'Home Is Christmas, Not December’
When Michelle looked outside that morning of November 7th, at the golden red bright sun in the sky, she smiled and slowly shutting her eyes, she inhaled the dry ashy cold hammattan air which collided with the heat from the sun rays to slap a comforting warmth on her face.
Finally, she let the air out through her mouth in a soft and slow gasp. Her eyes were now open, beholding still the sun in the sky. It was just as she remembered; the golden red morning sun which witnessed her going to school every weekday on foot when she was younger.
But the times has changed. There were no flying ants when she walked out from the living room. Mom would have scolded her to go back inside and put on a sweater and socks to protect her from their bite and from the cold, against the seamless sleeveless above knee night gown she was now wearing, she reminisced.
The well at the backyard, when she opened its lid, had a lot of fog coming from it. She would have ran to call brother Stanley to come see smoke coming from the well, were she still naive.
And pointed at the vapour that would come from his mouth when he opens it to explain to her that it was not smoke but she wouldn't understand now and instead task her brain to recall the conversation when she's older and he'd explain better. She chuckled at the thought of her childhood.
In the distant, she heard the cocks crowing, like they used to in her mother's house. She recalled running to the kitchen with fast little legs to get the can of millet before Sister Sharon would think of feeding the chickens. Then she'd call them to herself with her lips pointed out, leaving a tiny space in the fold of her mouth to imitate the calling sound mum had assigned to her chickens.
When she walked a few steps away from the well to a corner in the building, Jiffy was laid there, his tail wagging on the sight of her but too cold to jump as he would when the sun reaches its peak in the day. She saw the shivers run through his body and bent down to rub her hands through his fur.
If she had been a kid, she'd have cried to daddy. “Mommy left Ghetto outside to sleep now his body is shaking” she'd have said. She laughed at this thought.
Ghetto. It was the name of her first dog. A white skin dog. He was bold as he was fearless. He was called Ghetto because of how he loved to sit by the gate. The neighbors feared to come around because of Ghetto. She'd tease Munir, her crush nextdoor, that he was too scared of Ghetto that he refused to return the plates mum had used to serve them food last Christmas.
Munir would claim he wasn't scared, and she would insist and they'd go back and forth on the topic, knowing it was the most conversation they could make with each other. Michelle learned later that she had not been the only one crushing and though she wished she knew sooner, this had elated her, as even now, she smiles to the memory of the brief but cherished conversations they had from time to time back in school and how they'd act like strangers when they got back home.
She stood upright and walked further from Jiffy, back into the living room. She heard the nearby trees rustle their leaves as a fast hamattan breeze flew by.
Everything reminded her of Christmas, but nothing smelled like Christmas. Not in her ceramic walled house, with the well lighted Christmas shrub beneath the plasma TV on the wall. The mistletoe she hung up the middle of her POP ceiling, not the kitchen with the recycled cans filled with chin chin she made the previous day or the fried turkey in the fridge or the jellof rice which she had just made early this morning.
Her face dropped at the realization of the empty sillent walls that stared back at her and she cried when she saw the handwriting on the wall; “home is Christmas, not December”.
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