HOW WAS YOUR DAY?
[Creative Non-fiction]
HOW WAS YOUR DAY?
I wish someone asked me that, yesterday. Precisely yesterday. People ask me that every other day and on most days it’s a boring question to answer. Mostly because I don’t like the people asking them. And the people I do like get tired of asking the question. I don’t blame them. If there’s gist, you gist. If there’s none both of you stare at your phone while you occupy the same living space.
But yesterday, for the first time, I wished someone asked me how my day was.
This morning I woke up with a start. It was thunder and heavy rain. It was chilly cold with raging winds.
I ran to close all the windows affected, so rain wouldn’t get into the house. I did my dad’s room, then the kitchen. When I got to my sisters' room, the windows were already shut.
I put a bucket in the veranda, under the hole in the ceiling and brought in the clothes-hanger from the backyard.
I went back to bed for a few minutes and my dad woke me up. “The Door-man is here,” he said, “go open the door for him.”
It’s raining bloody heavy, I thought to myself. I took the keys from atop the fridge. Opened the front door, then the corridor door, then the door downstairs. An entire journey.
I held the light while he fixed the thing that attaches to the door. As he fiddled with his screwdriver, I thought, mechanics is beautiful.
When he found the problem, he showed me, “the bolt got stuck, did you see?” He had the excited smile of a young child who just figured out how to solve a tough problem. Ah, the beauty of mechanics.
He finishes, leaves, I lock the door behind him. I go back to bed. The rain is pouring heavy outside, the room is cold, and I am under my duvet. Father comes in again. “Let’s go pray,” he says, “wake your sisters up.”
I sigh. But it’s better to do it early by seven, and sleep most of the morning away. So I go wake them up. One of my sisters complain, “under this rain? Tell him to go and sleep.” I smile and prod them some more to wake up, then leave.
In the parlour I sit and think about the rain. I’m grateful that it didn’t pour yesterday, because I did laundry. I’m grateful that I washed yesterday. Just then I think to myself, did I bring in my clothes yesterday? I relax myself, I’m sure I did, if not, my sister would have.
I search my memory but I can’t seem to find anything. So I go back to my sisters' room, they’re still struggling to get out of bed.
Their window faces where we spread clothes. I say, “I can’t seem to remember bringing in my clothes yesterday.” I climb their bed, look outside their window, and there they are, my clothes, on the line, wetter than they were when I spread them yesterday.
“Don’t tell anyone,” my sister says. She is right. My parents will find out at some point and have my head for making a mistake, but for now, I’ll be the one beating myself up.
I resist the urge to hit my head on the wall. I can’t even blame God for this. What will I accuse him off? That he made me forget? Was he meant to remind me? I knock myself on the head.
After the prayers, my dad goes back in, I go downstairs with a bucket and an umbrella. As I unclip the clothes, my feet wet and mixed with mud, I think, this wouldn’t have happened if someone important to me asked me how my day was.
