When Ernest hemingway said: There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. He was right. He was absolutely right.
My music box is up to its highest volume, blasting J.cole, the soft tune of his for your eyes only caresses my eardrums. It shuts out the real noise—silence that is so silent it's loud and eerie.
I write better like this, with songs in my ear and bass pulsing through my room. But today not even J.cole can save me.
My jotter lies in front of me, its pages are a stark alabaster under the fluorescent practically begging me to tattoo poetic genius on its skin.
Trust me, I would love to. There is only one tiny-pinky sized problem.
I can't think of anything. Not a single word.
I pull myself back into my body and start the hunt for inspiration. My room smells like tea and perfume. A heady aromatic fragrance that fits perfectly to the cool beige paint, i'm still trying to get used to that.
Absent-mindedly, i thumb the wall's face, tracing the knobs and knuckles of rough paint. Someone tried to crest his name into the wall a long time ago because there are short precise marks on the wall and i can make out a carved T and an R, maybe his name was Troy or Thomas– tommy.
Writing method number one–just listen to my five senses, and the moment.
My stomach grumbles in protest to the slices of bread i grabbed when i came in. I pay no attention, i don't even have a little to give, i am too in the moment.
Right now, my room is the moment, but instead of giving me vibe, it stares right back at me with its too-cool biege-ness and i find nothing.
Normally, the outside world is my first port of call when i need vibe, but I can't go out, not with this obese thunder-storm growling at my window like a pitbull.
I ignore the nagging memory that i haven't done my Biology assignment. Something about Adaptation and stuff.
I wonder if Mom was ever like this. Uncomfortable, ill-fitting.
I wonder if writing came easy to her.
Dad can't seem to talk about her lately without getting that faraway look in his eyes. He no longer talks about her, period.
I was nine when i found out that she was a creative writer, and i gobbled up every work of her's i could find, book drafts, an anthology of poems, more unfinished novels than i could count all packed in an dust covered box.
I started writing then, and if you ask, i honestly don't know whether i am good at it or not. I have never let anyone look through my poems and stories, even Lorita, the many times she tried to sneak a peek over my shoulders.
I've never felt like, or even wanted to. Writing is my way of being close to Mum.
And even though the words don't come easy, as easily as when i'm reading a harlequin's, or reviewing a book, or writing an essay–they come, bit by bit, in small scraps, eventually.
Mom died when i was three, but i like to think that i can remember her face smiling down at me, remember her telling me with laughter in her eyes that i was unfortunate enough to get her unruly mass of black curls.
I miss her. I miss her even though i never really had her–and trust me, it's hard. It's like living poor your whole life and then right when you are on your death bed you realize a ton of money was left to you in a will a decade ago. You can't do a thing about it, but it hurts so bad you can't get over it either.
I wonder if her words stood in an ill fitted scrawl on paper (everything she wrote was done on a typewriter).
Yes, you guessed right. Geek and all, i can't write for shit. My handwriting has this strange look, like the T's are towering basket-ballers and the C's are monsters trying to eat everyone else.
I wonder what she was like. I mean, Dad tries, but there are still these times i wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mother, those times when i feel like a fundamental part of me is missing.
Then there are these scary miliseconds when i can't remember her face and i dash into the parlour to stare at the giant photo on the étagère, guilt bounding at my heels like a blood-thirsty hell hound. It is an old gold-framed picture of dad, mom and I. I was like a year old in that photo, perched on mom's lap, eyes bulging as if i could see something the camera-man couldn't.
Mom wore a loose blue kaftan-ish gown in that photo, gold bangles circled her wrist. Dad is at her side, with an arm slung across her shoulder, his smile is clone of hers, and he's looking at her as if she is an unknowable enigma–i know that feeling. I have felt it my whole life.
I twirl a strand of hair around my finger, the coarse links of kink are tangled into a greasy mane and i try toimagine that she's the one playing with my hair.
For one extra second, i hold on. Then i'm back in my overwhelmingly beige room.
But i don't come back alone, my head is swollen with a flawless string of in-fault-able words. I roll over and grab the bic pen at my side. Damn biology.
The unmistakable aroma of stew creeps through the window, from the neighbour's house, but my stomach stays silent this time. I reward its sobriety for this awe-inspiring moment with a small smile and then i write. I bleed the first word:
Beige.
Her name is Chimamanda Yara Ezeocha.Yes, i got the full name.No, i am not a stalker.The first time she talks to me is in an Economics class, after Mr Uzoukwu had succeeded in ruining the class' mood for the umpteenth time with his ingenuity—Dictation.She said "Please, can you lend me your note, i didn't get the last paragraph."My ears were too busy doing cartwheels while the men in my stomach opened bottles of champagne and made toasts to my heart.It's funny how your wits leave you when you need them the most. How it can feel like your insides are squishy and your heart is playing a guitar."Um yeah" i said, stalling so my brain can reboot. It doesn't.It doesn't, even when she asks if she can take the note home. It doesn't, even when Deziri cheerly starts singing Mj's Billie Jean in my ears.All i can think of is the sound of her voice, a husky song that should belong to someone else.It's nothi
It's the boy from church, i can swear my life on it. I don't know how i didn't notice on the first day.It's his red skin and girly eyes– i'll recognise them anywhere. He fidgets, taking it out on his pen, caressing its glassy surface and scrutinizing it with more intensity than an Avanti pen should be made to endure.I had to leave my safe seat at the door when it became too unsafe for my liking a.k.a boys are hoes. This huge-boy (i think his name is Dike) with thick lips too red for his dark skin made it his sacred duty to pester my life.I don't know why boys don't seem to get the memo, but there's a fine line between flirting and harassment.Boy-girl's put every ounce of effort in his body into not looking at me, his eyes are everywhere, the windowsill, the marker board, the desk's plane, the glossy daylight swimming about in rays–anything but me.I didn't see that one coming.But i guess it's
There are pieces of white paper all over the class, it is like someone made confetti from another's note book. I sure am glad it isn't mine though, because i would really hate to show up in school with a sharp machete.It is break-time, not recess, because recess is what you say in America. Recess, is what you say in Americanized–Nigerian montessori schools where big men send their children to learn history and French and Poetry.For us, it is break-time. That obnoxiously short, time-racing period between late morning and early afternoon when teachers decide it is time for you to breathe something that does not include a totally irrelevant part of the human anatomy, a set of increasingly confusing mix of numerals, or a language you speak everyday but never seem to grasp completely.Was that tasking?...sorry.Today, it is also the period when the class is agog. Apparently, Dike Uzochukwu got into a fight with Ahmed Tombe. If
My phone buzzes in my blazer jacket by 4:30 sharp after closing assembly. I know it isn't Daddy even before i pick the phone.When you've lived with someone your whole life you tend to adapt to their habits. Dad's chronic ailment is tardiness. He can't be here so early.I am right, it isn't him. It's Aunty Seedy's silk-thin voice that's at the other end of the line. She told me that she's waiting at the parking lot.I see her truck minutes before i get there. Aunty Seedy's hillocks is like its owner– titanic, imposing and more than a little intimidating...up until it starts making sounds.That car practically purrs." How are you"I smile " Aunty, good evening"Does that mean that Aunty seedy makes me all teeth and cheeks: Y. E. SOther than the fact that she was my babysitter when i was little–she's practically my mother–the one kismet tried to rob me of.She makes the best meals and the ho
His sketches look like anime characters.Fun fact: they are supposed to be Nigerians.The last pages of boy-girl's books are covered in them– layers upon layers of drawings. It's some kind of figure-drawing collage.He should be in an art school, he's really good.He made them into a comic strip. DEITY– he called it, and the protagonist's name is Echinabia, and he acts like a bum. All muscles and no sense.His notes are complete though, written in perfect, elegant calligraphy. It probably took him ages to pen these notes down.They smell of musk and a little like baby powder. I spend half my study time trying to imitate his looped handwriting.
Grass. Freshly cut grass. That is what she smells like. Freshly cut grass after a drizzle. I could feel it deep inside my nostrils.My notes are covered in its crisp, nose-prickling, earthy scent. It's like newness— blessed freshness from an olive branch.It is better than any scent, better than any fragrance, better than any perfume Daddy ever bought. And trust me, that is something. His perfumes come in giant metallic boxes of varying colours, and they always— always have the aroma of heaven.Before i go to bed i spray the insides of my bag with Daddy's cologne.
TuesdaysTuesday: the best day to be a student at L.F.A.Tuesday is the one day in the whole week we get to go out to the sun.The horizon is a peak of clear blue with sheets of white for clouds. So far up south-south you wouldn't think the sun could shine like this, in glittering gold-dust tendrils of light.Green; rows and rows of translucent green cover the field's perimeter, resplendent beads of water dot their fringes. Queen's greenery ran a marathon round the school, like an over-sized lawn at a giant's, it touched every patio, every block, every front door. Lorita and i used to lie in the grass at school behind the tuck-shop, when it just got mowed.It's always like breathing in sea-salt in a forest, all rolled up in a drop of sunlight. Lorita and i usually had splotches of dark green on our uniforms after. It was worth it.There's a small crowd around the field, and an even smaller crowd inside it; boy
When i get back from V.p's office, where i went for a new set of markers, the class is like a coven. Which, i must admit, is expected.I can hear them three classes away, even SS1 can't boast of the level of noise pollution we manage to stew. It's a God-given gift, unmatchable. Being an L.F.A alumnus is like living with Mili militia addicts. At some point you get used to the sound of gunfire and bazookas slicing the air.NB: I despise that game, from the depths, of the depths, of the depths of my faulty heart.She actually smiles at me when i walk to our seat. She, being Chimamanda. I cant' think of anyone else in this hall being that ' she'.Maybe's because i have spent so much of my time with everybody else they have lost their allure.Maybe i'm just being stupid, like with Celine. Maybe it's because she's hot– it's virtually impossible to unsee the looks and stares, even Juniors can't not notice her.Or maybe i really li