Switches That Flip

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      One more thing before we end this session, shall we?

        Yes, why not.

       Okay. There’s this recent viral Tweet where you said the large scar extending from your chin to your neck is testamentary—

     Yes, and you must have read that I’ve been carrying it around for fifteen good years now.

      Yes, fifteen years. Also, in the two essays you published in the popular Ogbomoso Review last year, you featured the same scar and made active remarks on how dear it is to you, isn’t it?

      I must have opened my bathroom window to the public glare. (Laughs). And now you want me to fling the door open for a better view, no? Well, it doesn’t look like I’ve got many choices. So, Shoot your shot, as my son would say. Shoot.

     Your  bathroom  door  is  in  safe  hands  though,  trust  me.  (Chuckles).  That’s  on  a  light  mode. Now, d’you mind telling us what you remember about it... I mean, the events leading to the scar?

     Uhmm, at first, I remember none ever told me life could so easily beat your imagination and  go  unexpectedly  rough  and  ugly  overnight.  Without  a  prior  notice.  You  know,  I  wish someone had forewarned me to take heart and brace up, or preached me into shedding my soft skin for thick scales. Yeah, I could really have used a lot of those. But no, I wasn’t that fortunate. I was barely nineteen when I learned from our sad-faced pastor that my sweet mother now got a new apartment. Where? The church cemetery. Inside an unmarked grave. 

     But why?

     My heart burned sore at the terrible news, and almost failed. Pastor patted me on the back and said something about my Mum finding rest already. But how soft was the cushion in her casket? Pastor said her rest was in the bosom of her savior. Forever. Forever meant she had been  sown  into  the  greedy  earth  and  I  couldn’t  have  her  anymore.  No  one  to  pester  with complaints about my petty issues anymore. 

     But you could have at least let me see her before burying her, I cried. Don’t worry, the clergyman said, you shall meet again. I understood what he meant, so I stopped wailing and sucked in my tears. Everyone was surprised. A twist. Initially they were baffled about how I would take the news, exactly why I wasn’t allowed to see Mum before she was buried. Now they thought me valiant, thought me matured—and yes, I was, oh I was, to the extent that I quietly excused myself, used the back door and ran to the cemetery like a fresh madman.

     I raised my voice into the cemetery air: I must bring my mother back in one piece, or the  world  would  never  continue  being  the  world.  By  the  time  the  mourners  found  out,  I’d already shoveled my hands into every grave with moist surface. I hadn’t found Mum when I was forcefully dragged home by some men. I put up a struggle. I called Mum by every name she  answered  to.  Iya  mi,  they  are  taking  away  your  only  daughter,  but  she  never  replied. 

Betrayal!  Those  men  sat  me  down  in  our  rented  apartment  and  then  placed  me  under  close surveillance. It broke me. Beyond repair. I could only let my tears run.

     So sorry about that. But what about your father? Where was he at the time? 

    My father? He was elsewhere in the world, probably picking fights or drinking away whatever bit of life he had left. I don’t think he even knew Mum had passed on. I was the only one left behind, the naive me against the beasty world. That was when life lost all its meaning. Everything went bland, void of color. I simply existed in a vacuum. There was no longer mesince there was no us. Mum took away everything called us with her. I thought her selfish. 

     That’s sad. And how were you able to recover from the—

     I  didn’t.  I  never  did.  I  was  asked  to  join  Mama  B’s  family.  Mama  B  was  the  choir mistress in the Ogbomoso branch of our church, and Pastor proudly vouched for her. She had willingly volunteered to help. Although widowed, Pastor said Mama B was a selfless Dorcas. She  would  nurture  me  like  her  own  daughter.  She  could  even  fund  my  university  education after some while. She would care for me like my mother, he said. But it was clearly a joke to imagine anyone could ever perfectly fit in my mother’s shoes. Pastor asked if I was okay with the  arrangement,  and  since  I  couldn’t  even  feel  myself,  I  had  nothing  to  object  with  or  to.  I relocated to Ogbomoso and became part of her household. 

     And... how was Mama B’s place?  

     Good at first. She treated me well for two sweet months, gave me almost all I wanted, allowed me to sleep till whenever I desired, treated me like her other daughter. But it was all a pre-suffering therapy, and she was a vet at it. Becca, she’d call me, we no dey worry  here o. Why  you  con  dey  look  one-kain?  No  worry,  e  go  better.  Or  she  would  say,  Becca,  why  you sidon for there dey hug yourself? Na we be your family now o, you hear? Other times she called me by my full name Rebecca, and said something sickeningly sweet or thoughtfully caring. I should have known it was all bait. Pastor checked on me twice and saw that I was fine, finer than the previous times, and that now my face was rocking half-smiles. He saw a glimpse of paradise in my eyes during his second visit, and then stopped coming around. It was then that Mama B’s true color was unveiled, displayed in full HD, six-dimensional. It was the start of my real horror.

     Oh, that’s huge. I can only imagine what hell you went through after—

     You can’t. No, you can’t imagine half of what went behind Mama B’s apartment and her big bedroom and its abundant curtains. You have no idea. 

     (Clears throat) Dr. Rebecca, maybe you could share some, you know, we still have few more minutes on air.

     C’mon, you don’t. You don’t want to know how five thousand naira disappeared in the house one day and I was framed for it, and then ended with alligator pepper rubbed into my bushy  down-below  (muffled  laughter).  Aish,  the  pain!  Or  you  want  to  hear  about  how  the growing friendship between her younger son Tunde and I got her suspecting and suggesting I was  introducing  the  poor  little  boy  into  immorality.  So  I  had  to  vacate  my  room  which  was opposite his. The store was cleared and that small heck of a hot room became my bedroom—sorry, mat-room since I used no bed in there.

      I  tell  you,  you  don’t  want  to  hear  my  story.  Not  how  my  menstrual  cramps  meant nothing to Mama B other than a sly means of escaping house chores. E don teywey I don finish to dey do menses, she would say. No be new thing. Dem neva born you sef. Cramps were my personal problem, she said, and I should deal with it personally. It just mustn’t affect chores.Not how I offended her one Saturday afternoon and she called for my Ghana-must-go bag, retrieved my blood-earned WAEC result printouts and lit it. I watched my key into the future  go  up  in  flames.  Thank  God  I  hadn’t  had  money  to  collect  the  original  certificate  by then, or she could have burnt it just the same and left me permanently hopeless. Oh seriously, you don’t want to hear my horrors, you don’t.

     Humm... Doctor, maybe we should just return to how you got the scar on your neck.

     Yeah,  just  about  time.  So,  the  notorious  scar—which  is  fast  becoming  a  tourist attraction  (smiles)—came  to  be  on  a  messy  Friday.  It  was  the  day  I  broke  out  of  Mama  B’s house in the dead and dread of a rainy night. The agony is forever etched into my memory, ever fresh. Maybe because I still carry its souvenir on my neck for the whole world to see, and for people like you to make a deal out of.

     It started at dusk that Friday. The clouds had started gathering and a light wind blew around. I was summoned into Mama B’s room by Sade, her daughter. As usual, Mama B was into her awkward makeup routine, humming Òpómúléró, painting her face into all shades of color riot. She had just adopted a trial-and-error approach into self-learning how to makeup—clear waste of time. I knocked on her door, entered her bedroom in all apprehension, announced my presence with bowed head, but she didn’t acknowledge me. I stood there, anxious about what terrible package she had for me this time. In the restlessness of my waiting, I watched her open her big eyeballs into the mirror she held and tilt her neck east and west as though checking out a golden acne. The bed creaked under her weight, and for most of those days, I secretly wished it would joyfully break one day, which never happened. When she was done, she asked if her makeup was beautiful. I opened my mouth and faked  a  compliment,  forgetting  she  was  only  addressing  Sade  and  Tunde,  forgetting  I  was merely a doormat in her presence. And of course, she reminded me of that at the instant, and almost  slapped  me  for  speaking.  She  successfully  put  me  in  my  place,  before  her  malicious children. Then she made me get 5Alive juice from the fridge, and three glasses—one for her, two for her children. Next, she sentenced me to cook beans for the family, a family not mine. Imagine cooking beans of all foods, and worse, she said not to use the in-house kitchen nor the gas cooker, because we couldn’t afford wasting gas on beans. It must be firewood, she said, whichever way I went about that. But even if she never cared about the headache I complained of earlier, she should have cared for the weather threatening to rain sooner than later. But no, she only cared for her bloated tummy. What more?

     Huh, I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m curious... how did the cooking go?

     Went berserk—if that’s the right word. Minutes after leaving Mama B’s room, I was standing in the backyard, under the leaky roof of her open-shed kitchen. It was made of rusted sheets suspended by two wooden poles fixed against the fence, three sides unenclosed. As I sit here speaking with you, I can see my twenty-year-old self having just gathered wood in the backyard, lit them, put water on the fire and rinsed sorted beans into the pot. I can see my poor self adding salt and folding my arms afterward, like a wet chick, watching the fire glow and glow till it started dulling out on me. Why? I dared not return inside the house until the beans were done. I dared not. Terrible life. (Subdued sobs. Sniffles).

     Oh, Doc, I’m so sorry... maybe we should take a break here and—

     No, I’m fine, okay? Until now I never thought this could get me so emotional. I just can’t help it. But I’ll manage through. I’ll manage.

     All right, if you insist.

     You  know,  it’s  painful  to  think  maybe  I  wouldn’t  have  been  there  that  evening  had death  never  cheated  on  my  mother,  on  me.  Death  is  such  an  unruly  bastard.  Think  of  the savagery it played in letting Father live while Mum was put to sleep... unforgivable bias. If anyone ever needed relief off life, it should be Father—I call him Father because I don’t want to agree he was my Dad. Father aged faster than usual, lost most of his hairs in his mid-years. He wandered around, a failure at everything virtuous. He was ever haunted by his dark ghosts, ghosts of days past, ones that rendered him useless.

       But my mother wouldn’t cast him off. She held fast to him, tried plucking him like a burning branch off the fire. She bent knees in prayer on every high mountain, fasted many days for  his  restoration.  She  wanted  to  witness  his  rescue  from  recklessness,  from  the  obsessions that reduced him to crumps of bread.

      And what followed?

      Father  worsened.  He  came  home  bi-weekly,  and  that  too,  in  the  darkest  hour  of  the midnight. He increased his alcohol quota like he had swallowed a big septic tank. He discretely sold a reserved piece of land Mother bought and was developing in his name, then squandered the  cash  at  the  club  with  his  equally  miserable  cohorts.  Almost  every  morning,  my  mother picked him from the gutter he’d fallen into last night. She despised the shame he rubbed on her, the smears of his ever-sickening stink. But she would still wash him clean and tend him through his hangover. 

       At the peak of Father’s derailment, Mum stopped crying for him. She sucked in all the tears to save some energy for me. Maybe the unshed tears were what fermented and turned into poison,  and  then  pitched  her  blood  pressure  to  an  excessively  high  degree.  But  after  all  the sweat and blood, what did the wicked death do? It took her away, away! She slumped on her way  back  home  from  market  one  unwholesome  evening,  and  that  was  all—all,  the  end.  But why, death, why? Mum never said she needed rest. No, she wouldn’t have wanted her misery to end in the coldness of an unmarked grave. And if death would be so heartless to pet Father and smoke Mum, then it should have taken me too, don’t you think? Wasn’t being late with my mother better than being present and slaved under Mama B’s lethal care?

      Oh, that’s something else... I feel for you, Doc.

      Well,  sorry,  you  don’t  have  to.  As  I  was  saying,  I  stood  under  Mama  B’s  open-shed kitchen when the dark-blue sky started drenching the earth. The initial cloudburst forced me to locate and remain fixed to the only spot with fewer leaks. Heavy blows pounded the rusty roof like some strange legs rushing off in stampede. A wind meandered some stray drops and pulled some  cold  along  with  it,  so  hostile  it  sent  unsettling  charges  through  my  body.  As  the  fire smoldered and emitted smoke, I knew fresh trouble had found me out. That night would never end well. I knew, I just knew.

     Really? What did you do?

     What I did? I retrieved our neighbor’s ax from beside the old cupboard against the fence, rolled out a log of wood and tried chopping it into bits. The fourth strike in, the ax head flew off in fury, a tiny metallic sound trailing it away. It landed with a big splash in the heart of a small pool of muddy water, about a stone’s throw away. 

     The log was yet untorn, its end only resembling loose lips. So unfortunate. I put my leg between the lower and the upper lip, set my hand in place, trying hard to tear it apart. But the log was ever intact, not making as much as a silent crackling. I struggled until I realized I was merely a poor-head set to drain the ocean by drawing off a cup at a time; I wasn’t going to go anywhere far.

     I remember there was an aluminum plate by one of the leaky spots. It made a to-ta-to-ta rhythm sounding more of a mockery targeted at me than an innocent dropping—God, I don’t deserve to be this humiliated. I remember picking the plate in petty annoyance and flinging it into the rain. Then I felt oddly better, though its consequence would later hunt me.

      Gray tendrils kept the atmosphere soupy, so thick and choking. My eyes weren’t spared. Even if I fanned the fire to my last blood, the absence of easily consumable woods would only aggravate the smoky mess. There were no specks. No chopped firewood. No dry bamboo. Extra woods were useless until split. No umbrella. No backup ax. Nobody to help. The dissembled ax was my only savior—and sadly, it was a pity that the savior itself needed rescue.
    Ununiformed  wetness  had  started  gaining  ground  on  my  black  vest.  But  it  no  longer freaked me. I had something better to worry about: how do I get the ax head, especially with
the rain still hardheaded? Entering into the shower meant getting wet all over regardless of how fast I ran. Besides, I wasn’t ready to give the cold further grounds to cause more goosebumps.
But  I  couldn’t  just  stand  with  folded  arms  for  long.  With  the  passive  fire,  the  beans wouldn’t get soft in ages. And if that happened, when would I be free of what chained me to the harsh weather?
So I counted the stakes: two choices, just two. First, to stay off the rain with my cloth fairly dry, but enjoy the eye-torturing smoke and risk unduly long cooking. Second, to get in the heavy shower, dig my right hand into the mushy brown pool, retrieve the ax head, battle the  stubborn  wood,  eventually  reactivate  the  fire,  stoop  to  borrow  some  heat,  and  probably retire into the house on time.
After weighing the odds, I chose the second option. I launched out and returned with drips all over, shivering. My sensitive body reacted as expected, vibrating to the cold’s rhythm.
     My black vest stuck to me and became one in union with my skin. I managed to fix the ax head by patching it with a speck of wood. Raising it high with shaky hands, I exerted my vexation on the wood and its lips gave way a bit more.
    I  think  something  whispered  within  me,  saying  something  like, Rebecca,  you  better reduce your force or you’d get back in the rain. But I’d outgrown caring for wherever I returned to. The worst had happened already, hadn’t it? What I dreaded most had befallen me, so what
else? I struck the wood again and again till the lips parted. I took another and chopped it into bits. Then internal anguish set in with tiredness. I was distressed.
    Stooping down, I fed the fire with pieces from the split. I withdrew some dried corncobs from the cupboard. Smokes persisted. No dried palm kernel husk to use as incendiary. Nothing to fan the fire. After brief grief, I launched into the rain again and retrieved the aluminum plate I’d flung earlier, then fanned the fire to life.

     Oh, that’s some pretty hard time.

     And with the fire back to life and backup firewood now available, I spent the next hour watching the yellowish-red flame lap the blackened pot. I couldn’t be sorrier for myself, for my unlucky fate. I remember staring into the fire as it turned a mirror of horror where I saw myself helpless and defenseless, struggling against my location on life’s maze.

     I was borrowing some heat when I realized I was no different from the bean pot. Just like me, it burnt to satisfy some third-party stomachs. It would have protested if it could, and chose  another  path,  but  could  it?  The  bean  also,  like  me,  wasn’t  happy  getting  boiled  in  the troubled water. And the water too, what made it void of peace? Wasn’t it the raging fire? But the fire also didn’t just rage of its own accord—something or someone turned the wood on, and it couldn’t object.

     We were all victims, scums—the pot, the beans, the water, the firewood, and myself. No one respected our opinions of how and how not to be used and dumped. Being left without a  choice  of  our  own,  do  we  call  that  destiny?  Or  duty?  If  destiny,  someone  or  something predetermined it, and that’s seriously unfair. And if duty, something or someone obligated it, and we were helpless against it. If neither destiny nor duty, then was it just our make?I know the wood wouldn’t have chosen to be cut down and burned to ashes. The pot wouldn’t  have  agreed  to  be  fired  every  day.  The  water  would  have  preferred  its  natural temperature. And I, would never—I mean, never—have chosen to watch myself being reduced to a usefully useless house girl in Mama B’s lower-middle-class home. 

     Huh, life and its prejudices, isn’t it?
    Yeah, life is as unfair as unfair could get. Stray raindrops kept flying in from the three sides unenclosed and I still stooped there. I felt the devil coming to me from under the rain with enough sympathy, then ministering to me, saying something like, Becca, there are two strong rat poisons in the cupboard, pour it all in the beans, then add enough potash. The wicked don’t deserve  to  live,  don’t  you  think?
I  opened  the  cupboard,  brought  out  the  poisons,  but  no,  I couldn’t do it. The devil ministered again: Okay, Becky dear, listen, if you can’t do that, you may consider taking the poison yourself. Your mother must have been waiting in paradise for you all the while, don’t you think? I opened the lid of one of the poisons’ small bottle—I think it  was  Exterminate  Force—and  was  about  gulping  when  I  stopped.  No,  I couldn’t  do  it.  I dropped the bottle and dug my forefingers into my ears. I’ve had enough voices in my head for the night.
  As  though  planned,  a  thunder  struck  not  long  after  and  the  clouds  rumble  under  its plough. The rumble traveled at the speed of light, entered my innermost being and caused a disruption. I can’t explain it, but it seemed to break off whatever bond I had left with Mama B and her tyranny. As soon as I recovered, I felt different. I was now a fiery savior, a no-nonsense warrior, and my only mission was to liberate myself and my co-scums.
    Really? That sounds weird.
    Maybe, and maybe not. I didn’t think twice before I toppled the pot on the fire. It landed on  the  ground,  spilled  some  water  and  quenched  a  part  of  the  fire.  Beans  were  all  over  the place. Something kept chanting in my head, Total freedom! Total freedom! So I reached for the  pot  and  flipped  it  upside  down  to  empty  it.  I  took  the  aluminum  plate,  got  some  dirt rainwater and quenched all the fire. As the eased woods released vapors into the air, I was joyed. I’d just saved the world, saved other scums. I was a heroine. The pot, the beans, the water, the wood, even the fire, were now independent—I didn’t care if it was only temporal. Now that the warrior had only herself left to save, an instant sorrow coursed my being. What the ugly disservice had I just done to myself? 

       Questions rushed into my head in fright: now that I’d pulled off my greatest rebellion stunt, what next? Where would I go from there? But Rebecca, I convinced myself, haven’t you always wanted this? Even dreamed of a revolution bigger  than this? Yes, but  I had  nothing saved up for the rainy night. I must have just pulled the plug on myself. I couldn’t even return to the house to pick my few belongings.

       Huh, seriously? For real?

       Do I look like a joker? 

      Sorry, that’s not what I meant. Please continue.

      Well, the mess I’d created meant I had a few minutes to evacuate Mama B’s property if  I  wanted  to  live  more  days  with  no  disabled  body  part.  Believe  me,  I  turned  my  back  on Mama B’s house with no destination in mind, and with nothing—only myself, the wet clothes assaulting my body, and my anguish. 

     I  pushed  into  the  drear  evening  already  darkening  into  night.  Ah,  it  was  a  disaster, hellish plight—if there’s anything like that. The rain was still up and active, beating me down with my sorrows. I didn’t try taking shelter. I simply walked faster, though on the inside I felt like a zombie going in any direction on impulse. I trusted the wind to blow me on, blow me away to wherever it wanted. I prayed Mama B never realized I was gone until I reached a safe harbor. The atmospheric cold was eating into my sanity and death had never been nearer.

     This would be my end, I mumbled with quivering lips, yet I dragged myself down to Arowomole junction. And as I made to jump over a wide gutter near a culvert, my legs slipped and failed. I lost grip. The culvert had two prongs of iron protruding out of its concrete. Before I knew it, my neck and chin had made serious contact. Oops, the irons did me worse. I would have died on the spot had the prongs not only gashed my neck sideways towards the chin.

     How about a rescue?

     Maybe  God  knew  I  would  be  useful  one  day—at  least  you  know  about  my  Becky Foundation—and planned a rescue for me. I must have fainted in the gutter as my blood leaked and mixed with the dirty water flowing down the drain. But when I returned to consciousness and woke, I was on a small bed in a hospital. My neck was immovable. My body was a total mess.

     To cut the long story short—I have other things waiting on my desk at the office—I was rescued by the lovely Engr. and Mrs. Owolabi, whom then were strangers to me. After I recovered  a  bit,  they  asked  every  normal  question  they  should  ask  a  normal  person  with  a normal background, only that I wasn’t the normal person that could give them normal answers. I didn’t trust them at first. I only wanted to thank them and move on with my misery. But since I owed them my life, I spilled all of my sad stories. They listened with care, then assured me life  didn’t  need  to  be  gray  and  colorless  anymore.  They  proved  there  were  still  wonderful species of human left on earth, that life was not utterly bitchy after all.

      Before they had a reconciliatory meeting with Mama B, they put a call through to her. I was there in their sitting room and the phone was on  loudspeaker. I was asked not to speak a word. Mama B kept spitting fire and brimstone on the line, saying all sorts of rubbish about me.  I  was  even  scared  she  would  turn  these  people  against  me.  On  the  meeting  day,  when Mama B saw my unstable frame and plastered face and neck, she calmed. A little remorse was in her eyes and she muttered sorry at the end. I didn’t say a word, didn’t look twice into her filthy eye, until all deals were finalized between her and my new benefactors.

      Maybe  I  should  stop  here;  you  only  asked  about  my  scar,  not  my  life.  Well,  the Owolabis  funded  my  university  education.  I  got  a  fellowship  for  my  Masters,  got  a  job  in academia, persevered through my Ph.D. and here I am.

     That’s great, really great. So, as it stands now, what does the scar mean to you?

     A lot of things. Some days in the far past, it meant devastation and failure. But for many days after, and till tomorrow, it means survival and victory. When I walk around I’m always aware of prying eyes. I see their piercing balls asking questions, wanting to know why someone as  beautiful  as  me  could  be  flawed  this  much  by  an  underserved  scar.  Well,  no  one  is  too beautiful to be dealt with by life. That’s why my Becky Foundation deals with cases of burns and  scars.  Those  who  need  facial  restructuring,  we  fund  them  with  the  help  of  other philanthropists. And those who are bold enough to flaunt their scars and not pocket it, we egg them on to become who they aspire to be. 

     Scars may heal on the outside in no time, but the circumstances surrounding them may leave you with many undesirables within, internal scars that may take a long time to heal. But they never stop you from achieving greatness. Only you can stop yourself. Life happens to us, we are all scarred but differently. And we must move on. That’s it.

     Wow,  you’ve  given  out  even  more  than  we  bargained  for.  We’re  delighted  you  joined  us  on TalkLife 2.0. And before you leave, any brief advice for people out there, especially the young ones?

     Well... nothing much. I’d just say, in life, prepare for the worst. Yeah, I repeat: always prepare for the worst of the worst. If you do that and it turns out as expected, then it won’t be a shocking surprise that could make your heart fail untimely. And if otherwise you are ready for the worst but the best happens, then it’s a double win. So, prepare for anything at any time. 

     Tides could turn, the switch could flip at the most unexpected of times. And like Frank Sinatra sang, This fine old life keeps spinning around—and of course,
That’s life, funny as it may seem.
    You know, I still wonder: who would have thought there could still be good people left on earth, on this stinking earth? And that a former scum as myself could still be brought up by one of those? Unimaginable.
      And  yeah,  you’d  have  thought  all  of  the  good  ones  died  back  in  the  civil  war.  Now, being a beneficiary, I’m set out to be a benefactor myself, maybe join the few better persons left on this degrading planet. And I think every sensible human should make this their aim.
     Sorry, am I done here? (Laughs). You just made me dig into long-buried skeletons. If you’d excuse me now I need to use your convenience.
    Yes, go ahead please. Thanks for your time.

Author Joseph Babalola has written several poems and fictions over the years. A co-winner of 2018 PIN (Poets In Nigeria) Food Poetry Contest, my pieces have appeared in 101words, Praxis Mag., Kreative Diadem, MONUS2.0, Tall Tales Anthology, K&L Anthology, WordFest'19 Anthology, Poetica Magazine and others.