Stop my Mind from Wandering

I

There’s a certain brokenness buried beneath the painted walls of this house. There’s a quiet pain distributed amongst us like the dusting powder Mammy tells me to rub on my neck when I have those red heat rashes. There's a thirstiness that has nothing to do with wanting water or Happy Hour juice (and I love this juice o). But, you know this, don't you?

I want many-many things, like:

A smile from my sister, to make me feel loved.

A hug from Mammy, to make me feel seen.

Most of all, I want to talk to you, Daddy, to be heard.

Mammy is pounding yam on the kitchen veranda, preparing food to offer when we visit the man of God today—soft pom pom punctuates the silence now and then. You are sitting in the parlour, pretending to be watching the afternoon news on Channels TV, but I know you prefer CNN. Sister is in our room, the space between our beds wider than ever, and I can tell she’s pissed at everyone (her I-hate-everything frown is 100%). I am in my side of the room, squeezing inside myself; it is like I am a snail.

Daddy mi, I don’t know how to be what you’ve made me—an invisible thing. And I don’t like this thing I’m becoming—like a non-living thing.

Some days, I am tired of everything. Some days, I just want this to end as soon as it has started.

I want to sleep.

But I’ve learnt my Roman numerals, and I’ll tell you if you’ll listen.

I want to stay awake.

“Can I help?” I ask my sister, unsure of a better way to cross the many steps from my pink and purple Barbie corner to her grey and red Monster by Mistake corner without making her vex.

She hisses. “Stay away, Bola. You can’t help me."

“I can help, Tutu. I want to do something. I’m twelve, see. I can—”

“Shut up!” She stands, tall and bony, with legs as long as my entire height. Her eyes dart everywhere but on mine.

Look at me! I want to shout. She doesn't. The door slams shut as she storms out, and I curl into a ball of invisibility.

Silence sails by, until the waves roll in, spilling water onto the shore that’s our beloved house. That is how I like to see it. I wish it were real. I wish I could climb into the Barbie Island princess cartoon and be her. At least, she was loved there.

“Daddy, I cannot go. Daddy, if you take me there, I’ll die!” Sister is screaming in the parlour, her voice passing through the thin walls.

The pounding in the kitchen starts and stops. Then I hear Mammy’s voice through the thin walls:

“Tutu, you'll go, and that’s final. Let Pastor James cast out that demon that's making you talk anyhow. Abi, no be me be your Mama?”

“Me? A demon is in me?” She starts to wail and I can picture her face squeezed like she has tasted lime.

“See, it’s final. You’ll go o.”

“Mammy, how can you say that a demon is in me?” Her voice breaks, bouncing high, then bouncing low, like the handball I play by myself in the backyard.

“It’s either you go or you beat me o! Choose one.”

I can picture Mammy pounding her chest, challenging her with wild eyes. I wonder if she was a fighter in her past life. She picks ways to fight everybody. Except me. I am too fragile. She does not see me.

I clutch my pillow. Sister does not have a demon, I want to go out there and tell Mammy. She just wants to be a wild-wild bird. She's sixteen. Seyi says sixteen-year-old people have a bit of angst. I don't know what it means, but it sounds pretty.

She is angst, Daddy.

Anyways, I love Sister. Everyone loves Sister. Like you, Daddy. I love you, so I love her.

II

Sister has gone to that fine purple house to live with Aunty in Port Harcourt—once, she'd loved purple like me. Now I’m not so sure what she loves or likes for that matter. You keep saying Aunty will take care of her, that maybe that’s what she needs to become a better person, free of those demons Mammy claims she has, and one other word you whispered to yourself. When I asked you to say it again, you made a keep shut sign by holding your lips together.

It’s a week later and nothing is getting better here. Mammy’s in the parlour with you, playing pretend like everything's alright. Why are you people pretending? Do you people remember that there's still one kid around? What use is it to birth a child and leave her locked like a piece of unwanted jewellery?

I slink into the kitchen and make the only reasonable food I can prepare—noodles. Smoke from the kerosene stove clouds my head, forming harsh, new words I learnt in English class last week:

Inconsequential.

Unimportant.

Unwanted.

I want to float away like this smoke and disappear from Akure to Disneyland. Will an oyinbo person adopt me? Maybe that will be nice: they will choose me, and not be forced to keep me just because they gave birth to me. They will choose me because you have not chosen me.

What does it feel like to be chosen?

I am smoke. Everybody coughs and leaves when smoke is present. They do not cherish it, they do not welcome it. But, Sister. Sister is like a flame, like a candle burning brightly, its fire drawing you closer with blazing yellow, orange, and red colours. A fire which can also be extinguished with the lightest breeze. Sister is here one moment, then gone the next. She is like ponmo inside Mammy's egusi soup—soft, with just the right texture as you bite into it. Sister is loved.

"Isn't something burning in the kitchen?" you ask, your voice so distant I'm surprised I can even hear you.

Silence.

"Won't you check it?"

More silence. It's so long that I can almost hear your heartbeat. Almost feel the tension. The stare that she's most likely giving you. Moments pass, and when nobody comes to the kitchen, I carefully carry my half-burnt pot of indomie to the veranda to eat directly from the pot.

Must be a nice thing, really—to be loved.

III

Daddy mi, I'm safe and sound in school. Sister is here with me. I have missed her. She hugged me when she saw me at Agofure Park, helped me with my Ghana-must-go, and said things like, "Baby girl, you're big now o", as she touched me like we were ever close. I didn't say anything weird to her. I didn't speak at all even though I wanted to say, You've changed too, o, because she's different. It is obvious in opposite ways, the way light contrasts with darkness. She's quiet one minute and loud the next. It is bare. It is too much of a difference that I cannot miss even though I say nothing about it.

Our roommates—Lola the lookoo-lookoo and Ijeoma the talk-talk—in this cramped room are strange. Sister worked out the hostel allocation, making sure I got allotted space in her room, to ease my transition into the University. She says I should take it slow one minute, but the next minute she's berating me for declining to attend the fresher's party.

"You're a big girl now, lighten up joor," she says.

I'm just sixteen, I want to remind her. It is not just my age that holds me back, it is this glaring fact: University is alienating to a girl like me who’s never seen.

There's just something about this oddity that's buried deep in my bones, this nonconformity that renders me invisible. It spreads from within, and I guess people around me can see it, too. Hence, they leave me be, and I don't try to change their subconscious decision.

“Tutu,” I try to call her back to earth. She was chatty in the morning, now it's five in the evening and she's lost, once again, in her head.

What do I call this sickness now eating at her?

More demons?

Madness, the unspeakable word?

IV

I’m scared. I know fear—I’ve felt every possible negative thing I can ever feel. I have thought my way through every emotion I’ve come across. But this? This is different: Like a new strain of a deadly virus. Like something evil and resistant to my ways of suppression. Like wahala.

Sister mi cut herself. I watched the blood flow before I could run and grab the knife from her. I didn't know blood could be so red—like Mammy’s darkest shade of lipstick, like the reddest of the non-alcoholic wine we pop every New Year's Eve as we pretend to be one big, happy family.

Ijeoma and I are too shocked to speak or move as we come into the room from the kitchen to find her staring blankly at the wall, hands bleeding. Ijeoma acts fast—she manages to get a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding. Sister looks me in the eye. It’s the first in forever—this free-way entry into the depths of her soul; into that deep, numbing weariness. Fear taps me. This is it: she’s going to die. But the incessant time that waits for no one goes tick-tock. She does not die. She does not live, either. Whatever light remains in her seeps away. My mind seeps along with it. I've begun to mirror her from living for so long in her shadow.

She cries in my arms like a baby when the blood stops flowing. She unravels, and I can only watch.

I have so many things to say, but they remain lodged in my throat like a painful and unwanted swelling. Many thoughts swim in my head. Three, actually:

Sister is strong.

Sister does not cry.

Sister is not strong sha.

V

The days that follow come with more wahala:

Scrubbing.

More scrubbing.

There’s blood every time I open my eyes at the breaking of the day when pots are clanging as the hostel occupants start warming their food or preparing meals to eat before their morning lectures, and I stand with a strong compulsion to scrub it away. There’s that thing that sits on my chest, loading me with hate. Hate for this cramped room we share. Hate the realisation that I have to stand up early, go down two flights of stairs, and fetch water to bathe before it finishes in the GeePee Tank. There are eggshells on the floor, and we dance around each other, muttering sorry when we trespass on invisible territorial lines drawn by each girl, demarcating her corner of the room. It is almost like when I shared a room with Sister. It is too familiar in a way that stings me.

By the time I stand up to fetch water, Sister is out already with God-knows-who doing God-knows-what. I call Aunty.

“It’s normal,” she says. “Sometimes, she acts like she’s dead weight. Don’t mind her o, just pray for her. I’ll call my Pastor, okay?”

“But, ma, what can I do to help?”

“Pray, my girl. Pray.”

Guilt races through me as she cuts the call. I should have told her about the blood, about the knife; but the thought of it all just hurts. One can only take so much weight before it begins to feel like baggage. An unexpected thought flitters through my mind. A crazy one, actually, given the state of things. Maybe I should call Mammy. I don’t want to. But, what if no one had been around? What if she’s all alone the next time she…

I pick up my phone, seeking Mammy’s number in my contact list. I hesitate. What will Mammy say? How will she react? Will she throw tantrums and make a big scene in school, in front of everyone? Will there be more talk of demons, madness, and deliverance? I think to call you instead, you’re a lot calmer. Sometimes. But I can’t even convince myself to do that either.

Ijeoma comes back from her afternoon lecture at the same time I do, the face of anger and the sun's wrath, rambling about a clowning lecturer. We skilfully avoid talking about what happened with Sister. For this, I am grateful (it is an unspeakable topic, after all). For this, I am angry (but, I do not blame anybody other than society that has worked to bury it).

I sit still and try to listen to her, all the while imagining an old man standing in front of the University of Port Harcourt's logo and clowning. I laugh, the sound forceful and grating my ears, and when I look at my phone's screen, the face that stares back at me looks like a tired, old clown.

VI

There’s a memory that keeps me awake, still, after the ordeal with Sister. It is haunting and good at the same time that I wonder if it’s real. After all, everything I have felt for most of my life has either been one or the other, never a combination of both. How can something good be equally haunting?

In this memory, I remember going to Seyi’s house, into an abundance of children and joy that I didn’t want to leave. I remember how you came there and pulled me by the ear because I’d already refused to follow Mammy back home, and being one who liked to keep up appearances, she had left and sent you to come to get me instead. Now that I remember it, I wonder how she’d told you to come get me. Did she say, go and get your child o, or did she say, biko, bring our child home?

See, I was happy to see you. Overjoyed. I wanted to jump on your back so that you’ll give me a piggyback ride home, but you came at the wrong time.

This is a random memory. Maybe I am embellishing the truth, but, stay with me, Daddy.

They were preparing goat meat and yam pepper soup. Mammy had already whispered that she wouldn’t give me dinner, so my little brain had quickly gotten invested in eating there. I had to eat there or I’d starve—it was as simple as that. Then you came just as the meal was being served after I’d stood at the corner of the kitchen patiently watching how they all worked together with such love, such unity. It all felt sacred. I had to eat the food to feel close, even if a little, to these people.

You burst into the house, pulling me by the ear. I could see Seyi looking on in confusion. I could hear her mother trying to reason with you. You didn’t talk, you never talked much (it is obvious that I got this trait from you). Instead, you just pulled me by the ear all the way to the house. That was the only day I felt something other than love for you, Daddy. That was the day I was so sure that I hated you, so sure that I would run away. I would pack my things and go and live with Seyi and I would be happy there. I would eat sacred food prepared with love and in unity, and I would play with Seyi’s sisters and be happy.

It was all I could do: think. I could never leave, though. Till now, I do not think I can ever leave all of you altogether. But, back then, I thought I could. It was all I could think of until my hate melted; until all I did was stare at my ceiling; until I went to school the next week to a cold Seyi. She never spoke to me the same way after that day.

Angst. I’ll never forget that word she told me.

I was thirteen then, and she’d said only sixteen-year olds had it. Maybe I had grown up too fast in my mind, maybe there was something dark propelling me. Now that I am sixteen and I know that she’d rattled off a word she didn’t even know the meaning of, I have come to so many epiphanies, but none has set me free from the heavy weight on my mind.

Daddy mi, all these aside, I want to tell you something. Two things, really. Or more:

I love you.

Sister is okay.

I'm okay, too, sha.

Everybody is alive for now.

VII

Anger is all I feel today. What kind of father are you? It's been ages since you called. I’m here. Breathing. Living. Not chased by demons. But, the people I call family act like I don’t exist. I've never been part of you people, have I?

See me, Daddy. This silent bleeding has clogged my chest.

See me, Mammy. Did I claw your uterus when I lived inside you to deserve this neglect?

Every day now, in-between lectures, I see her blood swimming. I see the word, CRIME, flying boldly across my vision. Sister is the criminal by our country’s standards yet I’m the one locked in this mental prison.

Happiness: No be me and you get am.

Joy: No be my name.

I know you don’t talk much, but I can share this silence with you. We can find a semblance of goodness in our father-daughter bond.

And yet, everything good has not come, because you aren’t trying at all.

—

“Bola!” Ijeoma taps me. My surrounding comes into view. “Which kain smile be that?”

I touch my face. My lips are stretched far apart. A smile? It’s been too long since I smiled that I don’t feel it. I sigh against my fingers.

She continues, “Where’s Tutu? I made concoction rice for all of us.”

Passing ever-quiet, ever-staring Lola on my way out, I shout, "Let me go and find her o!” I need to leave the confines of this stuffy room and catch some fresh air.

But, as I step out of the room towards the kitchen area, I am assaulted with the scent of all kinds of delicacies as girls go about cooking like it is a hobby. One girl barrels past me, muttering, make my food no burn o.

It reminds me of Mammy. She could cook up a hurricane just as easily as she could charge up the atmosphere in the house. One moment, she would be calm, serving guests who came to visit, wearing her Sunday best, and smiling like all was well. The next moment, she would slam every door she walked through shut. When it's just us around, her true self always comes out to play.

I navigate my way past the buckets that litter the corridor close to the bathroom and head towards the balcony. Loathing bolts through my body as I find Tutu sitting on the balcony. It crawls into view from its hiding place. Familiar. Foreign. Like it's been there all along, lured out by memories of Mammy and growing irritation of this frustrating reality.

“Tutu,” I start.

She does not hear me.

Push her.

I pause. What?

My heart is galloping.

Push. Her.

Who is that? Who is talking to me?

I swallow, shake my head, breathe in, breathe out.

No.

She turns.

Our eyes meet. Hers are:

Troubled.

Dark.

Like my mind.

Maybe we are not so different after all.

VIII

I have made up my mind. My eureka moment occurred during the Chem130 lecture in the Mba1 lecture hall. My course rep was holding the attendance sheet for my department and shouting attendance for Pure and Industrial Chemistry is here o, when it just clicked. Snapped, really.

I cannot be pure.

What is pure about me? What? Nursing hatred, begging for love, shutting my mouth, hiding behind a smile when these murderous thoughts refuse to leave me when my mind is running helter-skelter.

I have spent too many hours surfing the net to try to make sense of what is doing Sister. I have seen so many articles, pored through so many speculations that point to unspeakable things: madness, psychosis.

Dad, see, the future is blurry; my mind keeps running in circles.

See, the past is hazy; light hides beneath the dust of age-old bleakness.

Darkness hovers in me, in her. Now that I think about it, there was never a choice of being good, was there? It is in our blood—tainted by this thing called sco-sco. This thing we do not speak of. This thing we tag as a spiritual problem. What if it is just genetics? Even if it is indeed spiritual as you think, what if it is a result of the fusion of your tainted lineage and Mammy's own?

Maybe the light will find me one day. Maybe it will find us one day, for your sake. Maybe I’ll find peace and everything good. Probably find a way to heal and lead a fairly regular life. Marry and birth kids that will most likely be tainted, too, and pretend everything's fine.

Blame: I no fit hide from my mind again.

Hate: I no fit live under her shadow again.

For now, I want you to:

Hold me.

See me.

And, please, please stop my mind from wandering.

But, you fit do am?