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.

Prosper Obum Anuforoh lives in Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria.

MAMA (Third Prize Story) by Yeku Babatunde James

You could hear the rain drizzling in mournful trickles at the Nne graveyard that Friday. All was silent but for the raging voice of the preacher. Not even the umbrellas lifted to the heavens could do much as to stop us from getting wet. The throng, in their dark goggles and dresses, stood by, watching with hands folded on thumping chests, shaking their heads slowly at the loss of their Mother Theresa. I looked around, and I saw friends and colleagues from the office, staring at the lifeless body in the opened casket. They would have thought I had deliberately made up my mind to honour mama with my muffled moaning and tearful smiles. Emeka, my husband noticed my wandering eyes and drew me to himself. I rested my head on his shoulder as my thoughts drifted to that day I first spoke to mama about him…

“I know love when I see one”, mama had said to me.

It had been another special sundown that day. The large orangery ball on the sky’s gentle face was gradually been swallowed up by the clouds; and the evening breeze was caressing my skin as I lay between mama’s feet while she plaited the long shuck on my head.  Mama’s words had painted strokes of sparkles on my tender heart, and so I have never forgotten that day…

Look my daughter, she continued, “When your heart misses it beat at the sight of that special man; when you wish you should worship in the shrine of his spirit; when he himself would do all to see you reach to the sky and pluck off the moon; now that is love.”

“That is love my child”, Mama repeated again, as if I had not heard the first time.

That was during my high days at Aba Government College. It was the season girls around my age, flaunting budding buttocks, and mango-sized breasts started to ask about why boys from the neighboring schools would not stop staring at them. It was a time some of us also had begun to desire some of the scented roses of male affections we saw in Hollywood films. It was a time to seek the priceless purple of innocent lavenders. It was the season of questions. And more questions we asked. Some of my friends had not been too lucky to have parents who listened to the curious but softened clattering of hearts at that verge of personal discovery. I remember Moyo especially. The boys said she looked astonishing; and they all craved her presence. Poor Moyo! She was rusticated from school when the school matron discovered she had been pregnant.

To thank God that Mama was there for me would mean reminding him of all her outpour of sweetened memories. She seemed to have an answer for every matter raised. Maybe it was because she had been trained as a counselor at the big Ibadan University every girl in my school always talked excitedly about. Mama was also a good listener. She nodded her head when she was not saying anything, and being with her was like entering her womb again to be carried in that round and wet calabash behind her dress. I still recall, sometimes with moistened eyes, how she would tell me stories that lured me to sleep.

There was one topic mama however did not like talking about. My father. Not that I delighted in reminding her of a topic that brought tears to her eyes, but I had been curious about why I did not have, like other girls, someone to hold me in those muscular arms my friends talk about. Nkem, the one everyone called daddy’s girl, would even bring pictures of her heavily bearded father to school. I always withdrew at such points, fighting hard not to burst out crying. When Mama finally told me how my father had died in the Biafran war, I understood for the first time why she decided not to allow another man on the bed he had shared with only her precious Ebuka.

It was the Catholic Father’s voice, presiding at the burial mass that called my attention back to mama’s graveside.

“Dust for Dust”.  I heard the preacher say. This time, I could not hold back the tears.

“It is time to go”, Emeka whispered into my ears.

AUTHOR:

YEKU BABATUNDE JAMES

lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.