Pepper Soup (excerpt)

I catch myself when I see a loose tear fall into my pot of soup. I know I’m an amateur cook. When I was younger and still lived with my family we had a rota for making meals each week. Whenever it was my turn- Wednesdays and Sundays, my sister would make a show of spitting the food into napkins when she thought me and my mum weren’t watching her. She was awfully dramatic about not liking my food. Some days, after dinner, she would hole herself in the bathroom and pretend she was retching. Some days were very convincing. I got the message, I can’t cook. 

But you know how they say love can make you do crazy things? For me that was buying a cookbook. 

I met Fajimi at what he referred to as a ‘farmers market,’ and I referred to as Aleshinloye. He caught my attention when I heard him poorly haggling with a seller for gbafilo. He was being extorted so badly it would have been immoral not to step in. I remembered that I had eyed him briefly and then turned towards the seller, exchanging a few words in rapid Yoruba. She hissed loudly and grunted but eventually she halved the price. When Fajimi let out a murmured ‘thank you ma’am’ both me and the seller burst into loud laughter. 

'Carry this your boyfriend o, make him no lost.’ The seller yelled after us. 

I might have taken her advice too seriously because all these months after, Fajimi is still nestled immovably somewhere between my solar plexus and my highest rib. He sits just outside my heart, forming a new body part all on his own. When I’m without him it feels like there’s this chasm in my chest. My heart starts violently ricocheting around the space, cracking slightly when it connects with my ribs or crashes against my spine. There are now a thousand fissures in my most vital organ. When I say he left me heartbroken, that’s what I mean. 

I stir the soup idly. In the pot, I’ve thrown in urheri, ehre, umilo, uziza, and alligator pepper. I left out gbafilo seeds because they reminded me too much of Fajimi. It’s the first christmas dinner I’ve had to cook by myself since I met him. 

Our first Christmas together, which fell just four days before our anniversary, my whole family had come to visit us in our apartment. My mum had frowned from the first minute of her stay to the very last. She scoffed at the vinyl player that sat on our coffee table. She fingered through the books on said coffee table with contempt laced throughout her features. She refused to go within six feet of the makeshift Ifa shrine that Fajimi had set up in a corner of the living room. The only time her disgust subsided was when she took the first bite of the food Fajimi had made. He’d spent hours in the kitchen separating beans from their shafts, hovering over it as it cooked, sieving and re-sieving, and dishing the soups on everyone’s plate in elaborate patterns. My mum, ever callous, swept up the carefully laid tessellate -with pounded yam that Fajimi had made from scratch- and threw it roughly into her mouth. She swallowed and then frowned deeply, looking between my (then) boyfriend and I. 

“Who taught you to cook like this in America?”

Under the table I squeezed Fajimi’s thigh, trying to communicate that it was a compliment but that she was too proud to ever give one so freely.

Fajimi understood. He always did. 

“My sister, ma’am- ma.” He quickly corrected himself. 

My mum narrowed her eyes.

“And where is your sister today?”

“She couldn’t be here, ma. She’s uh, finishing up her PHD and couldn’t take the time off.”

“Oh okay, so she just didn’t want to.”

“No, she…” Fajimi faltered for a second, “she just couldn’t.”

My mum grunted like she had been all evening.

“Keziah is here.” my mum gestured at my sister who sat across from me rolling the pounded yam along her plate with a fork. Fajimi had made her egusi soup because she’d sporadically become vegan earlier that year. “She works full time and”

“And she lives in Ogun, not Oregon.” I cut her off roughly, giving in to my temper.

I can admit that my anger is historically the brightest thing in any room. Everything people say about love is what rage has always been to me. When I’m angry the whole world feels like a scratch pad that I throw my body against, not minding the burns. I focus on the feeling with such a singularity that everything outside that orbit is vignetted and dim. In our earliest months together I thought Fajimi infuriated me, because every single part of my body broke into movement when I heard his name. My heartbeats would come three at a time, my feet would strike the floor in exceedingly quick blows, my pupils would dilate until my whole eye was one midnight coloured orb. Sometimes I fantasised about having him under me. I dreamed that I would press on every body part of his until they gave in and collapsed. I wanted him to feel how I felt. I wanted him to know what it was like for your chest and stomach to go concave because someone deftly stroked a manicured thumb from your chin to your ear. No one could provoke me like him. Sometimes I would remember his lilting laugh, perpetually warm hands, and the gentle way he would say my name- with the tenderness of a reluctant wave goodbye- and think, he is too good for this world. And I’m right, he is an aberration. In the moments we would fight, which was hardly ever, I think about how noble it would be to return him to where I know he came from. But then we make up and he kisses selfishness back into me. He deserves heaven, I know, but would you ever let go of something divine?

Passion Flower

Trigger Warnings: Sexual assault and discussions of CPTSD

Queer women have a language in subtle glances and fleeting touches. Elusiveness is notorious in the community. We are always simultaneously complaining about  how we dance in circles around each other but then never being the ones to close the gap. She was bold. She was even bolder than me (which is saying something). We spent the night in each other’s orbit, exchanging glances over the top of every body’s head. I would catch her eye every time the crowd would part; and every time it felt like an invitation to step forward hurriedly… But, I’m somewhat of a veteran of queer parties. When you put that many people who are pretty and drunk and have something to prove about their liberation in a room, the world is only as big as that dance floor. In many ways it is beautiful. It’s this liminal space where people can live out the things that reverberate in their head. It’s like a medium. The issue is, if you put people in heaven for four hours and tell them they can be anything they want to be, they move rapidly and intensely. Mouths start crashing against each other at neck breaking speeds, hands snake inside the back of jean pockets, people bend each other over railings. Everyone is moving like they’re running out of time because we are all acutely aware that we will never be this young and raucous and unbound again. I’m not exempt. So even though I pretend like I won’t for the first thirty minutes of the party, I still find myself behind her. 

She calls me ‘Naija babe’ because she can’t remember or pronounce my name. I can’t remember or pronounce her name either so I settle for ‘my love.’ And the beautiful thing about existing in that liminal space, is that she really could be. We could unfold the hours in each other’s arms. We could create our own inside jokes and secret signals. We could sneak off to some quiet corner in the party and learn to pronounce each other’s names. If we really wanted to, we could pretend like the doors would open, not shut, at 4am. We could pretend like we had time. 

The other thing she said to me was that she liked how I looked. I was so proud because I had actually been saving the outfit for months. It was a navy two piece with tendrils that flowed from out of the top and the skirt. Every step I took made me feel like a sexy passion flower. (Barely) covered in that blue, I looked like the person I had spent years building up myself to be. It’s cliche, but I felt beautiful. I’ve always been the slightest bit afraid of showing my arms and my legs. I haven’t always felt very feminine. It’s in my behaviour as well as in my looks. I’m 6 feet tall and I’ve always had a very muscular build and a flat chest. And where I was supposed to counteract these things with grace and softness, I’ve always been angry and outspoken. Liking girls was just another dimension to this. One of the things that initially repulsed me about my identity was the idea that I was aligning myself even more with masculinity. Here I was looking like a man and acting like a man and now lusting like a man. I was horrified. Being able to wear my micro mini skirt and super duper cropped top wasn’t an epiphany that introduced me to or reaffirmed my femininity, it was simply coming into myself. In the moments that I’m out with my friends and we’re turning blue and yellow and pink with the flashing lights, it doesn’t matter who I like or how I look. It only matters that someone is seeing me. And that what they see, masculine or feminine or neither or both- looks good. My love looked at me like there was nothing horrific about me, and when I looked back at myself in her eyes, I believed her. 

I’m glad she liked my skirt, I’m less glad that she tried to rip it off in the middle of the dancefloor. I won’t tell you what  else she did because there are only so many things you can do to a person in public without catching an indecency charge - even in queer parties. When my friends ask what happened I tell them that I suffered that night and leave it at that. I always make sure I say it in a playful voice and with a laugh so that whatever they imagine is better than the reality. I want them to think that I’m being dramatic and blowing things out of proportion (which sometimes I still think I am). I think I’ve always approached conversations around sexual assault with anger because it’s easier than dealing with the other feelings that wash over me. Pity has a nasty connotation. It’s not as lovely and soft as a word like compassion. It’s not even as melodramatic as a word like sorrow. It’s just plain, disgusting pity. I want to say I read and hear and watch stories about assault and I don’t pity the victims. But each and every time I hear that another person has been touched and tortured in ways they could never invite upon themselves, it feels like there’s a cork-screw in my stomach. In my response I give all the rage that I have. I give all my headshakes. I give all my disbelief and disgust. But I don’t say the first thing that I think, and the thing I mean the most - I wish that hadn’t happened to you. 

I wish that hadn’t happened to you because I understand that it feels like there’s some part of you that has turned to stone and that you’re going to spend the rest of your life rolling it up a hill. I understand that it’s going to be sisyphean. I understand that someone will ask you what happened that night and it will feel like watching the memory through a gauze. It will always feel like a wound is on the other side of it. I understand that you will hear the same words and look into eyes that hold that same singular determination to touch you, and your heart will rearrange itself in your body. I understand that you will feel fear that you tell yourself is something milder like ‘not being in the mood’ or being shy, or not knowing that person all that well. I understand that you will come to know the words ‘no’ and ‘stop’ as powerless, so you won’t bother saying them. I understand that you will step out of your own body and see yourself how the people who hurt you saw you- as a beautiful thing to own. I understand that sometimes, for weeks at a stretch, you will feel like you swallowed a bowl of acid. You will feel it ripple through your stomach and threaten to come up in words that you know describe you now like ‘broken’ or ‘damaged.’ Sometimes the words are less forgiving like ‘whore’ or ‘prostitute.’ I understand that you’ll understand that it doesn’t matter how much you drank or how hard you flirted or what you did. You’ll tell yourself over and over again that it wasn’t what you wore. But the stronger memory will always be of pink gin and the way you said ‘you look gorgeous’ and the way you leaned into her and grabbed her arm. The stronger memory will always be how you matched your eyeshadow to your two piece and took a dozen pictures before leaving the house and allowed yourself to feel so beautiful when you looked like a slut. And how if you waited three months to wear the outfit you might as well have waited an extra day because it’s a fucking cliche to be assaulted in a micro mini skirt and crop top. I understand that anger for yourself is unfair and damaging. But in the moments that you pull away from kisses and lean away from arms and shy away from hands it is ruinous. It would almost be a blessing to be touched and feel fear or shame or disgust. It is ruinous to be touched and feel nothing at all. Or maybe I don’t understand anyone else, maybe it’s just me. 

I think the worst crime might be that she took some magic from me. I return to those liminal spaces and nothing is hazy around the edges and sparkly at its centre. I watch people writhe on the floor and all I see is the bacteria attaching itself to their skin. I see bodies pressed up against walls and all I can feel is how every bone in their back must be slowly breaking against the hard surface. People stop to look at me and I look right through them and respond to their enthusiastic ‘you’re so pretty’ with a high pitched, dismissive ‘thank you’ and nothing else. I let strangers hold my hand and sometimes I let them spin me around. I leave them when the songs change and I don’t let them convince me into a corner. Because I’ve peeled myself off the poster of debauchery and parties. Because I insist on being real. 

Reality is not as miserable as I imagined it would be. It has its limits, and maybe I’m just a bird that has learned to love its cage but… I’m okay here. When I go out now there’s no pretence to it anymore. I’m not anxiously looking at the clock wondering whether I will fall in love before the crowd disperses. I don’t see people cradling my worth in their hands and chase them around the whole night hoping they’ll distribute it to me in words like ‘you look good.’ Humans are just humans and they’re as beautiful and as disappointing as they’ve always been.

In biology class we learned about positive phototropism and how some plants can’t help but reach for the light. I thought that might be me. Because, well, I’m alive. But sometimes I feel as if you could crash a cymbal stick into the middle of my chest and hear an echo. Which is to say, some days I feel a little bit empty. I’m positively phototropic in that I grow towards the light, artificial or not. Strobe lights remind me to dance and the glare of my office lights reminds me to work and the first flash of a lightbulb in the morning reminds me to get up. I’m alive in a battery powered sort of way. But that doesn’t feel like a life, so as it turns out I’m something else- heliotropic. It’s growth in response to the sun, and compression in the absence of it. I exist. And I can be as bright as the brightest light in any room but I still miss the sun. I miss being warm. 

I think everything I do is in pursuit of that feeling. Even the stupid and brave things like walking towards joy. I still think that one day I can lock eyes with someone across the room and feel the music slow down and the world sporadically start glowing. I still imagine the crowd parting and me making my way up to them. I imagine the fear washing over me with every step that I take. I imagine remembering rough hands and forceful grabs. I imagine feeling the acid agitate around my stomach from one end to the other. I imagine persevering through it and walking towards them anyway.  I imagine reminding myself I could never belong to the people who have hurt me. I imagine reminding myself that I’m more than the things that have happened to me. I try to live in the love despite. I make the journey. And when I’m in front of them I let them tell me how pretty I am, and I return the compliment in earnest. I imagine telling them my name and waiting to hear them say it back and say it right. If they don’t the first time I’ll smile and correct them and let them try again. When they touch me, tentatively, I will feel something. I have to believe that things can be ruinous, but I myself am not ruined. I have to believe that even if my tendrils tuck into themselves and my petals recoil I will still, always, want to be warm. And if it takes forever to reach the sun, then it takes forever. I might just be lying to myself though, my whole life might be that liminal space, but even in it- I’ll pretend like I have time.