“Whenever she gets the urge to forego Roy, she also gets a small dose of mischief, to lie with him one more time, for the last time ever, and she finds herself back to her jail.”
Nornu fills her bathtub to its brim with water each time Roy tickles the spot where her creator placed her madness—the talk of her age. She dips her head in the water, opens her eyes wide and lets the cool and purity bring her to calm. She watches the base of the bathtub and imagines that it is the base of her worries—an end she can see and maybe reach if she stretched at it—an end of her entanglement with Roy.
When Nornu can’t breathe anymore in the water, she jerks up like one chased by a ferocious dog, eyes bloodshot, and she sits on the toilet bowl, heaving, as she throws back her soaked hair, bringing up her memory clips of Roy, editing them. Sometimes she replaces Roy with someone else—a Monsieur Pierre—her creation, someone calmer, who smokes less, fucks a bit slower but steadily, and holds her waist while holding on to the bed so it would not creak so much and disturb the neighbors. When Nornu does her editing, she finds it a bit uneasy to replace the complexion, for it is worth everything to kneel before a light-complexioned, fully aroused penis, to swallow its length and size and throw it up again to life with her saliva all over it, like it has been born again and soaked in thick birth fluid. But this has been her prison and she has been the voluntary prisoner.
Whenever she gets the urge to forego Roy, she also gets a small dose of mischief, to lie with him one more time, for the last time ever, and she finds herself back to her jail where she is her own jailer, the one who puts the lock on her wrists and throws away the key.
Roy began with talks of being taken away from his youth and put in a place meant to excite someone’s taste only. He mentioned thirty-seven numbers, including his, and the mention came like a screech to Nornu. She would get married if she could find such a product in a mall. She would just pick it into her cart and at the counter; she would flash her credit card and walk home proudly with her man but for what she had resolved to call blessings instead of body fat.
Everyone says her thirty-seven is the new fifty, and although Roy said something contrary on the first night, that she was twenty-one down there—a thing that excited her somehow—was it possible to carry what lay down there around and dangle it in the faces of people to prove to them that you are better than painted? And like it happens in the movies, Nornu’s last time extends and becomes the longest last time in recorded history, for how do you stay away from a meal which drives you crazy, a sauce of super spiced noodles, smoking hot, waiting to be eaten?
Roy moved in with Nornu six months into his job at an Internet services firm in Jabi, where Nornu had gone to rectify her Internet problems. The one whose abs almost leaped out of his blue shirt at the front desk was this Roy, this one whose tongue became poison to Nornu. She couldn’t place his nationality at first. It was so with folks in Abuja—they had accents tucked in their bags and used them anywhere it was needed and only a prolonged conversation revealed the fraud.
When he spoke, she heard a bit of a Middle Eastern coloring but his eyes were so Western, American precisely, for when he returned her Internet card, he lifted her hand and stared at her nails and asked why she painted them black. Choice, Nornu said. And when he dropped the fingers gently until the hand fell lightly on the counter, it was like a walk through all things perfect—his hand was smoother than ice. But he was a sales man at a desk, not even one of those who went out to source customers, one of those who drove beautiful cars and could decide to visit someone in-between jobs. This fair one was like a housekeeper ordered not to leave the desk, and she had pity on him and herself, for her longing to have her ten fingers dipped in lotion swiping through his chest was overwhelming.
And if she felt anything for him, it was his eyes—the bravery, the way they did not dart or blink, how they stayed on you until you were fully aroused and things ran from your vagina through your legs, until you were weakened and left at his mercy. But his accent became mere and eventually evaporated. He mentioned once that he was from Port Harcourt, birthed on Nanka Street in Diobu, but his father was transferred to the Abuja office of the State Security Service. And each time he gave poison to Nornu, it was not his fairness that she saw anymore but lies, and she preferred Monsiuer Pierre even more, for even if she could not talk to Pierre and get feedback, when she put battery in it and slid it down her vagina, he did a great job too.
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Post image by Andrea via Flickr.
About the Author:
Bura-Bari Nwilo lives in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His interest in films pushed him to get a diploma in Screenwriting from the New York Film Academy through Del York. He studied English and Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Nwilo is also a photo enthusiast. His funny book of rant on relationship is entitled Diary of a Stupid Boyfriend. His book of short stories, A Tiny Place Called Happiness, is in stores across Nigeria.
Zino A March 01, 2017 02:55
Good writing.