Her left fingers soaked in a bowl of warm acetone, her right hand hovered over a thinned-out notebook, gripping a pen, poised but unsure about the first line to write. The trash brimmed with torn drafts crumpled into balls. The priest had essentially said, this damned eulogy had better be good. It would be telecast live to a country of two hundred million. Every word had to land evocatively. And you see, in a eulogy, everything one did is always bigger and better than it was. So, how would she capture one who meant everything to many? Mr. President had said this when he hugged her, and the Speaker of the House echoed the sentiment when he overstepped with a forehead kiss.

She’d been wearing red stiletto nails when he died in her arms. Between the high current stream of mourners through the house and the weight of her own paralysis, this morning was the first chance she’d had to scrape them off, in favor of a simple nude manicure. Grief at a funeral must be performed to the jury’s tastes — no signs of a woman clinging to normalcy. Not a trace of collarbone skin peeking through the black lace of her option three on the bed. Fr. Aloysius had vetoed options one and two, sheath dresses culled from an Audrey Hepburn lookbook, as fitted, scandalous. Even though her husband would’ve bit his lip.

“So, you have nothing else that’s black?” her personal assistant, Tomide, who had been a pillar the past couple days, asked, sympathetic but panicked as a clock ticked overhead.
“We lived in color,” she muttered in a hoarse voice, tears pooling in her throat. “You don’t prepare for this day. You don’t will it to existence.”

The color in their world went beyond the coordination of their many gala outfits. He never found a pocket square he couldn’t match to her couture gowns; planners would offend not to place her name card next to his, even where men and women sat separately. He always had gossip about the badly behaved husbands in the room or a clever quip to whisper in her ear, and her giggle in response was always the music to his night. The color in their world was dark blue days which turned sunny because they held each other’s hands, knowing exactly what to say to the other. On their final sunny day, they lounged side by side on a beach blanket. He was reading a book he was excited to tell her about. She doesn’t remember the seconds before the phone slipped out his hand and he was gasping for air. She only remembers screaming.

“I don’t know of anywhere open to buy a suit this morning,” Tomide lamented, pacing, without offering a solution, because her capacity had been stretched thin the last few days. Then the idea struck. The wife hadn’t gone through any of his things since that day — and maybe never his closet — but he would have a black suit. Attorney General? He always wore one. And when hearts broke for her in the tabloids, readers would nod in agreement with the know-it-all commenters: She wore his blazer just to feel within his skin one last time… Aww.

Her fingers grazed the hangered lineup, each piece heavy with memories she pictured like they’d happened yesterday, a tear falling for each one. She saw herself knotting his tie by the table before breakfast, and she had always seized those moments of her hands around his neck to be naughty. As if announcing its choice, a teardrop landed on the shoulder of black twill blazer which was tailored perfectly to his measurements. Not too big. Not too snug. They were one; it would fit. Before slipping it off the hanger, she checked the pockets, searching for comforting keepsakes. A receipt enveloped a card — the card was a hotel concierge service’s key, the receipt for a Saharan rose arrangement she’d never smelled. Slowly, at first, but soon hastened by rage, her eyes grew redder by the second while she fished; other pockets spat out receipts for necklaces she’d never worn. On lapels, lingered base notes from perfume which would make her retch. Who still wears powdered lilies in this day and age? He had always told her to wear gourmand scents as a suggestion, but as an instruction if she wanted him to undress her faster. On the floor, she made herself a carpet from pants and blazers strewn, pulled down with force. She wanted to lie there. To mourn the man she lost. To mourn the idea of the man she’d just lost. In eulogies, we strictly speak of new angels.

Tomide was at the closet’s entrance before the brooding could exceed five minutes. And outside the door, she had debated how to say, “this eulogy won’t write itself,” in five different ways that wouldn’t sound like commanding a fragile widow. She cleared her throat audibly instead.
“I’m sorry,” the good man’s bereaved said, rising from the floor, “the planner called? Or the priest? Sorry for making your life difficult.” Tomide shook her head. “Please help me off the ground,” the widow said, stretching out her hands.

She noticed Tomide approach with quivering hands to grab onto hers, so she held them to give her own comfort. To stabilize them. When Tomide pulled her up into a hug, she got the whiff of a scent from the younger woman’s blouse.
“You smell good.”
“I always have to, working for people like you and Uncle B,” she responded with a nervous snicker.
“May I ask what scent it is?”
“I don’t know the name, it came in a box. Was a gift. But I know it’s flowery.”
“Lilies, maybe?” asked the widow, with a smile pulling more than its weight to hide her increasingly red eyes.
“Probably. And maybe jasmine… Did you find a suit?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what Fr. Aloysius’ beef is with that lace dress. Can you steam it for me?”
“Absolutely!” said Tomide, sprinting back out of the closet.

When the widow was alone again, she turned back to one of those suits which had now made her grief a hydra – a monster with multiple heads, a new growth where one had been conquered. She took a whiff of the sleeves, of the lapels, of the insides.
“Lilies. And maybe jasmine.”

The widow had mentored a group of young women at their diocese seeking to enter the corporate world in a program sponsored by the good man. Many had come to thank them with their coding certificates or hampers to say thank you after new businesses were successfully opened, but a bright eyed and naïve new graduate in the program had a simple request for the widow: I want to be like you. I want to assist you. And I can work without pay, just for that experience. The good man was an avid sceptic; he needed it to rise to the top of politics like he did. And so, during pillow talk, he had brushed off the request as something with a motive, and the sparse CV Tomide handed as lacking the qualifications to assist a high-profile politician’s wife like her.
“Even without pay?”
“I know I’ve spoiled you to where you don’t like to pay for stuff,” he laughed at his wife, “but think of the costs of inexperience. An appointment scheduled incorrectly? You know? I’ll find you someone if you need one badly.”
She went to bed knowing he was right. But in the weeks after, she observed Tomide at the chapel. How she volunteered her time with kids in the evenings. How, as an usher, she rebuffed, with grace, rude and stubborn older people when she was guiding them to designated seating. And after one mass, she approached the young woman to take this gamble.

The gamble became a song and dance of diligent support and reliance. Appointments never scheduled incorrectly. Emails with no typos. Hand holding on the way out when the widow had had too much to drink at an event. Reminders to take medication. Yes, even the vials for the in-vitro treatment. Tomide knew her tolerance. The intimacy of her injection spots. There came an evening when Tomide, as she did routinely, prepped the four syringes for her needle-averse self in the bedroom.
“You know, it’s so funny how Uncle B didn’t want me to hire you,” she giggled, “and now I don’t think he sees me without you. Had to give him your number for when I’m unreachable.”
“It’s an honor,” Tomide simply responded.

Now, with nails scrubbed clean but brittle, she picked up the pen again and penned the first line: “It appears I did not marry an honest man.” Scorned but tinged with uncertainty, she rehearsed the delivery in the mirror with snark, daring herself for the moment when a thousand Nigerian news stations’ mics were mounted on the podium before her. Would these women be scattered through the pews and have her play a guessing game every time she looked up from her script? Would they be there in modest dresses concealing lace undergarments he bought? There was an hour left to decide which version of him she would give to the world. Would it mirror, outdo even, the version editors had painted in the national papers? Her decision would be swift if she would only turn on his phone. The last message came from a number simply saved as T with a heart next to it. But it was stowed in a drawer somewhere since their final sunny day, too painful for her to open.

As he read the book, a simple question text interrupted his flow: “Should we tell her?” He looked to the side, torn apart by her smile of contentment.
“Never,” he texted back.
“FYI, I’m keeping this one,” came the response. “But you know her… she’s still going to find out.” The thought of that ‘out’ was a sharp and swift arrow to his heart. If only he’d held on then and had the time to clean the other tracks.

But now she is lost and still thinks of what to say. Should your secrets also die because you passed away? She does not know. All of this is grey. But when she put the pen back to paper again, she wrote, from her stream of consciousness, lines she was certainly going to read out on the podium. She would look right at the first pew where she was sitting, in the eyes of Tomide. And in that lace dress Fr Aloysius still deemed scandalous, she would step back, for every camera and every eye would catch the details of it, making way for a new speaker the program hadn’t listed.

“My husband and I lived in color. And I am learning he lived in color with several other people. I cannot say he meant the same thing to them as to me. I cannot say that their color was as vivid as ours. But I would invite them to share that color with you. Here. Now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by HamZa NOUASRIA on Unsplash