Nothing rivals a kiss from your favourite person in the whole wide world.
Nothing in the whole wide world rivals a kiss from your favourite person when you need it most. Nothing at all, G.
My eyes are closed, lightly, shut automatically the moment she kissed me. She lingers a second. A second long enough to make me want to depend on her more.
When she lets go, i open my eyes and the sun has dipped further into the water.
But it is still bright out here.
"Every time we are alone, this kind of thing happens," she says, quietly.
"And whose fault is it?" I joke.
"Yours." she intones, not missing a heart beat.
A Classic case of Amanda. I chuckle to myself.
"Thank you though," I say. "For coming to get me. I needed this.".
"Whenever," she answers, focused on the bear paw imprints on my shirt. Out of all times to be bashful.
I steal a kiss.
Afterwards, we sit on the jetty and listen to Teni's Wait on my earphones. One bud is his ear, one in mine. Honestly, I never, ever, enjoyed a song with one earbud. I still don't, but I like the sharing part. I wonder how Patoranking and Lil Kesh's is it because I love you will sound if I listen to it like this. It used to be my favourite song. I wonder about the mangrove tree near the jetty, its thick twisted roots growing into the river bank, I wonder how long it has stood there, watching silently. I wonder about the straight line of black ants marching up its torso carrying fresh green dicot leaves.But I don't let myself drift very far away. I am sitting next to him, being here, whilst wondering about the world. Living it, breathing it, wondering about it. Oddly, it is not so bad to sit and watch for a second, like the tree.I don't know when I start humming, humming to the next song on my playlist."Please stop," Chideziri begs. "Please."
By the time darkness falls we have left the riverbank.The ends of my knickerbocker are still wet and they are cold, plastered to my knees.Amanda stopped us at the suya shop I'm front of the store. The suya man was busy arranging and rearranging the heap of meat stock piled on his table, a thickset man with too prominent a Hausa accent. He called her "Aunty", in that sly way traders do, even though he looks twice both our ages combined.He said, "Ah, aunty welcome. E don tey since I see you.".I got the feeling that she often stops by. I never thought of her as a carnivore. But we learn every day. I told her that, and she laughed, while pointing out the bloody red pieces of meat she wanted from the pile. When he had finished grilling the skewed meat over the improvised barbeque, he chopped onions and cabbage, with expert precision, added it to the mix and then rolled it up in old newspapers.Amanda said.
I close my eyes as I think of the sound of a popular Nigerian music in my head. The beat is steady and I can feel my eardrums vibrate to the sound of its intensity which tries to draw me apart. I try not to think of the music but I can't stop myself from enjoying its lovely taste.It takes a while before I realize that the sound I hear in my ears is not the sound of a popular Nigerian music but the sound of my own voice, warning me to pay attention carefully and always follow my heart. I rest my head on the bed and before I can recognize the sound in my head, I fall asleep.
It rains mad heavy all night. It is still raining by the time dawn ascends the horizon. I saw it all, from black to gray, then dark blue and later translucent turquoise; because after undoing my braids which were damp with rain and river water, and drying them as best as I could, I stayed up through out the night, texting Chideziri.It has been said once, that the best conversations happen around two-thirty a.m, when eyelids are drooping, when words are sincerest, and the awkward silences are not awkward at all.Amanda: ......Chideziri: Ikuku afaAmanda: What?! (Laughing emoji)Chideziri: Have you gotten home yet?Amanda: Don't try to change to the subject (finger pointing up emoji). What is that?Chideziri: Ikuku? (Grinning emoji) it means wind.Amanda: ??Chideziri: You run quite fast, like a petty thief.Amand
Tobi wakes me up Sunday afternoon with a toe in my side. It's barely still bright outside and there's a small drizzle falling.NEPA finally decided to show up after going AWOL on Friday night, when this three-day long drizzle started. That's the thing I hate about October; when it wants to rain it rains rhinos and elephants, maybe even a little bit of monkey, the entire menagerie in fact.I tumble out of the sheets—they smell like spice and use and unwashness—to plug my phone to the adapter on the wall socket. It was where I had left it before I fell asleep—drowned by the cream waves of my tousled bed sheets.Tobi doesn't strip down, even though he is half drenched. He is still in that his brown and black 50-over-50 woven sweatshirt with orange stripes at its shoulder, that makes him resemble a homeless person. His hair is in a disarray, in small tight curls like locks. It adds more realism to the homeless-
There are two Chideziris in the shop at once.It is the kind of thing you see in a movie, very much like that scene in Divergent where Tris went up against herself. Only this time one Chideziri is fair, as luminous yellow as the sixty-watt light bulb, and far more muscled, equipped with mountainous shoulders and a big mouth to go along. He has said like a thousand words within the five seconds I have been in here. He is also the Chideziri that's braiding my hair.After Saturday night, after I came in from the downpour and I couldn't blow-dry and re-braid my hair altogether before Monday, after Aunty Seedy called to tell me she couldn't come around because of a family meeting she had to attend (she still links up with her exes family. Don't ask me why. Of an inkling I have none), Dad decided to bring me to a saloon–the saloon, he said. He said he had a classmate in town who owns a saloon at Elimgbu. He just didn't tell me that that 'friend' was Chidezi
It ts that day Celine undid her buttons, all over again. I am so not amused.Tobi's hands move swiftly in her mane, yet softly, with greater care now. There's a bit of Apple on his arm and he slicks some onto his fingers every now and then.He leans towards her ear and says something I can't hear. She giggles. I catch fire.It's that bloody day all over again. Somebody hit the restart button on the DvD plate; it is only different now because she's my girl, and he's my brother—it is a measure more obnoxious. When he finishes, her hair is tapered down her nape in crooked lines, her forehead sleek with oil. She looks something fierce. She examines the hairdo in the mirror and smiles. Her full cheeks blossom and I am reacquainted to the lush sugar of her face.I know this Amanda, I think.I know this Amanda that smiles at people she does not know and plays with the tail of her braid, I think.Later
Fridays in October always start off as cool days. Often, they stay that way till tired Saturaday mornings arrived. Or they don't. At times, they melt slowly into afternoons hot enough to deep fry a chicken, so damp and itchily lukewarm that you want to shed your skin, exit, stray away from your body, just leave. On top of that our class has no fan. There is a single bulb, fluorescent, yet I felt as though half the heat in the square is a product of its emissions.Weeks go by faster when you are happy. It was only yesterday I was in blazers and skirts braving an early morning rain to get to school. Small nescafe ponds of water carpeted the estate's dirt roads and each time the car's tyre hit one, it sunk, sprayed water on unsuspecting passers-by. One woman, an old lady in a hijab cursed the loudest. Dad muttered a sheepish sorry that she wouldn't have heard even if the windows were rolled all the way down; they were not. Then I go to bed on an unceremonious