You met in your second year. At the stadium one cloudy evening when you played
against his department. He was not a player, he was too small to be one, even
though you knew that bigness wasn’t the stuff anyway. But he was so small, so
fragile, you were dead sure he had never kicked a football.
He reminded you of Dave.
You walked up to him at halftime and told him he reminded you of someone.
The way he smiled, his eyes lingering briefly on your sweaty chest and then on
the ground, made you certain that he was one of them. Dave was one of them
too, and he had almost put you in trouble.
I wanted to tell you that you reminded me of someone, you said, with what
you knew was a weak smile, and then you were gone.
You lost the game to his department. On your way home, you called Rachael
and told her you loved her so much did she know that? She giggled over the
phone and you told yourself again that Dave had almost put you in trouble, Jesus!
You met him again. At Christ Church Chapel where he played the organ so
well on Mothering Sunday, the entire church was filled with a tender light, the
women burst into tongues in the middle of hymns, and the chaplain for once
didn’t say, First and last verses only. You couldn’t believe it, that his legs could
strike the pedals so strongly. He did not look fragile on the organ.
After the service you lingered around the door of the choir room, until he
came out and said, Hey.
Hey, you said, scratching your head and glancing at the floor. That was
great, what you did up there.
T-thanks bro, he stuttered. I wasn’t sure at first, b-but then…
And you learned that day how well he could talk and not bore you.
Later he would tell you that he had been afraid you would walk away again, so he’d
talked and talked.) You exchanged numbers, and you whistled on your way
home, skipped by the roadside like a little boy, so full were you with giddiness.
But you did not call him. He called you, twice, first to know how your
day had been. You said, Fine. The second time he called, he told you that his
piano instructor was OCD, the man didn’t give him any breathing space, and
you said, Really?
Yes, he said.
After that, he stopped calling, and you did not call either. Not until the
night Dumebi texted you that Mum and Dad were quarreling, could you please
call them now? You were asleep when the text message came in, and when you
woke up at midnight, you had eleven missed calls. You tried to call her back,
but she wasn’t answering. You started to dial Mum’s number but then stopped.
Then you dialed his number. His voice was rough: Hey, Lotanna.
You sat on the bed, running your fingers through your hair. Hey, Kamsi,
you said. Didn’t expect you to be awake.
I’m rehearsing my exam pieces.
I see.
Then you told him everything, how every time Mum and Dad would quarrel,
even though it was in low tones, the entire house seemed to reverberate with
their bitterness. How it hurt you in the chest so badly you couldn’t breathe;
shit, you couldn’t breathe. Then, because he was so quiet, you said: I’m not
even sure why I’m telling you this. I hope I didn’t disturb you.
No, no, he said. N-not at all.
Okay, you said, and then asked how he was doing, and what were the pieces
he was playing?
The next day was Saturday. The girls from your department had a football
match with the girls from his. The match was already on when you came, and
you walked straight to him after shaking hands with your friends. He folded
his arms across his chest, smiled so widely it made you happy simply standing
there, saying, How’veyoubeenbro?
You sat with him on the racing track. He was wearing three-quarter shorts
and an Arsenal jersey, the hair on his legs and arms black and curly against the
light brown of his skin.
You have nice legs, you said. Let’s run.
Arinze Ifeakandu is a Nigerian writer known for the collection of his short stories, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things,which won the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for the US and Canada, and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize,the Lambda Awards,and received the Story Prize’s Spotlight Award. He also won an O. Henry Prize for one of the stories.
