Don’t call me daddy!

The little girl ran straight home from school.
She was not going to stay back and play with Freda’s new doll today because her daddy was returning from his trip that afternoon.

Oh how she’d missed her daddy. Her wonderful daddy who piggybacked her all the time and tickled her sides until she was gasping for breathe.

Sara wondered what he got for her on this trip.

She ran over the foyer of their lekki town house and flinging her bag on the stairs ran shouting into her parents’ bedroom.

Her daddy was lying on the bed with his hands clasped behind his head. He was staring at the ceiling.

Sara dove and landed on his stomach giggling happily as she did so.

The next minute she landed hard on the floor. A strong muscular hand shoved her off the bed.
‘Daddy?’ She called out trembling.
Her heart had begun to pound like the mortars of many housewives on new year’s day.

‘DON’T CALL ME DADDY,’ screamed the stranger who now stood over her.

‘I am NOT your daddy. Get the hell out of my life and go find your own daddy!’

The idea for this short story came to mind when I read about an artist who discovered that some of his children were not his and sent them away.

It must hurt I can imagine but… y’know, it is not the child’s (children’s) fault.

They didn’t choose the circumstance, scenario. No one chooses their biological parent.

But, what about the love, the memories, the years past? Can these be erased easily like bad writing?

What about the child who has never known anyone else as daddy?
What about the child?

Give Me Yesterday

He was awakened by the sound of her sobbing.
He reached over and checked the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was 3 o clock in the morning.

‘What is it hon?’ He asked, rolling over to her side of the bed and pulling her into his embrace.

‘What is it?’ He asked again as he stroked her brow.

It took her a while to answer. He could feel her trembling in his arms. He drew her even closer and wished that he could take away her pain.
‘Tell me Angie,’ he pleaded. ‘Tell me why you are crying. Please!’

She hiccupped, then raised her head to look at him with red eyes, eyes red-rimmed from a long period of crying. He could see the anguish in her gentle eyes. Her soul was in those eyes, tortured, trapped.

‘Angie?’ He persisted, lifting her chin with his thumb .

Her answer was brief when it came and did not need many explanations.

‘Jessie.’ She whispered. ‘I dreamt of Jessica again.’

He did not know how to answer her then. He’d suspected as much.

‘What did you dream about her this time?’ He asked as his mind raced on how best to approach the matter.

‘She was getting married, Jake.’ Angie spoke in a low shaky voice as if she was afraid to speak. ‘We were at her wedding. She looked really beautiful Jake, she had on this transparent veil. She… Oh Jake…’
She could not continue. It was too painful, too raw, like fresh wound from a deep knife stab.
Her shoulders shook as she was caught in a new wave of misery, a wail like that of a trapped animal escaped from her lips.

Jessica was their daughter.
She was beautiful and smart and Angie loved her very much. The only thing was that Angie had never held her in her arms. As a matter of fact she had never even seen her for she had been aborted at seventeen weeks.

Angie had conceived her when she was fourteen and Jake, sixteen. Their parents had decided that it was for the best if the pregnancy was quietly aborted so that the would be young parents could get on with their lives.
Everyone said it was for the best and convinced Angie that it was so even though she’d rather have her baby.

The procedure had been carried out but not until Angie had christened the baby. She was convinced it was a girl and named her after her favourite actress.

Jake and Angie did get on with their lives, finishing high school, getting university degrees.
Angie did her best in those times to put what was past behind her as she built a life but sometimes, at unguarded moments thoughts of Jessica haunted her.
Somehow providence had brought Jake and Angie together again as matured and independent adults. Fifteen years after Jessie, as Angie liked to say, they were married.
They began to try for a baby immediately. It was what Angie wanted. She was obsessed with having their baby but ten years on they were yet to have a child. And as each attempt to conceive failed so did Angie’s anguish increase over her loss of Jessica.

The medication, thought Jake, pulling himself back to the present.
He continued to stroke her brow as one might a fevered child. She had stopped shaking and just lay there limply like a broken doll.
‘Can I get you your sleeping pills?’ he asked, still desperate to help.
‘I already took some at bedtime,’ she replied, moving her head gently. ‘They don’t seem to work anymore.’
‘We’ll go back to Dr Irvine in the morning,’ he said, tucking the duvet around her slender form.
‘Maybe he’ll give you something stronger that will help you sleep through the night.’
She nodded, sorrow as thick as a winter blanket all about her.

‘Oh God, he prayed, as he watched her in the morning light, if you’re really there, please, please send my Angie a baby.

 

 

 

 

Apologies Diana, Papa Efe coming up.

 

Papa Efe & Sons 4

Rukevwe did not know when she let out a scream and collapsed on a nearby chair.
‘Papa Efe don kill me o,’ she shouted, holding her head with both hands like a woman who just lost her only child.

Alero laughed her evil crowing laugh, a malicious glint in her eyes.
‘You wan die? Hehehe wait o, I neva finish.’
She stretched her hands in front of her and clapped four times.
‘Ehis wife don get belle sef. I escort am go do scan yesterday, na boy e carry for belle.’
Rukevwe felt her spirit deflate when Alero said that, the way a balloon would when pierced with a pin.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks of their own accord. Quickly she wiped them off before Alero would see her crying and gloat.

She looked at Ehis. His eyes were darting everywhere, like a pickpocket about to strike.
So this is how he would repay all my years of dedication, she thought. Men, you couldn’t trust them. Her mother told her when she was getting married that as long as a husband looked after his wife and children, and was discreet in his affairs, a wife should be grateful and carry on with her marriage.
But in this case, he had not only been indiscreet but he had even added pregnancy and marriage to it.

Rukevwe’s solitude was invaded when Alero began to sing a chorus, swaying her huge mass from side to side.
‘He has done for me, He has done for me, what my enemies could not do, He has done for me.’

Rukevwe swears to this day that she does not know how it happened but one minute she was slouched in a chair pitying herself and the next she had Ehis in the air the way Hulk Hogan would handle a lightweight.
Deftly, she brought him to the ground and proceeded to pummel his body with many blows.
Alero who had been caught off guard recovered momentarily and came to pull Rukevwe off Ehis.

‘I don talk am say you dey crase,’ she said panting, having exerted a lot of energy to pull Rukevwe off. ‘You wan ki (kill) my brother?
And you,’ she said, to Ehis who was back on his feet ‘you no dey shame? Na woman wan ki you so. Na like so you go marry Philo?’
Rukevwe’s ears pricked at the name.
‘Philo? Which Philo?’ she asked.
‘How many Philo you know?’ replied Alero.
Rukevwe ignored her and directed her question at Ehis.
‘Ehis, which Philo?’
‘The Philo wey you know na,’ he replied massaging his hurt elbow, ‘and make I warn you, the next time you try that nonsense na that day I go troway your load for outside. You no thank God say I wan manage you with my new wife.’

Rukevwe did not hear Ehis’s threats. She was thinking about who he said.
Philo!

I Don’t Know How She Does It.

The above is the title of a book by Allison Pearson.
I came across it some years back while browsing through some books in a bookstore.
I remember picking the book off the shelf just for the sake of the title.

What kind of book is this?
Who names their book with such long sentences?
These were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I pulled the book out of its hideaway where it stood nestled between two big books.
It turned out it was a pink medium-sized book.
I flipped through it to find out what it was about and decided afterwards that I had to read it.

The book is about a woman who tries to balance her work as a very busy professional with her family life.
It talks about the main character (Kate Reddy) who struggles with meeting schedules at the office and at the same time worry/prepare meals for her family, attend school events and still be a loving partner to her husband.

I found the book interesting, funny, as well as poignant.
It kind of struck a chord with me as it will any woman who has to juggle with a career and family.
It suggests moments of guilt when unable to make a school play or spend time with the children.
It reminds one of the occasional sinking feeling that one gets over a spouse. Feelings that he or she deserves better attention than they are getting.
And not forgetting the paralysing tiredness that takes over the mind and body and that can only be alleviated by sleep.
And yet, it is the family movie night, or the baby’s birthday the next morning, or even the couple’s anniversary and more effort than usual is expected and therefore demanded.

‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ is an interesting read.
It shows the daily struggles in the life of a woman, the juggling, the victory, the loses.
Though the author used a high-flying and successful woman as her main character, I want to think that even women who do not have such careers or who do not work at all still face the kind of challenges portrayed in the book.I hear the book was made into a movie.
I am yet to see it.

The Polite Trees

22:55

I’m walking down Riverside Lane alone. I can picture my mother scolding me for walking down this road alone so late.

Walking along, I notice yet again the neat rows of trees on both sides, their branches stretching out to intertwine in the middle of the road, forming a canopy that is very welcomed on a hot summer’s day.  The trees look like rows of battle weary soldiers, standing in line in a peace making handshake. If trees have feelings these must feel like I do when that man takes my hand. His handshakes last seconds longer than necessary and they leave me with a feeling that I find hard to describe..

I force my thoughts back to pleasant ones.

Polite trees.

That’s what folks around here like to call this road even though it’s got its own name. I am now at the middle section of the road, at the point where the road snakes off to the left.

I can make out the outline of the huge Birch Tree that stands just behind Dr Lawson’s house. Out of the corner of my eyes I think I see the tree move. This is absolutely ridiculous, I say. Trees do not move. I walk on, no longer confident.

With shocking realisation I see that the tree is actually moving and is now at a place that it is obstructing my path. In wild panic I turn around and run down the road I have come. Reaching the end I look back only to see that the tree is back in its usual place as if it never moved. I shake my head. Did someone add something to my drink at my cousin’s party? Otherwise how could a tree move?

I must have imagined it.

I begin to walk back again. The eerie silence is beginning to get to me and I am anxious to get home.

This time as I approach the tree I keep my eyes fixed on it to convince myself that the earlier sighting was indeed imagined but again the tree begins to move. It seems to glide along the path, silent and speedy, like a ghost in haste. I rush on determined to cross to the other side before it can block my way again but it beat me to it. As I run smack into its middle it folds its branches around me in a suffocating bear hug, a human like warmth, a warmth so familiar and so dreaded that I open my mouth and scream and scream…

“You’ve had one of your nightmares again.” I hear my mother say.

I open my eyes to see her sitting beside me, her arm is resting against my brow.

I close my eyes but I know sleep will not come again for he is standing a few metres from my bed, awkward like. But I guess no one noticed anything about that. They never do.

And again I had seen his face…. my stepdad’s face… in the middle of the huge birch tree.

 

Train To Insanity

The journey was almost over.

They had been travelling for over sixteen hours and what with the time change and crammed travelling conditions, the American could not wait to go back.

His agency had been contracted to return a certain young woman to her family in Spain and he had been chosen to carry out the assignment.

He sighed deeply and once again turned his attention to the girl by his side.

Her files told him that she was sixteen years old.

She did look sixteen but only in the look of innocence around her, for even though her dress hung loosely around her like she was wearing a dress a size too big, he could still tell that she had a well-shaped body underneath.

He continued to look at her from the corner of his eyes, wondering. He had done all he could to draw her out and make her comfortable, but all his attempts had failed. Even the entertainment magazines he had bought her at the duty free shop eight hours ago were still on her lap unwrapped. She hadn’t even glanced at them.

It was obvious she was upset. He had caught her on several occasions wiping tears from her eyes.  All his attempts at conversations only drew monosyllabic answers from her, or at the most, very short sentences.

‘Would you like to stretch your legs for a bit?’  He had asked.

‘No, thank you’ was all she said.

‘Are you hungry yet, would you like to eat something now?’

‘No, I’m fine thank you’ she had replied with a forced smile.

At that moment the warning lights began to flash signifying that their train, the Barcelona Express was approaching.

The girl took the vacant seat next to the door of the train. She could feel the man’s eyes on her, he had told her his name but she could not remember what it was. He was probably wondering why she chose to sit so far away when they were travelling together.  She could tell he was perplexed by her. It was unfortunate that they had to meet under such circumstances. If he had met her this time last year he would have got a completely different girl. But a lot had happened since that time.

Before then she had been a very happy and carefree girl living the American life, with loving parents and great friends both at school and in the neighbourhood life had been perfect. Not until one Thursday night ten months ago when her parents had been killed in a car crash on their way from a conference. The Police had told her that one of their car tyres had come off as they negotiated a hilly bend.

Since then things had been terrible. A succession of family friends had come to stay with her in her home as she had been an only child, but after a while they had become too busy to come. They were also too crammed for space to take her into their homes when she asked them to as she had been told that she was too young to live on her own. So the Law had stepped in. The Court had decided that since she was an adopted child, she should be returned to her birth parents if they were willing to have her. She had been depressed by her parents’ death but everything became worse after that decision was taken. Nobody bothered to ask if she wanted to return to Spain, to her biological parents. She had grown up in California. She had known no other parents or life except the one. The people she was now being taken to meant nothing to her and she did not want anything to do with them. Her feelings were that if they really wanted her in the first instance they would not have given her up for adoption. Neither would they have waited until her parents were dead to take her back.

Perhaps it was because they thought that she had no other choice. She had thought of running away and had even researched places she could run to, but the thought that she would be looking over her shoulders every time she passed a police officer did not appeal to her. And so, in desperation, she had perfected the plan.

It was at exactly 1pm that she sprang up on her feet and depressed the emergency door knob opening unto the second rail track, the one from Madrid. With shocked expressions on people’s faces, she hurled herself under the wheels of the approaching train from Madrid.

Adriana was a middle aged Spanish woman of slight built with a beautiful but sad smile.

She had been a great beauty in her youth but now one had to look carefully to find the beauty that was once there for sad happenings in her life had turned her into an anxious looking older woman with a permanent tic in her right eye.

Today, however was a very special day in the life of Adriana for finally her prayers had been answered and her baby girl was returning back home to her.

She had been so excited in the weeks leading to her baby’s return that now the day had come, she could scarcely contain herself. She had done a total makeover on their lovely home in San Fernando de Henares. She had even redecorated the beautiful attic room she always referred to as ‘our daughter’s room’.

No one had ever lived in that room. It was filled with toys and presents that she had bought for her daughter over the years. Things she would have given her if she lived with them.

And now the very thing that she had always wanted was finally about to happen.

Begonia Marcus had been a very lovely baby. She was the first child born to a happily married but desperately poor couple. At birth she had been very light-skinned. No one in the family had ever been that pale. Even the colour of her hair was different. She was so exquisite and fragile that her skin bruised when she was picked. In the first few months she was so sickly that they spent most of their time on admissions in the newborn and later, the children’s ward.

For long no one could say precisely what was wrong with her. Not until Adriana had gone to see a specialist who requested that the baby should undergo some specific tests.

The tests had been very expensive; the cost was equal to her husband’s salary of three months. However they had revealed that she had a genetic condition which was responsible for her being constantly sick. The doctor had told them that if she was not placed on special diets and medication she was likely to die before her fourth birthday as the deficiency in her genes would lead to her organs being destroyed.

They had been devastated at the news most especially as they could not afford the kinds of meals she was required to eat. Neither were the medications anywhere near affordable. After weeks of brain storming and Begonia’s health worsening, they could find no way out of their predicament than to give their baby away to a family who could afford to care for her.

It had been a very difficult few months while they met several couples who were looking to adopt their baby but they did not feel right about any of them until they met the American couple.

The couple was at that time resident in the Country as expatriates.

The man was an international staff of an oil company there.

Adriana had noted how the American woman had cuddled Begonia the first time they had met. The look of love in her eyes had not diminished even after she had been told of the baby’s condition. Adriana had known it in her heart that moment that her daughter would be well taken care of by that woman. But it had not been easy letting her baby go.

She had been heart broken after Begonia had gone to live with her new family but she dared not ask for her back because she knew that she would die living with them.

Things only improved slightly when Adriana took in six months after Begonia left to live with her new family. Blessedly the pregnancy had resulted in a healthy baby boy.

In the beginning she followed the American couple around just to catch a glimpse of her baby, but that was until they relocated back to America when Begonia was two years old.

Adriana had fallen into a deep depressive illness when the family left.

She thought that she would never see her child again. It was about that time that her husband’s long time employer died, the man who her husband had chauffeured faithfully for nineteen years. He had left her husband some money as a reward for his loyalty over the years. The money had been invested in an Olive producing farm which over time had done well that he was able to divert funds into other businesses. Suddenly the thought had come to her one night as she lay unable to sleep that they could ask for their daughter back since they could now take care of her needs.

She had spoken to her husband the next morning about it but he had refused. He was of the opinion that it was not right to disrupt the girl’s life like that.

He had suggested they wait till she was eighteen to contact her.

In the meantime Adriana had successfully tracked her daughter’s address in America through private investigators and started to take yearly secret trips to Whittier where she lived.

She spent those times following her daughter around but was always careful not to arouse suspicion. Through that means, she got to know Begonia’s friends, her favourite activities, and other wonderful details about her life. There were lots of difficult moments on those trips as she often had the urge to run over to her daughter. She would have given anything at those moments just to hug and hold her baby.

They had phoned to speak to her after her adoptive parents died but she had refused to talk to them. The rejection had hurt but her husband had consoled her telling her that it was expected, telling her to not expect that things would go so smoothly at first.

She was so glad that finally Begonia was coming home. With time they would build a fine relationship together, she was sure.

It was 4.00pm in the evening. Adriana stood at the window overlooking the highroad.

It was now two hours past the time her daughter was expected.  Her husband had begun to pace, while their son had gone back to his room, tired of waiting in the living room.

Surely there had been some delay of some kind, she thought, her tic going off faster than was usual.

They heard the siren of the police car even before they saw it. Adriana scrambled on top the coffee table that stood next to the window to get a better look. Her husband ran out of the house to the road.

There was a police car approaching their drive way and in the front seat sat a man with a worried, frantic look about him. He had a different skin tone from the others in the car and she thought he looked American.

Adriana wondered, her brows meeting in a worried frown why on the day she was expecting her daughter the police would decide to bring her a frightened American instead.

3D, 4D, 5D, 6D…

My daughter came home very excited the other day.
She and her class had just watched a 4D movie.
‘Mummy,’ she said, jumping on one foot excitedly.
‘You should go and watch one.
I could actually see the fog around my feet and even had the sensation of snow falling on my face.
It was amazing.’ She said, dancing around the kitchen.
‘We should go again soon.’
I smiled indulgently as I beheld my teenage daughter who at times behaved so grown up and at other times was like a little child.

Not to digress.
I remember when I first watched a 3D movie, it was really fascinating but at a point I had to discard my 3D glasses because I had got tired of dodging the flying birds in the animated movie we were watching.
It kept feeling like they would soon fly straight into my face and I was getting tired of all the dodging.
‘It’s just an effect,’ whispered my husband in irritation.
‘Stop moving your head around so much before you bang my head with yours.’
That was the point that I took my glasses off.

And now several years later there’s the 4D movie.
I’ve decided to sneak out and watch one alone and see how it feels before going with the family. No need for any late night emergency room visit.
Especially as I’ve heard that one actually experiences things.
Makes me wonder what any other ‘D’ coming after, will be like.
I told my daughter that day that it will probably get to the point that we, the viewers will star in the movies we watch along with the cast and we will probably also be able to decide how we want the movie to end. And then wave a hearty goodbye as the cast disappear into thin air at the end of the flick.

Care to share your experiences and thoughts?

Where do you think technology is leading to with regards the above?