She's present

About a woman who is hunted by her past mistakes.

Title: SHE’S PRESENT.

Number of words: 2,758.

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing comes into the head without knocking first through the eyes; and you opened, silly you. What did mummy tell you, don’t open doors to strangers, don’t talk to strangers, don’t, don’t; DON’T! Still you did, and look where it got us: A carried reflection of naïve love down a flowing stream, rippled by his lust for you and hands together, yours holding more tightly, looking into the swaying smiles, the crystal waters, torched by sunlight behind your gullible head. Did you think I didn't see you, I was always there, trapped in the dark alleys of your eyes. I have my mother’s eyes.

They say the eyes never lie, that don’t mean it tells the truth either; if it did, then I would be here, anxiously waiting by the door to hop on the shoulders of my father: My father, the transmitted image from your retina snapshot. My father, the stranger you loved when your age had no story and your life misgoverned. The stranger your nagging mother talked about all the time, either when she had a basket of unclean clothes wedged to her hips, buttocks large and swaying like a pendulum, whilst she sing “glory glory” with hypocritical joy and a deceased faith. Or, when she beats morality into you, screaming at the top of her lungs so the neighbours would hear her discipline you, just so they would think she’s being a good mother.

Your Impoverished Father, tired of your mother, can’t leave because Africans see shame in divorce, so they remain together in sour romance, only for the judging eyes of the world.  Your father, he sits on the chair he’s made, one that no customer would buy, and he smokes, puffs it out as he watches the haze spiral to disappear like his dreams had. Your father, for you always held that pistol look in his eyes, an only child, an only regret. Maybe it was just me in my transient imaginary cubicle imagining what he felt, but I could swear his eyelids batted at you, like assassin’s fingers on sentencing triggers. Nothing makes him smile, not you and certainly not your mother and your mother, she was just the penile mistake your father never told you about. To you, parents never had an ex lover.

‘I guess you are thinking now how many trains had raced through your tunnel…’

Mummy, are you there? Mummy, I need you to hold me and tell me everything will be okay. I need you to carry me in your arms, as you did when you were much younger, swaying side to side with Helena, the doll. I thought this was your dream; to have me. I was wrong. I guess your dream was just as soluble as every ‘puberty’ little girl: First the anxious seed of the breast, the desires and the wet dreams, the long bath and make ups, the long naked modeling in the mirror and  the boys. Yes, the strange boys that would become your heart’s thief or brief knights. Well I guess those cute fairy tale told a different story. Bloody televising romance, sitting cross-legged and watching how the prince always saved the princess, how their kisses were always soft and rehearsed.

The erotic novels were your secretive amorous sojourn, a domain for your mind’s ecstasy. Your mother wouldn't guess how wet you felt in between your legs or how hard your breast had become. She would open the door and as long as you had a book to your face, you were being a good girl. What you failed to watch and read, was your mother.  The truth about love had always being in her eyes. Eyes that said life is not always what it seems, a mirage of your expectation, a long waiting queue in the rain where promptness nor orderliness doesn't count, just wisdom and sometimes fate. But who knows, I probably would have being born to make same mistake.

I am glad I don’t have to listen to you cry in the wardrobe, clutching to your shivering self like one who’d seen a ghost; funny how we fear the dark and yet hide in it; and she always found you, standing at the door like a victorious villain with her octopus whip, its tentacles dangling and her eyes flaming with discipline. She beats you because you went out to play or forgot to wash the dishes, didn't cook well or stayed too long on an errand, and your strokes, matured with your age. Then at fifteen, she beats you about strange boys, but now, you were used to her celestial exorcism: The demon never leaves, it only pretends to sleep. Your demon was your growing urge for boys, a hormonal emotion, an urge your mother forgot she once had because if she hadn’t, there would be no you. She beats you, because she was afraid.

Why do people forget, why do they let yesterday slip through their fingers, memories wobbling like water in a glass jar, unsteady, held by the feeble hands of an infant. They forget like your mother, eyes blinded by pastoral saliva and memories cleansed by baptism. Now to sit and talk about the ambivalent filth that bore us is sacrilege. She shoves the bible to you, expecting the Holy Ghost to be your parent; how then, could you have avoided the seed of a premarital moon growing inside of you when holiness was your contraceptive and sin your refuge. She hides her experiences with her strangers and you, you hide your hurt.

Mother, do you still think of him, does his promises still ring in your head like church bells, does it call you from your sleep like the Muezzins? Now, your dreams are colourless. You used to dream every day, the same dream, of the three us, little me holding Helena, the doll I inherited from you and your eyes were lighted up like a starry sky. You held hands with him as you counted your foot prints in the beach sand. The wind flustering your flowery designed gown, his unbuttoned shirt, and his khaki trouser, folded to reveal the curly hair on his legs. He was always smiling in that dream, it was the same dream: The water always washed to the promontories same way, the birds always squeaked same sound and I was always molding a house for Helena, whilst your footprints never uttered its depth: You had your dream but never visited his and you were too innocent to know, there is no date in a dream.

You and your silly friends were only good at talking about sex education or envying each other’s body parts. Your breast and buttocks were always envied, ‘full and promising’ as the boys who would gossip about your waving buttocks, would say. No, you weren't waving at them, your buttocks was. It waved at them just the same way your mother’s buttocks had greeted your father, enchanted him and made him wear a compulsory suit and tie as he states his vows.

His meteoric shower of love, made your mind travel into a galaxy of thought and you felt bitter sweet. Each night, you stay awake thinking, should I, what if, but your body yearned for his touch. It was a new feeling, practical, not like the experiences you've had in a dream or the tingles from a romance novel. This was lucid, this was good and yet taunting. Your praying hands tightly slotted between the warmth of your laps as you lay, day dreaming on your bed. You couldn't seem to forget his large eyes, his squinty smile, and the shelter in his voice. “Isn't this what love is about.” You thought and thought until you would slip away into the comfort of his promises, away into your dream where everything happens just as you wanted it.

That dress, that lovely flowery dress that accentuated your curves and made the tabloid hearts of the boys. You looked gorgeous in it. I saw the smile on your face when you look into the mirror, your ebony skin glistening from makeup, your shiny lips, wet with gloss, the careful sketch of your eyebrow and you smiled, like a candy child as your hands smoothened your dress just so you could appreciate the beauty of your curves. Then for a brief second you paused, a blank thought, you knew what you were going to offer him; the gift of womanhood, one to be unwrapped by the thrusting spear of manhood passion.  Then you smiled again, no reason why, you just smiled.

Why did you change your mind, why did you pull away each time he drew close, I guess you wanted him to promise you and tell you all that sweet stuff you've always dreamt about. You wanted him to assure you that your dream would not be just a dream, but a dream he would share with you. He had told you countless times that sex was nothing and yet he based his love on that. You wanted to know that what you felt wasn't just the generic affection of a little girl, but, you were a little girl.

You were looking at his eyes and not into them. They seemed to be looking at you, but they were buried underneath your dress and had stripped you naked before you knocked on the door. Every word he said came from the erection of his desires. He drew closer and closer until his fingers could walk slowly up your skin. Then he kissed you and with all his promises swimming in your minds fantasy, you could not resist: A first true kiss always comes with mixed feelings because a lie cannot be detected with eyes closed

Some call it a blessing: You see those women outside with placards in their hands, clamoring for the legalization of abortion, they don’t see it as a blessing or a curse; they are only misguided by their feelings. Questions revving loudly like a bad engine, stagnant with hope, trapped in the treacherous path on a dark night with no moon. The confusion is overwhelming. The car started and worked all through the day, why here, why now. The mechanic knows the answer, and you also got to find out, waking up every morning tired and feeling sick, having a strong appetite for sleep and spitting out like a snake. Until your menstruation stopped, everything worked well. 

You tried to keep yourself together so your mother wouldn't notice. A good girl you became, washing the dishes early enough, doing all other chores and then dashing off to sleep. You would smile sheepishly at your mother when she asked if you were alright. She suspected, but had no reason to ask. After all, the Holy Ghost has being your guidance and Sunday school has taught you about sin, yet, no one had sex in the bible, Adam only knew Eve. To your mother, the thought of you being pregnant was impossible, only some years ago, you were running around in your napkin. No child ever grows to the parent. It is impossible, she thought, but she was suspicious.

“I AM NOT THE FATHER, YOU S**T” The reverberation of these words sent a quake up your brain, a quick sensation of what is to come if you kept up with the alcohol. The molten magma in your senses, red hot, and heating up to erupt an explosion of disbelief. Your heart stopped for a second, eyes wide open like warehouse doors, to reveal a content of betrayal. Then the tears followed like a thunderous rain as knees hurried to kiss the ground, hands firmly around his ankle, body sprawled on the carpet discomforting the home in your belly, discomforting me. He looked down at you like a large pile of rubbish as you lay there, weeping in an ‘I don die’ position and those once beautiful eyes, now inflamed with spiteful colors. When love left with the watering can, the flowers in your heart died. All does times he was inside you, unprotected, all those times you felt the release of passion, gripping him tightly as he did you; that was his submarine shooting torpedoes into you.

You see those women demonstrating outside, placards dancing in the sky, words written out in blood red; they don’t want us to be trapped in your minds, they only want to get rid of the hurt they feel. They want to uproot the seeds of bad boy Joe. To them they aren’t taking a life, they are burying a hurt. Where are the shovels, we need to dig the ground and bury these memories, not the offspring, the memories. And the farmers in lab coats, only scrapes out the weed, so the field could germinate a new offspring, a new memory.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Stop yelling ma’, don’t let them mistake guilt for madness. Stop yelling, before you are bounded with ropes from shoulder to ankle, convulsing on the ground, electrocuted by your mind. You own the day, I own the space in your head and with that you can keep asking yourself, like that little lover girl indecisive if she is his bed mate or soon to be his wife. Stay awake, be lonely, I guess death isn't as easy or as quiet as they thought. Suicide seems like a getaway card only before you die and after that? Well after that, you are just another embodiment of your pain: No towels to dry your wet hands and no hugs to pamper you, all you are left with in your blindness, is you: You, you, gullible like the tree willing to sway to the winds disco, did you ever have your own opinion? I said stay awake. Doctor’s pills are good, but they don’t solve the problems of guilt or is guilt a disease? Miniskirts and wet dreams, we have them all here, but what we don’t have is tomorrow, and you, you fear tomorrow; how can you fear what you don’t have. So you see, my beauty is your sadness and your sadness is my need. How Ironic. Stop talking? STOP TALKING! But I can’t; only you can. Innocence is silence.

Life is short, yes, a man died in an accident, innocent babies die in war, a baby is born still, no tears but at least the mother wanted her to cry and since the baby would not cry for them, the mother cries for her. What did you feel for me mum, pity or relief? What did you say to the doctor when he brought me out of you in pieces, shattered as your heart, broken, as though I had fallen free from the Everest in your womb? What did you feel when all you had left were the fragments of a stolen history.

My coffin had no flowers mum, no true tears and I was wrapped in a bag like evidence from a crime scene. It indeed was a crime scene mum. You robbed me off time, time to tell you I love you and won’t hurt you the way he did. Time to make you realize that mistakes are only natural and only our decisions thereafter counts.  You didn't cry for me, you cried for your future. Sing me a farewell song in your heart; I was the soldier who took the bullet for the ovaries.

You've got a happy family now Mrs. Kofo, you cannot continue thinking of your past. This could have a strong effect on your health.” The Doctor said.

 Science men, all they ever think about are procedures and guidelines. No clue what so ever about feelings. Anyway, they've seen too many Kofo’s come and go: Girls who abort at a tender age and live with the regrets. Some even become delusional from this. You aren't, you are only wondering what and where I would have being if you had let me live.

I still see the sky, and they are sometimes colourful and sometimes depressed. I still see the ocean and I am still trying to build that beach house for little Helena. I am growing old here mom, your dream is growing old. I wish I had a peek at the world, I know you say it is a crazy place, but great things do happen. I have siblings now and Ebunoluwa; you had to search a name for her, was it because she reminds us of me. What would you have named me? 

Author's Note

Please, I would love this manuscript, to be constructively viewed and comments made. Thanks