Kambili:Chapter two and three

Two

It turns out you suffer the effects of too much alcohol even the day after.

We got to Ginika’s house at a little after eleven. We were in such a bad state, Ginika’s mum got scared and called my mum for help. She had been shouting questions at us but I couldn’t speak and Ginika was half asleep. As we ambled up the stairs, Ginika holding my hand, I heard her mum on the phone.

“Felicia, I don’t know. They just came back looking tired and miserable. They couldn’t even answer me…”

We got to Ginika’s room and she flopped on her bed, not even bothering to change out of her clothes. I was here so much they had put a spare bed in for me. I washed my face and put on one of her nighties. I was tempted to crawl into bed too but I looked over and saw her slumped over. Her dress had ridden above her waist. I wiped her face off with baby wipes and tried to get her to sit up but she was heavy with sleep.

I got a bowl of cold water from the bathroom and splashed it on her face. She groaned and squinted at me. “What’s your problem this girl?” I began to take off her shoes. “Ginika you need to change.” “Are we in trouble?” I didn’t respond. My parents were going to murder me. I raised her arms and took off her dress. I folded it and put her shoes aside. Her wide toothed comb was on the floor. She undid her bra and looked at me, too tired to help herself. Her eyes widened suddenly. “Aunty Fifi is going to kill you.” I nodded and dragged her tank top over her head. “Kam, it’s my fault…” I shushed her and sat behind her, pushing her head down onto my lap.

I dragged her dark, curly hair through the comb and began to put it in fat braids. I knew she liked her hair braided before bed because when she loosened it, it came out curlier and fuller. She had begun to cry. I started singing one of the songs we had liked when we were little. Something about a monkey and a balloon.

When I was on the last braid, I noticed she had fallen asleep. I placed her head on the pillow and lay down next to her, listening to her heart beat like we used to when were small. We hardly did anything together these days. I embarrassed her sometimes and we couldn’t hang out as much because of school. Ginika raised her arm above her head and I shifted a little.

I stared at the white ceiling and fell asleep.

Three

“How do you feel Kambili?”

I was in the poorly lit consulting room of a clinic in VGC and a bright eyed doctor with horrible purple lipstick stared into my eyes with a torch. My mother was in the waiting area, too embarrassed and too angry to come with me. I think her name was Mrs. Adeyemi or maybe it’s Adeyinka. I didn’t even care if she was called Lucifer, but could she just fix my headache?

I had slept wonderfully but when I woke up, a concert was going on in my brain. Trumpets and trombones and when I looked up to quickly, a large gong was hit. I threw up a little and retched a bit but Ginika had it far worse than I had. She threw up and wailed incomprehensively. I guessed the memories of last night had come back to her.

She looked so miserable, I ignored my own pain to care for her. Her mum even forgot her anger for a short while and went out to buy more panadol. I tried to reduce the air conditioning so she wouldn’t feel so cold and I flushed the toilet. I tried to mop her brow but the light just hurt so much. We couldn’t even take anything in but water.

Shortly after Ginika’s mum returned, my parents arrived to take me home. At first they were relieved to see me and my mum worried if I had messed up my system. It didn’t last long before the anger returned and they began to fire questions at me. None of which I was willing to answer. I buried my face in my hands. I didn’t want to get Ginika in trouble. This was always how it was. I always looked after Ginika, I always took the fall.

When we got home, they asked me to sit down and demanded answers from me. My father didn’t say much. My mother had enough talk for all of us.

“You wanted to give me a heart attack abi? No way! Do you hear me? NO WAY! I did not kill my mother, so you will not kill me!” She let go of the wrapper tied around her waist and slapped me hard across the face. She stammered as she shouted, striking me with each stammer. “Wha-Wha is WRONG with-th you-you this-this child? You are not –not my-my only child o!” I raised my hand to ward off the blows.

I had tried to keep my face passive but soon I had begun to cry.

“My friend will you remove those crocodile tears!” She ranted some more before exhausting herself.

She sat next to my father , glaring at us both and pounding on her cell phone. I tried to explain to her, it had just been a normal party and we’d lost track of time. “Will you shut your mouth? Shut up!” She looked back down at her cell and scratched her hair, through the hairnet.

“I thought they had kidnapped you! Maka chukwu! I was now asking this idiot they call Esther if you had told her anything.Where is the stupid housegirl sef? Esther!” Esther ran out quickly, like she had been listening the whole time. “What are you standing there for? Boil hot water for me! Osiso! Quickly!”

My father didn’t stay silent forever. He did not fail to remind me of just how much he was struggling to pay my school fees and pay all the bills and how much he had struggled to raise us. The short meeting also went with a lot of “You were drinking Kambili at a party?! I can’t believe this!” I have always marveled at the ability of adults to state the obvious and lay such emphasis on words. My responses were variations of “um’s” and “mm’s” with the occasional “I’m sorry.” Mother was certain I was pregnant, given how much I was throwing up and she dragged me to this hospital. She muttered under her breath, the entire drive and I sat, mute in the back.

My head was pounding so hard and the light streaming in from the windows was just so bright. For a while, I could see nothing but the light. I wanted to tell her to give me some Panadol and we could wrap this up.

“I feel fine, thank you. Just a head ache and bit of nausea.” I reply. I figure that this Mrs. Adeyemi/Adeyinka is undeserving of my bad tongue this early morning. “Can you tell me how much you drank last night?” I smiled at her. “I didn’t have my pen and paper to take notes of how many cans there were…maybe fifteen to twenty.” She raised an eyebrow and I can see the disapproval stamped on her face.

“You were found very drunk Kambili. You could have messed up your entire system. What is a young girl like you doing, drinking?”

I felt like she was about to give me advice, in the unsolicited way Nigerians do and I was in no mood for that.

I shrugged. “How can you mess up something that is already messed up?” I stifled a yawn. I was very lucky my mum was in the waiting room or that one could have landed me a dirty slap.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

My stomach hurt a bit, but I had nothing left in me to throw up. She scribbled it down and mumbled something about small children running wild nowadays. She would have been pretty if not for the permanent frown and the eyebrows drawn on with black eyepencil.

“May I please just have some panadol, maybe advil?” She glanced up at me and curled her lip in distaste.

“It’s not as easy as that. We are not sure it was just drinking you were up to. We have to run some blood tests, pregnancy, liver infection etc etc”

“You could just give me some panadol though. It’s just a headache.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you teaching me my job?”

I sighed and averted my eyes, scanning the room. It was sparsely furnished with posters on Diabetes and pregnancy, with cheesy lines at the corners saying “Pregnancy is Fun!” The walls had chipped white paint and there was a small brown shelf, stacked with medical books. A plastic chair sat in the corner, with a stethoscope draped on it.

She sneezed and immediately got up to squirt some sanitizer unto her hand. I wondered, absently if she would have done that if she were alone.

She wrote some more. “I prescribed some drugs for you which you can pick up from the small pharmacy.” She pointed towards a tiny cupboard-like office. “If symptoms persist, you’ll come back in next week for blood tests…In future, stay away from alcohol.”

She signed the prescription sheet for me and set me on my way. Outside the consulting room, my mother was on the phone with the driver “Tell Esther to prepare Oga’s Egusi soup sharp sharp.” she listened for a bit and “Okay, that’s fine.” The line drops and she dumped the phone in her handbag. She glanced at me briefly and stood. “What did she say?” I looked down at the paper. “She told me to pick up some drugs.” She snatched the sheet out of my hands and squinted down at it. We shuffled towards the tired looking office and queued up for the drugs. I was anxious to leave the place, with the metallic smell of pills mingled with blood in the air. The man behind the counter finally handed us the tiny bag filled with medicine and nodded his head, smiling cheerfully.

Mother stuffed the bag into her handbag and we walked out, into the stifling heat of a Saturday afternoon.