Let me tell you: I have grounds for eating pepper soup. Yes, footholds securing the slippery platform upon which I fire my rightly fueled rage. Since we chanced upon ourselves, it has created nothing but a touchable tension felt with the fingers like dust; a dark comedy that makes me wipe my face with toilet tissue and blow my nose to free it of mucus.
I regress to age ten. The day Mama hinted that she would serve pepper
soup for lunch. The winds blew from the East as I sat in the front row in class
in my neatly ironed red-and-white uniform biting the haggard head of my pen. As
we copied notes, some of us flipped our pens over to make the ink flow
smoother. Or we warmed their tips on the poorly cemented floor so our writings
would seem darker. I didn’t care who did what until the bell rang and I bolted
from my seat with the swiftness of a cannon shot, raced down the crescents, and
appeared in our small bungalow off Oroazi Street which stretches into Rumola
Road in Port Harcourt city.
On dropping my schoolbag and peeling off my uniform, Mama served pepper
soup in a large silver tray. I said grace with my eyes open, my fingers
gripping and freeing the pretty new china. Mama had always insisted that I bath
before eating because gems thrived on children. And after bathing, she would
stand akimbo, shoulders slightly tilted, as I presented jottings after jottings
till she belched like a boiling soup.
The pepper soup was hot and tempting. The meat had mingled with the
spices and the onions were cut in fat round curls. There was sliced utazi leaf,
red bits of floating pepper and something I suspected was mashed potatoes in
it. I scooped up a spoonful, blew on it to cool and smiled as the delicious
taste melted in my mouth. Then my face glowed like the furnace of a roadside
corn seller as the curry and nutmeg swept through my tongue as if with
broomstick. Surfing through the TV channels, I eased out of the low wooden
stool onto the freshly mopped marble. And when the sun’s blaze dimmed briefly,
I asked Mama if the soup wasn’t too spicy. I spread out my legs imagining they
were healthy cassava leaves, folded the fringes of my pants washed out with
soap, and said that Papa had missed the moment as it was.
‘Olanma, it won’t be too spicy if your father hadn’t left us for a
secondary school girl who rarely baths and smells,’ Mama said as if reading
through a boring newspaper. Her face was powdered and her eyebrows neatly-lined
and she wore her coffee-brown earrings with pretty amber dots saved for
important occasions. I looked from the TV to the wall paintings; from the
sagged sofa to the dining table. The ground seemed shaky. I felt my way to the
side stool and stood like a portrait. And despite the raw growling in my belly,
I didn’t touch the pepper soup.
I tasted pepper soup again twelve years later. I was in my final year in
the university and had just submitted my project work to my supervisor who
returned fresh from Philadelphia. I knew better than eating pepper soup, but
today was different because my head was filled with fluffy foam. Kenechukwu had
visited me from Port Harcourt city with six red apples knotted together, his
dusty black shoes projecting from his trousers. Ifeoma, my roommate, opened the
door, accepted his presence and read romance to his visit. I was so pleased
with his company that I feared I would burst into an applause startling the
innocent bystanders.
We talked beneath the giant mango tree behind the hostel till the sun
tumbled through the horizon and reddened as if from anger. I put myself in his
hands as we raced down Enugu road the smell of gasoline in the Harmattan heat
making me dizzy. We stopped at a restaurant along Anglican Road, crashed into
the plastic seats and ordered for pepper soup. He kept his urbane tone we
shared the inside jokes passed around and befriended the sugar-tongued boys
partying with pretty-eyed girls. I simply viewed the dry leaves flying about
the porch of a short building; my neatly ironed jeans and polished Loafers.
‘I got a new job in Bonny,’ he said regretfully. ‘My mum is pressing me
to marry her friend’s daughter Ada and I can’t disobey her.’
The hot pepper soup scalded my right arm. It was nothing like Mama’s for
it lacked the fat curls of onion, red bits of pepper, and sliced utazi leaf.
But the curry and nutmeg were epitaphs suspended to commemorate my pain. It was
hard thinking clearly. I may mix things up a bit. I remember saying that ‘he
had made me feel different’ and ‘I really thought we would last.’ I think I said
that ‘I didn’t believe his story’ as if accepting it would ease the pain
squeezing me into a corner. His fingers felt their way to mine then for his
wallet, and when the electricity went out, I took my hand from his, felt my way
to the door, and bolted into the cold evening.
I am cooking pepper soup thirty years later. The onions are cut into fat
round curls and the utazi leaf is ground in a mortar. I lift the steaming pot
and drop it then refill the empty Butterfly stove’s kerosene tank with a small
purple funnel. I am yet to add the curry and nutmeg.
‘Grandma, why is your face as fresh as a weeded farmland?’ my
granddaughter asks. Her radiant face reminds me of the fireflies glowing and
flying about at dusk. She is barely ten but such a benevolent soul that spared
the joys of Lagos city for my graying company in the village.
© 2010 Jill Okpalugo-Nwajiaku. All rights reserved.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jill
Okapalugo-Nwajiaku has been published in Snap online literary journal, Identity
Theory, All Things Girls, Glint and many other poetry and writing journals and magazines.
