And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode

Author:Ani Kayode
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2023-05-17T16:37:34+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

August’s palms were sweaty as he sat in his father’s car. Occasionally he would turn to his father and nod or murmur in agreement to show he was listening. His father was talking slowly as he drove. They started in Achara and made their way down Agbani Road, and then they turned around, back through Independence Layout and the suburbs of New Haven. August listened. If for nothing but the static silence that existed between the words.

“Your mother built this one in eighty-four,” his father was saying as they pulled up to a brown two-story apartment building. As they made their way into the compound to greet the tenants, August’s father seemed even less at ease than normal. The tenants clustered close, shaking his father’s hands and then August’s.

“Is this your son? He’s so grown. Look how big he is,” they said, shaking August’s hand and fussing over him much like his sisters did, wide smiles plastered on their faces.

“Do you remember me?” some of them asked.

“No,” he said each time, wishing they wouldn’t stand so close.

“Oh, but how would you? You were so little the last time I saw you.” This they said while gesturing, so August would understand just how little, knee-level, calf-level. “Welcome, our son. Welcome,” they said.

“I just wanted to show him around,” August’s father said.

“O di mkpa. Very important.”

August tried to memorize the addresses of the houses, not of need but of a desire to be somehow competent. He imagined that knowing the addresses of all his father’s properties was a competent thing to do. He could already imagine doing this later in life, owning those buildings, and it made him feel nothing. He wished he felt something, excitement or pride perhaps, for what his parents had achieved, but it was like everything else, a vast expanse of nothing. He listened to his father’s voice and noted the names his father mentioned and chided himself silently for not caring.

At the house on Agbani Road, he thought he saw Segun. He wanted to call Segun’s name even, but shouting names wasn’t something he felt comfortable doing. He simply stared, hoping Segun would turn and see him. And it was a good thing he did because it wasn’t Segun. The boy had an uncanny resemblance to Segun though, the same hair, the same slender frame with arms that stretched out forever, the same fair skin the tone of light honey. He even thought he heard Segun’s laugh. He was being asinine, August decided. For the rest of the day, he tried not to think about Segun.

“That’s it,” his father said. “We’ve gone to all of them.” They drove back in silence and August wondered how Uzoamaka had convinced their father to do this, if she had begged their father, just like she’d begged August to spend time with their father.

“It would help lighten him up, to spend time with you,” she said. “It will help him recover. We all have to be here for him.”

He did not feel like he was a son being there for his father.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.