Non-Remembrance

I have a confession. I did something, something you would have probably disowned me for had you found out before you died. 

***

About six months ago, I woke up and my legs were heavy. It felt like I would sink into the ground, or even below that. Try as I did, I could not remember where I had been the previous night. I brushed it off. I’d remember eventually. As I swung off my bed, I caught sight of a sticky note taped to my bedside table.

Remember, two pills every morning and evening at six, it read.

Given the fact that it was in my chicken scrawl of a handwriting, I should have remembered why I wrote that and what it meant. Did I get drugs to treat malaria and forget? Underneath the note stood a bottle of pills. My stomach twisted at their appearance, tightly packed capsules of brown, green and black muddled together in each. The first thing to come to my mind was weed. But since I would never tell myself to take weed, and I was most likely just disoriented as it was morning, I decided to gulp down the tablets and get on with my day. 

As I made breakfast and got ready for work, a buzzing, lethargic feeling began to flow from my neck and spread throughout my body. It got so bad that I decided to spell my pots to heat up and cook my spaghetti by themselves. Even drawing the runes made me tired.

By the time Andrew arrived to take me to work, I was dragging my feet to get into his car. Not even Andrew’s feigned annoyance could get me to pretend to hurry up. His expression at that moment actually reminded me of you. The way he pursed his full lips, how his eyes shone just a little bit brighter, and his mouth trembled with barely concealed laughter.

“I wonder how you still have a job when you’ll be moving like a snail in the morning.”

I didn’t have the strength to respond as usual, so I simply smiled, closed my eyes and sighed as my head hit the headrest. 

“Joshua? Are you okay?”

The concern in Andrew’s voice made me open my eyes. The mirth had dropped from his face, and his brown eyes were filled with worry. 

“I’m fine,” I replied. When his expression didn’t let up, I leaned over the armrest and kissed him. I learned that from you, you know, how you would smile and laugh when Mummy asked you if anything was wrong.

The kiss didn’t work perfectly, though, and Andrew kept giving me glances as he drove. Exasperating as his worry was, I decided to put it to good use.

“Did I tell you I was going to get any drugs yesterday?” I asked.

Seeing as he was my ride everywhere I went, I expected him to know about my whereabouts and where the drugs came from. You can imagine how my unease spiked when he frowned and said no. 

“Why do you ask?” he asked

It didn’t occur to me that I should not have told him. Had I known what I now do, I probably would have kept everything to myself. But I told him about the note, pills, and my non-remembrance.

“Ah,” he exclaimed when I was done. “That’s like the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. Sha, you said it’s in your handwriting, and it’s not like you’d poison yourself. Maybe you just forgot. I’m sure you’ll remember eventually.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I just nodded. Everything would make sense eventually, I thought.

Eventually, we reached my office, and Andrew kissed my forehead before I stepped out of the car. The action made me smile. I took a second to appreciate him, his wide shoulders, arms, beautiful brown eyes, and the scar that split his left eyebrow in two like a pirate. 

“Don’t let it disturb you. I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said. “And if you still feel tired, you’d better go home.”

I sighed dramatically and swore that I would; the little smile on his lips said he knew I was lying. I waited till he had driven out of the parking lot before drawing a rune on my suitcase so it could lift itself and follow me.

All through lectures, it was like I was a functioning alcoholic, only instead of alcohol, languor was my vice. I was suddenly acutely aware of every working cell in my body. But I didn’t know what was causing it, and all I wanted was for the day to be over so that I could rest it away.

“Are you sure we won’t just postpone?” Andrew asked that evening. “You look so tired.”

“I’m not that tired,” I protested. 

He let go of my legs and trousers, and I struggled to keep myself upright at the edge of my bed. He raised one eyebrow, and I couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his head at me, but ended up helping me finish dressing. Honestly, he should have known that I would not have agreed to stay home for any reason. Not after your last stroke, when your doctor said the next one could kill you.

No matter the oddness of the day so far, and my malfunctioning body, I wasn’t going to miss our weekly visits.

I don’t really remember the journey to the house, probably because my eyes were closed for most of it. The next thing I remember was Mummy’s tired smile as she opened the door to let us in. She felt warm as she hugged Andrew and me. 

Her cornrows looked nearly three months old, and her lips were so dry they were nearly chapped. It took me years to notice how the situation with you sucked the life out of her, and that evening I was unable to unsee how she had gone from the woman who speed-walked into church even when we were early, to this slow-moving shell of a person.

I don’t know if it is right to say such things to a dead man. Probably not, but it’s the truth, and that’s the one thing you never compromised on.

Andrew and I greeted Mummy as we stepped through the door.

“Good evening,” she responded. “Why do you look so gloomy?”

It is comforting to know that there will still be someone to immediately criticize me, now that you are gone. I brushed aside her concern with a smile and told her I was fine. She didn’t pursue the interrogation further, but I could feel her eyes on me as I walked slowly to the kitchen.

You know this next part, but I’ll say it anyway, because maybe you have been struck by non-remembrance in death, like I am in life. More importantly, I need you to see it from my perspective.

I heard you before I saw you. The sound of your crutches on tiles had been your calling card for the past ten years, a soundtrack to the bleakness of our family’s situation. It has lasted longer than my memories of you walking normally and painlessly, which end at ten years old.

Right then, I felt a sharp pain in my head. I frowned and tried to massage away the pain. Something about that didn’t seem right, that precise knowledge of when your legs stopped working. 

Then again, a lot of things didn’t feel right that day.

I tried to shake off the feeling and went to greet you once you reached the bottom of the stairs. 

“Daddy warang’a,” I said, with a smile that felt strained. Inside me, my thoughts were a jumbled mess. My head was starting to hurt. Why did everything feel forced? What was this itchy feeling of wrongness that made me want to pull my skin off?

“Ah ahn, you didn’t say you were coming today,” you said, smiling widely.

I laughed and rolled my eyes a little. “Daddy, I told you last week that I’d be busy tomorrow, so I’d have to come today.”

Andrew laughed when he saw the realisation dawn on you, and your eyes immediately went to him. Your smile widened. My chest warmed. I would have still been with him regardless of your opinions, but I am happy that you loved him, sometimes even more than me, your biological son.

I let the two of you get together and catch up, and went into the kitchen to meet Mummy. Luckily, she didn’t forget that we were coming, so there was enough food for all of us. Thankfully, it was pounded yam and not the bland acha the two of you were fond of eating.

As I helped her serve it, I noticed the clock on the microwave read six oh two, and I panicked slightly. The panic subsided when I reached for my pocket and felt the bottle of pills. I popped two in my mouth just as Mummy exited the store. She frowned as she opened the fridge.

“What’s that for? Are you sick?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. I did not know if I was sick. I did not know what the pills were for. So why was I taking them? Especially when the uncomfortable buzz from the morning resurfaced.

“I’m fine. It’s just small headache.”

From her frown, she didn’t believe me. 

We walked back to the living room together, where Andrew was regaling you with funny factory stories, eliciting wheezing laughter from your old self.

As we walked, the buzz from the pills intensified, and I massaged my temples discreetly so Mummy did not see and worry. We reached you, and I took the seat opposite you. 

The buzzing exploded into a ringing sound.

Then your eyes shifted from Andrew’s to mine, you winced as you shifted your legs to be more comfortable, and tears began to fall from my eyes.

The room fell silent. Slackjawed, you all stared at me with wide eyes. I couldn’t control myself. Fast and silent, my tears flowed.

Then the memories came, and I wept. 

They were of you. You, jumping to wash the roof of your big red jeep. You, walking me to the yellow and green gate of my primary school, scolding me to hurry up because you were late for an appointment.

Many more flashed, and they were the same: my father, walking on his own two legs.

I hiccuped through my tears as I watched you move in my mind without any limp, walking stick, crutches or walker. 

Mummy rushed to my side.

“Joshua, what is it? What happened?” she asked.

Her hands were rough on my skin, trying to find the cause of my pain and ease it. Her wrapper had come loose at her waist, but she either didn’t know or didn’t care. You looked on in concern, your body tense and coiled as if to jump with the strength of ten men and comfort me too. 

You could not.

My tears fell faster. 

I wiped, and Andrew wiped, and Mummy wiped, but it did not stop. Not until I took deep, calming breaths and forced my feelings down. But I did not do this until I registered the absolute frustration in your facial features, your lips tight, all the lines in your face pronounced.

I saw it on your face, and Andrew and Mummy’s faces. You all wanted to know what was wrong. So did I. A thought whispered at the back of my mind. If something was wrong, why wasn’t it being fixed by the damn pills I couldn’t remember getting?

Andrew took me home shortly after that, because I begged him to. Not with my words, but with my eyes. I could see how much my strange outburst hurt you. I knew you had questions. 

But at that moment, all I was thinking of was myself, and my need to understand why I had become a weeping mess when I looked at you.

Andrew offered to stay over that night, and I didn’t have the strength to decline. But I couldn’t have him stay with me in my room. So, I left him in the parlour, locked my bedroom door, and drew a rune to lock in every sound. Then I crumpled to a heap and wept until I slept with a raging headache.

***

I have always been impatient, especially where there is confusion and there doesn’t need to be.

Do you remember the first time I tried to be a magic tutor? You’d had to pull me aside when my student’s hand started shaking. Her name was Mary. I didn’t see why it was taking her weeks to perfect an incantation I had mastered in two days. You’d told me I needed to let her figure it out for herself, instead of reminding her of all the things she had tried to learn the spell, all of them failed attempts.

The morning after my weeping fest, I did two things. First, I went to get the pills tested. Because at least I should know what is going into my body. Mummy didn’t raise me that way. But the main reason was that something strange happened after I skipped them that morning.

I could remember that I’d cried the previous evening. I couldn’t remember why. Every time I tried to think about it, all that surfaced was the name of my Nursery 2 teacher, Mrs. Philomena.

What a useless memory.

Then I took the pills. The previous day’s buzzing lethargy returned, and Mrs. Philomena’s name disappeared from my memory. But at least I now remembered why I was crying. 

All this is fairly easy to describe now, but it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside while my skin remained intact, not even letting me see the torn pieces to fix. I may not have known what was happening, but what I did know was that the pills were the things making shit happen.

This time, I made sure Andrew was with me. For posterity, I turned on my location tracker, put a tracking rune on Andrew’s car, and then we drove off. We went to Dorcas’s lab, the one in Sokale.

“Joshua!” she screamed when she saw me. It’d been a while since we hung out, her busy with her research on bush babies’ biology, and me busy teaching at the university.

“I need you to help me test something,” I said, and pulled out the pill bottle to show her.

Her face scrunched, and she laughed. “Test something or lace something?” she asked.

Her laugh died when she saw that I did not join her, nor did Andrew. My hands shook, and I shoved the bottle at her. 

It didn’t take long to get to her lab. I was grateful for that. I needed to understand what was upsetting the balance of my life. I needed things to go back to normal.

Andrew held my hand throughout as we waited for Dorcas as she flitted between tables and equipment, sometimes going out to other labs. After about two hours, she stood in front of us. She looked harried, her lab coat stained green and black.

“Where did you say you got this from?” she asked.

My chest tightened. This was the part that still baffled me. How could I have a drug whose origins I did not know? 

“I lost the label, I can’t really remember,” I rep(lied).

Dorcas’s face was blank as she handed me my bottle back. “It’s just simple memory adjustment pills, but this particular one is from Mallam Bello. It has sand from the afterlife, and it’s only him that uses it.”

If you were here, listening to me, I know how your face would change. My face did too, similar to yours, I think. I stopped breathing, my lips dropped, and my eyes widened. Andrew withdrew his hand from mine.

“Why would he have something from Mallam Bello of all people?”

He was facing Dorcas when he asked the question, but I knew his words were pointed at me. My heart stung at the suspicion layered with confusion, but I was just as lost. And I didn’t blame him for his suspicion. I tried to think of what possible reason I could have had for going to visit such a man.

Dorcas’ fingers snapping in my face brought me back to attention. “I’m not going to ask any more questions. But if you have any, I suggest you visit him.”

The look on Dorcas’s face made me look away from her. The disappointment there made me feel dirty, and I didn’t want to see it.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

Her mouth opened like she wanted to say more, but then she just nodded and pushed her glasses up.

“Good luck,” she said.

***

As Andrew drove to Mallam Bello’s shop, I couldn’t help my thoughts.

If it was true that these pills were from him, it meant that I had no memory of the last time I had visited his shop, probably alone, and the thought made me so afraid that I couldn’t breathe.

For all the stories of Mallam Bello and his devilish, unscrupulous ways, his shop appeared boring. It’s like a normal pharmacy, stacks of potions and concoctions stacked on shelves behind the glass counter in the middle of the shop. Even the man was unassuming.

It was not until I squinted and looked beneath the surface that I started to see everything from the stories: the upstairs lab filled with indentured spirits of all forms churning potions in pots, hanging carcasses of sacred mami wata, dripping divine blood into vials to be sold to the highest bidder, and herbs even my PhD textbooks didn’t know.

I adjusted my vision back to normal and discreetly drew a protection symbol in Andrew’s palm with my index finger.

When we walked in, he looked up from his phone. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes. Before he could say anything though, Andrew slammed the pills on the counter. 

“What are these?”

Mallam Bello ignored him. It’s hard to ignore Andrew, hulking as he is. And the man himself is slim, his green kaftan adding more body to his small frame. The Mallam’s one good eye fixated on me, and a tingling began at the base of my spine.

“You,” he said. “Why did you come back?”

When I heard those words, the tingling spread to my whole back. Finally, I was getting some answers, if in the form of questions.

“What happened when I came here the first time?”

That was not the question I wanted to ask. Or maybe it was, but I was too afraid to hear the answer. Luckily, my mouth has always tended to open involuntarily when I’m nervous.

The man smiled, and it looked pitying. I ground my teeth. I hated that smile.

“You came to buy that.” One gnarled finger pointed at the bottle still clenched in Andrew’s fist, who I could tell wanted to throw it at the old man’s head.

“Why?” I asked.

The man looked me up and down, and it felt like a slimy scanner was passing over my body, reading every inch of it. A rectum inspection would have felt less invasive. 

“You don’t remember?” He asked, and now he looked worried. And when a man with his kind of reputation looks worried about you, you know there is something fundamentally wrong.

“Ever since he started taking your pills, it’s been hard for him to stand, and he’s been crying anyhow, and remembering and forgetting things at random! Answer him!”

Andrew’s words were a paltry description of everything I’d experienced in the past two days, but it was still enough to silence the Mallam.

“No one has ever reacted this way to the pills,” he said at last to me, still not looking at Andrew. “The most that has happened is mild migraines for a while until they’re all gone and the full effect takes place.”

“Unless…” he trailed off, his one eye scrutinising me intently.

He tapped his chair. “Come and sit down,” he said.

I had to shrug off Andrew’s arm to go there, and it felt like I was shrugging off the last of my protections. I was going to sit in the chair of a man whom I had apparently met before, but couldn’t remember meeting, who had given me pills that made me lazy, lethargic, and messed with my memory.

The minute I sat down, I began to gasp for breath. It was like I had plunged into a pool without taking a deep breath. My vision of Mallam and Andrew grew hazy, and the shop went dark. It felt like it lasted for hours before I finally felt normal again.

When I opened my eyes, I could see fear on Andrew’s face, and I smiled a little to reassure him.

That smile died when I looked at Mallam Bello. Gone was the genial old man with his little smiles. In his place was the Mallam Bello from the stories. His mouth was in a straight line, his jaw clenched so tight that veins ran from the corners of mouth to his forehead. I shrank into the chair, afraid his eye would vaporise me on the spot.

To my surprise, he turned to Andrew. 

“This man is a liar.”

His words were clipped, like he wanted to do anything else but talk to me. But the problem was that I didn’t know what he was talking about, I didn’t know anything, and the person who most likely had the answers was calling me a liar.

So, I got angry too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked in a tone I hoped was measured. Looking back, from the way his nostrils flared in response, I know I wasn’t as controlled as I thought. Then again, how could I be?

He waved his hand over me without turning from Andrew. 

“He told me he wanted to remember what it felt like to see his father before he was in pain.”

And my world shattered.

***

I never told you this, but one night at a sleepover, I broke down. It was because of you. We were sharing things we were grateful for, and things we wanted to happen, when I started thinking of you, and the tears started falling. I hate crying in front of people. You don’t know this. Were you here, you would call it pride.

But that day, I wept like I hadn’t ever before. It felt like a cruel joke. How do my only memories of you involve a limp, a walking stick, crutches, or a walker, accompanied by a wince as your legs move? You’re my father. Why should the only memories I have of you be ones where you want to comfort me, but can’t because you are too consumed by your own pain? 

I realise how selfish I must sound. At least you were alive. You moved around, going to work every day till the day you died. But there is a specific, sharp ache that comes from realising I will always remember you in pain, and know that there is not even a dystopian or mystical reason for it. 

I hated it, I hate it, that memory deficiency that makes me turn into a mess when it hits at the wrong time.

So, I decided to do something about it.

I am telling this from my perspective because when Mallam Bello told me, there was a high-pitched ringing in my ears, the kind that came before all my panic attacks. 

A day before I woke up with the pills, I had gone to see Mallam Bello. I know you warned us never to see him, considering all the rumours of shady spirit deals and hard, bloody bargains that the government had outlawed. But I knew that for what I wanted, I wanted the best. And Mallam Bello is the best.

I told him I wanted to remember what it was like to see you walk on your own two feet. No limp, walking stick, crutches or walker. In response, he gave me the pills. I’d heard of his particular, and illegal, brand of memory stimulates. Apparently, so powerful that they could make you remember your time in the womb. They were supposed to work gradually, awakening the memories you desired until you didn’t need the pills anymore.

Yet, they hadn’t worked on me. They hadn’t given me the one thing I wanted most in the world.

As Mallam Bello described our visit to me and Andrew that day, I felt myself unravel. Suddenly, I was back at that sleepover, my non-remembrance tearing me apart. Only this time, there was no hope. I knew now that I would never remember you walking.

Mallam Bello didn’t care that I was falling apart, though. 

“You lied to me,” he repeated. This time, to my face. “You said you don’t remember a time before your father couldn’t walk. But what you really want is an ideal, unsullied version of him,  a pain-free, perfect version of him that never existed. ”

“Don’t you think I know that?!”

My voice was loud in the closed store. I could hear myself breathing. I could hear everything. My body was hot, and tears pricked my eyes. I couldn’t believe I had screamed. But I couldn’t stop screaming.

“I know! I know!”

I kept on screaming that phrase until I couldn’t anymore. My words fell behind an incoherent wall of tears and sniffles that wracked my already weak body.

“I was there, I know I was. I remember him flying out for treatment. That was when the pain started. Wasn’t it?”

My voice broke on those words as Andrew pulled me into his arms, whispering things I can’t remember. I couldn’t stop shaking. 

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t live like this–taking the pills, then breaking down because of what I saw.

On some level, I knew I had to stop taking the pills. They weren’t working like they should. Instead of bringing old memories from my subconscious to remembrance, they were creating new ones based on my desires. How, I wasn’t exactly sure. But I didn’t care, and I didn’t want to stop taking them, if only to continue with the false memories of you pain-free and walking. On some really bad days, I want to run back to Mallam Bello’s shop and demand a year’s supply of pills. I can’t; not because of my will–grief makes clay out of one’s will.

When I finally calmed down enough to leave his store that day, he stopped me and Andrew before we left.

“I may know another way to help you.”

…

I would have turned around when those words made me stop. I would have said yes. I didn’t, and till today I don’t know why. But I do know why I kept walking.

I was tired. And where before that tiredness had ignited a fire in me and delivered me to Mallam Bello’s doorstep, now it was taking me away from him.

And with a bone-deep weariness that has not left since.

Maybe it would have been better if I had not tried. 

***

This lack of memory. I cannot call it forgetfulness. To forget something implies that the thing ever existed, that there can be a trigger for it, and all the memories will come running back. That is why I choose to call it a non-remembrance. I have lived for over thirty years, and no trigger has reminded me that you once used to be pain-free. 

What does that mean?

I am no closer to deciding whether I should stop caring about remembering or not. I want to remember. Am I fully your son if I don’t?

The other day, I went through your prayer journals. Mummy gave them to me the week after you died. I didn’t want to read them. I had a feeling it would be filled with sad, pleading supplications to Na’an, the way mine were, at least when I used to write about you.

And I was right. You were sad, but you were also angry, mostly at Na’an, because what supreme being keeps her followers crippled? What shocked me most, though, were your prayers for death to come soon. When I first saw the words, “I want to die,” I was filled with so much rage that I tore the page out and burned it. You ingrate. I was doing everything I could to remember you before the accident, and all you wanted was to die.

But I realise now that we are more similar than I thought. I was trying to remember because I didn’t think you’d ever get better, and you wanted to die because you thought the same, and were tired of the pain, the pain of thinking and being.

It’s been about three months since you died. Andrew has moved in with me and watches over me constantly. It is bloody irritating. Is this what married life is going to feel like with him? He’s with me now, rubbing my shoulders as I type this out. 

Mummy…what I am about to tell you may hurt. She is happy, happier than I’ve seen her in decades. She tells people it’s because she knows you are resting with the ancestors. But I don’t think that’s true, because the smile she gives those people is different from the one we see when she comes home every evening from one event or the other. You are resting, and she is living. You are free; so is she. 

But there are times that I find her staring out the window, like she is waiting for the sound of your car.