Gnosari

The drunk driver who hit my car had ludicrously large hips. It’s the last thing I saw before she got back into her car to try and run me over. I will find you Terror Sidika trust me I will

My father never came to a single thing I invited him to. Not my primary school graduation. Not my secondary school prize giving where I collected 3 awards and kept looking at the gate. Not my university matriculation. Not the ceremony when I got called to bar in 2012. I'd send him the date weeks in advance and he'd say I'll try and that was always the full sentence. I'll try. No follow up. No explanation after. My mother would sit in his place and clap loud enough for 2 people. I stopped inviting him after the bar call. Not from anger. Some people love you completely and still cannot show up and after a while you stop making them feel guilty about it. He was not a bad man. I want to be clear about that. He was a mechanic in Mushin for 35 years. Worked 6 days a week. Sent every one of us to school. Never raised his hand. Never left. The lights stayed on and the rent was paid and there was always food and he did all of it quietly without asking to be celebrated. He just could not sit in a plastic chair and watch something. I accepted that and moved on. Last year I bought my first property. A flat in Ojodu. Took 9 years of saving and 2 years of paperwork and a lawyer who nearly finished me. When the keys finally came I sat in the empty flat on the floor for an hour just breathing. I called my mother first. She screamed. My sister cried. I didn't call my father. 3 days later he called me. Said he heard about the flat from my mother. Said he wanted to come and see it. I didn't know what to do with that so I just said okay. Gave him the address. Figured he'd say I'll try and we'd never speak of it again. He showed up on Saturday at 9am. Stood at the door in his good agbada. The one he only wears for serious things. Holding a small nylon bag. I let him in and he walked through every room without speaking. Not quickly. Slowly. Like he was counting something. He checked the pipes under the kitchen sink. Knocked on the walls. Opened and closed the windows twice each. Looked at the ceiling in every room the way only a man who has fixed things his whole life looks at ceilings. Then he came and stood in the sitting room and looked at me. Said the pipework is good. Said the windows seal properly. Said whoever built this knew what they were doing. I nodded. Long silence. Then he opened the nylon bag. Inside was a small framed photo. Me at maybe 7 years old sitting on the bonnet of an old car in his workshop. Grinning. Both legs swinging. He's standing beside me with his hand on my shoulder looking at something outside the frame. I remember that day. I had gone to the workshop after school and he let me sit there while he worked and gave me a Fanta and put a Michael Jackson cassette on the small radio. I didn't know anyone had taken a photo. He said he kept it on his workshop table for 22 years. Said he wanted me to have something for the new place. I held that frame and stood very still. He said he knew he missed things. Said he was not good at the sitting and watching. That crowds made something in him go wrong in a way he never knew how to explain. Then he said the flat was good and he was proud and he asked if there was anything in the kitchen because he hadn't eaten. I laughed. Made him eggs and bread while he sat at my kitchen table in his good agbada like he owned the place. We ate and he told me about a car he was working on. I told him about a case that was giving me trouble. Normal conversation. The kind we should have been having for years. He left at 1pm. At the door he gripped my shoulder the same way he did in that photo. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to. The photo is on my sitting room wall now. First thing I hung in the whole flat. Some fathers cannot sit in the plastic chair. But mine drove to Ojodu in his good agbada on a Saturday morning with a 22 year old photograph in a nylon bag. That was his standing ovation. I just didn't know to look for it in that shape.