FICTION

Like Skeletons Without Skin

By Nwanne Agwu     VOLUME 58 No. 2

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Dogs cried the day your father died. Not the day exactly; they cried the night before that day. Two dogs that I heard but didn’t see because I was too scared to leave my bed, and even if I left, I wouldn’t know how to tell Mama that I was going outside to see crying dogs. I thought of myself lying to my mother after she’d heard me opening the main door that creaks like its hinges are too old and unoiled, the hinges that I won’t put drops of palm oil on because I can’t risk not hearing Mama walk into the house when I am doing something bad that nobody must see. If Mama caught me doing something bad, it would be worse than if I were seen opening the door to watch crying dogs in the middle of the night because she wouldn’t just bark at and scold me; she’d shout my name and call on Jesus to save me while twisting my left ear with her right hand after she had dealt me a heavy, dirty slap.

See eh, I was talking about dogs before I started talking about the door. So the dogs, one was crying, more like howls, and the other was barking. The one that barked didn’t stop; it only lowered its pitch, sounding more tired. The other one that was howling in shrilly notes actually stopped howling and began to sob, more like a baby who’d been beaten and warned not to cry.

In my mind, I imagined them being male and female. The female being the one that howled and sobbed while the male was the one that barked. I was really afraid, but I imagined that the dogs, too, were doing bad things like I do when I’m alone, except that they were doing it together. I imagined the male behind the female with its paws on her back like I had once seen goats do, bleating differently, the male releasing liquid from its penis. So I imagined that the dogs cried because they were caught and beaten for the bad thing they did together. But who would beat dogs for that? Aren’t they supposed to have fun and have more babies?

I was still imagining the crying dogs when I heard footsteps coming toward my door. I closed my eyes and covered my head with the wrapper that Mama gave me when I asked her for a blanket a few years back. I knew the sound was either that of a ghost or that of Mama. I didn’t want to see a ghost, neither did I want Mama to find me still awake at that time of night.

Whatever it was unlocked my door and walked in, pacing so slowly that sometimes I was unsure if I heard a footstep or a shuffle or nothing. I opened my eyes and looked through the washed-out wrapper. It was so near, the thing in my room. It was even standing over me with a candle in its hand. It was Mama, perfectly outlined in the darkness, a wrapper tied over her chest, above her nightgown. She sat on my bed while I pretended to be asleep until I actually slept off.

In the morning, Mama confirmed my fears. Ekene, she called my name. Somebody will die on our street soon.

How? I asked her.

Didn’t you hear the dogs crying in the night? she asked, regarding me coyly, as though expecting me to stutter.

Which dogs? I said. When? Why?

Mama looked startled: her eyes widening, her gaze deepening, questioning. I was surprised. I panicked. My pulse ran uphill, then dropped. I was sure she believed I’d been asleep when she came into my room in the night.

Ekene, I don’t have time for your questions, she said. Dogs cried last night, and everybody heard them.

Ah, I thought it wasn’t real, I said. I heard something like that in my dream.

I was too afraid to watch them from my window because they were just there on the road, standing still and raising their heads to cry into the night. I had to stay in your room until it was all over.

My room? I asked. I must have slept so deeply. I never knew you were there.

I hope nothing happens to us, Mama said, looking at me, straight into my eyeballs, releasing goose bumps on my skin. I pray it goes to our neighbor’s husband, she added. After all, the man is already half dead.



That was how Mama had also started it when your father had newly arrived. On a cold December morning, with a harmattan haze covering the rest of the world outside our window, she had asked: Have you seen your friend’s dad?

I answered in the affirmative and thought that was the end, but after a moment, she asked if I knew what was wrong with him. I replied no.

You mean your friend hasn’t told you what his dad is actually suffering from? she asked. I nodded. Poor boy, she said, I feel his pain and why he would want to keep his dad a secret.

Mama, what do you mean? I said, watching the calm on her face as she tried to feign both concern and disregard with a shake of her head.

See, Ekene, she said finally, your friend’s dad has HIV.

HIV?

No, not just HIV. It’s AIDS, my mother said. Full-blown. In short, he’s back just so his wife can nurse him to his death.

Mom? I said, more a plea for her to stop than a question. But she didn’t act like she had heard me, didn’t even seem like she would want to stop because I was uncomfortable.

That’s the way with men. They leave and never return until they are damaged, completely damaged and hollowed out. Then they come back to you like vessels with no contents. Or more like skeletons without skin. They come back and want to start where they had stopped. They come back and expect you to open your arms and receive them with a hug, with kisses, with a song on your lips singing their praise like ancient warriors returning from prolonged battles. And when they are received, they ask for more: a bouquet of bodies, to give whatever they have returned with, to destroy the little joy that had grown in their absence.

Mom? I said again.

Allow me to speak, she retorted. See, you’ll have to reduce how much time you spend with your friend. She stopped and looked behind her as if someone was coming, then placed a hand on my shoulder, lowering her tone and adding: I want you to cut him off totally if that’s possible for you. She nodded, blinking twice or thrice. Now that his father is back with that disease, he’ll soon give it to him and his mother. And, if you’re not careful, the baton will be handed on to you, and soon you’ll be looking to pass it on to me. I don’t want to die yet.

But when I asked you, after my mom’s instruction, you said that your father wasn’t suffering from AIDS. You said it was diabetes, and then you asked me to look at his leg for a sore the next time I visited, but I didn’t see any sore the many times I visited because your father always wore trousers or tied a bandana over his calf.

Still, I believed you. I always tried to believe you, even when your house began to wear that heavy stench which you claimed came from your father’s untreated sores.

You said he was just there, didn’t do anything, and that your mom never looked him in the face. Sometimes, I imagined the yellow bandana over your father’s calf getting soaked with pus, turning tawny and patchy like it was smeared with honey.

You never wanted him to die. It is crazy that neither you nor your mom liked him yet you never wanted him to die. And he, too, couldn’t choose between pain and death. Couldn’t he have ended it all by himself?

Coming to your house became a task that I couldn’t keep performing. The cheer in your eyes died with your smile, and all that remained was a gaze, sometimes too distant. The sofa in your parlor, too, became dull, as if we hadn’t lain atop each other on the three-seater and tried kissing the day NEPA seized electricity and had us cursing because your laptop’s battery was so weak that it wouldn’t work except when it was charging.

You changed with your father’s arrival, and I prayed your grade in school wouldn’t drop too. I couldn’t stop visiting you even though my mother wanted me to. It was a duty that I owed myself even as my interest in keeping what we used to have declined daily. I blamed it on your father. You used to say I looked like a delicious meal with an inviting aroma. You had the language for everything. But you stopped saying so much. You stopped making awful things look pleasant with your words, words you stole from the books we read and exchanged. I couldn’t help you; I didn’t know how to. I wished your father had never reappeared in your life.

I got tired of asking you about him. Didn’t you notice that? First it was the distance in your eyes when you talked about him, then the discomfort I felt because I knew that I was asking too many questions. But I couldn’t stop caring, couldn’t stop thinking of him, especially on the days when you said he was too weak and couldn’t sit up or stand from his bed, and your mom asked you to stay home and watch over him while she was at work, to call her if his condition worsened.

But did you really care that much about him? You were hardly ever in his room. Isn’t that unfair? You nursed him from your room, standing by the window and watching the world outside, reading and rereading books. You talked to him but never with him. Did you really watch the world beyond your window, or were you lost in the wilderness of your own thoughts and anxiety? Did you ever look him in the eyes, and what did you see? Was it remorse for abandoning you and your mom? Was it anger or hatred toward you?

My mother often forgets that I’m a boy, that I’ll become a man someday. She talks about men as if we are both women, as if I’m heartbroken like her. One day, she said to me: Ekene, be mindful of all these men around you. They aren’t any good for you. All they want is to take a part of you, leaving you with a burden you’ll bear until it starts getting lighter, then they’ll return with a heavier one.

Her advice was confusing. I thought she was only talking about your father until the evening I overheard her on the phone shouting at someone: Next time you show up at my door, I will have you arrested and sued for assault! You unremorseful fool! Listen, I don’t deal in threats. I make promises and I keep them. Show up at my door again, and you’ll bleed to death in a cell even before the court’s clerk learns of your name.

I thought it was a lover, a swindler, or someone disturbing her. But when I told you the next day, you suggested it could be my father. I never gave that a thought. All I knew about him was from Mama’s stories about his disappearance when I was two. She said he had gambled away all the money he had and had stolen, as he left, the valued jewelry and wrappers she had inherited from her mother.

I guess my father was worse than yours. At least he didn’t steal from you as mine did. Your father only came back sick. Who knows what mine would have brought back if he ever returned?

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NWANNE AGWU is from Ọkpọsị, Nigeria. He has twice been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Isele Nonfiction Prize. Nwanne has been or will be published in West Branch, The Republic, Isele Magazine, Southword, The Mukana Anthology of African Writing, and elsewhere. On X, he is @NwanneAgwu.


VOLUME 58 No. 2