The Gathering Storm.
Photo by NOAA on Unsplash.
My heart leaps as I see my twin sister striding down the lonely bush path off the road leading to our house.
She looks hale, as if the illness that ravaged her body and almost brought her near death’s door was nothing more than a slight hassle.
Her steps are firm. When she sights me, she halts in her movement, seemingly startled.
When I left home at the crack of dawn, my sister lay on her bed, shivering like a leaf caught in the harmattan breeze.
Her condition, which deteriorated the previous night, prompted me to rush to the bank to withdraw money for her treatment.
I recall Mom dipping a towel into a bowl of water and dabbing her head with it, to calm her fever.
How has she recovered so quickly, looking so sprightly, as though she were never sick in the first place? I think, swatting a fly buzzing around my ears.
“Chinaza!” I call, approaching her, grinning. “How is your body now?”
She’s mute, her stare blunt.
“Are you alright?” I ask. Her piercing gaze and silence discomfit me. “Where are you going to?”
“Mom sent me to get something from Mama Emeka,” she finally replies.
Something? Mom never sends us on errands when we’re sick or recuperating. If she needed anything, she’d get it herself or perhaps place a call for it.
I want to ask her what Mom has sent her to get, how urgent it is, but I don’t ask.
I wonder what had happened to Mom’s phone. Her phone wouldn’t be switched off, given that the electrical power had been restored that morning.
It’s the same reason I left my phone at home to charge because there was no light the previous evening when I returned from work.
“Mom is very busy,” she says, as if she read my thoughts. “That’s why she asked me to get it.”
“What happened to your phone and hers?” With my palm, I swipe at the sweat beading my forehead.
“You should have called Mama Emeka instead of going to her place. You know you’re just recovering.”
“Her number is switched off.”
Above us, the sky is overcast. Wind ruffles the grasses and trees around.
I inch closer, stretching my right hand to touch her neck and feel her temperature.
She takes a step back immediately my hand comes in contact with her skin. When I touched her in the morning, her temperature was that of a pot boiling on a stove, but now her body is cold.
What drug did she take that calmed her temperature?
“Your body is like ice,” I say, peering into her eyes as if I can still sense a budding fever in them.
She nods and smiles, revealing her glossy teeth. Her hair is neatly pulled back into a simple bun.
She’s still wearing her blue nightgown, with a wrapper tied around her waist, the ones she had worn since morning, her flip-flop slippers on her feet.
This is unusual because she’s never been fond of dressing in such manner outside the house.
“What drug did you take?” I ask, observing the way she responds with perfunctory smiles and nods.
“The native medicine Mama Emeka brought yesterday.”
“Just that?”
She nods.
Loudly, birds chirp as they hop on trees bordering the bush path.
From a distance, a truck honks noisily.
“Hurry home, Mom has been waiting for you,” she says. “Stop worrying about me. I’m fine now.”
How will I stop worrying about my twin? What then is family if we aren’t there to look after each other?
Gazing at her face—her pointy nose, broad lips, wide eyes, and a gracefully arched neck, the thought of losing her stabs me with panic.
I smile. She smiles back, gliding past me. I observe that her eyes are watery and I watch her for a while as she continues walking down the path, before I tilt my head towards the road home.
The wind howls intensely, tossing debris around. My eyes sting with dirt, and when I clean them and look back, my sister is out of sight. She must have taken the bend down the path.
Chinaza’s ailment started two days ago with a headache, after she returned from an outdoor event, where she alongside her Madam and other apprentices went for a decoration work.
Mom, a petty trader, never thought the hospital was needed until a severe situation of collapse.
When she huffed slightly and made for the table, I knew she’d be looking for paracetamol tablets.
The pain capsized after Chinaza took the tablets, but continued intensely the following day.
Neighbours slipped in their suggestions:
Let her have enough sleep. It’s just stress.
Pray over a bottle of olive oil, wash her head with it and give her to drink too.
My mother did all she was told. The illness took a grip on Chinaza, the evening of the second day, causing her to develop a running temperature.
Along with the fever, blood was present in her vomits.
It was Mama Emeka, a slender dark-skinned lady with a mole on her nose—my mother’s friend—who suggested the use of native medicines.
She said it worked faster. The native medicine calmed the fever and stopped the vomit, but didn’t reduce the pain.
At this point, self-medication wasn’t helping; it rather worsened the condition.
In the morning, being the third day, I was prompted to leave the house to get money after I overheard my parents quarrelling in the parlour.
Dad’s hoarse voice grew louder as he exclaimed: “Stop disturbing me, this woman. I’ve told you, I don’t have money!”
There was a loud bang on the door following his outburst. This reaction from him was likely due to my mother’s request for money for my sister’s medical treatment.
Ever since he lost his job at the railway station, he had struggled to fulfill his role in the family.
Mom shouldered all the responsibilities. However, now that business wasn’t flourishing as it once did due to the scarcity of the naira notes, I knew I needed to do something to support my mother, and to save my sister.
A Toyota Camry speeds through a puddle on the road, splashing the water about. I leap back, trying to dodge the filthy water, but lose my footing and slip into a drainage channel.
The rough edges of the channel scrapes against my left leg, leaving an abrasion. Pain sprouts through my body, but I resume walking.
I trek past a bar built with bamboo and corrugated zinc, where men with bellies as round as a pot drink and discuss football and politics.
I fume as I hear Dad’s voice in the bar.
Which father would be in a bar finding solace in alcohol when his family needed him most? I sigh.
Taking the final bend towards the house, I see people standing in clusters near the electric pole flanking the entrance, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders in resignation.
I stop in my tracks, my mind racing with curiosity.
Had there been another fight? Did someone get hurt?
Our compound has many troublemakers who find pleasure in brawls.
I sight Mama Emeka speaking with a lady at a corner. Isn’t she the person Chinaza mentioned meeting? I sense something is wrong and scurry through the crowd towards her.
Chatter reverberates in the air.
When she sees me, she quickly takes my hand into hers. Her eyes are red and puffy. A gut-wrenching sob escaping her lips.
“Auntie, what happened?” I ask.
“Chinaza is dead!” Tears flood her cheeks.
Thunder rumbles.
I narrow my eyes, slowly shaking my head. “It’s not true,” I retort.
“But I saw her. She looked fine.”
Mama Emeka’s face contorts in disbelief. “She died few minutes ago.”
My eyes widen. My heart starts thumping fast against my chest in confusion and fear.
I’m struggling to breathe. “W-where is my mother?”
My voice quavers, and before she says a word, I dash inside and find Mom crying over my sister’s corpse in the Parlour.
I freeze. My body pricks with goosebumps. My blood runs cold.
Mom rocks Chinaza’s body, pulling her head to her breasts, and pleading, “Wake up, Sweetheart. Bikozienu!”
Fear parches my throat. Was it her ghost I saw? No. This can’t be.
I shut my eyes and slap my head as if to clear it, to be sure I’m not hallucinating. I open my eyes and walk forward, slowly.
“Ehh! Chinaza anwụgo!” Mom shrieks. Phlegm bubbles around her nose. “My daughter is dead o!”
I reach for my sister’s pale face. Her skin is cold. Just as it was when I touched her.
My mouth slackens with dismay and a queasy feeling creeps into my stomach, before the numbness spreads over me and stops at my feet.
My eyes burn with tears.
Outside, thunder continues to rumble as rain pours in torrents.
