Redemption

Sunlight; It is the first thing I notice. It plays on my skin with the flickering shadows of the trees like butterflies on sun bleached flowers and dewy leaves. I turn my hands in wonder as my skin become golden with pinpoints of rainbows and then black like those club lights Andy, my friend always talks about when he comes home from his travels. I smile, then my smile freezes as my eyes fall on the well worn path that I must take.

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I am walking on an old path. My father's people have walked this path for generations upon generations. It leads to the only source of water that feeds the community;the great river Olokun. The river sits around the community like children listening to Pa Ame's stories but it is the centre of everything the community does. It is where the washing is done, the fishing is done, the exchange of news and gossip is done and even some trading is done there. At night, when the moon is at its fullest, it is not uncommon for you to see men and women clad in white wrappers coming to the river like ghosts seeking light. They come to offer propitiations to the river but I go there for none of these things though. My intent is very simple. I go there to die.

I have been thinking about it for months now. I have looked at it at night when the ceiling fan in the room that I share with my father's other children groans in its slow revolutions. I have pored through it when I stare at my face in the only mirror in the house,that dusty thing that sits near my father's room. I have listened to it in the early evening rustling of the wind as it finds its way home among the rafters after a day of sojourning the world and peeking into the different lives of man.

When mama died,my world collapsed like a weak sand house, those ones my father's children and their friends used to make with the heap of white sand by the gate during the rainy season. They would dig a foot into the soft sand and gather the sand about their foot and that would make the first house. I used to join in such plays but after mama faded like she never breathed, after her name quietened in my mind, I lost the sweetness of childhood and began to seek beauty.

My search led me to the bronze casters that served the king. I learnt the craft for years but I got no satisfaction. I travelled to the west and slept beneath the eaves of great wood carvers but I felt nothing stir within me. In truth, it was mama I sought. Instead, I found women who wanted me in different ways. I indulged in them but when Kemi came and told me that she was pregnant, I fled. I came back home, a prodigal, my name forgotten, my father. I watched, ignored as my father's children fought and died over his meagre possessions and as my father's house crumbled, the more disillusioned I became. Yet,this is not why I walk this path this morning.

In the early hours of one harmattan morning,I stepped out of the room to pass water behind the compound, close to where the house dumped trash and I heard the cry of a baby. I walked to the place where the sound was coming from but I saw nothing. I searched and searched until the sun rose high in the sky but I found nothing. When I returned to the house, I stank of waste and everyone thought I was mad. I could not explain myself. I could not tell my father that that I was haunted by a letter sent to me by Kemi. She had stopped her pain.

They chained me and shaved me and my father's children taunted me by the gate with sticks and stones. Because I never fought or raved, cursed or persisted on any of the fantastic beliefs about the mentally ill,I was considered cured after some time but the harm was done. By the time, my father's children allowed me back into the room, I was ready to leave. I had began to see the beauty that lied beneath the embrace of the earth;the silence,the darkness,the peace.

I get to the river bank just as little boys and girls troop in with water cans. I walk along the river's edge, watching the river lap at the sand until I get to the part where the forest converge on the river like supplicants. I turn to watch the boys and girls laugh and play then as I turn away, I see Andy running towards me. He is smiling.

"I found him; Kemi's baby, I found him," he says as soon as he reaches me.

I weep.

©warpedwhale,2020.