We settle in at a Mr Bigg’s.
Our village is merely thirty minutes away and our home is some ten minutes away. A journey of bumpy granite roads and then the smooth tarmac of town. We came to this particular Mr Bigg’s a lot when we were younger. The other Mr Bigg’s we used to go to, has since closed down and this one was in a state of decline.
It is almost full. There is a girl with a boy I assume to be her boyfriend. She is settled on his lap with her phone out while she makes videos. Her hair is cut short at the temples and slightly bushy at the top. At another table, a mother is ignoring her crying toddler, her attention instead on her younger child in her arms. A man I presume is the father watches the toddler uneasily. There is the incessant chatter of people who had come to eat rice and meat pie and ice cream.
I stare at somto. He holds his spoon the way he holds a steering wheel; he never really learnt how to hold a spoon properly. He picks up a spoon from his rice then he places it back. He has barely eaten since we came.
I ask Somto then, “Are you alright?”
He stares at me blankly, “How can I be alright?”
It was me who had driven us here which is something because Somto barely lets me drive when it’s just two of us.
Our father had said to us some few minutes ago, “You can start going now, I’ll meet you boys at home.”
Somto nodded. He led the way to the car, he is older than I am. He had offered our father that we stay but our father had declined, I suspect I was not the only one glad at this.
It’s a nice change of scene here. My mother had just been put in the ground and it had been a hectic day. First, the village church had talked about dues we had not known existed and then the Umuada had also made a complaint I wasn’t quite sure was about.
My father had cursed in quick successions under his breath, something he only did when he was frustrated with something.
At where the car was packed, I had asked, “Somto, maybe I should drive?”
He said nothing to me, barely threw the keys at me and then walked meekly to the other side of the car while I moved over to the driver’s side.
When I had asked before we stopped at Mr Biggs, if he would like to get something to eat, he nodded. I took the turn at the junction towards the Mr Biggs close to the large market. Truth is, I did not want to go home, at least not yet. I worry home will never quite be the same again, that a sort of emptiness fills up where something. I remember being little and being expectant for any parent still out to return at night. Then after we were all complete, we would lock the door and it would be just the four of us. That is the easiest I could come to explaining this loss.
I was the one our father called to inform us that our mother had died. He asked, “What of Somto? I’ve been trying his line since, it’s not going.”
“I’ll go check him,” I said. Our school was still in session and Somto and I lived at different residences, something that had to do with our conflicting personalities when put in one place. He was outgoing, had more friends, needed people to be himself. I on the other hand preferred to be alone.
“Any problem?” I had asked. Since the last relapse of my mother’s cancer, all calls from home began with, ‘Any problem?’
“Your mother just died.”
He said it. There are no other ways to describe it other than he said.
I was silent. I had expected this call, dreaded it, wished it away.
“Are you there?” My father asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Is it possible for you to tell your brother this night?”
“Yea, sure.” He lived just down the street.
“Okay, then. I’ll talk to you guys later.” The line went off.
I packed a bag; a change of clothes, books that I wouldn’t read, my phone and Earpiece and a torchlight.
The entire way to Somto’s place, I kept wishing there was no one there, not one of his numerous friends or a girl so that I could break the news just between us.
When I got to his room, the door was unlocked and inside was lit with the blue bulb Somto liked to leave on when he had a girl over or he wanted to sleep.
A friend was by the reading table and he was conversing with Somto whose voice I could hear from the kitchen.
I shook hands with the friend.
“Who be that?” Somto asked from the kitchen.
The friend and I spoke at the same time; “Na your bros.” “It’s me.”
Somto appeared from the kitchen in a tee shirt and a knicker. He wiped his hands on his knicker then asked, “How far Goli? Are you sleeping here tonight?”
“Um, yea,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. It was not usual that I slept at his place but that was not what his question was about. He would tell me later that he knew something was wrong immediately he saw me.
“I came to tell you something,” I said after much of an effort to speak. I turned to the friend.
The friend got the cue. He turned from me to Somto and said, “Alright now guy, later.” He shook hands with Somto, then me. Then he left.
Somto’s attention was on me when as soon as the guy was gone. “What is it Golibe?”
“Daddy said he has been trying to reach you for some time now…”
“Yea, my network has been having issues,” he interrupted. He was apprehensive now.
“It’s about Mummy,” I said finally. “She died this evening.”
“Jesus,” he left out silently. He continued staring at me wide-eyed until large drops of tears fell from his eyes. “God, no. Fuck! Jesus!” he fell to his knees.
Seeing Somto cry was enough to make me cry and soon my legs were too weak to carry my weight anymore so I rested on the bed.
Somto’s cry, as with everything he did with his life, was more vocal than mine was. He let out, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” then, “God, no, no, no. What the fuck?” I was jealous of this, jealous that I couldn’t vocalize what was bottled up inside of me. Especially as I was closer to our mother than Somto was. On the other hand, Somto was closer to our father. They were both the loud ones, the ones that had the most stories and because this was not really a fit, Somto had evolved to more of a listener than a storyteller to our father. Then there was our mother and me. She wasn’t the social person that my father was. She was more of the listener, the problem solver. In primary school, after she listened to whatever exciting adventure Somto had taken part in, she listened to my quiet account of the day. She told me things as though I was an adult and this made me feel very important. I followed her everywhere, in the kitchen while she cooked, I watched her delicately slice up vegetables. In the bathroom, while she bathed, I waited patiently outside the door. When the cancer had returned, it was me she confided that she was scared of dying and I had felt helpless that I couldn’t save her.
Later, Somto asked me to call our father.
Inbetween sniffling and cleaning my nose, I dialled Daddy’s number and then placed the phone on my ears waiting as it rang. After I heard my Father’s gruff, ‘Hello?” I passed the phone to Somto.
“Hello Sir,” he began. “Yea. He told me”- “When did it happen?”- “Yes, thank you… he’s alright, he’s here with me.” He reached across and rubbed my back. “Thank you… thank you… Alright, later.” He passed the phone to me then collapsed into my embrace weeping. “I spoke to her this morning,” he was saying. “I spoke to her this morning!”
Prior to her death, we never really spoke about my mother’s dying because Somto was so boisterously optimistic, there wasn’t room for any other kind of feelings. He said, even after the Doctors had said things were getting worse, “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. I just know.” And so I felt guilty for having other thoughts, for thinking at the back of my mind that she wouldn’t make it, for crying in front of her when I thought she would die and having her console me even though it was supposed to be the other way round.
I don’t know when I slept that night but when I woke early that morning, it was still dark outside and Somto was sitting silently by his desk. He was not crying but his eyes were a swollen red.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked. He said nothing.
Later that morning, when everywhere was brighter and he was replying messages on his WhatsApp, I asked what we would eat that morning.
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “But there should be indomie in the kitchen if you want.”
I went ahead ordered rice for both of us with a dispatch. When it arrived, we played around with the food for some time but did not eat much.
He told me his friends were coming.
I asked how come they had heard.
He said It must have been from home.
I said I needed to leave because I did not want to have to meet a bunch of people.
He reminded me that Daddy wanted us to be back by afternoon so I keep that in mind.
When I left, it was still foggy outside.
We are talking now about the burial. Somto hasn’t eaten much from his food and my entire tube of ice cream had dissolved into a soggy cream that I ate slowly.
He tells me the time he went to the back, he caught one of our kinswomen throwing something over the fence and she was spooked when she saw him.
“What did you think it was?” I ask.
“Maybe meat, you never know with this people,” he says.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he says. “What do you want me to do? Plus, shebi they helped with the cooking too?”
I tell him now that a man from church had come to meet me and report that he hadn’t gotten food.
“Seriously?” he asks. “Damn. That’s fucked. Those people can be so annoying.” Those people were our village people and the possible reason for my villain origin story. First, it was the demands from the church, then the Umuada, then the youths. All that had to be met before my mother’s body could be buried in our ancestral compound.
It was Aunty Agnes that helped with most of the organization. Aunt Agnes was my father’s cousin and his elder by at least twelve years. She said it was she who looked after him when his mother went off to the farm. She never married and she never left the village. She became our makeshift grandmother since my father’s mother died a few years after I was born.
It was Agnes who did most of the running around, calling my father to ask for money to pay for such and such, to buy such and such.
I tell Somto now that I do not believe in the ‘Serenren’ attached to Igbo burials. That I wouldn’t mind being bundled up in a raffia mat and thrown into this ground.
He shakes his head and smiles. “That is what you think. But I think the rites are important. To show that you lived at least. It’s just the whole monetary aspect that I am against.”
He says I would change my mind and even though I don’t believe him, I don’t argue.
I want to tell him that all the while we sat with Agnes, I kept thinking about how Agnes was a common illiterate and how our mother had a PhD from the University of London, how it would make more sense if Agnes had been the one that died and Mummy had lived. How I was ashamed of this train of thought but couldn’t shake off the thought that there were people who I could argue were less worthy to live than our mother. I want to tell him that some nights, I wake up with a dulling ache and find that I had not been breathing. I want to tell him a lot of things but instead, I tell him I’m jealous of him.
He smiles and asks why so?
I shake my head and say nothing.
His departmental mates had attended the burial. I wouldn’t have invited mine but Somto was too popular in school that everyone knew our mother had died and he told me it’d be somehow if I disinvited people that tried to show care.
I would have preferred it to be just the people that mattered; the immediate family, Mummy’s sisters, a few cousins. Instead, I had to occasionally leave the canopy where Somto and I sat with Aunty Agnes to check on my coursemates, stand in front of them awkwardly and ask if they needed anything because I had seen Somto do the same. Before they left, he came over to their canopy and had a word with them in such a socially competent manner, I was embarrassed.
I study Somto’s face. He’s staring at something behind me. I turn back and notice nothing out of place.
“It’s nothing,” he says when I turn back to face him. “it’s just the board where the logo is, isn’t exactly at the middle.”
I turn again and stare at what he’s talking about. He’s right. It is a particular tic of his, checking if door frames are aligned to the windows in a room, if the ceiling of a place has sharp edges. He had once disqualified a hostel for having an asymmetrical problem I do not remember which now. But I remember him complaining that he simply wouldn’t be able to get it off his mind if he lived there.
We discuss the board for a bit, I make a suggestion and he nods reflectively. He is almost always in awe of what I know.
Our conversation morphs from the board to the newer hostels in school that are being built with very little space but had exorbitant rent. We talk about our friends (mostly his friends) and finally, our conversation fizzles out and we bask in the silence of our company.
It’s getting darker outside. Most of the people we had met here have since left.
We are not ready to go just yet. I stretch my legs. I’m scared of home just yet and Somto’s face reflects my worry.
