SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 79
IkeChukwu Henry
You Took the Rain with You
It is raining tonight, Papa. The kind of heavy, swollen rain that does not come with warning.
The sky had been grey all day, swollen at the edges, and now it pours without restraint. The
sound is all around me, drumming against the zinc roof in a way that feels less like weather
and more like mourning. I have been listening to it for hours, just sitting here by the window
with this paper in front of me, trying to decide if writing to you makes sense. But even as I
hold the pen, I realize this letter is not about sense. It is about weight. It is about memory and
the hollowness that has filled the space where your voice used to be.
The rain sounds different now. When you were here, the sound on the roof was deep
and full, like the house was singing along with the storm. You would say, “Ututu oma na-abia
n 'ime mmiri,” that good mornings often arrive soaked in rain, and I believed you. There was
something about the sound then that made us feel kept, enclosed by something stronger than
walls. But tonight, the rain is just water hitting metal. A thin noise. A foreign one. It is as if
you took the fullness of it with you when you left. As though your body was the drum the
rain played on, and now that drum is gone, the music has become just noise.
I tried not to write this. I told myself there was no point in addressing a man who will
never reply. But you have been everywhere lately. In the slow way Ugo, my son, drags his
slippers across the corridor. In the way he chews his food when he wants to taste everything
all at once. Last week, I bought suya for him from the mallam who sets up by the Orie ochie
junction. I chose the pieces with the least fat, the kind that burned red around the edges and
left the scent of pepper trailing in the air. He bit into them the way I used to—quick at first,
then slow, with his eyes half-closed, like the flavour might run away if he opened them too
fast. He ate it all, then asked for a water, and I laughed. It was your laughter I heard in mine.
That short, low rumble that used to shake the windows in your chest.
But Papa, it didn’t taste the same. Not really. I could feel it, even before he spoke. The
taste was missing something I could not name, and when I looked at him, I knew what it
was. Our suya used to be seasoned with your stories. We would sit on the veranda, tearing
meat with our fingers, licking the spice from our skin while you told us about the time you
almost married a girl from Owerri who could outrun the rain, or the time a goat chased
you up a mango tree in Nnewi. We would laugh until our sides ached, and then you would
cough—twice, sharply—and the story would end, and the meat would taste better because
your voice had seasoned it.
Ugo does not know those stories. He eats quietly. He does not ask about you, and I
do not offer you to him. I do not know how to. How do I explain a father who became a
rumour? Who left without slamming the door, without shouting or even sighing? You did
not make an exit, Papa. You became a silence. And silence, I have learned, is louder than any
thunderstorm.
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