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When Tomorrow Calls

By Veronica Nkwocha

Words swirl around my head, like a twitter of birds I can’t control. It is morning but I remain prone, on my bed. I sink deeper into the sheets and pluck a phrase here and another there from free singing birds outside my window. It is not good. I search and pluck despair from the twits that won’t stop. They sound chirpy enough but I refuse their reign, I fold myself. Away from any happiness. I do not deserve it.

Yesterday it rained. Hard pelting rocks that resembled white walls crumbling down like the foam surfers leave in their wake. I could not see through the slush that ran down my face, my cheeks. I stood in the rain.

My penance fizzled. In an instant, bright sunshine ruled. I craved the wet. A shower from a passing car slicing through the flooded street washed over me. I stood waiting.

‘Lord wash me, cleanse me.’

A resolute silence clung to me like my wet clothes draped around me like a morbid shroud.

A honking car slowed to a near stop waiting for me to move to safety, the driver nodding politely, I pitied him. I trudged away from his path.

My wet feet left soggy prints on the thin carpeting, I peeled of my clothes as I walked to my bedroom, the warmth indoors cloying, draining.

Sleep eluded me. Dark thoughts consumed me.

In a basin along with others, my baby lay. Given up before their time. I had thought long and hard and reached the same conclusion every time. For me there was no choice. As had the others. But mine was worse. I had gone of my own volition. I Laraba Nelson.

It began, many months ago. A day like any other in the dry season. Lectures had ended and I had gone to the lady down the road just at the road that forked left to the grounds of the Theatre Arts Department to buy recharge cards.

As usual, I pretended that was all I was out to do but after I loaded the digits on to my phone, I stared long and hard to make sure I wasn’t cheated. Then I asked for another card all the while looking through a veil of my braids to see if he would come.

The birds continue their dance of whatever it was that had them singing this un-merry morning. I get up to shush them. I grab a broom and fling it against the netting on my window. A cloud of dust and the thudding sound send them flying. The momentary silence has me floundering. I sink into the sheets and they resume their chirping.

They make sweet music. Like we made sweet love. Their notes hold a tenderness and a gentleness. Like Ahmed. They call and another answers, rolling the sounds, floating, merry, crisp. Ahmed. Ah Ahmed.

It has to be a sin. To love so strongly and to cut so deeply.

Soyayya, ruwan zuma.

Love and honey. It must be a sage who thought up the saying.

My eyes are like fire when they spy him walking down that fork in the road. He is not alone. The bright sunshine that surrounds him, bounding off the near white sands of the encroaching deserts in the savannah make like one walking on a sheet of pouring gold. I drink him. Silently through a veil of my braids.

He walks past me, as always. He asks the lady for a recharge card. His companion asks for a bottle of coke.

“Would you like a drink, sister?”

His companion asks. I stutter. I can’t believe Ahmed is looking at me intently, a question in his eyes. The voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau. Nothing good will come of this. I am warm from the gold of his gaze, I take the drink from the outstretched hand of his companion.

I am so shy I sit under the mango tree as we finish our drinks. I do not say one word. They argue about the latest results from the Premier League. It is strange living in my dreams. I am sitting next to Ahmed. I spy the fuzz on his arm resting next to me. I want to run my hands down through the hairs, they look soft. He tells his point to Joseph and they nearly stand up at odds with each other about a particular point.


It is Joseph again.


“Ah, lovely name. Ahmed here just smashed his medical exams.”

Ahmed and I lock eyes. I notice his has a question in them.

“You’re so beautiful Laraba” Ahmed says.

I lower my gaze

They both smile.

Of course I know who he is, his pedigree, and his renown. Everyone on campus knew of his family, his ancestry, a long line of royals.

I only ever came here to day dream, out of his league. Even I Laraba knew to be honest with myself.

I pinched myself. I winced.

We part. I thank them for the drinks.

The canaries flit and float, they sing trapped in their very large cage. Their yellow bellies are the part I love best about them. Like tiny balls of cotton. Ahmed loves my fascination with them. They are his favourite. Of all the animals in their sprawling compound, the horses, ostriches, peacocks, his mum’s Pomeranians and more.

He likes to wake up to their singing. I love that about him. That he would love them, fragile, beautiful.

“What gives you the right to intrude on our peace? How can you even do this to yourself? You realise this will end badly don’t you?”

It is Sameera. His sister back home from Law School in Lagos. We had tried to be discreet. Him sneaking me into his room, his parents blissfully unaware.

Love made me. I knew I should have put boundaries. To stop after I had my fill. I knew to make memories for my old age, for when I would sit at the porch like other old women and have a knowing smile, of my one true love. The one we love and can’t be with.

But I couldn’t help myself. I was everywhere with Ahmed. I moved my daydreams a notch further. I began to envisage marriage. Maybe someone would sweep into our compound, take a look at the forlorn nondescript house, shake his head at the irony and march to the door asking for my father. A letter in hand, he would open it with a flourish. An official letter bearing a coat of arms would fall to the ground and he would pick it up with manicured hands.

We would in the blink of an eye move from being paupers to co inheritors of a royal lineage. The family tree traced by a fluke of a historian bearing a record from a forgotten time. And then I would become able to marry my prince.

To be honest, I tried to pinch myself every time the day dreams began to run off. But the sweetness of honey is addictive. Ahmed was as addicted to me. We wove tales. Of how he would come into his own money and set up a new business for dad and my brothers, surely we could latch on to a faraway uncle or chief who would agree we met the pedigree of those who could marry royalty.

Sameera invaded my dreams. Every time I drifted off, she followed. A trail of ‘end badly, end badly, end badly…’ lingered like the waft from our backyard after the rains. Plumbing was a luxury out of our reach.

He came, bearing a letter. The stranger refused to sit gravely delivering his message. My father jumped up calling out to my mother. A doctor. Laraba. Marriage. My mother ululating, my neighbour ululating, my aunties danced into the compound. I was made to sit down. It was all too much to bear.

Dreams do come true. What better gift to a grown daughter. The gods had smiled down. Just finishing university and I am getting married. A good marriage.

The days are heavy with the threat of the first rains. The clouds are grey and heavy. The rumble of thunder comes but it is a message from afar. It is pouring in the neighbouring town but we remain dry. A cloud of dust lifts up here and dissipates creeping up unexpectedly raining a shimmer of fine sand on corn and beans drying on top of granaries dotted here and there.

The voice on the other end of the phone is unfamiliar yet polite and gentle.

“You will enjoy England. Your nursing degree is valued here.”

I nod through my tears, under the guava tree. I speak to him and caress my midriff.

I must tell Ahmed. That our tender baby lies cradled in my belly. Made with the sweetest love possible. The most beautiful baby ever. He or she will take the best of both of us. His laugh and his kindness, my smile.

In my dreams I tell him and he hugs me excitedly. He takes me to his mother. She is overcome with joy for her grandchild. Eons of tradition fall like a pack of cards. His father rises like a king over all, over pariahs and taboos. We are knit together by time and by a beautiful ceremony, I the blushing bride.

I walk out of my father’s compound, a prelude to my new life. First I stopped for an appointment with the doctors. For my journey to England, I have to walk alone, empty of my child. Bereft of Ahmed. First Cut


“I am strong. I’ll just pick myself up and move on!”

She banged on the stool and then moved to the mirror. She hit her reflection shattering the glass to a hundred shards.

One whole, a hundred pieces. They clung to each other refusing to let go. One mirror, crackled like a map drawn by the insane.

She drew blood. It started like a trickle from the edge of her palm and as she raised her hand to look at it closer, it made a bright red trail to her inner elbow staining her sleeve as it went along unheeded.

She grabbed the first piece of cloth she could find and after making sure there were no pieces of glass embedded in the gash, she wrapped it around and around stopping only when she had a tiny bit of cloth left. She tucked it into the flat part on her palm. She looked at her reflection, there were a hundred of her staring back at her.

“I am me. I’ll get up, again and again and again and again! I will never give up. Oh God!”

Then she started to cry.

“Why me? Why? Oh God.”

She wiped her tears and left a smudge of blood. Even as she ran her good hand through her hair, wild and sticking out in places. Her eyes were red, her mascara ran like melting wax staining her cheeks.

With quick movements, she tidied up. In a flash, the bed was made, stained bedding replaced by fresh sheets, the upturned table was back in its place and all the cosmetics and books were arranged back to their own place.

She undressed with deliberate care. Peeled off the remains of her blouse; already ripped, the buttons already popped from their holes with his violent movement. Her torn skirt was still partly ridden up her ample hips. A rivulet from his claw marks marred her soft thighs.

“Oh why?” she moaned when she saw the trickle of blood. From within her. Down her legs. She left sticky footprints.

She ran a bath. She soaked in the warm waters and imagined herself in a peaceful place.

‘If only I could lie here forever’, she thought as she immersed herself deeper into the lavender fragrance of the foam bath and into her thoughts.

But she got up. She dressed. And made up with skill in the one good part of the mirror that she could still see half a face. She smiled at her reflection as she smacked her lips. Her eyes refused to embrace her lips, they were as cold as death.

Knock! Knock!! Knock!!!

She ignored them. This intrusion into her peaceful place.

She swayed. In front of the mirror. A hundred swayed. They danced when she danced. They smiled, her pearly teeth were like pearl necklaces strewn across a dark sky glinting as they spied the stars.

A pirouette and her pink gown flared, rose petals dancing in the mirror.

She ran her fingers down her hair. She caressed her hair. She removed them. Quickly. It reminded her of him. Her countenance changed.

“I hate him”

She looked at her hands. She placed them in her hair again. And removed them.

She grabbed nail polish, she painted her nails. Bright red. Then she ran them through her hair again.

“That’s better, nothing to remind me of him.”

She pulled at her hair.

“I hate him! I hate him!! I hate him!!!”

The wet polish left red flecks in her hair.

“I hate me”

And she folded. And they all folded, her reflections in the mirror.

She lay, a dark shadow in the corner.

Knock! Knock!! Knock!!

Shouts of “Halima! Halima!”

She looked at the mirror

She spoke softly “Halima? They are calling you. Answer them”

Then she laughed.

“Which one of you will answer them? She asked the hundred Halimas.

She heard breaking. Sounds alien, from near and yet far. She crouched, in her corner staring at her nails damaged from running them through her hair.

She got up, picked up the bottle of bright red polish and went back to her corner. She imagined it her cradle. She rocked. She sang. A lullaby.

She was painting the last little finger when the door gave way.

A group of worried friends burst into her room.

“Halima!” they said worried.

“Pretty isn’t it, see my nails, they are pretty.”

The crowded around her, helped her up, and took in the scene. Her wild hair dripping with nail polish and her nails poorly done, smudged and streaky. The shattered mirror and the pristine room. Her pretty pink dress.

“Are you okay? We’ve been worried about you. It’s been two days, where’ve you been? We thought you travelled or something, you didn’t come for lectures or meals or even to Sade’s party. Ore here has been so worried about you.”

He loomed over them. Ore. They made a path for him to make a beeline for her.

She opened her arms, it knocked the mirror and the shards fell.

His arms wide open. His eyes hesitant. Knowing. Pleading. Shame faced.

She smiled, that smile that always had him wanting, needing, hoping.

Her eyes were cold, as always. Closed. As always. To him.

Her arms open, and they embraced.

“Aww, Halima and Ore sitting on a tree” some in the group sang.

She sat in his arms, on the very same bed.

He stopped. Eyes wide open. His side bearing a large piece of glass.

Her hands clutching the piece of glass. Bright red. From polish. And from his and hers. Their blood.

Halima. Singing.

“Halima and Ore. Sitting on a tree. K.I.S.SI.N.G. Halima and Ore. Sitting on a tree. K.I.S.S.I.N.G.”

A lone voice cutting through her friends’ looks of fear and confusion..

Halima swaying.

Ore, sightless in death. Ore embracing the bed. Where he drew first blood. The Lone Elephant

A certain family of Elephants were on a long journey across vast plains, deserts in search of water. The journey would take them weeks upon weeks.

The Matriarch was strong, she was wise and above all, she had the fire of ten thousand men. She led them, walking alone. Apart and slightly ahead, a lone powerful beacon; through the hills she triumphed, through the valleys, she inspired. And the elephants all followed her. They were tired, they were growing weaker by the day but they had the fire of mama’s leading to urge them on. To the hope of water for everyone, to life.

As the sun set one terrible day, a lion found them. It sniffed for the weakest and trailed the broken. Those who had undergone the journey over the years had the experience to carry on; they were at the fore of the journey, right behind the Matriarch, each one eager for the oasis that was nearly within sight. They could smell it in the air, and most importantly, they saw their old faded footprints from a distant past to show them the way.

At the far end limping along though, were the calves. They tried with all their waning strength to keep up with the herd but their small legs betrayed them.

The lion was getting closer and closer. It gnawed at the heels of the last of them all, a lone yearling, the smallest calf, drawing blood. She limped along frightened and yelping in pain.

Then something strange happened. The stronger, older and wiser elephants surrounded their lone kin to protect her from the lion.

They bellowed and trumpeted, they stomped running around wildly, their large frames covered in a canopy of dust wafting from their terrible anger at the prowling lion.

They formed a bulwark against the rampaging hunter and provided a secure refuge for…
their lone beacon, the Matriarch,
closing their ears to the bitter cry of the lone yearling even as the lion took her away,
the smallest of them all.

*It is easy to be strong for the strong, the true test of humanity is whether we can be as strong for the weak. Baby Ane


“Morning o my brother, I greet o.”

Mama Ezinne called from across her front door,

She lowered her tone and spoke to Ane,

“Abi craze dey worry you? Sit down there!”

She pretended she was stirring the vat of dough.

“Who dey craze”? Ela quickly retorted.

“Mummy, is enough!” Ane shouted.

“You dey insult me, your mother?”

Ane was at home when she walked in.

A repentant Ela began in a tremulous voice,

Ezinne turned to look at her mum who nodded.

“See my doll baby” she said excited. Abuja Dusk (Photo credit: Jeff Attaway)

Dusk’s New Dawn


He stared.

“Bingo”, she whispered silently.

“Hi, I’m Uzoma.”

“I’m Mary.”

“Pleased to meet you”, they exchanged, smiling.

“Oh Mary”, he whispered.

They walked into the house and sat, knit together.

He started, Dangerous Liaisons


Nneoma pinched her nose as she stepped in gingerly pushing the door. She stumbled over a sharp object, its blade tilted at such an angle she whispered ‘blood of Jesus’ in thanks for escaping a cut. She lifted the soft end and put it to the side. Strewn everywhere were clothes, belts, a half-eaten pizza from a late night dinner congealed and curling at the sides. She cleared a path and moved around toiletries upturned on the dresser. A pair of underpants with skid marks stared at her dangling from the handle of a drawer. She used an old comb to fling it to the side. A thick greyish novel titled ‘Hard as Steel’ partially covered a sheaf of stationery. She moved it to the side and found what she was looking for, a birthday card and some envelops, she heaved a sigh of relief.

“He really must take better care of his room”, she grumbled to herself.

What did they learn in university these days she thought shaking her head? He got worse every time he came back for the holidays. At nineteen, her first born Sam had been brought up to be tidy, at least when he lived at home. It appeared going off for his studies was the beginning of forgetting all he had been taught. He would do nothing but read novels, whisper surreptitiously constantly on the phone, go out at odd hours and lounge complaining bitterly that he worked so hard during term time, it was his time to rest. ‘Rest’! She spat out the word as she fumed looking around once more. He must clean this room she decided. She couldn’t wait for him to come home. She picked up his ice-skates that nearly cut her when she walked in, and marched back to pick up the novel. She would not return them until he cleaned up. He would grumble but he would do it, she was boss after all.

She hid the skates at the far back of her wardrobe and tossed the novel to the top shelf. It fell to the floor nearly bruising her nose taking her glasses with it. She was very annoyed now, her glasses had lost an arm!

“Oh Sam will pay for this” she said out loud.

A piece of paper fell out of the book. She thought for a moment it was being used as a bookmark but her heart froze in fear as she read its typed contents;

“You are to pay or else we will kill him. You have until xx date to do the following…”

So this was the reason for the furtive movements, the quiet whispers on the phone, the long nights away from home. Her son was part of a criminal undertaking. A ransom note. She sank to her feet all energy sapped out of her and began to weep, silently at first and then she began to wail.

“James, I think you see what you have done. Death, you’re cruel, I said I needed my husband and you took him away to raise these kids by myself, is this the shame Samson has decided to repay me with?”

She beat her chest and began to roll on the floor clutching the piece of paper. Every once in a while she would look at it and take in another detail; bank, Warri, slice off an ear, millions.

She started to pray and then picked up her phone to make a phone call but her tears wouldn’t let her see clearly. She saw Sam in her mind’s eye, tied to a stake facing a firing squad and began to ‘bind and loose’.

“Devil, you’re a liar. Fa fa foul! You will not take any that belongs to me, I bind you, I cast you. Into the endless lake of eternal damnation. Hands off my Samson! I say hands off my boy now! Samson! Sam!”

“Yes mum?”

“What’s the racket about?” He asked sauntering in, a spring in his step.

He was Drake like. His good looks always had girls whispering when he walked into a room. They would stand straighter jutting out their chests and jiggling their behinds. Nneoma would glare at them, “young girls of nowadays, no shame” she would tell him. And he would walk, in what he called a swag, his bling tastefully worn and shopped from the trendiest of shops in London.

He clouded her vision now, flashing a huge smile.

“Mumsy the mumsy, what’s up?”

She jumped up from where she had been crouching.

“Samson Jonathan Akelowse, you want to add armed robber and kidnapper to lazy and dirty?”

“I am doomed, others have doctors and lawyers for children and mine, a kidnapper? Heavenly father, forgive my every sin and please take us out of the valley of this darkness, why me eh, why me?” She shouted.

“What are you on about mum?” he asked horrified.

She shoved the paper into his face.

“I know all about it. Here, see, can you deny it? Blood of Jesus!”

He starred at the paper his eyes widening and reached to grab it from her but she tucked it in her bra.

“Mum listen…”

“No you listen. Whoever it is you have kidnapped must be returned, that evil gang you’ve joined, may God help us. I told you to be careful in this Lagos, of the kind of friends you keep, even your old childhood friends may have changed, hungry for more money. We can still sort this out please my son for the sake of your late father”, she said weeping profusely.


“Shut up you foolish boy, you won’t send me to my grave before my time.”

“Mum, it’s the beginning of a short story!”


“It’s the draft I started. I was hurrying home to let you know I won a creative writing contest with this piece ‘Dangerous Liaisons’. Check the rest of it online and the announcement on their webpage.”

“What?” she said, drying her tears. He hugged her wiping the rest of it tenderly.

They hunched over a computer in her room and she said happily,

“I knew you had it in you! That’s my boy. Eh heh, all that novel reading you spend hours on has paid off. You know you’re Nobel Prize material.”

“I know mum, but that’s not what you said a moment ago.”

She laughed, “Go and clean your room. I’ve kept your ice-skates till you clean it.”

“You can keep them mum, they were feeling a little too tight on the ski trip anyway. I’ll get new ones back in London when school starts.”

“I know you complain I party a lot with my friends but Oya where’s my special celebration party for winning the contest?” He asked, his a cheeky grin melting her heart.

“Silly boy”, she said affectionately. “Still, you have to clean that room. Where’s the phone let’s call your sister, this good news on her birthday is just too wonderful, Baba God you’re faithful.” Whistling Seas


“The sea flows in cascading waves over the beach only to flow back leaving behind debris and valuable, a sign of its earlier presence.”

Ana paused her writing and stared at the surface of the sea, wrinkled and glittering catching the evening sun.  She rubbed her brow with the end of her stylus and sighed. The words she tried to form into tangible letters were stuck in her head and no digging could get more out. She flung the phone to the side and unfurled her lithe frame. One last swim and it was back to the hotel.

She was enjoying the solitude of her lone vacation in her dream destination, Valletta, Malta, cradle of ancient histories and jewelled seas. She came alone, without Mark or Ephraim her brothers even though they begged her, that she should not be alone at a time like this.

She twirled in the lukewarm waters allowing its light waves tug her here and there. The light breeze picked up and had a whistle to them, a lone voice trailing from across the miles and miles of vastness. She drifted thinking of the words she had written earlier, ‘leaving behind…valuable’ could be likened to ‘memories’; a stamp of an earlier presence, and she missed Kama so. She ached for him so deeply tears welled up in her eyes and for a moment she was lost in her thoughts.

She lifted her eyes to stare at the sun and realised she had drifted a fair distance from the shore and the evening darkness was descending. She threaded water in a panic. She was alone at the beach. She tried to get closer to shore but she seemed to move further away. The tears were falling freely now.

She yelled ‘Help!’ as loud as 