I didn’t need the alarm to wake me at dawn, Eleko had baked in me that body clock from about the age of four! But I stayed in bed until the first rooster crowed. I knew she would expect me in nothing else but immaculate. So, I wore my school uniform, starched, all white shirt and trousers and new white tennis shoes. I had not seen her in six years since I left our village, Ralamo, to school in Ibadan city. I thought of little else since I was told that she was expecting my visit and ways to impress her with everything she taught me.
Our relationship was forged by fire. I barely gave up breastfeeding when she coaxed me from my sick birth mother. Since then, I was hers for keeps!
I boarded the first rickety yellow bus which came breaking the hazy harmattan dew from Moloka to Molete. It took 2 hours lorry ride from Molete terminus, the cheapest fare stopping at Idofe, the nearest town to our village, before many couples woke.
Before departing, when the lorry driver asked about my destination dressed like a colonial. I felt my attire was subject of admiration of my fellow travelers during the journey. Only at the end of my journey did I realize their look was more of pity.
The junction where I stood at journey end, stepping out of the wood-framed Bedford vehicle told how bad of a mistake I had made.
Nothing appeared to have changed. Breeze tickled leaves but the red clay road remained unpaved and slippery. Three steps and my tennis shoes had spotted. The luxuriant greenness of surrounding mangrove edge dripped gold from the sunrise. Birds nesting in tree canopies still sang happy songs. I wondered why, but not for long.
In half a mile I arrived at the squawking, a market chorus of hawkers and farmers. I bought a dozen eggs and tiptoed off to my old village. I was happy nobody cared to ask my name or recognized me.
Eleko used to put half an egg on my plate, claiming eating a whole egg was greed and corruption of character in a good child.
Meeting Eleko soon, with her uncommon grey piercing eyes, small, neat frame and jet-black braids brought a chill to my bones, though the feeling didn’t last.
Nevertheless, I played out the scene in my mind, but I hoped it would never happen as I imagined. As harsh as she was, I knew she loved me on her terms. I can hear the fire in her voice again, “Butata, I told you not to drink palm wine with your grandfather, you won’t listen, now, you’ve wet your mat again.”
Then, I swiftly rolled my mat and headed out back to dry it. I fingered the cowrie necklace hanging on a string of beads she placed around my neck, the envy of many.
Even now, fingering it assured me after each scolding of a warm meal and a hug. The only exception was when I returned home after playing covered in red dust from the streets.
Eleko would stare me down with dagger eyes, scream forever that my ears were deaf and promise to beat the living daylights out of me if I don’t head straight for the showers before coming to eat supper. Usually, as she twists my ears, I would make her promises I would break the next day.
My luck changed after a few minutes’ walk. A bicycle rider came along and asked if I was going his way, I accepted the ride. Sitting on the tray over the back wheel, I was relieved I didn’t have to walk in the mud the rest of the way. I hadn’t noticed his back wheel splashed my trousers with sticky mud. I eagerly protected the tray of fresh eggs.
I arrived at Eleko’s doorstep thankful for the ride and was shocked when the middle-aged rider asked if I wasn’t Okiri Butata, the third son of Asoro. I smiled unashamed, carefully placed the eggs on pavement, and proudly stood erect, feeling safe from any muddy splashes from the ground. I studied his tribal-marked face, gap-toothy grin, and shook his firm hand thanking him. I searched the gloomy sky and the muddy ground. He pumped my hand and giggled. If he didn’t forget Butata, I doubt if I could ever live down this name and muddy part of my existence.
“Oh! That would be dried by noon, like pancakes. Don’t you remember?”
I replied, “I hope so. I can leave this afternoon or tomorrow.”
Our little chin-wag brought a rousing welcome from a voice approaching the wooden front door.
“Welcome home, my s-s-s-son…” Her voice trailed off. I prostrated and rose to kiss her. We’d shocked each other! Eleko was no longer larger than life. Her bushy brow, solid white as wool, dimness covered her sharp hawkish eyes, and she appeared slower in her walk. Time like grief wore her shadow. She pushed her headgear backward and forward, looked me over biting her fingers.
“Why would you wear white in this…? Just come in, come in…”
She looked left and right, picked the tray of eggs I had placed on the pavement and ushered me into her living room before latching the small wooden gate behind her.
“Butata! I see not much has changed, uh?” She drew away, looked me over then hugged me. I rubbed my hands together, but I was short of words.
“The muddy pants put me in bad light. I know.” She examined the gift I brought her.
“Eggs, I see. How I have counted the days to your arrival, and we shall have some.” She faked a grin.
I wasn’t alone in my suffering in that brief world of our silence. The room also appeared shrunk. Two things remained unchanged, the charming clock which stood at the end of the room and the blue Rediffusion radio mounted probably since 1885 by the illegal British occupiers, which hung above it!
“You must come out of those, this instant. I will find you some of your grandfather’s clothes.” Her audacious voice still rang authority.
Grandfather had died about three years ago and the entire house looked deserted without him. He was a gatherer of people, be they his workers, their children or town folks to whom he told stories. Eleko was the opposite. She sold her ware, didn’t gossip, and never left home. Now, she lived by herself except for a dog which came out of nowhere to love on me. “Don’t you recognize your own dog?”
I looked at the dog and back at grandma. I didn’t. If it was my dog, brown had overtaken the large white spots. She looked oversized while everything else lost shape. This dog was probably another stray creature she loved on her terms. Eleko stood there like the old days expecting me to take my clothes off in front of her, but I am 13 now and won’t do so. We fought the stalemate with our eyes for about two minutes before she gave in, giggly chuckled, and departed to fetch me grandpa’s oversized garments!
She exchanged them for my dirty wear. I followed her into her courtyard where she washed my clothes, and I brushed my tennis shoes free of mud. She spoke almost in a whisper as we toured the old schoolyard and burnt down church. “Butata, I knew you would come. That’s very nice of you. You’ve made an old woman happy.”
“I love you and miss you, grandma!” Emotions never die. I couldn’t believe those words poured out of me. She had put me to work at an early age, maybe 4, if not sooner. Usually, we left for her leaf farm by 6 a.m. and worked it for two hours each day. I could still hear her ordering me about that marshy farm.
“Butata, clear the edges, prime those dead leaves, harvest those rows, and pack all neatly in your basket.”
We gathered whatever she needed for her corn meal which she hawked the next day! I learned the use of a small custom cutlass for trimming weedy boundaries and a sickle to harvest. She always threatened that if I didn’t finish my assignment, I will get no breakfast!
Today, a teenager, as tall as she is, and in my tennis shoes, taller!
Upon our return, I sniffed the musty air coming out of her bedroom where she hung her old petticoats. She looked at me with softness. Clearly old and may be not so much in control after all.
“What about your leaf farm?” With reawakened stubbornness, I asked. She shut and opened her eyes. She stopped farming it. She resumed small talk as if her life depended on it. “I see you still wear your cowrie bead necklace!”
“I never take it off , grandma.” I smiled and she returned my smile. I realized, at this moment, I never saw her smile in those four years I lived or shall I say slaved under her.
“I knew you would keep it. There are more cowries, you know. I saved them all for you.”
We ate her special asaro delicacy. She must have cooked it the day before in anticipation of my arrival. “It is still by far the best porridge I have ever had.” I said.
“You eat more when it has sat overnight, don’t you?” She said, showing her pink gums.
I nodded in agreement, watching her fling the headgear, shaking free her white braided hair. She aged more than I expected but smiled again. I couldn’t believe Eleko, the workaholic, could relax at a table after a meal. She folded her hands behind her head. In the old days, she did everything briskly, cleaned ferociously, and expected the same from all her grandchildren. I attempted to remove the plates to wash but she won’t have any of that. “You are my guest. Those could wait.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Back in the day, she whipped my butt if I sat after a meal for five minutes without washing my plates. “What did you say, grandma?”
She ignored me, finally thanked me for the eggs she got three hours ago. She muffled something about eggs under her breath.
Then she switched on the radio for a deep Sakara native motif of a popular musician, Yusuf Olatunji! She even tried to sing along! Grandma sang and danced for a minute or two. I asked her if she was okay. She smiled again broadly and then again ignored my question.
“Do you remember your bosom friends, Abata, Taiwo, Alaba, and Elizabeth?”
I remembered their names but not their faces. I told her so, studying the old almanacs on the wall! She sniggered. “You roamed every street in this village every day with those three boys and her.”
“Who? Fat Elizabeth? I don’t even remember her that much.”
“Just as well. She is not fat now. She is about 16 and pretty. She looks a grown woman and could be married in about two or three years. You would still be in college, won’t you?” Shyly, I nodded embarrassed and agreed again.
The sun burned like flames on all dancing green leaves where we spread my clothes.
I looked at the clock over her head as she switched stations on the wall mounted piece.
By the time she returned from her climb of the bench to resume her seat, we had run out of things to talk about.
She asked after my older brothers who I replied were soon off to university. She said looking far into the distance that my junior brother was so tiny. I told her he was still smaller than his classmates but was best ranked in his class. She smiled again.
“I expect no less from him. He took my frame and intelligence.”
“What about the rest of us? You never…”
“You took after a mix of your grandfathers on both sides.”
“I said that can’t be true. You never picked him up….”
“Why should I? The helpless being. He couldn’t do anything for me.”
She stood up, retied her wrapper, and stretched before she defiantly walked with the plates towards the door in her tiny hands. I pretended to reacquaint my bonds with this stranger dog.
When she returned, she declared she had made the bedroom next door for me for the night. “How time flies? How old are you now?”
“I am about to turn 14” I replied not looking in her direction. I looked at the clock and strode to the window to see if the muddy ground outside was dried. Time was the only thing grandma couldn’t have on her terms. I dug in my choice to break her power.
“Grandma, I don’t plan to stay the night. I shall leave in an hour! I wish to join the afternoon pick up.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t plan to stay the night!”
I remained silent and remembered something else she didn’t like, and I did it. I shrugged.
She didn’t like shrugs. She couldn’t stand anyone who wasn’t sure. She tried to conceal her disappointment with my shrug. It took her half an hour, to say something.
“You would stay until tomorrow, for me, won’t you?” She repeated. I changed back to my own clothes.
“I can’t. I said, I must make the 4 p.m. lorry departing from Idofe town. That’s easily an hour’s trek from here.”
It took her another quarter of an hour to join me at the bench near the window. She caved. She wrapped her arms tightly around me. Her words had no power over me or time.
“I won’t let you!” She shuddered on the verge of tears.
I saw the mist welling in her eyes. I gently let myself out of her wrinkled hands and slipped into my dried tennis shoes. She sat slumped on the wooden bench!
“Butata” She called after me. I quickly paced away after kissing her on both cheeks.
I trekked the two miles in less than forty minutes to Idofe and had a few minutes to spare under the mango trees behind the bus garage. That darn strange dog didn’t even follow me unto the street. I knew it wasn’t mine.
Like old times, I joined the children throwing sticks at the dangling ripe fruits in harvest. I didn’t feel bad leaving the village behind forever but to imagine her agony of getting old was painful. I shut my eyes for a spell. Whatever bond we had was scorched in flames of time.
“Wake up! Mr. White-White, you are back in the city.” The same driver yelled.
Under awning of dark sky alive with sparrows, stars began to peep I trekked the last mile to my parents’ home in the city.
It was a decade later before I saw Eleko again, this time, in the city, attending clinic, a short time before she passed. She asked if I remembered where she kept the beads and cowries.
She shouted “Butata” as she was wheeled away out of sight by uniformed nurses. I imagined the river in her was quietly slipping into the silence of nights. I wasn’t wrong.
Guilt engulfed me in my grief, I had failed to help her rekindle our flame at our moth hour. She wanted love which time didn’t offer her on her terms.
I woke from my dreams weeping, my ears ringing “Butata”, her last cry. That appellation she gave me for returning home every evening covered with red dust!
Maybe in the foundry of her flames, I forged something of myself. Butata covered in red dust but eager for life. Flamed or otherwise, we are made of the people we love.
I fingered the beaded cowrie necklace around my neck and hope she would understand and forgive me.
Cash Aiye-ko-ooto
In over 115 works, Nigerian American, Aiye-ko-ooto, Cash Onadele Aiye-ko-ooto’s oeuvre spans several creative genres. He wrote and produced The Noble Warrior staged in theatres in Abeokuta and Lagos. 2019 4-part ethnographic fiction drama titled 'Blood of Freedom'. Additional works followed, 55+ children youth and adult stories, screenplays, novels, novellas, children / youth short stories, and collections of novellas. Before fiction were poems. 52 anthologies of poetry, he famously cataloged as 'Odo-Alamo Series'. He is a prolific writer, a culture-aware philosopher, poet, and playwright. Cash is 62 and lives in Lagos and Texas, USA with wife and business partner, Denise Marie. The Yoruba native brings indigenous Juju voice to storytelling. Aiyeko-ooto built the world's largest library of individual poetry work. The solid enrichment of his volumes in songs, ethnographic plays, and stories with literary devices make them appropriate for entertainment and teaching of literature to secondary and tertiary institutions. His ambition is to contribute to development of youth and creative arts in Nigeria. Cash, an Architect, graduated from UI, (BSc, MSc) 1987, University of Nottingham, UK (MBA) 1993. He walks, writes, and mentors writers. He accepts international bookings for Readings, Public Speaking, and Poetry.