A cold morning is the time you wear an extra layer of clothing to work – it could be a raincoat, a sweater, or a suit but not if you work in a hospital. A health professional would wear their ward coat from home. I was on mine, and the neatly ironed navy blue shirt tucked into well-creased black trousers stayed underneath. The shiny black tie and black Chelsea Booths stayed showy though. It was foggy and drizzling. I squinted my eyeballs as I walked through the drizzle from my unit to the hospital’s canteen. I was cold in temperature and in spirits. I had just been informed of the demise of my favorite paternal uncle the previous night. I was grieving but being in the healthcare industry means that you deal with your personal issues and emotions at work. So I walked tiredly, more like rolled with the way my feet moved with a lot of internal friction.
Suddenly, I saw light. Light shaped with so much precision of contours, bends, and edges. A creation of a sculptor who must have had an additional degree in architecture or geometry. For some seconds, all I saw was that light glowing in a perfect feminine shape, before slowly, each part settled from a flame’s glow to the dazzling of a spotless skin. Soon, she was fully fleshed. I had gone from squinted looks to a full gaze – highlighting, zooming, analyzing every edge and contour of her body. Her eyes were small and shyly hid in her brows when I zoomed into them. The blue scrubs matched her fair complexion so perfectly. She didn’t wear her ward coat; she carried it in her arms and her black stethoscope hung on her neck. I couldn’t resist such a sight when obviously I was in darkness.
I reached for her. Facing her, I told the woman wrapping the fried rice she had ordered in a plastic takeaway, “Madam, that’s mine. Maybe put another one for her.” She was fazed.
The seller said, “Make I put your own after this one. E don tey wey this small rain dey touch aunty here.”
“Madam na family issue be this. She no gree cook yesterday, so I go carry her own food. Make she continue dey wait.”
“Ohhh. Na your madam. Okay!”
She didn’t know whether to smile or laugh or frown. I could tell from her bemused countenance that she was utterly surprised.
I then looked at her, all smiles, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not hallucinating. I’m just practicing for our little squabbles when we finally get married.”
She laughed out loud. The lady selling food overheard me and started laughing too.
“You actually had me right there. I was so confused.”
“I am glad. You are so perfect that you could use a little jeopardy.”
She chuckled. Her phone rang. She hastily paid for the food and turned to me.
“I am sorry. I have to leave now. My chief is calling me already. But I am happy to have met you. I am Doctor Ifeoma, a house officer.”
“I am Pharmacist Onyekachim, the Chief Pharmacist of the Oncology ward.”
“This is the point when I ask for your phone number and you give it to me so I call you after work, so we can fall in love, so I can experience perfection.”
She laughed.
“08071971438. Don’t forget to call, please.”
“One more thing please.”
She slowed down for me to catch up. I looked into her pupils. They rushed to hide underneath her eyelids.
“You don’t look real. When I saw you, it felt like transfiguration. Just like the disciples that followed Jesus to that mountain, I have lots of questions.”
She chuckled. “Questions like?”
“Why does your skin glow so much? Do you have luciferase protein in place of melanin?”
“Was your figure 8 drawn with a pair of compass?”
“Does the sweet fragrance come with the physique?”
“Were you born or sculpted?”
“Was…..”
She ran away giggling.
In the night, we chatted on WhatsApp till 4 a.m.
Our first date came four days later. I arrived earlier and made the arrangements for my first perfect date. Seven minutes later, she seeped in with graces. Seeped in because her fragrance pervaded the restaurant long before she made her entrance. Soon, she saw me completely sublimed to her airs and beauty. She smiled and walked straight there. Her steps were unreal too. She walked as if she had a digital device placing her legs in a constant angle and pace.
She quietly sat on the exotic chair directly opposite me over the table. I was startled from my daydream. Then, I smiled heartily, and then grinned. I extended my palm over the table, and she cheerfully took it, saying, “Onyekachim. I’m glad we are here.”
“I don’t know but there is something about your humility that astonishes me. I am out here with the sun’s fiercest competitor, and somehow, she is the grateful one. Wow!”
She chuckled. “The sun’s fiercest competitor, really? Really, Onyekachim?”
We both laughed.
“Actually, I would run into semantic problems trying to put it in the right expression but I don’t mean it in the metaphorical sense. You’re not bright – that’s what you would call a star. But stars are aided by stellar reflections. You’re simply incandescent. You make your rays and carry them with you, as a personal aura.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Don’t huh huh me. Didn’t you see the way everyone stopped to catch a glimpse when you stepped into this place?”
“Onyi, I didn’t. Nobody stopped anything. There was nothing extra.”
“There goes that humility again.”
We ate and talked and laughed for the rest of the day. I asked if she would want to taste the pasta I made. She affirmed, so we went straight to my apartment. The Spaghetti was delicious but it wasn’t really the sweetest thing that happened that night.
The next morning, when she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, I followed. She was making jokes about the way my towels were worn out when she pressed the tube of my toothpaste at the center. The tube jutted its tongue excitedly. She rubbed it across her brush and tightened the cover. First, she squeezed my toothpaste at the center. Second, she didn’t clean off the excess at the mouth of the tube. Third, she kept it on top of the mirror instead of the shelf. She was talking and laughing, I was blinking repeatedly.
Later, she took time piecing her perfection together for work. I watched it for the first time. She took time drawing the lines, stroking the brushes, dressing the scrubs… While at it, I became her mirror.
“How does my layering look? Too brownish?”
“No. It is perfect. You are perfect.” Said someone who didn’t know what on earth layering was. But I was sincere, she was perfect.
“I think my edges look a bit edgy, right?”
“It’s neat. You are perfect.” Ask me where edges start and end, I did not know. But again, I didn’t lie to her.
“Is this how this my mirror will function? Everything is perfect. Oh! I forgot you don’t ask your man how you look. They see you the same every day, every time.”
She laughed but I didn’t.
“Are you trying to box me with other men you’ve known, dated?”
“No. I saw that on Twitter”
“And I am the same with every man on Twitter?”
An awkward silence followed. I blinked twice. She looked away. I held her hands and hugged her. She picked her phone to book us a therapy session.
The following week, we sat on separate sofas in the therapy room.
“I watched Father throw our kerosene lantern’s glass at my mother because she said he should have seen the way Okoro was walking around with his wife at the antenatal ward. So I know not to allow my woman make such comparisons even as a joke. I watched him scold mother for cooking with so much firewood even though I never saw him fetch it. I watched Mother chide Father for drinking on a festive day. So I know partners should never give each other a pass.”
The therapist scoffs.
“You still carry that emotionally hurt child inside you.”
“Does anything help you navigate or avoid this anger?”
“It’s funny but I just blink twice and it’s gone.”
“Wait, I always catch you blinking whenever I am eating snacks.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “On the couch. And playing Kizz Daniel’s songs.”
“You need to learn how to blink internally, I mean without your eyelids moving because you’ll need to be blinking a lot for yours now. But what’s the harm anyway? I hope you can blink with speed. So that whenever there is no power, she will play Buga so you both can use your blinking eyelids as a fan.”
—
Chukwuma Henry Onyekachi is a Nigerian pharmacist and poet. His works have been published by/coming up in New Croton Review, Brittle Paper, ReadWrite Strategies, SHIFT, PIN, Poetry Journal, Rice, Rewrite the Stars Review, Alkellan Press, and elsewhere.
Henry won a prize in the PIN Initiative’s Cross-country Poetry Competition 2023 and My Gang and Groove Poetry Contest 2023.
Read – Her Before Now – A Short Story by Cynthia Anjie Nkweti – Cameroon
