Soup

By Chinaza James-Ibe 

First published in Brittle Paper’s Christmas Festive Anthology, 2023.

It is Christmas Eve again, and you are freer than you have ever been. Nobody calls to ask if you will come home; it's been 10 years since Ukamaka called. Another 10 years since Mama called. Papa is as blind as a moonless night. You'll go home either way—you always do.

Christmas lights fascinate you—the way the entire country shapeshifts into a dainty masquerade. Green. Red. Green. Sometimes you roam the night, going from shop to shop in Nsukka just so you can touch the blinking lights. What fascinates you even more is the scent of happiness as you stroll—the different aromas of food colliding softly into each other—chicken, rice, plantains, and soups. Boys and girls smelling of Oud, sweat, and money queue every day. You wonder how vast their stomachs must be to eat so much daily—you only eat on Christmas. The harmattan makes Nsukka look strangled; the air is so stiff and cold; the lizards are grayer than usual; the ixoras have no nectar in them; and sometimes you wake up frozen and have to wait for the sun to rise before you can move again.

The greatest of all your fascinations is traveling.

In all your walks, you avoid St. Peter's Chaplaincy; the carol songs make you want to cry and pine for things you can no longer have—like a voice. The sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses all climax to form a plenary elysium. The Igbo songs remind you of Mama 10 years ago, the way the sun rose in her face each time you led the village choir in "Amụrụ Jisọs na Bethlehem." When you were done, she would clap loudly, forgetting that the mass was still ongoing. While the church wardens in boring green dresses tried to calm her, she would say at the top of her voice, "That is my child! Ada m!" 

Everything was quieter now; you did not have a voice, and your mother no longer went to church, not even on Christmas.

Walking towards the Faculty of Arts, you remember the two years you and your friends walked to class together, talking and dragging your fingers across the ixoras on both sides of the concrete walkway. The way you would snigger when you found someone's clothes ridiculous; the way you would passionately complain, "Why person go wear suit and Crocs?" and your friends would laugh—strands of their knotless braids sticking to their rich spread of absolute lip gloss, "You should just quit English and become a fashion police," they would say.

You remember the 7 a.m. lectures where your African literature lecturer would stand beneath a lightbulb, his scalp gleaming, and reiterate, "African literature as a child of two worlds!"

You once wrote a poem about the decadence of the lecture hall, the cobwebs that were thick enough to hold a buff human body, the shattered glass windows, and the ostrich ceiling fans that had transcended into antiquity—the dust in their necks would not let them rotate. As you punctuated your poetry, Achebe peered at you through his glass frame, and you whispered to him, "Forgive me, please."

In the little courtyard outside the lecture hall, there is a little sculpture of a woman's head under a veil. It is new and still smells of cement. You slip into the faculty hall and take a seat. Achebe, and the others whom you never cared for their names are still there, the cobwebs are gone, and the walls have been repainted. There are surreal paintings at each corner of the hall. You think of how your friends would have loved to take photos in front of them—they called it conquering—going about the school and taking pictures at every spot, not excluding the dry and crispy bushes. But they had left you here; every one of your friends had signed their names and affirmations on pleading white shirts; they had totally forgotten about you when they all left Nsukka. You had begged, telling them things were bound to change here, but they all wanted to speed into real life. Your fingers caress the glossiness of the paintings, and you whisper to each of them, "Merry Christmas."

You take a seat at the front and stare deeply at Achebe—Kamsi, who was once your friend, shared the same nose shape with him. You say, "I'm going home for Christmas again; please be here when I return." His artsy silence reassures you.

You walk down Ikejiani Avenue and continue your nighttime stroll while waiting for dawn to beat dusk. The moon looks like a croissant made with too much butter. It is darker now and quieter; you finally settle under your favorite mango tree and let the dry leaves worship you. Traveling on Christmas is hectic, so you slumber without closing your eyes. You can almost hear the angels singing Hosanna. Ukamaka loved to hear you sing Hosanna.

* 

It is morning—6 a.m., if you are still a slave to time. The leaves fall to your side as you stand and begin to walk, almost gliding towards Peace Park. You can hear the animated chatter of people; some students who had waited to attend the carol before traveling are now rolling their boxes to the roadside to wait for okadas and kekes. A child in a red lace dress is singing a comic version of "Jingle Bells."

Jingle bells Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Babangida open nyash everybody shout mpfmmm! Did you see that thing?

Her mother twists her lips and reminds her of her failures in the last school term. The child sulks for a while, then begins to skip. Christmas is for failures too; she was going to eat rice no matter what. You were going to eat the soup Ukamaka made for you each Christmas—it made you skip all the way to Peace Park. The park is crowded, as it usually is during this festive period. Everyone is struggling to get tickets to the first bus so they can spend the most of Christmas with their families—spending most of this day on the road was believed to be a bad omen. You eye an Okpa woman who has refused to sell Okpa to you for years now; if it were a normal day, you would have made her trip. Without bothering to get a ticket or write your name in the log book, you board the first bus to Owerri and wait patiently for it to fill up—the students with their stuffed ears, the old women whose teeth were always chewing, the bachelors who traveled with just one school bag, the essential troublemaker who always picked on the driver, the girl who did not know where she was headed and was always on call with a relative, the yahoo boy who treated his laptop bag like a fair maiden, and the boy and girl who would embark on a talking stage for the entire duration of the ride. You love how everyone always emerges from the bus, dusty like corpses without memories of their own deaths. The keke men, the okada men, and the wheel-barrow pushers all gather around the bus; everyone disperses. In the park, a man is hawking Christmas tapes and is singing "Ekeresimesi Ogene" at the top of his lungs. His white Adieu papa shirt is drenched with sweat, and the skin of his legs is scaly and coated with dust. You try to hold your breath as you walk past him.

*

When you get home, mama is seated in the outdoor kitchen on a mahogany stool; a nude cluster of spider eggs is dangling beneath it; she is blowing a fire with her lips; and her eyes are red and threatening to pop out. Her hair is gray and scanty, and green veins are strewn all over her skin. Beside Mama is Papa, the reflection of a growing fire glows on his bald head. He rocks back and forth in his rocking chair, humming your favorite Christmas hymn, Noel, Noel. Papa smells old and musty, like wrappers locked inside a metal box for decades. You walk towards him and tickle his nose until he sneezes. Three of your cousins are home; Ukamaka is home too, and she is pregnant. Everyone has grown older except you. Everyone is so quiet, one would think Christ was stillborn. If you had your voice, you would have sung them all into the same excitement as crackling fire. But you don't, so you soft-walk past them and into your now dust-filled room, where you listen to the songs of your neighbors' children, absorbing a little life into your pale skin. The aromas of Ukamaka's dishes make you wish you had tears to cry—rice, roasted chicken, ofe egusi. Mama and Papa would eat the ofe egusi with the solemnity of one chewing bitter-leaves. They would ignore the chicken entirely, and Ukamaka and the cousins would chew and suck on the bones while remaining silent.

 *

It is 10 p.m. When you walk to the backyard, Papa has fallen asleep on his rocking chair, and Mama is staring at the fire as if considering jumping in. She is in one of her trances. Under the coconut tree is a mound; you sit upon it and await Ukamaka, who comes thirty minutes later with a bowl of steaming ofe egusi and two wraps of fufu in a tray shaped like a teardrop. She walks with her feet barely touching the earth to avoid rousing Papa and Mama, and she places your meal at your feet.

"Nwannem nwanyị, lee nri rie." Ukamaka whispers as she unclothes the fufu for you. Before she leaves, you take her stomach in your wispy hands and plant a kiss on it. A teardrop falls into your plate of soup. When you are done eating, you stretch yourself on your grave and slumber with your eyes open. You will wake up in Nsukka tomorrow morning.