Tuesday, February 4, 2014
To Do List:
- Clean street
- Survive school
- Supper
- Help Sarfoa with homework if she has any (make sure she studies for an hour if she doesn’t)
- Study
I woke up at 1 a.m. after sleeping at 11 p.m. I’d actually thought the insomnia was getting better but just two hours of sleep was an all-time low.
The insomnia started after Ntiriwa died. Because they couldn’t find her body, I kept thinking her spirit was hanging around and I was scared to go to sleep. I knew it was fruitless trying to get back to sleep. I picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns and finished reading it at 4 a.m.
I changed into shorts and an old T-shirt, got a bin-liner from the kitchen and wore Mom’s gardening gloves. I don’t know when disorderly things first started driving me crazy. I can’t stand dirty places, be it my bedroom or the street in front of my house. So I clean my surroundings a lot. A lot more than the average person probably does.
Ntiriwa and I had always been close. She had been only a year older than me and though we were as close as any two sisters could be, we also had moments when we fought.
In Tamale, all three of us had shared a bedroom though Sarfoa had spent most of the nights in our parents’ bed. Our fights began in Kumasi. Ntiriwa and I shared a bedroom same as we had done in Tamale but suddenly I couldn’t stand the fact that she would not put her clothes back into the wardrobe, or the fact that she would not make her bed in the mornings, or that she would leave litter on the floor.
Initially I began tidying up after her but after a while I got tired of that and she got tired of me touching her stuff.
Our parents decided that I share a room with Sarfoa instead while Ntiriwa got her own room. When Sarfoa got old enough I taught her to make her bed and put her toys away and we got along perfectly.
Ntiriwa used to say I had an obsessive compulsive disorder,but I didn’t, at least at the time I didn’t. I didn’t have urges to tidy places other than my room, but that all changed when she died and the insomnia began. I realized it was futile trying to chase sleep, so I started doing the chores Mom neglected doing—tidying the living room, doing the laundry and making sure that even though we were going through a difficult time nothing in our house would look neglected. Nothing would show others we were not handling our grief well.
I got so good at cleaning the entire house that I could do everything—cleaning the louvers, dusting, mopping the floors and scrubbing the bathrooms in an hour and thirty minutes.
So on nights I couldn’t sleep, I’d clean. But then my hours of sleep became lesser and lesser and I had more time on my hands, so I moved out to the compound. But there wasn’t much to do on the compound because most of the yard had been cemented and weeds in flower pots didn’t grow fast enough to require three hours uprooting, so I moved out to the street.
It started with just picking litter from the front of our gate. Then I moved to the front of our neighbours’ gates. And the next thing I knew, I was picking rubbish off the entire street, sometimes twice or thrice a week. I don’t know if anyone else noticed our street was cleaner, but that didn’t matter—I did, and that gave me a small measure of joy and accomplishment.
I loved going out in the morning and seeing a street devoid of black polythene bags, newspapers and ice-cream wrappers. I slipped out of the house and closed the gate gently behind me. I loved the early mornings when the world was quiet and there was no human activity—just me, some frogs and crickets. The quiet was so soothing that it eased the hurt in my heart.
I walked to the end of the street and began. The grass by the side of the road was wet with dew and many snails were about, their slimy trails glistening in the early dawn. I usually didn’t think when I picked rubbish. My mind was just blank, but it was a nice, calm blank.
I was almost at the end of the street when I heard the sound of a car. I froze. I didn’t want neighbours seeing me and jumping to all sorts of conclusions. I was usually back in my own home by 5 a.m. and that was only when the street was really dirty. I doubted if I had been out for more than thirty minutes. There was nowhere to hide. Our house was in the middle of the street and all the streetlights were on. I couldn’t even duck behind any of the shrubs.
I stood where I was by the side of the road with the big, black bag in my hand as the car approached. The driver slowed down and I got a good look at his face. But he needn’t have slowed; I would have recognized that red Audi anywhere, anytime, even if the license hadn’t shown the car was registered in Nigeria.
I turned my face away quickly, but not before I’d seen the look of surprise on Chidi’s face. The car slowed down some more and I prayed, I actually prayed that he wouldn’t stop., And thankfully he seemed to realize what he had been about to do and he drove on to his house at the end of the street.
School passed in much the same way as it had the previous day. It was easier to be invisible because the whole school was talking about Chidi. I heard snippets of conversations as I waited in the assembly hall.
“His dad has an oil company.”
“I hear he was sick and had to stay home for a year, that’s why he’s now in Form 3.”
“His dad does not own an oil company. My mom says he’s a professor at KNUST. She met him yesterday and he told her his son was in KICS.”
I didn’t have any new books so at break I solved Sudoku puzzles while I ate plain rice with palaver sauce. There was a buzz of excitement when Chidi came into the cafeteria. He got four chocolate rolls and a bottle of coke.
“Yo, Chids,” Kwaku Duah called from his table.
I wasn’t surprised to see three of the more popular girls— Nhyiraa and two other girls sitting at Kwame’s table. I turned to where Afua Gyamfua and Eno sat by themselves. Eno was sulking. Afua wouldn’t meet my gaze.
Chidi waved a hand in greeting. Then he stood with his tray in front of the snack section and searched the cafeteria like he was looking for someone. He saw me and started walking in my direction. My heart began pounding.
Please, don’t. Please, don’t. Had someone put him up to this? Didn’t he know the entire school was watching? He came to my table and nodded at me. Then he sat at the extreme end and ate his lunch.
There was silence as everyone around us waited for him to make his next move. But they lost interest after he finished his second roll and started on his third. I finished my lunch. Picked up my Sudoku book and left the cafeteria.
I had no idea what he was trying to prove.
***
Tell us: Do you think Chidi is trying to prove something. If so, what?