THE VELVET TAMARIND 1 (A short story)


Mama was not like other women in the neighbourhood. She was different, in several incomprehensible ways. Sometimes, I wonder why Mama was not the Baba. It was not because she never plaited or braided her hair. She carried a kind of punk that was unfeminine, a punk that goes up high only in the front, with a line unmistakably drawn by a teenage barber, whose closeness to Mama was a source of worry to my calm but jealous Baba.

Mama had resigned from Nigeria Army. She claimed they had denied her, her due promotion and other benefits, because she was female. But that was before she married Baba, a local politician, who never rose above a ward councillor in our local government.

Mama was a nurse, while in the army; upon resignation, she started her private clinic, in which the villagers in Ofugo patronized a lot. Few months later, she was luckily saddled with a huge responsibility by W.H.O; Mama became the chief nurse in charge of immunization within and around the villages in Ofugo. Perhaps, she could have enjoyed the job much longer, if she had not been given a motorcycle that came without a helmet.

That evening, when the motorcycle came, Baba was happy, Mama was happier but I was the happiest, because I would no longer walk to school and that means I will escape the awful anger of Moses. Moses was a usually dirty boy in my class, whose uniform short has been patched, repatched and had lost alignment.

My teacher had ordered me every once in a while to cane Moses, because he couldn't read comprehension passages in our Macmillan English text. Moses couldn't have felt very bitter, if I were a boy. But because I was a girl, he felt more humiliated.

I remembered the day he beat me and left my skirt torn; revealing my tiny pitiable buttocks. I had cried home, but Mama and Baba were away, before they returned, my childish anger had died down with child's play. I couldn't report Moses to our teacher, one Mr. Akwu, a lanky man who called me his wife and I came to hate him. He had his fat nose perfectly plastered to his thin face. But that was not why I hated him, I disliked him because he made me felt so shy anytime he called me his wife.

I love the enormous authority I had in flogging Moses in particular. I'm happy he wouldn't see me on my way from school anymore. But I'm scared of how Mama will carry me on a motorcycle made for men without a helmet. By the way, why would the W.H.O give her suzuki 100? Certainly not because of her punk. But Baba had warned about it, but we rode it to and fro every week day anyway. The last straw that could have broken the Carmel's back was when Mama first crashed. (to be continued)