TAKEN

[27]

"What?" I wiped the glass shield frame to get a clearer view. The image remained the same, staring back at me. Their happy expression mocked my disbelief and confusion.

Ten fingers of mine trembled around the frame. I held onto it firmly, afraid it might slip away from me. Then, my crazy emotion filled my knees with jelly and they began to withdraw their support for my weight. This discovery involuntarily pushed me gently to the floor.

"It can't be! Couldn't be!" I muttered, forcing my unwilling eyes to investigate the picture further, and just like the sun, it sat there, flashing its wicked secrets at me.

"No. No!" That single word echoed out of my mouth as though I was too afraid to say it.

His face, I stared at most. A laughter-filled face. The face of the man I called father for years but he was just there with his hands wrapped around Mama and Dozie. The boy sat on his left lap while Mama who looked way younger sat on his right.

"Dad?" I whispered yet again in unbelief.

I wanted to look away, to stop seeing him with the woman who had wrecked our lives but, I just couldn't bring myself to stop staring.

My eyes weaved from him to Mama, then to Dozie, and back to the man I called my father. He wore a ring as well as Mama and the background was rocky and dry. More like the northern part of Nigeria.

"Were they married?" I asked in my head but shook the fog out as soon as it made its debut in my mind. "Can't be! Not possible!"

"What's that?" A voice asked from behind me.

I looked up and realized that so many faces merged into my blurry vision. They seemed longer and shapeless. Then a warm feel of wetness ran down my face, and that was when I realized that I'd been crying.

"Why" ....the feminine voice asked as if shocked to see me in that position. "Why the tears?" The fog cleared as soon as I wiped the tears off my face. And there was the solid image of my friend, Nurse Dima.

Her face was laced with bruises and her body looked like the forbidden land of the spirits with patches of dark painted on them. She smiled and put her right arm on my shoulders as she knelt to meet me on the floor.

The rest of the room was filled with questions from different voices, sometimes, an outburst, a scream, or a whimper. There was nothing good about the energy in that room. Everyone seemed to have a reason to seek closure at this time.

Mama mostly cried or wailed as her victims kept bombarding her with tons of unanswered questions. At times, there were sounds of a slap or a punch. But suddenly, she wasn't a problem in ways I'd been clamoring for. She'd suddenly become a puzzle I must unravel.

Without a word, I pointed at the picture frame in my hand and it was the Nurse's turn to stare at me in confusion. "Who's the man?" She asked still captured by the beauty and unity of those in the photograph.

I wiped the snort off my nose with the dirty shirt I'd been wearing for the last twenty-four hours.

"My Dad." I pushed the air off my lungs, whooshing away my agony.

My heart was thumping away at the thoughts of things I didn't know or maybe... Wasn't just ready to know. Our bodies sometimes understand situations more than our minds, they rebel and repel negativity or uncertainty.

Dima's eyes danced into mine for clarification or total unbelief. Either way, she was feeling a little bit like me. "You're kidding right?" She scoffed, shaking her head. "It can't be!"

I pushed the frame up a bit and pointed at the man in the picture, "This is my father!" A minute of silence passed between us and froze me in its city of imagination.