NONFICTION

By Ubong Johnson 

                              Photo Credit: BijouCreates

                             NOTHINGNESS 

July, 2021.

I have failed my professional exams again. This means I have just one attempt left before I am withdrawn from medical school. In two months, considering how low my cumulative average is, so low passing is almost impossible, I most likely might become like my once-senior-colleagues who were withdrawn last year. Most now study biochemistry; they hide their faces whenever we surgery students walk past, and probably go on to look for a decent spot to sit in, and cry, and hate themselves. Rumors say one attempted to kill himself—this is something I can do. Might do. Have tried to do, but that was long ago, when every morning showed me how meaningless life can be. 

I snatch my gaze from the air when my heart has slowed down, and stare into the result sheet in my hands once more. This time, though, to my surprise, I feel nothing. Not fear. Not shame. Not disappointment. Nothing. It's as though my emotions have refused to move. As though I am dead but alive. A clogged shank. A vacuum. 

Two days before black soil blankets my grandma's body, on a cold Friday in October.

I am speeding down a small road in my Grandma's village, thinking about how she struggled with but succumbed at long last to COVID-19, when a boy no more than ten years old runs into the street. Screeching noises I press the breaks hard. The car jerks forward, then shuts off, the bottled drinks in the boot rattling and clanking. Silence, then nothing, cold spreading across my chest. I feel dead. My eyes follow the child as he gets up and runs away. 

The Saturday That Forces me To Seek Therapy once More.

“How is daddy?” 

I am asking because Daddy was moved to the I.C.U at the Navy Hospital, Calabar, yesterday. I am three cities away, at school. Daddy pierced his leg a week ago whilst he worked in his small garden. And since, there have been silly symptoms everyone kept away from me in a bid to not trigger my anxiety: a swollen foot, pain in the neck, involuntary clenching of hands and feet, talk about what lies on the other side of life. 

“Your father is fine.” My mother says after much hesitation.

My elder brother seizes the phone. “We have lost our father.” 

My chest tightens. I fall into a nearby seat and cup my face in my hands. Water, and then nothingness. I am floating. Like air, I am dancing, and dancing. 

Another Saturday.

It's past midnight. The noises from the gate are loud enough to scare even guard dogs. Obviously, it's another break-in attempt. Just my elder brother and I are in the compound. He creeps into my room, and we make towards the kitchen after some whispering. He nods, and I grab a machete. Then, we both walk towards the gate, two six-foot-tall silhouettes who have been stripped of the fear of death, who wear their father's ghost like a shield. 

My father's last words were: “Nothing will happen to you guys; if I die, don't stress yourselves or your mother. The burial doesn't have to be extravagant. Just put my body in the ground, beside my mother, and leave.”

I scrape my machete across the concrete floor and my brother barks loudly. “Who be that!?” The banging stops at once, and thumping from feet stirs the cold air. The thieves are running away.

I lower to sit there, on the floor, and there's the nothingness again. Which I suspect even my brother feels. He sits beside me and we stare into the sky, at a sickle moon struggling to keep clouds from blanketing its light. 

“So we don't have a father again.” He breaks the silence before climbing to his feet. He walks back inside the house.  I have never before felt so alone. 

Glory to The Lamb.

The girl can sing. I like it when she leads worship. Her soprano draws me in even though I now almost hate God; even though the very thought of him makes my tummy churn these days.

“Glory, Glory, Glory to the lamb.”

The choir joins her: “For you are glorious, and worthy is your name, you are the lamb upon the throne.” 

I push my phone into my pocket and stand. I would raise my hands and, again, nothingness. It's warmer this time; the warmth clings to my cheeks, to my eyelids. 

Minutes pass. A tug on my trousers.

“Sit down! Sit down!” My brother is whispering. 

I open my eyes and turn around. Everyone is seated except me. 

Gifts.

I pick up the phone. My mother's voice is so loud I have to move the device away from my ears. The last time she sounded this happy was two weeks before my father died and three months after my grandma was buried; when I passed my resit exams.

She was at the office when I called her that afternoon. “Mummy, I passed.” 

Her co-workers still mock her for shouting so loudly in a military facility and in front of her superiors. 

“Mummy, why are you so happy?” I jeer. 

“Ubong, your Uncle just sent me money enough to cover everything needed for your dad's burial. I mean, everything. It's so much money.” 

I become air. Nothing.

Therapy

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

I want to say: “Dead.” But I don't think I would want to die then, so I scoff and say I don't know. No one knows anything. The future gives and takes what it wants.

“You should. Think about your answer carefully.”

I close my eyes. 

Nothing.

I see nothing; I feel nothing. 

I hear her say: “How are you dealing with your addiction, though? Any new girls?”

Outside the Therapist's Office, A Boy Remembers

The memory is foggy, but I remember. Stepping into thirteen years old was stepping into nothing. Tongue became desert; new cracks announced a new age, a new kind of suffering. I couldn't speak to anyone about everything that was happening. Even my mother. She saw it in my face that my happiness was gone, but she could have never guessed that I am fine meant I am dying, slowly. 

It all happened so fast. I woke up one morning and found that I was nothing. The previous week, I had seen porn, and I had fondled my penis until I shook and shook. When semen left me, I stood still with wide eyes and hated what I had become, unbeknownst that I would hate even more the me from the future. This one had no shame.  

The boy who sat behind a piano died a new kind of death, a new kind of way, every time he was alone, the moment he turned eighteen. That boy was I. Three bodies hung over my neck like a medal I showed to the boys whenever we talked about women we had stroked. Women who sang our names in the middle of the night.

One of those bodies ripped my heart out. I remember. I sat naked in the bathroom and cried my lungs out, reading that text, hoping it was a joke. But it was not. She was leaving, and there was no reason. At least she said so.  But I am not foolish. I knew it was the man who came to see her at the entrance of her hostel on Wednesday evenings. 

She had been entertaining him for a while after she found out I had cheated on her. Twice. With two different women. 

Once, months after the heartbreak, my heart raced to a stop and my sweat-swathed body kissed the floor. I had collapsed. Panic attacks. 

I do not like to talk about my anxiety. But I know that running from anxiety is like holding your breath and hoping death takes you.

Rest

I wake up crying like a child.

“Hey, don't cry.” My lover, who has been awake, pulls my face around and kisses me. I don't kiss back because I am embarrassed. Instead, I pull free my face from her gentle grip and turn the other way. I grope across the bed for my phone, and when I find it, I scroll through texts, searching for one of the few texts my dad ever sent me. 

I would spend the following seconds reading it:

“Ubong, today marks another landmark in my life. You are 22 today. It all happened on Sunday evening, exactly 22 years ago. To God be the glory, for He will -keep watch over you and flourish you with the desires of your heart. I'm proud to have you! Happy birthday and God bless.”

My lover leans in closer. She cuddles me from behind, and reads the text too. Aloud. Then, she kisses my head and kisses my neck and tells me that I'll make a great father someday. 

I don't answer. Instead, I pull her around and rest my head on her thighs. She rubs my face and begins to sing a song from Aladdin. “I will show you the world…”

I close my eyes and, nothing. Perhaps, this is what it means to rest. 

Gratitude

They say I am not grateful.

Candy says I should be happy my dad didn't die a coward but a man who raised men. He left good things behind. Houses. Lands. Money. 

I try to be. But all I see is nothing. He left nothing behind. 

                                           

Ubong Johnson is a doctor-in-training and storyteller. He is thrilled by the possibilities of literature in preventive medicine.