Aunt Precious, Precy for short was the last of my dad's siblings. She used to be a fair sweet aunt with a smile I used to love. Always there whenever I missed my mom and related with me like a sister, she used to be my favorite. One time she told me I was her favorite too and I smiled and hugged her. It was mutual.
She used to keep flowers in her room and they bloomed like her laughter. Roses mostly, and every other one of them made her room a fountain of wonderful scents. She had a place for them. Close to the window that looked into the courtyard. She made a small table and placed beautiful vases that were never out of flowers on them.
Aside flowers, Aunt Precy loved music and long walks too. She had this small tape player that came with an headset. Whenever she wanted, she would take it with her and walk. She said it used to clear her head. I knew because it was what she told me whenever she returned from the walks with sweets for me and flowers for her vases.
I used to imagine what "clear my head" meant. Like her head was a dirty room and the headset was some sort of vacuum cleaner. With very little knowledge of how the life of a young adult could be, I used to believe she was just my pretty aunt that had no problems in the world.
" That daughter of mine was created to be happy " my grandma used to say.
***
" Roses have thorns, beauty harbors pain too "
She used to say that every time I said she had a wonderful life. Once she pressed her hands on my lips when I tried saying I wanted to be like her when I grew up.
I never knew what she meant by that. Was it just some fancy thing she used to say? Was it some fact she knew about her favorite flower? Or was there more adult stuff and growing up bullshit that was interlaced in that statement of hers? I pondered for a long a time over that statement and there was just too little my small mind could decipher.
***
My first understanding of what Aunt Precy called her thorns ( or so I thought ) were in her poems. She used to have this little black notepad. She called it her "book of dark things" and being a lover of horror, I used to read the poems she scribbled on those pages.
They were dark poems. Poems about death, suicide, sadness, loss, rejection and wrecked sanity. Aunt Precy wrote them beautifully with words that adorned them like her flowers. "Forget them, the poems and the flowers, they're all dying slowly". She used to say this everytime I told her about how lovely her poems were.
It seemed slower and unnoticeable but my aunt Precy was dying. The stress started during her final exams at the nursing school. One of those evenings, she had gone into her room, everyone thought she was studying but when I joined her, she was lying on her desk and crying. Her head was buried in her notepad as her back rose and fell to heavy sobs.
When she noticed my presence, she faked a smile, grabbed her portable player and headed out of the room " come!" She called me. "Come and stay with grand mummy, I want to walk and clear my head" but when she came back that evening, her face didn't look like something with a cleared head behind it.
***
Aunt Precy was facing a difficult time and it was taking its toll on her. She smiled less and most of the time, the glow on her face was gone. She avoided people and gatherings slowly. I was still a child and couldn't imagine what it was that could take all of one's happiness away.
Her final exams was going to determine her future and my aunt was scared of that. Who wouldn't? Having all the years ahead of you determined by a single exam was mentally draining. She told me stories about the numerous times her tutors induced fear in them by telling them how failure was sure for most of them.
My aunt Precy feared but studied. She would sit all night looking at textbooks and lecture notes. She paid less attention to her flowers and spent most of her weekends in the town's library. To me, my aunt Precy was doing more than enough. I believed she deserved the best grade and something to prove she didn't need to be afraid.
She took the exams finally and the day the mailman brought the result came two weeks after. She held the envelope with shaky fingers. When she opened and read the contents, she flung the paper and her body on the ground and cried like a heartbroken newborn. All through the night of that day, my grandma didn't leave her side. She spent hours consoling and comforting her and when morning came, aunt Precy was smiling like nothing happened, she even watered her flowers and replaced the dead ones.
***
Throughout the week that came after that day, my Aunt Precy was the happiest person I knew. She shared smiles with every face that saw hers. She danced with me when her favorite songs were played on the radio. She increased the number of flowers and most importantly, she gathered all her nursing books in a cardboard box.
Then on Sunday, Aunt Precy in her bright red dress, and matching lipstick went to church. She listened to the homily and was chosen to take the prayer of the faithful. She danced like never before during the offertory and smiled on her way to and back from the altar for communion.
When the priest said "the mass is ended" Aunt Precy in all the congregation responded with the loudest " thanks be to God" and three hours after we got home, my grandma went into her room to invite her for dinner only to find her lifeless body on the ground with an ugly cut on her wrist.
She left a note saying " I'm sorry you had to believe my last smile, I was on my death bed already"
FICTION
Next episode drops next week.
- Ifiokobong Etuk ( KING of the QUILL )
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