by Peace Nkeiruka Maduako
Amanda dried the cups and set them carefully on the tray patterned with adorable pink bears dancing and swirling around. Looking across the kitchen counter at the well-arranged rack, the soup spoons hanging down the wall and the jars kept away in the cupboard, she was happy she had no chore remaining. She loosed the apron around her waist and put it away. Now they’d have a late breakfast and watch movies till sundown, Dennis and herself. Dinner was already made, warm and tight in a cooler, no more chores till Monday morning. She lifted the tray and made her way to the living room to set it down on the center table. Dennis could smell the chocolate from the fresh slices of bread all the way from the bedroom. He sat up, climbed down the bed and came running. “Ma, is it tea time?” he asked with a grin, peeping at his mother from behind the curtain.
“Yes, Dee, come on,” Amanda said. She had expected him to come running when several cups clinked in the sink as she washed them. Chocolate bread on Sundays was his favourite. Walking up to the table Dennis put his hand forward for a slice. “On those dirty hands?” Amanda asked. Without another word, he ran off to the kitchen to wash. Amanda smiled and walked lazily behind him, she knew he couldn’t reach the sink. She lifted him in her arms so he’d reach for the tap himself and turn it on, that was how he liked to wash. She let him down and they returned to the table. As Amanda poured the tea from the jug into his cup, she lifted her eyes from the tray to the window. Though the bread was Dennis’s favourite thing about Sundays, hers was the young man who was sure to pass by every Sunday noon at approximately twelve. Amanda didn’t know his name, but she felt she knew him in every other way. Always dressed in that well-ironed purple long sleeved T-shirt, a black trouser and a black belt around his waist. He carried a big old Bible, and his hair was old school, well oiled, glistening in the sun. Whenever Amanda saw him walking down in the company of his fellows, she’d wonder. She’d stare out the window and then back at the picture hanging down her wall, how could two unrelated people look so alike?
As she sipped her tea and waited, she watched Dennis force a handful of bread into his mouth. She chuckled. It has been hard watching Dennis grow up without a father, he didn’t seem to care now that he was little, and now that he calls Amanda’s father ‘Pa’. It didn’t matter, but Amanda feared it would as the days turn into years. She turned on the TV and let Dennis’s favourite nursery rhymes ring out loud. She stretched her neck to look out the window again. She took a slice of bread and spread it with butter. She looked at the artificial rose flowers sitting in a small vase at the foot of the wall beside the TV, it’s been a while since she last dusted them. She heard some voices on the street, and she got up to look out. There on the street the same group of people stood, all smartly dressed, some holding Bibles, others their phones. Her eyes searched through their midst. Purple. No purple. He wasn’t there. Dennis’s shrieking and laughter as he watched the TV helped send a shocking pierce through her. No purple?
Tucking Dennis into bed at night, he kept talking about something he’d seen on the TV earlier. Amanda smiled each time he laughed but she wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking about the man on purple shirt that didn’t walk down the street with the others that noon. Was he alright? Did he take a different route? Could it be, he’d moved away from the neighbourhood? Was it a sign that the week would not go well for her? She sighed. Seeing him at the beginning of every week was a relief she could not explain. How would she manage another seven days without seeing the man on purple? Amanda sat in the living room when Dennis had gone to sleep and continued flickering through the TV channels, her eyes going from the screen to the picture the whole time.
* * *
A driver was blaring his horn at an ice cream man who was crossing the highway slowly with his ice cream cart. The sun was bright up, the heat down below. The gateman was arguing with a man at the entrance and Amanda was sitting behind her desk, in her office opposite the road and trying to read up her recent mails. An alarm was ringing loud in her ears, and she placed her forehead on her table, frustrated with all the distraction from the environment and from within her. She was having a bad week like she had suspected, not because of the man on purple, but maybe because she had said so. Her head was spinning, she walked around her table to the mini fridge in the corner of the office, took a bottle of water and drank it all up, gulping it down like she’d been in the Sahara. She peeped through the window to the highway where the most noise was coming from. Her phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello.” It was a teacher from Dennis’s school, he had fallen and hurt his foot.
At the school medicals, Dennis’s sad face remained half hidden under the blanket as he explained to his mum how he had leaped off a table to show his friends he could fly like Peter Pan, anyone could. “You’re not Peter Pan”, Amanda told him.
“I’m not?”
“Yes. No leaping off of tables. You don’t have pixie dust, do you?”
“No,” he replied meekly.
They let her take him home and he couldn’t be in school the rest of the week because his ankle was sprained.
* * *
Throwing a few pills into her mouth, Amanda swallowed, trying to calm her racing heart. She leaned over the kitchen counter weakly, only the man on purple could help her now. Hopefully he’d show up by noon. She looked over at the sink and sighed at the dishes piled up, waiting for her. She grabbed the kettle sitting on the gas and poured out the hot water into the jug and dropped a tea bag into it. She reached for the spoon rack and got two spoons. She rinsed them and placed them in the tray. She left for the table. Her weight sank into the sofa, and she looked over at Dennis where he was quietly seated waiting for her. His ankle had healed but he was still acting like he couldn’t walk around the house. Amanda worried if they’d have to go see the doctor again. She shook her head as she examined his foot. She mixed the milk and poured out his tea. He let the tea grow cold as he kept on eating the bread. Amanda’s eyes went from Dennis to the wall clock, to the picture and to the window. Just as she packed up the cups, she heard that familiar noise out on the street. She got up hastily and looked. The group. All so smart. She stared. Not again! No purple. Her heart fell as she leaned on the wall still looking out the window. She heard a knock on her door. She ignored it. She let herself wonder how the next seven days would be for her, maybe Dennis would break his neck, maybe she’d lose her sanity. She looked at the picture on the wall, she heard the knock again. She turned, Dennis had gone to the door and said “come in” to whoever was there. He was standing straight. His ankle seemed just fine as he stood on his toes to reach for the door handle. The visitor opened the door and walked in. Amanda’s eyes widened. He grinned at little Dennis standing at the door and took him up in his arms playfully, his old Bible locked in his armpit. He turned to Amanda.
“I’m sorry ma’am, I was wondering if my friend and I could share a word with you?” he said. Another man stepped in behind him.
“Good day ma’am,” he said . . .
An hour later the visitors were not gone, Amanda had constrained them, serving them tea and chocolate bread. She offered to make them chips, but they declined. She offered to make jellof, they declined. They didn’t really talk about the things they had hoped to talk about, Amanda did all the talking. It was as if she had known them forever, especially the man on purple. As if she’d been expecting a visit. She let her eyes go from her guests to the picture on the wall, hoping they’d look and see what she saw. Well, they did look at the picture.
“Is that your husband?” The man on purple asked pointing at the picture. His oversized silver wristwatch dangling from his wrist.
“Yes. You know him?” Amanda asked.
“No. But he looks an awful lot like your son,” he said looking at Dennis who was playing on the rug.
Amanda chuckled softly. “No. Dennis looks like me. I say he looks an awful lot like you,” she said. The men looked at themselves. They looked at the picture on the wall.
“Well, you know him better, pictures lie. Maybe he does look like me,” the man said.
“He’s late now,” Amanda added with a smile. “But I feel he’s just as alive and around as anyone,” she said before sipping from her cup.
“Of course,” he nodded dropping his cup back on the tray. He would take his leave. He left her with a leaflet to read. He walked to the door, Amanda walking behind him. His purple shirt sort of squeezed around his back from sitting in the sofa for long. He walked through the door with his companion, Dennis running after them. As Amanda watched him play with Dennis one last time, she stared in amazement. He was right, Dennis looked like his father. She stood up close to the man and saw the colour of his eyes, it was not the colour of Dennis’s father’s eyes. There was a difference after all. His hairline was different too, it receded too backwards into his head. His ears were slightly bigger. Suddenly, he didn’t look like her late husband anymore. She stared. She watched the men walk away down the street. From afar the man on purple looked like her late husband, but near he looked quite different. As she turned to enter the house, she suddenly realized she didn’t get his name. She bit her lips. She looked down the street and he was gone. He would remain the man on purple until they met again, or maybe not, but she would be alright now, she felt, as she held the leaflet against the sunlight.
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