Even Loneliness Needs Friends.
A faint sound has woken Fatima for the third time in the last hour. This time, she suspects it’s the kitchen door she left ajar. She sits up, rubs her eyes, and hisses softly at her invisible enemies.
“Ẹ̀ dé lọ sìmí (Why don’t you all take a break),” she mutters.
The midnight of the room is thick around her, its quiet heavy. Uneasy, she brings the bedside lantern to life and stares at the wan wall. The dusty pink paint is fading fast, and parts of it are swollen, pregnant with water. The sight forces a dense, unwilling smile from her. She remembers being a little girl, pretending the swollen walls of her childhood home were friends.
Weary, she rummages through her medicine bowl for paracetamol. The headache that so often comes visiting has returned, and though she knows the tablet will be useless, she plops one into her mouth and chews it slowly. Its bitterness, a comfort to her now-faded life. She considers trying to sleep again, but she knows better. So, she stands, grabs the lantern, and begins her usual parading of the bungalow - a wandering of how her life has come to be this way, and how this comely bungalow she once cherished has now become a place of no rest.
Her languid shuffle stops first at the living room. She places the lantern on the center table and circles the space. Several letters to lost friends could be written in the dust coating the room, and cobwebs dangle in every corner. Her heart aches at the sight, yet cherished memories embrace her. One in particular pulls at her, so she lifts the cloth from the brown leather chaise in the corner, the very first piece of furniture she brought with Prof to the bungalow that wet afternoon in 2001.
The earth had been so miry as Prof’s Toyota Hilux galloped down the narrow path, fruit trees brushing its sides in angry protest. She remembers sitting beside Prof, the chaise creaking behind them and her heart racing in anticipation until the unpainted structure came into view. Its beauty draped in masquerade trees.
“Welcome home, my beloved,” Prof had said in his baritone.
She remembers flying out of the car in a rush, beaming. Her body and soul consumed by love and all the gifts it bore. And though the surroundings were rugged and the air carried the fetid scent of gutter water, she was in heaven. For her dream of starting her own family, one that had always felt faraway, had finally come true.
The memory slowly fades as the lantern flickers. She twists the knob, hoping for steadiness, but a sudden draft catches the flame, snuffing it out. She sighs, grabs the lantern, and makes her way slowly toward the kitchen for kerosene, her fingers trailing along the coarse wall for direction. When she reaches it, she is comforted by the dim light shining through the jalousies. She grabs the kerosene-filled jerrycan by the stove and refills the lantern, the silver light her only guide.
When she is done, she feels suddenly parched, so she reaches into the cupboard idly for a glass. But she is surprised to find that the one she picks is one usually stored at the very back, away from easy reach. She stares at it, her stomach hollow, and another memory slips in. One of her and Jameela, whose relationship now hangs on a loose thread of texts. It was the day of her bridal shower. She had been dressed in a rose-pink shine-shine dress, seated away from her guests, soliloquizing.
“Werey aláṣọ, (Mad woman)” Jameela had said, appearing with a brown box balanced on her shoulder.
“I’m just nervous.”
“Are you sure you want to marry him? I do not approve.”
She remembers laying out her reasons to Jameela, and how, with a stance of defeat, her sister - the only one who had ever tried to understand her life choices - handed her the box of glasses as a congratulatory gift. She had meant to return Jameela’s calls, to take pictures with her at her monumental life events, but her marriage to Prof had taken precedence, and she had given herself to it completely.
A loud bang of the kitchen door snaps her back to reality, and she realizes that her cheeks are now hot with tears. Dizzy, she sits, the gelid tiles pressing against her weary body. Her chest rises and falls against the wall as she tries to steady her breathing, but the tears only come harder. In her ideal world, Prof would be close, his words and the familiar Robb scent on his skin calming her. But he had left for another woman, leaving behind a sum of five thousand naira and a note saying she could have the bungalow, as if it were her fault her womb lacked gifts.
She stands, fills the glass with water, and drinks with shaky hands. The whistling breeze that careens through the jalousies is heavy. She wills herself to scream, to curse the night, Prof, the house, but the effort feels heavier than the grief.
So she surrenders. She accepts that loneliness must be in dire need of a friend to find its place, so serenely, in her story.
