Lost and found.

I called this brother a lost puppy.
So today, he swaggered in, sat down, put his feet up on the table and raised his eyebrows at me.
He laughed out loud and, when I didn't hear, apologised for laughing.
"Sorry, hope I didn't scare you."
What?
He announced to the room that he wanted to invite me to a party.
He teased me about my workload, tried to flirt in front of a witness.
"Oh, don't you need some help?" "If I take your exam, will I pass?"
I don't know, I don't teach you.
He talked loudly into his phone. There were many business meetings.
He invited me to, "the after party starts at six... just cocktails, not dancing music."
Does he know who he's talking to?
"What kind of music do you listen to?"
Any kind, my good sir, any kind at all.
I called him a lost puppy, and so he's acting like a hungry dog.

I guess that's one way to do it.

Mama in the morning

My mum watches me when I'm tottering about in the kitchen.
She would have been looking in a pot, or drying her hands, or yelling at the help. I would walk in and she would stop, and watch. Her eyes follow me as I put my bag down, all busy-like, as I totter over to the cooker to inspect her hard work, as I stalk to the cupboards in a huff when I find there's nothing there for me.
Sometimes she'll say, "Oh, you can't eat that? Gluten abi," with the tone of one who humours another's eccentricities. Or she'll say, with a strange, small smile, "Did I buy you those earrings?" Never anything that demands an answer longer than, "Yes."

I find it strange, her staring. Under the weight of it I get busier than normal, huffier than normal. I suddenly can't see anything but the bowl in front of me, the bucket of garri I've lifted pointedly, the bowl of sugar in the fridge (to keep the ants away.) She stands there, and she stares.

I don't suppose she's done this all my life. I don't imagine that I would be bugged by it if she had.
I wonder, when I let myself tone down the haughty contempt for her silent eyes, what she's thinking; what she's saying with her eyes as they track my movement.
I wonder if she's thinking, "she's eating too much sugar. she just won't listen." I wonder if she's watching my breasts bounce in my blouse, laughing at their subdued movement. I wonder if she's staring at my odd shoes, wondering what it is about the screws in my head that make me wear such weird things... but that's the sound of my arrogance reverberating in my head.

When I take a minute to breathe, to listen to her silence, to be, in her presence, I hear the smile in the way she steps out of the way of my bustling. I don't need to look up to see that she is happy. There's something about me in those moments, that transcends her disapproval of all my life choices prior.
In those moments, she doesn't wonder why I chose to waste my brains studying Writing, she doesn't wonder what it means to be post-25 and unmarried, and un-engaged, and surrounded by newly wedded bliss. She doesn't even wonder, really, why there's so much sugar in my bowl.
She's just, maybe, happy, because despite the fact that I'm just about to do something else wrong, just about to laugh at the wrong joke or disrespect her, I haven't done any of that yet.
And in that moment, she is - maybe - proud.
Of me.

 

Out of the mouth of facebook

Girl, On Hiatus

In one of the comments I got from the three posts I put up so far, my friend said he did not care for Morenike the party girl at all. You know, the one who only paid attention to the guest at the party when she needed her opinion, the one who was obsessed with nail polish, the one who dates clients. I thought, oh! Is Morenike a vapid, vain woman? Then I thought, am I a vapid, vain woman for not noticing that the character I’d created was? Then I thought, Morenike is not you. Then I thought, uh oh.

That comment helped me realise that I hadn’t paid any attention to what I was writing, why I was writing, or what I wanted to achieve by writing.

I started writing Morenike without a voice. I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know what she sounded like, I didn’t know what she wanted. I let her name roll around in my head, and each update reflected whatever Omotayo was feeling at Time of Typing (TOT™). But you can’t build a whole person on snippets of uncertainty and, without a personality to love or loathe, adore or abhor, the words are just an empty shell; clever constructs without the core that creates a connection. Wink.

So, Morenike is on hiatus. It’s lonely in my head, in the corner where she is, and so I need to play with her a bit more. Find out what she wants, now that she’s kissed Bigfoot. Find out what she’d do with a broken heart, if it came to that.

I want this story to mean something, to explore the reasons why women make the choices they do in love that they wouldn’t anywhere else. I’d like to examine the idea of identity – the choices we make because of who we want to be, who we think we are and who we would like to be. And, what do others see when they look at us? Vain, vapid or, you know, vigilant and vociferous? I’m very visibly vying for verve, here. Just throwing words unto the pile, ignore.

But, what will happen to my story-a-week, the point of this entire exercise? Will I go right back to slacking again?

No, no, I won’t. There will be slices of stories and snippets of stuff splayed in sequence for subscribers to see. Ha.

Also. Morenike's illustrator is getting married soooon :D

Do we judge our friends by our standards, or by theirs?
- Or both?
Or neither, and we not judge them at all?

But then, how would we measure offense, or devotion, or support,

If friends, with different strengths, measure all these differently?
And, if we choose one measure and lose some,
and if we change our minds, and gain again,
What does that say about who we are?
And what does it matter who we are,
If we're always changing?

You heard me, but I didn't speak. I gave you my mind, left it out where you would see.
You took it, you gave it back to me,
and left the page as blank as you
think it ought
to be.

The eraser left a hole in the sheet where my words used to be.
There's nothing left but
what I wanted, all of the nothing of it.

Your words, they do not match your smile.

Once this was a fashion blog

...with gems like this:

Happy birthday Amaka. x

Girl, Re-interrupted: What is a First Date?

He uses old words. You turn them over, hold them up in the light and look them over again, again, until you find the thing that lives in them, the genie in the words that rubs them until they shine and you can see a glint on the edge of his lips where he smiles.

He smiles at you, so maybe there’s something in your eyes that rubs against his in a way that makes him want to shine for you

There is a cloud on top of today, but it doesn’t have any rain. It wraps itself around the memories as you make them, and keeps them safe in a place that knows no rain, no tears, except the kind that patters against windows lit by the fire of burning eyes and candlelight.

The cloud is a warm blanket, it holds today together against the windows… it steams, and grows, and builds, and cloaks, a haze made of quiet words and loud, loud, hungry eyes.

Food moves around your plate, your fork scrapes against the things you wish you could say but mustn’t, stoppers your longings with the delicious fish.

Smiles nod in agreement in place of heads that stay upright, keeping eyes in the same direction as the things you wish you could ask for but shouldn’t.

Words float on the clouds of steam that have risen between twitching hands, restless feet and sighs that stay silent with every wish you swallow. They multiply; they guard your belly with their muted chants until the fish, it has no room. Still, your fork protects you. You hold on.

He uses old words, strings them together in a way you imagine clouds are spun; in a way you need to learn as desperately as you need to hear him laugh again, say your name again…

You say his.

Before you know what happens you say his name and your voice stills the magic. But his name, it has magic of its own. It adds its own layer to the words in the middle of you both and you watch it draw something beautiful, even from you. So you try again, say it again, find something maybe clever – maybe – and in his answer a wish escapes, heard, and you feed the others some of the delicious fish.

Your words sound new in the way he says them, he turns them over on his lips and your eyes follow to see where they end up. They won’t betray you. There’s nothing to betray. You fold your hands over your heart to make sure.

His hand against your face distracts you, and as you bless the hair that fell in the path of his fingers you forget to hold your feelings closed, and he takes them from you.

Not with his hands, that separate your fingers as he measures them against his, not with his touch, that separates the small of your back from the chill of the night air. Not with his words, that separate your resolve from your reason. Not with any one of them, not with any one of them alone.

He walks you to the gate when he drops you off. He says things you’ve heard before. He looks at you a way you’ve seen before, but still… You find yourself following his words with your fingers, mapping them out, sorting them apart from yours, checking to see if they go together. He bends, checks to see if your lips go together.

You have a thought. You file it away for later, even as another wish flutters free of your belly.

It is later, but your mouth is still hot from where he kissed you.

This is what the best day looks like.

---

Read the previous Girl, Re-interrupted post here

Read all of them here

Girl, Re-interrupted: Mr Telephone Man (There's Something Wrong With My Line)

5. Wake up really early.

It was Saturday. Morenike knew this. She’d seen it written on her cellphone screen in tiny block letters: SATURDAY. As if it was worried about what she might do if she found out that it had been Saturday for six hours and twelve minutes. That gave BigFoot a sixteen-hour window within which to decide whether or not to call. Morenike was going to die.

She leapt out of the bed she’d only been in for five hours and went to get a glass of water. But what if she wanted a second? A third? What if she stood by the dispenser for minutes and minutes? She couldn’t risk it. She grabbed her phone and trundled down to the watering hole.

Four glasses later, she’d been gone for three and a half minutes. She knew this because the hands of the clock in the kitchen ticked sullenly at her as she attempted to drown herself from the inside. Her phone blinked the last minute at her in mockery, 06:15. She watched the five turn to six. Then seven. Then eight.

It was going to be a long day.

4. Put your phone away from you (so that you wont pick up at the first ring.)

Morenike’s phone didn’t ring until 12:02pm. By then she had gone for a run, bathed, made breakfast and shocked her mother. Her dad swallowed each mouthful with scepticism but he kept it all down, in the end.

Morenike made sure her phone was away from her all the while she was in the kitchen. It was a Saturday, after all. Who wakes up at the crack of dawn? Not anyone that had a life. So she made one up, and when she climbed back up to her room her mother made the sign of the cross and thanked the Lord for His miracle. Her father wiped his mouth and went to watch the game.

When Morenike checked her phone at 12:17pm she saw that it wasn’t him. Morenike turned off her phone.

3. Paint your nails - All of them.

She turned it back on at 01:19pm and took out her nail set.

She cut and filed her nails meticulously, making sure there were no splinters or rough edges. Starting with the offending toes, she filed and buffed like she was preparing a masterpiece, careful to maintain the curves without taking her eye off her cellphone.

2. Text friends to call you (to check that your cellphone network isn’t acting up.)

At 03:25 she texted DD.

Participants:
-------------
Mo-re-Nike✓, DD

Messages:
---------

Mo-re-Nike✓: Yo. Call me.

DD: Oh, so your phone works, eh

DD: Didn’t you see my missed calls??

Mo-re-Nike✓: What? I was making breakfast.

DD: I know you can’t see me but I just spat up all over my baby.

Mo-re-Nike✓: You’re a bad mother. Bring him to me. Now.

DD: Your brother says mum called

DD: He says

Mo-re-Nike✓: Helloo??

Mo-re-Nike✓: PING!

Mo-re-Nike✓: Mum called for what?

DD: More tick! 

DD: Mum says you’ve gone crazy or you’re possessed but either way she likes it and you made breakfast and dad thought you poisoned him but he lived and now he’s calling about the game goodbye crazy.

Mo-re-Nike✓: WHAT?

DD: I’m back. It’s me.

DD: Yup, everything he said.

Mo-re-Nike✓: What? I have to be crazy to do something nice for my family?

DD: Yes.

DD: Your brother says yes, too.

Mo-re-Nike✓: I quit you.

Mo-re-Nike✓: Goodbye.

DD: Where are you going???

DD: Don’t leave me, he’s watching football! :’(

Mo-re-Nike✓: You deserve it.

Mo-re-Nike✓: I’m busy. Peace.

DD: Doing what?

DD: PING!!!

DD: Doing what??

DD: ANSWER ME!

DD: PING!!!

DD: I can do this all day, missy.

Mo-re-Nike✓: Not like it’s any of your business, but I’m painting my nails.

DD: Oh crap.

Mo-re-Nike✓: What do you mean, oh crap??

DD: He still hasn’t called??

Mo-re-Nike✓: I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m not going to let you ruin my mani-pedi

Mo-re-Nike✓: Goodbye.

*Ends chat*

1. Pick your phone up when it rings.

It was 04:02pm, SATURDAY time. Morenike’s bum was halfway off the toilet bowl when she heard a familiar ring. Knickers possibly askew, she sailed across her bed in her rush to pick up the phone. It was him.

Only after she put it back down at 04:45pm (oh yea) did she observe that she might have cracked a nail.

---

Read the previous Girl, Re-interrupted post here

Read all of them here

There is enough time in the world to achieve everything you are going to.