Light at your Doorstep

You'd spent five months laying on your bed, spent, dry, tired and numb. Your room was drenched in gloom. You'd broken up with your phone; you kept getting notifications like 'stay safe', 'stay at home', many of your favourite celebrities were testing positive to the virus, and the death tolls in Spain, Italy, and even the US were alarmingly escalating.

Then, you turned to soda for comfort, and that made things worse. It puffed you up and made you want to cut the folds of your skin that folded atop one another like the neatly ironed clothes that your mother stacked up in a pile in the laundry room. We and you were trapped inside this body. You'd hoped to set yourself and us free by downing bottles of Coca-Cola, but it didn't work. The silence in your home was crazily deafening, so, it was the only thing the bottles kinda helped with; keeping that frightening silence away from your head. Your mother kept going to her shop at Balogun market, and sometimes when you sneezed more than thrice in a day, you would cry hard and ignore her greetings when she returned from the shop.

When it was just you, us, and The Voices outside there, it was different; we were all free, and we breathed fresh air. We stilled your heart whenever it beat wildly because a random person asked you a question, or you were in the midst of a crowd. The Voices spoke right and you saw well, and you didn’t have to smother us with Ankara nose masks whenever you went out or stay indoors all day, gulping the rich, dark brown-coloured soda right from its bottle to keep the silence and your worries away. Before this time, your skin, smooth and taut, hugged your bones tightly.

When those calorie bags began to rear their heads beneath your skinfolds, they started as a little extra pound in your arms, a small belly flab, they kept increasing with your growing sadness and soda spree until they spread all over your body. They didn't stop until they made sure you started to think that you waddled like a pregnant duck whenever you walked around the house. You tried hard to convince yourself that you were not a dumpling, or that your cheeks weren't starting to look like mounds of eba. Those folds also replaced The Voices with the ones that told terrible stories. Eeew! Those voices spoke words that even we couldn't comprehend. They were fond of telling you about one kind of black death hanging down from a tree, with blood smeared all over its body, and a bloated, or probably blown up one beneath the sea. Sometimes, they talked about another handsome one, who looked like the man of your dreams. They would keep telling you many ways he could save you, that you began to long for it, but we knew the tricks of those useless voices. They just wanted you to kill yourself. Death is death, which one is handsome abi ugly? Those voices made you blank and void of any will other than listening to them tell you things that you weren't.

You were in another world, different from ours and The Voices and every second, we tried to take you away from the world that the folds of skin and their fatal small voices created for you. It was a tug of war between us, and every day, we fought and fought, leaving you spent and tired, with not even a grain of self-love.

* * * *

Now, we've succeeded in uprooting your right foot from that world, so, you're one foot here, another foot–which is not firmly rooted–there. Now, your smile starts from one corner of your lips, then spreads over your face, like butter on bread. Just yesterday, we turned your face away from the mirror, and placed scissors and hair clippers in your hands. You'd accepted them without questions, snipped off the damaged part of your hair and ran the hair clippers on your head until your scalp was almost bare. Your hair made you hate yourself but you couldn't cut it; you were always afraid that your head would look like a skinned pineapple if you dared it. You even deleted Instagram and Pinterest because you couldn't bear the sight of huge afros that popped right into your face whenever you opened those apps.

When we turned your face to the mirror, you were wowed at the new you, you shouted–what's that thing that you people say sef–opoor! You told yourself and believed it, that going bald might be better, just like trying something new won't kill.

A new kind of peace is sewing you back into one piece. You now run your hands through your scalp without digging out bits of weak, damaged ends. That’s one torn piece being sewn back. You play with the short strands of what you call 'real hair' and dye them to make them look like rainbows. Rainbows that radiate in your now frequent smile, slowly severing your covenant with the droopy skin folds and their little fatal voices that came along with your sadness.

Today, you’re staring down at your street from your window. It’s evening and the sun is sinking into the pinkish-orange horizon, whose clouds are swimming into one another. People are returning from their workplaces, and their nose masks are hiding the most part of their faces from the weak, pinkish-orange rays of the sun. You laugh when you see a lady whose nose mask is the same ankara pattern with her headwrap. You think she looks like Lagbaja. We’re thinking what you’re thinking jare, they’ve turned Corona to fashion.

This is the second evening of your 'die or live' game. You’re still contemplating between dying and living; you can’t explain it, but you feel attracted to death. You’ve tried death with the twine on the tree behind the house yesterday, today with the fistful of drugs that are now scattered on the floor of your room. You decided against jumping off the Third Mainland bridge because you want to be found and buried, so you can attend your funeral. Well, this is still a win for us; you’re trying to know what it feels like to die, and you already feel it’s horrible. Also, we’re almost done scrubbing sadness off your eyes, they’re no longer bloodshot, off your face, which is now devoid of acne and blackheads, and off your body, which now glows with coconut oil. Even your mother confirmed it yesterday when she returned from her shop and met you in the kitchen.

“This Corona holiday is treating you well o. See your big cheeks, even your skin is fresh like ẹ̀kọ inú ewé”, she'd said. You were pissed at her for that comment she made about your cheeks because you're still struggling to keep your weight in check with exercises, but the one about your skin was so funny that your anger melted. Even we laughed our asses off.

You’ll stand at the window again tomorrow evening, holding a knife. But before then, we’ll place hair dyes in your hands again and instruct you to make a new rainbow off your hair. We’ll also make you dip your face in the white baby powder you’ve always kept in your handbag, you’ll do all these without sparing your mirror a glance. You’ll look away from your window to face the mirror for, probably, the last look, and you’ll drop your knife as a burst of rib-cracking laughter erupts from your depth. We, The Ẹ̀mí, will laugh with you because your laughter will be a hearty one. You will fall back on your bed and mutter, while reaching out for a slice of cucumber, that it’s easier to laugh than to die.