Day 15
In my rich, luscious garden, there are palm trees. There are orange trees. But most importantly, there are nim noms. Red, purple, blue nim noms. In bloom, ripe, tender, and soft. They grow as curly as my hair, and I love curls, so I love nim noms. And I love them, so I eat them.
I crouch in the soil, as low as I can go, and let my ear brush the mud. I stretch my neck like I am spying on a test and grab each leaf with my teeth, then I chew. No one is looking when I feast, when I devour. I chomp till I feel a tingling within me and I cough up petals. I eat until my neck turns purple and I’m ripe and unfolding into blossoming. I eat till I’m fulfilled, till a velvet petal grows from my palms the next morning and I brush it softly. Then I pluck it out and wash the blood off my fingers because that wasn’t the transformation I needed.
When Auntie comes to ask who has destroyed the beautiful, precious nim noms, I shrug. I shake my head and pass around the tissues and cry with everyone for the loss of the nim noms. After Auntie stops crying, she stands firm and calls the exterminator.
He sprays the nim noms with something awful but non-lethal, then wipes his gloves and says that all the pests will go, so there’ll be no more sorrow. Auntie writes a check and he leaves, stomping feet, a smile on his face.
But an exterminator can’t get rid of me. I will never stop eating nim noms, not even the ones coated with a thick layer of pesticide. They taste of something spicy and savory and sweet. Like chicken, cheesecake, and peppers. Maybe the chemicals will give their sweetness an edge and make me more special.
The first time I ate a nim nom was after Daddy ignored my attempt at a hug in favour of a phone call, while Sunday got a smile and pat from Daddy later that day as Auntie was shouting at me for not dressing properly or doing anything right. Auntie had once said that all plants are great, but nim noms are special because they’re filled with magic. So I put a nim nom in my mouth, and I swallowed the opportunity to be greater.
Day 23
The chandelier is shining bright when my little brother, Sunday, bursts into the living room, sweating. I’m chatting with one of Daddy’s friend’s daughters while Daddy and his friend are drinking whiskey. With his sticky eba hands, Sunday points an accusatory finger at me.
“Ella has been eating the nim noms. Ella is the pest! I thought it was a rabbit, but it was Ella.”
The room bursts into gasps. My face flushes. Sunday! My own brother, trying to destroy me. Exposing me, embarrassing me. I’ve been caught. Now the whole crowd is staring at me, folding their arms, whispering. Gossiping. Me. Eater of nim noms. Destroyer of the beautiful. Murderer. Liar. Disowned daughter.
“It’s simply not true!” I scream, stamping my feet on the floor. “I would never eat a nim nom. I know better. I am better. Only rabbits eat nim noms, and I am not a rabbit. I’m not. So how could I?”
Deny, deny, deny. Lie. Lie. Lie. Straight through my teeth. My teeth that ate the nim noms. They must believe me, for I have eaten and I am now filled with sweetness.
“But I saw you!” Sunday counters.
“Daddy—if I was a nim nom girl, a dirty girl, then you would see me with mud on my dress, looking stained and impure. Ungood. The cleaners would say my clothes looked awful. Have you ever seen me look anything but perfect?”
Murmurs in my favour. Yes, yes, yes. Sunday looks around the room, panicked, and when he tries to talk, his defenses are drowned out. Who would believe the boy with eba-stained hands?
I am hugged by my father, an apology for ever doubting me. He knows me to be true. He knows me to be good. The nim noms have made me good, have made me pure, have made me sweet. Daddy strokes the beads in my hair and promises to take me to the mall on Saturday to buy me something nice. Something pretty—for my hair, or for my skin, or for me to play with.
I shoot a knowing smile at Sunday just to let him know I have him beat. His eyes open wide in horror. Daddy snaps his fingers for Big Nanny to come take Sunday back to his meal, an unfinished bowl of ogbono soup, and I can hear his “nooooos” all the way to the dining table as they drag him away. I let out a small cackle of victory. Little snitch almost ruined me.
The daughter of one of my father’s friends turns back to me and our conversation goes from dolls to snotty siblings who really ought to stay in their place. The girl pulls the hair off one of her dolls, straight out of the scalp, and I like her style. She’s the kind of person who would do something ruthless without a second thought. Like lie through her teeth. Like eat the nim noms in her yard.
She comes close to me and asks me if I really did eat the nim noms. The girl tells me that she swallowed an eraser once, a very precious eraser that once belonged to her grandma. That kind of thing is about as bad as eating nim noms and so I don’t have to hide my secrets from her. The girl tries to touch my hair but my eyes widen and I slap her hand away. I tell her she is a monster, that she should be filled with shame, and watch her eyes well up. I storm out of the parlour, up the stairs and into my bedroom, where I fall into tears of my own, only weeping when I’m sure I’ve locked the door. God help this feeling of worthlessness inside of me. Of being evil. Of being bad.
In the evening, I go to Daddy’s room and tell him I never want to see that girl again. Hypnotized, he deletes his friend’s number from his phone. Pleased my father answered my small request; I smile and go to my room, where I fall to slumber. At midnight, I eat some more nim noms, sweeter than ever now that the rain has washed off the pesticides. I fill myself with goodness, and know that with my eating I am becoming a better person.
I don’t know why my sweetness only works on adults and not other children like me. Maybe I need more nim noms. Maybe I need to feast. Maybe children know real goodness, the kind that comes from the heart rather than from nim noms. But what is real, anyway? This is faster. This is better.
Day 29
Sunday barges into my room when I am trying on my Junior Girls Singing Club outfit, and I scream my head off. He doesn’t care. He shuts the door.
“I saw you eating nim noms last night,” he says.
Deny, deny, deny. “The exterminator obviously needed to use more chemicals. So many moles must be digging around.”
“I opened my windows and I saw you,” he says. Straight to my face, stepping closer to me. Is he trying to intimidate me? Fool.
“You don’t know what you saw. Big Nanny says you haven’t been eating enough, and you know how you get when you don’t have enough foo—”
“I saw you!” He screams. His flailing arms hit my dresser causing some of my perfumes to fall off. “I saw the beads in your hair and your blue nightgown and your favourite bracelet. I saw you on the floor, putting nim noms in your mouth.”
Who does he think he is? I’m done playing these games. “And so—who’s gonna believe you with your eba-stained hands?”
“I’m going to ask for a camera for my birthday. And then I’ll get you. And they’ll see you’re not even a rabbit. No, you’re just a filthy rat.”
I hate my oversabi little brother, with his snotty little face. I didn’t ask for him, but yet he came. I can’t delete him and I hate him and…
“Get out of my room! Get out! Out! Out! Out!”
He runs out, quick and alert. He has crossed a line. I shut my door. I relax my breath, then I scream again. I am filled with shame and anger and pain. I am filled with hurt. I pluck out the tiny little petals from my skin and I rage.
My secrets are mine to keep. Mine.
My mother left us a year ago. In a drunken stupor, breath full of sour wine, sticky and stumbling and raw with emotion. Rain was falling and thunder was screaming and our dinner was rice and stew. My father tried to calm her but she was a mess, crying and angry, then vomiting on the floor. She didn’t leave with footsteps, but puddles.
Mummy and Daddy loved each other, never fought, so why would she leave? I know Daddy still calls her on the phone and they talk, slow and awkward before falling into rhythm. I know Mummy talks to Sunday, but she cuts the call before it can ever reach me. She never asks to speak to me. Maybe it was because I used to cut her hair when she slept or because once I threw out all her sleeping pills or because I would use the wine in her cabinet as blood for my dolls in the dramas I would act. She thinks she knows who I am. She thinks it’s easier to avoid me. She thinks I won’t be good, but I’ll show her, I’ll show them all.
Daddy won’t tell me where Mummy is and I hate him for that. I hate my mother and I’m sure she hates me.
She called me a demon before she left.
Day 37
My Auntie is hosting a planting party, to celebrate things that grow. They are serving drinks and organic juices and everyone wears nice spring clothes. The grass glows greener than ever, not surprising after all the shouting Auntie did to make sure the place was perfect before the visitors arrived. My eyes shine wide at all the freshly-planted nim noms, fresh and all mine. Mine.
Auntie comes in with the grand plant, golden nim nom brought all the way from London. It’s beautiful, stretching out in all directions like a peacock’s feathers, with its tapering, curling leaves that resemble hair. It is ripe and juicy, gorgeously pure. I almost faint at the sight of it. I love it more than anything—more than my brother, or my father. It will be my Christmas dinner. It will make me better for the holidays, best for the New Year.
Before my Auntie can plant it in the soil, my brother stops her.
“Wait! I don’t think you should plant that pretty thing here. I’m not sure all the pests have gone yet, Auntie,” Sunday says.
That. Little. Snitch. He better watch himself. I cast dagger eyes at my brother, but he doesn’t look at me. He gives me no attention. Who does he think he is? If I eat him someday, it would only be right.
I burn. My hands keep clenching and my eyes keep twitching and I try to hold it in, try to be sweet.
“What?” My Auntie shrieks, face paling, hiding her precious plant. Her oh, so delicious plant. Her sun hat wobbles on her head, and the crowd murmurs in confusion. “What have you seen?”
“Big, chewing, rats!” Sunday screams, raising hands to the air, eyes to me.
The crowd gasps.
I explode.
“Lies!” I immediately say, and the crowd turns to me. “I’m always watching the nim—the flowers, and I haven’t seen anything. Sunday just wants attention.”
“I do not!” He yells, and the crowd looks back and forth.
“Maybe if you washed the eba off your hands you could finally tell a lie that sticks.”
“Stop it, both of you!” My father in the midst of the crowd shouts. He glares at us.
I walk up to Daddy and wrap my hands around his waist. “Daddy, see how Sunday is behaving.” I tell him and Sunday looks shamefully at the floor. He knows I have Daddy like thread around a roll, loving me. “Daddy, I’m so sorry,” I say, forcing out tears. “Sunday brings out the worst in me,” I turn to the crowd. “Everybody, I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It’s Sunday’s fault.”
If I have Daddy then I can have the crowd, all in the palm of my hand. I can show them my flowers and, even though I hate the petals on my skin, maybe everyone’s adoration will fill me up and I will finally bloom and be full of nectar and full of love; as pretty as a nim nom. I can get them all to love me, to not criticize me, to do my will. That’s how I will be better.
I whisper to Daddy, “I know how we can fix this. Let’s give Sunday up for adoption so he can find someone who loves him. It’ll be you and me—just like old times.”
Daddy stares at me and I smile at him.
“Ella?” He says to me.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“I have never been so disappointed in you.”
“What?”
“Get out.”
“Daddy, what?”
“To your room!”
I burn bright and my stomach rumbles, and I want to eat every nim nom around the room. Every single one, in my mouth, so I can be transformed.
“No,” I say, stamping my foot. “No!”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” My father bellows. If his voice is thunder, then I can be lightning.
“That’s not fair! It’s all Sunday’s fault; he thinks I’m a rat when he’s nothing. He doesn’t want you to love me! Daddy, don’t let Sunday do this. Please. Don’t let Sunday destroy us.”
I open my fingers up for Daddy’s warmth; I just want to be loved. I just want to be pure. But all I feel are hands dragging me away. The crowd watches me and gasps and my father shakes his head. I hear their murmurs. I hear someone call me spoilt. A brat. A rat.
This can’t be happening. I’ve been destroyed. My father does not love me anymore. I wasn’t enough.
I begin to scream. I cry and tremble. My petals wilt and droop, itchy on my skin.
My brother has ruined me. I must make him disappear.
Day 44
Sunday has gotten hold of one of Auntie’s old phones. He called her after the party and mentioned he had seen more “rats” and that he wants to use it to record the rodents eating the nim noms. Auntie came and dropped the phone for Sunday, then took away some of the silver nim noms planted in the garden.
For the next week after the party I stay silent and keep my head down, avoiding Daddy’s gaze. I feel diminished, malnourished, but Sunday has that annoying phone all day long so I can’t feed. Everywhere I go he is watching, video on. If I step outside, he is there. If I get up at night to pee, he is watching. If I excuse myself from the dinner table, he is there. Always with the phone on.
Why doesn’t Sunday want me to be better? Why won’t he allow me to eat the nim-noms so I can be sweet, so I can be pure? So I can be like all the other girls who don’t hate their brothers and fight their mothers, and don’t hate themselves.
I eat to be. So I can transform.
But since the little snitch doesn’t want me to be better—
Day 53
I enter Sunday’s room with a march and a glare, and he stands up and grabs the phone like we are about to fight. But this is not a battle. I push him down to the floor and he lands with a thud. He sees the roll of tape in my hand and it’s like he knows what I’m about to do, and when I come closer he curls to a ball. He’s still holding that freaking phone and I try to take it out of his grasp but he holds it with all his might. I scream in frustration.
He shrieks and I just want to shut him up. I grab his struggling, squirming legs and push them down, firm, steady, under my control. I wrap them several times with tape till his legs are stable and unmovable. Then, I grab his arms which are flying to my nose and I hold his hands tight, and bind those too. I cover up his little accusatory lips, again, and again, and again, till he has no more words to say. I like his silence.
Then I wrap his disgusting fingers and his crying eyes and his nose till all the rolls of tape are finished. I’m done being sweet. All the nim noms that I have ever eaten roar through my belly. My stomach rumbles with a hunger that’s monstrous and starts to fill with heat.
I crouch down, as low as I can go, and bite his skin, pressing my teeth deeper and deeper, a bit further into his flesh. He doesn’t want me to feed so I will eat him. Sweet or unsweet. I will chew him up; a meal without taste.
I stretch my neck and chew his ears first. No one is looking when I tear out the flesh from his jaw, when I devour. I chomp his little fingers till I feel a tingling in my stomach and a fluttering in my chest. I eat till my neck turns purple and my lips turn red, till I’m fulfilled,. I chew and chew and tear and swallow Sunday whole. Then I belch.
I leave his remains for the rats.
I take his bedroom key and lock the door and head downstairs. I run to the garden, to the nim-noms and I begin to devour every single one. I’m not even subtle. I dig up the roots and suck on their stems. I need to feast till I feel no guilt or sorrow or shame, till I have erased my sins with the taste of sweet. With the taste of pure.
Petals grow on my arms and in my throat. My tears are running down my face into the soil and messing up my dress, messing up my rage, but there’s nothing to feel sorry for. I just need to feed and be good. Good, good, good.
Why am I like this? Why won’t I stop? Why can’t I work and grow and transform to shine? Why can’t I get it right? I just need…
I stop eating when I feel eyes on me, a shadow in the darkness. I look up in horror to see Daddy is watching from the window. He is watching, mouth wide, face twisted. He starts screaming.
Petals bloom on my skin, itchy and bloody. My throat aches with chlorophyll and my stomach swims with vomit. My petals flutter like wings, as though ready to carry me. I am the pest who eats the nim noms. The rat. I am still unsweet, but I am strangely relieved. The hiding is over. I will never be better, never be pure, no matter what I do.
I could try to be better. I could start over and work on my heart, but that’s too hard and right now I have to eat. I can’t help it. I love my nim noms. So I take another nim nom, then I start digging through the soil.
END
[…] In the Garden Watching Nim Noms, by Osahon Ize-Iyamu, in Omenana […]