Asero Hills – Part 2

Baami stood rock still like a tap rooted acacia tree. He glared at Uncle Lambert for what seemed like hours but was indeed just a few minutes. One could almost hear the sugar ants talking in the silence that hung like a cobweb over the compound. I had expected anger and shouting and screaming. The silence perturbed me and the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight.

When Baami had arrived, Maami had shuffled inside like a scared chick seeking refuge from a hovering hawk. I had thought Uncle Lambert’s reappearance would provide answers. But the enigma was enshrouded in deep waters more than ever.

“What are you doing here?”Baami finally uttered in a strangely calm voice.

Uncle Lambert’s eyes were cast on the ground. He still nursed his aching limbs with those lines of pain etched on his eyebrows. Then, he heaved a long sigh and spoke. “Brother mi, Ile l’abo s’ini oko. No matter how long a man sojourns, he must return home.”

Baami let out a gruff laugh, “Oga o! So, the outcast is now concocting wise sayings. Abi, you’ve forgotten why you left?”

Uncle Lambert shrugged his shoulders. “It has been a long time now; the wind has blown over everything.”

Baami made as if to speak. Then he noticed me and swallowed the words with his saliva. He shook his head from side to side and entered the house, leaving me with Uncle Lambert and Ewatomi and Lola who had sat subdued in a corner throughout the scenario.

“Lola, get Uncle some water to drink,” I said. She ambled to the kitchen. When Lola came back with the water, he pressed the rim of the bowl to his lips. He didn’t raise his head until he’d drained it all. “Thank you,” he said to her.  He also turned to me, “Thank you, Tade.”

I nodded and wondered how grievous his actions must have been. No visitor had ever been denied the offer of water in our house.

Ewatomi moved forward and stared at his wooden leg for a while. “Who cut your leg?” She asked with the kind of forwardness only a child could muster.

“Shut up, Ewatomi. It’s rude to ask elders such questions,” Lola quickly interceded, assuming the big sister role she liked so much.

“No, leave her alone. It’s not wrong to ask questions.”Uncle Lambert said.

I waited eagerly, expecting him to answer the question. But he was silent. He had a faraway look in his eyes.

Maami and Baami had ignored Uncle Lambert since he returned, so he became my responsibility. I instructed Lola to feed him with the eba and left-over water leaf soup from the previous day. He ate with total concentration. His Adam’s apple bulged as he swallowed lump after lump of eba until the plate was empty. One thing was still the same – Uncle Lambert’s voracious appetite had not lost its vigour.

At twilight, he was still sitting on the same spot on the veranda. Uncle Lambert’s former room had been rented out to an Igede man, a labourer on Baami’s plantation. I removed one of the yellow uncovered lumpy mattresses which made up my bed and laid it below the window. I left the higher bed for Uncle Lambert. Eminem and Chris Brown and Beyonce and Rihanna kept him company from their vantage positions on the wall.

I watched as he unhinged his wooden leg and rested it against the wall. He’d arrived with no luggage. I pretended to be asleep. He grunted as he laid on his back. Then, he sat up again. He looked in my direction in the dimly red-bulb lighted room. I liked to sleep in that reddish haze. It made me feel like an actor in the setting of a horror movie.

Uncle Lambert brought out a wrapped packet from inside his jalamia’s pocket and peered into it. Then, he quickly replaced it in his pocket. He inclined his head towards me again. I simulated a loud snore.

I tossed on my mattress. “What’s in the packet?”I wondered.

Uncle Lambert’s return had become a great puzzle. I wondered how long it would take for all the mysteries to be unravelled.

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On Asero Hills

So it’s the first of January again! A time for retrospective thoughts or rather I hope it’s a time of decided action because if you are still in a state of sombre reflection on the what-nots and what-ifs of the past year, you’re OYO (on your own) 🙂

I know a lot of people have made New Year resolutions – never mind that we forget most of them before the 31st of January. I made one relevant to this space – to keep it lively with words; freely flowing. So, I’m starting the year with that decided action.

Today, I’m posting a new story which will come in parts every Wednesday – can I hear a yippee? 😉 (There must be something so appealing about episodic plots, I guess it’s a spill from watching all those season 1 till infinito movies). I hope this story keeps all of us (me and all readers) enthralled for some weeks. You might be wondering why I mentioned myself – here’s the thing, I don’t know where the story is going myself. So, I will be as eager as you are. Before, I bore you to sleep with this longish intro, here is the story already.

Happy New Year! 🙂 🙂

On Asero Hills

The day Uncle Lambert returned was just as any other day. The birds chirped and flew from the mango to the orange tree, the lizards skittered across the walls; the orange-head after the female in a sensual chase and Bingo dozed on the veranda, flickering an eyelid open at intervals and baring her teeth at the flies disturbing her slumber.

Maami sat on the steps shelling melon seeds and singing choruses in her falsetto voice. Ewatomi and Lola were busy with their ten-ten, clapping their hands and opening and closing their feet in perfect sync. It was the halt of the clapping and foot-stamping that had made me to raise my head, from my draft essay. That was the third draft I’d written and crossed out with thick lines and torn into tiny shreds. Dr Grillo often gave such ostensibly simple assignments. A week ago, he’d asked ‘Is man matter or form?’ and we’d all reproduced Aristotle’s theory and spewed it all over four foolscap sheets. Only for him to throw them out of the window and we’d wondered what he’d really wanted from us. When I’d complained how strange the lecturers were at home, Baami said I was lucky that I didn’t have to leave our small town to attend university. The governor was from our town. He’d built the state university in his hometown.

Maami’s singing had stopped and she watched with eyes as calm as a river at dawn, as if Uncle Lambert’s appearance was part of the green foliage and brown dust. As if he was the planting season that had returned with no surprise from the farmer who had waited for it. She shook the melon seeds in the tray and blew out the chaff. Then she wiped her rheumy eye with the back of her hand. One of Maami’s eyes was failing, the nurses’ assistants in the government clinic could not agree on the cause. The hefty male nurse assistant with a bulbous nose had panted like a marathon runner – ‘it must be golocoma,’ he’d whistled between kola stained teeth. The fair-skinned assistant with red and dark patches on her knuckles and elbows, had whispered through scarlet-painted lips, ‘he’s wrong and he won’t listen. It’s cataract.’ I knew Maami had seen Uncle Lambert with her one good eye.  

He looked awkward in the jalamia he donned like the mallam selling suya in front of the new G.R.A where he was assured of good sales from the rich inhabitants. When he shuffled forward, I realised his awkwardness was not limited to his garb but also his gait. He wobbled, on his one good leg and the other wooden one made a dull plack plack thud on the brown soil.

Maami paused as if she had just seen him. Her eyes were riveted on his legs and her lips were drawn apart. Then, she threw her head back and ripples of laughter shook her shoulders. “So you came back! Where your proud is walk Lambert? Answer me!”She taunted him.

Uncle Lambert moved slowly, lips clenched and eyes brimming with pain. It took almost forever for him to reach the elevated platform of the veranda. He sat, breathing heavily and sweat trickled down his face. He squinted and shielded his eyes as he stared at me.

“Akintade?”He asked, uncertain.

I rose from the bench and prostrated in greeting before him. Uncle Lambert had left Asero when I was in primary five. I remembered that hot afternoon in the dry season when the water had run in streams on my back, soaked my shirt and formed a ring around the top of my khaki shorts and how I’d hastened into the kitchen to drink from the amu. The water in the clay water-pot had been very cold. The fridge had looked on sorrowfully in the corner where it stood. It served as a cupboard since the supply of electricity had become like the appearance of goats and sheep flying in the sky – a strange and almost scary event. Because of the way the house was built, six rooms; three on each side of the corridor, the kitchen was a separate building outside the house. It faced the smaller building where the tenants lived. Uncle Lambert stayed in one of the rooms because he wanted to prove he was a real man and could provide for himself.  However, at meal times, he forgot his manliness and loitered outside the kitchen, whistling toneless songs until Maami thrust a plate into his hands.

“Our wife, don’t bother. Ah, I’m not hungry,” he’d said, even as his hands latched on to the food. That afternoon as I’d come out of the kitchen, I’d seen Uncle Lambert running, his eyes wild as if a million evil spirits were after him. He ran into his room and came out with an unzipped bag spilling with clothes. “Uncle, Uncle where are you’re going?” I’d asked. But he didn’t respond as he walked away with swift paces.

When Maami returned from the market, she’d gone  into the kitchen to cook. I’d heard her gasp in shock as she poured a bottle of red oil into the garawa of gaari instead of the pot on the stove.  She’d looked worried and sighed every time she looked towards Uncle Lambert’s room. Even when Mama Sade, Baami’s second wife had stepped out of her boundary and taken her jerry-can of kerosene, she’d remained mum. Three days later, Baami returned from his Cocoa plantation. I’d tried to eavesdrop when Maami entered his room but they talked in very low tones. Even my two elder sisters, Salewa and Abosede who buzzed like bees fell silent each time I passed by. Anytime I opened my mouth and asked, “where did Uncle Lambert go?” They all snapped at me as if I was a nagging housefly festering on their sores. I never found out where Uncle Lambert had gone.

 Now, he was back; sitting on the veranda and massaging his limbs like an old man. Maami’s mocking laughter had dried on her lips and she stood arms akimbo watching him. The compound was silent – even the pigeons had stilled their cooing and wings-flapping. Then, Baami came in through the gate…