ALL THAT NEEDED SAVING

When the time came for you to entangle yourself with the affairs of this world, Mummy wasn't ready, so it fell on you to shield her eyes and those of her mind from the gory gashes it etched on smooth skins and on initiation nights. It had turned her in her sleep, almost tugging loose the hemming of her sanity how much of the bamboo your blooming typified.

Was it not only yesterday you still ran around heaps of sand, playing host to an idle pair of dots too plain to make an impression even on a skin-tight? How did two hills burst out of that plane overnight? And now mountain climbers will begin to encircle you. And now their fingers will begin to itch to grip you in your crevices, to claw and crawl their way. And now dogs lining the unwired kennels of Jaji will snarl and howl and cut eye at the fat bone you have become. Will her task, the supreme test of her motherhood, not be to reinforce the fences and defences about this mountain for as long as is possible that the hikers in Jaji are never able to as close as stride its foot or as high as pin a peg?

You could not have put a name to her distraught, but like a prickly shawl, it wrapped itself about her, and she policed your every breath. Sometimes you caught her gaze transfixed on and scouring your chest, and even when you shot back to deflect it, it didn’t flinch. In fact, you felt it escort your departure. Other times she pulled and shook the soft of her ears and reiterated: “You won’t shame me.” The evening of the day she pumped a slap to the left of your cheeks for running beside a boy and for ignoring the skipping of what had amassed on you, she walked into your room and made sure to be disgusted by your wardrobe.

When she sat on that stool in the clothing store attempting to replace your wardrobe at once, she must have wondered how long her fence would hold till the climbers manoeuvred it. How long till even patient dogs broke their leashes at the sight of this fattening bone? When you were handed the set of B-cups, she mischievously hoped it would be the largest you would ever ask for. It wasn't.

The restrictions came sooner than reckoned – a six p.m. curfew, a ban on tightly-hugging clothes except when in the house, another ban on skirts too high above the knee except when in the house, yet a ban on trousers except when in the house. And yes, no v-necks.

As much as a plethora of objections boiled atop your tongue, behind clenched teeth, at the stern reeling of each of those locks, you managed to get her point: was it not a few days before that Majid had smiled at you in a strange way, baring his canines? Soon, for the dog that he was, he would be asking questions about school, then he would volunteer to put you through, and he'll end up putting himself through you. How then would your future find you worthy of owning it?

Yet even that could have been worse. If anybody had been kind enough to smile at Sadia, she would have found a means to run home to stitch what gaps had opened up in her underwear. When she told you that school had ended for her, she hadn't added why, but you saw it soon. Everyone did. And for the many weeks that towed, hers held the negative copy of what your future should look like:

“That is the same skirt Sadia wears, isn’t it?” Mummy would query.

“It seems you don’t know the times we live in.” Daddy would backup.

“All these things I do for you, and you still won't help yourself?” Mummy would tearfully probe.

“Go take it off immediately.” Daddy would order.

And you could not as much as move your lips to ask for the baby's name, even when you found yourself next to her little family in front of a kiosk. It did not take an effort for Jaji’s residents to garrote one with the very things – or people – they tried to run away from. She had spoiled. Everybody knew. Her face had fallen. If those bloodied eyes meant that she had cried, then it was in the pool of those tears her beauty had drowned. Her hair had tangled so badly, it was cut to its unseen roots, and you're sure something funky wafted through your nostrils the other day.

But it was not just her that you baulked from. Even her name carried all the stench of her rot, and for a long while at school, you slalomed through the morning maze of gossip circles because not only did that name jut out of every clique, it is a torture on its own to be known as best of friends with the one who no longer had a future. But they will seek you out.

Hameed sought you out that afternoon. The same Hameed. The one who had slipped into Sadia's bag the little notes about “presin bres” and “kisin maut," the day she got an afternoon smack from her mother for it. It was his feet that had stretched from under his desk to poke at her buttocks during science class that Ms Ije had yelped “Ye” when she got around her seat to send shocks of lightning through his cheek. When she turned around and beheld a frowning teacher in that near-teary mix of defiance and repentance, she fidgeted mostly by the quizzical stare of the rest of the class, paralyzed mostly by Ms Ije’s indecision to abdicate her best and exemplary student already. Her last session's grade in science had won that moment at the expense of the teacher’s knowledge of Hameed's sin. It was he that now angled by the door.

“So after all the refusing, this is how she ended?” He did not laugh after saying this, but the indifference in his eyes meant he would have loved to. You saw from the fluidity of his tone, smoothed by the oil of mockery, that when he says “ended," he means “shattered”, “irredeemably fragmented”. And it irked you so much that you could have but did not shatter his head against the doorframe with the hardback of a textbook; instead, you resolved to help your mother barbwire your fences, to lock in this thing that could irredeemably shatter.

“You see, you're a very rare flower,” she had begun to say that same evening, elated that you finally became interested in your own safety. “Do you know how many mothers don't even care what their daughters are up to? Do you know how many of these girls have aborted many children, as young as they are, till they've aborted their wombs? Not your portion in Jesus name. That is why your father and I try to give you the best that we can. This is why I do all I do for you. In my days, girls did not useless themselves like this, and I never had cause to bring my mother shame. You won't have cause to bring me shame.”

She paused to decide for herself that the smirk on your face did not tend towards sarcasm. And as if to drive it away if it did, she leaned forward. Her eyes outdid their sockets. Her saliva was in your face.

“The world now does not use its eyes to see good things. Everyone tries to destroy the other person’s property. So while I’m trying to be a mother, you too must do all you can to preserve your dignity.” And you would have, like you did, wondered whose dignity exactly was at stake – hers or yours? What was it with always comparing her methods with other mother’s? – but you didn’t.

You lay on your bed that night and for the first time, let the lifecycle of this revered and prized flower manifest in your head. First, its innocent budding on the fresh branch of a sturdy tree. The green, well-fed leaves had made room for it as it morphed into the shape of a flower ready to hatch into fruit. As its fruit appeared, rings of onlookers had positioned in the tree’s canopy to see what juiciness its blossoming had come with, and as the taster reached for it, the crowd stilled in unison and watched in quiet suspense. He delayed after taking a bite, munching slowly and staring at the black loam of the earth. Soon he raised his eyes and in joyful bewilderment, nodded at them. The crowd ululated. Your mother was smiling and waving at people, many of whom were familiar – family. She was wearing the same red gele, and gold Aso-oke she had used the day your father came with his people to tell her father that they had seen a ripe fruit on his tree and had come to pluck it.

Another little crowding had begun to form about her, and too many hands reached to her for a shake that she barely swiped on some fingers, echoing 'Thank you' to as many. Your friends were there too, not failing to smile thoroughly. But you were not sure how this ends. What did the taster do with the fruit hence? Did he just keep gnawing at it till there was hardly an evidence of its ever existing, and then just put his hand out for another? Did he preserve its seeds to nurture its likes? What happened to the crowd soon? You did not let your mind pull you into the dark depths of its own abyss with these questions. Did your mother not turn out fine? And it was that you folded this page and tucked it somewhere in the pockets behind your mind.

Then you slept.

It would have seemed as though your mind smarted and took the occasion of your unconsciousness to pull you into this unwanted abyss to force unwanted answers upon you. But no, it wasn't a dream – your taster materializing for the first time of many, for a gagged while and in the weak streaming of the moon, and your mother need not have bothered herself with the fences.

By the morning, most of you had simmered to numbness- aching numbness. You pounded your belly to undo its mocking hollowness. You chewed on the vertices of your pillow to muffle the screams that would not have sounded out anyway and tried but failed to still the chills and shivering that later came to paralyze you to your bed. It was only the portion of the sun, shooting through the window and warming your eyelids that finally raised you to scrub the flecks of blood that beset your thighs, and you did it marking the caution of not reaching too deeply inside you lest you grew a loathing for your fingers too. Then you walked out of the house, through the gates and across the yard till your knuckles, prickling yet, were knocking on the Adigun's gate.

You did not bother if anyone saw the rags, torn and dirty, that you were sure tethered to your waist. You did not care if they pointed at the slivers that attached to your sandy, matted hair. You did not care if they nudged each other and “hmmphed” or harrumphed at the wilt a part of you had become. You did not care because you did not care.

When Sadia opened, you fell to her arms, gripping her tight, squeezing. You thought if she pressed you enough, you could eventually size down and shut out all the empty spaces that had opened up in you. When you spoke, you let out more air than words. And when she patted your back, it was then that you first heard yourself cry.

Later it was her turn to speak, and Sadia said: “ ‘Flowers are admired to the utmost effect that they are plucked, my dear, not tended forever. You don't want strangers to crush you before your gardener has the chance to savour your fragrance, do you?’ That is what he said to me. My father. The first time.”

Neither tears nor your jaw dropped as she might have expected. You did not as much as shake your head or as little as click your tongue at her revelations because if hers had come with a forewarning, then she was better off. What you wanted to ask, however, was if her mother knew about it. How did she know? How did she take it? For how long was the air unbreathable? But you did not ask any of these. You did not ask because if your mother did not know about yours, then it could not hurt her. Yes, if Mummy did not know, then her own dignity at least could still exist. And that quite frankly was all that needed saving.

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