No Bounds

by Yagazie Emecheta

Second Place Winner of the Bright Before Us Like a Flame Writing Contest

You arrive at your home in Magodo and race up the stairs to hand your mother the medical report you received during your medical evaluation for NYSC Orientation Camp. It’s the summer after you graduate from Nile. The summer you receive the report confirming your PCOS. You had since told your mother about your irregular cycles, the hair strands that suddenly appeared on your chin area, the cramps that always almost take your life, and she’d shushed you and told you it’s nothing. Particularly, for the hair, she said, You should wax it off. It’s unladylike. You don’t want Wonu’s family seeing you like this during the introduction in December. 

She’d told you, We can’t afford to let this weigh us down. By ‘we’ she means ‘I’. Your mother cares about perception more than you care about bread, red velvet cake, and akara deep-fried in bleached palm oil. She raised you to walk ‘ladylike’, smile ‘ladylike’, talk ‘ladylike’, and just when she thought she had successfully trained you and shipped you off to your husband’s house. This PCOS wants to stain her white. 

She spends the following days re-planning your life. First, you will no longer do NYSC. You will leave for London in September for your MBA at LSE. You will only return after you have fully treated this PCOS and have returned to your default ‘ladylike’ state. Secondly, you will leave for her sister’s place immediately, and you will be her shadow until you leave the country. Her sister, Anita, is the only extended family member with whom you share a close relationship. If not for so much, simply because she embodies the identity of the black sheep of the family is enough. Anita is in her mid-thirties, unmarried, and an assistant professor. She is the one person your mother knows can ‘handle’ you, so shipping you off to her is what she resorts to whenever she needs to save face from your mess. Like when you were raped in SS2 by your then-boyfriend, and you didn’t tell her until she found out, six weeks later, that you had fallen pregnant. She sent you to Anita after she asked the family doctor to terminate the pregnancy, and lectured you about not putting her to shame. She went on and on about you being the only surviving heir of your father and how you shouldn’t let his family turn you into a laughing stock. She rang lessons of abstinence into your ears as she drove you down to Ibadan, where you stayed till you finished secondary school and left for Nile. 

Now, she’s doing it again: shipping you off when she needs to save face. The plan was that you would introduce Wonu’s family in December. You’d get married to him before finishing NYSC and follow him back to San Francisco after your Passing-Out-Parade. You had met Wonu in your final year at Nile. He was also a corps member in your department, and he taught your class whenever Dr. Imasuen rainchecked. From asking him for extra explanations to discussing your future ambitions with him, you began to grow fond of him. And by the time he was moving back, you two had become lovers. 

Ibadan is where you first meet her. You are at Café Chrysalis to pick up an order for your aunt as she walks in with her brother. For the first few seconds, you are lost in the ocean of her eyes. The waiter calls for you several times before you find your way back to the present. You are almost at the door when you find her behind you, asking if you frequent there. 

She says something about wanting to see you again. 

You say you are visiting your aunt for summer break, she lectures at Lead City, and you are here to pick up your lunch. 

She smiles as she mentions that she attends Lead City. So she asks you about your aunt. You don’t like where the conversation is headed, so you tell her that you have to go.

She hands you her phone for you to put in your Snapchat handle, after you tell her you don’t give out your phone number to strangers. 

‘Nkasiobi? That’s such a lovely name,’ she says. 

‘I know’ is what you say when walking out the door. 

By that night, you already know that she is 20, about to resume her final year of nursing school. You already know that she couldn't care less about nursing, and what she really wants to do is make music. 

By the next day, she is already calling to tell you about her day and the beat she had just finished producing. By the third day of meeting her, you already know about her first girlfriend, the roommate who got away, but was her gay awakening. You already know that she came out to her parents on her eighteenth birthday, and they have been supporting her even though they don’t fully understand how being gay works. You already know that she puked during her first anatomy practical because she is necrophobic. 

By the morning of the fourth day after you met her, after you had been on the phone for over ten hours, after you had told her that you are closeted, engaged to your also closeted fiancé, after you had told her that even though you still serve in your church’s protocol unit, you had lost your faith for over a year. It begins to dawn on you that you might have entered into what some people would call a talking stage. And this is the part where you stop to catch your breath. You don’t fucking do vulnerability, and even when you mistakenly slip into a talking stage, you are not a talker. Yet somehow, you had told her things even Wonu, the closest person you have to a best friend, doesn’t know about you.

This is the part where you block her number everywhere and delete your chats, delete the beats she shared with you, and delete the pictures of her lunch from the day before. If only you could also delete the memories that now live rent-free in your head. 

You tell yourself that it’s too complicated. Your worlds are far apart; you must save face for your mother. Your engagement with Wonu is worth more, your marriage will satisfy your parents, and you will both make them proud. You tell yourself that being apart is better than being together, for the people you care about, and for the reputable image you have to maintain to remain accepted by society. 

“So you are just going to keep ghosting her?” Wonu asks. You are on a video call with him as he gets dressed for his night out. 

“Well….’ You sigh, ‘It is way easier than telling her why we can’t be together.” 

He is wearing a bodycon tank top and wide-leg pants, combing out his afro as he responds to you, “You know you can be together now, right? At least now that the engagement is off, you are technically not cheating on me.” 

“That’s so easy for you to say! I’ll just text her randomly like, Hey girl, I actually blocked you everywhere because blah blah blah. And now, my engagement with Wonu has been called off, so I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t mind if we start talking again, let bygones be bygones. How convenient?” 

“Well, you have been sulking since you blocked her everywhere, so you might as well look back.”

Wonu is right, you stopped being yourself since you stopped talking to Meyiwa. So much so that moving to London and being busy with your studies hasn’t helped you get over her. You had thought that the out of sight, out of mind theory would apply, but everything keeps reminding you of her, and at this rate, you have no idea how long it will take before she stops living rent-free in your head. Perhaps, this will never stop. 

Lagos is where you meet her again. You are at a rave with your cousin, and your aching knees are the perfect excuse to leave the dance floor. As you make your way to the restroom, you catch a glimpse of her at the door. She is wearing a glittery silver halter-neck mini-dress that creates an electric contrast against her ebony skin; her hair is plaited in puddle puffs adorned with cowries, falling off her bare, defined shoulders, and she is staring hard at you. Her eyes are filled with something that looks like rage, but also looks like excitement. 

You want to tell her you are sorry for being a coward; that every day you think about what you could have been if you had the nerves to be half as brave as she is. You also want to untie her dress, and you run your fingers through her spine. But instead, you swallow saliva and say, ‘Meyiwa! Oh my, you are the last person I expected to see here.’ while smiling and clutching your hurting toes. You would do anything to get out of this awkward air between you both. 

Her face lightens up for about a millisecond before she has that deadly look back on, ‘You are the last person I expected to see here too. I didn’t realise that ghosts attended raves.’ 

You tell her you can explain. And with a face straighter than a ruler, she asks you to start. You tell her that your feet are aching, and she doesn’t blink as she picks you up and heads to the rooftop. She is climbing the stairs when you tell her that your engagement with Wonu is over.

Her face flickers with a smile before she asks you, ‘Who called it off? You or him?’ ‘His mother,’ you say in a shroud of shame. 

Somehow, before you can tell her why you ghosted, before you can explain to her that you have been this avoidant since your dad passed. Before you can explain that you shut everyone out, so they don’t get to leave abruptly as your dad did, you are pulling the straps of her dress as she presses her lips against yours. Your hands trace her back like the pages of ancient scripture. Somehow, her legs are quaking as your tongue works magic between them. 

And this is what you do every other time that you meet up before you return to London. She’d come over, you’d fuck and tell yourself it’s not that deep. You will tell yourself that this can’t be more than a fling. You can’t go beyond the closed-door hookups. You tell yourself that you can’t build a future together, all you can do is enjoy the temporary time you have together. 

Even when she goes with you for obstetrics appointments, drives you to the airport, makes a song just for you, you hide behind the supposed absurdity of your union and tell yourself it’s just a fling. Even when you fly back to surprise her during her induction, and drive her to work on the first day of her internship. Even when you are the first person she tells when she decides to quit nursing to fully focus on music, and when you are the first person she tells when she signs her first record deal, you tell yourself you just can’t be together. 

Even when she starts doing things she’d sworn never to do again, like when she shares your picture on her story and captions it with ‘My woman’ or when she dedicates her first legacy award to you during her acceptance speech. You tell yourself that it will pass. The idea of you two being together will sink you both. 

This is how you lie to yourself for three years straight. Like when you moved back to Lagos, saying you want to build a new-age advertising agency that would redefine the industry, especially in the West-African clime, what you didn’t say is that your soul can only smile around her. What you didn’t say is that you panicked at the idea of building your life in the UK while she stayed miles away. 

Six months after you moved, you are in the shower when ‘Bones’ by Titilope Sonuga begins to play. You are unaware that she is about to violently pull your cowardice out of your scalp. Yet, as it plays, her voice sticks to the very back of your skull. You suddenly realise that if you were currently on your deathbed, the only thing that would really matter to you is that you tell Meyiwa how you truly feel. So, you hurriedly drive to her house. When you arrive, she is about to step out for an interview. You pull her to the back of her car. You don’t know what to say, how to say it, even. The speech you rehearsed on your way unmakes itself in your mouth. Your hands are trembling, your voice is shaking, and your feet are unsure whether the floor is even a safe space to stand on. 

She turns away from you, asking her driver and assistant to wait a little while for her inside. She leads you to her car and drives to your spot—the open field of a high school in her neighbourhood with grass that sparkles with so much green and lush, air so clear you can hear yourself breathe. She leads you to the bleachers and, with the face most genuine to God, she asks you, ‘What happened?’

At this point, your panic is only worse. Your mind has run through the possible outcomes of your actions. She could shroud and say, ‘I fell out of love with you, NK’. She could look at you and burst into a loud laugh before she says, ‘You don fall in love with your fuck buddy? I thought we were just a fling.’ She could, in fact, say something worse: ‘So, after Wonu dumped your ass because of PCOS, you have realised where home is?’ Your mind is calculating the worst-case scenario, and you are drowning in the sea of your plausible disgrace, even though deep down you know she will never make a mockery of your confession. You remain a slave to your mind’s endless spiral. 

‘So. I…. I….,’ You start, ‘Yo-you…. I think I am going to have to turn around to say this,’ you say turning your back against her. But really, the translation is, ‘I can’t look into your eyes and tell you that I love you, and I have been scared to tell you because even though I put up a show, I am a coward behind the veil, and no one knows that. I have also been ashamed of judgement because growing up, I was told to be the most likeable person in the room and liking women is not the most likeable thing to do in this part of the world and so I blocked you before I could sit with my feelings and I shut them out after we started fucking and now a poem I was listening to made me realise that my cowardice might be the end of me.’ 

‘Nkasiobi?’ she says, pulling you back to her. Her face is brimming, and her eyes are lit up like wildfire. It is in this moment that you realise you translated your actions aloud. 

‘Nkasiobi,’ you are now covering your face with your fingers because the shame you feel knows no bounds. ‘What took you so long?’ 

She holds your hands. You want to cover yourself in this bottomless pit of shame that overwhelms you, and possibly let the ground open up to swallow you. But she doesn’t let you.

Instead, she let her lips dance on your forehead and then squeezed you into her arms, and this is the most at home you have felt in your entire life. In her arms, there is no shame, only peace that knows no bounds.