Must Read: Twine (A Drama Series)

7 years ago

Must Read: Twine (A Drama Series)

Dantata

I don’ t know why thoughts of my late father keep coming to mind. I remembered my sister coming into my room to tell me he was gone…..gone as in dead. I stayed in my room, my beloved father was gone. How could he be alive one minute and gone the next?
When I finally left my room and headed to the living room, I met a spectacle. My mother sat on the long settee, I was expecting to see her face flooded with tears but the opposite was the case. She was in a jubilant mood. A glass of wine was perched in her hand while a half full bottle of wine rested on the table. She was chatting excitedly with my sister who was still chewing her bubblegum and blowing into it.

I stood by the entrance a little confused looking from mother to daughter, then back to mother again. She must have felt my presence because she lifted up her head and looked at me.

“Dante my boy, you must have heard the news.”

She called her version of my name fondly. Her eyes was a shade darker. She must have stayed awake all through the night. I could only manage a nod as I dragged myself to her side.

“I am sorry about your father.”

Those words pricked a chord inside of me. My emotions was let lose as I started shaking. I was trying my best to control the tears that kept coming with each happy image of my father that flashed through my mind. I was trying my best to act like a man. The ladies in the house were not crying. What did I know? I was only fifteen years old.

“Dante, stop crying. Act like the man that you are.”

My mother said to me dropping her glass of wine on the center table. My sister had gone to the stereo and switched it on. I looked at my mother in shock but she acted like she didn’t notice. She patted me on my back and continued drinking.

Their nonchalant actions took me back to my room and back to my bed. I only glanced at my desktop with pains imagining how a PlayStation would have fitted perfectly in its position.

I sobbed till I fell asleep without even thinking of breakfast. All I had in mind was how I was going to survive my overbearing sister. I must have slept for some hours before finally waking up to wailing voices. It was a cacophony of noise. I sniffed, catarrh ran from my nose dropping in blobs on the bed. Using the back of my palm, I wiped it off.
It took me a moment to get it registered as I stood looking at my room. When it came my legs gave way. I had become fatherless. I allowed the tears flow as I made my way to the living room.

The spectacle that greeted me was surprisingly more sorrowful than what I had seen in the morning. There, seated on the ground with her legs spread both ways and her hair scattered in a hundred directions was Mrs. Chinenye Aliyu, my mother. Three of her friends were consoling her.