Crickets: Father and Daughter

A flash fiction about a single father and his daughter

Kelechi added three spoonfuls of Cerelac into the feeding bottle and closed the lid tightly. In the room lit by an old kerosene lantern whose flame casted ugly shadows on the wall -- Ada, his ten months old daughter -- wiggled with her back on the bed, her arms and legs raised. She was crying. The window shutters above her had been left opened to diffuse the heat and now, crickets chirped away from the nearby bush, the sound drowning the room in a sheet of noise.

He turned away from the broken stool in front of him and scooped Ada into his arms, blowing air across the pimply rash on her neck, a thing he had learnt from his mother. Ada stopped crying immediately and peered up at him, unblinking, as if she were studying him. Then she tugged at her rumpled dress and began to cry again. But this time, she shrieked. Kelechi let out a long sigh and then stuck the tip of the feeding bottle into her crying mouth; he drove it deeper that it was necessary. He hated Ada, hated her mother even more for abandoning them and running off to America with that good-for-nothing Chijioke whose wealth was ill-gotten. That was a month ago. He didn't want to dwell on the matter anymore; it will just make him furious.

Ada belched with her mouth still clamped around the feeding bottle, a signal that she was satisfied. He lowered himself slowly on the bed and swung the window close to shut out the noise the crickets were making. The flame from the lantern flickered and then died out. As he laid her down he thought he heard her call him "Dada". He shifted to her side and waited to hear her say it again.

Kelechi smiled in the darkness; it was the first time his daughter would call him that.