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LIZARDS AND KERNELS
She moves with fragile steps, her back slightly arched as she leans on her walking stick. The hairs on her head, once black, are now grey, the colour of mature pumpkins. Her skin dull and scaly. She talks a lot and forgets a lot. It is what old age did to her.
She sings sometimes when she feels high spirited or the moon is just too bright, sitting outside in the open on a small wooden stool. Her voice low and sonorous, not intended to be melodious;
"Don't tell me not to go Who will fight for me if I go home? Move! Move! Men in boots move! They say victory is almost ours.
Tell my mother, I shall never come back
Tell my mother, we shall see again".
We did not understand; Paschal who chews food a lot before swallowing, little Grace who always has a doll strapped to her back with a wrapper and l, a young swaggering nine year old. We never did until the night Grandma saw it on screen during the nightly news. The colours red, black and green in horizontal patterns. The half of a yellow sun at the centre. The Biafran Flag. It reminded her of something she had witnessed, something she could not touch yet, she felt. Something with a familiar sin. She felt withdrawn the days that followed, talked seldom and hummed away the evenings. Pain like termites built anthills of grief in her soul. She wanted to splash water over them and watch the emotions crumble away.
Then, on a cold harmattan evening, weeks later, she called us together, all three. She sat on a mortar turned over and we on a mat spread out on the dry earth. Her eyes were unusually bright, our nostrils stiffened by the icy breeze. Then she began, talking slowly but audibly. Her words filled with emotions, wrapped in grief. She talked about Biafra with concern and about the war with scorn. She talked about those who were betrayed and those who had better guns. Of how she ate lizards, red head lizards for breakfast and palm kernels split open with stones for dinner. Of mother who suffered kwashiorkor and had to suckle Grandma's breasts even at the age of five, she had guessed or more still, she couldn't remember (something mother never told us). Of war jets and shells and buildings riddled with bullets, others blown away. Of the Biafran leader, a large full bearded man who spoke well but didn't think well. And while she talked about the shallow graves hastily dug, the the women who ran in the streets with their breasts exposed to the sun, the little girls raped, fathers who never returned, babies orphaned, she developed a sniffing punctuation., sniffing in between words.
Then she let the tears flow. Her sobs are throaty. I stare not knowing what to do, why she cried or the pain behind those tears. I do not see the tears but I know they would be hot and fresh and they would dry up as quickly as they had appeared. I never knew tears could make stories come alive.
My siblings are asleep and my knuckles feel frozen. Grandma wipes her face with the end of her wrapper. I can see her bare breasts now. These breasts that had witnessed men and evil, now a sagging lump of flesh with a barely pointed end. These breasts that were once round and full, that rose and fell while she ran with mother strapped to her back, dodging bullets, dodging the eyes of the soldiers who looked on with carnal fascination.
An owl hoots nearby, crickets rhyme.
"Agha ajoka. War is bad" mother says then repeats, her voice now slim and shaky. I nod, finally grasping the story behind her moonlight songs about men in boots, victory and her mother. She would tell this story again or maybe another. I am sure, a symbolic beginning of her storytelling nights.