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Alive, You Say: Amanda POV
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2020-11-14 06:47:45I close my eyes as I think of the sound of a popular Nigerian music in my head. The beat is steady and I can feel my eardrums vibrate to the sound of its intensity which tries to draw me apart. I try not to think of the music but I can't stop myself from enjoying its lovely taste.
It takes a while before I realize that the sound I hear in my ears is not the sound of a popular Nigerian music but the sound of my own voice, warning me to pay attention carefully and always follow my heart. I rest my head on the bed and before I can recognize the sound in my head, I fall asleep.
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She Belongs To The Sky Messages (Two): Amanda POV
It rains mad heavy all night. It is still raining by the time dawn ascends the horizon. I saw it all, from black to gray, then dark blue and later translucent turquoise; because after undoing my braids which were damp with rain and river water, and drying them as best as I could, I stayed up through out the night, texting Chideziri.It has been said once, that the best conversations happen around two-thirty a.m, when eyelids are drooping, when words are sincerest, and the awkward silences are not awkward at all.Amanda: ......Chideziri: Ikuku afaAmanda: What?! (Laughing emoji)Chideziri: Have you gotten home yet?Amanda: Don't try to change to the subject (finger pointing up emoji). What is that?Chideziri: Ikuku? (Grinning emoji) it means wind.Amanda: ??Chideziri: You run quite fast, like a petty thief.Amand
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Messages (Two): Chideziri POV
Tobi wakes me up Sunday afternoon with a toe in my side. It's barely still bright outside and there's a small drizzle falling.NEPA finally decided to show up after going AWOL on Friday night, when this three-day long drizzle started. That's the thing I hate about October; when it wants to rain it rains rhinos and elephants, maybe even a little bit of monkey, the entire menagerie in fact.I tumble out of the sheets—they smell like spice and use and unwashness—to plug my phone to the adapter on the wall socket. It was where I had left it before I fell asleep—drowned by the cream waves of my tousled bed sheets.Tobi doesn't strip down, even though he is half drenched. He is still in that his brown and black 50-over-50 woven sweatshirt with orange stripes at its shoulder, that makes him resemble a homeless person. His hair is in a disarray, in small tight curls like locks. It adds more realism to the homeless-
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Messages (Two): Amanda POV
There are two Chideziris in the shop at once.It is the kind of thing you see in a movie, very much like that scene in Divergent where Tris went up against herself. Only this time one Chideziri is fair, as luminous yellow as the sixty-watt light bulb, and far more muscled, equipped with mountainous shoulders and a big mouth to go along. He has said like a thousand words within the five seconds I have been in here. He is also the Chideziri that's braiding my hair.After Saturday night, after I came in from the downpour and I couldn't blow-dry and re-braid my hair altogether before Monday, after Aunty Seedy called to tell me she couldn't come around because of a family meeting she had to attend (she still links up with her exes family. Don't ask me why. Of an inkling I have none), Dad decided to bring me to a saloon–the saloon, he said. He said he had a classmate in town who owns a saloon at Elimgbu. He just didn't tell me that that 'friend' was Chidezi
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Messages (Two): Chideziri POV
It ts that day Celine undid her buttons, all over again. I am so not amused.Tobi's hands move swiftly in her mane, yet softly, with greater care now. There's a bit of Apple on his arm and he slicks some onto his fingers every now and then.He leans towards her ear and says something I can't hear. She giggles. I catch fire.It's that bloody day all over again. Somebody hit the restart button on the DvD plate; it is only different now because she's my girl, and he's my brother—it is a measure more obnoxious. When he finishes, her hair is tapered down her nape in crooked lines, her forehead sleek with oil. She looks something fierce. She examines the hairdo in the mirror and smiles. Her full cheeks blossom and I am reacquainted to the lush sugar of her face.I know this Amanda, I think.I know this Amanda that smiles at people she does not know and plays with the tail of her braid, I think.Later
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Then Came Collisions: Amanda POV
Fridays in October always start off as cool days. Often, they stay that way till tired Saturaday mornings arrived. Or they don't. At times, they melt slowly into afternoons hot enough to deep fry a chicken, so damp and itchily lukewarm that you want to shed your skin, exit, stray away from your body, just leave. On top of that our class has no fan. There is a single bulb, fluorescent, yet I felt as though half the heat in the square is a product of its emissions.Weeks go by faster when you are happy. It was only yesterday I was in blazers and skirts braving an early morning rain to get to school. Small nescafe ponds of water carpeted the estate's dirt roads and each time the car's tyre hit one, it sunk, sprayed water on unsuspecting passers-by. One woman, an old lady in a hijab cursed the loudest. Dad muttered a sheepish sorry that she wouldn't have heard even if the windows were rolled all the way down; they were not. Then I go to bed on an unceremonious
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Then Came Collisions: Chideziri POV
Monday morning at the assembly, that is where Mrs Epele tells us about Ralph: Raphael Ebigide. He was attacked at Eneka, late at night when he went out to the market atrhe second junction to buy stuff.Ralph is one of the big boys in SS2 arts class who has made close friends with most G's in our class already. That lively bubbly kind of G that sweats mad vibes.Apparently, the bad news is that he was hospitalized as a result of the injuries he sustained.The good news: He should be back to school within a week's passing, three at most.Reason for Announcement: "Please endeavor to stay at home if it can be helped. Those of you who move around aimlessly at odd hours. Please. Please and please. We have entered the ember months—"Aha!Finally, mention of the dreaded ember-months!I said it. I was just waiting for her to land and she delivered, right on target.Once we get into S
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Then Came Collisions: Amanda POV
Break time see the arts and sciences combined. Four long desks have been arranged in the middle of the classroom to form a large table at the class' epicentre. It's a mini-conference hall in here.Subject matter: Ever Shine."Oga, I dey talk say make we carry full force jazz these niggas down. You dey cap me talk wey no get head." Ojeh says. He unbuttons the collar of his shirt and yanks his tie knot lose as though it is the problem.Ahmed has both hands flat on the desk top, trying to glare him into nonexistence."And wetin go come happen na. As you no get any sense. Your own na to dey yarn careless talk like say you be superman.""Guy, I call you? I call your mouth here? Comot body o, blood dey hot." Ojeh retorts.Chideziri intervenes."Oboy coolele temper. Calm down first." He thumps Ahmed's shoulder.They have been like this for a bit now, rabid dogs at each others throats. Ahmed ha
Last Updated : 2020-11-14She Belongs To The Sky Then Came Collisions: Chideziri POV
Once, I told Tobi that my favourite section of PH-city was the city. The entire city. As you can imagine he looked at me crazy. I don't blame him; I looked at me crazy too. But it was the truth. Up until when Amanda took me to the river, the city was the place I loved most in this world, the deserty sand that sticks to the base of drums and buckets and trousers when it rains, the towns, the tarnished zinc-roofed houses spaced out awkwardly, standing like children who have quarreled. How the people move with ease but also purpose, at leisure with the familiar air and the putrid smell of green water which has flooded the gutters. That's why I take Amanda through them, l those tarnished roofed closes and rain-coated streets.No squad.Just us both, strolling.We stop by the movie shop and I buy a wrestling film—WWE's smackdown. Then we buy powdery popcorn and share it, the milk and sugar sticking to our fingers. To Amanda's upper lip. She le
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