For Leke:
I loved the thunderstorms that flashed through the campus. Sitting in the house it felt like we were in a capsule. My father explained to me that the thunder is just the sound of stone hitting the ground. Sango the God of the sky had thrown it down to earth. Had I done anything to anger Sango? my dad would ask and I would shake my head in earnest.
My favourite story was about Esu who went to two friends who had just sworn they would never fight or disagree. Esu made a man walk in between the friends. The man wore an outfit where half was red and half was white. One of the friends said, ‘Did you see that man who just walked past?’ The other friend asked, ‘The one wearing the red outfit?’ ‘No it was white.’ And so the friends fought, they disagreed, each disgusted that the other could lie so. They parted ways.
‘Dotun, stop it! You'll give him nightmares,’ my mother would complain but in too-soft a voice to mean business.
My father would wave her off, winking at me.
I did have nightmares. Sango and Obatala would fight. Oduduwa would eat lunch then vomit and out would pour three new Orishas. My dreams mixed up the stories. Oya would cut off my ear and try and feed it to my mother. Moremi, bitter from losing a son for the prosperity of Ife, would steal me from my mother's arms and take me away to the forest, she wouldn't speak, she'd just hiss and then right before I opened my eyes she'd say: you’re mine.
I know that when my father died – his okada hit by a truck – I was nine. I was catapulted into a life that had been waiting for me just beyond the bushes. It grabbed me from the life I loved and thrust on me a new kind of existence. The curse had eaten up my cousins, aunts and uncles and now it was making a feast of my father.
My mother and I returned to Cape Town. When she fell ill I wasn't surprised – the darkness was closing in. She was tough, though, and she fought off the disease for a decade before finally surrendering, the sleep of death a relief after the hassle of living.
I was a young man by then, intelligent with a future but life felt hollow Only the stories my father had woven around me as a boy coloured my dreams. My father and mother became characters in this sleeping world. We played and swam and laughed.
It wasn't comfort because I'd always wake up but it was sweet distraction. Like a soft kiss to assuage the pain of parting.