MY YELLOWEST MEMORIES

I like to fix memories of my past into packets of colour – yellow for happy and sunny, blue for bored, red for angry or nervous, green for ill and black for depressed. It’s a lot easier to appreciate those memories when I paint them and tuck into corners of my mind.

Yellow was my happy moments; the period I was carefree, gullible and when I didn’t have an idea what a migraine was. Yellow was between age six to ten; losing my front teeth, getting my first pair of jeans trousers and finally getting the freedom to decide on my own what I wear to church.

I remember days spent in the garden in front of the house growing beans and tomatoes (those were the only things that agreed to sprout after we poured the seeds on the hungry soil without actually burying them) with my best friends Kemi and Chiamaka. We watched our seeds grow and were proud to offer a few bean stalks to our mothers to cook for us which I’m sure they ended up throwing away behind our backs. I remember listening to songs from Everly Brothers – songs like ‘Take a message to Mary’, ‘Ebony Eyes’ and ‘She’s a Bird Dog’ were my favourites at the time. I remember picking almond fruits from beneath the trees with my friends; we called them ‘ebelebo’ back then. After eating the fleshy part, we would march to Kemi’s house where she would sneak inside to find out if her father was around. Once the confirmation was made that he was out, we would use the vice in the garage to crush the seeds in order to get the nuts out. It was much easier than my fragile arms hammering away on the stubborn seeds with a stone that would start to scatter after the first contact.

I remember hopping on one leg while playing ‘King’ on the corridor, darting in and out of ‘Game Box’ and playing ‘Skiskiskilolo’ which entailed hiding a bundle of sticks in the most ridiculous place ever so that the last person to find the sticks took the next turn in hiding them. I remember cooking eba and ogbono soup in the garden with ground hibiscus flowers and sand. By the way, did you know that crushing hibiscus flowers make them yucky and sticky? Bet you didn’t know. I remember pretending to be a teacher with a long cane flogging my students very often and with much aggression. My students, of course were the flowers at the front of my house. My parents always looked dismayed when they returned home to find their well trimmed flowers looking like a swarm of locusts had dealt with them. I remember sucking the sugary nectar from the flower stalks of ixora plants and eating the ripe black seeds. I wonder now why poison didn’t finish me then with the strange things I ate.
Rewind back three to four years earlier - primary school.

As an incentive to make us come top three positions in class, my parents decided that they would reward our efforts with ‘special presents’. The first position was to get...um...I think it was a cold bottle of coke, a whole loaf of bread (yes, sad to think that all those years, bread was actually our heaven on earth...sigh...such a waste!) and a tin of sardine. The second was everything minus the sardine and the third was just coke. So, with such an incentive, who would not want to come first three? I must add that if you are reading this and we were in the same class in primary school, I apologise for stealing your joy but now you understand why it was really important for me to maintain my spot.

The days for collecting my results were usually the longest. I wouldn’t be able to sleep and during breakfast when my father gave side comments I would pretend not to hear just so the tension would ease out of me. My mother was a teacher in the same school so it made matters even worse because I didn’t want any of my parents to hear about my results before me just in case of any disappointment.
The assembly that usually started as early as eight would delay till almost twelve. Now, I wonder if it were not a deliberate attempt by the teachers to punish me even more...then finally...the dreaded bell that would cause my throat to dry up. Standing in line with the others, my knees would actually be knocking together until the headmistress announced my class and...
After collecting my report card, waiting for my daddy was an agony because the excitement bubbling in my stomach would cause me to run all the way home on broomstick legs waving the card in the air. My father would return early from work just so he can see our cards. At the time, my immediate younger sister and I were the only ones who knew what to expect; the third child was a toddler then. My mother would prepare us a special meal to celebrate and if while we were eating, we heard the familiar honk of my father’s car we would run out with dirty fingers jumping and chanting into the air, “daddy, daddy, I came first!”
With a huge smile plastered on his face, my father would lead us into the sitting room where he would announce that we were to be given our special gifts and then we would proceed to the dance we enjoyed. Flapping our hands like birds and nodding our heads while walking around the room in a single line with my father in front and the two of us behind, we would sing an improvised song I am too embarrassed to write down.

Sigh...if only today’s children knew what they are missing.

PS: if you are my mum or dad reading this, my phone is not available at the moment...try again later.

JOB PALAVA

Imagine this scenario:
You, a lady in a well pressed shirt tucked into a knee length skirt. Your skirt shows off your long legs balanced on four-inch NEXT shoes. Not a strand of hair saluting the skies. Even your smile can win you a place on the front cover of a Virgin Nigeria flyer. You know you look perfect, well co-ordinated (seriously, your English can put the Queen to shame) but there’s just one teeny-weeny snag...
You, a guy in a no-nonsense three piece suit. Grey colour, the colour GQ magazine quoted was the new trend for well discerning guys headed for the top. You smile at the lady in front of you; beside her is a plaque that reads FRONT DESK PERSONNEL. You wish she can see your shoes; they are brand new, not from those bend down boutiques along Obalende. These ones are solid shoes but she can’t see them because she is almost charmed by your smile. Until she notices that little snag...

...the file clasped in front of you.

Her smile slips a little then disappears completely. You almost hear her mind snap, “try me today. Let me see how you will pass through that door while I’m here.”
“Hello,” you say to her. “Having a nice day?”
Her frown quenches your eager smile. You can see the oil shinning on her face and you think that it should be just enough to fry an egg; the tiredness that makes her eyes almost red; you can hear the faint song from the game she was playing on her computer.
“What do you think?” she snaps at you. You know she is thinking: look here, I also went to school like you. University graduate too. See where it landed me. Come and pass here, let me see how you will do it...mschewww...
“Um...” you try to remember all the words that will take you to your dream destination but somehow all the words seem to float out of your head, hovering around like annoying mosquitoes. “Um....” you try again. “Please may I see the head of the Human Resources department?”
“For what?” she barks. Her eyes are no longer red but a bright white as if your utterance has fuelled the energy in her. She looks ready to attack if given the chance. You take one step backward.
“Um...I would like to ...um...” you swallow. You think: ah-ah, I am sure I am older than this little girl here. See how she is using me to do ten-ten.
“Please I would like to discuss something very important.”
“My friend,” she chirps going back to her game. “Drop your cv over there. We will get back to you.”
You look at where she pointed. A pile of papers and files stand abandoned like a mini skyscraper gathering dust at the end of her table. Soon you would probably buy roasted plantain and find your discarded cv was used to wrap your plantain. A spider is belly dancing on one of the papers with an edge that looks like it must have served as a rat’s dinner.
“Excuse me, please can I quickly see....”
“I said drop your cv there,” she says more firmly pinning you down with a stare. She looks pointedly at the direction where a uniformed guard is yawning on a stool by the door, his baton across his lap. You get the hint. You drop your file on top of the belly-dancing spider and wonder if you squashed it. You wish she could turn into that spider so you can squash her but she has gone back to her game which sounds quite familiar like the one you play at home when you are idle which is really most of the time.
“Have a nice day,” you say stiffly and walk out. She does not reply.

On your way home, you start to think of all the things you should have done. Maybe, you should have barged in and demanded to speak with the head of the human resources unit. Maybe you should have pretended to be the Brand Manager of ExxonMobil demanding an urgent meeting with the human resources department. You start to think of all you did wrong including letting that small girl intimidate you.
The nerve of a girl. A mere common girl who might have been your junior in secondary school! Your heart winces in pain.

Then as you walk under the heat to the bus-stop, you come across posters of Nollywood movies; most of them have strange titles...Izaga, Isakaba, Igodo, Karashika...and you suddenly get a burst of inspiration. You smile as the sun boils your head, as sweat creeps down your face until your handkerchief is too wet to handle any more. In your mind you recreate the scene, fixing in details of what you should have done and should not have done.

Imagine:
You, a lady, dressed in a two piece skirt suit. Black. The skirt reaches your ankles. You have a red scarf tied around your neck and a matching one on your head. You have kohl painted underneath your eyes until your eyes look like they are standing out of darkness. You have red coral beads around your wrists and ankles that jingle as you move and a long black mark drawn cleverly down the middle of your forehead. There is one more thing to do...

You, a guy dressed in a three piece suit. Black. You hold a cane on one hand because you are faking a limp. You have kohl painted underneath your eyes and red breads around your wrist in place of your leather wristwatch. You have a patch of red cloth over one eye that you tie at the back of your head. You had ensured that the smoke from Iya Kofo’s roasted corns permeated every hole in your clothes so now you smell really weird. There is one more thing to do...

“Hello,” you say. You smile at the lady in front of you; beside her is a plaque that reads FRONT DESK PERSONNEL. She looks up at you. At first she is confused, intrigued then when she sums everything she sees in front of her, terror creeps into her eyes. She pushes her chair further away from you. She brings out the rosary hidden inside her blouse to view and fingers it. You smile wider. You like the warning.
“May I see the head of the Human Resources Department?” you ask.
“Who...who are you?”
You like that she is the one stammering. You relax a full minute before answering.
“My name is KarashikaIzagaDuduosunIkenga from the great Ogboni Kingdom, the third in line to the priesthood of Igbudu. I need to drop my cv.” A pause. “Please.”
In a second, she is out of her seat. She is trying hard to smile but her smile is wobbly; makes her look like she is about to burst into tears.
“This way please. Would you like Coke or Mirinda? We even have Beer if you want. I can organise for wine if you prefer that.”
“No thank you,” you reply hiding your smile.

Before you know it, you are seated before the Managing Director himself and you know you just got yourself a job but then you remember that you have to attend today’s night vigil just in case the evil spirits are watching and decide to take you serious.

TILL DEATH DO US PART...

If a bill was passed at the national assembly to reconfigure the words of the marriage vows, guess who would be at the forefront, holding an oversize placard, grinning for all she’s worth and shouting, “Yes! We must!” with such passion that the people beside her would ‘shift small’ (you never know when madness starts).
“Well, not everything though”, I would say when given a chance to speak. “Just the last part; the part that reads ‘till death do us part’”.

Reason being that to me, there is such finality in those words that remind me of a sensation of suffocation like a ball of cloth shoved into my mouth and my nostrils covered. The words make me suddenly realise “hey, you mean I’m stuck with you forever and ever and...dare I say it...ever? What if I need a break?”

I was at a friend’s wedding recently and was seated quite close to the front pew just so that I could provide moral support to my friend. She was radiant in her white ball gown, elegantly coiffed hair and a smile that could light up the whole of Nigeria if PHCN decided to go on strike. She looked happy, expectant, her eyes painted roses on her husband’s face. Sometime during the vow sharing, I even felt a sting in my eye. I had to dig my nails into the fleshy part of my palms to keep myself from crying. My friend was about to become another person’s wife; no more gossiping about girls stuffs like who’s selling the hottest pair of shoes, no more single talking, feeling sorry for awkward guys when they came up to say hi, no more...single stuff.
Then the Priest spoilt everything by announcing in a sombre voice, “till death do us part”. My friend and her husband repeated after him. Then they turned around to face the cheering crowd.

Needless to say, it was at that point that I lost my dreamy smile.

I kind of wished that the priest had scrapped that part and said something like, “you both will live together forever BUT whenever, you need a break you can take three days off max. Now repeat after me.”
It would have made a lot more sense. ‘Till death do us part’ sounded like a constriction; like someone had handcuffed both of them, swallowed the key and said, “you can now enjoy yourselves all you want.” What would be the point in that?
In that instant, I started to think of both of them leaving for their honeymoon immediately after the reception, not able to keep their hands off each other as they explored their new status as husband and wife. I thought of both of them getting back to real life; to performing the same ritual everyday – wake up, breakfast, office, dinner, make love, sleep. Perhaps this would take about a year before a baby arrives then the time table would alter slightly. I thought of her waking up each morning to the same face, on the same side of the bed, wearing the same night gown in the same room. Then I calculated at least fifty years of that.

Sheesh...thinking about that is causing my heart to race again.

What would happen when I got married? I mean, of course I have a choice to remain single and happy but many things are working against me. One, my mother would never let me sleep in peace if I chose that; the last joke my dad told me was that he was going to collect my bride price then send the ‘payer’ down to Lagos to claim his prize. Of course, we both laughed together but I had a feeling daddy was giving me a deadline. Two, I really would like to spend the rest of my life with someone special, ‘someone to annoy for the rest of my life’ like I put it, have a baby or two and do stuff that mothers do such as taking pictures when my children lose their two front teeth and showing the pictures to their girlfriends or boyfriends when they are older. Three, it will be nice to grow old with a friend who will find it funny when I say, “look, you have more white hairs than I do!” and who would actually think me a woman who never ages ( I wish).
But then what if two years down the marriage I needed a break sort of like a mid-term break? What if I wanted to just spend three days out hanging with the girls like old times, drinking glasses of Chapman and chewing the cucumber slices off my drink, wearing shorts and an ankle chain on the beach and singing at the top of my voice when I forgot that proper ladies don’t do such? Would any husband indulge me in a mere three days of my fantasy? Any?
As a single girl, I could make my own time table; I could work when I wanted to, gossip with girl friends when I please, get away from home when my head is full and my creativity is at zero level, take a trip to wherever my budget allows and basically, be a bird.

Only recently I spoke with a friend of mine about my worries. He seemed amused by my overactive imagination; the look on his face said that he found it childish. In fact I am pretty sure he said something like that. He is single and maybe getting ready to settle down. I thought as a guy he would feel the same way after all, guys were more likely to be frightened by a woman who said, “so, when do you think you will be ready for a commitment?” In fact the best way to break up with a guy without leaving any mess is to mention the word ‘commitment’. It will be amazing the way he will disappear like vapour into the atmosphere. Back to my friend...I expected him to second me, a high five maybe or chop knuckle. Instead, he stared me in the eye and told me that he would never allow NEVER ALLOW his future wife out on any vacation without him. You should have seen the way my mouth dropped open.

What did that mean then? Was I imagining everything in my head or was there some other problem my subconscious was probably not letting on that I needed to uncover? Was I in the 2 percentile of women who are terrified of the words ‘till death do us part’ but still want to wear that lovely Victorian pure white stone-encrusted embroidered ball gown with pancaked face and a smile that could put the sun to shame?

For now, I think my cure would be to start watching more romantic comedies. It seems to me that all this while I must have been watching them in the reverse or only in my manufactured dreams.

IF WORDS COULD FREEZE...

Igbo men have this funny fetish with their women marrying from their kind.

If possible, the woman has to marry a man from her hometown; in fact, from the exact village she is from. Tell an Igbo man that your name is Mrs. Ifeoma Adewale and watch the stereotypical reaction he would likely give you. Watch the way his eyes would look down your body from head to toe gauging if you are worth continuing the conversation which might likely turn bloody; watch the self satisfied smile that would creep into his face when he deems you argument and disdain-worthy; watch his eyes narrow in suspicion as he asks, “you mean you married a Yoruba man? Those people that speak gbo-gbo-gbo like they don’t know what else to say.”
“Oh yes I did.”
“E-en? But why? Didn’t you see all this fine fine Igbo boys around with cool cash that can take care of that your fine body?”
“I did oh. In fact there were many but I love my husband so I agreed to marry him,” you would reply trying not to be offended at the leer that would travel down your body again, this time, slower.
A snort.
“Mm hmm? The love of a woman is in the depth of a man’s pockets. Ah-ah, where was your mother when your father was collecting wine from a Yoruba man? Na wa oh. You these girls of these days, you people are something else. Don’t you know that...”
The conversation would go on and on and on until embarrassed, you would quietly slink away while holding back an exasperated groan.

Yes, Igbo men hold their own like the mistletoe holds the orange tree. I was caught in such a conversation recently. Why I bothered wasting forty five minutes of my time on the phone, I will never know. Maybe I was just bored that day or maybe I was too amused to drop the phone. Good thing though, it was his credit not mine.
I received the phone call sometime about nine p.m. I had just returned from my office few minutes earlier after suffering an excruciating two and a half hours journey shuffled in between a woman who used my shoulder as her pillow and a man who seemed to have taken talking-Viagra before entering the bus. I was too tired when I got home and just wanted to eat if I could manage it and sleep in preparation for another day stuck in the famous Lagos traffic. So when I received the call and saw that it was a number that I had saved as ‘that Igbo man’, I groaned.
Kelechi had called me twice before during the week. The first time was to introduce himself adding the usual, “I am from the same village with you,” as if just the uttering of the words would make me fly in through the phone and give him a hug.
“Your cousin Onyinye... you remember Onyinye that got married to Nnamdi during Christmas?”
“Yes I remember. I attended her wedding.”
“Ehen. She was the one that gave me your number.”
Mental note: Call Onyinye and tell her...no, scrap that...warn her not to give my number out to any stranger even if he claims to be the president’s first son or the heir to the throne of England (might reconsider sha). Kelechi said that he was a businessman – importing and exporting paint products and building materials. Did I know his brother? He mentioned a name. I said I had not heard of anyone by the name. He gave the kind of laugh you would give an adult who said he had not heard of Michael Jackson.
The second time he called was to proceed to the next level. He told me that he had heard so much about me.
“I saw all your pictures. Very beautiful. Asa nwa,” he said his words dripping with heaviness as he rattled on with Igbo-accented English. “I could not stop looking at your picture. How is school?”
This question usually threw me off because...well, I still had issues with people looking at me and assuming that I was still too young to have completed the university so I replied with a frosty, “I am no longer in school. I work.”
“A graduate?” he exclaimed and gave another uneasy laughter.
He asked me several other questions and I replied as best as I could. I could have disconnected with a snap, “don’t you have better things to do with your money?” but he had used the famous line ‘I am from the same village with you’ that was as binding as a signature. He said my cousin knew him very well. Chances are my parents might know his family and if I got rude, I might end up tarnishing the image of my family forever. At that moment I was thinking of my dad, a man whose roots were buried deep in the village soil, who had threatened that my traditional marriage (all his daughters) MUST be held in the village without compromise. So, I patiently answered Kelechi’s questions and wished him good night when he decided we had talked enough for the day.
The third time he called, I was in no mood for small talk. I was still trying to get over the ringing in my ears from the guy who had talked at 250km/hr beside me in the bus. My head ached. My body throbbed. I needed sleep. Plus I was hungry. When he called I let the phone ring till it stopped but at the third ring, I knew that he was not going to stop till I picked up.
“Hello?” I injected a weak voice that sounded pitiful even to my ears.
“Ah Ify, how are you now? How was work today?”
“Fine.”
He started with small talk asking how home was, have I heard from my parents, what work did I do today until he must have sensed the way I was giving one-word answers so he plunged into the real talk.
“Eh, Ify when are you coming to visit me now? You have not agreed yet. See ehn, if you come on Saturday, we will be able to meet my brother.”
I asked him why I would want to meet his brother.
“Look, let me tell you. I am not that kind of man that will be talking rubbish. I am a man that goes straight to the point. I want us to be close, very close oh, more than friends. And later, I will meet your parents. Who knows? We might be celebrating our wedding this December.”
Whoa! I almost yelled at him to apply the brakes but I forced myself to remain calm. Did he think that I was like those girls who would start jumping like a monkey at the mention of the word ‘wedding’? I bristled.
“I am honoured,” I began as carefully as I could, “that you want us to get to...to well, be more than friends but I already have a boyfriend,” I finished in a rush.
He snorted. “Stop all that talk. Ikwuzine ihe a, biko. I am offering you the real thing not play play like all those other boys oh. I understand that you have a boyfriend. Even me, I have a girlfriend. She comes to the house, cooks, cleans and then she leaves but I cannot marry her. Mba nu. But you, I want us to get married, you will have my babies. No need for you to be working at...where did you say you work again?”
I repeated the name of my work place.
“Ehen. No need oh. I will take care of you well well. See eh? My brother goes abroad every time and very soon, I will join him in going abroad. Then you will be a big madam when we marry. Eh?”
“I am sorry. I am really sorry but my boyfriend and I are serious about our relationship,” I said with patience. Forced patience. My teeth were jammed together like a closed trap.
“Look, a man cannot be serious until he takes you to his parents to say this is the girl I want to marry. Okay, let me ask you. Is he Igbo?”
There was that question again. That question that stings my insides like a bedbug. I knew what would follow but at that moment I almost wished that my boyfriend was another tribe, say Hausa or Yoruba or even from another country. It was what I used to fantasize at the university; I still wished that I would marry someone from a different tribe from mine. There was something exotic about seeing an intertribal couple that made me really want that but anytime I mentioned that in school, my girlfriends would shout me down with arguments about in-laws from hell; in-laws that would embrace you while smiling and whisper curses in their language into your ears.
“He is Igbo,” I replied.
“E-ehn? Is he from Anambra?”
“Yes he is.”
“Okay, is he from our village?”
Haba! I wanted to retort that he is from my compound. In fact, he is from my father’s house. No-oh, from inside my room.
Instead I said, “no. He is from another town.”
“Where?”
I mentioned the place.
He shouted like I had told him that my boyfriend was from a village of cannibals or a place where people danced naked under the moonlight.
Then he replied, “why now?” His voice was a whine like I had just switched off his favourite television channel. “All you girls of nowadays, you will leave your town people and go and marry from far away. When they maltreat you, you will come running back home and report to the same people you looked down on.”
“But is it not where love takes you that you will go?” I asked.
“Forget love,” he snapped. I could almost feel the spit in the venom he spat out. “Let me tell you, they use sense to marry if not you will suffer. So you think that we are not good enough for you, eh?”
“I did not say so,” I replied.
At this point, I became amused and wanted to giggle because I could picture him pacing around the house talking into the phone and gesturing widely with flailing arms just to prove his point. I could imagine the frown that would mar his features, the way his chest would heave because his argument was getting him out of breath. I could imagine that he would pick up a pillow and squeeze it with his hand hoping that it would turn into my neck.
Mercifully, my cousin came into the room to tell me that dinner was ready. I motioned to her that I was coming.
Into the phone I said, “Kelechi, I really enjoyed talking with you but I have to go now. My aunty needs me. I do hope you find someone you really like but that person cannot be. Take care of yourself.”
He was silent for some seconds, perhaps chewing the inside of his mouth or looking at the paint on the wall or still squeezing that pillow tight. Then in a single breath he puffed, “goodnight” and disconnected.

If words could freeze, I would have been an ice sculpture by now.