her queer dressing. Most of the grown women appeared in elegant traditional dresses; with their sky-rising head gears but Aunty Liz had decided to go the foreign way. She wore a blue satin gown that had frills at its helm. It was the white gloves and the pink neckerchief that caused a stir amongst the crowd. I saw people pointing in the direction of our table during the reception. They called her a crazy woman. Whoever heard of an African woman wearing gloves to compliment her dressing except on her wedding day or if she was part of someone’s bridal train?

I lived with Aunty Liz’s strange ways for a whole year before I came to know the reason for her obsessive cleanliness. I woke up one night with cramps in my lower abdomen. I screamed when I saw the bloody stain on the white bed sheet. We had been taught about body changes during puberty in school. Mother had also told me about becoming a woman and not allowing a boy to play with me. So, I was not ignorant. I was only scared to see Aunty Liz’s perfect white sheet stained with my blood. I tiptoed to the bathroom to wash it. I almost made it but as I turned the doorknob, I came face to face with Aunty Liz coming out of the bathroom. Her eyes flipped to the reddish stain. All hell went loose.

“You can never be clean again. You’ve become permanently dirty,” Aunty Liz screamed. Her eyeballs were dilated. She looked like someone who had just woken up from a nightmare. She dunked me in the bath tub which was always full of water. The bath tub was used as a water storage container since water supply was largely inconsistent in the country. I tried to keep my head above the water but Aunty Liz would have none of that. She wanted to clean my whole body; from the strands of hair on my head to my toenails. I really tried not to suck in the water but soon my head started to pound. It was a terrible feeling. I was certain my head would burst open, so I opened my mouth and the water gushed in.

 

I woke up in a strange room some hours later. I saw Aunty Liz pacing the room and scratching her jerry curls. The smell of disinfectant was strong in the air. Aunty Liz saw my eyes open and she moved quickly to my bedside.

“I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, please forgive me dear,” Aunty Liz repeatedly said, as she smothered me in an embrace. I began to get scared that she would suffocate me until she suddenly stopped. Her withdrawn look slowly settled back on her face. I saw my chance fading by so I quickly grasped it before it was too late.

“Aunty, why do you clean things all the time?” I asked. She looked away from me and walked to the window without a response.

“You shouldn’t talk so much. The doctor advised that you should rest.” She said evasively.

“I won’t tell Mummy and Daddy what happened.”

Aunty Liz turned around swiftly to face me. She tried to stare me down but I refused to look away. She realized I was asking for an explanation in exchange of my not-telling.

Then, Aunty Liz told me everything. She had been told by her uncle that she was a dirty girl. He said that to her after he’d forcibly had sex with her. “After he finished, he told me to go and wash myself with a bucket of water,” Aunty Liz said, as she stared into the distance. When Aunty Liz started her menstrual period, her mother also told her to wash very well so she would not stink.

“My father also said; dirty girls are bad girls. To be good, you’ve to be clean.” She finished with a heavy sigh.

I was more confused than ever before. I did not understand how being clean made one bad or good. Mother had warned me not to allow boys to touch me down there but she had never mentioned being wary of family members. Aunty Liz did not say the name of the particular uncle that had abused her. I wondered whether it was aged Papa Joel because he was the only one alive out of all my great uncles. It could not be. Papa Joel has a very kind smile. He told such interesting stories.

I left the hospital the next day and returned home with Aunty Liz. As we entered the house, she immediately went for a broom and parker. I watched the strokes of the broom on the brown rug as she swept. Then, I rose to get another broom to sweep the bedrooms. Together, we swept the whole house until it was clean.

I’d decided to always help Aunty Liz to stay clean and good.