Weird

She was not really my girlfriend then. She could have been. From the first time I set my appreciative eyes on her, I knew she had potential; she radiated the rare and effervescent promise of unfading beauty. And to crown it all, she had good sense and displayed all the qualities of a woman a […]

She was not really my girlfriend then. She could have been. From the first time I set my appreciative eyes on her, I knew she had potential; she radiated the rare and effervescent promise of unfading beauty. And to crown it all, she had good sense and displayed all the qualities of a woman a man like me would love to spend the rest of his life with. Unfortunately, someone else – someone much better placed than I – had also seen those potential. Unlike me, he did not wait for her to mature. He took his best shot.

There was a sudden rain shower that morning; the sort no one really anticipated. The sun had been shinning, promising a beautiful day, when suddenly the drizzle came. People in the narrow side street scattered, looking for shelter wherever possible. I jumped into a narrow verandah with a number of people, hustling for good positioning. But the shower was as evanescent as the morning dew. It was like a practical joke by nature. We laughed and started streaming out of the verandah when I saw her, clad in a blue ankara speckled with little, red butterflies. She had flowed in with the crowd for shelter and was flowing out as well. She saw me too.

She smiled and said, “Hi,”

Her transcendent smile stunned me. Suddenly, all the colourful pubescent emotions I had felt then jumped up at me. I smiled back shyly. We had exchanged suggestive looks back then. She knew I had an eye on her and she had been flushing with embarrassment when she told me of her abrupt wedding. She stood back until all the people emptied into the street. I was nervous. One had to be careful relating with a married woman. But she was rocking her shoulders naively like the girl she had been, like a flirtatious adolescent waiting for the pimply boy to make the first move.

“Such a long time,” I said at last.

She told me I was more…‘evolved’, that I must have run into some prosperity, that I was much more handsome. I was not. She told me she had four children and had gone back to school and got a diploma in something. I told her about myself. She seemed impressed. She had always seemed impressed by everything I did. Then we talked about some of our old classmates.

I looked at my watch. She was comfortably perched on the railing, not hinting at leaving. I suggested she might want to go cook lunch. She said I should not worry about that. We were silent again. The silence became uncomfortable.

“I should be leaving,” I blabbed.

She smiled. “After all these years, you think I will let you run away like that?”

I grinned. The quirky grin froze on my face and became a mask. I wrestled with my eyes to stay away from her rouged, supple lips. I felt envious that someone else had been kissing them for fifteen years. That got me round to asking her about her husband. He was the only thing that came to my mind. She lowered her head.

“He is dead,” she said grimly. She told me how he had died in a car crash two years before, how unhappy he had made her, how he had mistreated her and almost ruined her life and how his death had been a liberation for her. I seethed; angry at the dead man who had stolen the hallowed essence of my first adolescent fantasies and mistreated her. I felt sorry for her and tried to comfort her. She looked so vulnerable, so helpless, so like a girl. Impulsively, I reached for her moist lips with two fingers. They were velvety. Then I flamboyantly touched the fingers to my lips. She stared at me in fascination.

“What was that?” she asked.

“My pledge of fidelity,” I said effusively. She smiled.

It was romantic but fatuous. I immediately wondered what I was thinking, allowing myself to be beguiled by a widow with four children. I wondered what I meant by my ‘pledge of fidelity’. I was certain I was being stupid. Without preamble, a girl of about five, standing not far from us, started wailing. Gambo turned and called her. It was her daughter, she said. But the girl did not seem to know why she was crying. She just felt like crying. Her mother’s attempt to pacify her failed woefully. I tried to procure her peace with an offer of biscuit. The girl spread out her five little fingers, like the pentangular leaf of the cassava plant, and flashed them in my face. I was shocked. Her mother was enraged and drove the impudent child off. She apologized profoundly.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked, shaking off the embarrassment.

“Just the next street,” she said.

“Kai, dan ubanka!” a man roared. He was heavyset like a prize bull, his torso bare, his glistening muscles rippled frightfully. He pointed at me with a machete. “I am talking to you, dan iska!”

He charged at me. Unarmed, he was no match for me. But armed, I certainly stood no chance. I scaled the rail and bolted. He came after me, slashing maniacally with his machete, almost losing his balance. That made me gain on him but he just would not give up. People cleared out of our path, screaming excitedly. He chased me down the street until I ducked into a narrow alley, splashing mindlessly through the thick, green-black sewage. I was already racing up the next street, when I realised I was running from myself.  The burly man was nowhere to be seen. I stopped before a house and asked a girl to get me some water to clean off the filth clinging to my trousers. I waited, fighting to regain my breath, thinking about Gambo. The girl brought the water in a plastic kettle and stood by while I washed my feet.

“So, you are here,” Gambo said. She was standing, arms akimbo, looking down disdainfully at my stooped figure. “You just fled and left me.”

I was embarrassed. And then angry. “Who on earth was that man?” I asked.

“My husband,” she said.

“Your husband? You said he was dead!”

“He is.”

I looked at her, flummoxed.

“That was just his ghost. He’s harmless really,” she explained.

“Ghost? Harmless?” I thought of the bulgy muscles and the gleaming machete. I began to think of leaving before she toyed with my sanity. I felt a sting behind my neck and clasped my hand there.

“What?” she asked. I told her. I felt another sting, this time on my back. I turned in time to see a rascally boy with a miniature catapult trying to hide. He started laughing impishly when he saw that I had seen him. Some of his front teeth were missing.

“I will knock off those teeth of yours,” she said sternly to the boy. “Now, go inside before I get my hands on you.”

She turned to me and apologized, explaining that her son was naughty, that he took after his father. Then she introduced me to her daughter, the girl who had helped me with the water. I looked at her. She was almost a woman, her evolved bosom pushed for attention through her blouse. I was certain I had been mistaken all along. Chivalry be damned, I had to go. But Gambo clung to my arm, insisting that I at least say Hello to her mother since I was in front of their house.

Her mother was sitting in a clammy, dimly lit room that smelt of senescence, surrounded by a riot of upturned plates, pots, toppled stools and a misplaced broom. There was an earthenware pot full of cinders close to her, from which the curly smoke of some hideous incense reached for the bare rafters. I stooped and greeted her but she urged me forward.

“She can’t hear very well,” Gambo explained. “Move closer, she wants to see you.”

I moved closer and knelt before the woman whose features I could not see clearly in the dimness. She reached out with talon-like fingers for my face. I drew back. Gambo nodded. Her mother’s dead-cold fingers closed on my face, feeling it out, running over my nose, my eyes, my little beard. She was grunting satisfactorily as she reached down over my chest. I tried to withdraw but Gambo squeezed my shoulders reassuringly. Her mother’s hands travelled down to my backside and felt the thick wallet in my back pocket. She grunted, enthralled.

“Gambo,” she croaked, “You have found him, kin ji ko? Very promising, blessed. Very handsome too. He will be rich, this one, but he must be guided. Guided.”

“The ghost came after him,” Gambo informed.

“This one too! That husband of yours,” she spat contemptuously. Then she turned to me. “Saurayi, he will kill you, that crazy ghost.”

“But she said he is harmless,” I protested.

“Oh no, he’s not. He will chew up your head if we don’t pray for you. You must bring money for special prayers.”

I said I would come back for that and rose to leave. They tried to stop me but I insisted. I was tired of her dubious mother who smelt of sorcery and a mad ghost with bulging muscles and her demonic children. ‘Eternally fidelity’ indeed. Again, she clung to my arm, luring me with her seductive voice, pleading with me to stay for lunch. But her spell was broken when a commotion broke from outside.

“Dan Iska!” The angry voice roared. It was her mad, incorporeal husband. I shrunk, and then tried to flee. But he came, bursting through the dirty curtain and lunged at me with his machete.

“You want to steal my wife, ko?” he thundered, striking. I shielded myself with one of the toppled stools in the room. The blow shattered the chair and I cowered.

“My stool! My stool!” her mother shrieked. “Mad men, you will both pay me for my stool, kun ji ko?”

But the angry ghost was beyond caring. He struck again. This time, without any shield, the blade whooshed inauspiciously through the dank air toward my head.

I woke up screaming, fighting the bed covers and even the air I was breathing.  It was only a nightmare after all.

Two days later, I walked the streets to the market, still haunted by that nightmare. But when I looked into people’s faces; indigent, tired, defeated, hungry, hopeless, they all looked dazed – as I had in that nightmare. I had a feeling we all have been living in a chain of weird nightmares that have no beginning and are determined not to end. I turned my head and my heart fluttered. Ahead of me was a woman in a blue ankara blotched with little, red butterflies. I halted, wanting to turn back. She turned and looked at me. It was her. My heart froze.

She smiled and said, ‘Hi.’

***

Abubakar is the author of The Quest for Nina. His short fictions have been widely published locally and internationally. He has won the BBC African performance Playwriting competition and the Amatu Braide Prize for Prose.