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A Foreign Place: Chideziri POV
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2024-10-29 19:42:56CHIDEZIRI
Even for December, it's an unusally chilly night. But that's probably stemming from the unsaid fact that I wore beach-party-worthy clothes to an evening party. Sleeveless tee and tracksuit trousers, because of the heat. I regretted the decision immediately I stepped out of the house's warmth. I'd forgotten how antonymous December days are from the nights in the Harmattan. Blazing hot days and bleeding cold nights. As soon as I arrived, Abe pointed out my track trousers and sleeveless, joking that this wasn't the Olympics but a 'bash'. Point noted. And yes, another party. Since after we broke the news of Amanda's imminent departure, nothing was the same. Amanda's become quite the celebrity at school with her carefreeness, her poems and easy nature with answers in a test hall, so everyone's feeling the loss, even before it has happened.Related chapters
She Belongs To The Sky A Foreign Place: Amanda POV
Amanda "You want something to drink? My throat is parched with all this dancing we've been doing." Chantelle says out of nowhere while we are grooving . I nod in agreement. My throat is a pulsing, raw arid wasteland, too. I let her drag me through the crowd in the courtyard which is swelling by the minute, empty cup raised above her head and the crowd. The evening air is sweet, with lively music and jaunty voices. Dancing out in the open is therapeutic, it turns out. Somebody should have told me.Someone presses me closer to her and my arm sticks to hers, cool with fast drying sweat. "Girl, you are sweating like a pot of boiling water. You came ready to par-te! For real, for real." She swats my butt, and her signature smile-smirk is a torch in the night. She loves parties, like Abe. "I'm only trying to keep up with you." I say. &nbs
She Belongs To The Sky Stay: Chideziri POV
Late into the night, Abe hijacks the home theatre, links it to his bluetooth and plays Cole's Stay.I asked him to. The loud bass is sweet music to my ears. I look over the crowd and there she is smiling to the music, too. As if she understands, as if she hears me.Amanda taught me about J.Cole. Then she taught me about love. And now...now she's leaving me with all that new knowledge.It's tragic. It's Jack and Rose's retelling without the giant ship or the iceberg. It's the curtains falling before we are ready to stop dancing. It's us.And it's beautiful however you look at it.
She Belongs To The Sky Stay: Amanda POV
AMANDAStay.It booms through the speakers, deafening and delicate at once. People groan and curse at whoever changed the song.I look up and I'm perplexed to see Abe at the speakers—he gives me a thumbs up—and Chideziri manoeuvring his way down the staircase, hands in his pocket.He's beautiful.Not handsome. Not rough-and-tough good looking.Beautiful."Hey.""Hey you." I reply. "They don't seem to agree with our taste in music.""I thought you might want to listen to some J.Cole," he answers. "I wanted to.""Fuck them." is what he's actually saying. He knows it and I know it. We share a conspiratory smile.Tell me how am I supposed to leave this.~ The lady prosecutor—the one who looked as if she had never before spent a day of her life in a cell filled with mosquitoes and grumpy cell mates—called you a monster.
She Belongs To The Sky Slipping Time: Chideziri POV
Finals are easy. Mostly.I was the first person out of the hall; the post-school tutoring paid off. That or I just failed the last paper of the term, and year. English. With 20 minutes extra time to go. A combined paper, so everybody wrote.Like most of my mates, Abe stumbles out, cross-eyed and confused, cursing the essay writing. Cursing the English teacher. Cursing Little feats."Write an essay arguing for or against the motion to legalize abortions in Nigeria, giving cogent reasons. And it carried 15 marks. Just fifteen." Abe sparks. He squeezes the offending exam sheet, balling it up in a fist."They are trying to kill us." I say for his benefit alone. Every year, since SS1, Mr Harrison, the Literature and English teacher pulls a stunt of the same nature. Debates. Essays. Short prose writing. Anything to make you "wear your thinking cap" as he puts it.And every single year Abe emerges from the hall, sweating, spewing hate
She Belongs To The Sky Slipping Time: Amanda POV
"They are here!" The voice startles us.Abe. And the entire squad. They followed us."Lovebirds." Chantelle chimes.Pascal crows, "Chimaziri." grinning.They all are. That conspiratiory look kids have when they have done mischief and you just can't place a finger on what exactly it is they did."You are kidding me." flies out of my mouth.Chideziri groans, "Seriously?"Abe eyes us. "What? You want time alone to fornicate. Not happening. Not while I'm alive."Chantelle steps up to the edge of the plank, where we sit, and there is amazement in her face at the sight of the water."So this is where you guys stay. It a smart hiding place. It isn't too close to your house or his house. An in between."Abe makes to sit, but we are at the middle of the jetty, and the space is too small."Shift," he says. I groan."Shift, abeg."Half bent, he pauses, na
She Belongs To The Sky Forget Not: Amanda POV
By the seventeenth day of December, Christmas has taken over the town. Soon red and white are the only two colours the world knows—how it always happens this time each year.Plastic hollies and mistletoes hang from porches of family houses and schools gates, churches and banks. A cherry sun hangs from a lucid mistless sky.Red and white, too.Perhaps that is all Christmas is: Red and white.Little Feats' closing fete is a sombre occasion, suprisingly so. Chideziri made a life sized portrait of the infant Jesus, in a manger, gurgling. Hands reach for him from the periphery. I assume they are Mary's. It's so properly done that looking at it, it could have been an old black and white photograph.For the carol, all the fluorescents are switched off and only candles light the room.It's a sight. A hundred or more candles, glinting against the Assembly hall's blackness. Then time flies and it becomes time
She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Amanda POV
Christmas is explosive. Literally so. The number of fireworks produced in a single annum is alarming. But what is even more alarming is the fact that the effing hoodlums that deadbeat parents in my neighbourhood call their children seem to think that detonating all those fireworks in the street just beyond our gate is cool. On Christmas eve, after one "knock-out" landed on our roof, I reached the end of my thoroughly stretched patience. I stormed out to yelled at a couple of them loitering in the street. All of which I did barefooted.Don't blame me, I was spectacularly pissed.The twenty fifth—Christmas day itself—is spent out of our house and in Aunty Seedy's, with her and Ozo. Dad wanted us to go to Chicken Republic, or one of the many fancy restuarants he made it his business to locate in the area once we arrived, since neither of us can boil an egg.
She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Chideziri POV
Ahmed is stuck at his mother's shop. But as always, he finds a way to vanish. Abe's on his way already. Pacal posted pictures of the places his family had been to today: cinema, swimming at a pool and Ferris wheeling. The mere sight of the Ferris wheel gave me vertigo.By the tone of his last text, he's down for a reunion. Although he's never been as good as Ahmed at vanishing, I know he'll be there. Chantelle gets there first, to our spot at the river. Her sister's nurse friends visited, and in her words, turned the house into a marketplace. Amanda arrives last. The sun has sunk below the horizon by then and mosquitoes are biting. "I come bearing gifts!" she bellows, stomping down the planks, her footsteps heavy with the weight of five paperbags she's clutching. "Since when did Amanda become Santa?" Abe says. Yet he grabs his gift bag when it's offered.&nbs
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She Belongs To The Sky Eclipse: Lorita POV
Calling Ma to tell her the exam is over will only make her rush me, I think.Today is the one day I don't want to rush things. So when others pull out their phones and gather round for selfies and corny posts such as GRADUATE IN A BIT or BEEN HERE, DONE THAT, I push my phone deeper into the slash pocket of my overall."And we good to go!" my best friend appears just as she disappeared: when I wasn't looking, and all of a sudden.She stretches her arms out for a hug."Ewwww." I dodge her. My best friend, Amanda, only seems to want hugs after one of her many visits to the toilets. There's enough bacteria on the doors alone to kickstart an epidemic."You know you want this hug," Amanda grins, inching closer.The periodic toilet frolicking is normal, the usual. The grinning is new. Whatever Port-Harcourt did to her was good. She even let me read her journal for like six seconds—which is a record. She n
She Belongs To The Sky Eclipse: Abraham POV
I slump onto the grass next to Chideziri. He keeps staring up ahead into the tree, as if he's looking for something in particular, not paying me any mind. "G." Nothing. I shove his shoulder. Still nothing. "Are you going to sit here sulking all day?" Finally, he looks at me. "I can try, can't I?" "It's passing out day, you fool. We had plans, remember?" "Frankly, I don't." He says. I raise a brow at him; he only shrugs. I adjust myself till I am lying on my back in the untrimmed grass. "Well, since you don't remember, I'll wait here until your mermory starts to come back." "You'll be waiting for a long time" "I have enough time." I fire back. "Jesus Christ." Chideziri mutters. "Don't use the name of the Lord in vain, bro." "Guy, g
She Belongs To The Sky On The Wings Of A Flood: Chideziri POV
After four months of complete drought, March releases the first rains.Rooftops turn red with dust filled water, dust that accumulated over the dry season. Children play around under the rain, splashing in puddles.I spend half of most days in second term numb and staring. Staring at the teacher, at the writing on the board that makes no sense to me whatsoever, at the wall clock hung above the marker board. Then I spend the other half of the day noticing I'm numb and staring.In church, I no longer swing my shoulders to the music. I don't listen to J.Cole anymore.She is too everywhere. Too present to be so absent. My clothes smell of rain-beaten leaves, of abandonment, of freshly written poems. How hard I scrub makes no noticeable difference. Weeks after January the sixth, my knuckles are red and raw from trying to scrub her away, and failing to.She is too everywhere.I learn to stay in my room, curtains drawn
She Belongs To The Sky On The Wings Of A Flood: Amanda POV
Queen's is as quiet and sprawling as I remember. Almost too quiet. The pinafores are also as I remember, shining from excessive ironing. But now the shirts are cardboard paper and the weather is always so dry that I have to keep lipbalm in my bag, just in case my lips crack. Again.Lorita's here, and she definitely missed me. I get cupcakes literally every day of the week, and a lot of guilt trip for that one time I abandoned her, went to Port-Harcourt, and while there, lived my best life.The absolute best thing about being back is that Queen's installed a new track. I'm feeling it.Now, I can run.As far as I want, as far as my legs will carry me. So fast that I fly. I close my eyes and there I'm in PH city, with Chideziri, sprinting, the rain right behind us.When I open my eyes, he isn't there.~
She Belongs To The Sky Exodus: Chideziri & Amanda
CHIDEZIRI I kiss her now, because when she's gone, I want to remember how her smile tastes mixed with tears. I want to remember the flayed pink that the sky took on, how rays peered down through clouds. I want to remember the mangroves, their dying leaves forming a glade of rusted confetti. I want to remember the sun, before it was eclipsed. ~ AMANDALeft to Aunty Seedy, suffocation by embracing is how I'd die."Nne, I'll miss you sorely." She says, smothering me. I lose count after the seventh hug. All our stuff will be moved to her house. Sofas,
She Belongs To The Sky Purple Hibiscuses: Chideziri POV
The trees outside my window are almost naked now, burnt to figs by the ever angry sun. In the darkness of dawn, their branches resemble bones. I can't sleep, and being awake staring at the skeleton branches isn't helping, so I take Tobi's hoodie and leave the house. Outside is silent, much like everything else. So silent that when I pass the playround, I can hear the grass whistle. I walk. I walk by the tailors shop, to Close 4 and past. Past the hulking buildings and lonely trees. I walk till I get to the river. Elimgbu river has sunken so low that the stones underneath break its glassy surface. The first time we were here, it was full to its brim. Leaves floated on its surface. Pebbles lived under. It was beautiful. That is the thing about faded glory. It always starts out beautiful.
She Belongs To The Sky Purple Hibiscuses: Amanda POV
January, the sixth arrives quickly, quietly. January, the sixth steals our time. I wake up not remembering what the day means, at first. It comes to me slowly. The night before we leave, the night before January the sixth, I learn two things: there are two kinds of hunger, and one can keep you up all night, staring at the ceiling and missing a place and people you are yet to leave. It is two O'Clock in the morning and disconcertingly quiet when I decide that I can't endure the trashing and turning. I take a book from the shelf that will no longer be mine by evening, purple hibiscus, with the cracks on its cover and Adichie's delighted face above its blurb, and I go to the sitting room that will not be ours by evening. There, I turn on the light and cozy up on the couch. Halfway through the first chapter, feet shuffle in the hallway and Dad emerges from
She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Chideziri POV
Ahmed is stuck at his mother's shop. But as always, he finds a way to vanish. Abe's on his way already. Pacal posted pictures of the places his family had been to today: cinema, swimming at a pool and Ferris wheeling. The mere sight of the Ferris wheel gave me vertigo.By the tone of his last text, he's down for a reunion. Although he's never been as good as Ahmed at vanishing, I know he'll be there. Chantelle gets there first, to our spot at the river. Her sister's nurse friends visited, and in her words, turned the house into a marketplace. Amanda arrives last. The sun has sunk below the horizon by then and mosquitoes are biting. "I come bearing gifts!" she bellows, stomping down the planks, her footsteps heavy with the weight of five paperbags she's clutching. "Since when did Amanda become Santa?" Abe says. Yet he grabs his gift bag when it's offered.&nbs
She Belongs To The Sky Yultide: Amanda POV
Christmas is explosive. Literally so. The number of fireworks produced in a single annum is alarming. But what is even more alarming is the fact that the effing hoodlums that deadbeat parents in my neighbourhood call their children seem to think that detonating all those fireworks in the street just beyond our gate is cool. On Christmas eve, after one "knock-out" landed on our roof, I reached the end of my thoroughly stretched patience. I stormed out to yelled at a couple of them loitering in the street. All of which I did barefooted.Don't blame me, I was spectacularly pissed.The twenty fifth—Christmas day itself—is spent out of our house and in Aunty Seedy's, with her and Ozo. Dad wanted us to go to Chicken Republic, or one of the many fancy restuarants he made it his business to locate in the area once we arrived, since neither of us can boil an egg.
