Touchstones

Sagbo Gideon Gregory

1 Publication

View author

Those days were a memorial touchstone to her: days when Mother would spread the raffia mat before the hut, and tell them stories under the silvery glow of the moonlight.

They would listen, first, with filled stomachs and rapt attention. And later, with heavy eyes and clumsy responses, until they all fell asleep, one after the other. Then the night would descend into utter silence, safe for the “croak, croak” of the frogs, “chirp, chirp” of the crickets, and “whoosh, whoosh” of Mother’s wrapper, sweeping over their bodies in persistent chase of mosquitoes. As she thought of it again, she wondered the nature of the thoughts that besieged Mother’s mind during those silent moments. Ada felt a wave of sympathy well up inside her. They always betrayed her. They would force her to tell them stories, only to fall asleep minutes later.

There were other days, too — the bad ones. Like the day Father died in an accident on his way to town, and the day when her childhood friend, Ozi, had drowned in the river. But those were the days she consciously trimmed off like pieces of fabric littered in a tailor’s shop.

She looked through the window and was attracted to a body of cloud crossing the sky. It reminded her of a story Mother had told them. A story about the tortoise who flew with the birds to attend a feast in the sky. It was one of the many that accounted for how tortoise got a fragmented back. Until then, watching the clouds had never reminded her of that particular story. She felt it was due to the intense nostalgia she was feeling, even as she drew nearer to her home. Clearly, her homecoming was taking an unexpected emotional toll on her.

Ike must have really grown, she thought. He had probably become a perfect replica of their father. He always had his face. And Mama too. What would she look like? The last time she had gotten a picture of her, she had stared at it with tears glistering in her eyes. Mother’s fair skin didn’t look as bright as she remembered, and she looked quite old too. Ada had wondered why it never occurred to her that over the past years, Mother was prone to succumb to a phenomenon of life called age. She could still see Mother, seemingly smiling at her from the picture, exposing the only attribute she could trace to her maternity – her bright beautiful set of teeth. She also couldn’t ignore the deep lines of wrinkles that spread over her face, the mass of gray hair that peeped from beneath her scarf, and her unfashionable pose. They had made her spend the remaining hours of that day somber.

Slowly, the five-seater saloon car came to stop at the side of the expressway. The driver claimed he had noticed a minor mechanical issue. Whatever it was, Ada was especially grateful that she would get some fresh air, and most importantly, stretch her stiff legs. The windows of the back seats could not unwind. For that reason, she had found her place at the back seat highly discomforting. The hot air commingled with the strong smell of petrol, perfumes, and sweat was nauseating. She watched as different models of automobiles zoomed pass them. She wasn’t surprised that no one paid any particular attention to their plight. That was why home was home, she reminded herself – everybody minded their business.

They stood under the broad shade of a nearby palm tree, while the driver worked on the car. Two ladies, who seemed to be travelling together, took advantage of the short break to relieve themselves somewhere in the brush. Ada believed it was the closest she had gotten to nature in a long time. She plucked a frond from the tip of a branch, and for a moment, examined it intimately. From the stem, she began separating it into halves. The overwhelming boredom inspired a simple mental exercise. She was going to recall everything she could connect with the palm tree. Palm Sunday…palm wine…palm oil…palm nut…broom sticks…

During school days, they were exempted from farm work. Father always wanted them to have some time to study. “Education is the key to a bright future,” he would say, waving his pointing finger emphatically at their faces. Thus, they only went to the farm on weekends – very early on Saturday mornings and after mass on Sundays. Ada’s eyes followed the driver as he worked on the engine. He touched some wires, and with an iron rod, began hitting one part of the engine and another. He soon started the engine and beckoned them. In no time, they were speeding over the asphalt once again. Half of the sun had already disappeared behind the horizon. The sun was gradually ending its daily service to human kind – at least, to humans at that part of the world. At the opposite side of the sky, dark clouds were forming. Mother would be worried, she thought smiling. Everything had delayed that day – from her flight to the bus. She had initially sat in one of the long yellow buses at the garage. And for almost forty minutes, no commuter joined in.

“Aunty, calm down now. E go soon full,” the driver had called after her as she pulled her travelling bags along her sides, maneuvering her way through moving vehicles and hawkers to the roadside. She shook her head without turning to face him. She would take one of those sole vehicles instead. The sole drivers picked people randomly from the roadside, provided they were headed the same direction as they were. Most times, they were private-car owners who used their vehicles to make some quick money off commuters. They were typically cheaper too, but it wasn’t the issue of money for her. She was going a far distance.

The car started making an occasional funny sound, each time accompanied with a jerk that alarmed them.

“Driver, what is happening again?” One of the ladies asked. “Henh, driver?”
The driver parked the car. This time, Ada didn’t find the idea of getting some fresh air entreating. None of them stepped out. The driver raised the bonnet, took a bottle of something from the booth and disappeared behind the bonnet again. The kpa kpa Kpa sound ceased as they continued their journey, with the driver skillfully swaying the car to avoid the ever-present potholes. She never remembered the roads to be so bad. They were now relatively worse.

“Here nothing works,” she muttered. She just couldn’t forget that line since her secondary school days. It was the first line of a poem that stuck to her. It was simple, and yet, so powerful. It was a powerful summary of an exceptionally failed state in such a very simple declarative sentence. Though written decades ago, Clark’s poem still stood as a perfect portrait of the present Nigerian society. Maybe she could also say: here nothing changes. Seven years away seemed to have afforded her a bird-eye view of the whole madness. The shades of madness, she discovered, could be further summed up in a word like “exploitation.” Everyone exploited the other, no matter how close or distant. The government exploited the people; the pastor, the church; the lecturer, the student; the driver, the commuter; the landlord, the tenant; the trader, the customer. It was like watching a documentary on wildlife. It was also like listening to mother’s tales of tortoise and other animals. Everybody wanted to play tortoise – wise, subtle, and inculpable. The inculpability was only an artificial act; a mere attempt to effect a twist in the typical resolution of the tortoise folktales. What she had seen was a people establishing, managing, and suffering from greed in every system of human life.

Their car decelerated as it approached a particularly wide pothole. Ada glanced at the dashboard. It was 6pm. Mother would have called, if she could. At the right, she saw a group of men approaching the road from the thicket. She stared at the moving figures for a while, as the car continued its wavy movement through the small pool of muddy water. They were probably farmers returning home after the day’s labour. Their hoes were slung over their shoulders in the common fashion. Ada was convinced that there was a village or township nearby. She glanced around, expecting to catch the slightest sign of human habitation – as little as the pinnacle of a rusty iron roof. When she couldn’t find anything, Ada felt disappointed. She was startled when she saw the farmers stride towards them. In no time, she realized her error. What she had thought to be hoes were, in fact, guns. One of the ladies screamed, covering her mouth in her palms. Others were shaking visibly. The driver fumbled his quivering fingers over some buttons, and the windows of the front seats slid shut.

One of the men positioned himself before the moving car. “Stop the car!” he ordered, slamming a fist on the bonnet. The three others were each forcefully pulling at a door as they trotted along.

“I say stop this car!” He repeated, and fired some rounds into the sky.
“No. No, driver,” Ada said in almost a whisper. “Drive! Drive! Drive!” The other passengers joined in the desperate call “Drive! Drive!”
The driver halted the car, and with the back of his right hand, wiped the perspiration that had formed over his face. He slowly raised his hands over his head. His passengers watched him in horror.

“Open the door fast fast!” commanded the man by the driver’s door. Seconds passed, and the driver’s hands remained in the air.

The man pointed his gun at him through the shut window. “You no hear me?!” he asked in a tone that highlighted his searing fury. The driver bent over the dashboard, seemingly searching for the unlock button. Without warning, he matched down on the accelerator, and began steering the car through the pothole.

Caught off guard by the driver’s unanticipated move, the gunman who had stood before the car made a backward leap to avoid the charging vehicle. However, it was too late. The car hit him at the side and he fell to the ground. Ada and the other passengers were now screaming in extreme fright. When the men began shooting, they lowered themselves, clutching their heads with their hands. Suddenly, the car veered off the road, and crashed into a nearby tree. The glasses shattered and rained on them. And there was silence.

***

Someone sneezed. Ada slowly returned to consciousness. It was all she did these days: close her eyes and sleep till a sound woke her. After that, she would think herself to sleep again. There were many questions, because those who could provide answers, wished not to be asked. The last time she had dared to ask one of them, she was whipped.

“We told you all not to say a word,” he said repeatedly as he whipped her with a slim tree branch.

She was starving, and the fact that they cared little about feeding them, provided only one answer: that they were worthless. Their daily meal was a slice of stale bread and a cup of water. If they thought it was enough to keep them alive, it was not true for her. She could already feel her soul slipping away. She imagined the headline on the front page of a national newspaper. Boldly typed in title case: “Unknown Gunmen Intercept Vehicle and Abduct Passengers.”

She had cried at a film show when she watched a documentary on the transatlantic slave trade. The images of humans like herself being treated like, or even worse than, animals had been too much for her to bear. There she was, tied up to a pole, an object of the human wickedness that had spanned ages. She found her face amidst them. A group of naked ebony women, cuffed legs, hands, and necks. Linked by misery, pain and speechlessness. She cried like she did that evening, in that dark room where the flickering light from the television set was the only source of illumination.
Suddenly, a voice seeped into her consciousness.

“Hello.”
“Huh!” Ada tried to open her eyes, but failed.
“Why are you crying, Ada?”
“Leave her alone,” another voice warned.
“Mummy, come and see. Ada is awake.”

A wave of sharp aches washed over Ada’s eyes as they met with the recessed fluorescent light above her head. She shut them immediately. Everywhere was white. She was in heaven, she thought. She could hear voices, too – unintelligible voices; probably the language of the angels. She tried again. This time, opening them very slowly. She became alarmed when she saw two dark figures approach her from both sides. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Her lungs were weak. A familiar scent hit her nostrils; It was mother’s. Indeed, her mother was standing by her bed, and at other side was Ike, her brother.
“Mummy,” Ada called, affectionately.

“Nwam nwanyi,” she answered, with a trembling voice. “I thank my creator that you are alive.” She robbed Ada’s hand tenderly with her palms. “What would have become of me if I had lost you?”

She smiled faintly as she noticed tears gather in her mother’s eyes.
“Ada,” Ike called out to her. “What would you like to eat?”

Even at that instance, she could notice Ike’s inconspicuous attempt to break into the moment. It had always been so. As sincere as his question was, she knew it was one of his ways of shouting, “hello, I’m here, too!” She felt sorry that the short affectionate exchange with mother seemed to have estranged him.

“My handsome brother,” She said, and watched as his lips spread into a genuine grin – she knew how to get him.

She had questions to ask, but at the time, she was feeling too tired to speak. What of the other passengers? For how long had her unconscious body lain peacefully on that hospital bed, while her mind – or was it her spirit – wandered the depths of hell?

Sagbo Gideon is a graduate of English and Literary Studies from Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. He is a creative writer, educator, and spoken- word artist. He has contributed several times to EWA Literary Magazine and was one of the contributors to the Best New African Poets (BNAP) Anthology 2021 and the Dare to Dream Anthology 2021. While on campus, he served as the Director of Research and Administration for Impact Leaders Club (ILC), FUOYE chapter, and as Subeditor for Fiction and Nonfiction at the English Writers’ Association (EWA), FUOYE. He loves reading, writing, teaching, and listening to music.