ABY Prose: Who Will Tell Them

Look at this fool. Intoxicating my front yard with her cheap perfume. A mere good afternoon is more than her. She only knows how to chew bubblegum and wind her waist. Why must she empty fifteen cans of this nonsense perfume on her body before going out? Or has nobody told her the spray will not lift her breasts which are now almost touching her sandals? I don’t even want her good afternoon. Before you know it, it is me she will be asking if I know anyone who does quick and instant termination. No me oh! I will not be a perpetrator.

Eh hein now! Young girl, fallen breasts, stretch marks, no children to show for it. Do you have a better explanation? 

‘Ma Adeh I salot oh,’.

‘Eh.’ A victim of circumstance.

The latest convert in town. We have all seen her mother. Her visits from the village had become more frequent. The crying. The shouting. The casting. The binding. The rebuking.

We did not need a soothsayer to know that her mother had started worrying about her non-forthcoming Grandmother status. Was it ever going to happen? Why was the cry of irritable children not filling Nchong’s house like it was other houses. 

Nchong held her Good News Bible against her chest and hurried down the road. I am tired of shaking my head at this façade they are putting on. Did she or did she not know? I know for a fact that her husband fathers at least two of the children I’ve seen attending Sunday School. Who’s arguing? That circular nose with the distinctive bulbous beak could only have originated from one seed. But like a sensible woman, I always mind my business. I will not be the one to tell. Let her god reveal it to her. I refuse to help rumours spread.

Ah, ah! Who is this emptying dust on my veranda this afternoon? Where are my glasses? Is that Ngwanah? Small Ngwanah, because he has been to America one or two times and now drives a 3rd hand Carina thinks he can now fly past my house and wash me with dust? Why don’t you personalize the plate at least so we can recognize which one of these debilitated noisy engines that wake people up on this road is yours? People who drive real cars don’t even need to announce themselves. When my son visits, nobody hears.That car of his is so smooth-running and faultless. I’ve even told him that one day he will drive into my room and park by my bed and I will not hear. 

Fosa, Fosa. The way she flings her human hair and those her spindly legs in this wind. How will all the local champions not want her? If it is the Fanta complexion they are after they are fooling themselves. Who does not know her supplier in this town? I have seen family albums. Old pictures. Dating back to her grandfathers, great grandfathers and fore fathers. Not a single one of them is fair-skinned. All of them as dark as pawpaw seeds like myself here. 

What is that smell? Aggie hasn’t learnt to cook yet? I’ve heard people say her kitchen is like a Chemistry lab. She’s always experimenting. Where she learnt to put tomatoes in eru, I’m still to find out. Or crayfish in stew. The way her husband scavenges for food at parties is painful to watch.

Girls who don’t know how to keep their man baffle me. My man knows me. My perky breasts and flouncy bottom are exactly the same as when he met me. All these small small girls cannot try me. Before they say yin, I’ve said yin-yang and then yin again. They want to know how I do it.

Who will tell them?

Who will tell them that once you’ve made a man beg for you, there’s nothing any other woman can make him do.

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Felt like writing today…and I did! Wrote it this afternoon on my lunch break. 

Hope you love.

Love & Light 

Lydie xx