PRACTICE - NINE

Arguably the sweetest day of my life… the day of the trip with her… To nurse your darling, to watch her fall asleep in your arms, to pick thread strands and dirt from her hair, to be there for her… life has only a few more pleasures than this. Albert Einstein all over again: I almost prayed for the trip not to end. Ordinarily, Nsukka was far, but today we got there before we knew it. At the bus terminal we hailed a cab to my village… still an hour ahead – give or take.

Late September evening… As expected, the village was deserted somewhat. Two months… three… and the outlook would change. Nowhere on earth is the Christmas season taken more seriously than in Igbo land. Men lived for this… The efforts of the entire year were for this…Who would come home with the biggest, flashiest car… who would host a housewarming ceremony for the grandest mansion… and so on. Businesses were left to apprentices in the cities… the bosses carted their families to the village early in December. They didn’t care much what the apprentices did. But when they went broke in January, they instinctively developed uncanny eyes for detecting fraud, and Master/Apprentice relationships began to suffer.

                Here was my father’s compound. Grandpa and Ma lived here. This year it would witness a Christmas homecoming. It didn’t every year. We were never neck deep in the whole fuss. Often, when Dad and Mom set out, they found none of us interested in the trip, so they either went on alone, or shelved their plans. That I was here now, for sure, meant I wasn’t going to be here at Christmas… except if the scheme at hand required it.

                Grandma’s race to embrace me was a catwalk. Or, maybe not cat, dog. Or, say… goat. Grandma had awkward steps… made all the more pronounced by age. It was like a dance. And if she was coming to hug you, she’d have raised her hands from a mile away. I quickened my pace, and hugged the mother of my father.

                “And who’s the beautiful damsel?” She spoke in our dialect. I hadn’t heard more than three words of English in one stretch from her since I knew her. I said her name, and Grandma started battling to get her mouth around it. I helped her out… Laide… L-A-I-D-E! I invited Laide close, and Grandma hugged and welcomed her. Laide kept smiling, though she didn’t understand what Grandma kept saying. She seemed to know, however, that they were profuse pleasantries.

I brought Grandma up to speed… where Grandpa and I left off the last time. She knew.

                Grandpa wasn’t home… must have been at the village hall or so. I wasn’t sure we had a king with a palace. What I was sure of was, we had the eldest men in different clans, and then the eldest in the entire town… those were the ones to whom tributes were paid. The eldest in our clan had died; Grandpa now was. It meant he’d be busy a lot… until his last breath. Politics here threaded on merit… and it was all in a bid to be distracted while awaiting the inevitable end.

                Our coming was unannounced. There was a phone in the house, but these old folks never used it. I went in search of it, and I found it off. The battery was dead… probably died months ago. We didn’t have central electricity yet; we depended on a generator. It hadn’t been put on since someone from Abuja was last here. The house was untidy. The yam barn was scanty… These old folks needed help.

                Grandma made dinner just before Grandpa returned. He was past being surprised at anything. He was worn out, so I didn’t bother him too much. I only introduced Laide, and he welcomed her. We held up a boring, lamplight chat in his Obi until he started to snore. I wasn’t embarrassed; all the old men I’d ever watched sleep snored. I took Laide to her room and talked and sang her lullabies. When she fell asleep, I went to the living room to sleep… dust dwelt in all the other rooms. Tomorrow we’d do some cleaning… reduce the work for those coming in December.