SUNDAY SUNDAY MEDICINE
A sordid glimpse behind the resplendent mask of an everyday upper middle class Lagos family.
Charles spent the entirety of the night studying for the test he was so sure he would be having tomorrow, Monday.
He had consciously altered his sleep pattern to suit the suffer-head lifestyle of any student that had a booming social life and yet somehow still juggled top tier grades. It was no wonder that around tests and especially during exams he got into impulsive, fiery fits in the room we shared with two Yoruba young men. Stress; understandable, completely avoidable nonetheless.
He — Charles — had not hacked life yet. He was, if I am to be honest, the very definition of suffer-head. Hours spent over textbooks he did not understand, taking breaks every 10 minutes to respond to texts from young women that would not recall his name once we vacated the campus premises for our summer recess. Would it not be easier to play just one fucking role?
Anyhow, that’s honestly not my problem at the moment, I always digress. Sorry.
“When the time comes ehn, boys go still run am.”
“No be who dey read dey pass exam, at all-o! Na pesin wey sabi whether na current or savings the lecturer dey use dey pass.”
Sabi now!
When I awoke that Monday morning, just like every other morning in my life since I hit 17, the first thought that came dashing at me was the one that asked in its hoarse tired voice, when next I’d be able to lie back down on my bed to get some more fucking sleep. Life’s weighty issues had already started to set up camp in my heart, and without knowing it, I’d slowly begun to despise being awake and all the other baggage that came with existing.
Really and honestly, I was tired.
The then weird sayings of almost every househelp I’d ever been entrusted to in my life, somehow started to cascade down my mind, brewing me a mild headache.
“You won’t sleep now-o, Tochi!”
“You don’t know that you are very, very lucky. You better sleep-o!”
“Nobody did any siesta time-table for me when I was small, your papa get money now, na why.”
It would be somewhere here, in the hollows betwixt their admonishments, that a weak wave of wistfulness would blow, revealing the true expressions in their sunken sleep-deprived eyes; drained, yet ever so grateful for the other benefits they enjoyed living under our roof.
Yes, Mother overworked them sometimes — most times.
It was always as though they were looking back into their past lives, their voices empty and even more alone.
“Tochi, go and sleep now!”
“Hmm, look at you. A time will come ehn, you will find this sleep that you’re using to do iyanga now, and then ehn, it, too, would use you to do iyanga.
Bet it with me.”
Now even though at the time, I could not understand or be bothered about what their ominous sayings meant, I knew that I grasped one thing;
I understood that whatever it was they were always going on about,
it foretold a somewhat grey and scary future.
A future that could not possibly have any Honey Loops and more of Fathers’ chewy bacon; a future with strange exams called “Jam.”
A curious future it was, no doubt.
But at the time, you see, I had time; I knew that I was still about 5 or 6 years of age, I was aware even then, that I was unfledged; that life’s problems would not be coming for me until many years had passed.
LOL!
This little detour I’ve brought you on has cost me about 15 minutes of my current reality, the woefully exhausting one.
You nasty little bitch! I know that’s just how you like it.
Bright, the man in his mid-thirties who lived in the security post of my Father’s house, and served as the caretaker of the compound, liked his pornos rough and black, like locally brewed coffee.
He also played them a little too loud whenever he was high off some of my leftover weed, and sometimes, when I heard them, I wondered what his sex life as an unprivileged adolescent from Enugu’s bowels must have been.
No one was home at the time, it was midday on a Sunday, and the family was at their usual after-mass spot.
One Sunday I’d had a fever and could not go to church with everyone.
Mother offered to stay with me but Father said it was a mere fever, only little held me from going to church with them. I was 12.
The after taste of the funny tablets Mother had given me that morning still sat, bitter in my sour mouth. I slept immediately after they left, hoping to awaken at the sound of their returning, triple decker pizza smells, purchased from the Debonairs Pizza outlet at VGC, calling me back to consciousness.
But I had a nightmare, and in a bid for company ran straight without knocking into Bright’s room. He was touching himself.
He had not locked his door.
It wasn’t anything, we never even spoke of it, but sometimes, bored in church, my mind would go to that image, and I would think about how Bright could not imagine how much I longed for his freedom and simple happiness.
I think I’m just tired of Ikoyi Club babes for now ngl, I was texting Idong just as Father pulled up to the second floor of their car park.
They never ever school here, it’s always Leicester or freaking Manchester. Guy, the p is so fucking frustrating, I’m tired, I swear.
Ever tried guys?
And just like that, Idong opened up several new worlds in my life.
This Sunday, like the other Sundays, when Father was in Lagos, was no different. The powers that be must have gotten new copying machines and somehow felt that our family would be the ideal test dummy, because how else could one explain these Sundays?
8:10 AM — The back and forth arguments in Igbo would have already begun, and they would always end with Father hitting Mother a couple of times across her face, or anywhere else that was closest to him, before she’d finally shut up and head to their bathroom with the same angry tears of submission we were all accustomed to in our household. The blood-like tears would dance and well up in her eyes just before she banged the bathroom door behind her.
Others paid for African Magic on DSTV, I had my fucking family.
I’d turned 20 in August, but I was sure that their bathroom had seen more new doors than I had years. Till this day, I always wonder why she’d waited so long before finally deciding to poison his Ofe Onugbu.
8:50 AM — Mother, in one of her bright wrappers, would leave the room she shared with Father and head to the guestroom downstairs to continue with her pre-mass rituals. No bad vibes.
She would always have her Christian pop music blasting from her JBL speakers; I still can’t shake some of them off. Her resilience never ceased to baffle me, nothing ever truly fucked up her Sundays, not even Father.
9:30 AM — Everyone emerged from whichever room they called their own in their church clothes; father would always style himself in that grown, sexy,
I-have-big-money-and-I-live-on-the-island-with-my-family silky traditional attire; mother had no qualms being the stereotypical Igbo Christian wife with the flamboyant head tie that blinded even the Lagos sun; my two younger siblings would each swear that they had their own unique styles going on,
but we all knew that they were trying their hardest to look like me.
They always ended up looking like embarrassing throwbacks of mine. Looking back now, it was sad, but the happy kind of sadness — warm.
I could not judge them, my taste had always been superior.
It would not be Sunday if I wasn’t hiding from the world behind one of my sunglasses from my ever-growing collection of eccentric, oversized Vintage Smith pieces.
Bright had rolled up another batch for me the previous night, and I could swear that I was floating now. As we made our way towards Fathers’ Range Rover as a family, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in our one-way kitchen window. It was my hair; she was glistening in the early sun, and she had already begun to lock herself.
My parents didn’t care how I looked anymore since I had gotten myself expelled from university for smoking some weed; Dare had snitched.
I loved this newfound freedom. Would you judge me if I told you that I secretly hoped that they had given up on me?
LMFAO!
“Bright! Come and open the gate.”
As Father backed out the compound, I could have sworn that Mother stared at Bright a bit too long. I let the thought die almost immediately, though, because there were more pressing matters underway in Saturn.
10:00 AM — “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!”
“Amen!”
11:45 AM — Just as the Holy Mass is concluded, Father becomes a new being; the mass has washed him of his sins, and so, he begins to play the role of Daddy once again, quickly forgetting that the next time he enters the country, he will bend back down to pick his rags of Father up.
What is beautiful, however, if you ask me, is how my last sibling capitalizes on all of these Sunday cruises. Daddy only lives for him now, and I hope that my last sibling doesn’t grow up too fast, at least, for Daddy’s sake.
Daddy knows that the rest of the family has grown numb towards him.
I recall having nightmares sometimes, on what will happen when the puberty truck hits my last sibling: the chilly completion of a dark, dark circle, a family of zombies. If I knew Mother had made plans, perhaps I, too, would have capitalized on this Sunday cruise.
It still pricks my heart till this day.
“Daddy! Remember, you promised to buy the new Xbox CDs.”
“We’ll get as many games as you want, ehn. Don’t worry, my boy!”
12:21 PM — After we’d stopped at the Palms shopping mall to get all the CDs the last sibling could never finish playing in 6 lifetimes, and stocking up on groceries, we stayed at the Ikoyi Club to fake-bond as a family.
It was astounding how Daddy could keep his happy demeanor on a table with so many thick grey clouds.
His performance, if you asked me, deserved an academy award, an Emmy.
Just once babe, and it was back in secondary school, I replied Idong now, this time a bit more cautious of my surrounding.
5:30 PM — Fathers’ Uber driver was out front.
Parked, ready to drive him to the airport.
Bye-bye to rubbish. Thinking back now, the Uber driver must have laughed a bit, ambivalence coating his throat.
He must’ve not known people could die on Sundays.
I can imagine.
12:49 PM — Bright had finished touching himself.
It was time for him to complete his Madams’ strange request.
FIN.
