Someone should as well come up to me and ask: Any last words?. Because i am a zombie, walking dead. A meat suit on two feet if Daddy catches me. Catches us. I jerk him into the sitting room by a handful of his dress shirt and shut the door behind us, quickly.
"Amanda, slow down first. What's happening?" He asks.
How about "my Dad is going to murder us".
I shush him and pull him by his hand past the sitting room, past the black glass dining table we don't eat at, through the passage and....into my room. I have been doing that a lot lately, dragging him around, I mean. In this scenario, it is absolutely necessary. We enter my room and I close and bolt the door, panicking myself shitless. A thrill runs through me, climbs up my tummy and evaporates into my chest in a shiver. There are beads of sweat under my arms, uncomfortable, like shards of glass, and the butterflies in my stomach are flying around my insides like mad. I would recognize the feel
The voice beyond the chestnut brown door reverberates with the same sonorously sweet huskiness I fell for a month ago. Still, it is different, more controlled. It is like steam; tepid and everywhere. If Amanda's voice had feet and it could on walk on water, this is exactly what its footsteps would sound like."This is the eyeglass from the clinic. Try them on a d check if it improved anything. Remember to take the drugs we bought. Two in the morning. Two at night. Okay?". She doesn't reply immediately, and although she says "Yes Daddy" sweetly after half a second, I smell the terseness in that nanosecond, amplified and velvety, and it eroded the silence into a chasmic void. Next, i hear the slap of shuffling foot, going in the opposite direction, away from my position. I hear her barefoot sweep against the face of the tiles when she steps back to shut the door. Then the slapping sound stops, and returns to the door. My head is on fire, and I am wondering how he saw me,
The beguiling fear passes soon enough, and with it, the urgency in my thighs that made me imagine i was about to wee on myself. It would have been a disaster if Dad saw Chideziri. I swear."Were you sick? Is that why you didn't come to school?". I look down at the paper bag in my hand, Thelma's eye clinic is scrawled over it in bold Sanserif, at my phone, at the shiny Teddy bear ears on its pouch shimmering like its saying "did you miss me?"."No," I say. I sound calmer than I should be. "My Dad caught me coming back from the party and....as you can imagine, he was properly pissed," Chideziri grimaces at the thought. It makes me want to laugh."He seized my phone and made me stay at home through out yesterday and today. And Viola! here I am." I shrug."I'm sorry I got you into that mess" he says, looking doleful. I've noticed he has a habit of saying he's sorry for things he didn't do; things he has no control over. We are st
Democritus, this old philosopher of the classical era propounded the Atomist theory. He argued that everything there was that existed on our dew washed dune of a planet was formed primarily by a rare convergence of atoms. He believed that these atoms where colourless, transparent bodies of varying shapes and sizes and weights; the purest of which were made up of fire. People didn't believe him. They didn't believe him the same way they didn't believe Leonardo Da vinci who imagined men could one day fly.After Amanda's exploring fingers have ignited a sure trail of wild fire in every fibre of my being, I feel inclined to believe Democritus. Her kisses are feathery like a brush of paint against a canvas, yet each one burns. Between my eyes, at the slim drawbridge of my nose. Tenderly on the valley between my nostrils and upper lip. On my lips. My eyelids seem to have lost the power to unseal themselves. They tilt and flutter and quiver, and the only thing in sight is the
AMANDAIt is late evening when I ask Dad for a pen, when he goes into his bedroom to sort out one of the fancy biros he stashed in the lower drawer of his reading desk. I sneaked Chideziri, quickly, into the kitchen and out, to the back of the house through the pantry door. Though he didn't seem a tad worried about my Dad smelling him out, I hurried him anyway, but I made him wait for me at the gate. I think of how we watched the twilight born together, saw it fall asleep, slowly, leaving a map of scintillating pink, orange, red and yellow continents stretched across the worn out sky. We talked about everything, and nothing. Movies and books and songs, and wondered why another person could tickle you but you couldn't do so if you tried your hardest. We talked about poetry and lyrics, our favourite places in the world, and tattoos. When he asked me if I would like to have a tattoo, i said "yes", and I told him it would be at my hip—a giant bitumen-black butterfly—t
It's past six when I get home. The house is as quiet as it always is. Only the rustling of the crawling plants at the fence can be heard. Daddy is at his usual spot, cuddled between the two ends of the long couch. He eyes me vehemently but doesn't say a word. For that I am gateful. He grunts in answer after I have greeted him, then goes back to listening to the news at six on his trusty radio, eyes closed, blissed out. He nearly looks peaceful, I swear. I had already braced myself for the tirade, so when it didn't come it is replaced by a suprised soothing relief. I ambled into my room as fast as fast goes and shut the door before he can change his mind. That night, I do not soak my clothes in a bucket of detergent water and wash it off in the bathroom how I normally do. I set it u on the nail on which I hang my backpack and I breathe the underlying perfume of clean grass shimmering above the spicy smell of use. Amanda on me. Perfection in itself.There was no electrici
Daddy took me to school in the morning, himself. We drove in silence, he staring at the wheel, me staring out the window. When we drove past Elimgbu junction, I thought about the crossroads the four-way junction had created. One time, Dad told me that back then in the village, some people who believe in one deity or the other would go to a junction that is a crossroads and makes sacrifices there. He told me how he would see cowries and red brown blood on the coal tar when went out for water—some times even a dead chicken or two in the middle of the road. He told me how he saw that bizzare sight so many times that he became used to it. His face contorted into a grimace when he said it and i knew he was thinking about all those wasted birds that someone could have eaten and been satisfied with. I thought of them, too. Although I had never seen such—i still have not—i was angry at them, whoever they were, for all that wastage. Whie zooming past that spot, I imagined s
It's past six when I get home. The house is as quiet as it always is. Only the rustling of the crawling plants at the fence can be heard. Daddy is at his usual spot, cuddled between the two ends of the long couch. He eyes me vehemently but doesn't say a word. For that I am grateful. He grunts in answer after I have greeted him, then goes back to listening to the news at six on his trusty radio, eyes closed, blissed out. He nearly looks peaceful, I swear. I had already braced myself for the tirade, so when it didn't come, fear is replaced by a suprised soothing relief. I ambled into my room as fast as fast goes and shut the door before he can change his mind. That night, I do not soak my clothes in a bucket of detergent water and wash it off in the bathroom how I normally do. I set it on the nail on which I hang my backpack and I breathe the underlying perfume of clean grass shimmering above the spicy smell of use. Amanda on me. Perfection in itself.
Daddy took me to school in the morning, himself. We drove in silence, he staring at the wheel, me staring out the window. When we drove past Elimgbu junction, I thought about the crossroads the four-way junction had created. One time, Dad told me that back then in the village, some people who believe in one deity or the other would go to a junction that doubles as a crossroads and they would make sacrifices there. He told me how he saw cowries and red brown blood on the coal tar when he went out for water—some times even a dead chicken or two in the middle of the road. He told me how he glimpsed that bizzare sight so many times that he became used to it. Still, His face contorted into a grimace when he said it and i knew he was thinking about all those wasted birds that someone could have eaten and been satisfied with. I thought of them, too. Although I had never seen such—i still have not—i was angry at them, whoever they were, for all that wastage.While zooming past t