大象传媒

The best thing that happened to my brother was not the guitar he worshiped. It was a shiny maroon that hung high up his wall, like an oversized crucifix in a small chapel. My mother brought the guitar home on his sixteenth birthday. That was the only day I saw them hug, Bartho and my mother. She wanted it to last forever; at least I thought I saw that in her moist eyes as she almost cracked his lean bones in her embrace. But Bartho broke free, grabbed the guitar and escaped to his room. That would have been sixteen years ago.

Sixteen years ago, I saw our sister cry. It was a Tuesday because I wore my Nike鈥檚 to school. I came back to our fading citrine duplex and found her crying in the kitchen. She was hunched on the smaller stool, her indigo tie-and-dye wrapper was firm around her breasts, suppressing them.

鈥楢gatha, good evening鈥�, I called out from the door

She mumbled a response without lifting her face. So, I went to her. That was when I heard her careful sobbing, timed like one part of a song. I ran my fingers through her Jheri Curl curls, they were not as wet as they seemed. I wanted to know why she was crying but did not ask, knowing that she would say she wasn鈥檛 crying.

鈥榊oung lady, remove those dusty shoes. Can鈥檛 you see this floor was scrubbed?!鈥�

I removed my Nike鈥檚 and ran up the stairs. Upstairs, Bartho was still in his school uniform and dusty sandals. He had brought down the guitar from up the wall and was pretending to play it but without plucking the strings, as if the strings were not meant to be plucked. I sat down beside him and told him that our sister was crying in the kitchen but he did not hear me.

That evening, Agatha dressed up after dinner like she did sometimes when Papa was out of town. She arranged her hair in a curly heap, painted her mouth red, got into the blue jeans that made her hips reappear and left the house. Night came as quickly as it comes in December, with the winds bringing us the neighborhood in wafts of burning wood, frying akara, carbon dioxide, defeated leaves, as they did on many evenings. Bartho held his guitar but sang instead. His voice was silk tenor, somewhere between a boy鈥檚 and a man鈥檚. He sang an Igho folksong. It was of the woman whose husband鈥檚 other wife was wicked, and would not let her parched child have a sip of water. The woman in the song has to walk miles to the River Iyinne to get water for her child. But the child dies before she returns. He sang until sleep came and took me.

Someone must have put me in our bed. Her heavy breathing woke me. Our sister must have been running from something in her dream. Bartho once told me that if you hold open a person鈥檚 eyes when she is asleep, you would see what she was dreaming, so I tried to hold open Agatha鈥檚 eyes. She sat up immediately.

鈥業t鈥檚 too early. Why are you up?鈥�

I kept quiet and stared at her. Her lips were still red but her curls were packed in a hair net.

鈥楪o back to sleep or find someone else to harass!鈥�

I swallowed tears and a question, the same one I had swallowed many times before. Why did she choose Bartho over me, Bartho who would not look at her?

Sleep did not come back to me that night but I still dreamed my usual dreams. I was a tall girl in a faraway place where there were flowers, where people laughed, sunshine on their faces. I was one of them. Bartho, Agatha, Mama and Papa were also there and we were happy. In a second dream, I was still twelve and we lived in a house with a marbled staircase. Everyone sat on the steps of the staircase and listened to me play the guitar, strumming and fretting with all my fingers until my mother smiled at me.

****

On the night before he left, Bartho told me the army was the best thing that could happen to him. We talked as he cleaned his boots and searched through Mama鈥檚 things until he found an old travel bag. I hovered about him, listening to him wonder repeatedly if there was something he was forgetting. Then he smoked his daily dose of Hedges; he never called it Benson and Hedges. When night came, when the street brought its aromas and the breeze through his open window, Bartho sang again, with the guitar my mother brought home on his sixteenth birthday in his arms. He never learned to bring music out of it. His voice, jealous of the guitar, silenced it.

Loss hung heavy upon my neck. I had felt a lighter version of this on Agatha's wedding day. Christmas was different without her- there was no decorating or eating together. But Papa still played carols all day. I could still hear Papa's voice, speaking to the ceilings when Bartho would not listen.

'It is not your war鈥�.鈥�

鈥楾his is suicide....鈥�

鈥楨ven if you survive, there is a part of every soldier that never comes home....'

Bartho had waited till the morning of Boxing Day, the day before he left, to tell Papa that he was joining the Banjo rebels. The war belonged to the Maki at our eastern border. Papa said it was all ego and no sense. It started not long after I began to see Banjo men, unmistakable from the three scars on each side of their jaws, on television. They stood before delirious crowds, screaming that the Kilawii were drunk on power and Banjo petroleum. They said they wanted to taste power, to feel the headiness of their own oil. Bartho sat before the television all day long. That morning, he said quietly and firmly,

鈥楤anjos are also human beings. It is not right to do nothing.鈥�

He never really had many words. But the few he had drowned Papa鈥檚 voice and the Gunter Kallmann choir鈥檚 carols.

鈥楾he university is not for me. I have told you where I am going and that is where I鈥檓 headed tomorrow!鈥� Bartho stormed away, the door clapped behind him as Papa continued to talk.

Papa hit the radio hard so that it stopped singing, so that Christmas ended. He let himself slump onto the settee. Mama鈥檚 dying had robbed him of sleep in many years and his kind eyes had taken up permanent bags. The grey that used to be only a patch had spread all over his hair. And as he sat there, I thought I saw a few more wrinkles creep in on him. When I told Bartho, he said that life was too big to be spent only on one person, even if that person was one鈥檚 self.

He woke me before the next dawn, blowing a small cloud of Hedges in my face.

鈥楴nedi, I'm going.鈥�

鈥淵ou'll come back, right? You won't die.鈥�

鈥業'll try.鈥�

鈥淪hut up. You'll come home.鈥�

鈥極k. I'll come back.鈥�

He smiled, avoiding my eyes. I kept mine on him- he, grown so much taller than me and stubble all over his face. I followed him to the door. Outside, he killed his cigarette butt under his left shoe and caught my eyes,

'You must never smoke a cigarette.'

I nodded, staring at his back as he became one with the early morning darkness and the distance of time. That was fourteen years ago.

Ten years ago, I saw Papa cry like a woman.

That was the morning a red-eyed Agatha came home to tell us about the requiem for my brother. She was pregnant again. She came with the priest鈥檚 letter, written in hurried cursive and signed 鈥楶.J. Rodriguez, CARITAS鈥�. It was difficult to read but I read it three times, each time hoping that it didn鈥檛 say that a landmine cleared Bartholomew Ene鈥檚 squad, that a mass had been offered for my brother and his comrades. He wrote that God knew best. Agatha asked God questions in between sobs, while Papa hid his tears between his palms and hiccups. I wiped my face and went to him.

That day, Papa and Agatha told me about my mother. Maybe they feared I would die without knowing.

I went to my brother鈥檚 room and tore the guitar off his wall. It was dusty and I wanted to tear its strings one by one but all I did was hold it, wondering if I could make it sing. I wanted to make it cry too, a disjointed song to mock Bartho's ghost. I scattered Bartho鈥檚 drawers, his neatly folded clothes, his books, seeking more secrets. Under his bed, I found the bold-check shirt he wore on the evening before he left home. It still smelled a whiff like him. In its breast-pocket, I found my first cigarette.

****

The Banjo girl named Rifkatu says that my brother is the best thing that has happened to her. She has skin the color of bleached palm oil and a head full of woolly coils that fall everywhere. She calls my brother Bartholomew, stressing every syllable like a nursery rhyme.

Yesterday, Bartho turned up on my porch with her. When I opened the door, he screamed like a child, choking me in an embrace. He said I had cigarette lips but had not changed much. I could not say the same for him so I only laughed and cried in his arms. My brother was bald with a paunch I couldn鈥檛 have imagined and he needed Rifkatu to walk steadily. But his face was the same face, and his eyes, the same eyes that could not look me in the eyes fourteen years ago, as they still could not.

We went home yesterday evening, to the citrine duplex where we were children. Papa's grave was in the front yard, shy, behind willful shrubs. Many harmattan winds had brought down dried leaves and scattered assorted ends of disheveled paper and nylon bags alongside the leaves.

'He was a good man', Bartho said. 'I was a foolish boy.'

Rifkatu squeezed his hand and asked me why I never wrote back.

"Wrote back?!"

Bartho touched her shoulder and looked at me with soaked eyes, so I did not continue.

'How's Agatha?' He did not ask it like a question.

鈥楳y mother?鈥� I asked at first, and after he did not answer, 鈥榶our sister is well.'

His eyes turned to me with a query, but then relented.

We walked into the house, three of us, hand in hand, not speaking. Inside, we found the house like I and my mother had left it after Papa's burial three years ago. Mustiness tingled our nostrils. I was the first to sneeze, then Bartho, then Rifkatu. Then, our melded laughter filled out the emptiness of our childhood home. The guitar was still there, in my brother's room, lying on his bed. I felt our eyes settle on it at the same time. I did not know what was on his mind, but in mine, a door was opened and wafts of light spelled out the meaning of hope.

Rifkatu picked up the guitar and dusted it against her jeans until she sneezed again. She plucked with her slender fingers and music filled the room. Bartho pushed the curtain back, letting in the day鈥檚 last rays as he sang alongside. He sang a version of the Igho folksong from our childhood. It was the story of the woman whose husband鈥檚 wife was wicked and would not let her parched child have a sip of water. The woman has to walk miles to the River Iyinne to fetch a sip of water for her child, who is waiting when she returns.