You try to distract yourself from these thoughts by counting the number of motorcycles speeding past the street as if the whole city belongs to them. But you cannot shake the thought: this began long before Francis even noticed.
By Daniel Echezonachi Maxwell
Oil and water do not mix. You are water, and he is oil. Yet, despite this, you both have found in each other a love that is self-sufficient. You both noticed the fire in each other’s eyes, even as you mourned, for grief had momentarily shifted in that instance of your meeting, allowing a flicker of light to proclaim itself. And now, it is late evening, almost night, and you are looking out onto the street from the verandah of the first floor of the three-storey building where you live.
You can see three streets away from your own, all enveloped in darkness, despite the efforts of roadside sellers to illuminate their corners with lanterns and the After-Nepa torches sold by Hausa men. A small crowd has gathered around the small, makeshift wooden shop where Da Rose sells her akara, and it takes you about seven minutes of intense scrutiny to realise that Francis isn’t there.
With no electrical power, the fog of darkness makes it difficult for you to discern who is over there, but you can recognise Francis anywhere, even in the deepest, most impenetrable darkness. He has been your close friend for a long time, even before you—water—found this oil whom you now mix well with.
When it is 8:30 pm and Francis has not yet returned home, you aren’t as worried as you might have been in the past. He usually doesn’t stay out this late, yet you don’t feel a strong concern for his safety. After all, he is an adult.
You and Francis have lived together for three years, sharing the rent for your two-bedroom apartment and pooling resources for your upkeep. In the days before today, he would have been hunched over the reading table in your room, tackling a maths problem, with lines of seriousness creased in his face.
You would come up behind him and tickle his sides, but he would say in mock seriousness, “Leave me, joor, I’m busy. I have serious work to do, unlike you, whose job is just to keep talking and talking”. You would laugh it off, replying that his job might be more serious, but yours pays better. He is a secondary school Maths and Physics teacher, while you are a radio presenter, whose job, in some way, really is to keep talking and talking.
You remember your last misunderstanding with him—gentle as always, unlike the ranting of your landlord and his wife. You recall how he picked up his pillow from your bed and walked to his room without looking back when you called him; how you knocked repeatedly at his door, and all he could say to you was, “Leave my door, bastard”.
He had come to your room that night just as you were beginning to drift off to sleep, joined you in bed, and slipped his hand into your pajama trousers. Without even opening your eyes, you slowly took his hand away. “I’m not in the mood”, you told him. But it was a lie. You were in the mood, just not for him. He mentioned that he had shaved for you, but you responded, “Not tonight”, and pulled the bedsheets over yourself.
He accused you of rejecting him—and hey,you should not even try to deny—because he knows, you have found someone else. Otherwise, why would you have said no to him for four nights in a row? “Hey, listen, it’s fine if this is how you want it, but don’t come back begging. It’s always you who begs first, bastard”. Then he took his pillow, which had been in your room for weeks, and went to his own room.
This was three days ago, and you haven’t spoken to each other since. In the morning, you both left for work. In the evening, you returned and locked yourselves in your rooms. He played Simi’s quiet songs each time you were not on good terms, and you played Fireboy’s love songs. It was the method you both had adopted to make your individual rooms feel spacious enough, without needing the other person. But the songs hold something miraculous in their lyrics, reminding you each time of a tangible feeling and making you think each night about Niru, who is now your ‘all’.
It is tonight, as you wait for Francis to come home, that you realise just how much this man, Niru, has occupied the vast space of your mind. You try to distract yourself from these thoughts by counting the number of motorcycles speeding past the street as if the whole city belongs to them. But you cannot shake the thought: this began long before Francis even noticed. It was in September last year, on the very first day you saw Niru, that something shifted inside you, and even without the initial consent of your body, you welcomed him and surrendered yourself to his love.
**
It was raining heavily when Sir Nwokocha died. 3:17 pm. That day, you learned by experience that time could stand still for a person in grief. The doctor’s pronouncement yanked something out of your mind, and suddenly nothing remained as it was. Everyone around you appeared like a ghost. Instead of a nurse, you saw a boneless shadow covering your uncle with a white-and-blue striped bedsheet. One of the nurses, aged between fifty-five and sixty, walked over to you and placed a hand on your shoulder. You nearly cried.
“Take heart. Í bū dímkpà. You are a man, and you fought like a man to save your uncle. God’s will must always override ours”, the nurse said.
You nodded your thanks and left the ward for the hospital grounds. As you waited for the hearse to arrive and take away the man who had raised you to become who you are.
Francis called. You had texted him when Sir Nwokocha passed away, immediately after ending the call with Ezinne to inform her of her father’s death. “I’ll come once school closes for the day”, he said.
Ezinne arrived with the hearse. Apart from giving you a brief hug and saying over your shoulder, “Chai, daddy!” she showed no other visible emotion. “Thank you so much, nwanne m. I’ll call when we are back from the mortuary”. She hugged you again and left.
Coming out of the doctor’s office moments later, adrift with a sense of loss, you heard a woman wailing. No one needed to tell you it was another death. Some women really put on a show, you thought. Who would look at Ezinne and guess she had just lost her father? She is remarkably strong for a woman; you’re not even that strong. You wanted to cry but knew the societal rule: men don’t cry. So, you had to maintain your composure and the manly style of grieving until later in the night when you could cry in Francis’s arms, shedding all the tears for your uncle.
“Knowing such a loss at this young age”, one of the two hospital cleaners by the corridor said.
“It is really sad for a mother to bury her child.”
“Really sad”
“A child that is yet to explore the world. Odiegwu.”
You turned and walked back to where the wailings came from.
The girl, who was four or five years old, lay asleep in the peace of death. Her mother sat at the foot of the bed, sobbing and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. You looked at her and imagined the pain of labour, and then the pain of losing the result of those labour pains. It was profoundly saddening—gravely devastating. You realised that grief can surpass one another. You lost an uncle of seventy-six; she lost a child of five.
You sat beside her and drew her head to your chest. She rested on you and wept. Grief can make one’s mind numb, as she forgot, at that moment, that as a married Igbo woman, she was not supposed to lean on a man who wasn’t her husband.
“Please tell my mother to stop crying”, she said to you. It was then you realised that the woman whose cries had drawn your attention was the dead girl’s grandmother.
You had been with them for nearly an hour when the girl’s father arrived. He was dressed in a sky-blue shirt and black trousers, with punk-style hair and an earring in his left ear. The moment he entered, your eyes met his, and even after you gently pushed his wife’s head away from your chest, his gaze lingered on you, as if to size you up.
He sat on the other side of the bed, gently patting his wife, who broke into another round of tears upon seeing him. The looks he gave you, though you understood them, unsettled you.
Francis texted: He can’t come; something has come up. He’ll meet you at home. Much love.
You told them you had to leave and he offered to walk you to the gate. “Thank you so much”, his wife said. “May God abundantly reward your care.”
As you approached the gate, he stopped. “Thanks for staying until I arrived. I had something to attend to.” His nonchalance surprised you. His daughter had just died, and he had other matters to handle instead of rushing to the hospital? Such a man.
“You’re welcome. We have all known grief, so it was the least I could do to help her.”
“Thank you once again. You have a good heart.”
You knew this wasn’t merely a compliment. His voice carried a tender longing—something familiar to you from your experiences with Edu, Jide, and Francis.
“You have a bright smile”, you said, taking a chance.
“But you haven’t seen me smile, have you?” he asked, and then smiled.
“You just did.”
Both of you laughed, despite the recent losses—your uncle and his child. He threw his head back as he laughed and said, “Stop it.” You knew instantly that he was one of them. Something about his voice, though masculine, had betrayed him.
“I am Oganiru. Professor Niru”, he said.
You introduced yourself. “Chikeobieze. Or Chike.”
Two weeks later, you found yourself in his bed one morning. The only clear memory of the previous night was the two of you downing bottles of Star beer at an upscale hotel. You recalled gripping his neck firmly inside the bathroom, drawing his head closer as your tongues explored each other’s mouths. An angelic kiss. So, when you woke up naked beside him, you knew what had transpired.
He was already awake, checking something on his phone. As you got out of bed to retrieve your pants from a chair in the corner, he smacked your butt.
“You do this with men, too?” you asked, as if you hadn’t noticed the signs over the past two weeks.
A snicker flashed across his lips. “You should ask if I do it with women too”.
“But you have a wife!”
“Because I should have a wife”.
You walked to the window, ripped the curtains apart, and looked outside. You wondered if Francis had spent the night with another man. You thought of this with more jealousy and less guilt.
“Who is Francis?”
“What?”
“You kept calling him while we were busy last night”.
“I’ll tell you later. I need to get ready for work now. I have a programme at nine”.
You didn’t look at him as you dressed, but you heard him say that this was the beginning of something new. Though you were hesitant to agree—having never had such experiences with married men—you knew he was right.
The day before he left for America in November, you had sex with him in his house for the first time. On that day, you shared the story of your uncle’s death and how he had raised you since your parents died years ago. “It was diabetes that killed him,” you told Niru. You found that day to fully grieve for your uncle in the arms of someone who cared.
“See, we both found love as grieving souls”, he said.
That evening, while you were both bathing, he told you he had to return to continue his work. He was a professor of English at a university over there and had only come home for a brief visit.
“Don’t miss me too much,” he said, and you laughed while still scrubbing his back.
Later that day, he sent you money—almost the equivalent of your salary for an entire year. He called it a thank-you token for the past electrifying weeks.
**
Francis is not yet back. It’s just minutes to ten, and the street is gradually emptying. You can hear your landlord’s wife screaming from the third floor—he is beating her as usual.
You receive a text from Niru: Can you please meet me at Heartland Hotel tonight? Take a cab; I’ll pay the fare when you arrive. I’m waiting.
You slip the phone back into your pocket. This is the first time Niru has asked you to meet him in a hotel since his return in May. You know it’s because of yesterday. His wife had caught you both in the middle of a passionate moment. Honestly, you’re still surprised that all she said was “Sorry” before leaving the room, as if to say that if she knew you both were inside the room, she wouldn’t have opened the door. Even Niru had acted as though it was nothing. When you were leaving, you heard her say “Bye” to you instead of Husband Snatcher.
He is at the gate when you arrive. He kisses you on the lips, but you brush him off. “This is not America, Niru. This is Aba”, you say.
He smiles and takes your hand as you both walk to his hotel room. He tells you he has bought his wife what she asked for, as penance for “doing it” in their home.
“She knows?”
“Yes. But she must not catch me with my guys in our house, or I’ll pay a price. My money is my penance”. He smiles.
When you wake the next morning, Niru is in the bathroom brushing his teeth. You feel thoroughly weak, and because it’s Sunday, you’re not going to work.
You open your WhatsApp and see a message from Francis: I am moving out of the house into the staff quarters of my school. I want to be happy. Thank you for everything.
You take a deep breath and type a reply: Fine, dear. Find someone to keep you happy. I have found mine.
Daniel Echezonachi Maxwell is a happy Black African. He grew up in Aba and is currently studying English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He loves playing drafts and reading—his main pursuits when he’s not writing. Despite his interests, he keeps a surprisingly large circle of friends.
Cover photo by Alexandre Moreira