I — PICTURES OF YOU
Kenzo bought you your first camera.
You remember asking her why she did it. It was a Tuesday afternoon in her apartment. You remember how she caressed your face and told you that it was your passion and she wanted to help fulfill your potential. You remember how she laughed when you told her if she wanted to support your dreams there were cheaper cameras. As you tried to ask her where she got the money from, she shushed you and continued to eat the spaghetti you had prepared.
‘Utibe, I’m not taking the camera back,’ she said, “So do not even bother asking me mbok.”
You smiled at her pronunciation of mbok. She always joked that if she was going to be your disappointing friend, she needed to learn Ibibio, so your parents would like something about her.
You draw your mind back to the room, and your investigation into the camera. “Kenzo,” the box sits between your legs. You still cannot believe she did this.
‘See ehn,’ she points her fork at you ‘Stop complaining and open it so you can snap my picture, sis.’
Ekene had been your best friend since secondary school. She would fight off anyone who crossed her, tearing people’s checkered green house-wears, breaking glass louvers, and wreaking havoc, but when you met in Junior Secondary school, she immediately decided that she would take care of you; little scared Utibe, with no friends and no school mother.
“What is a friend in your language?” She’d asked.
“Ufan.”
“We’re ufans now.”
You want to tell her that’s not how plural works in Ibibio but you don’t know how to correct her. All the other girls knew to avoid you if they did not want to incur her wrath. She earned her nickname then and stuck with it even after graduation. Kenzo was that friend that parents would use side-eye to look at the first time she came to your house, but would never stop asking about.
What of Ekene? Are you people not friends again?
She prefers to wear a tee and joggers and she never used her hair to hide her many piercings, which was the opposite of you, with your skirts and your unpierced ears. She laughed when you told her your church believed that such things defiled you. ‘nothing untainted can enter the kingdom of heaven.’
‘So now my problems in life are a hole in my heart, and the assured damnation of my soul?’
She said you were lucky she thought you were cute.
You opened the box and told her you needed to let it charge for a bit before using it. She argued that it was only in Nigeria that we did that, but she let you charge your new treasure. You thought of what the camera meant for your work. No more phone photography. It meant you could get more clients and better jobs. You looked up at Kenzo again; she just sat there, playing down the importance of what she’d just done; she had changed your life. The first pictures you took were of her; wearing just an XXL t-shirt and sitting with both legs crossed underneath her. She smiled widely, revealing the piercing on her labial frenum. She told you it was called a “Smiley”. You wish you’d taken more pictures of her that evening, with the setting sun bleeding in through her curtains.
She asked you about your day more than anyone. She was the reason you went from saying ‘fine’ to talking about what happened in the day in her apartment, where you spent more time than your hostel. You even kept your camera there because those hostel girls steal more than they shout ‘greatest Nigerian students’.
‘The tape we listened to today was talking about daughters of god being yoked to sons of men. My mother was doing ehen and wrinkling her nose at my sister’. You told her about your church beliefs, and how women were discouraged from marrying outside of the church, to stay away from ‘gentiles’ and follow ‘brothers of the faith’. She pointed out that at some point the thing would border on incestuous. ‘Maybe that’s why all of them are mad.’
‘Lol. You’re now a comedian abi?’
‘What about you?’ Ekene asked, ‘You don’t have any bobo in the lord you like?’
‘I do not have time to date yet.’ You told her.
Eventually, you made time for boys and fell in love. She insisted on vetting the young man before giving her blessing. Despite her best efforts, he broke your heart. You spent the night watching ‘The Notebook’ in her apartment and crying as she offered to organize boys and beat him up. She told you to be like her and not date men at all and kept making jokes until you laughed and ate the food she bought you.
‘Unlike all these useless boys, I’ll never break your heart.’ She kissed your forehead.
II — WHY AM I HERE?
I was clapping. I found myself grasping for the instinct that would allow me to keep rhythm with the rest of the crowd and not have my claps lagging. The crowd continued to sing and I stood there, surrounded by people praising a god I struggled to believe in; a god cannot seem to love completely.
It is not even Sunday. Why am I here?
My mother sang praises, cleaning her face with the handkerchief the prophet blessed for her and rechristened a “spiritual mantle”. She thanked God for everything, even though he had vehemently refused to heal me. She nudged me, giving me the eye that all Nigerian parents use to communicate with their children in public. Her face said ‘Dance or I’ll use the second spiritual mantle on you’, referring to a consecrated whip she kept at home for ‘casting out demons’.
I swayed from side to side as the drummer began the solo that ushered in a new song. I know she danced and threatened so that God would see our effort and not take my life.
On the mountain, in the valley!
On the land and in the sea!
Hallelujah!
The Lord is my portion in the land of the living.
I looked up to ensure no angelic emissary was taking down names to give his Oga at the top, to ensure adequate blessings and appropriate punishments to defaulters. God is supposed to be omniscient. That means that he knows all, he also sees all. I think of all the thoughts I harbor. Maybe that’s why he refuses to heal me.
I am drawn back to reality by the sound of a plastic chair breaking. I turned towards the sound. Ushers were already covering the person, but I could pick out a long dress and covered hair a few rows from me.
‘Water!’ someone called out. The people around her shook her unconscious form, trying to revive her. I looked at the altar. The pastor’s hands were clenching the pulpit tightly and he had not moved. “She is not breathing oh!”
The crowd shouted out in dismay. My mother held me tightly, repeatedly saying ‘Blood of Jesus’. She was not alone in her cries for Jesus’s blood.
The entire church joined in the chorus for blood.
This woman needs air and you people are calling for blood.
The pastor moved from the altar and the crowd parted so that he could reach the woman. He began the incoherent sounds they referred to as speaking in tongues. The entire congregation is focused on the collapsed woman and their Daddy in the Lord are. He shouts and after about a minute, the lady gasped. An usher helped her to her feet as the pastor said ‘Thank you Jesus’ repeatedly. The prayers in the church are at a fever pitch and the pianist is playing a ‘worship’ tune in the background.
My mother kept saying ‘Thank you, Jesus. She thinks we’ve finally hit the jackpot.
Holy Michael!
Angel Gabriel!
Be healed!
That evening, Mother booked us in for deliverance. All the time my mother and I did not spend in hospitals looking for second and third opinions was wasted hopping from church to church. In reality, it was the treatments we could afford that kept death at bay. I would take the sterility of the hospitals over those damn prayer rooms. They are so stuffy; the stench of all the people who had something against baths and antiperspirants filled my nostrils all day. I watched as the “prophet” and all his cohorts prayed in meaningless languages. I spotted his sweat-soaked armpits he lifted his hands to ring the bell, repeatedly, to the point I kept hearing the ringing long after he stopped.
As they shook my head, I would look up at my mother. She stood with them in the circle, dressed in her white flowing garment. She would worship any god that would heal her child, and even though all Christians supposedly served the same God, we kept trying other people’s gods. ‘Jesus is in some places Ekene. I can feel him here, nwee okwukwe.” Have faith.
Sha Sha the faith thing did not work. I wonder how he pulled off the miracle in church. Oya do it here sir! Fix my heart!
That was the day God died for me. The day I realized all his servants were liars and conmen. I’d rather die a thousand painful deaths than put my life in the hands of any prophet again abeg.
III — RARE DAYS
You feel anger rise in you. Anger and fear. “What else did they say is killing you?” You look at the results from her tests, fear taking hold as the anger gives way.
‘Apart from the PCOS? A left atrial enlargement,’ she says. Kenzo cannot look you in the eye as she speaks. You have known about her Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome for years, but she deliberately kept her other conditions from you, in some misguided attempt to keep you safe, or not have you worry about her.
‘UT I’m fine now.’ She says, but you know she’s an expert at hiding pain. Her doctor says that the amount of pain she experiences on any given day would paralyze most normal people, but she’d been enduring hers for so many years…
‘Don’t give me that “I’m fine” bullshit.’ You don’t want your anger to override the concern you’re trying to show. Her hands were cold like they belonged to a corpse, and you knew this pain was worse because she could not pretend she was fine. ‘I felt your hands. You are not going to lie to me and pretend you’re fine, Ekene.’
Her expression changes. You call her Ekene so she knew you were unhappy. ‘Are you going to call my mother?’
You tell her if she keeps doing hard guy you’ll be left with no choice, so she agrees to let you follow her for consultations and for ultrasound scans that reveal worse news every session. “How is it that you’re still on your feet?” You ask as you look at the cysts that she needs to have removed from her ovary. She smiles and tells you that she’s been fighting death her whole life.
‘No be now I go come dey lose guard.’ She interlocks her cold fingers with yours. She tells you that there are days she feels very good. ‘Those days are rare though. The rest is pain.’
Two years go by and you fail at multiple talking stages with men intent on wasting your time, all while ensuring Kenzo takes her drugs and sees her doctor regularly. You both graduate, with a lot of effort and neither of you attends the graduation ceremony itself, though your parents insist on a joint reception. Ekene dances with you before taking her seat and refusing to move for the rest of the party, choosing instead to cradle a bottle of whiskey, against her doctor’s recommendations and her better judgment. After your graduation, she does not allow you to take pictures of her; she doesn’t want to see how her body is deteriorating. You sit through the meetings, fighting back tears every time they deliver more bad news. You are in a plastic chair next to her hospital bed as she recovers from the surgery to remove a cyst when Terem sends you the text message that he wants to break up with you and you feel terrible as you tell her because you thought that he was going to be the one. Kenzo offers to organize boys but you refuse again, taking away only her hugs as you both try to sleep in the small bed. She complains about the teaching hospital’s poor standards.
The first time Ekene kisses you, it feels different. She is gentle even in her desperation, as if she understands your needs and is intent on satisfying them. You consented to this and though you don’t want to feel bad afterwards, you cannot help it. It is in the conditioning you’ve received your entire life. When you go home, you attend extra choir practices and even offer to sing solos in the hopes that God will not send lightning to strike you down for sinning so badly. Ekene needs your help, and though you give it, you are distant and she can sense it.
“Do you think me evil now?” She asks one night when she invites you to her place after days of you intentionally avoiding sleepovers.
You suddenly feel stupid. You move closer to her and assure her you do not think she’s evil “You’re my sister, Kenzo, as much as the one I left at home.” She smiles weakly and says you are her family. Her mind is clouded by the effects of her pain medication. She’s been on stronger drugs recently and the Co-codamol pill she took an hour ago has hold of her body now. You ignore the voice in your head that keeps saying you’ll burn in hell. The possible damnation of your eternal should not stop you from being a kind, decent human being. God is love, right?
You want to tell her she will be fine, that she will get better, but you do not want to lie.
“I have never felt this broken in my life.” She says, smiling through the haze of the drugs.
She tells you to take pictures of her. It is surprising, a change of pace from her apprehension at being in front of your camera. She sits in the corner of her bed, bathed in the purple light of her colored bulb, looking at her hands as if they aren’t hers, marveling at the texture of them. You look at her through the lens and see her, really see her. You see how the light from your flash hits her skin and the fluorescence makes her look ethereal. She is beautiful in a way you never truly understood till that moment. As you show her the pictures, she touches your hand, softly and with the fragility of someone afraid to break things, to break you. She tells you she loves you there. She says you do not have to say you love her back, but she needed to say it “I’ve loved you since we were kids playing in FGGC, Utibe. I’ll never stop loving you”.
You do not say it back. You do not love her the way she loves you, but you do not pull away either, so maybe that’ll have to do for now. Kenzo begins to smile in your pictures of her again. They’re warm and kind smiles, filled with affection for the one taking them. She looks more vulnerable than ever before; she is tired of expending energy to hold up walls to keep people out.
You kissed her back this time.
“Let me snap you.” She says, gesturing for the camera. You do not know how to pose, so you decline, but she insists. You will do anything to make her happy, so you let her take photos of you.
IV — NO ONE COULD SAVE ME BUT YOU
Utibe is very easy to love.
When we were in SS3, she bullied junior students for their novels and insisted they all called her just Utibe, without the “senior” honorific. She only ever got in trouble when we were together because she was an angel and I was a senior special assistant to Satan. Now, all she wants to do is graduate and take beautiful pictures, like if she takes enough she will never forget anything that has ever happened to us. I try to stay awake. I know that if I sleep when I wake up this will pass. I beg Utibe not to let me sleep and she pretends to agree with me as she tucks me into bed. Daylight will come and Utibe will leave me, so I will immerse myself in these hours. I will stretch them out and live whole lifetimes within every minute. I will hold all the seconds up to the light and observe the beauty within. As I hug each one close to me, for a little bit, the world is not such a bad place. The memories fill out the cracks in my heart, easing my pain. Somehow this girl, this pure untainted soul, sees everything I hate about myself and loves me still. She urges me to see a life beyond the meagre years I’ve lived, to attain knowledge she is sure will be useful, though I insist I cannot use any of it in the grave.
‘Get the degree first Ekene, then you can debate whether or not you need it’. I tell her I will not read anything the university doesn’t require and she says it is okay, though I can tell she is disappointed, so I always read the novels she leaves in my apartment. I will not sha tell her before she thinks she has succeeded in converting me.
I don’t know that she hasn’t already.
Days later, sober and aware of every drop of pain in my body, I sit through the car ride to Utibe’s family house. I should have called before coming over, but see finish has entered our relationship so her house is home. Utibe is not home, but her sister Ekemini is. The girl, who is a copy of Utibe save for her dimples, comes out and hugs me like we are old friends. I speak when she finally releases me ‘Ekemini, where is your sister mbok? Has she come back from choir practice?’
‘Senior Kenzo, I’ve started looking for style on Pinterest oh.’
‘Ehn?’
‘She’s probably still in church now. I didn’t know counseling in our church takes time like this.’
‘Counselling?’
She is so excited she does not see this is the first I’m hearing of this.
‘For marriage na.’
V — DO YOU LOVE HIM?
‘You’re marrying Terem?’ Her voice is even and devoid of emotion.
The day Kenzo finds out, the message from the head pastor during marriage counseling is “Secrets”; what you whisper in secret will be shouted on the rooftops. For weeks you’ve forced smiles, sneaking around and hoping she could not see the albatross around your neck. You cannot be angry with your sister for assuming that she already knew. You return to her apartment to find her sitting on her mattress. Twenty-three-year-old Kenzo is thin, not that she’s ever been a big person, but she’s smaller now than in the pictures from last year, frail even. You do not know where to start. She asks how long you’ve been engaged and you tell her.
‘You’ve kept this from me for two months, Utibe?’
You explain that Terem is now a deacon in your church. That marrying him will secure your future and save you the stress. It will also get your mother off your back. You tell her that he’s changed now; he won’t break your heart or hurt you.
‘That is not enough,’ she says ‘Does he love you?’ You are not sure, but you do not tell her that.
‘Do you love him?’
You tell her you will have to learn to love him and she spits. You reach for her and she shrugs you off. She says she will go home to her family. She lies with her back to you on the far side of the bed. You know she’s not asleep because you know what she sounds like when she sleeps; you’ve watched her sleep and counted her breaths as you prayed to God to heal her for many nights. She says nothing to you all night and she says nothing even as you pack your bags in the morning.
Weeks go by. You get regular updates from her mother on her well-being. Kenzo refuses to pick up your calls or reply to your texts, which is difficult to explain to her mother because of how inseparable you’ve been all your lives. You go through the marriage counselling, ignoring the voice in your head, which sounds like hers, telling you that you are too young to be doing this. You tell the pastor you’ve never been with anyone, never even kissed anyone, though you know you’re lying; your mind travels past Terem’s terrible kisses to focus on Kenzo’s soft lips and her warm embrace.
As the wedding draws near, you realize you do not know any of the girls on your bridal train except for your sisters and the little bride. You’ve known the girls all your life, but you do not know them. They throw you a small party on the eve of your wedding and you spend the whole night hoping that Kenzo will walk through the doors.
VI — COME WITH ME, PLEASE.
When UT’s sister called me about the bachelorette thing, I didn’t think I would go. Even as I put on clothes that evening and type the address of the party into the app, I am still not sure. I call Ekemini when I arrive and she leaves the party to meet me ‘Senior Kenzo, UT hates this party oh,’ Ekemini says. My school daughter is wearing the ‘chief bridesmaid’ sash from her shoulder to her hip ‘She’s there smiling and laughing with all those church girls but I can tell…’
She lets the word trail.
I think that means she misses me. Or am I overthinking? I tell her it was nothing, not revealing how difficult it was for me to be there. The doctor urges me to stay home as often as I can and not exert myself but here I am, exerting myself. She asks if I want to come in and the cold evening winds piercing my skin suggest I should, but I do not want to make a scene, so I say no. She says she’ll tell Utibe I am outside and hurries back.
Utibe looks perfect. She’s wearing a pink ‘Bride’ sash over a short white dress. Her hair is braided beneath a wig with a fringe. “You came.” She says, though her face asks many more questions. I cannot look at her without feeling a sense of overwhelming sadness.
‘I did.’ I kick a stone and watch it hurtle away “How are you?”
‘Ekene.’ She has not moved closer “You don’t get to reappear tonight after months.”
‘Utibe-’
‘For months I had to call your mother to know how you were doing. I was so worried.’
‘I know. I’m sorry ufan.’
She sighs. She does not tell me to leave, probably because she does not know if she will see me again. She asks if I want to come in and eat puff puff and samosa but I tell her I only came to see her. I tell her I’m okay and she says to wait for her to at least get me a drink.
I speak up ‘I cannot eat or sleep or stop my hands from shaking. As soon as the sun rises, I will leave this place.’
She stops and turns to me “You read one of the books.”
I nod “I read all of them.”
“You look like you haven’t eaten in weeks Kenzo.’ She says ‘Do I have to come to feed you?’
I try, but I cannot stop the words from escaping my lips ‘Don’t marry him.’
‘Kenzo…’
‘Utibe, please don’t marry him.’ My voice borders on desperation.
‘You cannot ask this of me.’
‘Why not? You do not love him.’
She looks around, worried someone might overhear us, but I don’t care “You do not love him, UT. I know you love me. I love you so much ufan.”
I tell her I miss her smile behind the camera as she takes pictures of me. I tell her that she is the difference between heaven and hell; that I feel heaven when I’m with her and I feel the torture of hell every time she leaves. I tell her that I’ve been looking at all the pictures of her and wishing I’d known that those were the good days when we were in them. I could tell her a thousand more words, but I do not know that they will get her to leave with me. I’m fighting for a life where we get our happily ever after.
I do not see any life without her.
‘Come with me UT,’ I tell her
“Come with you where?”
‘I don’t know. Let’s just leave everything and never look back.’ I offer her my hand.
She comes closer to me. I hope she’ll take my hand; that she’ll follow me. As our finger touch, she pulls away. Utibe apologizes repeatedly as she rushes back into the party. I wait, first for her to return with the drink, then for her to return. I know she’s not coming back, but to leave is to let in miles and miles of pain I’m not ready to feel.
I do not know if what I’m feeling is the pain of my physically broken heart or the heartbreak. I order my cab and ignore the first one that arrives. I order another cab and ignore the driver’s calls when he arrives. By the third, I force myself away, because it’s late and drivers may not accept rides from this area soon. As the car takes me further from Utibe, I feel as if an invisible string that holds us together is coming under too much strain. I worry it will snap if I keep going.
“Madam, you dey okay?” The driver asks. I hear him, but his voice sounds like it is coming from the other side of a wall. The pain drowns out everything, flooding my chest like someone is repeatedly stabbing me. I know there is air all around me, but as hard as I try I cannot breathe.
“Madam!”
Loading comments...
