AKIN

I was lying on my rumpled bed, half-naked – t-shirt bunched above my midriff, right hand wrapped around the engorgement, body tensed in anticipation of the release. My trembling left hand reached for my previously discarded pair of shorts; ducking her head, she muttered something about the laundry, the resounding door behind her at one with the thumping of my heart.

A week later, she knocked and waited for my “Come in,” which I said twice for an added measure before she ventured over the threshold. I sat straight-backed in the middle of the bed, my head and torso resting on the dulled blue velvet cushion of the rectangular headboard. She took the chair abreast of my messy reading table opposite the bed and leaned towards me, her slender arms crossed over an extended knee.

My eyes darted around the room, avoiding the chair.

‘I’m your Mum. Stop being weird around me,’ I dragged my eyes from the rectangular aperture behind the cluttered desk to meet her playful browns. 

‘It’s easy for you to say—you don’t…you know.’ My eyes returned to the blue, linen-covered window. She darted off the chair, hands outstretched, and nudged me to scoot aside. Side by side, our heads inches apart, the digits of her right hand nervously plucked the hem of her running shorts; the only sound in the room was the distant whirl from a neighbor’s lawnmower.

‘It’s normal to be curious…to explore your body…hey…look at me.’

My eyes went from her minted pink toenails to meet her now thoughtful browns.

‘Stop running in the opposite direction when you see me…or into another room when I come into the one you’re in…it’s silly and unnecessary. There’s nothing new under the sun.’

 ‘You don’t know how it feels.’ I return to contemplating her toes.

She gently nudged my shoulder with hers, ‘You are fifteen. I am forty. Do you honestly believe I don’t have the life experience to assure you?’

‘Girls don’t wake up with boners.’

‘True. But we have similar… experiences…. would you rather Daddy spoke to you about it?’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No… but it’s no big deal, Akin. Stop acting like it’s something shameful. It’s a natural evolution as you mature and your body changes.…how you handle it is what is important.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You shouldn’t become so preoccupied with it such that is all you think about.’

‘It feels good.’

‘Not everything that feels good is ultimately good for you, and vice versa. Take exercise, for instance, uncomfortable but good for you. You’ve got to practice mind over matter…direct your thoughts from there elsewhere, towards a productive exercise.’

‘It is productive.’ I dragged the second word for emphasis, and a chuckle escaped from my lips with it.

Her head rolled back against the headboard, her raucous laughter obliterating mine as it gathered traction. The door swung open, and Dad came in, a smile spreading across his face, “What’s so funny?”

The raindrops hit the glass window pane, pat… pat… pat, echoes of the soft rap of her knuckle on my bedroom door.

I watch the teary map trickling on the glass—pool on the window ledge, a puddle no doubt gathering beneath it. Huddling under the blanket, my head half-covered by the concave pillow, my right-hand contacts the smooth rectangle under the pillow cradling my head. The screen saver was the last upload from the photo gallery – my smile was a dim reflection of hers. Before the accident, my glances were a cursory polite acknowledgment to appease when she passed me her phone, “What do you think, Akin?” I responded with the generic glib, “Nice.”

“Do you think I should dye it?” She peered at the phone, forehead furrowed, index finger tracing the hairline of her image. I turned away with a shrug of my shoulders and an incoherent mumble conveying disinterest.

Now, I zoom in on details, drink in the slightly dry around the edges, uneven slanted lips, and counted five strands between the eyebrows her tweezers missed. My breath mists the screen as I pore over the pair of dimples, the cloud of springy black curls fringed in with dustings of coarse greys. I released a ragged breath into the pillow.

I hated taking pictures, but unlike Ayo, I never said no. And because she didn’t insist, most of the images were of the pair of us, each now, a shiny piece of currency I dare not spend, a reminder of the sting from a fire ant.

I darted into my room when I saw her wearing the pair of yellow and green Ankara shorts Aunty Lara sent by DHL the previous week, but it was too late. Eyes sparkling, slender arms injected with excitement waved frantically above her head, “Akintunde Ayobami! Don’t dare take them off! Today na today!” And because it was in my nature not to insist, I slunk back out, irritation fired in my veins as she fished out her cell from her back pocket, “What are the odds we would pick matching shorts today.” Before the ‘perfect picture,’ she took several, briskly instructing me to change positions, shuffle objects around in the background, and close the blinds to get the proper room lighting. When she whispered through clenched teeth, “Smile…please,” I did because her eyes beckoned, but a storm brewed in my belly as the selfie stick steadied. An hour later, as she maneuvered the car out of the garage, the sting on my right calf jerked me forward, smashing the culprit with my palm and her foot on the break. I stayed angry after her tongue dabbed saliva at the tip of her thumb and rubbed my puckered skin vigorously. She whispered, “Sorry,” after the ointment took the bite from the fire ant sting but left me bereft of the initial enthusiasm when I  grabbed my pair of Ankara shorts from my jungled closet.

She hated how I scattered my footwear on the floor, ignoring the shoe rack. How I never put my dirty clothes in the hamper by the door; how my room was a potpourri of nasty body odor; how I never opened my windows for cross ventilation. “How can you live like this?” She hollered, cracking open my bedroom door, pinching her nostrils down, eyes scrounged, lips downturned.

“If you don’t do your laundry, sweep your room and change your sheets, I will seize your phone and laptop when I return, oloorun,” she yelled before running out the front door that morning wearing a pair of pink shorts and a sleeveless white t-shirt with the inscription, “I run for me” in cursive.

Dad searched for her phone around the house after the accident, believing she had it on her when she was struck, but I knew she left it charging in the foyer and didn’t come forward with it. He scurried the sight several times with a couple of neighbors. When he came in from combing her running route, head downcast and shoulders slumped forward, I squashed the fiery stings of guilt. Every night, I reached into the breast pocket of the dark suit Aunty Lara bought for the funeral, confirmed the door was locked and climbed into bed. It was my last-thing-before-sleep and early morning ritual to look through the pictures. There were many, but there were a couple I was partial to. The one with both of us sporting matching Adire shirts she ordered for the whole family. My right arm was casually draped over her shoulder, and she had both arms extended out, thumbs up, her smile more expansive than mine; it was her WhatsApp profile picture and the post with the most views and comments on Instagram.

My closet was no longer a musty smelling jungle where clean clothes joined ranks with the dirty but a uniform furor of shirts and pants at attention on hangers and rows of folded t-shirts and shorts. I flattened my palms on the sheet under me, the teasing voice in my ears, “I see you laid your bed.”

I vacuumed all the rooms, did the laundry and changed the sheets on all the beds every Saturday. 

‘I want to follow you on Snapchat,’ she announced at lunch. I swerved panic-filled eyes at Dad, who started to chuckle.

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because my friends’ parents don’t follow them on social media, Mum… please…no!’

‘Angela’s Mum follows her,…she told me…I want a peek into your world.’

‘You’re already in my world, Mum. Angela has a dummy account her Mum follows… that’s not her real account!’

‘What..!’

‘Don’t tell her Mum, please…she is such a helicopter… doesn’t allow her to have any privacy…always searching her room…emptying out her pockets and backpacks….that’s why she set up a dummy account.’

Thankfully, Dad waded in.

‘Leave him alone, Funmi.’

‘I promise not to comment on any of the posts….’

Dad guffawed, ‘You won’t comment…but you will drill him no end on everything you read … leave him … stay in your lane.’

‘How can you know he won’t make bad choices?’

‘We have to trust him,’ Dad turned to me, ‘Don’t post what you won’t be proud of showing your younger brother. Don’t text mean and hurtful things to others, and don’t respond if someone says something unkind to you. What did I tell you to do if someone misbehaves despite your encouraging them to do the right thing?’

‘Block them.’

She fell silent for a minute.

‘Ehhnnn…so Angela’s account is a dummy one…, and her mother was boasting on how close they were…these children are something ….’

I scrolled down the gallery. Ayo is making a funny face – pink tongue jutting out between rows of pearly whites, his left hand lifting up his shirt to expose his bare torso, and his right hand rubbing his midriff. I found videos of Ayo alone I hadn’t seen before. Mum is out of view, but her voice coaxes him; he is in a denim blue onesie, tottering on chubby limbs, arms outstretched at whoever is filming, “You can do it…take those steps for me.” He is blowing out a solitary candle on a colorful two-tier confectionary, a shimmery red party hat slipping off his crown. It’s his first day of school, and I’m telling him to smile from the background; he turns away from the camera, stubbornly refusing to comply, “Leave him alone, Funmi,” Dad’s voice juxtaposes mine. The longest was a little over ten minutes. She is surrounded by colorful packages; an “It’s a boy” banner streams above her head. She lifts her shirt, chubby cheeks pulled back in a smile, an engorged shiny, elongated crescent, to the camera. Guilt pushed past my defenses, gliding between my sheets. I must return her phone to Dad. Not today, though. Maybe tomorrow.

The last upload was the one with her and me wearing matching orange and green Ankara sneakers, an online buy-one-get-one-free promo. “Look, Akin, they are more beautiful and cheaper than those yeye Nikes you’ve been raving about.”

The pair of sneakers she was wearing that morning.

I heard the screech as rubber met tar, a dull thud, an overlap of discordant screams, and the ensuing blare of a siren from my room but stayed put as I grudgingly tidied my room.

The teenage driver was texting.

I vaguely remember dropping the remote control when Dad stumbled into the den, held upright between Uncles Felix and Olumide, his front shirt muddied with dirt and blood, his face awash with sweat and tears. The rest was a haze, and the days and weeks that followed were sequences from a nightmare borne from that haze. My aunties flew in for the burial and stayed for several weeks. We all seemed suspended by the pause from a remote control—frozen, waiting for someone to hit play, to move us forward. I thought, “Move forward to where?” What future would have her in it?

I overheard one of the aunties ask Dad whether I had cried. He said, “As far as I know, only that first day.”

The aunties went back.

Dad was never much of a talker like she was, but now, I watched him trying to fill long pauses with cheerful banter, to which Ayo responded, and I stayed close-mouthed most of the time. The accident happened at the end of spring. As we approached the beginning of fall, I extended my cleaning to the pantry, freezer, and fridge, rode my bicycle along the path she ran, and self-isolated as  Dad and Ayo spent more time together.

I could hear Dad and Ayo moving around in the kitchen; the smell of eggs, toast, and oats made my stomach rumble.

‘Go and get Akin.’ The grating of a chair on the tiled floor was followed by the light thud of my brother’s feet on the wooden panel floor.

‘Akin! Akin!’ I could see the shadow he cast from under the door. He turned around and went back to the kitchen.

‘He is awake, Daddy…but he didn’t answer…I heard him moving around earlier. He never wants to talk anymore….all he does is clean.’

Heavy footsteps approached my door, then heavy wrapping of his knuckle on the wooden panel.

‘Akin. Are you awake?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Breakfast is ready.’

Mum insisted on making breakfast alone, constantly declining any help. She made a pot of coffee for herself and Dad, tossed vegetables in a pan, and then made eggs, toast, and oats. She would cut fruits in a bowl and insist we all had a serving of the contents in the flowery pyrex bowl she set on the dining table. Ayo ate anything, and everything put before him. Dad didn’t like apples, and I

didn’t like bananas; we would wrinkle our noses at the bowl, but we never protested. She would stand over us with that stern look that beckoned no arguments.

Dad made breakfast, but without the vegetables, coffee and fruits. He poured a serving of orange juice into each cup and made sauteed scrambled eggs, not the variety of omelets she did. Ayo asked him once why he didn’t make coffee anymore, but he didn’t respond.

I walked down the corridor that led to the kitchen, past the black and white framed pictures arranged on opposite walls, beautiful moments captured seamlessly by her knack for freezing the now to forever. For a long time, Ayo’s baby picture hung in the living room; she responded the same way when anyone raised the fact there were varieties of only my image on the walls.

‘I will take Ayo’s picture and frame it when he stops making monkey faces!

He didn’t seem to care until the day before his sixth birthday, ‘I promise not to make monkey face, Mummy.’

He changed his outfit three times too. When the pictures were printed, framed, and hung, he was beside himself with excitement, and for several weeks after their installment, he stopped to admire them every time he passed, several times a day.

Most days, I was a ball of tingling numbness until I looked at her phone, and I welcomed the stings inside my belly, eyelids, torso, and extremities. Each jab brought forth a comforting accompaniment—a soothing balm, like the ointment she administered the day I was stung by the fire ant.

‘Good morning Dad. Hello, Ayo…you sleep well?’ I turned to my brother, careful to keep my eyes above his head. 

‘Good morning, Akin.’ Dad placed his right hand atop my head. He did that for as long as I can remember. It was the first thing he did in the morning, the last thing at night. I shot him a forced smile as I shoveled food in my mouth.

‘Are you mad at me, Akin?’

My spoon froze midair.

Her sad brown eyes.

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

‘Angry at you? Of course not! What made you say that?

Dad sat down and started eating.

Ayo smiled, relief softening his features. Her smile.

‘You don’t talk to me anymore…..,’ his voice trailed away. A sting jabbed at the base of my stomach.

Dad stopped eating. He looked at Ayo and then at me.

Now would be the time Mum would ask a series of questions. “What is going on?” “Why are you ignoring your brother?” She was deft at peeling back what was at the fore until she got to the core. That was her forte, not Dad’s.

He set aside his fork and crossed his arms over his chest, sitting back in his chair, thoughtful eyes swiveling between my brother and me.

Despite the eight-year difference between us, we had been close. I played his computer games with him, let him pick shows on tv, and helped him build his toy robots. I welcomed his birth with an enthusiasm that probably dwarfed my parents, Mum used to say. She often told a story of how, holding Ayo in my arms for the first time, I raised my face upward and said, “Thank you, God…now my life is perfect.” I have no recollection of saying so but know it was true because I do recall believing a younger brother, not a sister, would make my life complete.

How do I tell him… it’s painful to look at him? That every time I see him, I see her. That my chest feels like it’s about to explode. How do I put that in words for an eight-year-old to understand?

‘I’m sorry. I will try harder… it’s just that it’s difficult without Mum…..,’ my lower lip began to quiver. Ayo pushed back his chair, the grating against the floor tiles the only noise in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around me.

‘I miss her too.’

My chest unknotted as my throat constricted, sobs erupting from my lips, graduating into wails. With his arms still around me, Ayo climbed on my lap. And then, Dad’s bigger arms enclosed us both.

The gentle pats of water hitting the rectangular window panes in the noise-insulated kitchen open to the weeping sky, synchronized with those shed for our loss.

Published by The Shallow Tales Review, June29th, 2022.