How I spent my Christmas day in Nigeria

A short story by Daniel Nkado

Our compound has gone lonely. It is always like this every Christmas, or its Muslim equivalent, when neighbours travel with everything living they own, leaving everywhere empty and quiet.

But this Christmas I didn’t travel with my parents on the 24th as usual. I had to stay back and wait for Uncle Ejike. He will arrive from Cotonou on the 27th and we will both be coming on the 28th.

I hated this arrangement but there was nothing I could do. I am the oldest kid – my kid bro, though quite taller than me, is only 17, six years younger (the type we call Agric) and couldn’t be left home alone yet.

But, in fact, staying alone hadn’t turned out too bad. Not as bad as I’d expected. At one time I even wished something happened and Uncle Ejike delayed coming in on the 27th again.

When I came out on Christmas morning to buy eggs for my noodles (like every 20-something-year-old who hates to cook, I love noodles)— guess who I saw. Bimbo.

She hadn’t travelled either.

She normally travelled to Ibadan with her sister at the slightest mention of a holiday—even on some weekends too.

‘Ekene, what are you doing here? You didn’t travel with your people yesterday?’ she asked me.

I told her why and she said ‘Oh ok.’

‘What about you?’ I asked.

She smiled that her smile that caused her dimples to appear so that she would look even more beautiful. She is a pretty girl, only short. ‘Actually, I just didn’t want to travel. But had I known that it was going to be like this, I would have listened to my sister.’

‘Had I known,’ I said.

We laughed.

‘Not this one, Ma.’ She was talking to the store owner. ‘Give me the big one.’

‘The big one is one-twenty o,’ Iya Ayo said.

‘Bring it.’

She put back the soap on the shelf and picked a larger one.

‘You, what do you want?’ Iya Ayo asked me as she extended the soap to Bimbo.

‘Egg,’ I said.

The good thing about this Christmas is that it appeared Jesus had come down from heaven himself to talk to NEPA not to fuck his birthday up with darkness. So, there was uninterrupted power.

I was glued to Channel O when a knock came on the door. DJ Exclusive was killing me with old classics.

I walked to the door and opened it. It was Bimbo. She was wearing a casual T-shirt and yellow shorts.

I let her in.

She asked what I was doing and I told her I was just listening to music.

She sat down beside me on the couch and tried to watch. Michael Jackson’s songs obviously didn’t appeal to her very much because she took the remote and asked if it was okay she changed to something else.

It wasn’t okay, not entirely, but I had nodded.

She left it on Africa Magic. I hated those kinds of Nigerian films where everything is shown and everything is said, like a documentary. The Igwe’s wife is going to poison him and there will be a scene with her nodding and explaining why and how she will do it. Aargh!

But I kept calm and watched it with her. Pretended to.

Once in a while, she laughed at what Patience Ozokwo said or did. The times she laughed she unconsciously dropped her hand on my thigh. Sometimes, she would rub it a little.

She would laugh and then look at me and I would show her some teeth. I liked that she was having fun though.

Then suddenly there was nothing to laugh about again. The scene has gone serious, someone has gone to a native doctor and was planting juju in somebody’s car.

Bimbo forgot her hand on my thigh this time, her mouth hanging open as the screen took away all her attention. She looked worried, or scared, or both. Her hand was moving closer to one of my balls, the larger one. I never truly understood why one was bigger than the other – the balls – sometimes I would wonder if other boys had it like that too.

Something happened on the screen (some kind of road accident) and Bimbo cupped my small, round organs. Realizing she had held what was not supposed to be held, she took away her hand immediately and shifted.

But I was no longer there – my mind, that is. I imagined Bimbo’s hand on my thigh still, now holding my organ – the other one. The main one. The long one. I watched her eyes grow wide at the sight of it. And she mouthed ‘Wow!’

“Where have you been hiding this?” she asked me. I only smiled. She smiled too, but differently – never seen her smile like that before – so sinfully.

I was so buried in these thoughts that I did not realize when I grew hard on the outside.

And then I came back to life only to find Bimbo’s eyes on me, with just that smile!

‘I’m sorry, did I turn you on?’ she asked.

I looked down on my erect self and felt very embarrassed. But Bimbo did not appear to mind.

She did the most unexpected thing instead. She held my hardened organ, and then, slowly, she pulled it out of my cotton shorts.

At that moment I felt not only my d*ck hardening but my entire self.

Bimbo bent over and took the entire length into her mouth. I stilled with pleasure.

It had been strange, how all my earlier imagination was playing out now in reality.

Bimbo sucked on me for quite a time. The times she made deep slurping sounds—like a young girl sucking on her favourite lollipop—got me out of the world.

When she stopped and relaxed back on the couch, I knew it was now my turn.

She is a gentle girl and I knew I had to be gentle with her too. When I took off her shirt and her breasts came into view, a pound hit my chest. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

There was something about her breasts, something young and fresh about them. They were round and bouncy, as if they were held up by an invisible bra. Her nipples were dark, two small dark nuts at the tip of the healthy breasts.

She made a strange hissing sound when I took a hardened nipple into my mouth. The snake-like sound was strange but very arousing still.

One after the other I fed on her nipples. There were times she held my head and in the arrangement, she looked like a breastfeeding mother, only this baby was quite big and seemed very hungry.

I would suck this nipple, then the other and then kiss her. She continued to hiss.

She made me stop when she’d had enough. She just stopped the tiny hissing sounds and pulled out of the chair.

‘Let’s go into the room,’ I whispered. It was hot desire that had made my voice so low.

She shook her head. ‘Let’s stay here.’

She stood and stepped out of her shorts. And then her ‘pant’ followed. Seeing her completely naked, my head filled with little sands of ice.

She lay down on the rug and I came on top of her. There was a brief repeat of the previous actions and then she whispered, ‘Do you have a condom?’

I ran naked into my room. But I couldn’t find the box of Gold Circle. I had one, I was sure I do. I was turning everything upside down.

‘Ekene!’ she called.

I grew even tenser. ‘Where is this condom na?’

‘Ekene!’

‘Oh-God! Where is this condom na?’ I was now scared that she was going to start wearing back her clothes.

‘Ekene!’ I felt a hard smack on my cheek.

I opened my eyes then and realized it had been my mum calling me.

‘What is wrong with you?’ my mum asked. ‘Why are you scattering the sheets and saying condom condom?’

I quickly rose. ‘Mummy, what did you say?’ I rubbed over my face. My head ached slightly.

My mum gave me a look. ‘Go to the backyard and kill the chicken. Your cousins are waiting. When I have time we’ll discuss this condom issue.’

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All events described in this story are fictitious and only a product of the writer’s imagination.
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© Daniel Nkado