A Man and A Woman

He’s downstairs. You know because you watched his car drive into the compound.
Unlike when you were fifteen, you don’t need to sneak around to see him. Honestly, you never needed to. He was family, born on the same day as your brother, went to the same schools as him, and spent the same amount of time teasing your mother with the same lines that had formed an inside joke that was now a part of your family lore. But you snuck nevertheless, because sometime around the transition from twelve to thirteen, you noticed that his left dimple was not as deep as the right one. And by fifteen, you could barely look him in the eyes anymore because if you did, he would see how much you longed for him to kiss you like the men in the romance novels you read did.

It helped that he went away to university around the same year. What started as him spending Christmas in your house, since his was always too full, became a tradition of never seeing him until your father forced your brother home for crossover service. You would see him in a different form every year. An earring on one ear in one year, a head full of unruly untamed hair the next. You became aware that with each passing year, you were so in love with him and no other emotion you could ever match its completeness or profundity. At the same time, you accepted he had become an unattainable ideal. Perhaps that was why you were so comfortable with sneaking for so long; you knew that your love was only real in your head and that there wasn’t a world where Nnamdi would look at you and want you. You were family.

But still you looked forward to Christmas, looked forward to his laughter booming through the house for two days. It didn’t matter that he worked in Port Harcourt and had developed a small disdain for Lagos. He still came home every December. And it didn’t matter that you were twenty-seven now; you looked forward to him driving into the compound and yelling, “Mama! I don show o”.

There was hardly any excitement as you watched him hug your mother with a wide smile on his face. He looked different, but not so much that he felt unfamiliar. You have missed him in every way that you love him. So, you hung by the door until he came to meet you himself and wrapped you in a hug that was a little less patronizing than the ones he gave you when you were younger.

You thought of his arms around you just before you slept. You convinced yourself that they felt a little bit tighter this time. That he leaned into your neck and placed a small kiss there just before your brother came and took him from you.

You dreaded preparing for the Christmas Eve parties your parents threw. You were a little surprised they were throwing one at all this year, given that you assumed all their savings, including a huge chunk of your brother’s, had gone into flying your father to India for the kidney transplant that none of you liked to talk about. But the reason your cousins showed up one after the other was to celebrate its success and thank God for your father’s health returning.

You hated the fullness of your house, but you did not mind the noise that you had grown to associate with Christmas. You were your father’s baby, so he shielded you from the more rigorous work. But as your mother’s only daughter, she thrust responsibilities and party planning into your hands even though, with your small moments of defiance, you had shown her more than enough times why she shouldn’t. You were never too busy, but you were never idle.

You enjoyed the balance. More so this year because it allowed you to plan for your own personal escapades. The house party/games night on the 26th that you secretly wanted to attend but let your friends think they dragged you to, and the beach party on the 27th that you considered going to but couldn’t decide what to wear.

A part of you wanted to tag along to all the places your brother and Nnamdi went to. You hated how pathetic you felt when you heard them discuss the women that they knew. You hated how much time you spent building a mental picture and coming up short. They all sounded so different from you. Their pawpaw skin was so different from your dark ebony. The long legs that were so much different from your short, stocky ones. You thought that if you saw for yourself, you would let it go.
 
You needed to let it go. You felt like your love for Nnamdi had become an anchor, not in a good way, in a way that kept you chained against your will. You wanted to talk to the men who tried to get to know you and think of the possibility of a spark—or even a crush – growing between you without the wall of Nnamdi’s giant bald head constantly flashing in front of you. It was the thought of letting him go that was weaving into different smaller thoughts that kept you from hearing your mother’s voice yelling your name, “Chiamaka, has your ear gone on leave? Didn’t you hear me telling you to go and buy this thing for me?”

“Ask your son! He’s been sitting down there running his mouth all morning, so ask him!” It had been many years since you yelled back at your mother, so it sent a silence around the buzzing sitting room and kitchen area. You knew it wasn’t fair on Somto because he too had his own work cut out for him, and this was his own small moment of rest.

“Mummy, let me go,” you scoffed when you heard Nnamdi’s soft voice over your brother’s rant of insults being hurled at you, but it was watching Nnamdi shuffle around for your mother’s purse that made you feel truly pathetic.

Your fingers still smelled like onions when you opened the door to your mother holding a plate filled with pepper soup. You let her push her way into your room and drop the plate on your workstation.

“I’ve told you to open these windows, so your room is more airy.” “Mummy, please don’t start” your mother laughed, soft and teasing.

“Nne’m, take courage. Of what use is hanging around him like a shadow waiting for him to turn around and look at you? Ehn?” You felt too much fatigue to pretend that you didn’t understand her. Felt too raw to turn away from the warm touch your mother was giving you.

“There’s no better time for it than now. Take courage and let whatever happens happen. In a week, the new year would come and make everything better, oh? This season is for new beginnings, or old deaths.”

“Mummy, I don’t know how.” “What do you mean you don’t know how?” Look, Nne’m, you are a woman; he is a man. Nature will sort the rest out,” you laughed, because she made all of your turmoil, and all of your pining seem foolish. And maybe it was, maybe you were nothing but foolish.

The party came, and there was no time to think of courage. Your name, pulled like strings from different corners of the compound, kept you from thinking, and you were grateful for it—until you got sick of it, and you needed to hide before you screamed at everyone to go to their houses and prepare their own Christmas meals.

You were on the brink of it when your mother asked you to put another frozen bag of fried chicken in the microwave. The words were on the tip of your tongue when Nnamdi pulled you aside and asked you if you wanted to come with him to the supermarket to get more ice. You took the chance to escape.

“Are you okay?” He asked, fixing his seat belt and waiting for you to respond with his worried eyes fixed on you. You thought of all the things you wanted to say to him, but your mind was blank, and the only thing you could do was take his right hand in yours and place your intertwined hands on your lap.

You had anticipated the courage to come with anxiety that would push vomit out of you. Thought of it as a bold performance that would get his attention, but the only thing you felt was lightness in the silence of his car and his own thumb softly brushing over yours at a pace that matched your heartbeat.