The Monday, After: Chideziri POV

Mumsi is back from work.

The house smells of soup, stockfish, and something i can't place–thyme, curry....or whatever. 

FYI, I am not big on cooking. I do much better wolfing down what has been cooked.

 Still, there's nothing like the aroma of food welcoming a man home after a long day at the battlefield. Yes, i am a warlock, come from the northern pass, great war axe in hand, gore dripping from my steel gauntlet. 

Sorry, i'm with you again, but you get the idea.

I have a pro-active imagination. It gets the better of me sometimes. Did i ever tell you i have been a huntsman, a dragon rider, a Casanova on miami beach, Aragon from lord of the rings before?...i guess i didn't.

I shrug off my school bag from my shoulders and fling it by its strap into my room and onto my bed on my way past. Correction there–my and Tobi's room. 

Yes, you heard me right. I share a room with my maniac of a brother, and between being slugged with a pillow, continuously assailed by ribald jokes and suffocated by polluted air on numerous tortuous occasions, i am doing just fine. Thanks for your concern.

I lumber toward the dining, pulling at my annoying tie that seems to have re-doubled its effort to strangle me just seconds away from salvation.

" Didi! Is that you?", mumsi calls from the kitchen.

Duh, its always me, your ever-present-loving-second-male-child. I don't say that out loud though, i still have crystal clear memories of getting my self canned from three years ago, besides i always hated " duh";it sounds artificial, sassy. And i do not like artificial or sassy.

But yes, apart from the fact that mumsi calls out that same question every evening when i walk in; it is me, and I'm not annoyed; just saying.

" Eh, Mummy, it's me oh", i answer,as i stroll into the kitchen.

" You are done early today", she says, she is in the middle of slicing deep green leafy Ugu vegetables on the chopping board.

It is one of those rare occasions where NEPA decides to grace us with their awe evoking presence. The bulb in the kitchen is a bright yellow flame that glints off all the corners of the white washed walls of the kitchen. Her face has that relaxed look to it when she is happy, not really a full smile, but like the beginning of one. When i come in, there are tiny pieces of shredded vegetable on her fingers. She flicks them off her hands onto the tray under the chopping board.

"Didi-didi, welcome."

"What did you learn today" she asks, her eyes fixated on what she is doing. Apparently, checking up on my on academics as though i am in crèche is a 20th century adult thing.

"Biology, agric, literature, english," i tick off my fingers, "and maths." i say, barely concealing my loathing for the subject in my voice.

If mumsi notices she does not say it. Her face is a soft brown that is almost caramel and there are age lines on the sides of her mouth, two hills of smooth flesh carved into the sides of her face like crevices in a mountain. The glossy light of the bulb dances on her, lighting up half of her profile like paint. 

" Nna'm, i am making hot vegetable soup, the type you used to like" she says, her hands are both pointed toward me, each folded into a thumbs up.

"Mmmmmmm" i breathe in when she raises the pot lid, savoring the aroma, mostly for her sake, and mostly because there is no one i like particularly. My taste buds are not that smart. I love all her soup varieties, even the ones i really can't put a name to.

" Oya go and turn that eba in the bowl", she says, her hands scrape the remnants of the ugu off the board with the knife.

This is the part i hate most. To be frank with you, rather to be Chidi with  you: this is the only part i hate.

Because–

# 1: i can't turn garri to save my life.

I end up with ragged lumps of eba half-way up the garri turner and the other half up to my elbow. Okay that's an exaggeration, the other half sticking to my fingers.

# 2: Where in hell is Tobi when you need him, this is his sacred duty, his talent, his God-calling. Tobi can flip a bowl of garri into the air and turn it into a smooth mould before it hits the ground. Okay i am exaggerating again.

Hyperbole just happens to be my favorite figure of speech of choice.

# 3: I AM JUST RETURNING FROM WAGING WARFARE!....em waging school, being in school....hell.

Let's get this over with.....

The eba turns out just fine though.

*

Our room smells like old and damp. That's probably because the walls are soaked, through-and-through. It happens every year, in the rainy season when the weather becomes too cold and the air becomes moist and almost too weighty to breathe–water seeps into the walls and the little white paint still clinging onto the wall for dear life starts peeling away– the tragedies of an old, old, old house.

 I sit on the floor, and lean back against the cool damp of the wall. My Tecno pop2 is plugged into the socket on the wall my side is facing, it only makes sense that my gorgeous dark skinned babe should sit next to me. I got her two months ago, at an exorbitant price, after saving for two terms and another, and Tobi still had to haggle for me and bro-guilt his friend into selling. She is a 'second hand buy'–scratch that, she was a second hand buy; but she was totally worth it.

 I mean just look at her lascivious body. 

Forgive the personification and over-zealousness. But you should see her.

The lush red of the rug massage the sole of my foot, electrifying and soothing at the same time. The distant sound of rain rattling again the glass face of the windows is a unsteady roar that stretches into perpetuity. 

I try to make myself forget about my biology assignment due tomorrow, Mrs Edua said to make a note on adaptation. A whole note! 

 Talk about a nightmare in broad daylight.

 Homework: one school activity i would really love to use my pass card.

But i really, really have to pass the subject–and that means doing the non-sense assignment. I let my mind drift, for a second, to nicer thoughts–straight to the new girl. I can bet my soul that she was the one from church. They have the same small pinkish lips and light trapping skin

"Or you are just a day dreaming goat." Deziri whispers.

Except that this one is real-er. She chews at her lower lip unconsciously and stares at her hands a little too much, as if she is trying to uncover some cryptic mystery about them. Her hair is a lustrous jet black that coils down her neck past her head to her nape in a plait of cornrows.

Something smooth and fluffy connects hard with my head, surprisingly so for something so soft. I was so lost thinking about a girl's skin that i didn't hear my heavy-footed brother enter the room. And he is obviously enjoying it, because there is a mammoth sized grin on his stupid face. I ache to wipe that look of his face, but not today, not with my stomach so full of eba. Instead i groan loudly.

Then i look at.....really look at him. He is soaking wet....so wet that he is dripping water....on the rug!!

Now, i groan.

"Oga, wetin dey do you na!"

He looks at me like he is just noticing i am an idiot. Don't bother, i am not hurting. I have had all my life to get used to that look.

"You are soaking the rug, this place will now start smelling like you!"

He smirks.

And to his credit, he takes off his rain soaked shoes–ony to haul them–soaked, sandy, smelly soles and all, out the door into the corridor.

Yep, that's Tobi, and yes, i share a room with a one-man-pigsty.

"What were you thinking of that you didn't hear me call you"

"My wife and children." i say immediately.

It is an inside joke from back then. Mumsi would catch you brooding and ask if you are thinking of your wife and many children. It was her subtle way of saying that we really didn't have any real problems, and oh, how often she not-so-subtlely reminds us.

But Mumsi is Mumsi, and Tobi is Tobi. He won't let it go just yet.

"Ehen, i have been meaning to ask you–how is my inlaw and your fifteen children?"

I give him that Let-thunder-not-fire-you-look.

"It's only you that will do fifteen children."

He laughs.

"So you don't want to expand the Obiatu family, you don't want to follow the Lord's sacred commandment."

"Which kind yeye commandment be that."

Tobi spreads his arms dramatically, like a spirit-touched-preacher on the pulpit welcoming 'sinners into the flock'. 

"Go ye into the world and multiply." He says, grinning triumphantly.

If you are me, you would understand that smug look. I am shocked that Tobi knows a word of the Bible.

I scoff "It's not me and you, abeg. " i rub my throbbing skull to settle the reverberations of that blow.

"You don chow?" It sounds more like a statement than a question. I have been expecting it though.

With Tobi, no matter its shape colour or size, food can not go wrong. Rather food can not go–that is if you don't want him raiding the kitchen, like some crazed Abam warrior.

"Eh, eba and vegetable soup," i say matter-of-factly

"Is there any left for me?"

 I construct my best perplexed face, all set for the theatrics that are about to follow. 

"No oh, we didn't know you were coming back home."

Tobi eyes widen. He stops in his tracks.

"But i called your Mother now" he does that sometimes, refers to Mumsi as my mother, as if she didn't also have to eject his big lumpy skull.

I shrug helplessly " i didn't know."

" That is," he says, finally putting two-and-two together "you people finished everything" he moves his arms like a butcher sharpening two blades against each other.

I want to laugh. Now, there is tobi, for real this time. No sarcasm intended.

 My brother, still dressed in his wet cotton-white sweater soaked in rain water, teeth-chattering with cold, and all he can think about is his stomach. His elastic stomach.

Tobi can eat a house down and not add one, single, small, tiny extra pound. I remember when i first read Hansel and Gretel, and i imagined that it was Tobi and i that found that food-covered house in the forest (or woods, as they called it; me trying to sound schooled here). Problem is, i couldn't imagine further because i bursted into laughter.

Tobi would have eaten that place down before the witch noticed. She would have woken up to an empty field where her house once was.

I let him off the hook "Oga, your food is inside the cooler in the kitchen, abeg, before you will faint here."

If it is possible, a semblance of colour returned to Tobi's heartsick face, then he is looking at me as if i just grew hell-boy horns and dragon wings.

" Wicked boy," he mutters

This time i am the one smirking. Tobi shook his head, and lumbered out, in the direction of the kitchen–obviously. He leaves foot-prints on the rug in shining crimson.

I lean into the cold wall and the sound of the rain again. It is so close i can hear its song, like an ill worded lullaby, it patters me into subconsciousness until i am floating everywhere and somewhere.

Everywhere but here, lost safely to the heart beat of the rain.