Short Story by Aisha Nelson
…the
sun sieves through the half-drawn lace curtains, casting dancing patterns of
light and shadow on my pillow and on my face. I recoil myself on the bed. I
spread away the fluff-y and sheet-y things on the bed. I let my eyes shut. Then
for eleven, just eleven more seconds, I let myself soak in the wonder and
warmth called Sun.
Thursday,
another school day, is finally here. I am supposed to love school, but truth
remains that it is teachers like Mr. Bawa and friends like Elorm; it is other
people like the woman at the canteen who always dishes and hands out food with
a smile and like the school principal who once helped me redo my shoe lace; it
is things like freshly sharpened pencil on crisp new paper and like iced asana I
buy and drink after school; it is experiences like watching that woman who paints
somewhere on the way home from school and like chatting with that man who takes
late afternoon strolls with a parrot on his shoulder; it is only all these
things about school that I love – truly and fully. And then there is Our Day,
today Thursday, the last and party day of school, a day that promises to be all
kinds of beautiful.
So
in my usual greased and easy tumble, I leave my bed and bedroom and skip to the
kitchen. Telltales of breakfast in the process of getting made fill the kitchen:
on the tiled surface beside the sink, an opened pineapple jam jar; in the
kitchen dustbin beside where I stand, roughly halved shells of uncooked eggs;
on the kitchen table, the remaining bread from the day before yesterday; and of
course, in the whole of the kitchen, the ever so bright taste of Papa’s
signature Pine-ger juice!
But
where is Papa himself? And where is that
basket that is supposed to contain a world of sweetness-es and deliciousness-es
for the super beautiful day that this Thursday is? I let these pass. I go to
begin my part of the morning chores. I do not forget to let my right index
finger trace nothing on the wall, as I walk the inner corridor to the bathroom.
As always. Or as almost always, except for the days Papa’s voice follows me to
the bathroom, even if briefly, to make sure I get there and finish early my
business in the bathroom.
This
Thursday, while tracing that nothing on the wall with that my finger, I
discover a new exception. The exception, it
is on the ironing thing always standing lone and empty on the corridor – except
when someone is standing there ironing one piece of clothing or several. The
exception, it is one of my Sunday
church clothes on the ironing thing. I stop the tracing. I start to relive the
time I must have told Papa that students were asked to wear mufti to school this
day, a Thursday. I find no such experience to relive. So I start to remember when,
if, I ever told Papa that I was asked to wear nice clothes – like Sunday church
clothes – to school this Thursday, this Our Day. There is not even a flake of
such a memory. And I do not think to dream up such a thing. Because this is a
matter of one the abiding facts of this life and world: a Thursday is a day
like any other but it still is a Thursday and no other day, no Sunday.
So
I go to the bathroom to do every-thing in the name of cleaning up myself. I am
in the middle of these-things when I hear a very familiar and sweetly clanging
sound, the chime of the clock at the Post Office far up the street somewhere on
which my house stands. I am not sure which of the early morning hours the chime
means. And there still is no sign of Papa, no Papa telling me to hurry up or to
do or not to do one thing or the other on a weekday morning like today. This
should make me happy, I know. But not when it makes me miss Papa, even if
vaguely. So I hurry and leave the bathroom.
I
find Papa in the living room, wearing one of his favourite house clothes,
looking very much like he has already taken his bath, yet lightly sweating from
picking and flipping through and sometimes putting aside one paper thing or the
other from a drawer box he must have fetched from somewhere else in our home, a
box now sitting on the center furniture piece in our living room. I pause and
look at Papa. He rightly reads the question in my look. Papa answers:
“Go
on, please. Do what you have to do. I should be done with this soon. I got a
call and now have to find something before going out today.”
I
return to my bedroom. I do every-thing in the name of dressing up. I put on the
clothes I know I am supposed to complete my dressing up for today with. Apart
from taking a tad longer than usual to find my comb, nothing particularly new happens
while I am doing these-things.
I
return to the place I first saw Papa this
morning. Papa does not look like he is done with his box business. He feels me
around, for he suddenly raises his head from the box to look at me, but his
eyes and attention return to the box, soon, before he asks and adds:
“Why
are you in school uniform? We are already very late today.”
“I
don’t remember my teacher saying students are to wear mufti to school today”, I
say.
Papa
stops looking and picking from the box. He briefly closes his eyes, sighs
heavily, looks away from me and the box, and makes the face of someone trying
very hard to remain patient and polite. I do not know what to make of this his
reaction, but if anyone is to ask me, I will say I am the one who is supposed
to be making that face. For what with my not finding him in the kitchen to
greet and chat with briefly before setting out on my morning chores? What with not
knowing where, if, he was in the house – at the time I was out of bed? What
with no basket of Our Day goodies today? What with my Sunday church clothes on
the ironing thing – only mine and nothing of his? And what exactly with this his frantic poring over this box and its paper
things, in the middle of the living room, on a weekday of all days, and at a
time he himself says we are already terribly late for I’m-still-not-sure-what?
Finally,
Papa actually speaks:
“I’m
not sure what it is you are talking about. At all. Go get your clothes from the
ironing thing. Go find and eat your breakfast – I’m done preparing it. I should
really be done with this thing and be
dressed up by the time you are done.”
“But
Papa –”
“No
But–s. Please. Just go do as I say so that we are not later than we can really help
it.”
I
walk away. To go do as Papa has said. The only cheer in walking to the ironing
thing to pick my Sunday church clothes and changing from my school clothes into
those Sunday ones, and the only magic in going to get and eat my breakfast, was
the Pine-ger juice part of it all. But for this, morning chores are never this
heavy, never this much of a drag.
I
return to that place. Papa is no more in the living room, but the box is, and
beside it, a fat pack of paper things bulging and threatening to spill out of a
worn yellow-orange envelope.
Now,
I do not know what to think. Really. Not anymore. For I can bear getting forced
to wear church clothes to school today, but I do not think I can survive this
morning without seeing an Our Day basket – forget what I previously said
about this morning and cheer and Pine-ger juice and magic. Meanwhile, the box continues
to sit with a large presence and some saucy aura in the living room, a presence
that suffocates me out of the living room and the whole house, an aura that
reminds and mocks me about the absence – or is it lack? – of an Our Day basket
in the living room and in what seems to be the whole house.
I
just do not know what to think, and especially so after I suddenly hear the rev
of the car engine from the compound and soon after that, Papa calling me from
somewhere in the compound and asking that I bring the envelope beside the box
in the living room to him. Even when I don’t understand him, even though I do
not at all agree with him, I think I am getting used to doing as Papa says.
This morning.
So
I go pick the envelope and walk out of the rooms, to the compound, and as it
later turns out when I get to the main house door, to Papa, in the car’s driver
seat. I step out of the house main door
and Papa asks from the car that I lock the door. I find one of many keys in a
bunch already inside the keyhole. I lock the door. I join Papa inside the car,
to I-still-don’t-know-where. As I firmly shut the front passenger seat and give
the envelope to Papa and he turns to put it on the back passenger seats, Papa
asks me to remind him to pass by Prof. Hammond’s. I am not sure when exactly
Papa wants me to do this reminding him, but I am too tired from doing as he
says to ask or say anything to him again, too tired to even care to turn to
look at what he is wearing. All this morning.
Soon,
the car emerges from our compound onto the road and into the rest of the world, and as I quickly and
painfully learn, into the real world,
the living and lively world outside of my fluid and fantastic day-dreams.
Sooner,
my mouth opens in the roundest O. My eyes must be more white than brown or
black or whatever. And even if they are visibly not much distance from the
backrest of my seat in the car, my chest and shoulders are not pressing into
the backrest either. My confusion is not hidden. My confusion confuses Papa,
who asks, with more worry than urgency:
“Is
there a problem? Is the seat belt too tight for you?”
I
nod, not sure if in the affirmative or otherwise or other. I nod again, now emerging
from my confusion, like the car recently did from our house and caused all this,
all this my confusion:
People. People all about the street.
People wearing their Sunday bests on a Thursday morning. People who definitely
are confused…
So
it all happen gradually and quickly at once. My lips return to touching each
other and to trying to form the semblance of a smile that is supposed to say
All Is Well. But all is not. My eyelids leave their flare and they close
further than usual, in keeping with the countenance of my recently taking in new
knowledge, and my trying to find a place in my sense of reality to tuck this
new knowledge. My chest and shoulders ease a little too hard into the backrest,
telling everything about my humbling defeat, my defeat by the source of all
this my confusion:
People prancing up and about the world. People going about
their lives on Thursday as if it is a Sunday. People who my confusion should
rather belong to…
My
confusion flood subsides into a mere trickle. So I now can afford to think and
think hard and far. Seconds run into minutes.
I
think about how I do love Sundays and Sundays’ churchy things, but truth
remains that it is the organ man who likes to check in on us children after
church and won’t leave the room until he has shaken hands with everyone –
especially, and a little too eagerly, our beautiful Sunday school teacher; it
is friends like Kay and Nana; it is the woman who always brings lots of pineapple-flavoured
sobolo and crunchy polo to sell, and some more to give away to children she
thinks are particularly well-behaved at church that Sunday; it is meeting my
Uncle Akwasi again, and outside of my house; it is the promise of stories of
old filled with colour and life, stories brimming with people and events, stories
full of many things warm and wondrous like Sun, stories running over with the
spirit of things essential for living and living vividly; it is all these and some that I love – not only truly and
fully, but also…also…well, also vividly
– about Sundays.
I
think harder and farther than Sundays and my love-s for it. The minutes run
from just a few to close to an hour.
I
ask Papa, absent-mindedly, still lost in the world and trickling confusion of
my thoughts and vivid day-dreams:
“Papa,
what are people supposed to do when they lose count of the days?”
“They
probably should be happy, especially if they are living well and so, lost
count. Otherwise, they will need help.”
“Help?
Help with what?”
“Help
with whatever could be making them lose count of the days.”
“I
see. Thank you, Papa. But what I really mean is, what are people supposed to do when they confuse…no…when they…they mistake
one day for the other?”
“And
by people, you mean?”
“Well,
maybe not you in particular. But definitely all these people dressed up and
going to church this morning, when it is supposed to be a Thursday. And an Our
Day Thursday at that.”
I
do not have to look at Papa to see
the smile which now spreads on his
face. I see it in his voice, in his next words, and in this his
new trying hard to be patient and polite. I see it, together with a loving
understanding of a child’s wild curiosities and incurable day-dreams – mine. I see
it all. The smile. And the understanding. The love, especially.
“My
Dear One, today is Sunday. Not a Thursday. You certainly are done with
exams at school. But it will not be until the next four days, a Thursday, when
your school will properly vacate and your Our Day will happen. And oh, I’ve not
forgotten about the basket, as
usual.”
But
I do not hear much of what Papa says after his mentioning Sunday and Thursday.
I
do not hear Papa because I now have to start to accept this jolting blow to my day-dreams.
I have to start reviving the beautiful worlds and live-s and love-s I have built
and arranged around daydreaming a Thursday out of a day everyone else insists on believing and living as a
Sunday. And if reviving fails, as is already now obvious, I have to start
thinking of how to live on, how to build new day-dreams around the jolt,
despite the jolt.
For
what is life and living it without dreams and day-dreams!
Some of her writings
were shortlist by Erbacce Press; another won Akwantuo Writing’s inaugural Harmattan
Poetry Prize.
More of Aisha’s work – short plays and fiction, poetry and experimental
pieces, memoirs and translations – has featured in outlets including Graphic Communications Group’s
The Mirror; Kalahari Review;
an Accra Theatre Workshop stage production, an African Walks into a Psychiatrist’s Office and other Short Plays; Munyori Literary Journal; One Ghana One Voice; a Writers Project
of Ghana poetry anthology, According to
Sources; Saraba Magazine; a Caine
Prize short story anthology, Lusaka Punk
and other Stories; Prairie Schooner;
the Spectacles. Speculations…curatorial
art exhibition at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST; and
recently, Obsidian, a journal of
Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora.
Later translated into Ga, Luganda and Kiswahili, Aku the Sun Maker is Aisha’s first children’s storybook.
With her manuscript of collected short fiction, Lens and other Stories, she won The Professor Kofi Awoonor Literary Prize (2018: Fiction).
Later translated into Ga, Luganda and Kiswahili, Aku the Sun Maker is Aisha’s first children’s storybook.
With her manuscript of collected short fiction, Lens and other Stories, she won The Professor Kofi Awoonor Literary Prize (2018: Fiction).
Aisha shares some of her writing on her blog, Nu kɛ Hulu (Water and Sun): https://aishawrites.wordpress.com
