It was that time of the year. When the cement floor and the yellow walls with imprints of coloured fingers felt moist. When the sun flirted for a few minutes at midday before darting behind an unseeing cloud. When we wore wool that swallowed us whole, socks so thick we couldn’t feel the wet floor.
We spent hours under an old blanket on the water bed, dragging feet against leg, giggling, and telling ghost stories with implausible paradigms, and crude jokes when we ran out of tales. The bawdier, the better. You told me of the Yoruba widow and the Tiv priest. I laughed long and loud until the space between my eyes hurt, though I did not understand the joke and I didn’t want you to know. I stopped laughing because you began staring at the wall. Not at the wall, but through the wall. Into a space I could never occupy but could glimpse through the brown of your eyes.
You felt my palm, sliding fingers in between mine and when I giggled at the sensation, you stuck your tongue in my ear. I shrieked, sitting up. You looked blank and I quietened.
We dieted on leftover beans. We didn’t reheat it properly, so it gave a foul taste and we took turns using the toilet as our distended stomachs rioted.
You ran your fingers through my hair, chuckling at the short curls that turned to isolated little knots and gave blistering migraines when I comb them without applying oil. You parted my hair using a green afro with half its teeth missing. Then you made tiny balls you called tomatoes, rubbed Shea butter on the exposed scalp, and peppered my hair with kisses. Pressing your lips to my forehead, you left a whisper of saliva, and said “O Maka.” It’s beautiful. I requested to do yours but you shook your head. “You will cut it tomorrow,” you said. So I settled for tracing your cornrows, drawing the thick ends straight against your back to see how long your hair was.
You didn’t need extensions to look like the women on TV. But you made only one hairstyle: all back. When I told you that the girls at school said they would make elaborate plaits if they had your hair, you laughed. Your lips curled at the ends and your cheeks dimpled. You found inane things funny: like the width of my nose and how I call your name. So when you laughed, and I laughed along, you laughed some more, holding my arm to keep upright. Sometimes, I stood still, waiting for you to pull away. Wondering if like me, your insides felt feathery-light as your fingers brushed the hairs on my arm.
I tried not to think of the big clock at the reading table: of the seconds that bled into minutes and then into nothingness. I tried not to think of how pointless everything was.
We waited at the veranda for your mother. At the last moment, you poked my stomach. “Don’t eat any more beans without me.” Then gave a jaunty salute and jogged down the steps into your mother’s Corolla, a 2022 XLE with advanced safety locks. She bought it after you jumped from a moving car. They upped your medications after that. You said it made you forget things. Perhaps that is why you didn’t send me a birthday card or tell me that you were going to a special home where the nurses made people like you swallow white pills.
You stuck your head out the window as the car reversed singing Bella ciao. The wind made your soprano shaky but your eyes were clear as day.
O maka.