JEFF UNAEGBU: A STORY FROM MY CHILDHOOD DIARY (Consolation Prize Story) by Prosper Obum Anuforoh

“So you saw it too?” Ifeoma, my little sister, says to me, grinning.

“What?” I ask.

“That black hen,” she says.

“What black hen?”

“That one…on that grave…under that orange tree…,” she says, this time showing me a rough-looking little book filled with colorful crayon paintings.

She has read my Diary. Now she knows all my secrets: those secrets I thought had died with 1998.

I learnt to keep a diary when I was ten – that was in 1998. Sam, my eldest brother, taught me. He has a big diary into which he records his thoughts, secrets and every single thing that happens to him each day. He’ll write in it only at nights, sitting on our spread mat.

At first it was difficult; writing was a problem. (I didn’t learn to read properly until I was twelve, two years after everything I wrote stopped being a meaningless scrawl on paper.) But Sam told me I didn’t have to be Chinua Achebe to record my thoughts: “Just record the dates, then paint…draw…write a few words to help the events speak for themselves. He is your friend; you can tell him anything, anyhow,” he said.

I loved drawing. So I got myself a makeshift Diary.

I started on June 7, 1998; but that part is torn now.

Ifeoma is looking at me now, somewhat scared I’d scold her for reading the diary. I collect it from her. We settle on the sofa in the parlor and leaf through it together by the pale light shining in through our uncurtained window.

It’s blowing up for a rain.

Monday, June 8, 11:30pm.

We ate the remaining jelof [Jollof] rice of yesterday night food before going to school.

I fighted [fought] Sule at school today.

We drank garri with kulikuli in the afternoon, when we came back.

[At] 6:30pm today, people beggan [began] to scream and dance and clap. Some young, young pe[o]ple ran the streets with big, big white boards in their hands, drumming on beer bottle[s] and singing “Abacha don die”. Plenty people, man and woman, are drinking and shouting in iya Kudi bar.

Abacha die[d] today. Some people said he was kill[ed] by [a] heart attack; others said he was kill[ed] by sixteen India[n] witch prostitutes from Dubai. But people are happy.

Good night.

Pipiro.

The drawing to this is colorful: matchstick men with smiling faces, wielding placards (big, big white boards); houses painted in various colors. Iya Kudi’s sleaze of a bar at the corner of Bola Street is painted yellow and green. There are so many matchstick men and women; some sitting around tables cluttered with beer bottles, others with their hands raised in jubilation. Ifeoma laughs. “That’s Iya Kudi,” she points at the matchstick woman with bow legs. I nod.

There’s a house painted blue with a tree beside it. That’s our house on Bola Street – that’s in 1998. Under that tree, there’s a grave on which is perched a black hen.

“That black hen,” Ifeoma points at it. I look at it, and then look out the window to see mum beside the house, sweat beaded on her forehead, struggling to boil the rice she had bought for supper. The wind blows the black smoke from the adunga towards her; she waves it away, and coughs. She rearranges the firewood to save the flame.

I tell Ifeoma we’ll read one more page and then go outside to help mum.

Since the kerosene scarcity, we have been using our adunga – the locally-made cooking stove. Goodluck Jonathan, our new president, has promised the problem will be solved soon.

We stare at the drawing. I’m stunned that after thirteen years, I haven’t forgotten a thing about that hen. But how can I forget? Just as the death of Gen. Sani Abacha is an unforgettable milestone on the Nigerian political landscape, whenever I turn to 1998, that hen’s story leaves me with a lesson timeless in its relevance, infinite in its instruction: she reminds me always of mum.

Ifeoma and I turn quickly to July 3 – that’s of 1998.

Friday, July 3, 10: 45pm.

Today that hen die[d] under the rain and thunder and mad, mad light because it didn’t want the rain to touch the small, small chicks. She is a good mother like my mum.

That tree did not save her. That grave is bad.

I’m not happy.

Good night.

Pipiro.