HiveComb

The tap cleared his throat and then shut his mouth like never before.

I was standing in our very small kitchen in Surulere and I was holding a blue plastic cup under the sink waiting to get the last drop.

The cup stayed dry.

The morning sun was already lying up against the window, already hot and already impatient.

"Musa," my mother called from her very room, "is it coming?"

“No,” I said. I again turned the tap, but more gradually, like kindness may induce metal expecting something but at the end, it was Nothing.

Such was the beginning of the day that dried up.

We were in a compound of eight rooms with a small tank on the roof which looked like a clock to everybody.

The time came to a halt when the tank was emptied. People spoke softly then. Buckets stood against the walls as fatigued men.
Children were told to wait. I stepped outside.

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The soil was fine sand, the atmosphere was very dusty and hot bread of the roadside vendors.

A tanker truck painted with groaning dragged round on the corner already full of people waving buckets and shouting prices at it.

"Jerrycan is Two hundred naira!" shouted a man.

"Yesterday it was one fifty," answered another voice.

I joined the crowd with my yellow jerrycan. The motorist was chewing something, and his eyes were looking so weary.

“Make it fast,” he said. “I have other places.”

When I got to the front, here the price had fallen. I counted my money twice. It was sufficient for one jerrycan.

My mother was like a pharmacist back home in measuring the water. Half for cooking. A little for drinking. The rest for bathing shared.

"You must not waste it," she said

During the afternoon, the rooms were heated up. My bed was on, and I heard the moaning of the fan.

My phone buzzed. It was Sadiq.

“Have you heard?” he said. “Rain is coming.”

I laughed. “Rain doesn’t ask us first.”

But in the evening the clouds were piled together, deep and black.

The air changed. Individuals came out to stand in the sky. Someone brought out basins.

There was another person who hung clothes on a line and was hoping.

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The original drop fell upon my arm. Cold. Then another. Then the sky opened.

The rain was rather saving stories. The ground drunk quick, then slow. Gutters filled.

The street began to shine. Children screamed on the ground. Women went dragging buckets out. Laughter rose with the rain.

"Be very careful, dear," my mother said and I went out. “Don’t slip.”

I was in the doorway, and I was letting the rain fall on my face. It was like forgiveness, but I did not know what.

Then the water kept coming.
It had become a shallow river by night in the street. The eaves ranneth, and swept on the leaves and plastic and a lost slipper. We placed our mattress upon blocks.

My mother transferred the bag of rice to a higher shelf.

“Musa,” she said, “check the back.”

At the rear door water sneaked in, slow and noiseless. It reached my ankles. Not dangerous, but steady.

“What if it rises?” I asked.

She gazed at it a good long time. “We will watch.”

We watched through the night. The rain subsided, and came again. Neighbors had knocked to ask questions which none could answer.

“Is it entering your room?”
“Small.”

“Mine too.”

At dawn, the rain stopped. The water stood still, like cogitating. Then it started to move back the way it was.

Before morning the street had become mud and foot-prints. The tank in the roof filled up, noiselessly and to the brim.

Later on, when the sun came back, I went to my grandmother on the other side of the road.

She was sitting before her window, boiling
water in a small stove. The kettle sang.

“You look tired,” she said.

“The night was long.”

She emptied the hot water in an already prepared cup and added tea leaves. The odour was elevated, plain and powerful.

When I was a child, she said, we used to go and bring water before the sunrise on the stream. Coming late you came back empty.
She handed me the cup. The tea warmed my hands.

Out of doors, water was dripping off roofs. Elsewhere a tap was switched on, and this time round it answered.

I sipped the tea and listened. The compound had newly recovered its voice not in boastful, not loud, not arrogant just enough.