Find your why

‘Find your why’, yet another book to help me find my purpose and calling. My friend says it’s good and truly helped her, I should read it. I decide not to. Later when she asks if I liked it, I would say I did. I would say it was insightful and now I know my why.

I’ve spent the better parts of my life asking myself who I was and the person I wanted to become, and it’s funny because every time I’ve thought I had it figured out, something happens that makes me question my entire existence, again and again. My life has never really had the perfect landscape, instead pieces and pieces coming together to resemble an upsetting looking collage.

At the beginning of my university days, even though I was studying to be a lawyer, I told myself I was also going to be a writer, publish a book and be the next chimamanda, so I put my everything into it. It felt good because writing came to me easily, and I just wrote and spoke about writing all the time. I had it figured out. I was zainab, lover of literature, writer, poet and I was going to become chimamanda. I was so sure, I started and finished writing a book.

A few months later, the doubts crept in, and writing didn’t come as easily to me anymore. I talked less about writing, and wrote less. I still wanted to be a writer, so I told myself it was only but a writers block. I was a writer, it’s what everyone saw me as, and even when I wasn’t really the writer I told people I was, I wasn’t about to introduce people to the writer I had become, so I held on. I must have held on to this version of myself until the people around me weren’t interested enough to notice, when I let go.

As time passed, I found other interests and became those interests. If I liked tea, then I was a tea maker and I was going to make tea for a living, and if I liked art, then I was an artist and I was going to have my art hung in museums. Somehow who I was or wanted to become was always intertwined and attached to my interest in that moment. So that if I had no interests, I was lost and completely withdrawn from reality. I lived in envy of people who didn’t need a creative outlet to be themselves, people who could easily talk about the things they liked without it meaning they were describing who they were.

If having these outlets made me feel worthy, then finding even more creative outlets would make me feel even more worthy of my own love, at least it was what I believed. So I did just that, I immersed myself in all the things I now call my passions. You’d think that this was enough, that I had finally felt at ease, but you’d be wrong. This is not an account of my success, or an account of self discovery. I still don’t know who I am. All my passions and interests are still not enough and on days when I’m confronted with the question of who I am or what I do, I quote someone, most times Roger Ebert, “we are put on this planet once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our mind”

Once a boomerang

There have been multiple times when I’ve told myself, that I was putting myself way out there, giving way too much of myself, and yet other times, it doesn’t even feel enough. I try to trace it to a period of my life, a time when I didn’t even know what to put out or what was even there to give.

I have these memories, several of them from my childhood, but somehow they never really feel like mine, it’s like I’m recalling someone else’s memories. For instance, I recall my childhood best friend and I bonding over our unfortunate luck of being first daughters and our annoying younger brothers, sitting just outside my house, it doesn’t feel like I was myself, rather, like I was a stranger sitting across two girls, watching them as they talked and laughed, neither of them taking notice of me, and yet I know that I am not the stranger, but the dark skinned ten-year-old, sitting next to the other girl, yet… I can’t help but feel more like the stranger than who I was supposed to be.

The very first time I felt conscious of my existence, of the fact that there was a soul in my body and it was mine, that it was me who was thinking these thoughts and living this life, feel as vivid and as real as something I can taste and feel, like the acidic taste of an orange peel on my tongue, touch like the wall in my room on that day. It was the first time I didn’t feel like just someone’s daughter, a bowling ball set to roll down the alley, a boomerang that would always return.

It’s a cliché, but it was my first night alone in my room, at my University. I remember lying on my bed, I kept the lights on, and staring for a really long time at the blue curtains covering the window. My heart was pounding like it was going to break any moment, it was probably fear, sadness and regret, I’m not sure, but I had never felt more alone, and desperate than I did in those few minutes before I slept. The next morning when I woke up, I was still alone, still in that room, and the air still smelt strange, but that was when I knew that even if I closed my eyes over and over again, nothing would change the wave of ‘new’ and ‘different’ that was about to hit me, and my only choices were drown or learn to swim.

Going to school away from my family and everything I knew meant more than just going away, or ‘freedom’, for me it was ‘rebirth’. I was forced to be myself, explore who I was, to recognize and accept the things I liked to do, the pieces of values, opinions and ideologies that made all of me, and most importantly I was taught bravery.

I guess when you’ve lived so much of your life not knowing, hiding, and observing, when you finally get the chance to not just see, but to be, you become a sort of good news you want to share with the whole world.

BELLE

BELLE
Maybe I wanted him from the very time he said ‘ Tu es belle’ you are beautiful. It was the first thing he ever said to me, and till this day, there are no words he ever spoke that I remember more than ‘ Tu es belle’ and I remember every word he ever said to me, to my husband, to anybody, as long as I was there.
His voice. His voice. There was nothing special about his face, or the way he looked at first, but his voice, it undid me from the very first time, every single time. The first time he spoke to me, it upset me. I wasn’t as nice to him as I would have been to any other guest, but I doubt he noticed, my husband didn’t, but I knew I could have been much nicer, if his smile didn’t make me tremble, if his voice didn’t make me want to close my eyes and breathe slowly.
He was an old friend of my husband, back when my husband schooled in Paris. He was a writer and liked to travel to the location of his book settings before he started.. This time, he was in Nigeria, in my living room- brown eyes, dark skin, tall, blue shirt and the smile of a movies star. We would share the same air, eat on the same table, and speak to each other. A part of me already knew that I would grow to want him, more than anything in the world.
Maybe it only struck me at dinner the day he arrived, when I served him and mistakenly brushed my hands on his. His touch set me ablaze and it felt like I had never been touched before until then. I was afraid of the way my body would react if he touched me again, so I stayed as far away as possible. I had to try not to fall for his skin, his eyes that looked at everything like he was about to worship it, his voice that always sounded like what heaven would sound like if it were a sound. I had to try.
For days I avoided him. Our conversations were never more than a hello, good morning, or directions of places he wanted to visit. I kept them as shallow as possible.
I wasn’t prepared when my husband asked me to drop him off at the museum since it was on my way to work. How was I to act like I was unaware of him, when the distance between us was such that I was forced to smell him, his hair, his perfume for almost an hour.
He kept his gaze on me, while I focused on the road harder than I ever have, on the steering wheel. Was he staring at me because he knew I was trying not to look at him. Did he see through me then? Despite trying to avoid him, I could still see what kind of man he was. Laid back, yet alert, everything he did he calculated, his words were premeditated. He could see through people as easily as you’d see through water. What drew me to him was neither of these, but the way he could listen to anybody speak about anything with all of his attention, and make sense of it, no matter how senseless they would appear.
why did I always say sorry, he had asked the second time I drove him. I did always say sorry. Sorry I stepped on you, when someone mistakenly hits me I still say sorry, when I’m caught staring. I was afraid of ever getting in people’s bad books, even strangers. I shrugged.
‘It’s almost like you’re apologizing for existing. For breathing’
‘It is?’ I stopped to think about what he was saying and I realized that if I could apologize for existing I would. How could he just casually tell me something about myself, something I’ve never been able to admit to myself. How could he be so casual about everything, about the way he called me ‘belle’, kissed my hands before parting, stared at me when he thought I wasn’t looking and even when he knew that I knew. Such a casual man.
It was on the third drive that he asked me to accompany him to the art gallery. Asked me if I would. ‘if’ I would. I wanted to tell him that I would do anything if he asked that I would begin and end anything, and all he had to do was ask, for I was his. I was his. I was his every time he looked at me.
‘yes’.
I could have convinced myself that I was deluded, sinful or just plain stupid. That I wasn’t completely in love with his laughter or that i didn’t tremble at the sound of his voice. That I didn’t wake up every day since I saw him with only the desire of seeing him again. I could even have believed that I wasn’t pretending to be interested in art literature, and French music, so he would think we had those things in common. I could have, but there I was that early afternoon on one of his last days in the country, standing in his room, naked, my robe pooling around my feet. The soft wind trailing through my bare breast as he stared at me. I wanted him to never stop looking at me. I stood for what seemed like forever holding his gaze, afraid that if I blinked, I would realize what I was doing, realization was the last thing I needed. I needed him to look at me, to touch me but still hold my gaze. I needed to feel the roughness of his palm on my skin.
He reached for me, and then my robe, but he never stopped looking at me. He could read my mind. I loved it when he did. He covered my body with my robe, I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face when he whispered, ‘belle’.
The rest of our days before he went back to Paris were somewhat similar. I was either leaving work to come home to him, or leaving work to go somewhere with him. We would do all the things you’d mostly find teenagers doing, in dark places, corners, at the back of the movie theatre. We would make love at home, and sometimes I would just listen to him speak. It was the happiest I had ever been and when I look back and want to feel ashamed of myself, I always end up smiling. It was on one of these last days, as we lay on bed that he asked me to come with him to Paris. It meant to leave my family, and my life in Nigeria, to be disowned by my family, to leave with a man to a strange country with strange people. I said yes! All he needed to ever do was ask. I would follow a week after him once I sort my Visa.
The day he left, I spent fantasizing about when we would be together. It was during my fantasizing that I received a call from my husband.
‘I lost my friend Jacque. His plane crashed’
My husband, he had no idea what news he had just delivered. He didn’t lose his friend Jacque. Not a clue that I was the one who lost the love of my life Jacque, lost myself, lost everything that would have ever mattered. I felt- I think I’ve never felt that way before, I can’t describe it exactly. I felt everything in me bitterly contracting, if death was a feeling, I died. I can still feel my heart tearing to pieces, and it always hurts. I shut my eyes, say the word belle, and he appears sometimes, brown eyes, dark skin, blue shirt and he’s calling out to me. ‘Belle. Belle. Belle”.

How to frame your family for murder….

How do I begin this story?, from my murder, my ungrateful family that I loathe yet help anyway, or my cheating mistress? God, I hate them all. It may sound sick to you, but if you’ve lived my life, you would try to make sense of my feeling. It feels like a black hole in my heart and it just goes on and on. Volumes and volumes of emptiness, surrounded by teeth gritting, mouth clenching pain, pulling all the light around me and turning it to darkness. It always hurts. These people, they are the black hole in my heart and they have not a clue. These people.
I married a woman I didn’t know, and I told myself that we would get to know each other someday, but it’s been thirty years and I still have no clue who the hell Hauwa is. Her lovers though, I know every single one of them, from where they grew up, to their dreams and ambitions. There have been three of them, always light skinned, always younger, and always dumber. She’s always perfect, never a hair out of place, never not smiling, not a single wrinkle on her face, and her clothes, always crisp ironed. She makes everyone around her smile and people say she’s a delightful conversationalist. I wonder what they would say if they knew she murdered the last lover who blackmailed her. She would stab herself if it was ever revealed, that part of her, I know very well.
My twenty nine year old son Abdul who makes a living off of thinking he’s extorting me, still lives with me, is a drug addict and spends every night making love to my mistress who is supposed to be my nurse, Stella. Stella satisfies me, gives me my medications, rubs my head and tell me to go to bed early for the sake of my health and then goes to meet my son waiting for her in her room, then they make love, over and over again every night. The rest of my family, my brothers, and my aunt are more of the reasons why I’m about to go bankrupt, and I loathe them equally.
I hate myself too. An old sixty five year old man, with money that I do not care for, crippled miserable and depressed. Every day I sit in my library and plan a thousand ways to kill myself, and then I strike them out and repeat. None ever really gives me the feeling I want, but on the 7th of January 2020 I figured it out and I knew because I felt something I hadn’t felt inside in a really long time. People would usually call them butterflies. On the surface, it was a simple, yet classy plan, to kill myself and frame my family for my murder. If you look deeper, you’ll find that they were so many pieces I needed to put together to make it all make sense, but I have spent years of my life planning my death. It will be a grand exit.
Everything grand begins with a feast. It will begin with me inviting my family and soon to be murder suspects for a lavish new year’s Dinner. Over the years I’ve learnt that my family enjoy things like dinners, weddings, and social gatherings, it’s strange because all they do is judge each other and fight. Everyone gets to do what they are good at. My wife would enjoy being charming, my son enjoys the thrill of doing dangerous and risky things in family gatherings, and so does Stella. My brothers would find the opportunity to complain about their businesses failing, and my Aunt would try to guilt trip me into sending her children abroad to study, bailing her junkie son from prison, or paying for her nonexistent weekly therapy sessions. This dinner will be the final one and it will be much much different.
I’ll let them eat and drink, ask them about their lives and occasionally fake a smile, maybe I’ll even smile for real. After which I’ll propose a toast to long life and happiness, before telling them that I’ve decided to donate more than half of my fortune to charity in my will. I’ll give a speech about wanting them to appreciate the value of life by working hard for everything they want; it would be a load of bullshit. I’ll watch those fools fight and shout over lost fortune, all but my wife. She’ll be as calm as ever, Abdul on the other hand will definitely break glasses and perhaps something valuable in the house, then storm off and try to take off in his car, but it won’t start, no car in the house will. My brothers and aunt will engage in a screaming match, until one of them gets tired and lands a punch. Hauwa would then try to talk some sense to me in private and I’ll suggest the library because it’ s the closest to the living room, and if she raises her voice, they’ll hear her. She will raise her voice when I tell her I know about her affairs, and about my affairs with Stella. I hope she does, and if she doesn’t I still have a secret weapon. It’s my journal, cliché, an old wealthy man with a journal.
My journal will reveal all the darkest secrets and will be found in the most convenient places to find. I’ve written about my wife’s affairs, confronting her with it, my affair with Stella, my sons affair with Stella, confronting him with it. It’s a perfect web. I’ll also suspect Stella of mixing up my doses, and I’ve attached to my journal receipts and proof of every dime every member of my family have stolen from my company and I in the past year. The journal is the piece that ties it all.

After the dramatic dinner, I’ll wait until everyone goes to bed, just after midnight on the 13th of January. I’ve always planned for it to be on an odd date. I’ll be wearing my favourite pajamas, not that it matters anyway and I’ll disable all the cameras in the house. It will begin in my library. I’ll send a text message to my friend the commissioner of police, ‘they are going to kill me. Find my journal’ then I’ll make a cut on my arm, dripping little amounts of blood on the milk carpet, then I’d go through the window, leaving my Aunts favourite scarf hanging from the window. I’ll go through the back yard, into the woods, dripping blood on the floor, and making blooded hand prints on some of the trees, dropping my brother’s ring along the way. I’ll go straight to the lake. I know what you’re thinking, but no I’m not dying by drowning, it’s way too stressful a way to die, it will take too long. I’ll tie myself with a rope attaching Hauwa’s loubotin heel to it, and then inject myself with an over dose of heroine, who knew having a son with a drug addiction would be a pro someday . I stole an injection from my Stella, and heroine from Abdul ; and then jump into the water. I’ll be dead in a matter of minutes, dead, and I feel nothing even as I write this. It will feel the same.
The goal is not to frame a single person more than the other; it will all depend on how smart they play the game after my death. My will would be read in a press conference, after a year of court trials. It will be too hard to prove, so I know trial will be ongoing. My beloved family and mistress, they’ll get nothing from my will, but their freedom. I hope they treasure it more than they would have the money, but frankly I’d be dead, I wouldn’t care.

Crystal clear

Ebony and AJ had just moved into their new house at one town hill, Abuja. It was a quiet place, with not up to fifty houses on the mountain, most of which were vacation houses. It was a huge house and they needed workers. A gardener who could also take care of AJ’s horses, a sitter who could also cook and a house keeper. Ebony had been lucky to find the gardener and sitter herself on the first week. After two weeks of searching for a housekeeper, crystal met AJ on his way back from work and told him that she had heard they were in need of a housekeeper and that she was one. AJ was happy to hire her immediately, he was already tired of listening to his wife complain about how difficult it was to take care of the house alone.

Ebony knew the moment she saw crystal that there was something wrong with crystal. The way she stared, the way she looked and her smile. She saw nothing but darkness, in her big dark eyes, but she was willing to ignore the goose bumps she got on her body if it meant she was going to get help with the house chores, at least until she found another house keeper. Soon Ebony began to notice other things with crystal, the way she stared at AJ, the transformation when AJ was around. Her grumblings transformed to giggles, her messy dark long hair was less messy, and her steps were louder and bolder. Ebony could tell that crystal was in love with AJ, and when she told AJ he had laughed so hard, she began to also think it was funny.

It wasn’t funny one night. Aj always left his lamp on and the windows by his side open when they slept, while ebony preferred to sleep in complete darkness. Something that night had woken ebony up; it was a presence she felt. She opened her eyes and immediately caught the silhouette of a body standing by the window next to AJ staring at him. It was a woman, a girl, slender and tall like crystal, long hair just like crystal; it had to be crystal, ebony thought. She called AJ’s name, and tapped him to wake up. Her voice trembled just like her entire body.

“There was a woman outside just now,” ebony said to AJ who looked perplexed and very sleepy.

“it was just an animal, nini,” but ebony knew what she saw and it was no animal,” let’s go back to sleep,” he said pulling ebony into his arms and rubbing her back gently.

The next day, after AJ had gone to work, and crystal had finished working, Ebony secretly followed crystal. She followed her through the bushes and scanty forest, and at point ebony knew that crystal knew that she was being followed. Crystal didn’t act like she knew but it was impossible not to have known, and so ebony stopped hiding and simply trailed behind crystal, until they reached a small tent in the middle of the woods. Crystal turned and stared at ebony, who was standing a few feet away and also staring.

“Why have you followed me,” crystal asked her face expressionless, but her eyes dark like the night.

“I saw you last night,” Ebony said, now wondering if it was smart to follow crystal to the woods alone.

“I know,” crystal replied, her face still stoic.

“You’re fired, and I’ll call the police if I ever see you around my house or my family,” Ebony warned and turned to leave.

“ no, you’re fired Ebony,”, crystal whispered and pulled out a kitchen knife from her back pocket and ran at ebony. Ebony turned to see crystal running to her with a knife, and turned to run too, but immediately tripped and hit the ground, falling on her back.

First crystal sat beside her, and then brought out a handkerchief and stuffed in ebony’s mouth. Her eyes begged crystal to stop, tears rolled down her eyes, and the last thing she thought about was the very first day she saw Crystal. Her eyes, they had always been a red sign: she looked into crystals eyes one more time, before she felt a knife pass through her heart. Crystal stabbed her heart first and then, the baby in her stomach, three times, and then back to the heart again, three more times, then she went back to her tent and brought out a lighter and gasoline. She burnt the body until it was almost ash and bones only.

Crystal sat next to the body until it was night, then she got up and walked back to AJ’s house. Her new house, she thought and smiled all the way back.

Ebony’s two sons were sleeping on the floor while their sitter, was sprawled on the sofa. She made a mental note to fire the baby sitter and to find a new one as soon as she was settled in her new house. She entered the master bedroom and picked all of ebony’s pictures that were kept next to AJ’s and threw them in the thrash; the ones that had both of them in it, she tore Ebonys face out. She made another mental note to replace the pictures of ebony with pictures of herself.

When she was done, she had a warm bath and wore one of Ebony’s night gowns, and then lied down, covered herself in blankets and waited for AJ. Now she was truly at peace and could not wait to spend the rest of her life with him.

When AJ returned, she didn’t move from where she was or turn to look at him, she wanted to surprise him.

“Nini, I’m sorry I’m late. Work was way too hectic today”, he crawled behind her and lay next to her with his hand on her waist. “How was your day? Miss me?”

“Hectic and yes, I’ve missed you for way too long. You’re here now.”

THE END.