MY BOYFRIEND'S NAME IS FRIDAY 

  1. 

 It was in 1996 that most things happened. I think it is three things that happened because it is three things I wrote about. It was this year when the world had shifted its lights from the grappling hands of tyranny in 1996. When we stopped talking about unseen democracy. The military was still doing its thing. Abacha was folding human rights like Ákwà Ocha- neat not to leave a stain, careful to stain the people. The world had stopped and shifted its focus to a stage in Amakohia. At least I knew the world I lived in had. People like me had joined a crowd to burn the properties of elites, destroying buildings because we had stopped to listen to one voice that had been beheaded. It was then in the mass crowd in Amakohia stoning a yellow and Blue building, setting fire to the building that I had looked at him closely in that heat to see he had become thin- he looked frail and when he yelled, I was afraid- too afraid that he would break. 

It was around this time that I had started to write this book, it was this time that consciousness had mattered and I peered too often into people's faces, and stayed too long in conversations, It was this time too that he worried about the becoming of his people- he sent money home to buy the papers, he read the news and waited like a patient worried about the outcome of his results. 

It was in 1996 that he became. He had become in the way I could identify. It was in this year that his people had fit into being called a "State". I remember October first like it was his Birthday, Abacha's voice ringing through our rickety radio in our small apartment in Nekede. He had jumped off the bed, slammed the fax on the floor, and said with tears in his eyes 

"We finally are." "Ebonyi is born."

But it was this year that our love sat on a rope.

                    2.

The women in his place have started to pick wrappa to dance for the Governor's project, he said they had built a borehole in Kpiri Kpiri and his mother would chair the women to dance a dance where they stamped their feet. He said they have picked Ákwà Holland but his mother says Mkpuru Uka is an alternative for the women who can't afford it. He said that the wrappa looked like what a designer had done to get going. He says it is the best they can afford from their job of mixing sands and jumping into moving vehicles to work on farms. He describes them like he knew their names- it is his people, after all, I would not describe the women in Nekede like that- his apt accuracy and the surging anger to say the women are more and are deserving of more. I like that he picked the details and dropped them. He said, "They will be dancing." Then he paced and then he said again "They will wear wrappa Women who have to climb buildings to cook soup."

"When will it all stop?" He turns and watches me straighten the bedspread. The sheets always looked like the ground Okuko had left its imprint on after we had made love.

"Maybe when we all see these necessities as our entitlements. It's our right."

He picks up the phone to call someone and I know if it's his mother, he always sits to talk to her. His stubble is three days or four days old. His short is grabbing the lean part of his thigh.

"I will tell Mama not to join them. She can't join them."

I look out of the window, sewing in the loose ends of my pants. The morning dew had settled on the leaves calmly like it took solace in living before the sun would set to heat it off. It was purely beautiful- in the way I was reminded of the non-permanency of our stay.

"You are going to sew that?"

He looks at me waving off the answer he knows already.

I would give him thousands of reasons why things should never go to waste.

He said they would gather at the government house, his people would bring drums and masquerades, the women would form songs, their white handkerchiefs would be flung in the air, and his mother would be there. 

"This is one of the reasons they call us Bush"

"It's everywhere Friday. It's everywhere. It's the system. We vote for them. They become. They give us and we praise. "

"Uto, this is the reason they call my people bush. An Abakaliki man is equal to the bush. Who buys a wrappa to praise a government for providing a borehole? Onye? "

"They might have other reasons but this can't be it, Friday."

He turns off the rickety radio on our reading table and picks a copy of a book I didn't see, It should be WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT or one of those classics he never stops talking about but he flings it, till the pages flap. He turns to watch me again, sewing in the loose ends of my pants. He figures that I can feel his eyes on my body and I know the questions that follow this. He always does this, find the news from his people and ask about what is happening. He wanted to know if the State's capital had been burning, if the harmattan dust had settled on his mother's pot or if the market was still the same, if the culture still looked the same, who said what, and if his Father still ate palm oil and abala.

He knew his people more than I did about mine. He could write about them. He could describe their madness, he knew their growth, he could grapple in his embrace their foolishness - stone it at them and shout their madness but he would love them. I knew nothing about Nekede not in the cautioness that Friday knew his people. 

"Do you ever think you wouldn't have fallen in love with a man like me?"

"Which kind of man are you?"

"The one who State is waking up to growth."

"Every state is... 

"You know what I mean?" He scoffs and faces the window.

"I love you, Friday."

"Maybe till it sinks. I love you."

His back has become a husk. He bends too often under the light to read pages of accounting concepts - going concern theories of men he says his fathers had invented the theories. He had sent letters on the becoming of the state- joined in writing articles he said would get them the attention it needed.

And now while he faced Nekede and peered into the emptiness of the street in this rescinding awakening of the road, the darkness resting on families with dreams and the night being the wakening for others like him, I worried he thought too much about what to give back to his place. The yearning hunger to rewrite the stereotype and fold them like paper.

I drop the torn pants to kiss his back, turn his face till his eyes meet mine, waggle my eyebrows till I can see him smile, and slowly my lips rest on his, picking the doubts that follow it, swallowing the questions and answering them. I kiss his lips gently sucking our doubts, I feared for my people too- we looked to the world as ritualists. The Otokoto case confirmed that. I feared. He doesn't call his mother again. I don't think he would.

                   ***

I do not know how to describe Nekede. Not the way you read an expert do so. Like someone would say of America or Friday would say of Abakaliki. I can't say if the sun had gone down in the way it angered people or what it feels to have lofty dreams and walk barefoot on red stones tickling the feet like in Abakaliki. But, I know the day Ebonyi turned three, our little apartment had beamed with light. The trees had waved in a small lightening of the sun and it had rested gently on the papers but Friday's light shone brighter. Friday had the papers splattered like tasty snacks on the bed. He squirmed in a frantic move to gulp the whole news at once.

" We turn Three Today."

He reads the papers noisily and hits the paper to strengthen and see the words. He knows I hate to hear him read - he sounds like ebe a nọ rụọ moto but the musicality in his voice makes me settle.

"Growth has become key, Uto. 

We have come far. You know men like Elechi did a lot for us."

"Freedom isn't always easy. It took the Israelites a lot to go away."

"But we are three now. I would love to go home. I haven't been home since we got Ebonyi. I want to see my people."

He leans forward under my burst and grabs a copy of WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT. He turns the pages and looks at out of the window like he's searching for someone.

"I will wait."

"Huh?"

"We will start making babies after your first book is out."

"What if it takes long."

"I am not in a hurry to add to a swelling generation."

I want to lean forward and tell him how inadequate I felt even after reading the books from other writers, how I could not say I was Imo enough because the language was a bitter pill when I spoke it. How the copies of Imo Times on my shelf were read over and over to gather stories about a place I hadn't been born in. I could not describe the setting and fear had gripped me to think that I couldn't write the story of this place as much as he could but I swallowed the inadequacies and watched him pack the papers.

" I will leave on Wednesday."

I slip back into the duvet and lose myself in the music of Osedebe. 

               2.

Formula: Leaving home + Coming back = A changed man.

Friday's people looked like they must have solved this math a long time ago before Friday could crawl. They must have sat at a table, gathered the Umunna, asked for opinions, collected like terms, ruled out even numbers, and finally had an answer. It must have been Friday's mother who said "Dokinta ka ọ ga bu' and later settled for the family letting him be what he wants.

And so the maths was. Friday is born. Friday grows. Friday goes to school. Friday fills JAMB form. Friday finishes mahadum. He goes for NYSC. Friday marries a woman the family likes. Friday finds a job and Friday's wife gives birth. 

But now, Friday's people looked like they had been flogged with sharp echara for failing at their formula. They look like roughly tied ichafu for an Ogbako. They look like a spoilt moto and their voices have lost the texture of a person who won. Their eyes follow the undertakers as they raise their son's body but more consciously their eyes follow the originator of this formula. I looked at Mama and she could be read. Her eyes said to Papa " If your sperm hadn't would we be burying?"

" If they throw that boy up again. I will tell them I threw him up when he was younger. "

It was Friday's mother loosening the ends of her white lace and consciously unlike others not letting the wrappa be stained by the mud.

How does fashion meet grief? When you look at Mama you would know.

I see what Friday has always said. If you leave your home you will find the urge to write about it and not live under her callousness of the belief that you can't. He never brought me here. I only came here in his dreams- the ones he jerked up the bed and said things about this place. It's his home. It looks like dust, the grass is greener, women work on buildings, and everything is budding. I don't think Nekede would look the same- no place is ever the same.

"We will soon have our own ruling us. We have come too far to be led by these military men. We shall have an executive Governor soon." His words flash through me while I hear the others weep.

"How did he die?"

A woman at my back asks Friday's sister. That should be Amaka or Chi, I don't know but she looks like one.

"O ra ura. He slept." She breaks off crying alongside Mama who curses the village people.

Friday slept. He just slept. It did not look like something he would do. Just sleep and die. It did not look like he had chosen that as a way to die. One day in Nekede we read a story to each other. He said he would die the kind of death that wasn't easy- a death that he felt he was snatched. Something like an accident or his people poisoning. Friday did not just sleep.

Mama was right. His village people must have done something.

                    ***

I start to pick the remains of Friday from the expressionless face of his mother. I see she is adamant about grief. She still wears the material Friday had bought that day in Ikonowa Market. 

"You say you went to the same school."

Her English is spoken with too much effort to make me comfortable.

"Yes. Ozigbo mmadu ka o bu"

"You are from Owerri" 

"Yes ma"

She kept off the conversation when His father came. 

" Dege."

"Thank you"

I fumble with the thoughts of asking how he died. If he told them of me. If he had a note for me. if he said anything or he just slept. How did he sleep? With his eyes open?

"We don't have many stones like this in Nekede. It's always sandy."

I did not know what to say but I guess mama liked me.

"We eat them. The stones. We eat them. "

She looked like she was going to say more to waive my confusion.

"We sell them. It's for health. " Chi said

 I remember her name now.

I liked the smallness of the family- the Cupid crux to sustain themselves.

"We had farmed for him to be in Owerri."

"I thought we would win. The farther he was, the lesser harm he was likely to get."

"It must have been my Uwa failing me "

A child comes off running and shouting after an airplane. He calls it eloplane and sings along with his age mate. He switches to his friends to sing "Abakalki is our home. " I heard that from the radio this afternoon. 

He switches again to play ball. He would become like Friday with lofty dreams of helping his people, of wanting to change the narrative. He looked small, small that I thought the older ones would swallow him with the ball.

"Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Bia saa ahụ"

His mother chases after him.