Joseph stood up from the bed, staring into its wideness. The night before he’d dreamt of himself standing afloat on a lagoon, his body failing to sink into the water, hard as he tried because Sonita was beneath the water propping his feet up. With eyes now wide open, he rushed to his daughter’s room to prepare her for school. They both brushed their teeth at the sink before he proceeded to bathing her. While they did these things together, they either sang the ABC of the alphabet or mouthed the 123 of the numerical chart and it was in these moments, the paucity of them, that Joseph felt Sonita’s absence the most. He had learnt to convince himself that her absence was occasioned by one of the many official trips she usually went on, or better still, that she had simply returned to her mother’s place at Makeni to let ‘peace’ reign as usual.
Bintu was five and such a sensitive child. She clutched her father’s arm wherever they went, making sure to not say the word ‘mummy’ from time to time, noting the cloud that pulled across her father’s face whenever she did. Joseph, on the other hand, was always there for his daughter. He prepared the Indomie soggy, just the way she liked it with extra water she could slurp from beneath the plate after eating the noodles. Only after she had eaten would he prepare rice for himself or just take down a bottle of Amaroula or Fearless, depending on the nature of his day – how stressful or tetchy it was for him at work. On weekends, he laundered her uniforms and sport wears, straightening every squeeze with the hot iron. Afterwards, he took her to a salon for a new hairdo, applying hair cream in portions and combing the hair himself. Once or twice, he took her to the Children’s Library to buy time for himself to restock the provisions in the house or see a friend. Yet it seemed like a dream to him, that Sonita would leave him, leave them, just like that.
Joseph still remembers the first time he met his wife at Forebay College, where she worked as an intern. He was a student-lecturer while she was a final year student of Accounting.
She’d insulted him the first time he called her pretty and landed him slaps the three good occasions he stopped her to make clear his intentions of dating her. Seven years now and he still remembers how the incidents played out, one after each, until she agreed to marry him and they took the life-long commitment to each other. Seven years, and the memory remains clear as crystal. Two years into their marriage, he picked a job with Immigration Service while she worked as an accountant at the PMB Filling Station. Their marriage was all bliss until one morning she woke with the ache in her chest and the constant nausea that almost drove him crazy. At night she groaned and glob-trotted noisily and it pinched his insides. Later, she was confirmed pregnant and soon enough, she bore their sweet little girl, Bintu.
Joseph enjoyed the chore of dropping Sonita first at the Filling Station where she worked before proceeding to his office. At evening time, they prepared supper together, cleaning the terrace or mopping the tiles together. Other times, when she travelled, he ran the home effortlessly. He liked how she called him Joe, her lips letting out each phoneme with precision. He, on the other hand, called her Fill because, he thought, she had filled the emptiness in his life. Not too long before, he had surprised her on Christmas day with the new house he bought with his life savings. She’d stood in a flurry of shock and excitement; the look was priceless.
“Let’s move in right away.” She motioned to get into the house at once.
He smiled for long.
“I’m serious.” She headed on. “I want to be living in a house of my own before the day runs out.”
This time he laughed loudly. They hugged and held hands.
Joseph woke early one morning, tapping Sonita awake. He held a frown, his elbows were twisted upwards, holding his chin. She sat erect on the bed beside him while he mumbled words to himself.
“I would fall back to sleep if you keep holding that face and saying nothing.” She warned.
As though irritated all of a sudden, he faced her, brows raised. “I was a fool to have thought you cared.”
“What do you mean? Cared about what?” She probed, just as he wanted her to.
“I thought you loved us.”
“Joe, speak up. What’s with this attitude?”
“It is because of you. Oh, yes!” He flared. “When last did you give time to your daughter.
It’s always about your business trips, this and that. I can’t take it anymore!”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I am trying to say you must quit that job to give time to your home. Period!”
Sonita shook in disbelief of his words. She looked at his face for signs of laughter, perhaps if it was a joke but there were no signs of it. He indeed meant it.
She shifted, opened her mouth to talk, closed it. “You know I can’t quit that job.” She said finally. “You know I can’t…”
“My income is enough to sustain us all.” He broke in. “We can do without it.”
“No, I can’t.” She flared, rose up from the bed. “I can’t believe you, Joe. How can you even talk like this.”
The next morning, she packed a few of her things and left a note on the desk in their bedroom, stating that she was returning to her mother’s place at Makeni for peace to reign. She was going to take Bintu with her but the child resisted, choosing rather to watch her series of Barney and Friends on the TV.
Days later, Joseph drove himself and their daughter to Makeni, pleading with Sonita to return home – even if not for him but for sake of the child. Their daughter needed to see her face more often, he added. Sonita returned home the next day, agreeing to take a One-Month leave from work, to ensure she had quality time with Bintu and with him too. They celebrated with a toast of Chandler and soft music from the recorder.
The days went by with Sonita tending a small garden in their backyard, playing with their daughter for the most time, checking up latest issues of fashion magazines and practicing various techniques of photography with her iPhone 7. When Joseph returned from work, she fed him the stories of how she did one thing or the other all through the day. While her fascination was always over the top, his was shallow. He did not enjoy how she distracted him from his paperwork whenever he sat over the desk. He did not like the sudden talkativeness she had adopted and he reasoned that her time away from work must have caused it so he woke again one morning, while the clouds hadn’t yet cleared.
“This your work, when are you going back to it?” He began.
“Is anything the matter?”
“I was just wondering if you wanted to resume again.”
Sonita laughed, soft, snarling laughter that pierced his skin.
The next day, she returned to her office. The day emerged with full glam; the bold sun striding across the sky proved to Sonita that it was going to be a good day, or so it seemed. They ate breakfast in silence, except for the clacking of spoons against the ceramic plates as they ate.
Joseph gripped the steering with the poise of a man who’d driven the car for years now. He swiveled in and out of traffic, clutching the hand gear as they swerved from street to street.
Finally, he dropped her off at the filling station before proceeding to Bintu’s school to drop her and then to his office. He had mastered the routes well. As he drove, he considered the possibility of having another child with Sonita. He wondered if she was expectant just as he was, planned to whisper the words in her ears as they slept that night: “Fill, let’s have another baby. What do you say?”
PMB Filling Station stood out amongst other buildings that lined Willington Highway. It was popular for its slogan: “Any day/ Any time”. Indeed, at all times, petrol was always available at the station. It sat in the heartland of the city, with clumps of kiosks and umbrella sheds dotting the road, fruit sellers ran after cars and buses to display their wares to the passengers. Vehicles and motorcycles busied the place at all times. Residential houses in their magnificence looked over the station from behind. Sonita strode in with her head high, her head gear was woven high enough to sustain her appearance. She greeted some of the retailers at the entrance before making her way through the crowd and into her office. Dust hung on her chair and desk, on the photographs of herself and Joe lining the wall. She pulled out a rag from the drawer and wiped their surfaces clean. She held the picture and admired the bulge in her belly when the picture was taken. She was then pregnant for Bintu. Her arms and legs were swollen.
The shirt she’d worn clutched her tightly, the buttons threatened to wheeze free at once. She laughed at how quickly time flew.
From the slides of her window, she sighted a petrol tanker heading for the station. The tanker came twice a week to make supplies. It puffed swirls of smoke that tinted the air, the tyres screeched as it moved. Smaller vehicles and traders made way for it to pass but one ambitious Honda owner plunged into the road, hoping to make it across quickly before the tanker took its turn. The tanker turned quickly too, hitting the other car with such force, it flew across the road, dismantling a man’s wooden kiosk. Loaves of bread, biscuits and household wares fell to the ground. While people ran to the driver’s aid, others made away with the goods that had fallen. Sonita watched the scene with tears brimming her eyes. As she blinked, a streak fell to her cheek. She dug her phone out of her bag to text Joseph when she noticed, the tanker was still in its position, like a log lying across the road. Fuel was raining from a gash on the tanker. She stared as men and women scurried about with bowls and gallons in different sizes and colours to collect the fuel. A man rushed out of his house with a drum to get his share. Bikers and Taxi drivers parked to a stop and bade their passengers good bye to get some of the fuel too.
Sonita was screaming on top her breath, hitting the glass slides of her window but it was no use. Her hands shook as she picked her phone to dial 911 but nothing went through. She dialled Joe’s contact but it wouldn’t go through too. She was sweating now, pacing her office in confusion and tension when she saw traces of the fire. It caught one man’s leg first, rolled across the street and into the gutters where the fuel made passage. She caught her breath and ran quickly to make escape from her office when the tanker exploded in a roar. A mass of flames lit the station; the cars and dispensers that stood outside were wrung in flames at once. Sonita made to run but her legs failed her. She saw the fire climb up the building to her floor, it caught the window blinds and raced into the shelve of papers and books. Her flops were already seared from beneath so she felt the heat crawl through her toes, into her veins before she gave out breath and dropped to the floor.
Joseph had dashed out of his office the moment a colleague mentioned the fire to him. He jumped the row of stairs and made for his car in the parking lot. He raced other cars on the road as he made way to the place. A team of fire service attendants had barricaded the area in Green and Red ‘do not cross this point’ ropes, the soot of smoke and residue of flesh filled the place yet he made way through the burnt bodies and smothered vehicles. He made way to his wife. The station was reduced to a pile of rubble already. There was no entrance route. Nothing.
He kept calling her name, kept looking to see her head gear and blouse. Some men held him back, shuffling him out of the area but he fought back, insisting that he had to see Sonita one last time, just this once. If not for anything, their daughter needed to see her face more often.
Favour Sia Gborie studies English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. She loves God, enjoys stringing her violin and is particularly fond of the dramatic genre. She hopes to be a renown writer soon enough.