Tell Me Something That Didn’t Happen
written by: Maria Oluwabukola Oni
@OhMariaCopy
I step out into the compound. He runs up to me. Do I look like a giant maize? I run in the opposite direction. He follows, cackling excitedly all the way. The compound is too neat; there are no stones or sticks about. I sit on the pavement and wait. He comes and jumps on my laps. He looks at me, turning his head this way and that to focus his parallel gaze. I sit stiffly. He also sits stiffly. The feathers surrounding his neck puff up, making him look like a half-open umbrella. He relaxes and leans forward to peck on my buttons. He spreads his right wing across my upper arm. We embrace. We are friends. I exhale. The next morning, he jumps on my window sill and peers inside through the mosquito netting covering the window, looking for me. I come out and pat his silky back. He raises a thin leg forward in greeting.
“Good morning. How was your night?” I ask.
He bends and pecks at invisible crumbs on my toes. I search my pockets and find a lollipop. I unwrap it and crack off a part. I lay it on my toes. He gobbles it up. My friend is a big one. He is of gold and dark blue almost black- hue. His butt is an incandescent green bush with one particular quill arching higher than the rest. One day, I went to visit my friend and met a speckled white and brown hen there. My friend sits on the far side, looking annoyed. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence and I go back to my room. I ask Father about the hen.
“She’s the wife. When you are old enough, you’ll have one too.”
I wake from my afternoon nap to loud cackling. That’s the wife’s voice. Is she in trouble? I rush to my window. She’s talking to herself and crying in between. She paces up and down, her hands at her back. I feel sorry for her. My friend must be making that house as hot as hell for her. But what if she’s the one making things difficult? She looks troublesome to me. I saw her nag at a lizard who was on her path and peck his head severely when she could just have turned left or right and gone peacefully. I think she is barren. She has never taken in since she came to this house. I will let the mother know this when next she comes to visit. I’ll say it before she has the chance to needle my cheeks, pulling them with her long, pointy nails to see if I added or lost some flesh since her last visit. She would hold on for seconds, not minding my wincing and move around my cheekbones simultaneously like a crab. My face always felt like a dozen soldier ants marched up and down it after she was long gone. My friend and I lived peacefully until she thought he needed a wife. I think of father and mother together. They lived peacefully until their mother thought they should live in separate houses.
I decided to help my friend be happy. We run races in the yard from this fence to the opposite one on the other side of the house but I have to demarcate the lanes with pebbles; my friend has the habit of running wildly – in all directions- like a firefighter, he also half-flies. Of course, he wins always. I let him come into my room and share my meals with me. I tell him stories my father read to me from books, my personal story; of my once happy family, of how lonely it is for me. My friend is a good listener. He puts his head on his chest and listens, making pitying krr krrkl sounds occasionally. We sing to lift our spirits. My friend jumps on one leg and then the other. He puts a hand on his head and shakes his butt vigorously. We laugh and collapse on the bed. I bring out my paints and a clean sheet. He stands on the sheet, looking down at it curiously.
“I want to paint you. I also want to teach you how to paint someday because you’re clever. I know you will do well. The world will know you just as it knows that hen that plays the piano.” I keep him in a pose. He soon sleeps off. I carry him gently to his house and say goodnight to his wife. She didn’t reply: She never replies.
There’s this big turkey I always see lurking by the wall. His white feathers are dirty brown and in tatters like he is always involved in street fights. He looks old too. What could he be looking for in our compound? He pokes his head out and signals to the wife, who is also fond of loitering around. Once she sees him, she comes, walking leisurely like she wants to go and check the laundry on the line or other something of little importance. She rounds the corner and is gone. This goes on for long. I cannot tell my friend. I sit outside, picking tiny crystalline stones from raw brown rice. My friend and his wife come to assist me which in actual fact, means they gobble up the picked grains I put in another bowl. The turkey peeks from the corner. My friend does not see him. The wife turns her head. She stares at me. I stare right back. Turkey gets impatient. As he comes closer, he looks bigger than I thought he was; bigger than my friend three times over. He looks vicious, puffed up like he would burst apart, tattered wings scraping the ground. He even has a long, brown, jiggly beard.
I pour the rice that haven’t been picked from chaff and stones on the stool and use the metallic tray to bat away the turkey. The tray hits solid bone. He flies at my chest. I run and pick up a big bucket which I upturn on the turkey, trapping it until father comes home. My friend pecks his wife on the head and drags her on the ground. She flails, squawking hysterically. I try to get him off. He drags his beak across my soft lower arm. I bleed. Mother is visiting tomorrow. I imagine her asking how I got the wound. I think of an explanation, ending with:
“It was a mistake.”
I know she will shake her head and say, “Kassim, what are you saying? Small boy with no friends, stuck here with a couple of miserable chickens.” Then, she will cluck her tongue like she has been the one in the company of chickens for too long. But this is of little importance when she did come. One would expect her to come looking rich in a heavily embroidered or fashionably cut expensive dress befitting of a woman whose sole interest is luxury. But she wears nothing. Her blouse is a fringe handkerchief that stops at midriff and is held at the back by a flimsy thin rope. Her skirt barely does its job. Her face is a cloud of colours, her cheeks a stained blush. On her head are about twenty balls of shiny, curly black hair. Triangles dangle from her ears and when she lifts her hands to needle my cheeks, I see silvery flashes of a half moon, the sun, and some stars. I tell her about the turkey and my friend’s fight. She can’t hide her disgust at my unwanted interference. She sets the dirty turkey free and he goes away with his wife and more pride on his shoulders. All this time, my friend is asleep in his coop. My mum sees me staring sadly in that direction and says dismissively:
“You’ll understand the feeling when you grow up.”
- Tell Me Something That Didn’t Happen - November 13, 2024
