What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro

Author:DK Nnuro [Nnuro, DK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Light

One

In the tight grip of an expectant mood, Alfred slowly pushed open the bedroom door. He tiptoed in. On the right edge of the bed, his mother slept on her side with her hands clasped beneath her chin. Her head was half-propped on the pillow and her body was curved. Robert faced her, the arch of his body more expressive, owing to the flexibility from his days as a sprinter. His pillow ballooned into two halves between his legs. His arms, which appeared abnormally long against the pale blue linen, reached out, as if to catch a toss or to take his wife in his arms.

One of the American storybooks Aunty Belinda had sent his father lay open on the bed: M-A-M-A D-A-Y. G-L-O-R-I-A N-A-Y-L-O-R. Alfred pushed the book aside and crept between his parents. He could not decide whom to shake awake and announce that he was about to leave for the day. Unexpectedly missing his morning run, his father, he thought, might want to be rocked out of sleep. More and more the sky’s blossoming orange was staining the curtains, further highlighting his father’s prolonged sleep. Maybe there was a sickness he needed to sleep away. Alfred leaned closer to his father’s lips and listened. The rasp from Robert was a normal sound. His father’s breath did not have the added odor typical of catarrh. So he reckoned him to have been overtaken by a powerful exhaustion. About time, he thought; his father was always on the move.

He turned to his mother and found her eyes on him. He tugged at the collar of his crisp shirt and the waist of his shorts to communicate his preparedness for the day. She took stock of him, starting with his hair, where she aimed her reach, gliding her arm to mimic a comb in her hand.

Alfred sat up with his thumb upright: he would certainly run a comb through his knobby hair before he left.

She felt his shirt fabric and mouthed, Fine, sounding the usual murmur that accompanied the only three words she ever mouthed: fine, no, yes. She mouthed fine about his shorts as well, then signed that their navy color was the perfect complement to the shirt’s off-white.

She gestured at his feet.

“Socks?” Alfred signed.

She nodded.

He pulled a pair from his pocket and dangled them in front of her. She fanned for them.

“No,” Alfred indicated with a shake of his head. “I can do it,” he signed, slamming the socks against his chest.

She knew he could, and signed as much. However, in the interest of time—she pointed at the clock on the wall—he ought to allow her. She put on his socks in a fraction of the time it would have taken him to get to the end of the bed, set his feet on the floor, and bend to steadily pull on each sock with one hand.

She gestured again at his feet, tying an invisible shoelace.

“My old sneakers,” he responded, brushing behind himself with a wave intended to convey a time long gone, when he’d first acquired the shoes from his aunt in America.

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