Whatever it was, though her mother normally would have just said “No”, instead she said “Let me ask your father.” She took the newspaper page with her and Chidera went to school. That night, her mother showed it to her father and told him what Chidera wanted to do.
“It’s her room,” her father said with a shrug. He didn’t bat an eye at the drawings his wife showed him. Nor did he show much interest in Chidera’s idea, at least not openly. But secretly, the thought excited him. He didn’t return the page of newspaper to Chidera and she assumed he threw it away. Little did she know that her father folded the piece of newspaper up and the next day put it in his pocket and went to work.
That night, Chidera did not start drawing. Instead she waited till the next day. When she came home from school, did her chores, and did her homework, she then sat staring at the blank walls of her room imagining just what she could turn them into. The kerosene lamp’s oily light fuelled her ideas of bringing the forest to her walls. She would start with the simple uli patterns. Palm trees, the moon, birds, snakes, bush rats, frogs, and night stars. Then she would flesh them out, adding textures to their simple shapes. Lines and squiggles to fill in spaces. She would give the birds eyes and feathers. She would give the trunks of her palm trees smooth textures. But it would all start with uli.
Two days later, on a Saturday afternoon when she had finished her morning chores, she started drawing. She didn’t stop for five hours. By this time the sun was setting and her hand had begun to ache. It was a knock at her door that made her pause from drawing. She jumped at the sound. Her mind had been so into her drawing that she hadn’t even noticed that it was growing dark.
“Yes?” she called.
Her door swung open. It was Florence.
“I didn’t see you at the…my goodness!” Florence said, stepping into Chidera’s tiny room. Then she laughed, her hands covering her mouth in surprise. “You have become very, very good!”
Chidera smiled, as she added another star to the sky she had created on her wall. There was a bird flying in it. It was a simple shadow of a bird with its large wings spread but Chidera imagined it was a vulture. They were so ugly and awkward when on the ground but so gorgeous and graceful in the sky.
“I have been practicing,” she said.
Chidera laughed to herself. Today had been wonderful indeed. She had been in her room all day, so absorbed in the pleasure of drawing on her bedroom walls. So happy. Only once did her mother come into her room to interrupt and the smile on her mother’s face warmed Chidera’s heart even more. Her mother had stood in the middle of Chidera’s bedroom staring at her drawings. Then she said, “Since when did you become an artist?”
Chidera shrugged. Her mother nodded, stepping to the door, “I’m going to go buy a few things. I’ll be back.”
Her mother had only seen the raw uli drawings Chidera had started with. Chidera couldn’t wait for her mother to see it now.
Florence sat down on Chidera’s bed and watched her draw for a while. After a few minutes she said, “Are you ready to draw on me, yet?”
Chidera stopped, turned to her friend and grinned. She was.
“What would you like me to draw?”
Florence thought about it for a moment.
“How about a dove!”
“A fine choice,” she said haughtily. “They’re gorgeous, as you seem to think you are.”
Chidera laughed as Florence frowned and humphed.
“I’m just joking,” Chidera said. “Doves are beautiful and very strong birds. It’s a good choice for you.”
Florence’s frown became a smile.
“Hold out your hand,” Chidera said. “Palm down.”
********
One day Chidera came across a series of figurines that her mother had recently finished carving. In the morning, her mother would take them with her to the market to sell as magical good luck charms. They weren’t really magical and not many people bought them but they did make a little money. Enough for an extra cup of garri or a few more oranges.
Chidera looked at them for a long time. They were tiny wooden men and women about the size of her pinkie. They were very plain. Clean of anything. Brown wood made from scraps that her mother found in the forest when she went to draw water from the well.
Chidera’s mother had gone to visit with a friend next door. Her father wasn’t home yet. Chidera bit her lip, and then she ran to her room to get her pen. Hours later, after night had fallen and she’d gone to bed, her mother shook her awake.
“Chidera.”
“Huh?” Chidera said. She opened her eyes. It was still dark. Her mother held a kerosene lamp up.
“Chidera did you do this to my figurines?”
She held one up to Chidera’s eyes. The figurine was covered with the shapes of fish and squiggly lines like waves. On the others, Chidera had drawn whatever came to her mind. One was covered with the shapes of yams. Another had stars. Her mother sounded angry but Chidera couldn’t keep the sheepish smile from her face.
“Mommy, I just wanted to make them prettier,” Her mother was quiet. Chidera could hear her breathing. Then her mother surprised her with a smile.
“They’re… wonderful,” she said, softly. Chidera frowned when she saw tears in her mother’s eyes. She gave Chidera a tight hug. “You’re very talented and that makes me so happy.”
She kissed Chidera on the forehead and stood up.
“I’ll have to keep one of these for myself,” her mother said. “Which one should I keep?”
“The one with the fish and water on it,” Chidera said after thinking about it for a moment.
Though she didn’t tell her mother, she chose that one because she had imagined the sea when she drew on it. And once, when she was in school a teacher had said something that always stuck to her.
“The sea can destroy the biggest ship and then turn around and nourish the whales and fish. It is both powerful and life-giving.”
Just like my mother, she thought.
Chapter Three
And so things in Chidera’s life began to brighten. It was as if the sun was starting to rise at home. Her mother sold every single figurine for very good prices that next day, except for the one she kept for herself. Her father was shocked when she brought home the money.
“This is wonderful!” he exclaimed. He immediately took some of the money and bought Chidera a bag a chin-chin and a new bottle of perfume for her mother.
Chidera had been working on the masterpiece in her room for ten days when her father finally decided to come in and see what was keeping his daughter so busy. Chidera was captivated by her work. She hadn’t spent time with her friends in days. She let her mind guide her hand as she drew. And her room began to transform. At times, she thought she saw that similar lightening blue glow behind the dark lines of her drawings, just like the ones she had seen in the forest that day. Line by line, she used her memory to add details.
“Chineke !” her father exclaimed, calling the Supreme Being’s name in amazement. He was grinning. He couldn’t help it. His face that was so typically pinched with anger was radiant. Chidera had not seen her father look like this…ever! He laughed. “Chidera! I didn’t know you were so…that you had such talent!”
He patted her on the head, as he looked from wall to wall to wall to wall. It was like the entire forest all at one time. Different birds in the air. The owl who only flew at night and the vulture who only flew by once in a while and the pigeon who flew by often. The sun was in the sky on one wall, the moon on the wall across from it. Chidera had drawn the well with several women standing at it, their wrappers and tops and head wraps each decorated with
uli squiggles and designs. There were houses with uli murals decorating their walls, flowers, vines and plants.
There was the market with people selling yams, watches, DVDs, flip-flops, eggs, chickens, goats, plantains, batteries, garri, dried fish, garden eggs, tomatoes, clothing, matches, and soap. And then one man stood in the forest, with his hands on his hips, his feet spread. Chidera wasn’t very good at drawing faces yet. However, she had drawn his face well enough for her father to recognize himself. Chidera had drawn him with an enormous grin.
“I don’t look like that,” he said, with a laugh.
“You should,” Chidera said.
He patted her head again and went off to visit his friend, Osondu.
An hour later her father returned with Osondu behind him. Chidera looked up from the house she was detailing. There was a smudge of ink on her nose and her fingers were dark with black ink. Looking up from what she was doing was like being plucked from another world, her world, the world she had created. She had to blink a few times to properly focus her eyes.
“See,” her father proudly told Osondu. “Look at what my only child can do.”
Osondu smiled broadly as he looked around. Chidera had always liked Osondu. He was a big man with a round belly who was always making jokes.
“Your daughter plays god,” Osondu said with an amazed chuckle. “She has recreated the world.”
“Goddess,” Chidera corrected.
Days later, Chidera sat looking at her math book. She had just finished half of her homework and was absentmindedly drawing the spider she’d seen scrambling across the kitchen floor during dinner on the inside flap of her math book. In the middle of the spider’s seventh leg, the pen ran out. Chidera gasped and scribbled frantically trying to coax the ink out of the pen. She had begun to think the pen was magical. It had shed an impossible amount of ink on her bedroom wall as she drew.
Realistically, she should have gone through over fifty such pens. But hers was different. Nevertheless, her efforts were useless. The pen had gone dry. She sat on her bed breathing heavily trying to stay calm so she could figure out what to do. She looked around her room. Her bedroom mural was complete.
She had finished the last detail just before she had begun doing her homework an hour ago. She’d stood back and looked at her mural. She didn’t know what told her she was finished. There were still spaces in the sky, between the trees, a few homes she’d drawn were just homes, no
uli decorations on them. But she knew it was done. She’d briefly thought about what she would do next. When she couldn’t decide on anything, she tried to settle back into her homework. Now, she could not concentrate.
Her pen had gone dry.Chidera said, rubbing her eyes.
.....read episode 7
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