ROSES (a short story) by me

I hate my life; I have always hated everything about life. I hate when I hear them screaming in tears because death had come knocking at the door. They cry aloud because they would never see Dr Jude again. Mama had even wanted to commit suicide but that was two years ago. Now she had forgotten about Papa’s death and had moved on with her boring life. I have never been obsessed about power or politics, I like keeping things simple. In this miserable life of mine, I had learnt that everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. About three years ago, I didn’t feel exactly the same way. I enjoyed life because Papa always said that life was short and that one had to enjoy every minute of it. He had died on top of a woman at Terminus hotel, what a shame! The news was all over the city; of course nothing could be hidden in Aba as long as it had happened here. I remember the first time I stole a piece of meat from Mama’s pot of egusi soup, oga Ekene, the carpenter that lives few blocks away from us had asked me how many meats I had stolen. He had asked me with a mean expression on his face as though he had never stolen a coin before. At least I knew of his colleague, Sir James, who stole meat from his wife’s pot of soup. Sandra popularly known as ‘James bond’ would never give him a piece meat except on Sundays. I ate meat every day, Papa made sure of it. At least that was since we packed into our new house, a duplex. Now I was in the verandah, looking down on the dirty street where Papa had built this mansion. I wondered how the big cities like New York and Washington would look like compared to Aba. Definitely that would be a senseless comparison. Paul, a classmate of mine had boasted about travelling out. He said that cars rode in the air not on land like ours. He told us that all the houses there were touching the sky; one could comfortably climb into heaven if he pleased. Paul had brainwashed our heads, at least I know better now because am twenty eight. Mama told me of recent that I was due for marriage. She talked often about the olden days, “in those days,” she would start and then she would explain how women got married at the age of thirteen and men at seventeen. But she didn’t get married at the age of thirteen, her excuse being that she wanted to get married to a doctor and it took years for her to find Papa. I had smiled when she told me that, so if every woman gets married to a doctor, who gets to marry the carpenters and bus drivers? Mama kept saying I was getting old even at my age. Then I thought about Obinna, a friend of mine, who was still single at the age of forty. He told me he had to own a nice car and build a fine house before thinking about women. “A woman is a liability,” he would say. Yet he slept all through the day, he didn’t even know when a customer would come and then pass his shop and move to the next to repair his shoes. How could he buy a car or build a house when he was just a cobbler. Mama had told him to join her in her sewing business, stressing that it was more profitable than repairing foot wears but he paid deaf ears.
I am tired of living. I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up. Even after Papa’s death, more deaths came. It is painful knowing that you keep losing your loved ones one after the other until finally you are left alone and then you still join your ancestors later on. I had watched Mama cry a couple of times, rolling over the floor and tearing her dress. She cried like a baby, like a baby who had been denied breast milk. Perhaps all women cried the same way or maybe hers was a special case. Papa told me that men never cried. He said that it was an abomination for a man to cry. I watched him that morning, five years ago when he heard about the death of his father. His eyes were red but his face was firm as he clenched his jaws and tightened his fist. Mama had wept helplessly in a manner I thought her eye balls would have fallen off from their sockets. Perhaps Mama was always like that, even as of last two years, the same year I lost Papa when she came for my graduation. She cried, at least I had seen tears streaming down her eyes and that had gotten me upset. I was a graduate with a bachelor degree in micro biology yet she cried and then she told me later that they were tears of joy. Mama cried a lot and sometimes I question her age as the only son. I stopped her from watching the news about a week ago when she cried about the bombings at Kano by the boko haram insurgents. It wasn’t really that day I had gotten pissed off. It was just a day after when she had woken me up from my sleep weeping and rolling on the floor because she heard a rumor, a rumor about the Ebola disease that had spread to Nigeria but it hadn’t spread to Aba. She wept because a friend of hers had told her that the deadly disease had spread to Aba and that we were no longer safe.”Daniel, we should sell the duplex and go to the village,” she said that morning. How easy it was for her to make such a decision. Papa would have given her a hot slap if he were still alive. The usual dose that keeps her head in other and seals her lips for good. Papa was a strong man, and stubborn too. Maybe I got the stubbornness from him or perhaps I got everything from him. I got the looks and the charisma too from him. There was no resemblance between Mama and me, and I had always doubted the fact that she was my mother. Few days ago, Mama had brought Nneka from the village, a lady she wanted me to marry. I remember the disgust I felt the first day I had seen her. Her stature had reminded me of a girl I had seen on the roadside, the girl who was suffering from kwashiorkor and had approached me in my Toyota Camry begging me for some money. Maybe Mama brought her for me because I had told her that I liked women with fat buttocks. Perhaps I should have told her more, at least she shouldn’t be hungry looking with eyes that kept moving left and right like that of a professional criminal. In spite my hatred for Nneka, Mama still let her stay with us. Mama was always bossy and that was the part that always started quarrels between Papa and her. She picked Papa’s calls and read through every new text that Papa got. No wonder Papa had gone out to seek for greener pastures. I would have cheated too if I were in Papa’s shoes. Sometimes I asked Papa, “How did you even get to marry such a woman?” he would smile and then tell me that it’s a long story. The usual phras for any story or event he didn’t want to talk about.
Nneka was always trying to please me, to make me happy. But love is a thing of the mind. She got a bouquet of rose flowers for me some weeks ago and I rejected them. Mama loved them or maybe saw something in them. Nneka now gets those rose flowers for her every week. I had asked her what she used them for and she replied smiling, it’s a long story. I sighed gravely. It didn’t matter to me; nothing she had ever done had mattered to me. But of course she was still my mother.
Three days ago, I had experienced love at first sight. Maybe my heart was just playing tricks on me but I don’t really know. Nneka had come home with her best friend, Angel. She introduced me to her as her future husband. While she went on with introduction, I stared deeply into her eyes; Angel was also staring at me. We were so into each other and it felt as though I had known her for a long time. Her eyes were sexy and boldly lined in black; her skin was smooth as silk. Her lips were red and roundish like a tomato fruit. Of course she had the height and probably everything any man would have wanted in a woman. I felt as though I was drowning until Nneka had touched me with those rough hands like that of a brick layer. I shuddered and then she pulled Angel away from me. I waited until Nneka went into the kitchen to help Mama prepare lunch. Then I sat on the couch opposite hers. There was something about Angel, it was so different. When I looked into her eyes again, my entire body trembled like it was an electric shock. I imagined those subtle lips on mine; I would definitely melt into heaven. I just stared at her, speechless or perhaps words alone wouldn’t have been enough to express my feelings. It was embarrassing because I had stared at her for over ten minutes without saying a word.
“You are making me uncomfortable,” she said with a soft voice. The kind of voice that would make a man give a lady his entire life savings.
“You look like a rose flower,” I blurted out. Probably the actual words seemed to have left me or maybe they hung in my throat. Nneka disrupted our conversation as she walked in beckoning Angel to come and join them in the kitchen. Nneka was an enemy of progress, the kind of woman that would take a man from ‘hero to zero.’ I remember that day I had seen her for the first time, I lost a job interview in a company that had assured me of the job. The manager looked at me disgustingly and told me to leave his office. I remember blaming Nneka for that loss.
The next day, Angel came alone. She forgot a project she was working on. She left it on the couch. I knew she was a final year student because I had seen the title of the project and the university. It was the same place I had studied, and at university of Ibadan, only final year students did that project. Angel saw me reading through it as she walked in; the project left my palms and landed on the floor. I smiled picking it up
“I figured this would be yours, so I kept it,” I said quickly.
“Thanks,” she replied casually and then collected it from my hands. “I will be on my way,” she added.
“Don’t go yet please, I have a surprise for you,” I said with a cracking voice. To my surprise she stayed. I was a boring person; at least my friends always told me that. There wasn’t really a surprise but I had collected a rose flower from the bouquet of flowers Nneka brought for Mama the previous day. The television was on, and she watched the cartoon channel smiling occasionally.  For the first time in a long while I felt happy. I took out the rose flower and gave it to her. She collected it with a warm smile and then she looked into my eyes. Like a magnetic attraction, our faces came closer gradually and her lips almost fell on mine when I noticed Mama by the curtains. She was watching us with hands akimbo. I could read the expression on her face, she felt rage, sadness, bitterness and she held a knife in her hands. “Mama!” I had shouted as I stood up frightfully. Mama went into the kitchen and Angel ran out of the living room and headed for the door. I didn’t stop her; I just sat down slowly on the couch. The expression I had seen on Mama’s face had reminded me of the story she told me. She had the same kind of expression on her face when she told that story. That hatred, burning anger and sadness was written all over her face. It was the story of how she lost her virginity. The story she made me swear never to tell Papa. I always wondered what made her tell me such a story. I was her son for God’s sake not her husband.  She had been raped at the age of thirteen by five young men. They raped her in turns and at the end the fifth man gave her a rose flower. She told me that I knew who the fifth man was. I remember shivering when she told me that. It was as though she had lost her mind. How could I possibly know who the fifth man was when I didn’t witness such painful event? I peered round the living room; Papa’s pictures weren’t hanging on the walls any longer. Mama burnt them alongside with his clothes few months after Papa’s death. When Mama gathered all pictures of Papa, I had stolen one of them. A picture that was still so confusing even at that moment. For no reason at all, I kept the picture always with me in my pocket. It was a picture of Papa and a woman, a woman who wasn’t Mama. It was a wedding photo. It perplexes me the more because I look so much like the woman in the photo. Papa never discussed about other women with me but I had known that he was cheating on Mama. Of course Mama knew since she picked Papa’s calls and read his text messages.
That same day, Mama had warned me about the rose flower I collected. She said I shouldn’t ever come near those flowers in her room. Even though a tear slid down her cheek as she spoke, she was mean and her eyes hardened. I nodded and left for my room. “The rose flowers,” I pondered. What was it about the rose flowers that Nneka brought that made her talk to me in such a harsh manner, I thought. I just slept on it.
I hate myself and everything about my life because now I had uncovered a bitter truth. I did that today. I had lived my life as a stranger of my own self. Now I’m crying like a baby or perhaps I’m crying just like Mama. Papa had said that men don’t cry but even Papa would have cried if he found himself in my shoes. Now am left with a choice on whether to kill the woman who had claimed to be my mother for a long while or kill myself so that she completes her mission in my father’s house.
This afternoon, Mama had left for the market, stressing that she would be back in a second. Her door wasn’t locked unlike before; perhaps she wasn’t going to waste much time. I opened the door to her room slowly and walked in, one careful step followed by a pause. I imagined her setting a trap for me just like the way she does to the rats in the house. My gaze fell on the rose flowers at the left end of her bed. Her bed which was just like mine was the shape of a sports car and took much of the space in the small room. I walked gradually towards those flowers and I was scared, scared that maybe they had arms, long arms hidden somewhere in them that could grab me. I lifted the rose flowers gently staring intensely at them. I noticed a box on the floor where I had picked the rose flowers from, an ancient-looking box that sat carefully on the ground. I bent down, opening it slowly. In it, I saw passports, seven of them pinned to a sheet of paper. Six of them were marked with an ‘x’ symbol. Papa’s picture was there, he was the sixth and among the six of them was a woman, the same woman I had seen in the strange wedding photo I took. It was always in my pocket, I brought it out and then confirmed that were the same not just a resemblance. I felt a rush of heat and cold go through my body. ‘The passports of five men and a woman all marked in ancient box,’ I muttered to myself. I hadn’t really noticed the seventh passport which was unmarked. It was me, I was the seventh person. My brain became suffused with heat as I dropped the paper frightfully.  A sepulchral voice froze my legs; I stood rooted to a spot.
“I told you that you knew the fifth man, didn’t I?” Mama said as she walked in. I turned looking at her. Her voice had changed; it was masculine and deep just like Papa’s. But tears streamed down her eyes.
“Papa was the fifth man?” I asked. Perhaps I knew the answer. Papa had been the one who gave her the rose flower after they deflowered her. My hands trembled, they didn’t tremble because I knew now that Papa was the fifth man but they did because an inevitable truth was coming to light, the fact that Mama had killed Papa.
“He was, and they all paid with their life,” her voice was strangely velvety now. She was sobbing and it was clear that she didn’t mean to hurt them but she wanted revenge.
“You killed Papa!” I thundered, coming closer to her position with a boiling anger. I froze just then as Mama pulled out a gun, a gun that had looked initially like a toy just meant to scare children. But then I wobbled backwards, tears sealed my eyes now.
“You are going to kill me in cold blood?” my voice dropped a pitch lower as though I wanted her to pity me but I wanted to collect the gun from her and then slap her first just like Papa does, and then shoot her head open.
“I have contemplated on whether to do this. You got in the way just like your hopeless mother did.” My heart burned, my eyes expanded as I fell to the ground. The woman in the wedding photo had been my birth mother all along. Something worse than butterflies churned my stomach, and I stared at Mrs. Rose, my step mother with teary eyes. I had just remembered that Papa had called her Rose only once. The same day he died perhaps that was the reason I never remembered her real name.
“You killed my mother too?” I asked her stammering, hoping she would deny doing it or lie to me. But she smiled, a snake-like smile that seemed to mock me. Suddenly Mama fell to floor and the gun ran towards my direction. I looked up and I saw Angel, the only woman that had given me a reason to live. Perhaps she was the reason I hadn’t committed suicide long ago, long after I had lost Papa. Angel had struck Mama with a rod along the passage. Probably she had come looking for me. She ran towards me, hugging me tightly. ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked staring at me. I shook my head and watched Mrs. Rose on the floor. She had deceived me all along, she also deceived Papa. After a few minutes, I called the police and they took her into custody. She would be sentenced to death and I wouldn’t shed a tear when the time comes.
Now I know am an orphan. An orphan with a future though. Papa would say that life wasn’t a bed of roses. But now I know that roses not only stood for love, they meant much more or perhaps they meant much more to Mama.