Skeleton No Bottom

“You should eat more food and eat it often too, like six times in a day”, mum says to Tiwa my best friend. She is skinny and eats very little. She is the first person I have met who dislike food. I don’t know her favourite food because she never eats anything with delight. She eats sparingly. I am the exact opposite of Tiwa, I LOVE food! My mum is a great cook you see, and she makes all sorts of whatnots from the recipes she reads about in cookery books or those she gets from the internet. Everyone in my house has a healthy appetite and no one is skinny except my brother; my brother eats a lot but it does not reflect on his body which makes us tease him all the time.

Tiwa is looking down at her toes, trying to hide the crooked smile on her lips. My friend always has that crooked smile on her face whenever my mum makes any of those remarks regarding her weight. I am not bothered about mum’s remark to my friend, I am busy behind the kitchen counter with a plate of five cookies resting perfectly on my stretched-out laps. I secretly picked them from those cooling off on the tray which my mum placed on the counter.

“You see my dear, a child should have a healthy appetite. You are still a child and you need food to grow well. Did your mother not tell you this?” my mum asks Tiwa with her eyes fixed on the poor girl who by now is thoroughly embarrassed. I am watching them from behind the counter where I am and I really wish that my mum would just leave Tiwa alone. She is still staring at her toes when she responds, “She did, ma.” My mum seems to have finished her lecture for Tiwa and that is when she notices I am not there.

She shouts my name, “Tunmise!” “Oluwatunmise!” but I didn’t answer. I have just stuffed the last of the cookies into my mouth, if I answer, she would know I have been pilfering the cookies. Tiwa is standing so close to me, resting her elbows on the countertop. Mum is on the other side and she makes to go out of the kitchen in search of me. I pinch Tiwa and she giggles. Mum looks back, the plate in my hand falls as I am about to stand up from where I am sitting. I remain sitting, I can’t get up, I have been caught. The cookie is still in my mouth as mum marches to where I am behind the counter. “Tunmise! O gbo pe mo pe e tele ni?” “Did you not hear me calling you?” She asks in her low, firm and coarse voice. My siblings and I know we are in trouble whenever she uses that voice and speaks Yoruba instead of English. I can’t answer because the cookie is now stuck in my mouth. I cannot swallow it for fear of my mum’s presence.

Then she comes closer to me and asks, “Ki lo wa l’enu e?” I didn’t respond. “Eti n dun e ni?” By now, I am extremely scared and as I open my mouth to talk, out comes the cookie. Now, it is an ugly sight. Thoroughly mixed with saliva, the brown mixture of cookie and saliva comes trickling down my chin and the front of my blouse. I guess I am a sorry sight to behold because instead of my mum slapping me as I expected, she holds her sides and starts to laugh. Even Tiwa who was silent while my mum was questioning me, starts laughing too. I am a chubby child and you can imagine what I look like with my big cheeks, fat face, round neck with the ugly liquid trickling down my chest. Well, I start laughing too and eventually, mum hands me some tissue to clean up the mess and without a word, turns around and march out of the kitchen.

Tiwa keeps staring at me, making stupid faces. I tell her to stop but she wouldn’t. I leave the kitchen for my room. I have to change the blouse, but to get to my room, I have to go through the dining room. Moriamo is in the dining room. She is arranging the placemat. She looks up and starts laughing when she sees my blouse. It is no longer funny to me, I run into my room and lock the door. I have a bad temper as a child and whenever I am angry, I would lock myself up in my room and refuse to talk to anyone till the anger subsides.                                                                                                                    “Tunmise, open the door,” it is Tiwa but I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, so I tell her to go away. A few minutes later, the voice comes again, “Please, open the door Tunmi.”                                                “Go to your house,” I scream. I hear feet shuffling and hear as her flip-flops make “pla, pla, pla” sounds down the corridor that leads to the lobby from my room till I can hear it no more. I hear my mum telling Moriamo, our maid to pack the cookies she made into my siblings’ lunch bags because the following day is a Monday. I hear her saying, “There’s none for Tunmise, just pack for Bolu, Laja and Tayo.” Those are my siblings.

Even though mum says there should be none for me, I am not bothered. I know she makes a lot of cookies on Sundays and we take some to school on Mondays. There is always extra and the extra cookies are kept in an air-tight container in the upper kitchen cabinet. I am going to get my own cookies at night after everyone had gone to bed.

I get up from the bed and fish out my jigsaw puzzle from under the bed where I have hidden it because of my brother who prefer mine to his. I start arranging it and before long, the sour mood leaves me and I am fine once again. I get tired of arranging the puzzles and need someone to talk to. My sisters will not be interested, they prefer to watch the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon rather than talk to me. Mum would be sewing in the special room she has designed for that purpose upstairs, Moriamo would be busy making dinner and I know my brother would be busy drawing his stupid comics. One could never get his attention when he’s drawing that nonsense. The only option I have left is dad as I have earlier sent my best friend away.

Dad is the only one who stops whatever he is doing to give answers to my endless questions and meaningless chatters. Sometimes, he would scratch his head before answering a question or put his index finger on his lips before chipping something in, during my chatters. It is usually funny. It is always in the line of something like this:                               

        “Daddy, is a dog a human being?”                                                                                           

        “No, Tunmi. A dog is an animal.”                                                                                           

        “But my teacher says it can hear you and do whatever you tell it to do, how can it do all of those if it wasn’t a human being?”                                                                             

        “Because it is a smart animal. That’s why.”                                                                                  

This is how dad answers my questions all the time, never raising his voice. Even when I ask seemingly stupid questions, he takes his time to give me an appropriate answer. At other times, our conversation would be something like this, “Daddy, see, one day, the lion and the tortoise were fighting…” “…then Tunmise came and separated them,” my dad would jokingly cut in without allowing me to finish the story and we’ll both start laughing.

Anyway, I go up to dad’s room and knock. He opens the door and I step into the room. I sit on a sofa that is in the room, he sits on the chair in front of his study table wearing his glasses. A big book is open in front of him on the table. He puts a bookmark on a page and closes the book, he then turns his chair so he could face me and asks, “Puff-Puff, what’s the story?” He calls me Puff-Puff because he says my cheeks look like a snack that goes by the name. “Ayam boorrrred,” I say, slurring the words as I say it. “Go and play with your siblings if you’re bored”, “But they won’t play with me?” I reply. “I don’t want to play too, I am busy,” dad says. But I stand on the bed and start jumping up and down, yelling at the top of my voice, a song I learnt in school.

“Row, Row, Row your boat,

Gently down the stream,

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily,

Life is but a dream.”

“Daddy, come and sing with me,” I say with sheer joy in my heart but dad is angry. I can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t like the way I scattered his bed. “Get down now, before I pounce on you!” He bellows. I scamper off the bed with the speed of lightning. Dad never flogs us, he only scares us with a loud version of his deep baritone voice. I vibrate anytime he warns me in that voice. Dad is holding the door and pointing out, I run out of the room and hear a loud bang behind me as he closes the door.

I go to the kitchen, “Moriamo, can I eat my dinner in my room?” I ask with a sorry look on my face. She nods and I hug her. I know mum will not ask of me if I am not at the table for dinner. She knows I have had enough embarrassment for the day.

***

I forget to take the cookies as I have planned because I sulked till I slept off. Dad hurried out of the house in the morning and has forgotten to give us money for lunch in school. Tiwa isn’t talking to me, she is still angry with me for sending her away the previous day. I don’t feel like apologising to her, instead, I just let her be. I know she will get over it soon. I am very hungry, so I decided to go to my sister’s class to ask for some of her cookies when it was time for lunch. I have only tea in my flask. I decide to go to Tayo’s class, not Bolu. I know if I ask Bolu, she wouldn’t give me. Moriamo always packs six pieces for each of us, so Tayo gives me two pieces and I am extremely grateful.

I go back to class and sit at my corner munching away on my cookies and sipping my tea from the flask. Then, someone comes and puts a food flask on my desk, it is Tiwa. I smile. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry too,” I say. “Want some rice?” she asks me, I nod. She gives me a spoon and we eat together. I eat most of the food because my friend wouldn’t eat much. I offer the other cookie to her but she shakes her head. After eating, she asks me to go with her to the snacks shop. She buys a bottle of water for herself and sweets for me. Some boys pass by us and call out as they go, Stingo, Skeleton no bottom. It is the name they call my friend on account of her skinny frame. She ignores them. The bell rings and we walk back to class together, hand-in-hand.

***

That was a decade and a half years ago. I think we must have been nine years or more, I can’t really remember. Now, both of us (Tiwa and I) are sitting at a café in Ikeja City Mall. My friend is still skinny and even though I am no longer chubby, I am not skinny either. I order a plate of salad and shrimps while my friend orders a bottle of Vita milk. I give her a pitiful look and shake my head. We are supposed to be having lunch and my friend orders just a bottle of soya drink. I also order a bottle of diet coke. I eat my food with delight.

When we finish eating, we decide to do a bit of window-shopping before going home. As we walk through the mall, we hear two guys behind us talking, it is obvious that they are talking about us and then one of them says, “Which one of them? The fair one or the chocolate Bonga fish?” We both heard them. Tiwa quickens her pace but I went back and tell the guys to repeat what they said. Clearly, they are embarrassed and choose not to answer. Instead, they turn to walk away and I am just about to drag the one who made the rude comment by his collar when Tiwa comes to gently pull me away. She has always been calm, I am the troublesome one. I leave the guy and we both continue our window-shopping. Some minutes later, Tiwa says she didn’t want to go home yet and we both decide to see a movie. We are on the queue waiting for our turn to get the tickets when I hear someone whisper behind me to the lady beside her; “That girl is anorexic.” I turn around and give her a fierce look. “What girl?” I ask. Tiwa is standing in front of me and she is now looking back wondering what had happened.

“I am not talking to you,” the girl replies curtly.

“Yes, you are,” I reply. “Because if you are referring to my friend…” I point to Tiwa, “…then, you are referring to me.” The girl, sensing that I am poised for trouble, apologises and leaves the queue with the lady she had whispered to. Tiwa turns to me, “Tunmi, why do you like trouble so much?”

“I do not like trouble, I am only looking out for you,” I say. She says nothing. We get our tickets and go into the cinema.

After seeing the movie, Tiwa says she wants to spend the night at my place. We call a cab and go home together. We are both hungry when we get home and I am too tired to cook. I have no bread, there isn’t any cereal too because I have run out of supplies and I haven’t done my grocery shopping yet. We decide to order pizza. We wait for a very long time before the pizza delivery guy eventually comes. It is around 9 p.m. but we are too hungry not to eat. We wolf down the pizza and drink lots of water. I turn on the TV to give the food some time to digest. Tiwa sits on the bed, she is chatting with someone on her phone. Ten minutes later, my friend gets up and goes into the bathroom. I hear retching sounds and get up to check if she is okay. I stand in the doorway, eyes as round as saucers, there she is, bent over the sink, finger in her throat and completely oblivious of me. She is forcing herself to vomit and eventually, she does. She empties all the pizza in her stomach, rinses her mouth and comes to face me as she is about to leave the bathroom.

“What was that?” I ask.

“What was what?” she replies.

I shift to the side so she could pass, then I follow her back to the room.

“Why did you have to do that?” I ask again. She looks at me and then says she doesn’t want to talk about it.                                                                                

“We were both hungry and so, we ate food. There is nothing wrong in eating when you are hungry, why did you have to vomit the food?”                                                               

“Tunmise! I do not want to talk about this and if you won’t let me be, I might as well leave. I’ll go home.”

There is a tone of finality in her voice. She never calls me Tunmise except when she is really angry with me. She always calls me Tunmi. But even though I know she is upset and I should leave her alone, I went on.

“Go to your house, if you want,” I say.

“I’m not keeping you here by force. You came of your own volition.” “Stingo oshi. Skeleton no bottom. Anorexic madam.”

She didn’t say a word. Instead, she dials a number and gives the person on the other end of the line directions to my house. I guess it is an Uber driver. I am livid. The girl at the cinema is right, my friend is anorexic. I feel a mixture of pity and anger burn in my heart for her.

***

It has been two weeks since that incident happened between us and I have not heard from Tiwa. She isn’t picking my calls and she did not call back. She does not reply to my messages either. I went to her house thrice but I did not meet her, so I just waited. I am waiting for her to get over it and call me. I feel bad, I regret what I said to her and I wish I could take it back. I have sent her a message, apologising for what I said to her but I also want to apologise in person. I thought about going over to her parents’ house during the weekend. That is the only place she would be if she has not travelled.

The next day is a Friday. I leave work early and go home. I pack a few things in a sleep-over bag and I am about to step out of the house when my phone rings. I answer my phone. It is my mum and she is crying. I am scared, my mum rarely cries. Instinctively, I know something bad has happened. I didn’t say anything, I wait for her to say something and then, I hear her saying, “Tunmi, Tiwa ti ku o.” Is she telling me that Tiwa is dead? I am rooted to the spot where I am. Even though she is saying some other things now, I can’t hear her. Her voice seems to be coming from a place that is so far away from me, the words are inaudible.

I let out a scream, my bag drops to the floor. I turn and sit on the bed staring at my phone, tears streaming down my face in rivulets. I can’t believe the sad news. My friend has left me without giving me the chance to settle our differences. Guilt wash over me. I feel a great pang of regret. I go to the bathroom and wash my face, I have suddenly become very cold and I am shivering. I pick my bag up from where it has fallen on the floor and lock the door as I step out. I head over to my parents’ house.

Dad and Mum go with me to her parents’ house. Her mum sits in a chair lamenting, “Is it a crime to be fat?” she asks. “E bami bere lowo Tiwa o,” she was saying to nobody in particular. Tiwa has always disliked the fact that her mum is very fat and she used to tell me since we were kids that she would make sure that she never grows fat. Her younger sister tells me that she has been on admission since the previous Saturday because the doctors say her body is short of oxygen. Her heart has shrunk as a result of her anorexia and it has been difficult for the heart to produce enough oxygen for her body.

I was told that she was on oxygen support till she died on Thursday. She was buried on Saturday, the day after I went home. I cried and cried. I apologise to her body where it lay in the coffin, I hoped she would hear me. I wasn’t scared of her corpse. She was my best friend and no one would ever take her place. I stand there looking at nothing in particular as her body is lowered into the grave. We all turn and leave the cemetery after the priest says a short prayer. Bolu and Tayo are holding me as we go towards the car. Tears flow freely down my face behind my big black glasses. The breeze is blowing my black kaftan. I cover my head with a black pashmina and wrap the ends around my neck.

As the three of us walk towards the car, I open my purse and look at Tiwa’s lovely face in a picture of her that I always carry around with me. I never remove the picture from the purse. As I stand there looking at her picture, I know the tears will never stop flowing.      

Adieu! My lovely Tiwatayo. Adieu! My Skeleton No Bottom.