Fragile (2) I walked down a corridor, grateful that I would be free of the antiseptic odour soon. I would be free of the cheerless folks with whom I shared the walled world of the unwell and dying. Again, I would embrace the open world of the healthy and living. These past eight days in the hospital had been like a sojourn in the cell. Nevertheless, my colleagues had been very supportive. Beverages, cards and other provisions littered my cupboard. I passed a ward and heard voices that sounded like the doleful sigh that rose in a confluence between Oguta Lake and River Urashi. A few persons were surrounding a man lying still in the bed. I wondered, just fleetingly, if he had breathed his last. Fill me with fragrances of wine! Fill me with hymns of the living! I continued walking. I paused at a pavement. I closed my eyes, dreamily, smiling. Kene would be coming before nightfall. We had been courting for a year. He had promised to take introductory drinks to my uncle before this Christmas. I couldn’t wait to be his wife. He had shown me more love than one could ever wish for; to me, he was the family I had, I would ever know. Every day he checked up on me, like a brother. He slept in the chair at my bedside most nights. As a friend he regaled me with jokes, teased me till my ribs ached from laughter. Honeycomb was the pet name we called each other. I sat down on a long bench on the pavement. There was a waiting room a yard or two away. There were elderly people coming out of that room. Thoughts of getting old started to scratch at my feelings. And I wondered if it was selfish if someone took her life before she got to ninety when she was too weak to “pooh-pooh”. The panic of growing older spreads fluttering wings Two women came towards me. One was a stout nurse, prim in her starched white uniform, with a stern look on her face: that called to mind the image of a proverbial wicked headmistress. The other, a skinny patient, moved slowly behind the nurse. She was clad in a long towelling-like dress, which made her seem as a mannequin in over-sized clothes. “Du ngaa. Sit here,” said the nurse, her Owerri accent evident, and pointed to the bench where I was sitting. The patient sat down, not too close to me. “You can enjoy the fresh air. I’ll be back,” the nurse added and walked away. The patient had young brown eyes. But her body was geriatric. As a child I would have feared that this woman beside me could pass for a witch. Instead of fleeing I stared at her, thinking I had seen her before. She too was looking at me. Both of us were like a squirrel and a snake watching each other at a distance. She coughed dryly, her cheekbones rose, and seemed to pierce through the thin skin of her face. There was something allure-like about this patient; something that defied the ravages of sickness; something that gave off an air of fearlessness. She noticed I was still watching her, so she wanted to grin. But what showed on her face was the kind of fixed grin one would see on a Bini bronze head. Head of a large tuber of yam. Hair, scant tufts of scorched grass… Discreetly, I inched away from her. You would never have touched her lips with your finger, even if it earned you a stinging lash on the yansh (bottom). Why didn’t the starchy nurse take her elsewhere? I knew what was destroying her life. It was not tuberculosis. She was dying of AIDS, I mused, and felt splinters of ice cut into my flesh. Chilly as the feeling I had one night. There was a power cut and I was sitting on the veranda, when a mighty rat rolled over my foot. I jumped up at once, screaming Blood o’ Jesus. A bald man hobbled towards us. He sat down on the floor, leaned his body against the pillar, staring skywards. He had crow eyes, with a watery hint in them. One would have assumed he was crying. I imagined a haze of gloom was hanging above our heads. The three of us were sitting in a cocoon of solitude: three lonely souls adrift on a lonely sea. The bald man began to murmur to himself. Child, you cannot know Why folks talk alone… Someone made a choked sound, a cough, hollow. The type of cough one emits in a room blanketed with thick fumes. It came from the female patient. I began to feel that she might not have any friend or family. Sometimes, I tried to imagine how my parents had died. Were they doused in petrol and set alight? Were their stomachs sliced open like fish? I was familiar with gory tales of massacres in the North, yet it barely curdled my blood. I believed the demise of my parents probably had made me a little hardy, a little undisturbed by other people’s death. My father and mother used to live in Kano, a land which was known as the “groundnut pyramid” during the colonial era. Father was a railway worker, while my mother was a seamstress (so my uncle had told me). Then a religious riot broke out at the twilight of the Second Republic. It was incited by some hegemonic Northerners, newspapers had claimed. The Arewa were unhappy with the drastic power shift to the South, the shake-up in the military (which affected mostly their people, the Hausa), and the agitation of the Niger Delta for resource control. I sighed, remembering what difficulties I passed through growing up in someone else’s home. I gazed at a puddle of water. It was stagnant, greening on the surface, around the edges. It had the ochre tint of urine. I thought of algae and mosquito larvae spawning. A dragonfly appeared. It skimmed over the water, rippling its surface, then disappeared. My land like the Middle East is a vortex of hate My parents had died in that riot. Houses, cars, shops belonging to Southerners had been torched. Men and women were strangled, amputated, halved, or butchered. My father’s younger brother came very close to being beheaded by flaming-eyed zealots, wielding blood-stained swords. He was quite lucky. The Sabongari quarters were not readily penetrated: most Southerners resident there kept handy guns. Before the killings had grown wanton some Christians had made it to the barracks. I was among the lucky refugees. Our neighbour’s wife had picked me up and carried me on her back while the slaughterers raced after the fleeing throng. Uncle Amaechi showed up as my guardian at the police barrack, a month or two later. He had gone round searching for my parents. He found me; together with his wife and two children, we relocated to the East. I was just a five-year-old then. His wife wasn’t pleased with my staying with them however, she barely liked me. I was an inconvenience, someone who would deprive her own children of their father’s love. She refused to understand why her husband should spend the little money he earned as a carpenter to educate a future housewife (me). She managed Mama Put, a woman who did not have a restaurant but sold cooked food in a wheelbarrow in the street. Some of them set up a makeshift eating place by the road. So why couldn’t her husband act sensibly enough to invest in her business? Uncle Amaechi had visited me twice in the hospital. Once before the surgery; the second time was four days after. I was consoled that he had not stayed away like his pain-in-the-neck wife. She could only send her measly wishes. I watched a boy holding the hand of a woman. He was smartly-dressed. But he wore a worried look on his face. She was bulbous like a sow, and walked stooped as though a giant abscess was on her rear. The boy pulled the back door open. Clutching the knotted part of her wrapper, the woman tried to lift herself into the car. A stocky man came out from the driver’s seat and assisted her. I was wondering whether the woman was the boy’s step-mother because she reminded me of my uncle’s wife, the kind of woman who would maltreat another woman’s child. Someone touched my shoulder. It was the skinny female patient. She had shifted nearer, unknown to me. buried though in a morass of present pursuits, the past returns “You don’t recognize me?” her voice sounded groan-like. I squinted. “No,” I said, disliking her audacity. “It is the AIDS,” she said. Although I had suspected all along, I was taken aback by the casual tone in which she said it, as though it were Hello. I started wondering whether the disease had eaten away her sensibility. “You were in IMSU?” she asked again. “Yes.” “You don’t remember me?” “Sorry, I can’t remember. If you don’t mind.” Placing her face was like looking for a lost child in a busy market. Her questions were beginning to vex me. I rose from the bench. But she grabbed my wrist. “You remember Ijeoma?” she intoned. “Who?” I managed to ask. “Ijeoma.” “Which?” “Your course-mate,” she answered, with a hint of excitement in her voice. “Miss Peacock; I do remember her,” I murmured, and shook her fingers off my wrist. The patient was hurt. I made to leave and heard “your handkerchief”. I looked at her; I didn’t notice I had dropped my handkerchief. I took it from her gratefully, and suddenly realized that she shared some waning semblance with Ijeoma. I heard Ijeoma had two brothers, no sisters. She probably was enjoying life’s sweet hors-d’oeuvre in South Africa, if she had not relocated to New York or Paris. “You are related to her?” “I’m Ijeoma.” “You…?” I stammered. She nodded her head. My mind went into a whirl. I almost reeled from the deadening blow her disclosure dealt me. Should I weep for fishes flopping in the Delta of oil? Or of farms burrowed through by crude pipes of despoliation? Look at her now! I could make fun of her right away. Recall the bile I had borne against her, how wretched like a disgraced mistress, she had made me feel back then in university. But something stronger than glee overwhelmed me. Swiftly, pity swept me into its humbling hold. How could I accept her in her ‘new’ looks? Ijeoma was born beautiful. Nothing could wilt her flesh. She was not bony and long like a bamboo, like this sickly female before me. She ought to know I never liked her. She must be very brave to expose her identity, to check her pride, and say this much, without fearing that I would gloat over her misfortune. This situation was tricky; it bred unease around me. How could I talk freely with someone whom I had often wished evil? Have you seen an adversary lying prostrate before you? Drawing a deep breath, I sat down again. She glanced up at a group of female student nurses drifting by. They chattered like pigeons, excited. Young just like us. Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes Ijeoma and I should be age mates, 25 years old. Now she looked like a hag, hopelessly aged by AIDS. What happened to those papaya boobs that stoked heat between a man’s thighs? Big, firm breasts, men once ogled at, were now slack, and dry like withered grapefruits. The nurse did not look in my direction as she came up behind her patient. “You’ll need it,” she said and draped a browning shawl over Ijeoma’s shoulders. “So you don’t catch cold.” “Oh thanks,” Ijeoma said. The nurse stared at me. Her patient told her my name was Nky. We greeted in Igbo. With her hands at her hips, like a female Yellow Fever officer, the nurse asked her patient whether she would want to go in now because it would soon get cold. Ijeoma shook her head languidly. “You shouldn’t stay out too late, understand?” And the nurse walked off. Ijeoma pulled the shawl tightly around her body, and gazed out into the horizon. The sky was aglow with clouds of lily, clouds of lilac. Birds floating like nylon bags. Like paper kites in the air. “When the initial shock had left me, that is, after I’d been told about the virus, I began sitting on the patio, dreaming of an after-life where nothing counts, where nothing really matters,” Ijeoma said. “I would watch the sky turn to gold, and then indigo. I would picture my life blending into their colours. I loved listening to birds singing in the bushes. Also I would picture my voice mixing with their songs. I own a duplex in SA (South Africa). That was years ago before the accident. Four years ago. I was in Nigeria. I was home for Easter break.” Four years before I had been serving with a private media house. That was where I met Kene. Sporty, dressed in white short sleeves and blue jeans, he had come to install some computers in our office, an ultra-modern publishing house. The bald man heaved himself up, ambled away, half-heartedly, still murmuring. “I’d gone to visit Anne. You may not remember her,” she said. Anne also graduated from IMSU. She did her National Youth Service Corps with a bank. Anne and Ijeoma were friends. Very close. She wasn’t our course-mate, yet she hung around our classes. Sometimes, she waited outside for her friend to finish lectures. They both gossiped about me. I remembered. “We still keep in touch. Anne’s been an angel. I was driving back to my village after I left her place. Another car bolted out of the blues into mine. That was on Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway. I was rushed to a nearby hospital…” She paused and looked at me. “You are crying?” she asked. I was not. I just didn’t know why tears trickled down my cheeks at that moment. “I’m sorry,” I said, a tender lump bobbing in my throat. I pulled out the handkerchief and dabbed my eyes. Lightly, she touched the bridge of my nose. “I’ve always admired you. You were strong, and cool,” she remarked. “Thank God. I survived the accident. I went back to SA. About a year later, one winter, I was frightfully ill and very cold. Pneumonia, I thought. I was diagnosed. My doctor said it could be managed, though hopeless. It was needless taking an ART. He sounded vague. What do you mean? I asked. I was nearing hysteria. He held my hand and talked about being strong in the teeth of crisis. ‘You’ve AIDS,’ he said. I fainted. You know, everyone seems to think I got it through blood transfusion.” I jerked. The lump dissolved. “It was critical, and I needed some pints of blood. I was unconscious. I almost died from that accident. It was critical, believe me.” Hadn’t I been infused with blood too? A wild emotion began stamping around, like a restive mare within my chest. I squinted at her, feeling odd. “You don’t believe me?” she asked. My mind began searching frantically for the face of the doctor who had administered the blood into my system. But fuzzy shapes confronted it instead. “You think I became loose in SA?” I grunted. I wasn’t responsible for her actions, so she need not convince me. It was her life. Darkness abruptly descended on the hospital. Someone shouted out a name. Someone else yelled, “Have you changed over?” Sieve-brained, you think me? - Don’t be puzzled if I see through you for I wear a mask too “You were free with guys, you forgot,” I mentioned peevishly, as more shadowy shapes butted into my head. I could not remember the doctor’s face, surprisingly. “None of them saw the colour of my panties,” Ijeoma said. You hardly saw Ijeoma alone. Guys, like bees, kept buzzing around her. So, would you believe she did not sleep with any of them? How could she act righteous even in her poor state? This was no way to obtain sympathy. It was as cheap and infuriating as when a drug peddler tried to convince you that you could cure malaria from drinking she-goat’s piss. The gurgling sound of a generator lessened my fears, and the lights came back. I assured myself that I could not get positive. Somehow. The blood was uncontaminated. “You have to believe me,” her tone was desperate. “You were famous,” my tone was firm. “That doesn’t mean I slept with men!” She trembled, and then broke out coughing. I wanted to rub her back soothingly as mothers do when a child is retching. I wasn’t sure if I should – or could. I was not even sure how she would react since we were not intimate. I told her, I BELIEVE YOU. But I felt she knew I was lying, so I glanced away. The shawl dropped off her body to the floor. I picked it up, aiming to place it back on her shoulder, but she took it from me, and wiped her nose on it. I wanted to draw close to her, though I felt a bit uncomfortable. I scratched my head. Was she a virgin? Every student in our school knew she was the irresistible Campus Queen no full-blooded male could ignore. “That blood was not infected,” she said, sounding as though her nostrils were congested. “You can’t be so certain.” “I know. I’m certain. I didn’t get the virus through transfusion.” She was trying to confuse me. I knew I had to keep steady. “How else could you’ve gotten it?” I asked. “You may not understand.” I suddenly remembered that there was something unearthly about her. I had suspected long ago even when other students were blinded by pulchritude. I observed she was breathing as someone with a boulder on her chest. “You can trust me.” She tittered. “Trust you? Indeed!” Trust me as a fellow patient at least, I considered saying. That was not convincing enough. “Tell me. I’ll understand,” I said instead. “I’m not what you think I am,” she said, drawing nearer to me. I thought of putting an arm around her shoulder, as a sly gesture that she could confide in me. But I was too anxious to hold myself. I didn’t want her to know that I suspected she was from the Sea. If you see mammy-water, never (you) run away…I recalled that song, and thought of fleeing. But I did not. I patted her knee. “I could be of help, you never know.” Ijeoma stared at me in an eerie way that made my buttocks twitch and my palms sweaty. “You wouldn’t tell a soul if I told you something dear to me?” “Yes, yes.” I was curious and scared at the same time. If a spirit being showed you her true identity, you either disappeared or died on the spot. Doubts were troubling Ijeoma because I could see she was finding it difficult to speak her mind. “It’s something I learnt in my secondary school. In the dormitory we girls…” she began. “Forget it.” “Tell me,” I insisted. “Please.” She seemed to hold her breath a moment. “I found pleasure in the presence of girls,” she said in a tone that was tense, so inaudible one might miss hearing her correctly. I arched my brow at her, hoping she would give details. She said nothing more. She bore the face of a mirror, empty of emotion, unfeeling. She did not even bat an eyelid. Her words replayed in my head. What kind of pleasure did you find in the presence of girls? I wanted to ask her. I even tried asking her if she was serious. But my tongue felt like a metal ladle, as I made out what she had implied. And something, like a whisk, began to stir my stomach. Untie the tongue Yet, the song is dumb “I had never gone for a test,” she spoke unhurriedly. “I didn’t have any reason to see a doctor. I couldn’t get HIV because I was different. So I believed. Moreover, I’d never fallen sick in spite of the busy scope of my job. I had to shelve my job; my world had collapsed. I grew worse each day. My manager and the agency were sympathetic. A tough decision, but I decided to leave for Nigeria...” There is a tale about passenger X who sat beside passenger Y in a car. They began talking. The next stop was X’s. Both passengers shook hands. As X alighted from the car, he saw he was holding something, a hand? The lifeless hand of Y. He turned and peered through the window. Y was grinning back at him. I felt just like X. Although, I was shaking my head as if I could lose some of the grim revelation Ijeoma had funnelled into my ears. She paused when she saw I was not paying attention. What could have made a girl whom everyone regarded as le beau ideal turn a deviant? I had always known something was wrong with her, but never did I expect her to be…different! “You have some money?” she asked. I looked at her. She pointed to a boy carrying a large pail of “pure water” on his head.
Copyright © 2006 Uche Peter Umez |