He walks like a bicycle. His shoulders, the steering-wheel--two sharp blades on either ends, traversing him to his minds' will and, most probably, the wind. His knees, the pedals, textbooks to gravity--Whatever Goes Up Must Come Down--raising and falling the soles of his feet to the concrete. Four out of seven days of the week: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays, I see him walk pass my window, down the promenade, vanishing into the foggy perspective. It's a wonder what he does the other three days: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Does she not see him? my mind wonders; Mother really doesn't see him walk pass her window, too? Surely if she did she would find it strange as well-- the mechanics to his movement--robotic.
The Dustbin Man, it's how my brain registers him, is the only thing my mind remembers everyday. I once saw a video on Youtube, where a blond, white girl with a stellar memory, said: "If you want to remember things better, put objects beside the things you hope to recollect; that'd make remembering much easier." Actually, I didn't 'once' see this video, it's the only video Mother plays me every morning, that I'd remember how to remember, starting today, as every other day.
Feels like I'm a ghost stuck in a time-loop; like something really bad happened and my ghost won't let it go so it keeps repeating this sordid event--my staring out the window, down at the lawn, overlooking the promenade, waiting for the Dustbin man to walk pass again--until I can fix whatever is wrong with me, until I can remember.
"Whatever would help you remember, dear," Mother says, walking into my bedroom with a tray filled with orange juice, oat, and a jug of milk. "You can stare as long as you want," a smile in her voice, she drops the tray on my bedside-table and heads for the door.
"Who are you?" I say in an emotionless tone.
She reassures me, as I believe she always has since the incident(whatever took my memory away), that she is my mother, that I was born in Jos University Teaching Hospital, that my father died when I was three, and that she doesn't know how I came to lose my memory but every day she repeats this: coming here with food and the blond, white girl on her laptop(youtube), that I'd remember. "It's what the doctor advised," she says.
"I want to take a walk. I need some air," I say. My mind is a blank slate; except for the dustbin man, the promenade he walks on, and the foggy perspective he vanishes into, everything else is alien to me, including this house.
"Sure," Mother says. "We don't usually do this--you and I. I try to make you go out sometimes, but you're always too scared to want to..." She turns to head out the door, then stops, turns around. "Something about you is different today... I don't know what it is but..." She leaves.
I spend the entire day on the stairs outside, surrounded by apple geraniums. It's a fast-developing city, I realize; a factory close-by emitting fumes, tall buildings buried in the distant clouds, and beautifully mowed lawns in this neighbourhood. I feel mother's eyes on me from the upstairs balcony, like a watch-dog. I close my eyes, lost in phosphenes, colourful shapes and lines running perpendicular, vertical, and horizontal on a black canvas. The air is chilly and still, life feels absent. I place my hands on the concrete and I can feel the beating of the earth. It is racing, speeding faster and faster. I search through the colours, for the zygote, for life forming in the earth, and I see it, like a dichotyledous seed, a bean, it floats in a black pool dotted with orange and blue and pink and yellow and red, and red. Red.
"Red... Red... Red... Red! Red! Red!!" I say.
I feel hands on my shoulder. The colours start to burst, dissipating as though they are afraid they've been seen, their hide-out uncovered, until the slate is pure-black again. I open my eyes, see Mother standing right behind me, staring down petrified. She places her hands firmly against her lips, tears sprinkling her cheeks, and I turn to the direction of her gaze, to the blood sliding down my leg, to the beating earth, the concrete. I crouch, go down on my knees, lips on the earth, drinking the blood sipping from within me. I try to save my baby.
"You're not a bastard," I say. "You're not a bastard, my baby."
I lift my head to find Mother passed-out on the floor. I notice the bags beneath her eyes, like a painting, unbelievably dark and heavy. Apathy. I continue drinking my baby.
"You're not a bastard," I say. "My baby boy, you're not a bastard."