Ekaete - S01 E07

Story 1 year ago

Ekaete - S01 E07

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 7

It was cold at the funeral.

The rain dropping around Ikoyi area was a rare kinda. The leaves dropped like dead flies. A few landed on her coffin. It suddenly looked like Halloween: orange leaves laid against a dark wooden box. My father stood silent beside me. His eyes were red-rimmed, yet I had never seen him cry. He had been in this state of almost-crying for a week now. Good for him; I hadn’t shed a tear, and my eyes were nowhere near red. No, not even pink.

I didn’t feel guilty. Death didn’t scare me; talking about it didn’t bother me. Death wasn’t sad, it was just natural.

It was my mother’s funeral and my second cousin’s sister’s mother-in-law was crying harder than I was. Even the dogs howled their mourning, sniffing forlornly at the edges of the sinking casket as it was lowered into the earth.

I didn’t miss her. I wasn’t sad. All I could feel was a bland acceptance. The soil thudded onto her coffin wetly. It had started to drizzle, and black umbrellas – perfect for solemn times like this – popped open one by one. From the sky, I imagined, it would look like a large black canvas had materialized across the grass.

I gripped my umbrella tightly, studying my dark gloves, shimmering in places where the pale sunlight hit them. I had no other gloves. The ones I was wearing were for dinner parties. They were itchy and I couldn’t wait to take them off.