Daddy's little Secret

part FOUR

Tolu's funeral.

The day that you bury someone, there's always that sense of finality. Not that the death itself isn't final but seeing their dead body, watching as they lie spiritless in the coffin, unintentionally waiting for them to open their eyes and laugh and say that it's all a prank. Or that they did die but now they're back.

None of those compares to the moment where you watch the coffin get lowered into the ground, into the six feet depth that was dug for that purpose. And nothing prepares you for it either.

As they laid Tolu's coffin into the ground, her mother stood and cried silently. The tears spilled down her cheeks in turns, one tear waiting for the other to reach her chin before starting its own journey. People had expected wailing and weeping because Mrs. Raji shouldn't even have been at her daughter's funeral.

According to Tolu's aunts, it was bad enough for any parent to lose their child but being present at the child's burial, that was worse. Mrs. Raji hadn't cared, all she had kept saying was, "She was the only child I ever had. E fimi'le, mo ma wa n'be."

During the funeral service, the pastor had said that God gave and He took away. Tolu's mother wondered why God had still given Tolu to her when He knew she'd be taken away. Her gaze bore invisible holes through her daughter's casket, her mind lost in thought.

Her emotions tempered and numb, she successfully refused to consider what it meant for her now. What Tolu's death meant for her.

She refused to think of the things or labels society would choose to plaster her with, a widow in her early fifties that was now childless. When she'd lost her husband, she had been a witch, whoever knew what she would be called this time.

Several feet away, in a white Toyota jeep, Fola sat. Unable to stop herself from being in Mrs. Raji's head and in her thinking. Wale was in the driver seat, carefully eyeing Fola, alertly observing her every display of emotion.

"Do you want to go out now?"

This was the second funeral Fola had been to in the unfortunate span of a week. Both Tolu and Dara had died on the same day and minus the obvious that Tolu had been killed by a bullet, no one knew the exact conditions surrounding her death.

Her body had been found, company less, at a dead end. Her eyelids had refused to be shut closed and people had walked past till the information of a dead body reached the police.

Fola had stayed in the car all through the church service, incapable of putting herself through another process of a fatal reality and its resulting grief. Wale on the other hand, had showed up and stuck around the church premises, drove the car to the grounds where Tolu's body was being buried and returned to find Fola seated in silence.

She had taken off her black scarf, tossed it to the back seat and began a peregrination of succumbing to the thoughts in her mind. When Wale made it to the car, that's how he met her, staring into the space before her.

"Go out where?" She turned to look at him, blinking herself back to existence.

Wale placed his hand on her arm and squeezed lightly. "Fola, are you okay?"

She gave him a blank stare, cold to behold.
"I buried my sister three days ago and today, I'm here for her best friend's burial. What do you think?"

Now Wale, desperate to take a fraction of her pain away, speaks with teary eyes. "I'm sorry."

A moment passes, he takes his hand off Fola's arm and clears his throat to pave the way for another speech. "Do you want to talk to her mum? She's about to leave."

Through the windshield, he watches as Mrs. Raji is guided by people on both sides and in the direction of a bus. Fola, whose head had been raised towards the ceiling of the car, opens her eyes to look at the woman. Confusion and mixed feelings rise in her chest, a part of her waiting for her sister to tell her what to do before remembering that that would never be the case.

She shakes her head, telling Wale that she couldn't do it. "I want to. But I can't."

Wale looks at her with understanding, his gaze tender and full of affection. "Let's go home."

He starts the car and heads out of the premises with his heart heavy and eyes red.