COLOURLESS

1

It was a Monday afternoon, and the class was rowdy with students. I sat in my regular corner on the front row, my elbow on my desk, and my chin rested on my left palm. I tilted my head left and stared out at the corridor through the open door. We were expecting our literature teacher, but I could see the mathematics sums from the last class on the blackboard; the class captain stood idly close by, and I hoped she would clean it all off.

As I sat there, uncomfortable and restless, my body hurt, and I felt sore. I didn’t feel like doing anything, and I couldn’t explain why this feeling of sadness flooded my mind. I wanted to share this information with Lolo, but she was upset with me. I could see her vacant seat right behind me, and she looked odd at the other end of the classroom where she was seated. I knew how much she disliked the back of the class because it was also where the class bully sat, and it had a cupboard that served as storage for the schoolbags of all the students.

Lolo was asthmatic and shouldn’t be anywhere close to windows with missing louvres, but she wanted me to understand how angry she was. I was angry too, and within my right to seek new friendships and could not see why she would not understand that. So what if Antje is white and German? Even though it hadn’t worked out between us, I expected Lolo to know why I wanted this relationship.

I used to like Antje, and I desired the experience of having a friendship with someone with a skin colour different from mine. My biracial mother was beautiful, and she disliked my father a lot. She blamed him for my looks and never said a kind word because I bore a resemblance to him. I didn’t fit her beauty standards – my skin was too dark, my hair coarse and once she told me that my nose was that of three adults put together – which was ammunition enough for her to mistreat me.

I gave Lolo a long stare, and then I called her. ‘Lolo, Lolo.’ She pretended she couldn’t hear me. She gazed at the blackboard instead. I couldn’t stand to lose my friendship with her or Tara, who I am sure she would tag-team with, so I walked up to her.

‘Lolo, I called you just now. Why are you ignoring me?’

Lolo picked up a pencil from the desk and sketched an arrow into her notebook. I grabbed the pencil. ‘Lolo don’t ignore me.’ She gazed up at me and had this look of indifference.

‘Omonigho, please stop disturbing me.’ She was emphatic.

I tried to feign anger but was internally nervous. ‘Ok, I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘What are you apologising for?’

‘I know you are angry with me and I want you to come back to your seat.’

‘I will come back when I am ready.’

‘Lolo, I am sorry. Please come back.’

‘Omonigho, please leave me alone.’

I stood there somewhat embarrassed; a few students had heard our conversation. I didn’t know what to do, so I looked out through the window and saw Antje. How convenient, the devil herself.

‘Wait! Lolo, is that not Antje passing by with her annoying friends? That’s her, of course.’ Lolo’s fiery gaze was enough to burn a hole in my uniform. It was my cue to go back to my seat.

I wished I could snap my fingers and make Antje disappear as I walked back. The way she strutted and flipped her long hair around because she was the only white student in my school got to me. How dare she feel funky with herself after what she did? She had hurt me last Saturday, and I hadn’t recovered from the shame she had sprinkled all over me while we cleaned the hostel’s windows in readiness for inspection. I had only tried to make small talk with her, but her answer was obvious. She embarrassed me and screamed obscenities in the German language. Of course, no one said nice things by yelling, so I was sure the words from her mouth were nothing good. She reminded me of my mother that afternoon, and I had wished the earth to swallow me for a quick second. I was further humiliated by Lolo’s loud laughter from across the other half of the hostel. She had seen me make a fool of myself. A part of me expected her to have confronted Antje and comforted me. Instead, she laughed.

I sat back at my desk and looked at Lolo, somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t get her to return. She scratched the side of her hair, and her blue beret slanted backwards to reveal a patch of white hair. It was a birthmark she was proud of and reminded anyone constantly was a sign of wisdom. I thought of Tara, who was far away in another class and wondered if she would behave the same way towards me. We had all been at Acorn Girls High School, Asaba, for five years; this was our sixth and final year. Since the middle year, Lolo and I had been in the art class, while Tara chose the science class.

Mrs Koko, our literature teacher, walked into the classroom, and the class captain drummed her desk—a sign for welcoming teachers. We rose and greeted her and sat almost immediately. She scribbled the novel’s name, Traveling Incognito, on the board and jumped right into teaching. She had asked us to read the book two weeks ago.

She read a few passages to illustrate her talking points. Almost immediately, Mrs Abu, the principal, walked into the room. The class captain tapped the desk again, but Mrs Abu instructed us to remain seated. Instead, she whispered in the ear of Mrs Koko, who looked at me funny and then signalled that I followed the principal. I looked in Lolo’s direction, and I could see she was worried as she gave me a concerned stare.

Did Antje report me to the principal? As I recalled my memory from last Saturday, I knew my approach may have been rough, aggressive even, but she didn’t need to go this far. We could have settled it in the hostel. Ideas on how to answer possible questions the principal may ask me webbed my mind as I followed behind her and into her office.

I did not want my eyes to betray me, so I gazed at the tall cupboard in the corner; several trophies decorated the top. The principal sat at the edge of her large table littered with exercise books and student files while I stood before her. I saw the famed biology chart of the female reproductive organs nailed to the wall. The pencil marks around the breasts and the abdomen was a testimonial to the sex education several of my schoolmates had received. I scoffed almost immediately as I remembered how a few got expelled.

My eyes darted to the almanac of past principals just beside; their raised eyebrows and sagging jaws were prominent, but the current principal’s headshot was quite large. It sat in the centre and was the main attraction. People come, and people go, I said to myself.

Mrs Abu motioned me to sit, but I stood instead.

‘There is no medicine against old age. If there were one, many of us would remain young forever,’ she said, and I looked at her, confused. And then she continued, ‘The earth is the queen of beds and when it is our turn, we must lie.’

I did not understand why the principal said these things, and I did not understand them. I kept my gaze on her, and she seemed uneasy. Then just like that, the words she had meant to say, which she had heralded with epigrams, fell out of her mouth: ‘Omonigho, your mother passed away on Saturday afternoon.’ She paused for a bit for my reaction, but there was none. Instead, she took my hand, placed it in hers, and continued. ‘I will always be a mother to you, ok.’ She paused again and stroked my hand a little. ‘Your father called and has requested that we bring you,’ she continued. ‘So I have asked your housemistress to take you home in the school’s vehicle.’

I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like darkness was clouding behind her, and I had to refocus on her face, but it started to fade. Then, I felt something hot shoot through my body, and Mrs Abu embraced me.

As I stood there, my body attached to hers, the smell of coconut from her hair sickened my stomach and the tasteless eggs I had for breakfast bubbled in my throat. Her grip around my back tightened even as my hands remained at my sides. I stared into nothingness, maybe and then she pulled away.

I watched as tears welled up in her eyes. It seemed like an opportunity for her to ruminate over past years’ losses. She continued to speak, but I could barely hear her words as a loud static sound went off in my ears, and my eyes became uncomfortable. My chest started to feel tight, and I began experiencing shortness of breath. Did she say my mother was dead?

2

I will remember the morning of Tuesday, 24th November 2015, for the rest of my life. It was the first time I had seen so many people come together for my sake. My classmates and some hostel mates gathered around the school’s administrative building to watch me get into the back of the school’s blue Peugeot station wagon. I stared at the floor, unable to look at their tear-stained faces.

A formation of light brown ants strolled in a straight line on the red sand of the school’s ground. They carried white particles of what I suspected was food though I wasn’t sure what kind, and detoured around my feet. They were in their world, minded their business, and unperturbed with my schoolmates, who were inches away.

While I waited for my housemistress, I watched these army of ants until they disappeared behind the cemented pillar before the building. I knew Lolo and Tara were still crying because I could see their hands clasped together with their fingers interlocked from the top of my eyes. Lolo continued to move her toes in her brown rubber sandals – she does that every time she is sad – kicking slowly into the ground. My neck was beginning to hurt, so I lifted my head slightly but kept my eyes low. I did not want anyone to see my glassy eyes as I fought back the tears.

As I sat there, I wondered why my father didn’t pick me up himself or send his driver. I didn’t particularly appreciate that the school’s vehicle would be my transport home. It meant everyone on my street would confirm the school I attended in addition to knowing about my mother’s passing. My mother was strict with me and never allowed me to interact with other children in the neighbourhood. It almost felt like I was a secret. ‘Let’s go,’ the housemistress instructed the driver and got into the vehicle.

The driver started the ignition, and I slammed my door and waved to everyone. They waved back as their lips moved simultaneously with condolence messages and apologies like they were responsible for my mother’s death. I was more embarrassed than shy.

My mother had never allowed more than ten guests at my birthday celebrations. I was that child she was not proud of, so this large gathering of tiny people who waved at me on the occasion of her death felt ironic. Our literature teacher had often used the term when explaining some of our texts, but only now had I experienced it. It wasn’t some story from any literature book; it felt real.

The driver moved the car slowly until we got to the only shiny tarred road of the school, where he accelerated. The road ran from the back of the administrative block and out through the school gates. He joined the slow-moving traffic and started the journey towards my home. The sky turned dark almost immediately, and I knew it would rain.

As I turned my head, I caught a glimpse of the overgrown grasses by the left of the road; they bent in several directions, like a model’s hair blowing in the wind. It revealed several broken tombs from the state’s unfenced cemetery, which shared a boundary with my school. A rusted and faded signage that bore the cemetery’s name and address angled from the pole which had supported it for years; it looked like it would fall to its death anytime soon.

A few times, my friends and I had engaged in discussions on why anyone would build a secondary school beside a land filled with graves. Some students had claimed they had seen ghosts or even heard them. Some others claimed they had interacted with these phantoms who had sent them on errands to their loved ones or even spilt secrets about how they ended up dead. I thought about my mother and the idea of her living in such a place. It felt terrifying and cold. But it also felt like a place that suited her, only that she could no longer speak and hurt people with her words. She would no longer require long scented baths. She would no longer need two hours to care for her supple skin every morning and another hour applying expensive oils and skincare products in her bedroom.

What would happen to all of her expensive clothes and perfumes? Her pieces of jewellery, bags, shoes? Would Aunt Theresa come to take them away? Would daddy start staying home in Sapele? Or would he take me back with him to Warri? I inhaled dust and sneezed as the rain trickled from the sky to the dry ground.

Bits of water wet my face, and I wound up my window. The driver turned on the wipers, and it started to move back and forth as it pushed water off the windscreen; the tempo of the rain increased.

I wondered again about my mother. Was she truly gone? Would she never speak to me again? Would she never apologise for how she had treated me all these years? But, wait! Would she never get the opportunity to tell me she loved me? Would she not see me marry a white man and have my babies? It suddenly dawned on me why a feeling of sadness engulfed me yesterday.

‘Turn off the radio,’ the housemistress instructed the driver and then turned her head slightly to the back. The folds on her neck twisted and pressed upon each other. Her jerry curls blew into the driver’s eye and forced him to tilt his head and wind up his window. She could not fully see me because I was behind her. I leaned against the door with the side of my face pressed against the window.

‘Omonigho, give me your hand’, she said. ‘Let’s pray.’ I stretched my left hand absentmindedly to her, and she took it into her hands; it felt warm, weird, and kind. I liked how she held it. ‘In Jesus’ name,’ she continued, and my memory floated back to the last moments I had with my mother two months ago.

The day before I left for school, I had to make my hair. I was excited about a new braided hairstyle I had seen on a Caucasian model in an Elle magazine while in my bedroom. My hair was long, wild and coarse, and I had always fantasized about treating and stretching it out. I wanted to have my hair look silky and glowing, like those of supermodels. I was impatient about when I would be free from the compulsory rigid school rules of having my hair braided. Still, at the moment, I had to be satisfied with the hairstyle from the magazine.

Of course, I needed my mother’s permission to leave the house for the salon. So I clutched the magazine under my armpit and walked out of my bedroom into our large living room. My mother had stuffed it with elegant furniture and several collections of her lone portraits. Few family pictures hung on the wall. The photographer was precise in how he always captured only the side of my father’s face – it was an instruction from my mother. She exuded all of her beauty before the cameras in the same photos, like rosebuds blooming. She was always the main attraction in family portraits; the rest of the family served as background props.

My mother was reading a book on her favourite green sofa when I walked up to her; she looked pale.

‘Mum, I want to leave for the salon.’

She placed the book on her lap. Since the beginning of the week, she read this particular book, Surrounded by Idiots, which was the title. She had always read social etiquette books, fashion magazines and books with weird titles. She looked up at me; her eyes were beautiful. She was fair-skinned, a product of her Nigerian father and biracial mother. She glanced at my hair and said nothing. Then she turned her face away, adjusted further into the sofa and stretched out her legs.

‘Hair isn’t for everyone; I have told you this several times. You should cut yours and keep it low like those other students in your school,’ she said, picked up the book and flipped a page.

‘No,’ I responded but regretted it.

‘It’s a tangled mass of mop and very unattractive,’ she continued. ‘It makes your already obvious facial features even more obvious.’ She tightened her lips. ‘If you insist, tell Felicia to add it to my bill and let her know I will be at the salon tomorrow. Remind her to keep her nails trimmed before I come. I do not want a repeat of the last mishap.’

‘Yes, ma,’ I said.

I thought about her thinning hair and wondered why she bothered with the salon as I walked out of the house and got into a taxi. I noticed there was something different about her that day. It had been the second time in that week that she had restrained herself and limited her responses to hurtful words. She didn’t throw any objects or try to smack me, or at least that was what I thought until I returned from the salon three hours later.

As I got to the door to the house and turned the knob, my mother pulled the door open. My eyes widened as I didn’t expect her to be by the door. I followed behind her into the living room and had an uncomfortable feeling.

‘Where are you coming from?’ She turned around. I knew she was angry, but I didn’t know why.

‘From the salon.’

‘Have I not warned you never to stay outside the house beyond an hour?’

‘Mum, you know it’s not possible to have my hair done in one hour besides Felicia gave me attitude and she didn’t attend to me on time.’

‘Are you trying to lecture me on salon services? Didn’t I tell you to cut this stupid hair of yours? And how was your father able to phone you and tell you about the driver coming tomorrow?’

At that point, I realised I was in a lot of trouble. My father had gotten me a phone for my sixteenth birthday, but my mother seized the phone and hid it in her bedroom. Whenever I needed to use it, I sneaked into her room to take it. My father knew about this, but he must have forgotten when he told her he had called me, and now she knew.

‘Erm, I took the phone from your room.’

She threw her hands up in exasperation. ‘Omonigho, you have grown wings. You now have the audacity to go into my bedroom without permission?’

I went down quickly on my knees. ‘Mum, please. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect you.’

‘Give me the phone. Now!’ My mother stretched out her left palm.

‘Mummy please.’ My hands trembled as I pulled out the phone from my pocket and placed it into hers. She fiddled with the phone and then gave me a menacing look.

‘Who is John 2 stingy?’

‘Erm, it is church…church. He is in the youth choir.’

‘Who is Fela clown? Gabriel ice cream? Wait, let me guess, it is church too, right?’

‘Yes, ma.’

‘So you have been stealing the phone and using it behind my back?’

‘No, I…I just wanted to save the numbers of….’ She grabbed my dress by the collar and pulled me up. ‘Mummy, please, I haven’t done anything bad.’

‘Take off your dress now.’

‘Mummy, please, I didn’t do anything bad.’ I managed to wriggle free from her grip, but she pushed me down to the floor and ripped the buttons of my dress. Then, she forced my breasts out and squeezed my nipples for breast milk.

‘You want to embarrass me right? I will kill you before I allow you nurse any shameful pregnancy under my roof.’

‘Mummy, please,’ I begged her, but she pressed my abdomen until I squirmed from the torture and then she poked her finger between my legs to feel the hymen.

‘The day I put my finger and there is space, mark my words, you are finished.’ She kicked my feet and staggered away.

The housemistress finished her prayers and released my hand. ‘Your mother is in heaven now.’ She smiled warmly at me. I hid my displeasure with her statement and smiled back.

3

The clock on the car’s dashboard flashed 18:00 when I pointed out the house to the driver. There were several vehicles parked on the left side of the street, and they had water showers; the rain had fizzled out. I recognized two cars; one belonged to the parish of the church we attended, and the other was that of my grandmother.

The housemistress pulled open the vanity mirror, glanced at her face and applied some powder. She touched her forehead, lower chest, and shoulders and then mouthed a ‘thank you, Jesus’ and got out of the car. She opened my door, but I hesitated before lifting myself out.

As I led the way towards the house, the driver moved the car further down the street while the housemistress followed behind me. I pushed the pedestrian gate open to see a large crowd of people. There were chairs all over the lawn.

Further down, someone carelessly placed a bench in my mother’s garden. It pressed against her purple cordyline flowers. It would grieve her to see her plants strangled in such a manner. I felt the anger on her behalf and couldn’t look at the faces of those who sat on the bench. There were empty bottles everywhere; flies lazed in the necks of the bottles and around them, while some plates with leftover food lay in water puddles. The premises was rowdy. My mother had never been a host to large classless gatherings.

I noticed a large portrait of my mother placed on a wooden table by the entrance door. On each side of the frame stood large yellow candles in gold candlestick holders; the flames on the wicks had blown out, and melted wax hung like fragmented sticks on the sides. They were the same candles she kept in the family’s prayer room. A large notebook lay open at the foot of the frame. It had a pen in the middle, and I could see that sympathisers had written several things into it.

I stared at the picture for a while and recollected when she had it taken. The governor had just appointed my father that year as the state’s accountant general. So my mother threw a party to celebrate the appointment, but the bulk of the pictures taken at that event was of her in a white cloak sleeve V-neck pencil dress; it was stunning. However, the image that made it to the front page of the newspapers had her posed on my father’s left side with most of her hair shielding his face. I had heard her tell one of the journalists why she insisted on the picture: ‘I want loose women in town to stay clear and remind them he was married.’ The journalist smiled as he received a bulky envelope from her.

I walked into the living room to see two toddlers jumping on my mother’s favourite green sofa; it had biscuit crumbs scattered all over. Two vaguely familiar women sat nearby. I suspected they were the mothers of the toddlers. I saw that they went through our family album and mouthed comments. My heart cringed at the pain my mother must feel as uninvited sympathisers desecrated her lovely house. I scanned the living room, and there in the corner was my father. He sat amid the parish priest and two other men I recognised as government officials. He looked up to see me.

‘Omonigho, you have come,’ he said; his voice was croaky. I ran to him and buried my head into his shoulder. We wept.

The first time my father and I had shared sad emotions and cried in each other’s arms had been when Alfred, my elder brother, died. After an injection he received, he had suffered paralysis, and the doctor confined him to a wheelchair. Alfred was beautiful, and my mother adored him. He was everything to her, and she made sure everyone around her knew it. Soon, she became embarrassed with Alfred’s condition. She treated him just as badly as she did to me and blamed my father for all the horror he had brought into her life. One morning as we got ready for church, I walked into Alfred’s room and found him lifeless.

‘We will get through this, ok,’ my father said as he wiped the tears off my face. ‘I miss her so much,’ he continued and bowed his head.

The priest placed a firm hand on his shoulder, and the rest of the guests offered words of comfort. I looked up at the housemistress’ face; she looked morose. She grabbed a chair from the dining table and sat nearby. She empathised with my father and relayed the principal’s message. While they conversed, I observed a few guests swap glances and heard noises upstairs. I excused myself, and I went towards my mother’s bedroom, from where the noise came. The door was ajar, and I saw my grandmother and Aunt Theresa seated on her bed.

‘Omonigho, they have brought you?’ Aunt Theresa said in surprise; her eyes were heavy with gloom. I knelt to greet my grandmother. ‘How are you?’ she asked and pulled me close.

‘Don’t worry, ok. I will take care of you. You are the only thing Joyce left behind.’ She burst into tears and squeezed me against her breasts and her sequence blouse pierced against the side of my face.

‘You are such a big girl now.’ My aunt paused, looked at me and then smiled sadly. ‘You know, your name was the last word your mother spoke.’ I pulled away from my grandmother’s embrace and gazed at my aunt. ‘I know how difficult your time with her was and we are sorry we didn’t do enough to change that.’ She stretched out her hand and pulled me to her side by the bed. Her hand caressed my shoulder as my head fell on her neck. ‘The storms of life comes to us all. Your mother’s storm was the sickness that consumed her and yours was…well…, look, Omonigho, I plead with you. Please embrace forgiveness so that your mother’s spirit can rest.’

There was something peaceful in the long silence as we stayed in that position and stared at my mother’s giant painting, which took up the wall adjacent to the bed.

My grandmother started to recount funny moments of my mother. ‘Theresa, do you remember when a few men came to ask for your sister’s hand in marriage?’ Aunt Theresa burst into laughter. ‘Yes,’ she responded. ‘You and dad had travelled that period, I remember. Ogaga, one of her suitors, had pulled up to the house that Saturday afternoon in his rundown Volkswagen Beetle car. The exhaust pipe designed the atmosphere with black smoke.

‘Joyce was beyond upset,’ Aunt Theresa continued. ‘I watched through the window as she stood outside the door. Ogaga stepped out of his car. I think he had a gift of some sort with him, but he never got the opportunity to give it to her because she spat on him and then screamed. The poor guy jumped into his car and drove off. The smoke from his car lingered for a while. When I tried to broach the subject of her behaviour towards him, her eyes were icy daggers. Finally, she said: ‘Theresa, please, you do not expect me to marry a man whose vehicle colour I cannot tell because it had seen better days. Why would I want to marry a derelict man with no money for a husband? I couldn’t even picture our sexual relationship because our bodies would be immobile. I know we would stare into the night, still and silent.’

Aunt Theresa gazed at the ceiling and shook her head like she had recollected something. ‘When I told her that at least Ogaga was handsome, she asked if looks could feed her. I let her be at that point.’

I smiled when Aunt Theresa finished her story. That was my mother for sure. She was in love with shiny things, and her beauty standards were difficult to match.

‘I was the one who convinced her to marry your father,’ my grandmother began to say. ‘Joyce had scared off a lot of men, and your grandfather and I were getting embarrassed about her status. So when Gabriel approached us for her hand, I convinced her that the wealth and comfort he would provide would make up for his looks, and she agreed to marry him. But alas, we all know what happened.’

Aunt Theresa grabbed my grandmother’s hands. ‘Mama, you did what every good mother would do. Joyce chose her path. Nothing we said or did would have changed it.’

Aunt Theresa rose from the bed and strolled to my mother’s walk-in closet. ‘Joyce has so many clothes,’ she began to say. ‘I have no idea what dress to pick for her interment. Omonigho, would you like to choose a dress for your mum?’

I looked in my aunt’s direction and at the plethora of dresses in the wardrobe. ‘Perhaps something without colours,’ I responded. I watched Aunt Theresa flip lazily through some dresses. Then suddenly, she jumped clumsily towards me. We fell against my grandmother; the massive painting of my mother had dropped from the wall; it seemed the hooks had given way from age.

END