I had been trying to sleep all day. I didn’t have the energy or the will to do anything else. It could be because I hadn’t eaten or that it had been a whole week since I’d heard from him. My bet’s on the latter. My mind was working overtime going through various scenarios of what the reason for his silence could be. I tried to call him the day before but his phone was off all day.
The afternoon sun was pouring into my room through my west window but it was still quite cool inside. This raining season has been much cooler than I remember. I was lying in bed under the covers, wearing a pair of socks and a sweater over my shirt dress. Yes it was that cold in West Africa! Ok so maybe it wasn’t really that cold. Maybe I was just too sad to allow the proper functioning of my body.
I kicked off the covers and flung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there trying to postpone putting my socked feet on the cold tiled floor for as long as I could; which was just about 30 seconds.
I shuffled into the kitchen and drank some water straight from an old Voltic bottle in the refrigerator. If my mother saw me doing that she’d have a fit. As I drank, I looked out the window at the golden glow of the sun on the leaves of the guava trees in the back yard. I put the bottle down on the counter instead of refilling it and placing it back in the fridge; another thing my mother will be mad about. Drawn by the promised warmth of the sun, I walked out of the kitchen into the lush green garden.
I liked the feel of the sun on my skin. It was still pretty cool so I kept my sweater on. I looked up at the sky and found it was the palest and most beautiful blue. Not a cloud in the sky. I stared up at it for a while before setting my sights lower. They fell on the corn my big brother had planted at the beginning of the season.
‘Hmm, corn!’ Suddenly I wanted to eat. I could harvest a few and boil them. I remembered then that I tried to harvest some a week or two before and my mother said it wasn’t ready. I asked her how she knew and she said if it was, the top most tassels would be dry. So I checked. They all seemed to be dry so I just weaved through the corn thicket and picked out two of the biggest cobs. I went back to the kitchen and put them in a bowl of water and put them on fire.
I went back out into the garden. A cat crossed my path and stopped only long enough to hiss at me. This particular cat always did that. I suppose it senses that I’m not partial to cats. We haven’t actually owned any cats in years but somehow we always have dozens of them traipsing around the garden like they own the place. My mother has taken to the habit of asking me to put out left overs for them so I guess they will always come back. I’m sure if our neighbours ever bothered to go around asking for their cats they’d find them at our house. We had all colours, white, white and black, brown, and a completely orange one that reminded me of Garfield, the narcissistic cartoon cat. He’s the one that’s hissing at me now.
I once saw Garfield chase a snake into a tree. I hate snakes even more than I hate cats so I guess the cats earn their keep buy driving the snakes away.
I hissed back at the cat and strolled to the Guava tree. I love the rainy season for the fact that during that time everything is so green and so rich. I tore two leaf shoots from the tree, washed them at the garden tap and stuffed them in my mouth. Guava leaves are great for getting rid of bad breath and having been in bed all day I needed them. I think I read that on the internet. Which I though was funny because when I told my mother about it she said she remembered my grandmother brushing her teeth with twigs from the guava tree. She’s known about all these natural remedies that I have become so interested in and yet I had to find out from the internet.
I was still chewing when I walked to the concrete landing and sat down. I looked down at my socked feet in the grass and remembered a time when my feet weren’t long enough to touch the grass while I sat on that same landing. And at that time I wished I’d grow tall fast. Time does fly and as your childhood wish of growing older quickly come to pass you realise that it means you’re taking more responsibility and having to deal with the pressures of being an adult. A pressure like that of relationships.
Relationships with the opposite sex that stress and cause pain and doubt and sleepless nights. Relationships like the one I was in at that moment. The problems of the last week came flooding back after their short vacation in the sun. Tears begun to well in my eyes. Tears that had been threatening to spill for three days are now making an appearance. They tingled my nose but that was it. They didn’t fall.
‘Why won’t you call me and why can’t I reach you?’ I asked him mentally. Of course I couldn’t get an answer. I lay back on the concrete and looked up at the blue sky. The sun had made its way towards the west and was hiding behind the orange tree. There were crows and other smaller birds flying over; calling to each other. Why won’t he call me?
Then I sat up. I remembered that with my very first relationship we had had a huge fight and I was going through the same emotional turmoil that I was in now. He hadn’t called in days and I thought for sure that he never would again then one afternoon as I walked home from work I saw a butterfly. It fluttered at my feet for a while before floating away but just as I saw it, I felt a sudden calm. Almost like it was reassuring me that everything would be ok. An hour later, he called and we made up.
Maybe it’ll work for me this time too. I mean I’m in a garden with fruit trees and flowers, how hard could it be to come across a butterfly? So I peeled my eyes for butterflies. I looked over at the bougainvillaea and searched through its purple, pink and white petals for any sign of the floating beauties. No. None there. I scanned the orchids and the lilies and the daisies. Not a single butterfly in a rich, fertile garden on a warm afternoon, just my luck!
‘Oh come on, just one tiny little butterfly.’ I gave up and lay back down on the concrete letting the sun warm me. I was getting cold again. Some crows called overhead and I followed their display. The tears threatened to flow again. A smaller bird called from the orange tree and I turned to look at it and there, floating over the bougainvillaea to the other side of the wall was a black, yellow and blue butterfly. I almost missed it.
It came back. This time it was followed by another butterfly. They fluttered about the bougainvillaea blossoms in a beautiful dance. As I watched, a smile spread across my face then the warm feeling of calm settled around my heart. I got off the concrete and walked towards the butterflies. They flew off but another one flew in and soon there were no less than four flitting around in the garden. There was a plain yellow one, two monarchs and two black, yellow and purple ones dancing in the warm, friendly glow of the rainy season afternoon sun.
He was going to call soon. I could feel it in my depths. We weren’t over. There was a very good explanation for his absence. I looked up at the sky one last time and slowly walked back to the kitchen, saying thank you as I walked. Thank you Mr. Sun, thank you butterflies, thank you Mother Earth for your beauty and bounty, thank you sky for your vast possibilities. The corn was cooked and I finished one.
That night he called; he had to leave town in a hurry for a business conference and in the rush, lost his charger. He’d sent me an email two days ago, did I check?
