Papa no longer plays with me like he used to because he has been sick since we traveled back from Benin. Worse, I am only allowed to see him once in the morning and then at night and it hurt my little heart so much. Isi the hateful new house girl from the village was tasked with the responsibility of keeping me at bay, so I now take solace in “The inanimate materials” by spending all day talking and playing “House” with my dolls. My favorite of the dolls which is also the ugliest is a gift from aunty Vwoke. It’s also the newest of my dolls but it has quickly become my only trusted friend and confidante in this cold and unfair world.
Earlier, after I had managed to evade Isi, I crept to Papa’s room and overheard the old smelly doctor tell Uncle Uyi that he is flummoxed by the symptoms Papa’s sickness presented. Whatever “Flummox” meant was beyond me but it apparently sounded bad and for some weird reasons the word held this fascination for me, just like every other big word these grown folks utter without the slightest consideration for the little folks like me.
Did I also tell you that for some funny entirely unrelated reason “Flummox” also reminds me of some of those prehistoric animals we were taught in nursery school? Yes it does.
Oops! Now I digress.
Digress is another of those words I hear Papa use. I really don’t know what it means but I know how and when it is supposed to be used so I use it at the slightest provocation because it gives me this air of being an “Academia”.
Sigh! Another of Papa’s words
My use of all these unnecessary English is one of the perks of being a daughter of an English professor. So bear with me, but if you want to dispense blames, blame the professor.
Papa once said I had this obstructive and confusing way of swinging in between thoughts and conversations like a “Pendulum”. But Mama in my defense had replied him that day by asking; Osas you remember what they say about the “Apple never falling too far off from the tree“?
Mama’s question startled me but Papa’s form of reply confounded me more because he simply looked up from the newspaper he was reading and gave Mama that secret and knowing smile they usually shared whenever they were up to no good.
I may be a mere eight year old but my memory serves me well by reminding me that things hadn’t always been like this. I remember when Papa used to tickle me under my sheet just to make me laugh; I remember that he was as strong as an Ox and how he used to prepare pancakes before he drives Mama and me out in his shiny Volkswagen beetle car.
Sigh! Those were good ole’ days past.
We no doubt had our bad moments like every typical family. We had the beautiful times before Mama died and the ugly times after Papa succumbed to the pains of heartbreak. I remember the nights he cried his heart out like a child who had his lunch spilled on the school play ground by a bully. Papa’s anguished soul was slowly withdrawing from the world and I feared I was going to lose him like I lost Mama.
So as Papa’s energy dwindled and his health failed, he was therefore advised by the doctor to take a leave of absence from his work and go to the village for a fresh breath of air.
I miss Aunty Vwoke so much. She always made me laugh whether she said something funny or not and there was this melodic ring to her voice that always made my heart skip a beat. Even Papa admitted that it made the butterfly in his stomach flutter.
Whatever that meant was a mystery to me and I made a mental note to ask my school teacher Miss Aduni if we had butterflies in our stomachs.
Whenever I listen to grown people like Papa talk, I always end up more confused than I originally was because they initially seem to speak in the language little folks understand but then they would all of a sudden resort to speaking gibberish. That at least is how my feeble and flabby ears translate them.
Anyway that was then, so where was I?
Yes the smelly doctor! He said that he has withdrawn his initial prognosis which was that Papa must have contacted something in the village. He said he has never seen anything like this in his fifty some years of practicing medicine and that he is at loss as to what to do. He said that he fears for Papa’s life and he advices that I should be taken to a relative’s house for the time being. He also said and I quote “He is deteriorating too fast for modern day medicine“ and that “it would take a miracle to save him”.
As Isi packed my bag in preparations for my trip to one of my auntie’s place, I mused over those last statements the doctor made. I may not have fully understood what he had said but I understood perfectly that Papa was dying.
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It’s been two weeks since I left home with Isi because of Papa’s sickness, two weeks of waiting with my heart in my mouth to hear that Papa had passed away, but now I return home overwhelmed by joy because a miracle had occurred. Papa’s sickness had miraculously taken a turn for the better and so it was therefore alright for us to go back home. I was so excited by the prospect of seeing Papa hale and hearty again that I could barely keep still on the ride back home despite Isi’s cautions.
When we got to the house, I saw Papa standing at the doorway waiting so I jumped out of the car and ran into his strong waiting arms. Papa held me tightly as we both shed tears of joy and after a few minutes of exchanging pleasantries, Papa carried me into the house and told Isi to carry my bags into his room because he had decided that I should henceforth sleep there. I was so overjoyed by the prospect of cuddling up with Papa at night that I gave Isi the tongue when I noticed the look of disdain on her face.
I and Papa spent our time catching up on things we had both missed while he made pancakes like old times. The smell of the pancakes awakened happy memories from the deepest recess of my mind I had forgotten existed. It felt so good that a semblance of normality had returned to our house hold, it felt so good that we barely realized that it was already nightfall and it felt so good that I was already dozing off in Papa’s arms.
He carried me up the stairs to his room and I snuggled closer to his chest, He gently placed me on his well laid bed and I nestled up as he covered me with a blanket, He planted a kiss on my forehead and I cuddled the pillow closer and when he got up, I opened my eyes to see that he was unpacking my bag for me and a smile broke out on my face as I finally drifted into dreamland with this last though, what else can a eight year old ask for?
I woke up to the morning light on my face and the warmth of Papa’s body behind me. I turned to see Papa awake and staring at me and a smile broke out on my face as I whispered “Good morning Papa”.
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It’s been two months since I woke up to Papa’s dead body, two months of accusations being thrown around and two months of my persistent weeping. Papa would finally be put to rest today and I am standing in front of his grave weeping. I am weeping so much that the faces around me were just a blur to me and the memory of that faithful day which I am forced to re live again was like a bad taste that refuses to leave my taste buds. I remember the heart wrenching scream my vocal cords emitted when I saw Papa’s unnaturally burnt and crisp body shortly after I realized that Papa’s loving eyes that I woke up to were unseeing and will forever remain that way. The uproar it caused and the inquisition that followed were a nightmare no child should ever experience and even after the culprit was finally caught, things still didn’t settle down and probably never will
After many consultations with a witch doctor, it was finally confirmed that Isi was responsible for Papa’s death and was therefore to be returned to the village for further actions. The witch doctor said that even though his divination were obscured by certain forces, he could boldly beat his chest and say that Isi had at least dealt the final blow that led to Papa’s death. He also pointed out that it was after Isi came from the village with us that Papa’s sickness began, it was when she left the house with me that his sickness mysteriously took a turn for the better and it was after she came back with me that Papa died.
I was still dwelling on the not too distant distasteful past when I saw one of my aunties crying toward me.
When she reached me, she knelt down on her knees and drew me closer to her bosom. Then she said, “Weep not my child”, and the rest of what she said were lost on me as I remembered the last time those same words were uttered to me.
Aunty Vwoke uttered those exact words to me on the day I and Papa were returning to Lagos. Like I said earlier, Papa’s health deteriorated following Mama’s death and the doctor advised him to take a leave of absence from the university where he taught. Papa initially rejected the idea but eventually went after much persuasion from his siblings and he later admitted that he was glad we went because that was when he met aunty Vwoke.
She was the daughter of the local locksmith. She was on holiday from the teacher training school and they had met on one of Papa’s evening walks. They had struck a rapport, they found out they had similar interests and she gradually started spending time with us. She mended Papa broken heart, made him whole again and Papa gradually began to smile like old times.
At one point I overhead them talking about she coming back to Lagos with us. I remembered the joy I felt but little did I know that they were just pipe dreams because a week before we were scheduled to travel back, they had an argument. I don’t know what prompted it or what caused it, all I heard was her begging Papa while he said that all that he had felt for her these past months were no longer there and therefore she couldn’t follow us back. She cried and asked Papa to consider the fact that her honor and dignity will be in tatters if he leaves without her. She appealed to Papa to remember that she had left another for him and had shared her body with him because she loved him, the same body no other man had seen or touched before him, the same body she had been saving for her future husband. But Papa didn’t bulge and she left the house weeping bitterly.
When the day came for us to return to Lagos, tears flowed down my eyes as I watched Papa carry our bags into the car because I would miss aunty Vwoke. A few minutes later aunty Vwoke came over to say farewell, so she took me aside and said to me, “Weep not my child” for even though I am not following you to Lagos, I will always be with you in your heart. I told her that I would miss her so much and she told me that she would to and that was why she was giving me a doll. She said the doll represented her love for me and it would bring unhappiness to whoever didn’t want us to be together. She told me to always keep it close and that I should never let anything happen to it. Then just as she turned to leave, she muttered to herself;
“I don’t want him to die. I just don’t want him to live without feeling the hurt he made me feel”
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I was still in my auntie’s arms as I remembered that emotional day but I had never felt so abandoned in my life. I felt so alone without Mama and Papa around and I wished the ground would open and swallow me. Worse, I craved for the comfort of the doll aunty Vwoke gave me but that too had already been taken away from me like every other thing precious to me.
I discovered it was missing after the initial shock of waking up to Papa’s death had worn off. I was sort of in a state of limbo when I searched for my doll to hold on to for comfort but when I didn’t see it I frantically sought out Isi to ask if she knew the whereabouts.
She had this smirk on her face when she told to me that Papa had discovered the doll when he was unpacking my bag and he asked her to burn it because he found it very ugly and repulsive. The horror I felt when she showed me the burnt remains of my precious doll cannot be explained with words and the dejection I felt at being left alone in this cold world were feelings no child deserved to feel, no matter how terrible she must have been.
No matter how!
My Dark School Of Thoughts 
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