Since Obinna came home for his mother’s funeral two months ago, he has found comfort in the eerie silence of the campus streets. But two weeks ago, his childhood neighbor Idam came to pay his condolences and told him Chisom would come home this week. Now the serene calmness of his street drapes him in regret: a dropping sensation that left a dullness in his chest, suppressed him in memories, and made his days overcast.
He no longer goes out to drink with his childhood friends who now lecture in the university, nor does he take his evening stroll, watching undergraduates. These days, he spends time alone in his room, drinking and smoking and lying in bed. “Personality change as a result of grief,” his brother often tells visitors who ask of him, or complain he had not come out to greet them. But it was not grief. He has known grief, in the past few days he spent mourning his mother, to make the organs of his body dissolve and his days so thick with fog that he could not feel hope or the purpose of life. But Idam’s visit had uprooted the little life that was left in him and replaced it with self-loathing for the many ways he had mistreated and betrayed his childhood best friend.
He is lying in bed this evening, his hands behind his head as he stares blankly at the ceiling. The house, as usual, is quiet, except for the loud voices of his father’s friends coming from the living room. He is suppressed by memories.
Yesterday he thought of those New Yam festivals in his village Chisom used to follow him and his family to, and those Christmas days he spent with Chisom’s family in their village. Today, he thinks of their first kiss when they were eleven. He remembers that Friday afternoon vividly, one of those days during the long school vacation when university staff registered their kids in the children’s library. He and Chisom were lying side by side on the linoleum floor, their legs dangling in the air as they shared a copy of Enid Blyton. The library was half-empty that afternoon. It was usually that way on Fridays because most of the kids traveled with their parents to the amusement park in Enugu. Sunlight poured in from the stained door that faced them, splashing amber colors on Chisom’s face. He leaned towards Chisom and kissed his cheek, a slight kiss that made Chisom bury his face in the book immediately. “Don’t make me pregnant,” Chisom said with a stunned face when he lifted his face from the book. They both laughed.
Obinna chuckles as he thinks of this, but gloom swathes him with those years he was cruel towards Chisom. He lets out a sigh as he trudges to the nightstand. He pours himself a drink, then lights a cigarette and trudges to the window. He opens it as he blows smoke into the air. He stares at the thick, tall hedges dividing his compound from Chisom’s. It is what he does ever since Idam visited, stares and stares at the hedges as though Chisom will appear from them.
When they were kids—at that time, Chisom’s parents had not installed the chain-wire fence—he and Chisom often crawled through the wide space they carved between the hedges, a shortcut to visit each other. Classmates often teased them—called them husband and wife—because they were always together. He did not mind the teasing until his senior year in school, when it became an open mockery, and his male friends sneered and stopped inviting him to their circles. Theirs was a school of university staff children who had gone to the same primary and secondary school, and so it shamed him when they hurled slurs words at him in school or in the streets. Words that made him shrink and wish for the ground to pull him in. Words that propelled him to show his manliness by being cruel to Chisom, throwing stones and making a jest of him whenever he was with his friends.
Obinna lies back on the bed after smoking and stares at the ceiling, then he presses his face on the pillow and screams. Just then, he hears car doors open and close in Chisom’s compound. He hear Idam’s laughter.
“I thought you would be fat by now?” Idam says.
“If you were not always eating my food when I was a child, I would be fat by now,” the voice says. There is more laughter now, followed by, “How was the journey?”
Obinna sits up on his bed. It was Chisom’s voice. It was really Chisom speaking. He springs from the bed, trots over to the couch and slips into his trousers and a T-shirt. He hurries out of the room, muttering a quick, “good evening, sirs” to his father’s friends in the living room. He cannot feel his legs on the ground as he stands in front of the chain-linked gate in Chisom’s house, unsure if he should unlock it and go in. His legs wobble under him. He feels cold, even though the weather is humid.
A muscular man in a baseball cap comes out of the house and walks towards the black jeep parked beside Chisom’s father’s Volvo. As he brings out bags from the trunk, Obinna thinks of him as the driver. He feels an urge to ask him if he could tell Chisom that an old friend wants to see him. But he decides against it. He can hear Chisom’s loud laughter in the house. His presence, he thinks, might upset Chisom. He turns and leaves.
In his room, as he lies in bed, Obinna decides to tell Chisom how sorry he was for mistreating him when they were teenagers. He thinks of the last time he saw Chisom, almost five years ago, a year after Chisom graduated from university. He and Chisom were making out in his bedroom when a friend knocked on the door, and out of fear that he might be found out, he started shouting “homo” at Chisom, told his friend that he created a setup to know if Chisom was really gay, and was not surprised that Chisom came over to “suck his dick”. He and his friend had beaten up Chisom that evening with belts that curled up in the air before landing on Chisom.
It had always made him ashamed each time he mistreated Chisom, but that evening after the beating, he was so enraged with guilt that he kept hitting his head on the wall in his room. So enraged with guilt that he went on Facebook to come out to his friends, but deleted everything he typed on the “what is on your mind?” section. He had gone on to accept all the friend requests on his list. It was then he met the man who changed him with books on self-help. The man’s name was Chijioke, a chubby Nigerian barman living in Johannesburg. He sent a message immediately after Obinna accepted his friend request. Weeks later, they moved their chatting to WhatsApp. Months after Obinna’s graduation, he joined Chijioke in Johannesburg, assisting him in his nightclub at Braamfontein before he got employed in a car manufacturing company. They dated for four years, a secret affair that ended late last year because of a gay article Obinna had published in The Times. “People will think I’m into this because I’m always with you. It will affect my business. I don’t joke with my business, Obinna,” Chijioke said on the night they broke up in his apartment, his Igbo punctuating his English in that way it did whenever he pronounced Joburg as Juwabough. But Obinna could not mourn his breakup because the following day, he received a text from his brother that his mother was diagnosed with cancer. His world came undone.
Now that he thinks of this, he wonders if the universe had allowed everything to happen so he could meet Chisom again. How come he never thought of Chisom all these years? Does it take one’s death for the world to become still and painful, for longings and memories to unfold themselves? He walks to the window and stares at Chisom’s compound. He will visit Chisom tomorrow and ask for forgiveness, he tells himself, then he will propose to him, and they will recover whatever they had lost in those years he was so conflicted with himself. He lets out a sigh.
_____
Chisom comes to hear about Obinna’s mother’s death the day after he came home. It is morning. He is sitting at the dining table, looking at the pictures his partner Nnabuike took last night while they spoke with Idam’s British wife, comparing life in England and Africa.
“Daddy, you still do your exercise?” Chisom asks when his father walks into the living room, dressed in his tracksuit.
“Don’t make me look old,” his father says, laughing. It was what he usually said to his mother years ago before she died of cardiac arrest. On those weeks there was a clash between cultists on campus, his mother would pace the house, talking to herself, worried about their father.
“Should I make tea for you or bring you water? “
“Water,” his father says. When Chisom came in with the glass of water, he sits beside his father.
“Did your brother tell you?” his father asks after saying thank you.
“About what?”
“Come closer.” Chisom moved closer to his father. His body felt warm against his father’s sweaty body.
“Is there any problem?” Chisom asks.
“No,” he smiles, shaking his head. But Chisom suspects his father is hiding something. When something troubles him, he remains quiet. He has been quiet since last night, refusing to join their conversation, his eyes focused on the cartoon Idam’s two kids were watching on TV. Chisom had sensed something was troubling his father. Perhaps something related to university politics: ever since his father was made the dean of the Social Science Faculty two years ago, he has complained that he no longer had enough time to teach.
“Daddy, something is wrong. Are you sick?”
His father places his hand on Chisom's shoulder. “You know Professor Chibuzo’s wife has been battling with cancer.”
“I never knew. No one told me. Is she getting better?”
“Owugo,” his father says. “She died in a hospital in Lagos. We buried her last month in her village. Did Obinna not inform you?”
Chisom freezes. He does not feel his father’s tight hug. Ever since Chisom ran out of the house and threw himself on the ground when he heard of his own mother’s death some years ago, relatives have been warned not to break bad news to him, unless someone was there to hold him.
“Breathe in slowly,” his father says. “Breathe in and take this water.”
“But nobody told me she was sick. How can it be that she is gone?”
“Calm down and drink this water.”
Chisom takes the water from him with shaky hands him.
“Drink it slowly,” his father says.
His brother walks into the living room, dressed in the same Mickey Mouse pajamas as his son, Harry.
“Obinna’s mother is dead,” Chisom says as soon as he sees his brother. “You knew about it?”
His brother greets his father as he sits down on the sofa.
“You knew about it?” Chisom asks again.
“I was going to tell you yesterday, but you know, bad news should not meet someone on their arrival.”
“But you’ve been here for two weeks. You should have told me on the phone.”
“You know how dramatic you are when you react to bad news. I was afraid you might drive here alone.”
“Daddy, even you,” Chisom turns to stare at his father.
Idam drops Harry on the couch and walks toward Chisom. “Come here,” he says as he pulls Chisom out of his father’s arms. He hugs Chisom. “At least you are not as dramatic as usual. I never knew you are now emotionally strong, eh. Our mummy’s daughter.” He teases.
“Or mummy’s mummy,” his father joins in. “Remember when your brother stole your mother’s wig to use for a fashion parade in primary school.”
They laugh, including Harry who says, “Uncle wore a wig to school!” He runs out of the living room excitedly, to tell his brother.
Chisom slaps Idam’s chest as he pulls away from him. “But daddy what you did was unfair.”
“You could visit them and pay condolence,” Idam says as Chisom walks to the hallway. “Your bestie is at home.”
The news of Obinna’s mother’s death sits on his chest like an enormous stone. It clouds his day and knots him in memories of Obinna’s mother who loved wearing bright lipsticks. Obinna’s mother who was fond of saying to Chisom’s mother, in a tone so full of admiration, whenever she visited their house and saw Chisom running around in his mother’s old dresses, “Are you sure this is not our modern Area Scatter? Who knows the where about of that man?” Chisom and Obinna’s mothers would then sing one of Area Scatter’s songs, and then burst out laughing whenever each of them hummed to a part they had forgotten. He had often felt a burden to interview his mother about Area Scatter, this cross dresser in the late 70s who was said to have toured the eastern part of Nigeria shortly after Nigerian-Biafran Civil War ended, entertaining people with his thumb piano. But Chisom’s mother had died of cardiac arrest when he was in his final year at the university. He could not interview Obinna’s mother or visit Obinna’s house because of his grudge with Obinna. Now it shames him. His grudge shames him. Obinna’s mother death shames him. But within this shame that thickened his throat, there is a longing unfurling, to fall and blend himself in the happy days of his childhood. And so, in the afternoon, he refuses to join his family for a road trip to Enugu. They return in the evening, just as he is preparing to visit Obinna. The quiet compound suddenly becomes heavy with the voice of Harry crying over a toy.
“Where to?” Nnabuike asks when he walks into the room. He lays their adopted daughter on the bed and removes her shoes.
“To pay condolences,” Chisom says.
“You should have gone in the afternoon so we could spend time together in the evening.”
“I was not strong enough.”
“You don’t have to go then.” Nnabuike walks to the wardrobe to hang his shirt.
“I have to. He is my childhood friend.”
“Who caused you a lot of pain,” Nnabuike says, almost shouting. Chisom does not know if it is rage that is burning in Nnabuike’ eyes. It is only Nnabuike who knows what had happened between him and Obinna.
“Are you afraid we are going to have sex?” Chisom asks because he feels Obinna sees him like one of those people who will have sex with their exes.
“Am I afraid?” He is speaking in whispers, yet the calm way the words stumble out from his mouth, enrages Chisom. It is what he has come to note about Nnabuike whenever he is angry, this habit of carefully choosing his words.
“Nnabuike you don’t trust me. You don’t trust me, Nnabuike”
Nnabuike stares at Chisom and does not utter a word as Chisom storms out of the room.
Outside, the air is humid. Chisom still murmurs to himself about how stupid Nnabuike is when he arrives at Obinna’s compound with its freshly painted orange walls. An opened thick-cover notebook is placed on a table draped with a white lace. A large portrait of Obinna’s mother in her convocation gown is plastered on the wall. Her lips are bright with a purple lipstick. AGED 57 is carved in gold letters on a red-shaped heart. Chisom takes a deep breath before writing a condolence. He can hear people talk loudly in the living room.
“Good evening, sirs,” he greets the two men in the living room, the air-conditioner absorbing his heat.
They stare at him.
“May I know you,” Obinna’s father says, almost snapping. His tone is laced with fear. He had once been attacked by a group of cultists who barged into his Office in the Chemistry Department, pointed a gun at him, and made him pass all of them. Ever since the incident, he has become so paranoid that he never spends time in his office, and makes his students submit assignments through email, a quirk not common with university staff.
“I’m Professor Evoh’s son. Chisom.”
“Ah! Ah! Chisom!” Obinna’s father says. He turns to his friend who is holding a green bottle of beer. “You remember that my next-door neighbor in the Social Science Faculty,” Obinna’s father says, “this is his last child.”
“Come to the middle let us see you well,” Obinna’s father says. Chisom walks from the door.
“These children grow so fast,” Professor Ugo from Mathematics Department says as Chisom stands in the middle of the room. Chisom still remembers him. Professor Ugo who loved to walk about in his compound at Ellen Avenue every evening, speaking to himself.
Because the two men stare at him, nodding, Chisom says “Sir, I don't know if Obinna is in,”
“He is in,” Obinna’s father says. “He does not go out these days.”
“I will take my leave, sirs,” Chisom says. They nod as he walks toward the hallway.
He knocks on Obinna’s door which still has a fading picture of Snoop Dogg pasted on it.
“It’s open,” Obinna says.
“Hi Obinna,” Chisom says when he opens the door. “It’s Chisom.” The room is dark and smells stale. He remembers the last time he was here, on the floor, writhing, while Obinna and his friend flogged him with belts.Chisom’s head becomes foggy.
“Chisom! You came!” Obinna says, “You came! Please come in! Come in!”
Chisom steps into the room, the room of his first lover, trembling. “I heard what happened this morning. Accept my condolences.” He should go now, but he stares at Obinna who has turned on the light and is sitting on the bed, clad in white tight boxers.
They stare at each other for a moment before Chisom says, “I will take my leave now.” He turns to walk to the door, but Obinna rushes and hugs him from behind.
“Chisom,” he whispers, “I’m very sorry for everything.”
Obinna smells strongly of alcohol. He should push him and walk away. Why is he still standing there facing the door? Why is he allowing Obinna to cage him from behind?
“Please,” Obinna says. He releases Chisom from his hug and drags him to the bed. “Please come sit with me. I’m happy to see you again. I’m so happy to see you again.”
“Look, Obinna,” Chisom says when he sits down. “I just came to pay my respect.” Everything is happening so fast.
“Chisom you’ve every right to be angry at me, but I hope you could let me explain.”
“Explain,” Chisom scoffs. The word explain seems to imply there was a good justification for causing him pain. “What do you want to explain, huh? What?”
“You’re still mad at me,” Obinna says, looking into Chisom’s eyes. “Chisom, I’ve really changed. Growing up, I was fighting an internal battle. We all grow and learn, don’t we? Or don’t we all grow and correct those faulty parts of ourselves and learn from our mistakes? I’m really sorry.”
Chisom laughs. He looks at Obinna’s face and laughs again, and suddenly he becomes angry. “What then happens to the ones you caused pain, Obinna? Should I just forgive you all of a sudden? Please spare me that!”
Obinna stands from the bed and walks to the wardrobe. He rummages through a rucksack and brings out a page from a newspaper that is well folded. “Read this,” he says, handling Chisom the newspaper.
Chisom stares at the title: “My Once Dear Friend”. The article was published beside a page advertising new furniture. On the top of the page was Obinna in a baseball cap, smiling. Chisom reads the story slowly. It is that of an effeminate young boy in his early twenties whom Obinna met in a gay club in South Africa called Beefcakes. The boy’s name was Balondemu. He fled Uganda because of the anti-gay law, and through a human rights NGO, he came to Johannesburg where he worked in Beefcakes during the day as a barman, and at night as a drag queen. What annoys Chisom is not the boy’s story, but the way Obinna had explained the injustice feminine gay men go through for having different bodies. Although Obinna had explained how he was once cruel to a Dear Friend who was effeminate in his teenage years, Chisom felt angry that it was through another person’s story he came to recognize the damage he had caused him. And now Obinna can just open his mouth and say sorry, as though the hurtful things he did and said in the past are things Chisom can easily erase.
“I’ve forgiven you,” Chisom says. “But everything in the past still hurts. Whenever I see your face, I remember those things.” He stands to leave.
Obinna grabs Chisom’s hands. He kneels down. “Chisom we can take baby steps and fix whatever happened. I’ve been thinking about us. Remember how we used to read together? All the things we did together as kids?”
“And then you became an oppressor, didn’t you?” Chisom laughs. A short laugh.
“You’re still mad at me?
“Of course!” Chisom shouts. “Of course!” How would he explain to Obinna the trauma he caused him? How his prejudice made him curl away from the world, terrified of the world, replaced his boisterous nature with self-loathing for being different.
“Chisom, we can come back together. It’s possible. You will come with me to the US, and then we will get married. That article got me a job with the UN. I’m now an activist. There is still a way for us. The universe has destined us to be together.” He kisses Chisom’s hand. Chisom flinches.
“Don’t do that. I’m engaged and I’ve a daughter.”
“You’re engaged to a woman?” Obinna says in disgust. His face is curled.
“A man. And we adopted a child,” Chisom’s says. He stressed adopted, as though he had really adopted the child from an orphanage. As though he and Nnabuike did not wake up one morning to find a baby wrapped in a shawl in front of their door step.
Obinna laughs. “Drama queen! You’ve not changed. Are you saying all this just to punish me?”
“Why should I? I don’t need to run away from my country when I’m a citizen.” Chisom speaks as if panic has not sat on his mind ever since the anti-gay law was signed some months ago, or that he does not feel sorry for their lesbian friend who visits every weekend just to act as Nnabuike’s wife so that neighbors would not suspect their gay life. Although friends often told him of how jealous they were that he came from a progressive family, he never told them his fears because he wanted to hold on to that happiness his friends assumed. “I need to go now,” Chisom says.
Obinna stares at him, his eyes moist with tears. “Let me see you off,” he says as he stands.
Chisom watches him slip into the trousers lying on the couch. He realizes now how short Obinna is with his full beard. It was as though the early years he started going to the gym had made him shorter by compressing his height, leaving him with broad shoulders and muscled arms.
The living room is quiet except for news broadcasts coming from the TV. Obinna’s father is snoring on the sofa, his head thrown back, and his mouth half opened. Chisom watches Obinna go over to his father, telling him to go to his room. Sleep, Chisom thinks, is his respite for his grief, this loneliness knotted with memories. He steps outside because it reminds him of how his own father spends his time.
It is dark outside, and insects dance around the streetlights.
“Did you write anything?” Obinna asks when he comes out. He goes through the book, studying it, as though there was more to what Chisom had written than the, “Yours is a well-lived life. Rest in peace.”
They walk side-by-side in silence, their slippers making slap slap on the concrete ground.
“Remember how this street was usually busy with many lecturers’ kids coming here to play, even the ones from Odim.”
Chisom nods. The heavy silence makes the street look ghostlike, especially the gentle wave of trees.
“Were you serious about the engagement thing and child adoption?” Obinna asks when they get close to Chisom’s gate. “I knew you were joking. But you succeeded in knocking me out.” Obinna laughs.
Chisom is quiet as he fumbles with the lock. There is someone sitting on the bonnet of their father’s car. “Chisom is that you?” Nnabuike calls. His voice has become calm, free of the anger it held earlier.
“What are you doing outside?” Chisom asks.
“Waiting for you.”
Chisom walks over to Nnabuike, while Obinna follows behind him. He puts his hands on Nnabuike’s lap and takes a deep breath. “Obinna,” Chisom says, “this is my partner. Nnabuike, meet the childhood friend I told you about.”
“Hi,” Nnabuike says in an unfriendly manner, his voice so stiff it seems as though he did not utter a word.
Obinna stands with his hands buried in his pocket. He chuckles. Then chuckles again, before he turns back and walks towards the gate.
“Obinna,” Chisom calls out. “Obinna.”
“Let him go,” Nnabuike says. “Let him go.”
“He is my childhood friend,” Chisom says.
“You’ve to unlearn some longing,” Nnabuike says, “so you will have peace.”
But how can he let go? Chisom wants to shout at him. How can he let go of the memories that suffocate him now? Or of the things they had lost to childhood: their laughter, their play, their innocence about the world? But all he can do now is stare at the gate. Just stare.
Chibuike Ogbonnaya obtained a combined honors in English and Literary Studies and History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Their unpublished collection of thematically linked short stories featuring women, feminine gay men, transvestites and gender queer was a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize. Chibuike is an alumni of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. Their work has appeared in Green Mountains Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Stellium, Akuko Magazine, Black Femme Co, and elsewhere.
