A FRACTURED LOVE: THE BROWN BOTTLE

 A man needs his vice as children need love. Help him overcome one vice and something else is born in its place. Sometimes its tangible things like drugs, women, sex, alcohol, gambling, an OCD or at other times it could be more complicated…something intangible that you can’t see such as anger, hate, guilt, a man can even become addicted to the feeling of emptiness. Whatever the case may be a man has a vice and you would think that if the vice were something tangible then it would be easier to straighten out the problem and help him fight his vice and conquer the addiction that has made him the unrecognisable monster those around now see.

With the loss of the brown dust to give him an escape from the lows he returned to the brown bottle. They were two peas in a pod and love like theirs has not been seen. The brown bottle only gave. It never asked questions or nagged, it did not require maintenance or care, all it did was give. They could never stay away from each other for too long. The most he ever went without the brown bottle was two weeks. Two weeks where she nursed him like a teenager with a broken heart and like young love that sometimes took a break but always finds their way back to each other, so did he and the brown bottle always reignited. A relationship so toxic yet poetic in the way he clung to the only thing that never judged him. A love like this cannot grow side by side with other human relations. Where the brown bottle was his first love, the rest of his family and few friends bore the brunt of the after effect of each visit to his lover.

She remembers with vivid colours the first time she truly saw him and his lover together. He stood in front of his building material shop, the same place he earned a living was his favourite spot to crap. His moustache line with some of the white foam the brown bottle had stubbornly left on his beard. His smile was so beautiful and carefree as he laughed at nothing in particular with eyes that seemed unfocused, she noticed that his pupils were dilated and he struggled to maintain his balance while holding on to his lover in his right hand with a glass cup in the other. The smell of his lover was a permanent perfume on his clothes and body. It never left even when he was sober and by the time she was nine, she could tell how drunk he was by standing close to him. With every visit to His lover, He lost a part of himself. The night became a time of torturous despair and unrest, as she lay awake in bed unable to sleep. The silence that ought to rule the darkness corrupted by the cruel words he let out.

“You stupid woman! Are you so useless that you cannot do anything! You are lazy, a terrible mother, a bad wife. I regret the day I married you, If I could ask for my money back, I would. Is it not you that I am talking to or are you mad? You disrespectful prostitute will you answer me when I talk to you before I slap you all the way back to your useless village where I picked you from. You were nothing when I met you; your life had no meaning. I brought you into my home, gave you a life and you disrespect me…ehn….eh”

They say a quarrel is only one when you have two parties involved. If the other party keeps silent then it is just one person nagging loudly. Simi saw her father as the only man who could nag. He nagged when the soup did not have enough meat, complained when he refused to spend time with the kids during the day, screaming that mum took the love from him. Words hurt; they stay with us and as tiny drops of drizzled rain, build up inside us until we have an ocean full of unbridled rage burning to burst from within.

Simi watched them fight from her position on the small bed mere feet away from her parent's bed as her dad struck blow after blow at her mother’s esteem. The tears empowered him, brought out the demon inside and he went on until he had exhausted every stylish word in his limited vocabulary. Rarely did her mum try meekly to defend herself. On several occasions she had fantasised about burning his dictionary (the only book he willingly read in his spare time), She imagined that he was turning the brown pages excitedly trying to learn new words with which he could deal severely with her mother’s self-esteem.

Every night when he became a monster, she took the pillows, one ear always folded into the mattress and the other covered tightly with the other pillow. She hated that she was a light sleeper with sensitive ears that picked up faraway sounds too easily. Her siblings would be sandwiched on the small bed in the second room of the quaint room-and-parlour they all shared and somehow she was the only one whose ear could always pick out the sound of his voice at night. Her ears always hurt in the morning from pressing so hard into the mattress and it took hours for the perfect hearing to be restored. If he was this vindictive without a visit to his lover, imagine how much worse he got on days when he paid her a visit.

Love for the man she wanted him to be had become tainted with the person he became after visiting the brown bottle. All four children were targets. If you walked, faster he hit you with a slap…sat in front of the TV and he threw anything handy at your head with an aim to hurt. The brown bottle might have given him happiness, which is temporary, but it could never provide the joy that is lasting. It took away his ability to walk as he turned and twisted from the bar…belt too uncomfortable to hold the trouser so why bother. He stumbled home and somehow no matter how drunk he was he always found his way.

They had all developed a sixth sense for the nights he would come home drunk. Sometimes he came home around 11:30 pm and on late nights between 1-2am. Sometimes Simi wished he would fall in a gutter, get hit by a car and die instantaneously. The only good fantasy filled her mind as she waited with baited breath when he would walk through the doors smelling like a concoction of vomit and urine mixing in with his natural body scent and forcing everyone to depart from whatever room he entered. On this particular day when she was seven years old, he came home very drunk…so drunk his belt was gone and his zipper was down, she came out in the passageway and saw him naked, on the floor trying to hold his trousers to his waist. She stood rooted to the spot unable to move. At some point, he lifted up his bloodshot drowsy eyes and stared at her. They held each other’s glances for five seconds that felt like a lifetime and even in his current state of inebriation, he recognised that a shift had occurred in his relationship with Simi. It was one that could not be repaired…neither by time, money or effort. The next day, she woke up with the hope that she had not allowed herself to feel for a while in her young life. She hoped that the event of the previous night would be like the brown dust and he would end his relationship with his lover. It was a Saturday so she walked to his shop around 9 am to spend time with him, to her surprise, he was already drunk and he stayed that way until Monday morning. The amazing thing about the brown bottle was that he never remembered any of his actions while he was drunk, so every day was a new day to create no memories.

By the time she was 11 years old, she barely spent any time with him. His relationship with his children had reduced to that of fear and respect for love was repressed in the face of contempt.

Daddy is coming! Daddy is coming! Her younger sister Adebola was on permanent watch duty. Her job was to notify the rest of the family when he was almost home so they could vacate any room he would be entering. He came home looking for the error, something that the kids had not done right. He never asked how they spent the day, what was going on with their lives. 

Why is there dirt at the door?

We already swept it this evening.

Well, sweep it again! Who was supposed to arrange the bedroom?

Why is there a shirt lying on the bed? Why are you sitting down in front of the tv as if you don’t have anything else to do?

It’s the holidays and the time is 11:00 pm, what else am I supposed to be doing? Something! He screamed, anything, instead of just sitting there like a lazy person. Do you want me to leave the parlour for you? Simi asked with a bored look on her face

My friend get out of my sight! Idiot!

They spent the nights huddled together with their mum talking about everything and nothing, unifying and forming bonds connected to the one man they all loved but loathed.