Awung Mbecha
WHEN A CHILD IS BORN
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It was four days before Christmas and I was living at my Uncle’s house in Kumba. Sally, my girlfriend for two years, had just ditched me saying she did not see any prospects in our relationship. She had been my only anchor through two years of hopelessness. How could I face the hard times without her? That morning, I was washing my uncle’s black Mercedes. Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers sang dolorously from the car’s compact disc player.
Christmas without you like a mystery with no clues…
The most joyous Christmas if luck could be with us
Would be if Saint Nicholas brought you home to me…..
“Andy, I got this from my mailbox yesterday.” My uncle called to me from the threshold. I looked up. He had a large envelope in one hand and a piece of chew stick in the other. I sprinted up the steps to the door, drying my hands on my shorts. I took the envelope and feverishly started ripping it open. He put the chew stick in his mouth and started nibbling at it.
“Where is it from?” my uncle asked, his speech distorted by the chew. I stopped tearing the envelope. My uncle did not like people giving him divided attention.
“It is from Norway,” I said after throwing a glance at the return address. When my eyes went back to my uncle’s face I saw that the depth and number of folds on his face had suddenly increased. I felt intimidated.
“This should be my admission letter,” I stammered.
“Admission what?” My uncle’s fleshy left brow collapsed over the eye.
“Probably my Admission Letter, uncle,” I replied timidly.
“Hmm. When do studies begin?” He asked disinterestedly.
“They should begin in early February, I guess.” I had not yet opened the letter.
My uncle did not encourage me to open it and see what was inside. Weighing my words so as not to offend my uncle,
“If admitted I will need a bank statement of at least Six Million Francs CFA to convince consular officers that I would not be a burden to their country.” I ventured.
“Six million Francs? Not at this time of year! I have emptied my accounts to stock up the stores for Christmas.” My uncle had about ten stores around the country.
“But uncle all you have to do is ask your bank to prepare a statement showing that you have this amount to give me. You don’t need to show the cash.”
“Six Million Francs is not chicken feed, young man. I have said I have no money. All you do is sit at home listening to music.”
My uncle knew he was telling a lie. I looked at him straight in the face, trying to show and indicting face. Hadn’t I been his houseboy and gardener since I graduated from university two years ago? There were many questions I wanted to put to him but I was held back by a reticence I inherited from my mother. In situations like this she would just shrug her shoulders and walk away, even if she was internally being consumed by a feeling of injustice. Slowly, I shifted my gaze to the neatly trimmed hedges, the evenly mowed lawns, the leafless driveway, then turned again and looked at him. Did he want me to personally remind him of my contribution to the growth of his business over the past years? Did he want me to remind him that my father had stopped his education after standard six in order to give his younger brother - my uncle- the chance to receive the best education? As if he had been reading my thoughts my uncle turned and spat out bits of frayed wood on the hibiscus flowers I had trimmed the previous day. I knew the conversation had ended. This was not the first time I had counted on my uncle and failed. I knew he had money. He could not have possibly emptied his accounts to stock up the stores.
My father had died when I was seventeen, leaving me with no money. Long before he died he told me hundreds of times “My mother and I sold palm wine, palm oil, palm kernels, and cola nuts to send your uncle to school. My sacrifice can only be valued in terms of what your uncle is today.” When I make attempts to ask my father why his brother was not treating him fair, he will simply say “I don’t know. Yet, God alone knows why he does not care about me. Look at the house I am living in.” “This is not fair, papa,” I would say at end of my father’s lamentation, but it changed nothing till now that he is gone.
My uncle was his only surviving sibling. He spent a fortune to bury my father. At the end of the mourning rituals my uncle announced, to the applause of family members present, that he would treat me like the son he never had. He wondered aloud, suppressing tears,
“Who knows? My brother would have been a very rich man had he not decided to sacrifice his own future in order to make me what I am today. He even went as far as Calabar just to make sure he raised enough money to educate me.”
He declared that from that day I had become his responsibility. I moved down to Kumba to live with him. Yet, every time I proposed a project to him he would always find an excuse to call it off. After graduating from university with distinction, I told my uncle about my dream to further my education abroad. He endorsed it. Now he was telling me he had no money. Like the waters of the Lebialem falls in the rainy season, my second inheritance - tears - gushed out and streamed down my cheeks. I inherited an abundant supply of tears and the ease to cry from my father. A little embarrassment or betrayal could make my father flood a whole valley with tears.
My uncle hurried into the house. I walked down the steps back to the car, seething with the urge to go back and give my uncle a piece of my mind. I was too disappointed to open the envelope. I put it on a rock, sat on it and slipped into one of my usual broodings.
At that moment I knew how much Sally had meant to me. She had a philosophical approach to life. She always gave me the reason to hope even when it was very clear that there was no reason in hoping any more.
Many times I had planned to leave my uncle’s house and try life on my own but Sally had always asked me to be patient. Sometimes she laughed when I thought there is nothing to laugh about. One time when I reminded her that I have a second class upper degree in journalism, and asked how many students graduate each year with such grade, she laughed heartily.
“Look, baby, it is no crying matter,” she had been with me long enough to know that the precursor to tears was glistening eyes.
“I want you to be practical. There are guys out there with first class honors and still they are jobless. But nincompoops get all the jobs just because they have godfathers. Have you counted the number of times you have been rejected by CRTV? You are the quintessence of the brains, the voice, and the personality of the ideal journalist. And yet people who had just a mere pass degree were recruited. Shine your eyes, boy! Dialogue more with your uncle. Moving away from his home is just taking a kamikaze dive. You would be giving him reason to withhold whatever little help he could ever give you.”
So, I had decided to stay with my uncle a little longer. One day, Sally came up with the idea that I could beg my uncle to send me abroad where opportunities “are boundless,” as she put it. “If you go to Germany you can study almost tuition-free and work at the same time,” she had said. “Moreover, I hear that from there it is easy to pick up a good job through the UK, Canadian, and Denmark skilled worker programs. In a few years you may even be richer than your uncle.” I could feel the scales suddenly fall off my eyes. Sally! God, how I adored her!
Sally and I applied for M.A. Studies in Norway. But she ditched me before the results were out. It was December, the time when bush-fallers returned home with glistening cars, throwing parties and attending parties everywhere. Their money was a strong chip to pry many girls out of their boyfriends’ grips. Local boys were always edgy every December.
“Andy I still love and will always love you.” Sally said to me two weeks before Christmas. “But you know… I am not getting younger…. Am I?”
“But we just celebrated your twenty-fourth birthday a week ago; you are only twenty-four for God’s sake!” I said as if she didn’t know her age.
“I don’t see how I can wait all my life for you to rise up from the terrace.”
“Rise up from the Terrace?” I felt my heart constrict. “Is that how low I’ve sunk?”
“I’m sorry for the callous expression but please understand my point.”
“Sally, don’t do this to me, please.” My inheritance from my father welled up at once. Within a minute catarrh and tears had turned me into a sorry creature. Even Lord Lundy could never compare with me.
“I’m sorry, I have found a new guy,” she said, rising.
“Is he that pompous bush-faller who attended your birthday party?” I asked between tears and hiccups. Sally did not answer. She just stormed out of the room.
There was a guy at her birthday party who came uninvited. His pomposity and cash spewing had put me ill-at-ease. He danced with Sally more than a hundred times. At one moment I wanted to tell her not to dance with him anymore. But how could I deny her the pleasure of her birthday celebration? I was very certain he was the one now spinning Sally’s head. What else could I do but cry and pray to God for my own sun to rise someday? But when would it ever rise? This chance to go to Europe for further studies had been my last hope. The last arch in the series of innumerable horizons up to which I had looked but never found the oft quoted silver lining. Was I doomed to remain on the terrace forever?
A sudden but light tap on my head jerked me out of my distant dream back to reality.
“Sally…enh…enh…” I stammered in disbelief. She put a finger on my lips.
“Is your uncle in?” she asked. My uncle did not approve of my bringing girls home. I nodded that he was in.
“Let’s get out of here quick!” Her voice was urgent.
I was lethargic. She pulled me up.
“What’s the matter?” I had not regained my mood.
“There’s much for us to talk about,” she whispered.
“Could she have changed her mind and decided to come back to me?” I wondered.
The possibility of regaining her dispersed the clouds over me. I picked up the envelope and followed her. She caught my right hand in a vice-like grip and literally dragged me out of my uncle’s yard. Within two minutes we were out of my uncle’s compound but Sally kept walking very fast dragging me along like a mother taking her recalcitrant son home for a good thrashing.
My joy suddenly turned into apprehension. At last Sally hauled me into an off-license, and then across the main drinking hall into a private room. We sat down opposite each other. Her brown eyes sparkled with a joy I could not decipher. I could not remember when I last saw her looking so charming. She licked her lips several times. Our separation had only lasted two weeks but I felt as if I had missed her for centuries. I wanted to reach across the table and kiss her moist ruby pouting lips like never before. What if she rebuffed me? The thought held back my gush.
At last she spoke. “Andy, I have won a scholarship,” she announced and then took a deep breath. I got up from my seat and kissed congratulation onto her prominent forehead. As I sat down, I realized that her excitement had suddenly died away. Tears filled her eyes. She raised her head up as if that would send the tears back to their source. A waiter brought in the drinks she had ordered before coming to my uncle’s. She waved away the waiter.
“How could I ever think I would be happy without you, Andy?”
She said between sobs. I did not know what to say.
“When I got this scholarship offer I realized that going to Norway without you in my life would be like jumping over a cliff.” She struggled to explain.
“What about your bush-faller?” I asked.
To think that somebody else had tasted of my sacred cherry! I could do nothing but bite my lower lip in regret.
“Andy, please. Can we forget about him? Despite your poverty and Lord Lundy tears you are worth more than a thousand bush-fallers.”
She was struggling to hold back the emotions swirling up within her breast. The sincerity of her tone and her tortured face gave me a certain feeling of guilt and anger. I felt guilty that my inability to rise up and be like other boys had pushed her into temptation and sin. I was angry at the system that had frustrated its own youths by blatantly disregarding meritocracy. I wished I was born in the years of the former President that my late father always praised. I did not experience those years but my father’s nostalgic recollections of those years always made me feel that if I were born in those years I would never have experienced this kind of hardship. My eyes became glazed with tears. My hands groped across the table and took Sally’s. They were sweaty and trembling.
“Will you ever find a place in your heart for me again?” she asked between her tears.
“You slipped and stood up again tall. That is what matters now. I forgive you from the depth of my heart.” My river of inheritance had already dug gullies down my cheek and was flooding my chest. Sally produced a white handkerchief and dried my tears. The assurance that she was now mine brought back the peace I had always known in her presence. I took the kerchief from her and dried her own tears. There was still one last cleansing ritual to be done in order to completely restore the sacred bond that we had shared. Squeezing the brine unto the floor I said: “Let the earth soak away our past hurts in each drop of these commingled tears of pain and let the brine be everlasting seasoning for our reconciliation and love.”
“Even in pain you never lose your poetic flare!” Sally said, still hiccupping.
“Didn’t a poet say ‘our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts’?” I picked up the opener to open the drinks. She asked if I haven’t received words from Norway about your own application. I felt stupid. I fumbled around for the envelope I had brought along with me.
“I got this from the University. I guess it’s my admission letter. There’s no need reading it. My uncle has said he has no money.” I explained in a resigned tone.
“Andy, do you know you are an idiot? The scholarship reply usually comes together with your admission letter!” I tried to open the envelope but my hands were trembling terribly. Sally snapped it from me, opened it and started reading: “Admission and Award of Scholarship….” The rest did not matter.
I bent across the table and her mouth dovetailed into mine. I almost sucked her breath off. Our excited arms elbowed the untouched drinks onto the hard floor where they crashed in pops and fizzes. At the same time one of my uncle’s publicity vans sped pass, blaring out what we later called our anthem of love and success:
You've got the feel you're on solid ground
For a spell or two no-one seems forlorn
This comes to pass when a child is born
But I have never forgotten Santa’s answer to my fervent prayer that Christmas:
Christmas without you like a mystery with no clues…
The most joyous Christmas if luck could be with us
Would be if Saint Nicholas brought you home to me…..