There’s a pattern to it.

First, you feel the blood rushing in your veins. It runs a mile a minute, as if powered by a piston on overdrive. Then you feel a hold on your mind. It’s like a cord that constricts your airflow. You’ve come to recognise it as fear. It leaves you incapable of thinking of anything else. You also feel your heart beating furiously in your chest, hammering on your ribcage with the intensity of an unjustly-imprisoned man seeking freedom.

Bob and weave, raise your hands. Bob and weave.

It never works.

You end up with the throb in your jaw and the sharp, tangy taste of blood on your tongue. Your eye is swollen, and your left ear is numb, like a bomb detonated near it. But there’s one last thing.

You hear it. The grand finale. What hurts the most. The scornful laughter and derisive words.

“You be waste of space. When you go ever learn?”

It’s funny how those words hurt more than the bruises on your face. It’s funny how you’ll remember those words for longer, far longer after the bruises fade to make way for fresh ones. Your face heals.

But you never heal.

*********************

She laughs.

You give a wry smile, shake your head, and look away for a moment. You turn your gaze back to her. She looks comical – the ghost of her dying laughter clinging for life on those kissable lips and her eyes sad, glazed with tears.

“Cry cry,” you tease her, pinching her chin.

“Leave me joor,” she says, slapping your hand away, her eyes still moist with tears.

You don’t like talking about it. She says it’s the only way you’ll feel better. You don’t believe her. But you tell her anyway. You tell her because she wants you to. You tell her because you like talking to her. You tell her because you like it when she comes to your apartment and lights it up with her bubbliness.

Now, you’re lying on your bed in shorts and a t-shirt, one hand propping your head on a pillow, while she sits beside you, one leg tucked beneath the outstretched other. Her Pocahontas-long hair hides under the silk bonnet you bought her for her birthday, while she wears your Tottenham Hotspurs jersey. You run your fingertips up her bare thigh. Smiling, she grasps your fingers.

“Noooo jare, just continue,” she says.

You sigh. You run your hand over your bewhiskered jaw, and continue.

*********************

A man fights his battles.

Every time you heard these words, hackneyed on your father’s lips like stale palm wine, you felt like a battle he wanted to conquer. He certainly did his best to conquer you. Feet dancing to an unheard rhythm, he skipped in front of you, daring you to hit him. But you dared not. Dem no born you well. Head bobbing, shoulders tucked in, your fists clenched in a pitiful attempt to protect your head, you raised your hands and tried to withstand the salvo of blows. Blows that jarred your head back with the force of a puppeteer yanking the strings of his puppets. Blows that battered your teenage mind. Blows that mummified whatever adolescent swagger blooming inside you.

You withstood this assault throughout your secondary school days. You grew to be a hermit, your psyche nailed on a cross for uncommitted transgressions. Your hankering for your pound of flesh sat in you like a tamed lion nestling beneath the coolness of a tree’s boughs. The bullies found out the hard way. You could withstand their taunts. But not their fists. Too many unreplied punches had hit you. By the time you’d Floyd Mayweathered your way past them, no one bothered you anymore. The sickening feeling never left you though – the blood pounding in your head like an angry tide, the fear caging your mind, which made your heart thud like a war drum. You’ve felt in during nervous moments over the years— at your project defense during your final year, at job interviews, and most recently, when you had to make a speech at your company’s end-of-the-year party. Somehow, you got through it, after locking yourself up in the restroom and downing a bottle and a half of Red Label. You try to convince yourself that what you feel is normal. It leaves you feeling naked, defenseless. You’ve learnt to live with it.

Your father was wrong. It turns out you actually did learn.

*********************

She likes wearing your Tottenham jersey. You don’t know why. Maybe it’s because she sees you and everything you own through a love-struck pair of brown eyes. It’s fake, a cheap imitation of Dimitar Berbatov’s shirt that you bought on a whim. She doesn’t mind. The jersey is old and faded. It clings to herframe. She stands and stretches. You can see the skin between the jersey and her panties. You bought the jersey after Spurs bested Chelsea in the 2008 Carling Cup final. Your father was a Chelsea fan. In a classic “the-enemy-of-the-enemy-is-my-friend” manner, you spent the rest of that day celebrating Chelsea’s defeat, your father’s defeat, like a kid at Christmas. His pain was your joy. You saved every kobo you had till you bought that jersey. But you caught hell from your father when he saw you in it.

She chuckles when you tell her this.

You’ve lived with your guard up. Something about her wants to make you put your hands down and let the heavens open your heart. Maybe it’s the way her perfect dimple swallows your finger when she smiles, like a foot dipped in quicksand. Or it’s the way your past feels like a lifetime ago when you’re with her. But you’re scared. Scared of all the sucker-punches you’ve spent your life avoiding. So you hold her sunny smiles for your dark days and the moonless nights. But you like it when she comes into your apartment and makes herself part of your memories. You like it when you sing together to her favourite song, Brandy’s “Departed,” and how she tells you she’ll be right there for you. You like it when she holds you close, her soft breath bathing your cheek, and her girlish squeals when you tickle her.

*********************

Today she came to your place straight from work. She did what she usually did— ingrain herself on your mind.

“Hey,” she says, those oh-so-deep dimples winking at you.

“Hi,” you say, smiling, feeling your insides leap at her presence.

She takes off her blouse and shrugs on your shirt hanging on the door. She leaves it unbuttoned. You like seeing the contrast of her powder-white bra on her dusky skin. She knows you do, so she does it for you. She lays in your bed and closes her eyes, humming a tune. Then you both snuggle and talk in muffled tones about how your days went. She does this all the time. Every time, she never gets to finish her words because you’re too busy trying to decipher what flavour of lip-gloss she has on. In between her giggles, you kiss her lips till you lick it all off. Then she wrestles you to your back and kisses you properly.

She has these motherly hips that remind you of your mother’s. A mother you hadn’t seen for as long as you could remember. Thinking of her sends you down a lane that has loud voices, quiet weeping, and many long nights.

“Really?” she asks, gripping you tighter.

“Yes, you have her stature,” you reply.

She fixes you with a thoughtful gaze, prompting a “What?” out of you.

“Why don’t you ever talk about her?”

You look away.

While your father boxed you to toughen you up, he pummelled your mother into submission. At least, he did his best to. She always fought him back. She lost every time. You grew waiting for your turn to be walloped, like a death row inmate awaiting an execution date. A man fights his battles. You took your father’s advice a little too close to your heart when you tried defending your mother. You never forgot the look his eyes pinned you with; that of a predator savouring the blood of an overconfident prey. He turned his wrath on you. He brought the pressing iron he threatened to bash your mother’s head with down on you. You raised your elbow to block the blow. The next thing you remember was hearing a loud, crunching sound, like teeth munching on crackers… 

*********************

She doesn’t ask you why your left arm is bent at an awkward angle. Nor does she ask you why you live with guards barricading your heart, like the classic philly shell of a veteran southpaw pugilist. She just talks to you, and by so doing, she makes you talk back. The more you listen to her, the more you open up to her. The more you hear that twinkling laughter, the more you gaze on that dimple hollowed perfectly for you, you find your walls coming down. You find her filling that emptiness that lies in you.

You don’t tell her how you feel a dizzying comfort when you’re around her, like the feeling of a shawl wrapped around the shoulders on a cold day. But she knows how you’re tortured by your past, how you live with your heart bobbing and weaving, trying to escape Cupid’s love-tipped arrow, and trying to fill up the nothingness in you with liquor. You try to love her. But you don’t know how to. You can’t pry love out of your unloved heart, like trying to draw water from a dried well.

She shifts on the bed, resting her weight on you. In spite of the uncertainty that lurks in you, you can’t deny is the smile that widens your lips of its own accord when you see or think about her. Nor can you deny the happiness you feel when she struts in your apartment in a tank top and panties that hug those pear-shaped hips, humming to herself and seeking every opportunity to wrap her hands around you when you cook. She pours love into the barren ground that is your heart. She brightens up the shadowy corners of you.

She’s breathing deeply, her eyes closed. But you know she’s awake. Her fingertips are playing an uneven beat on your chest.

You blurt out, “Where should we go for Val?”

It’s fast, but to you, it feels like a while.

Her eyes fly open. She looks deeply into your eyes. You hold your breath. Then she giggles. Her eyes are bright enough to light up a Christmas tree.

You feel a pulsing in your veins. Your mind reels with anticipation. Your heart taps softly on your ribs. It’s a familiar feeling, yet, it washes over you with peace this time. It’s strikingly different.

You’re in love.

Biography
Adédoyin Àjàyí is a young Nigerian writer. He likes the feeling of taking hold of a writer’s mind and taking them to a world of his creation. When he’s not writing, he’s daydreaming about being a sniper, reading, or listening to Abel. His work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Afrocritik, Livina Press, Nantygreens, Literary Yard, Fiction Niche, Literally Stories, Maudlin House, African Writer, Ngiga Review, Spillwords, and forthcoming in Figwort Literary Journal. He tweets @AjayiAdedoyin14.