A promise kept

Kemi’s feet were the color of old, unwashed dust as she shut her left eye tightly against the salty drop of sweat that had slithered its way into the eye. Too late, the damage had been done already. Her eye smarted and she sucked her teeth with a groan and rubbed at the eye with her left wrist. 

The dust on her wrist left a smear on her lids and across her cheekbone as she swiped at the offending eye. 

The smear left her face looking like the local Boka, the medicine man most of the natives of Otukpo would swear by for relief from anything ranging from malaria to bewitchment. 

She loved Benue at this time of the year as much as at any time, but this time of the year had its challenges. The blazing Sun was one challenge for sure she thought, even though the season also came along with a mouth watering potpourri of a variety of fruits ripening in the heat. Oranges were aplenty at this time and so were the annoying flies.  

The smell of ripe yellow oranges permeated the late afternoon air, as lazy goats sat idly about on the footpath. They sat huddled in tiny groups consisting largely of nannies and kids and once in a while one goat would give in to temptation and approach the orange seller under the orange tree, hoping the man would keep up the game of hurling orange peels at them to chase them away.

That was the plan, simple but effective. The hurled peel was the objective of the game. The triumphant goat would gleefully sniff at the hurled peel, look about to be sure no worse missile had been launched and only then would it nibble at the treat for a brief moment before finally carrying it off dangling to sit by the group and munch.

 

Kemi stopped to buy Oranges from her usual trader under the tree. She smiled to herself as she thought how convenient it was for Muktar that an orange tree grew right in front of his house, and all he had to do was sit under it and sell the oranges as they ripened. 

 Muktar’s Oranges were famous in the area. They grew fat and heavy, and the juice from them would make other oranges weep for sweetness. 

For that reason and the fact that she passed by him on her way home every time, Kemi would only buy Oranges from Muktar for her husband. He loved Oranges, and she loved feeding him wedges of Oranges at night, just before bedtime. It was their special foreplay ritual.  She hid a grin at the thought of what was to come tonight.

The heat was waiting for her when she got home. It rushed at her and smothered her in an all embracing hug as she hurried to the windows and slid them open for some ventilation. She turned on the cooling unit and then the fan almost as though she was at war with the heat.

She smiled at the thought as she tossed the remote of the cooling unit and made for the bathroom to wash the dust off her feet. She intended to shut the windows when she returned to the living room but she ended up not shutting the windows after all. 

She had washed her feet and wiped them. Then she went to the bedroom to get some oil for them.

The room was mostly the same as she had left it in the morning as she and her husband left for work, except for the new addition that was hanging on the wardrobe door.   

Her husband must have come home while she was away. She stared at it for a while, her head cocked to the right and her right eyebrow arched as she thought about the implications. Then she went back to the living room to get her phone.

She had thrown away the one he had in the house before they got married. He swore he would never be tempted to use it on her. She told him there was no need keeping something he didn’t intend to use.

He picked the call at the second ring; “Kelechi, how far?” she was the only woman who called him Kelechi and had called him that since their secondary school days. “Are you coming home soon? She asked. “Yes I am, are you home?” he sounded brusque. Her tone didn’t change. “How big is the goat?”

“What goat?” Now he sounded puzzled. “The one you must be buying right now.” She said.

“Woman what are you talking about? I’m not buying any goat.”  

“I’ve seen what you hung in the bedroom. I guess you didn’t think I was serious about what I said? Okay, no problem.” 

She hung up, and grabbed her bag, she made sure her ATM card, ID and passport were in it as she left the house. She locked the door and slid the house key back into the house through the window.

They had argued about having a whip in the house.

He told her last week after they had been arguing for some time over random things that he wanted to buy one just for the heck of it. 

She reminded him of the tales he used to tell her of how his older brother kept a whip at home for whipping his wife and asked him to buy a goat along with the whip if he ever gave in to the desire to buy a whip.

Something empty crawled up his spine as he entered their apartment. The fan was on and the cooling unit was working furiously, but the windows were open. 

As he walked into the house his left foot kicked something that skittered across the floor and under one worn leather sofa. It sounded like a key. He squatted by the sofa and lifted it. He was right, it was a key.

The dull glint seemed to mock him in silence. He stared at the innocuous looking piece of metal. It seemed to mirror what his life had become at that moment; flat, and dull and cold.

He knew she was gone. He didn’t need to search the house. She had told him she would leave him if he ever came home with a whip without a goat to use the whip on.