FRIENDS BUT NOT FRIENDS (SHORT STORY)
Nora ran into her former classmate, Gwen, at a supermarket on Tuesday. It was the same song and dance as always. Gwen complained that Nora had abandoned her, that she hadn’t visited her in months.
“Come on, Nora, we both work on campus. If you can’t make it to the house, you can at least see me in the office,” Gwen scolded.
Nora pointed out that she had been to Gwen’s office a couple of times but she was told she’d gone for omugwo abroad.
“I returned three months ago!” Gwen countered.
Nora was shocked at her friend’s lack of self-awareness. She’d neither told her that her daughter had had a baby nor that she was travelling to Europe for the omugwo. Also, she didn’t inform Nora that she’d returned.
Nora decided to ignore the undeserved rebuke and asked after Gwen’s daughter, her husband and their new baby.
This had been the pattern of their relationship from the very beginning. Gwen professed much love occasionally but left Nora to do all the visiting and never made her privy to anything going on in her personal life. But she expected Nora to tell her everything happening in hers because she was a part-time gospel minister.
This left Nora feeling like a prayer project and not an actual friend. She wanted to ask Gwen why she’d never reciprocated her visits. She wanted to ask if she even knew where she lived, but she held back because she didn’t want to sound bitter. Instead, she promised to visit Gwen on Saturday.
Come Saturday, Nora dressed in a lemon brocade bubu with matching scarf and inch-high brown leather slippers, arrived Gwen’s duplex where she lived with her husband at the Nsukka GRA. She and her husband were empty nesters whose children lived abroad but they had two live-in domestic staff, a maid and a driver-gardener.
The maid, a teenage girl, welcomed Nora and gave her a seat in the living room downstairs. She collected the small basket of fruits Nora had brought, served her a malt drink and assured her Madam would be with her shortly.
Fifteen minutes later, Nora was getting worried. She was just about to call Gwen’s line when she came downstairs looking gorgeous in a floral-patterned Hollandais A-line maxi and pink flip flops.
Gwen apologised that she was praying with her husband. She also informed Nora that she would be baking a cake for him shortly as that day was his birthday and she was organising a small get-together to celebrate. Nora noted that Gwen did not extend an invitation to her and her husband.
Presently, Gwen began to ply her with questions about her health, her career, her relationship with her husband, their children’s progress; nothing was off bounds. Nora remained determinedly vague in her answers. Frustrated by the wall Nora had put up, Gwen asked if there was anything she would like her to pray about on her behalf. Nora shook her head.
“How about your parents’ health?” Gwen asked. “ Surely, you’d like me to pray about that.”
“Nope,” Nora replied. “My parents are old. Everything they’re passing through is to be expected. No need for special prayer.”
As Gwen struggled to understand her friends’ refusal to avail herself of her prayers, Nora reminded her that she needed to do her weekend cooking plus get started on the cake for her husband’s birthday bash that evening.
Gwen thanked her for the reminder and went off to give instructions to her maid. She returned after ten minutes with a cupcake and another bottle of malt, which Nora declined. They chatted about campus politics and some new churches in town till Gwen’s maid came and announced that the ingredients she told her to prepare were ready.
Nora decided it was time to take her leave. It had been another unfulfilling visit. She could not help but compare her relationship with Gwen with the on she had with another friend, Gina, who had been her roommate in school.
She met Gina about the same time she met Gwen. They shared the same room in Okpara Hall, right next to Gwen’s room. She also worked on campus but she lectured in Physical Sciences while Gwen and Nora lectured in Social Sciences, all three having got their higher degrees in other universities after their undergraduate studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Gina and Nora called and dropped by each other’s home and office one or more times every week. When they visited each other, the guest was not expected to sit in the living room. They did the household chores together, ate their meals with the rest of the family and often stayed overnight.
This was how Nora learnt to cook onugbu soup with ede, which her husband enjoyed very much. And Gina learnt to cook ofe Owerri plus okpa with uziza, both of which her children couldn’t seem to get enough of.
Nora and Gina have weathered so many storms together, including Nora’s early struggles with conception and childbirth and Gina’s coping with her husband’s absence when he went for fellowships abroad.
They tell each other everything and their relationship has extended to their spouses, children and siblings. For instance, Gina paid for Nora’s younger sister’s university education when she was spending so much money on fertility treatments, Shirodkar sutures and Caesarian sections (CS).
Gina, a fair, petite stunner, is a bundle of energy and so are her children. They helped Nora’s husband, Johnny, care for her during her extended bed rests after each Shirodkar and CS. Gina also has a fiery nature and would have left her husband, Arthur, a long time ago if not for her friend Nora’s calming influence.
In fact, Nora became an accomplished intercessor because of her health challenges and was able to warn and pray off many disasters for both families. For instance, she alerted Arthur to the schemes of one of his students to rope him into a romantic liaison. He cut ties with her and the girl moved on to another guy in the department, whom she wrecked his home.
Furthermore, Nora, had participated in beauty pageants and modelling gigs as a young adult and won 2nd runner up in one of the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria contests in the late 1990s. She had also won Miss Ivory for a beauty giant about the same time and served as the face of some cosmetic brands for several years. With this experience, she informally mentored Gina’s two daughters who were pursuing careers in acting and modelling.
Although Gina had trod the beauty pageant route too and was prettier facially, Nora had been more successful due to her height advantage (5 ft. 11 to Gina’s 5 ft. 5) and more impressive vital stats (36-24-36 – a veritable figure 8). So Gina referred her girls to her friend.
Gina’s girls had wanted to bleach their skins to be fair like their mum’s, believing that would improve their chances of success, but Nora reminded them that she was dark skinned too. She advised them to concentrate on gaining knowledge, working on their public speaking skills, carriage and composure, as well as their physical fitness through dieting and exercise.
If anyone asked her, Nora would say that Gina was a true definition of a friend. A friend does not see you as a pity or charity case. A friend sees you as an equal and treats you as such. A friend does not demand what they are not willing to give you.
Going by the foregoing, Gwen was not really her friend, she reasoned. She weighed if she should quit the charade and tell her so. But she wondered what that would accomplish. It was not like Gwen didn’t have people whom she treated as friends indeed. But Nora saw that she just wasn’t one of them and she was content to keep their relationship as it was with them being friends but not friends.
When Nora got home to the bungalow where her family lived in Alu uno, Nsukka, she found Gina’s two younger children and hers weeding and raking the yard while Johnny and Arthur dressed the turkey they had bought for the families’ weekend enjoyment. Gina was in the kitchen preparing the ingredients for pepper soup.
She washed her hands and followed Nora as she went to undress. That is something they do: follow each other around whenever they are together. In the master bedroom, Nora told her of her disappointing visit to Gwen. Gina hugged her and said, “That is Gwen for you!”
“Why doesn’t she harass you like she does me?” Nora wondered aloud as she slipped into a slate-grey linen shift, the same type that Gina was wearing in beige. “I mean, we were all supposed to be friends from our underG days.”
Gina burst into laughter. “Me?”
“Why not?” Nora asked.
“Have you forgotten Gwen and I did youth service together in Ilorin? One day when we met for CD, she started that talk about how I don’t ask about her, blah, blah, blah. I shut her down hard.
“You know me now. I have neither the patience nor the time for a fake friendship. If it’s not reciprocal, I’m out, period! I don’t have the temperament to play her silly game or massage her ego.”
“I don’t think she sees it that way – like a game or ego trip. She’s really a nice person,” Nora began.
“Whatever!” Gina replied. “That pepper soup won’t cook itself though,” she added as she tugged on Nora’s arm, and they moved towards the kitchen.
-The end-
Translation of vernacular words/abbreviations
Omugwo – Visit of a mum or mother-in-law to a woman recently delivered of a baby to help take care of the new-born
Bubu — Free-flowing maxi gown
Onugbu – Bitter leaf
Ede – Cocoyam
Ofe Owerri – Owerri soup
Okpa – Bambarra nut
Uziza – Has different names: West African Black Pepper, Ashanti Pepper, or Guinea Cubebs
UnderG – Undergraduate
CD – Community Development exercises done by youth corps members weekly
You may also like these related posts: