Making Happiness
Kejie was on her way to the kitchen when she saw her aunt sitting on one of the armchairs in the semi-darkness of the living room, her elbows on her thighs, her fists bunched where they supported her cheeks. Blinking lights from the VCD player illuminated her features and they looked tense. Kejie hesitated in the doorway, unsure whether to take the other door that led outside, went around the house, through the neighbours’ hallway, and back into the house through the kitchen – or simply ask her aunt what was wrong.
“Why are you hiding in the dark? Ehn?” Her aunt’s voice startled her.
“Oh sorry, Aunty. Ajuobe. Good morning,” she said.
“Ajuobe tor, her aunt replied. “Bikor gan? “Did you slept well?”
Kejie noticed that her aunty had not turned around to face her: she seemed almost to be hiding.
Her aunt was one of the most energetic people she knew, following her voice with her body as though she was afraid her body would be left behind. When she returned home from work, her voice rang from three houses up the street as she hailed a neighbour, reprimanded a crying child, or admonished teenage boys playing touch football in the street. She walked with the longest strides and spoke fast, breaking into conversations or interrupting herself with a loud sharp laugh that she had come to be known with.
This was the first time Kejie would see her sit and allow her voice do the job of talking all by itself, not even her face following.
Kejie walked over and stood by the arm of the chair. “Aunty, abong? What is it?”
Her aunt sighed. A long drawn hmmm, then said, “my daughter, don’t worry. Please go and boil water to bath Ganong and Osatiem.”
Kejie hesitated, then decided she would follow up on this later. Let the children go to school first, she would get to the root of this.
She went outside to the mud and thatch kitchen, taking the tripod with her from the indoor kitchen. They only cooked inside on the kerosene stove, on days when it rained too heavily, and either the gust threatened to upset the pot cover that no longer fit snug, blowing dirt into the food, or blew the fire in all the wrong directions. Sometimes water leaked in through the thatch more than usual. In some cases, the rain was so heavy that it didn’t speed past fast enough into the gutter. Instead, some flowed into the kitchen in fat rivulets that snaked between the burning wood, quenching the fire and raising thick plumes of smoke.
Today was a good day. The air was moist and yet crisp in the last wave of the rainy season, and everyone awaited the Harmattan with the bated breath of an expectant lover; they stepped out at dawn, checking the stiffness of the air with their nostrils, flicking a tongue out to taste the fog for traces of dust trapped in the moistness. In the morning like this, when the sky traded blue for lighter hue of blue every few seconds, it was a delight to be out. In a few weeks, it would be hard to choose between the humidity indoors, lying sweaty under a lazy fan and walls that seemed to close in on you, and the brisk, sharp air outside that chapped lips and stung the eye. But for a few weeks yet, the choice was as simple as it was obvious.
Kejie swept the makeshift kitchen, gathering the mostly ashy residue in a crude dustpan, made from cutting up an old jerry can. She set the tripod down, rearranged leftover firewood from last night’s cooking, adding some fresh ones from a stack that was kept under a tarpaulin.
She sprinkled kerosene from a small keg tucked behind the stack of firewood, held her breath as she struck a match. It flickered, wavered in the slight breeze and went out. The next she covered protectively with her left palm cupped, bent slowly towards the cooking place as she willed it to stay lit. The match glowed bravely as she went inch by careful inch, afraid to move fast lest it got fanned by a strand of wind, but worried that if she was too slow, it would burn out.
She finally got to the nearest piece of firewood and touched the fire to the wood, just as the burning flame got dangerously close to her finger where she held the match. She lit the wood and dropped the match just in time and watched the flame burn out. Then she raised her face, inhaled and prepared to fan the flame, spreading it round.
The wood stared back at her, calmly, as bereft of flame as ever a piece of wood was. She realised that the piece of wood she touched the fire to did not have kerosene sprinkled on it. She dropped on her rump and stared at the cold fireplace which should have started warming by now.
“Well done o,” her aunt hailed her from the doorway. Kejie turned around with an apologetic look and saw her aunt smiling and holding out the lantern she had forgotten to blow out on waking.
“Kai Aunty, thank God I did not off it o,” she said, taking the lamp.
“Thank God abi? Better you buy kerosene on your way back from school o,” her aunt said, mock-seriously.
“Ehen, is kerosene your problem? I will buy kerosene, no wahala.”
“Kerosene is not my problem,” her aunt suddenly snapped, frowned, and strode back into the house, slamming doors as she went.
