My Tsunami Part 2
2. The Visit
My bedroom window is east facing gifting me with great views of sunrise. The morning sun was bright and turning the weather warm. In my garden outside my bedroom window the sounds of birds chirping had become less distinct than at dawn. Maybe the louder ones had gone to look for food elsewhere. On my mind that morning was nothing but adventure, thrills and Tsunamis. I am a Tsunami Onlyer – look for nothing else to keep my heart. My Tsunami must have Part 2.
I sat in my bedroom on my bed watching a TV thriller series, The Blacklist on my laptop. The episode was “Anne” – Season 8. In the episode Raymond Reddington played by James Spader had fallen in love with Anne Foster played by LaChance. Anne is a delectable Tsunami. However, it was her very Africanness and calm that won my appeal. Calmness is so sexy. Who wants a clamorous woman? Was it her ebony complexion, unpretentious ripe cultured manner and her little less than tame hair style that was captivating me? Or was it my unpredictable appreciation of beauty over time.
I shout out to her through the screen, “No wound me O!”
Truth said, some women I have found unattractive at first, then with time they became nigh irresistible. When I would confide this anomaly to my mum, she would say, “You are just one honest soul seeking deep affinity with another honest soul. You are not seeking skin arrangements.”
I have always worn a lens of neoteny and could see the defining projections of youth in both the young, the not-so-young, and the old. At age eight I could with ease go into a London cinema to see films ranked 15 and 18 in a red ring. Standing at five-foot-nine, carrying a huge frame and a face ever absorbed in concern made me look older. Overgrown described me well as a child though without any hormonal abnormalities. The terrible side of overgrowth was the expectations that came with it.
Relocating to Nigeria was in every sense much worse, the implications of my size against my age and the culture shock was unfair. I had to behave my appearance but be my chronological age as it suited others at the same time especially towards the older adults. Every day, I would look in the mirror to see my age and all I could see was my date of birth.
Had my experience rewired my brain to see youth in everyone? Now in my fifties the only compliment I pay myself in the presence of those close to me is I am now looking young. Who would not find the remark amusing? No one has teased me about claiming to be young, yet. I love my inner age without a doubt, though.
My phone rings breaking my delightful bubble of peace. I could see it was the number of an Okolowist, Mark or Ahoy Peppernizer, who had refused to speak to me after I left the fraternity in a case of blanket ostracism. Ostracism had become a “Humanistic/Humanitarian Ideal” to the Pyrates Confraternity. I know if Peppernizer must call my number, he wants something beyond his control from me.
Ignoring the call is not revenge nor malice. I will not regard any who sees me as an outcast worthy of my time. Well, then I get a text message. It reads, “Omi, please I know you are angry with me and rightly so. But my mother is with me here in your area and wants to see you. Please, are you at home.” My reply is, “I am at home. You can come.”
I move out of my bedroom into the en-suite toilet/bath in my wheelchair to freshen/dress up. I put on a pair a grey jogging pants and a new yellow t-shirt. Time to put on some music to improve the ambience of my space. I play Jabig Deep & Dope 311. In my near isolation the mixes of Jabig stands as my closest companion – jazz, funk, soul, lounge all rolled into one. Peppernizer’s mother I know not nor what to expect by meeting her in such suddenness. In under five minutes Peppernizer knocks on my door, Kon Ko Kon!
Peppernizer is wearing a smart black single-breasted suit, a white shirt and black tie. He is as boyish as ever, an early thirty-something-year-old. I do not understand why Peppernizer keeps a trimmed beard that makes him look like a perpetual upstart ever finding ways to become somebody.
“Good morning,” I say to Peppernizer as he comes into the living room through the corridor.
“Ahoy!” he replies.
Thirty seconds later his mother walks into my living room.
His mother is elegant, and the air of refinement fits on her like an aura. She is almost six foot tall, slender with slight curves where they matter and has very dark skin like Mark’s. Her low-cut afro has several glints in it adding a subtle spark to her femininity. Nevertheless, my curiosity shifts when I see she has a black silken band on that runs for six or seven inches from just above her wrist up her arm. It looks fashionable but I suspect it could be covering a birth mark or scar. She is an Almost Tsunami or a Tsunami.
“Good morning,” I say to her with a good behaviour smile. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
“Good morning, Sir,” she replies.
“Please have a seat,” I say.
She takes a seat at the dining table rather than on the settee. She was wearing a silk yellow knee-length sleeveless dress and blue sneakers. Sitting on my settee would force her to cross her legs. Marks stands by my French windows in the living room looking out at my garden.
“O Brother, this is my mum.”
“I am Ramah. Call me Ramah,” she butts in.
“My name is Ikurakpobunorovwarenugheoboroghenerukevwaredavwaro.”
In disbelief, my visitors burst into laughter.
“Your name should be in the Guinness Book of Records.” Ramah says.
More laughter and I join in.
“O Wrong Something! Your things must always be different!”
“I like this music. Who is it by?” Ramah asks.
“DJ Jabig, a Malawian-Canadian globetrotter who takes his blend of music to enthusiastic audiences everywhere.”
“I like jazz and lounge music,” she says.
“Me too,” I reply.
“What was the last jazz song you listened to?”
“Madness by Miles Davis.”
“That’s from the Nefertiti album.”
“You know your jazz. Wow! I also listened to Impressions 1963 Newport Festival.”
“John Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner and Roy Haynes.”
“Shuor!!!” I shout aloud in utter surprise.
Ramah knows jazz music better than all but a handful of people I have ever met. I like her.
“Mark, I am hungry. Go get us some food,” Ramah says.
“I have everything here in this house to make a good English or European breakfast except bread and milk. No gluten, no lactose.”
“Thank you. We had planned to buy takeaway breakfast on our way here. Would you like some?”
“Yes, please. But no bread or milk foods.”
“O Pally my car is at Currys just down the road. Give me thirty minutes. I will collect the car and buy breakfast at Camberwell. Mum, see you soon,” Peppernizer says then rushes off.
Soon her gaze on me has an intensity that in turn makes my breathing heavy. Though my eyes would lock on her eyes, I would break the contact by looking away, sideways. Making eye contact in social situations is always difficult for me. Being an Aspie is never easy and is worse in matters of the heart. I am not sure whether my 5.00am sip of Talisker 10 years old gave me nerve or not I would never know. But for several moments we look into each other’s eyes sitting one and a half metres apart.
“Come,” I say, waving her towards me with my hands. “Come,” I repeat.
With some reluctance she stands up and takes two steps to reach me and another to sit astride my wheelchair. She sits on my laps refusing to make eye contact. I can notice from her eyes and demeanour she is not too far away from tears; I gave the tears a few minutes to break at most. More remarkable is the gush of sweet warmth from her thighs to mine, Ghwo! I never knew such things still exist. Solitude and isolation!
Flooding vacates her eyes. I cry too. The sweetness of co-crying is something I discover in that moment and it is a high joy. Lips and tongues find each other by instinct.
Umaparun. Purunple. Farowen. Bumuron. What I cannot describe in a sentence onomatopoeia can say better.
Due to my respect for Mark and Ramah, the happenings of the next ten minutes will forever remain secret. All I can say is God blessed my sin, our sin. Sekpekpebe. I take a faraway ride into my thoughts.
I hear the toilet flush, and Ramah comes back into the living room.
“What have you done to me?” she asks.
“I should be asking you that question” I say.
“It’s seven years since my husband passed away and I was devastated by his death. I never thought I would be at this crossroad again. Not like this.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you.”
“He was a man who satisfied all my needs – physical, emotional and intellectual. He was a true intellectual and much older than I.”
She should not have said that. Her husband would be a tall order to emulate.
“In my experience most women do not really like or love true intellectuals even the professors among them.”
“That’s because you do not hang out with true intellectual women. Degree-holding and careers does not make one an intellectual. It took me a while to catch up with my husband and that’s because his love for me was unquestionable.”
“What was your husband’s area of specialisation?”
“Everything that interested him. He was a medical doctor with PhDs in pharmacology and dramatic arts from the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California. He loved books, me, our children, a few friends, jazz, great movies, photography, and esoterica. Nothing else. Money and power never interested him but he had lots of both.”
“Wow! Pharmacology and Dramatic Arts.”
“He was influenced by one of his idols, John Steinbeck.”
“You mean he took electives in dramatic arts while studying medicine to enable him understand surgery in the theatre better.”
“How could you possibly know that?” she asks with flashes of amazement in her eyes.
“I read Steinbeck’s biography.”
“Don’t tell me you know Kary Mullis too.”
“He made me read chemistry.”
She walks up to me and bends to kiss me holding my cheeks in her palms. The kiss is a full download of love straight into my heart.
“Hold me,” she says. “Hold me,” she says again as if alarmed.
I hold her like she’s mine.
“Thank you.”
“You won’t believe that for six years I have never been with a woman.”
“I do. The blows of fate neuter people every day.”
“Okay. Why did you ask to see me?”
“My son, Mark.”
“Really, I thought he hates me.”
“He does not hate you. For a few years now he tells me often that there is a Pyrate just like Papa. I was curious. My son is right, you are very much like my late husband.”
Mark enters the living room without a knock carrying a large flat cardboard box, a Tesco bag, and smiling. Ramah is dancing her joy to Secret Love by Shane D. His smile turns serious. In silence his eyes are now restless and furtive screening his mother and I with the intensity of unrelenting suspicion. Peppernizer remains silent but his frown and worries are too visible to deny. His eyes are asking loudly, “What have you guys been up to?” Sorry, he is not getting any answers.
Marks places the box on the dining table. He opens and it has containers of a full English breakfast. In each separate container is toast, fried bread, hash browns, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, baked beans, mushrooms and two cups of drinking chocolate. The Tesco bag has two cartons of orange juice, six croissants and a four-can pack of Red Bull.
“Serve our host first Mark,” Ramah says to Peppernizer.
Peppernizer takes the box into the kitchen and finds some plates, glasses and cutlery. He used to be a regular visitor to my place. The plate he brings me has everything but stuff made from wheat and milk. To his and my surprise Ramah takes the plate from him and lays it on the dining table deferring to me with deference. Commotion flashes through the young man’s eyes for seconds.
“You must have had a good time together,” Peppernizer says.
“Yes, we listened to jazz music, the music of DJ Jabig and talked about so much.”
“Grammar and high ideas,” Peppernizer says with a faint hint of sarcasm.
“Your friend you claim is Always Wrong does not seem to be wrong about anything so far. He is an excellent recommendation.”
“Would you like me to bring you here again.”
“I do not need your permission to do that.”
“An Ahoy! Omi, tiny thanks for being good company to my mum. She finds most of the people she meets with boring.”
I finish my two sausages fast and Ramah put her second sausage and a streak of bacon on my plate beckoning me to eat. For slim people Ramah and Peppernizer eat a lot. I am not a big eater.
When we finished eating breakfast my visitors leave on a cheerful note. She would have wanted a good-bye kiss but not in the presence of her son.
My encounter with Ramah may not have been a miracle but it was surely a synchronicity of good fortune. I hope more will come. Our sharing healed decades of rejection down to my interests and thoughts. I Don’t Want to Hear Your Long Story or Explanation. Why Do You Think You Know Everything? You And Your Know-Know. If You Continue Thinking Like This You Will Die Young. Why Must You Take This Conversation to Another Level? That was my fate with most women. Bianimikaley!
She has cured me. All that baggage is gone. No residual pain, resentment, regret or rethinks remain in my mind. I have met a person who does not make me feel bad about my brain’s wiring and even trips for it. More blessings unto me!
I do have an Almost Tsunami in Jos whose appreciation for me is complete but we have never met in person.
From now on its Almost Tsunami, Tsunami or nothing.
Be good, not Lucky
Grimot Nane
