Ambivalence And Other Stories By Unuafe Maxwell

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Waking up with a nasty headache can ruin the little time you get to spend with your loved ones. This morning it felt like my head was being dashed against the yellow concrete wall of our living room. I turned facing the left side of my bed. It was empty. Ogaga had neatly folded the sheets on her side and placed it beside her pillow. Her night gown was there too, with a note written in pink ink 'Happy birthday dear.' I picked it, examined the handwriting without a clue of what I was looking for, or what I hoped to find. Then I dropped the note and headed for the bathroom. On the door was another note with the same happy birthday wishes. 'I thought I told you no card or wishes' I said aloud, hoping she would hear me from wherever she was in the house. But no one answered. So I ignored the note and walked into the bathroom to take a piss. I know you will think I'm a guy with no sense of appreciation, but that is not it. I'm not just a regular guy. I am what some of you may call weird or uninteresting. And it is not that I don't appreciate Ogaga's effort to show me love on my birthday, it is just that I don't have a birthday.
'What!' Right! Shocking? Well that reaction is what I have faced many times. And you know, it is true that I don't have a birthday, and it is not as if I was not born. Ever heard of any human being that existed without being born? 'Incubation?' no, that was not how I came here, that is a whole different thing that I know most people won't agree with, even with the advances of science and technology. You might be an evolutionist, and I might even tell you that I evolved from something out of here, but you will still have your doubts. You will still think I'm crazy or you will use that sugar sweet word and call me weird. Well, tell that to the crazy old lady who thinks that everything good happens in the world because God wants them to and everything evil happens because the devil and his demons have entered the mind of many men and turned them crazy, without any effort at manipulation. Maybe that is my case, but whoever cares to listen does so at his peril. I told you I was not like any regular guy you have meet before, and if by saying all these, I have not impressed you or freaked you out, then you are nothing like Ogaga and we should not be having this conversation.

I didn't need any celebration this year because it was Ogaga that picked my birthday date this time. Remember I told you I don't have a birthday. Well as it happened, I don't know when I was born, and my mother, God bless her Soul, was too drunk to remember the actual date before she died when I was about seven or eight. Seven or eight, because children around me were seven or eight at the time.  I attended the first birthday party that my Aunt Chiedobie took me to at that age. The birthday boy was seven as was written on the cake, so out of curiosity, I asked her 'Aunty, when will I have my own birthday.' She looked at me, smiled, then at the birthday boy, and back at me, 'Rowie, you are seven years old, and you will have your birthday whenever you want.' A week after that, I had a small birthday. Where there was no cake, Aunty Chiedobie used rice that had been cooked to pulp and pressed inside a oval shaped plastic plate to form the shape of a medium sized cake. She designed it with different colours of ribbon and placed it on the table with four bottles of Coke and Fanta. The year that followed, there was another party to mark my birthday, this time a different date from the first. The next year another and it went on like that, that even aunty Chiedobie could not remember the actual day I was born. Even if she could, there was no assurance or any certainty, so that became the trend of my birthday. Last year I picked the date and decided that I was twenty-six, and that was the year I meet Ogaga. This year she picked the date and the age has increased to twenty-seven. I left the bathroom without flushing the pee, 'Something to tell her that I don't want a birthday.' I walked to the kitchen to find the microwave on. 'Cake 'I said out loud. Have I told you that I hate cakes? You see, I don't hate cakes because they are sugary and delicious, but because they make people excited in ways that I don't really understand. I walked to the microwave and turned off the heat. 'I have told her no cake, and no birthday.' Besides what is so special about today, it is just like every other day. I opened the microwave and brought out the half cooked cake, placed it on the kitchen table and just sat there watching it deflate into an unattractive pulp. This is what I would really like to do on a more advanced level, just sit and watch people deflate like leaky bubbles. 'Ogaga, I called again, this time louder than the first, but still, no response. I walked to the kitchen cabinet, took one of the very big knives we have and came back to the cake. I sliced it into two halves. One half i returned to the microwave and turned up the heat to the highest. I watched the cake rise and then begin to burn. As it burned, I laughed. As smoke forced itself out of the closed microwave, I laughed the more. 'This will teach her to respect my wishes.' I returned to the other half of the cake and began to punch it with both hands. I laughed the more. I wished Ogaga was here to see this. I bet she would love me more. After all, she asked me to be myself at all times, and this is me being me. The smoke was still oozing out of the microwave when I heard the footstep at the entrance of the door. Even though I had not seen her, I knew it was Ogaga. She has a peculiar way of thumping her foot on the floor, and the door makes a certain creaky sound whenever she used it. I wanted to move to the door, but in a split second decided against it. I watched as Ogaga walked in, a package of fruit in arms, and what seemed like revulsion covered her face. I smiled, but she didn't smile back. Then I knew I had done something wrong. 'Was it the cake?' I asked. Without an answer, she just walked past me into our bedroom. I followed her. She sat on the bed. I did too. She turned to me, brought her hand forward and touched my cheek. That was when it dawned on me. This had happened before. I had thought it was a dream. Ogaga had told me it was a dream. She had said it wasn't real, that all had been in my head. But it seemed so real. I remembered I was in the same kitchen. Her brother Tega had just left the house angry that morning. I remembered the argument they had had. It was about me and something they said I did that had put both Ogaga and me in danger. I had heard Tega talked about the gas cooker being turned on with nothing on it. I heard him talked about smoke covering the entire kitchen because the kitchen curtains had caught fire. I heard him mention my name, then, it had sounded distant. He had shouted, Ogaga had shouted too, and I had come running, then he left. She felt the tears with her hands before I knew they were pouring. She cleaned them with her hands and then she got up and walked towards the kitchen. About five minutes later she called. Her voice was as crisp as it could ever be, without any trace of a sigh or cries. 'Rowie, come let's have breakfast.'