This Is Home

Ashley-Christabelle Omoregie, Nigeria

Zina looks out the window all through the short drive home, watching the flats go by. She  waits for Chibuzor to swing his long limbs across the front seat and crack a stupid,  inappropriate joke, like a character in an adult cartoon, and follow it up with his wild  laughter. But he doesn't. 

Of course he doesn't.  

Zina rests her forehead against the glass of the window, pressing the heel of her hand into her  sternum, like she can massage the ache away. There's no reason for her to think that if she  looks, Chibuzor will be in the passengers seat, tracing doodles in the dust on the dashboard.  Still, she wants to reach forward and tap his shoulder, whisper into his ear that he looks like a  lizard and laugh at whatever smart comeback he comes up with. She wants him to reach back,  ruffle her unruly hair and tell her he’ll cut it when he has the chance. She wants him to be  there even though she knows he won’t be, and it makes her sinuses sting. 

When her mother asks why she’s so quiet, Zina answers with a question of her own. “When  is Chibuzor coming back?” 

She already knows the answer is never. Her brother is never coming back. Still, whatever  demon compelled her to ask that question has her glaring at her mother through the rear view  mirror. 

Mama is barely paying attention. Her fingers are drumming on the steering wheel along to the  beat of the gospel song playing on the old radio. She has a penchant for exaggerating the high  notes and bellowing the low ones. Beside Zina, her twin brothers are roughhousing, giggling  in the way that multiples do when they’re sharing a joke only they understand. It’s almost  like every other Sunday after mass and Zina hates it. She hates the way everyone is so  comfortable with pretending Chibuzor never existed in the first place.

“When are you going to be ready to make your hair again?” Mama asks instead of answering  her. 

Zina bites down on her lower lip, trying to ignore the way the anger sits heavy on her throat.  Mama likes to pretend that Zina hasn’t noticed the way Chibuzor’s pictures keep  disappearing from the walls one by one, a patch of lighter paint being the only indicator that  they were there in the first place. Zina likes to remind her that she isn’t the first born.  

Which is why she says, “Chibuzor says I look better with my hair short.” 

For a second, the car is absolutely silent. The twins stop punching each other. Mama stops  singing. Even the radio seems to key into the sudden change in the air, as it momentarily  stops playing. The silence in the car is thick and musty, a stark reminder of their loss.  

Zina holds her breath. All week, she’s been committing little acts of rebellion; hanging  pictures back up and changing the wallpaper on her mother’s phone to a picture of her elder  brother in his Sunday best pulling a face. Mama never said anything about it so Zina never  got to wonder how far too far is. 

So, when Mama opens her mouth to speak, she flinches, expecting screaming and the  promise of a beating when they get home. 

But the music suddenly starts up again, one of the twins farts and her mother says, “You  should make crochet braids. It’ll frame your face well. All the girls will want to look like you  and all the boys will want you. Mara mma! Beautiful!” 

*  

In the end, Chibuzor was always going to leave them behind and Zina is only angry because,  even though she saw it coming, she thought he would stay. 

She thought she would be enough to make him stay.

But there was something restless in Chibu, something that kept him looking out the window  and taking long walks and staring off into the horizon. He was an empty, hollow thing  waiting to be filled with something not even he knew. 

“It’s hard to put it into words, Y’know?” he used to say. If Zina closed her eyes, she could  see him pacing around the room, long limbs swinging like that of a rag doll in the hands of a  vengeful spirit. “There’s just so much out there and every where has something to give and I  want to know how it feels to have some of it. Even if it’s just a bit,” he’d sigh. “It’s like... that  feeling you get when you hear your favourite song for the first time—that rush. Only, two  weeks later, it’s no longer your favourite song and you want to feel that rush again so you  spend hours online looking for another favourite song. I just want to feel something.  Somewhere. I know that place isn’t here. It’s just... whatever, Y’know?” 

“Yeah... I do.” 

She would only say it because she thought he felt like how she felt on those days their mother  never acknowledged. Those days where, one minute she’s herself and the next, she’s feeling  like a total stranger wrapped in someone else’s skin. Where she can’t even look in the mirror  because if she does, she’ll feel like taking a knife to her chest to cut her breasts off. Where  she’ll bury herself in one of Chibuzor’s old hoodies even though it’s so hot out the twins are  naked. 

Chibuzor would turn to her and tuck his limbs in, coiling himself tight and Zina would think  that it must hurt to keep straining to depart like a statue preparing to fly. 

“I just want to go somewhere that makes me want to stay,” he’d say. 

Zina would close her eyes and breathe in the spicy scent of his perfume. The same scent that  clung to the clothes she stole and remained in the air even when it’s owner disappeared for 

days. The scent that calmed her when anxiety climbed steadily up her ribs and wrapped  around her heart like yam leaves. 

Chibuzor promised that, when he left, it wouldn’t be because Kaka sometimes beat him when  he came home late, dishevelled and stinking of alcohol. That, when he left, it would be because he was sure that Zina was strong enough to be on her own. And she was so hung up  on the fact that, earlier that day, he’d dumped all his favourite shirts in her wardrobe that she  kept on switching ‘when’ to ‘if’ in her mind. 

She didn’t really think he would leave. Didn’t think that after mass the following Sunday, he  won’t be in the front seat, slinging his limbs over the chair, reaching back to ruffle her hair  and telling her she was his favourite brother like he knew that was exactly what she wanted to  hear.  

She had thought she was enough.  

She had thought whatever was eating Chibuzor up and whatever kept eating her up was the same. But, in the end, Chibuzor was always going to leave them behind and he would not send letters because letters were for people who actually wanted to be found. 

Zina wishes she knew that back then, but she didn’t. So Chibuzor would talk and she'd lay  still and try not to look around the room when he'd say, “I just want to go home.” 

Zina would lay still and swallow down hard because, if she didn’t, she’d tell him that their small three bedroom flat, with holes in the ceiling which rats fell through and a kitchen tap so leaky their neighbours could hear it, was home.

*This piece draws inspiration from the song “Starburn” by Vola.

Ashley is a Nigerian writer and digital artist. When she isn't writing, she enjoys listening to music and pretending she knows the theory behind it. She prefers the smell of coffee to the taste.