Christmas Can Wait
By Faforiji Adébímpé
The spent rays of the sun poured over the old photo album that lay on Tayo’s lap. She was seated by the window overlooking her tomato garden. She lifted an old photo wedged between the cover and first page and smiled.
The slow smile tugging the corners of her lip remained as she overturned the pages of the worn album. The stillness of the day amplified the chirpings of the malimbe on the Teak tree tucked a distance from her tomato garden. Ebenezer Obey’s Odun Keresimesi purred through her radio box on the kitchen shelf. She was spending this Christmas eve alone.
She turned to a picture where her children and their cousins were filed in a queue in front of a tap. She was in the courtyard the morning the picture was taken before their breakfast of tea and bread. They were in their raucous element, oblivious to the camera action. One of the cousins had unknowingly travelled down with conjunctivitis and infected the rest. So the picture captured each cousin as they waited their turn to wash the stickiness off their eye-lids before applying eye drops. In spite of their aching crimson eyes, they sang and wiggled their bodies to Babatunde Olatunji’s Betelehemu bellowing from the next house.
Christmas, to the children, had meant reuniting with their cousins after a long academic year. It had meant quick trips to Aleshinloye market, perusing stalls for stylish shades and synthetic wristwatches. Scurrying through open doors of small boutiques for new dresses and shirts, new trousers and shoes. Procuring firework sticks and balloons and bangers.
While the children sang and danced, rumbles of cooking activities carried on in the backyard. The smoky aroma of jollof rice and chicken, of pounded yam and efo riro with ponmo, panla and periwinkles, of a bubbly pot of fresh stew and egusi soup with ogufe, of chin chin and prawn crackers, marinaded the frigid air like incense.
Christmas, to Tayo and her husband, Dele, had meant reuniting with their siblings. She loved that Christmas had an atmosphere charged with love and activities and the return of distant relatives.
She turned to another page in the photo album. In the first picture, her first son, Jide, clung to her in an embrace. His two little fingers pointed heavenwards, taking the form of a bunny’s ears. At puberty, she had noticed his contagious air thinning out like dying embers. He merely returned home one vacation and thawed into a mire of quiet. In an immediate response, Tayo had withdrawn him from the boarding house.
She trailed her frail fingers over his thick brows and hooded eyes. It still baffled her how the features on his face were similar to Dele’s, as though he had spat him out. She swiped at a tear forming in her right eye. Jide was all grown now and settled with his family of one in the Netherlands.
In the blurred background, her last daughter, Tishe, stood with arms akimbo as if outraged, while her second son, Olu, toppled over her, lifting a Santa Claus cap in the air. Their relationship had always amused Tayo. A cat and mouse thing that fizzled into a sturdier friendship. Most of their childhood days unravelled with retaliations. Tishe, running round the compound with the television remote. Olu, chasing after her. Olu, submerging her teddy bears and dolls and action figures into a bowl of water. Tishe, bunched up like a stalk in the corner of her room, plotting her revenge. Now, Olu lives with his family of three in South Africa. And months ago, Tishe flew to New Orleans to pursue her Master’s Degree in Business and IT. She was a food enthusiast now. A deep laughter tore through Tayo as she remembered this. Every time Tishe called home, she was a faulty tap gushing nonstop about Creole dishes.
‘Maami, I had a bowl of rice and gravy today.’ ‘Maami, I should send you a bowl of gumbo!’ Sometimes she indulged her, ‘how do they make those shrimp creole?’ ‘Obviously shrimps,’ she would laugh, ‘I think tomatoes and garlic and onions and bell pepper also. I’ll send you the recipe. You should have it with rice, maami. It is simply amazing.’
Her first daughter, Kike, had been absent in most scenes. Her days were spent closely knitted to Dele. Some days, Tayo envied how easy Kike let loose around him. And when he died, it had crushed her to see Kike collapse into herself. Kike had bawled as though life had lost its essence. It worried her, the years and distance that had now separated them. The years that had brushed past without Kike returning home. Occasionally, Tayo reached out. Whenever the call dwindled to an abrupt end, she would cry herself to sleep. It was as if Kike had little use for their relationship. Kike was the closest – she lived in Lagos – yet she was the farthest. Tayo’s only wish was for her to visit home as often as her siblings did. She hit her chest as if to shift the ache lodged there.
She stared into the tomato garden – a garden once flowered with vibrant voices. Tishe and Olu with brooms to clear out the dried leaves and Jide with a packer and dustbin. Dele with a garden pruner and Kike with a watering can. Her role was merely to pluck the ripe tomatoes. How noisy and animated they had all been. How beautiful the commotion was.
The courtyard that once bloomed with boisterous voices of their cousins, was now replaced by the chirping of birds. The backyard that once rumbled with the voices of her siblings and caterers now lay unattended. The cheerfulness had simmered down and a new stillness hovered above the compound like an ominous cloud. The memories were distant now, but they were hers. A warmness enveloped her heart like a sheet.
She would speak to her children and grandchildren via Skype later that night. They would promise to travel home next Christmas. Distance might have come between them, but they were all in her heart, she would say.
***
Christmas morning dawdled along with the smell of blood and skinned cows, the tender ooze of fowls dipped into hot water ripe for plucking, the aroma of steamy jollof rice, permeating the air. Tayo instructed her gateman, Ali, to go home to celebrate with his family by 10:00am.
Glee settled over her like a cloak as she resumed to her garden to harvest ripe tomatoes. She was beginning to find joy in unexpected places, engaging in the smallest mundane activities. She sifted through the garden, plucking and placing the vegetables into a plastic basket. She settled the basket on the ground and stretched. Above, the sky was a stretch of a baby blue fabric.
Tayo had plucked the last of the ripe tomatoes when the backyard door was pulled open. She straightened, focusing the blur of her eyes on the slim figure standing by the door – a body built like hers when she was younger.
‘Kike,’ she said in a faltering voice as the tomato slipped from her grip. Tayo did not notice the new watering can in Kike’s hand.
Faforiji Adébímpé currently resides in Nigeria. She is a creative designer who enjoys listening to instrumentals and creating mood boards on Pinterest. Her most recent work, In dusty November, was featured in Kalahari Review.
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