Visible Essence

CHAPTER THREE

Mama undressed and hurried up into the kitchen to prepare meal, as usual it’s the normal rice and ofe akwu that is being cooked every Sunday. It was like a tradition that everyone must cook rice on Sunday whether it is stew or ofe akwu.

And ours wasn’t an exception at all. That Sunday mama was to cook ofe akwu and I enjoy the taste of her food a lot. I sat at the kitchen stool with Ada waiting for the cooking to commence, while Obinna was standing at the verandah, watching some group of boys playing football on the street.

Obinna, did you see papa? I asked quietly, almost like I didn’t want him back yet.
                  
He turned looked at us and replied.

“no oo”.

As mama came in, her rubber slippers making slap-slap sounds on the tiled floor. She had changed from her sequined Sunday wrapper and the blouse with puffy sleeve.

Now she had a plain tie-dye wrapper tied loosely around her waist and that blue bold sleeveless she wore every other day. It was a souvenir from a traditional marriage papa had attended; the word THANKS FOR COMING crawled over her sagging breast.

Mama sat down in the kitchen stool normally called ekwu, by most people, and started preparing the meal. The pot of rice was already on fire when she came as Ada has taken care of that.

Kpom-kpom; we heard at the door, mama turned her head towards the door with shock, ada ran towards the door and opened it, it was dad.
Good afternoon papa, ada greeted.

He looked down at her, with steady eyes and said eeehee kedu?

She didn’t reply his question. Obinna greeted papa too and stood beside the kitchen door quietly. Papa entered the kitchen, looked at mama, she greeted him quietly,

He turned to her and said; you sit there and greet me good afternoon, when you have starved me since morning.

How many times have I warned you not to leave this house without making my food ready? So you went to meet your numerous boy friends? Staring at her with feasted eye.

He unbuckled his belt slowly as he speaks. It was a heavy belt made of layers of brown leather with a sedate leather covered buckle, and swinged it towards us; it landed on Ada first, across her shoulder. Then mama raised her hand as it landed on her upper arm, which was bear due to the sleeveless she wore.

I put the bowl of meat I was holding down just as the belt landed on Obinna and a little part on me. Sometimes I watched the Fulani nomads, white jellabas flapping against their legs in the wind, making clicking sounds as they herded their cows across the road with a switch, each smack of the switch swift and precise.

Papa was like a Fulani nomads although he did not have their spare, tall lanky body, as he swung the belt on us, muttering some words which no one heard. We did not move more than five steps away from the leather belt as it swings through the air.

Then the belt stopped, and papa started at the leather belt in his hand. His face crumpled; and his eyelid sagged as he headed for the door.

The rest of the Sunday was dull.

mama hurried the food with tears in her eye, and served us our meal. We sat at the corridor of the parlour, eating from one plate.

I looked down at the rice and ofe-akwu and fried plantain, and the two pieces of meat and some scraps of fish on the plate and tried to concentrate, tried to get the food down.

She served papa his meal on the dining table, the table was made of some local woods that cracks slowly, the outer layers where shielding, like a molting cricket, Light brown curling up from the surface. The dining chairs where mismatched.

Papa sat on his favorite chair, which is at the head of the table. He occupies that sit as the head of the family and no one else dares to sit on it. He ate his meal slowly and when he was done, he called on mama to come carry her plate.

I watched mama walk towards the palour and then to the kitchen, in her limping gait. Her braided hair was piled into a net she wore, that tapered to a golfs balls like lump at the end, like a Father Christmas hat. She looked tired.

Back in my room, I could feel mama’s agony but what can I do? I was just a kid who couldn’t even fend for herself.

As i sat on the bed; I just couldn’t stop imagining what mama was going through. My eyes filled with tears as I taught about it and felt the sharp pain on my back where papa lashed me with his belt.

* Ofe-akwu = banga soup (Native soup prepared with palm nut, scent leave, pumpkin leaves etc)

*ekwu = side stool used in local kitchen mainly for sitting while pounding