Mbaise.
During the wake keep, I sat on the stairs outside the house and looked at the villagers playing their gong and singing loudly. Earlier it had been dirges that praised Uncle Joe enough that any stranger would know he was a good man. They stopped to sing dirges and now sang traditional songs that people could dance to.
Wisdom and Ike came out to the center of the compound and began to dance, waving a stick in their hand like it was a traditional horn. They wore white polos and wrappers long enough to touch their ankle were secured around their waist. I smiled watching them, imitating other villagers around who knew the dance better.
Times like that when I sat alone, I thought of my mother that I never knew. I wondered if it was I or Ada that looked like her, I wondered if she was sick and how she died.
"Come and dance," I heard someone say. I turned my head and met Mrs Idika. I smiled and shook my head slowly. She did not persist. She just touched my shoulder and climbed down the stairs to join Ike and Wisdom.
I just hoped the dance would help. Earlier when, Uncle Joe's corpse was brought in, even those people dancing wailed and trashed about. It was wrong to tell a man, to be a man when all he wanted was to mourn yet the older men around kept admonishing Wisdom to be a man. When he stood by the gate of the mortuary and convulsed in tears in Ike's arms, they whispered that he was crying like a woman.
Others cried with the weight of our loss but I kept looking around, waiting that any moment, someone would come out and say, Uncle Joe was not the one in the coffin. I never went in to see him. I only imagined what he would look like inside a coffin, maybe he would be all bloated and wearing just a short or maybe he would be tying a wrapper around his waist. I only saw him in my imaginations because I did not want to ruin the perfect image of him I was storing in my head.
My cousins and my sister were in the kitchen on that night of the wake keep. I was supposed to be there also but I did not see the need to be there since caterers were working diligently in the wooden extension outside.
Amanda came also. Ike arrived with her the same day we arrived in the village. She was pregnant. She wore a bright blue wig the day she arrived in the village and after that, she was mostly in the room she shared with Ike. I liked her, I liked the fact that she did not try so hard to please anyone. But, I felt bad for all the guilt I had buried myself in thinking I was treating Ike bad not knowing I was just someone he wanted to occupy time with. I did not confront him, I did not need to. He came to me himself with explanations that could have also been lies.
"She's expecting my baby. She's just staying with me till she puts to bed," He had said.
"It's fine," I shrugged, "I don't care."
Truly, I did not care. I did not even need his explanations. He would always be good for the family but never good enough for me. I would be happy if he later repaired his relationship with his fiancee. I also did not have to be the one to break Mrs Idika's heart. There was now a reason why I could not be with her son.
Later I came to realize that Ike still loved his fiancee but he loved me just like I also loved him. Maybe I could say that this love has grades and our own grade was not enough to keep us together.
Ada came outside. She said nothing but sat beside me while typing into her phone. I watched her because it was like a new talent I was grooming - watching people, reading their lips that were not moving, feeding their silence with meaning. That was all I was doing to Ada.
"Are you okay? " I asked.
"If anyone answers that question with a positive this period, just know the person is a liar," Ada replied.
I nodded, realizing it was a stupid question to ask, just like when guests came and they ask us, 'How are you? ' We would nod our heads and smile but there was no truth there. We were bereaved and the mother of the house was grieving in all the wrong ways.
"It does not even feel real," She said looking into the night.
Those dancing had stopped dancing and the singers reversed back to dirge. They would sing it that way till morning. Nothing felt real. Even living it at that moment, it was still difficult to understand or accept that everything going on was for Uncle Joe's burial.
Stella also came out and joined us. She was with a wrap of chocolate which she shared amongst three of us.
"What of Miriam? " Ada asked.
"Gone to bed, " Stella replied.
"Amanda? "
"In bed also," Stella replied.
"She's frustrated, " Ada said, quietly.
"Who?" I perked up my ears to hear why she said that.
"Amanda. I don't think things are going well with her and Ike," She replied.
"And that's the sort of drama this one wanted to add herself to," Stella said, eyeing me.
I just shook my head at the kettle calling me black. "Have you broken up with your sugar daddy?"
"He's still a young man. Nene stop," Stella replied meekly.
I laughed at her face and her voice, falling into Ada. After that we fell silent.
I stared long at Ike wishing I was Wisdom who knew him in and out. It was hard to read him. "I don't really know what the major issue is between Ike and his babe. I just hope they will be fine at least for their children."
"They're adults," Stella said.
I nodded and we continued staring at everything and nothing. We could have even slept off on the stairs till Tunde's call came in.
"I figured you would be awake, " He said once I picked up.
"Yes, today is the wake keep," I replied.
"Hope you are trying to be strong? "
"Trying. I'm trying. "
"I would come in tomorrow or rather, later today," he said. It was early hours of the burial day already and I had failed to notice when I was swept into a new day.
The call ended and I looked at my sisters sitting beside me then Ada tapped my legs.
"Forget, I like this guy," She said.
I laughed. "You should na, he's a nice person. "
"Just legodi this one," Stella mocked like I was ignorant. I knew what they would say but Tunde was not into me in that way.
"And his dressing dey give man vibes," Stella continued.
"Stella, shut up. You are in a married relationship. Are you now crushing on him? " I asked.
She laughed. "So if I see good shoes, good shirt, good senator, I should throw way eye unto say I dey for relationship?"
Ike and Wisdom walked towards us with Mrs Idika behind them.
"Let's get a little rest, " Wisdom said.
I stood at the door with him while we waited for others to come in then he locked the door.
"Goodnight, " I said to him.
He did not reply but hung an arm over my shoulder as we climbed up the stairs. People could have said, he was not supposed to cry, they could have seen it as weakness but I knew better. It is our ability to feel pain that is our strength.