The birth of my Morning Star

As I placed the ankara on her casket, I let out a deep smile that came with a chuckling sound which made the tears and rheum in my nose stand still for a while. Although that cloth was the oldest of all the cloth materials adorning the casket, with a noticeable tear at the centre, it was for me, and I think for her as well, the most precious and consequently most beautiful of all the expensive georges and hollandaise there. Only two people know why: I and her! As I admired the wrapper grace her casket, my mind like the immediacy of the flash of the lightning, went to how this same wrapper had graced my bed 15 years ago.

That was September, 2000, when I gained admission into the secondary school. I remember how I cried when I got the letter of admission. It was not a cry of joy. Far from that! Rather, it was one of despondency, sheer hopelessness and helplessness; it was one of seeing one’s future just walk past one’s present and doing nothing! Because you just can’t do nothing! My mum was there too, helpless and speechless. What could she do? Yes I had to cry, and I know she cried too, just that my eyes were too waterlogged to see her tears, if there were any. By then, the garri which we were drinking, despite the unique taste which the salt gave it, had now lost its taste. All I wanted was the warmth of her embrace, the solace of her patting and the reassurance of her words. At least these were the much she could give, and I needed them badly. It was clear to me that I was not going to school. Where would the money come from? Fifty-three thousand naira?! Even the garri and salt we were taking for dinner was courtesy of my mum’s friend, Anna. But somehow, I still felt inside me the conviction that one day, I would go to school. I don’t know where that conviction came from, but mother has always assured us that we shall all go to school no matter what it would cost! Even if it meant giving her life! And she was serious. Mother was not one to joke with such matters.

It was Dad’s tears I saw clearly. His tears were thick and viscous like milk from the breast of a middle-aged woman. But even in my tears, what tickled my fancy was the fact that they were flowing from only one eye �" the left one. “Maybe all the tears in the right eye have finished,” I thought. Yes they must have, because recently, we knew Dad had been doing a lot of crying though we never really knew why. Dad was still suffering a big psychological shock from the loss of his company. I don’t know how it all happened but I know that he was betrayed by his best friend, Uncle Max. It was so hard on him that he had almost committed suicide were it not for the timely intervention of mother. Mother cried and cried and cried as she held dad tight in her arms, cuddling him, comforting him, encouraging him and loving him. I remember dad telling me that mum was the sole reason he was still alive. (That was on my graduation day.) I had thought it was because of this suicide experience. I never knew there was more to it than that. It was then I understood what he wrote in his tribute to mum: and now that you have taken my life, what is left for me? Death! Those were hard words and since dad was not one who was used to wasting words, I knew they were not one of such sweet unrealistic and untrue words which we use to tell the dead how much they do not mean to us.

Two weeks later, mum took me to the tailor! I was surprised! But there was still more to come. The next day, she brought home a big okirika bag, then books. They were old and bore the name Chinedu Akpaka. I was almost ready for school. I was so happy I did not even think about how all these came. On the eve of resumption, as I packed all that was bought for me for school, making sure I was not leaving any of them behind, not even the kulikuli, mummy called me to her room. As I entered, the room looked a bit odd to me. I think it looked scanty. From the bed on which she was sitting, she handed me two wrappers: “we couldn’t buy you a bed sheet, but we know this would serve. Just manage it for now.” It was just then I realized why the room appeared scanty to me when I entered. The boxes of cloth were gone; the hanger that hangs on the wall was stripped close to nakedness. She was not even sitting on bed as I thought. They had placed two mats on the wooden bed and dressed it. And I needed no one to tell me what had happened to them. By now, my vision of her was doubled by the tears which had now filled my eyes. But they did not stop me from seeing hers. For the first time I really did see what mum’s tears looked like. I think mine were more like hers than dad’s. I don’t know what else happened, all I knew was that I found myself in her bosom and in her tears she muttered: “And tomorrow you will be going to school. That is all that matters now.”

“Nnaa! I shuddered. “kasie.” As I turned to look at who had tapped me at the back, it was Uncle Max. “Take heart. That was a woman every man would like to have as a wife or as a mother.”