LAST EASTER

When I traveled home for holiday, Last Easter, a woman was sitting on a raffia bench, in front of our new house in Abanama, peeling melons. She was looking across the road, in a mood that seemed she was in some wonder. Though she wore a blue-and-red wrapper, which mama habitually wore in hot afternoons of dry seasons, she didn’t have semblance of mama. She was coke skinned and narrow neck, unlike mama who had Fanta complexion, whose neck rounded with flesh. She wrinkled deeply-two big wrinkles that guttered down the either side of her nose, unlike mama whose wrinkles cut across her forehead, like a cartoon.

                

When a red motorbike that carried me slowed down by our house, my face widens in a surprise that stiffened my fingers, when I discovered that the woman was mama, hollowed out by reason I was yet to know. “Welcome, Ekomobong”, she said, and called Ukeme, my junior brother, to help pull in my bow. From the courtyard, Ukeme emerged, bare bodied, and after smiling in greetings, he wrestled in my brown box.

“Uwaah!” Mama hugged me, rising. She moved away a rubber bowl, into which she put the peeled melons, from a stool, and unto her bench. “Sir down”, she said, sweeping the top of the tool with her palms. Skeptically, I settled on the rickety stool. “Mama”, I said. Don’t tell me you’re fine”.

Mama cocked her head to the left, smiling as she said, “Who tells you I’m not fine? Are you now studying Psychology, and no more the linguistics we knew about?” This one is obvious, mama. Very, very obvious. I need no psychology to know it”.

Though Mama was in her sixties, but I still didn’t believe her depreciated body condition was a matter of age. Ten years earlier, she would’ve blasted me for not coming early enough to join rehearsals, to be among those singing the Passion on Good Friday. 

Before that she would’ve searched my face and told me to change my cream if I were fairer, or to change my soap if I were darker. Then she would’ve asked if I had done my Easter work and made a good confession in my university parish. And the last question would’ve been complemented by another: “where’s your Word Card?”

Mama rose and spat. The saliva landed well out of the veranda. Yet she walked out, and, with her toe, she tipped sand unto it. The bench chuckled on the cemented veranda as she titled back and pounded on it.

“Your sister is my problem”, she said. “Your sister, Assian. She is my problem”. My teeth cooled with bloodlessness as my lips boycotted each other. “Assian?” I asked. “How…How is she your problem?” “Come closer”, she said, nodding me to herself. When I moved closer, she unknotted her wrapper and brought out a white water proof.

To be continued next week…

                                                              About the Author

Samuel Felix Ekanem is a creative Writer from Nigeria. Many of his creative pieces have appeared in many national Dailies and Magazines in Nigeria. Called Humanist by many, his writings are themed on Poverty, Disease, violence and Corruption, which have blatantly blighted the Nigerian and African societies. He lives in Uyo, where he is schooling.

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