Acceleration - A Short Story

To be condemned isn’t always the worst ending. I say this because I know nothing comes close to taking a judgement upon oneself, wanting to draw your own hands to your neck and choke the life out of you because the body, as we know it, can be its own weapon. Its own enemy.The rain started lightly, bearing no sense of foreboding but in no time, it was pouring buckets. I was sitting at the backseat of a trotro parked at a station and loading. I was exhausted. Every impulse in my being wanted to lean on the stranger who had just taken the seat next to me and nestle my head into the curve of his shoulder.The car, which had been empty longer than the usual waiting period filled up almost instantly. A heavy downpour like that will have you getting aboard any car to avoid getting beat by the rain. After a few attempts at starting the car, the engine sputtered to life and we were off. A relief.“You won’t even wait for our last troubles to settle. While we roll our sleeves up ready to rebuild, you’re getting ready to destroy the land again.”The voice came from two seats in front of me. It belonged to a woman. I could see a tiny head resting on her arms, most likely the baby’s mouth latched on her nipple. The back of her head faced me and loose threads from her red scarf hang at the nape of her neck, moving in rhythm as the car jounced over a chain of potholes. At first, I thought she was in conversation with someone and then I realized she was speaking to herself or the weather. Or perhaps, God. Whichever the recipient, it was a statement other passengers caught like snatching something in the wind and in no time, the silence was filled with murmurs about what had happened a week ago.The floods. I closed my eyes at the thought and massaged my temple, wanting sleep and food and a quiet journey back home, back to what I left behind. I was in the kitchen when it happened. Rains as thick as rivers. Pouring down as if unlatched from a dam. Atinka town floods easily, so much that dwellers like me never make a home of our settlement. I had cupboards removed and raised higher. In the bedroom, I built shelves for everything and convinced myself that as long as my belongings remained a little above ground level, I wouldn’t have to lose much.A soaked bed can always be dragged outside to dry. I got rid of my carpet, which, after every flood, stayed damp for days and carried a stench that lingered in the room. I forced myself to find pleasure in the coldness of concrete floors.These were adjustments we could make. Some loses were greater than others, of course. Floating cars filled with waste. Broken walls. Several road closures. An entire market storage fully submerged. People, especially the young, washed away trying to cross flowing water. Once, a railway bridge was swept away leaving the tracks hanging over the torrent.We became familiar with the pattern of the aftermath. Decomposed bodies excavated from a pile of wreck. Or discovered trapped under collapsed walls. We would grieve, clear our gutters, attempt to put our homes back in order, receive bags of rice from relief groups and send a message to the president whenever a journalist jabbed a microphone in our faces. When they propped the cameras up to capture our lives, we gave them a tour of our ruins. They surveyed our loss with us. We would point and say “My mother’s shop used to be here. Now, nothing. All gone.” And then we would stare into the lens. Hard. We wanted the glare to mean something. To be fire. To burn something.And when it was all over, we wrung out our clothes to dry and slept on beds dripping from our weight, or on cardboard boxes while our mattresses dried.In the car, people were sharing their stories from the last torrential rains-“My uncle had a metal jabbed into his side. So glad he’s still alive.”“I couldn’t find my husband for two days. Turns out he made it to the next town and there was no electricity.”“I was right at the center of the market when it happened. I saw it all. I don’t know how I’m still alive, but I have nightmares from watching.”The driver dismissed them and sighed. Called it an empty thunder. Rains like this strike nothing, you’ll see. God times His disasters, he went on, first there’s storm and then calm. Never storm after storm.His words made me picture God with arms stretched over fields of water; guarding and waiting, and eventually letting go one more time.I’d rather a storm after a storm than a peace that will be restored and then taken away.I didn’t realize I had said the words out loud and the passengers broke out in conversation, taking sides about which condition is best. If we had anything in common, it was that we agreed it would be better to arrive home than be packed inside a car which had slowed down at the growing intensity of the rain.Outside, people were running and making shield of anything- hand bags, polythene bags, metal sheets, buckets. Store owners by the road were closing their shops while others locked themselves inside. There were strong bursts of wind seeming to nearly knock people off. I noticed how they battled to keep themselves together, clutching themselves as though the wind could break right through them. And maybe it could.At the far side of the road, two men abandoned a wooden table covered with phone accessories, most of it already flying off and joining the flurry of dry leaves and plastic bottles in the air. The chipping paint on the sign board read Fredo’s Electronics. Dashing gestures of people seeking safety grew blurry before my eyes as I watched liquid globes slide down the window.In no time, as expected, I begun to feel the car’s depth wading in the stream of water filling up the road. Puddles had begun forming at our feet, seeping through the car door. Several drivers had parked their vehicles and were making their way knee-deep to safety.I remember seeing the bus conductor fidgeting with the gate and that’s when I jumped out the window. I left my crate of eggs. I wasn’t far from my street and that alone harbored within itself a knowing ache that somehow propelled me forward. From where I stood, I knew instantly it was useless to try to get home. People were wading towards us, away from my home. My chest tightened at the thought of going in any other direction.There were many of us shouldering our way along abandoned cars and I could feel spouts of water lapping between my thighs.It is said that each one of us has their own life to live. We attend to our losses and victories; we nurse our wounds and sing. That no matter how much we appear to be seamed at the ends- body to body, blood to blood- we’re always going separate ways.And that day, clustered around a heap of turmoil with my very fate tied not only to the strength of my legs but also to the mercies of God, I knew there was no coming back from this.What a mother wants is plain- breath, ease and the necessary grace of sanity. Which is why, and only why, it didn’t seem absurd to leave my child home for a short while. Two years old. Good sleeper. Peaceful when I walked out of the room, and his closed eyes, never wanting rest from aliveness, flittered slightly. I was to be gone for an hour. Get a crate of eggs from the town farm, among other things. Walk without any weight strapped at my back. Listen to my thoughts. Hum to myself. Maybe cry a little under a shade and put myself together for once. Abide in a moment of being nothing, doing nothing, and having to give nothing. And then, return home to life as it is.A saving pause. An ease off the brake pedal. A breath that will cost me everything.People were trapped in the moving water. I saw two I recognized, their names pressing heat down my throat at my attempt to call them.  For what? To save me? To ask if they had witnessed a little boy swept out of my home?This is it, God. All the storms I can take. Give me my calm. I did the only thing that made sense to me. I surrendered my knees and instantly buckled over. And there, submerged under water, having nothing, I was roused with the urgency to give everything.I have always thought consolation as a bridge between two pained worlds. How it leaves us confounded, cradled to the hope of something more and yet, stuck in the idle pursuit of letting go. And I hungered for it then, even as I dug my hands in the waters below me, searching for a body, a vessel of proof.My desire was clear and pinned to my heart; I wanted my son, I wanted what belonged to me carried on the arms of the flood and given to me, however scarred.