By Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni

I see my grandmother twice every year. New Year and Salah. 

Her house is a plain, single-story building in Akobo with gray screeded walls. Colors left the house when my grandfather died. Cream and blue and white from the walls. Green and crimson and yellow from the garden. When others wept, my grandmother called artisans to screed every wall a smooth gray. Colors seeped from her closet as well. Vivid bubas and aso okes ceded to the hum of black bubus and slippers and geles. Silver, gold, and platinum jewelry were all given away. All, except her wedding ring—the gold and diamond ring my grandfather bought the week he met my grandmother and presented to her, on his feet, two years later. My grandmother shed no tears, only weight and color. 

Grandchildren and in-laws streamed through the gray house. Her four daughters busied themselves with Salah preparations. Maami, first among them, sent me on quick, assorted errands. No one mentioned Uncle Ibrahim, his British wife, or their absences. Like my grandmother, Maami and Aunty Jemima are widows. Unlike her, they have regained whatever color was lost. Aunty Jemima smelled like alluring oud and tenderly fried meat. Maami reminded Aunty Rukayat, for the fifth time, that she had not been the last born for twenty years and needed to start acting like it. Aunty Rukayat lifted a cooler of rice with a petulant scowl on her face. Sadiya, my grandparents’ love child, born five years after me, gleefully alternated between insisting I call her aunty and feigning shyness when I did. Aunty Rukayat’s three children took turns with their father’s iPad in the living room while he made a call outside.

Aunty Jemima’s sons both made a point of ignoring me. We had taken our mothers’ sides in a disagreement years ago. The sisters reconciled. We remain exiled to the sides we took. Olive branches, extended and trampled upon. All the better. If we were on speaking terms, I could not have kept this secret from them.

~

Like many young Nigerians, my dream has always been to leave the country. Unlike many young Nigerians, I have the luxury of intending to return. After my MBA at least.

Twice, I have submitted Harvard and Wharton MBA admission letters to the American Embassy, only to be turned away. The dream was deferred the first time and buried the second. A year passed and I dreamt again. My third attempt succeeded. 

I have not told anyone about my Harvard admission or F-1 visa. I fly to Boston in a month. Two weeks is more than enough time to ask for forgiveness. Between betraying them and feeling their pity again, I chose betrayal. 

Aunty Jemima will call me cold. When I visit Maami, she will offer food without conversation. Uncle Bimbo will understand. Aunty Rukayat will find a way to make it about her. Sadiya will tell me to make sure I graduate top of my class. All of them will forgive me before I leave. There will be a call telling me how I have behaved just like my father, slim envelopes containing dollars, and monogrammed gifts of congratulations.

I planned to tell everyone at the family meeting after Salah. Then, my grandmother sat me down when I brought her a plate of fried meat. She had had a dream. A piece of meat slid off the trembling plate.

The day before my grandfather died, my grandparents had had a tiff. She went to bed ignoring him, only to dream of his body mangled under a burning oil tanker. She begged him not to travel as planned, but the tiff remained on his mind. She ran after his car and made a scene. Curious eyes came to watch. He still left and died hours later, exactly as she had dreamed. Mangled. A charred corpse.

When my grandmother told me she had dreamt I had plans to travel in a month and if I did, someone dear to Maami would die, I stared at the patch of oil left by the fallen piece of meat as if for another version of this dream.

“I know how much this journey means to you. But, wait and let me dream again. The corpse might show its face. You know there is no one your mother loves as much as you. I did not see the face, but please, don’t risk it. So ti gbo? Oko mi?”

~

When the plane encounters its first set of turbulence, my grandmother’s words rumble through my mind. I ignore them and try to control my breathing. The air hostesses urge us to remain calm. I wonder if I will ever see Maami again. The elaborate ways I rationalized this decision to myself elude me. 

The turbulence finally ends. Pre-panic composure returns. I feel a strange sense of wetness. A wide patch on my white wool sweater. In the half-light, the blood does not spread. I wait for my body to register the pain behind the blood. In the aisle ahead of me, I see my empty plastic cup. Droplets of red wine linger at its bottom.

The plane lands. I call Maami on WhatsApp. Each unanswered ring makes it harder to breathe. What if it was her my grandmother did not see? Or Aunty Jemima. Who have I killed by refusing to—

“Hello?” Maami’s face fills my screen and I collapse against the nearest wall, paralyzed with relief. 

“Maami! I made it!”

“Alhamdullilah. Alhamdullilah.” Her eyes are streaked with red.

“Maami, are you okay?”

“Can we talk now, or you want to settle in first?”

“We can talk now.”

“They called me from Akobo yesterday. They said Grandma kept calling your name in her sleep. She didn’t wake up after.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, with full understanding.

“She’s gone.”

Maami weeps. I imagine my grandmother’s last minutes. The corpse reveals my face, and she takes my place instead. I wonder if I would have stayed.