Valentine

Homeland

Bolanle sat stiff in her father's orange-gold Toyota C-HR her face resting against the tinted glass window. The pallid morning sun of the city shone across her face. Her breath stained the glass and she occasionally scribbled stick diagrams on them. Her father was at the front and they were speed past the tranquil streets of Brittleton Broadway, Wheatley and Woodford Halsey.

Bolanle unconsciously eyed the fine lawns that made the buildings formidable in appearance. Her father's face was just set and taut with an expressionless stare, eyes glued to the front. A few moments, Bolanle would imagine she was about to be dropped off at a rehab or something.

She had overheard when papa told Naomi that she -Bola 'had mild cognitive impairment and would be acting abnormally for a while'.

They had rushed a breakfast of slimy pasta with ketchup and Bolanle had dropped her spoon as soon as she spotted a strand of pasta hanging down from the inside of Olabisi's nostrils. Papa had announced to her that they were going to see a doctor.

But Bolanle didn't flinch. She only stared simply at her sister's face now with purple patches of gelatin violet and methylated spirit. Sparse bruises. Bolanle thought that they weren't even much to have GV smeared all over her face like that.

Naomi was at the table too, cooing the little baby.

As Bola thought of why papa was hurrying for a doctor's attention, it made her want to swing the car door open to jump out. She wasn't running temperatures or jittering her teeth as the case may be. Her feet wasn't cold and hell, she was ok. So she had no idea why papa was bent on taking going to see Mr. Orwell.

As they hit Woodford Halsey, she spotted a band, consisting of a bunch of seventh graders from school rehearsing in an open meadow. It made her think of school. And where she say in class- History class. Mrs. Robins took them on History, and for some reason, Bolanle's detest for her sort of infected all other genial things about school. Mrs. Robins had this narky way of looking at her, and asking her questions. Bolanle didn't know if it was because she was black -her skin color made it obvious, or because she was brilliant and corrected most of her American infected British accent. But for being a black, there was also Christy Bonnet from CoteD'lvoire who was darker, cheekier and sat at the back.

The annoying thing was that Bolanle sat in front in History class, just after the door. So she was the first to inhale the fragrance of her perfume. Bolanle wasn't even sure it was a perfume, because it smelled like a liquid dishwasher Naomi used at home.

She always missed to remind her mother to include her History teacher in her Christmas perfume giveaways and souvenirs budget.

Then she and her many friends in school then would have to show up at Mrs Robins door in Palker street, dressed in winter overcoats, beanies and fluffy scarves around their neck, singing Carol songs.

She remembered a day in class when her History teacher was feeling elated and showed up in school, elaborately dressed; sneakers, bowtie, waistcoat, yellow rimmed glasses, sou'wester, Burberry chemise. She was a tall woman, chubby and freckles cheeked. Her hair was golden brown and her lips were just too broad. She had a brief pointed nose.

It didn't help that Bolanle had began to twitch her nose when she walked in. And to her dismay, Mrs Robins stood just by Bolanle's seat, her arms folded and her head tilting slowly to a side.

Bolanle stared at her seamless chemise and from there she thought of the soggy apple pie and cheese she had for breakfast that morning. She closed her eyes. It was all she could do to stop herself from sneezing and faking an allergy to her cologne.

Then Mrs Robins was asking what a CV meant, and Bolanle answered it because Mrs Robins wouldn't stop drumming her fingers on the table and shooting her dreary glances.

Bolanle only wished she had a younger teacher on History, maybe like the college sophomore Mrs Hucklings who took them on Phys Ed.

Now she was seated in a plush looking office with her dad in a health house in Harwell, half paying attention to the conversation between her dad and the Med practitioner. His name was Orwell.

There was a mammoth frame on the wall behind him. And an Aier Thermo cool air conditioner hung right above, cascading in all freezing air from it's vents.

Bolanle swallowed. She was wearing a salmon pink smock, laced with hot red. On her feet were long purple socks and white cotton moccasins. Her hair was in a single bun and fastened with a woven ribbon. She felt for it. She thought that couldn't Orwell at least turn on the heater.

At least at home, and in dad's car, the heaters were always working their arses off, warming up the atmosphere.

But now, in the office it was down to like thirty degrees.

She could hear muffled voices from the hallway beyond the closed doors of the doctor's office. The doctor was still discussing with dad and if Bolanle tried to pay attention -(because she felt they were discussing her) she would be grabbing lots of Spanish. She itched to understand because with their low, hushed tones, it felt like whatever mattered was serious.

After a while, the doctor seemed to have thrown a question at her when they left to another small room with a large machine suspended from the ceiling. Papa didn't join them.

"Do you remember your mother?", Mr Orwell was asking.

Bolanle ducked her head backwards. She wanted to understand. She was supposed to be seeing a doctor if she was feeling unwell. But she was fine. There was a funny feeling in her head though but she was completely fit, she ensured herself. She tapped her moccasins on the floor. She could feel her feet. The lighting in the room was incandescent.

Mr Orwell was still staring into her face, expectantly.

"Listen", the man said."It's just the both of us here. You can tell me anything you feel"

Bolanle didn't stare. She noticed that his cologne was familiar. Gargos. It was definitely Gargos. Mama used to be crazy about it once.

"Ok", the latter said, looking confusedly around the room. "Nod if you can hear me"

Bolanle nodded quietly.

"Good, now say something".

Pause. "I want home", she said.

There was a slight smile on the doctor's face."Ok so, tell me if you remember your mother. Say yes or no, then papa will take you home.

Bolanle maintained eye contact with Mr Orwell, she could even barely remember him. All the memories with him as a little girl weren't so crystal anymore.

If she remembered Mama? What sort of stupid question was that? That morning too, Ola was waking her up to greet her with a mama was dead. She remembered mama and hell, she knew Mama was six feet deep or probably in some mortuary. So if anyone was trying to make her re-realize those things, she wasn't going to take it with a pinch of salt. Did they b****y think she was loosing it?

She had no idea how long she must've been muteor how many times Mr Orwell must've raised his left bushy brows to urge her on but alas, she just sank back dryly into her seat and twiddled with her freezing fingers.

She heard Mr Orwell 's voice again but couldn't make much sense of it. she grew more mute within her. She began to shiver. Again. Just like earlier that day with Ola.

Heat was suddenly sweeping through her entire body. Her eyes burned and felt watery. She ogled precariously at the flower vase on a table at a corner in the room. Her head felt light. She fought to maintain her composure and didn't understand why she was feeling so hot when the air conditioner was on here too. Her body rattled more vibrantly, her eyes now shut. She was clutching at the doctor's face and his T-shirt. She wanted to rip him apart. Why would he talk about her mother?

The doctor held her down with a tight grip while tapping the emergency button built in the wall.

Then it all seemed like she was dreaming, struggling to be free from Mr Orwell and nurses rushing in, masks over their faces. They were injecting her. She was screaming dreadfully. She could see papa staring from a distance, that horrifying look on his face before she grew numb and fell.

***

Bolanle glanced surreptitiously at papa across the table. He had just returned home from a trip the day before. The sitting room was lit from a distance. She let her gaze hover around lazily. Naomi was nursing her baby brother, changing his napkins.

Bolanle looked away disdainfully. He was named Shola. He looked so much like Mama. Now as she sat across from her father at the dining table with Ola adjacent for lunch, she sank more into the dreadful thought - of why Shola came back and Mama didn't.

"How is Shola doing?", papa asked Naomi.

He had stopped over his meal to get his reply, looking halfway over his shoulder and looking at no one in particular because he backed Naomi.

Naomi replied that he was well.

Papa groaned over his meal. "I'll bet you are having a hard time".

Bolanle noticed the black rings around her father's eyes he spoke. They were puffy; those eyes, and sunken. She couldn't even make it out, sadness or grief, whatever, or stress from his work. Papa worked late or at least she was certain she had sighted papa's eyes and fingers busted on his laptop last night, as she strode past to use the bathroom.

She wondered if papa had loved Mama like that anyway, if at all his gloomy eyes meant that he was grieving. The only times she saw them even laugh at each other's jokes were the times they face timed him at the Apple, and would tell papa that Ola's teeth were closing up and that his Sugar's hair was turning dada again.

Over the past weeks, friends and families had paid their condolence visits starting from their neighbors, Mama's friends at Dat, papa's partners and many, many friends and so much more she hadn't seen.

The day the Rogers came, she was seated at the dining table and poking noiselessly at soggy peanuts, half esping Joan as he tucked his hair behind his spread out ears and listening as papa told them that "she refused to talk"

Other times when papa's friends came, she was sometimes seated in the stairs close to the upper landing and playing joylessly with a ragga muffin on the railings. Papa's colleagues always showed up in grey suits with lepals, too flat and appeared as if their outlines were only sketches and we're not really there.

Bolanle could imagine the dry cleaners sitting on their irons over their suits on the ironing boards for them to have such creaseless effects. Sometimes papa was there and if he wasn't, they'd connect to him with a tele and discuss at length.

If Bolanle was lost; that is not in her bedroom or bathroom, she was to be up, in the attic. She'd listen to the endlessly playing classical music; those her mother liked, sitting near the poorly lit fireplace with a homemade shawl wrapped around her. Sometimes, she'd be rocking to and fro.