For The Invisibles

This is a Short story by my favourite writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie...the person that mailed it to me didnt put in the title, so lets just call it "Technicolor" Its a beautiful, slightly sad story, and if you've ever felt invisible, I'm sure you could relate. Enjoy! :)


"TECHNICOLOR"

I lay in an uncomfortable position, my head at a strange angle so that it stayed on Victor’s shoulder and my body curving back so that it tucked into him. He was sleeping, his breathing as even, as unhurried, as everything else about him. In contrast my thoughts churned, though I didn’t allow myself to think about my lost virginity. He had looked faintly surprised, probably because I had offered no resistance, required no coaxing. He wanted to apologize, but I wouldn’t let him. He didn’t know what he had done for me. Instead I thought about my tummy swelling with child. I would get pregnant, I was sure of it. I was the sort of person who never got away with wrongdoing. If everyone was skipping classes, the teachers would only come looking on the day I followed suit. But I had slept with him anyway, knowing I would be caught and disgraced. Caught, disgraced, and noticed. I would be seen.
In a family of nine it is easy to be overlooked, even easier if you hold no position; first-born, last-born, only boy, prettiest, most intelligent. Every time I told someone how many children there were in my family, they joked, “You’re Catholic, right?” It had never really amused or annoyed me. I’d just gotten used to it, the same way I’d gotten used to people mispronouncing, then forgetting my name. My family called me Kamsiyonna, and it had never occurred to me to shorten it; to what? Few other people called me anything at all. In a family of swans, I was an albatross. I always felt like people were looking through me, around me, for my prettier, more conventional-looking sisters. Short and thin, I combined my mother’s dark skin and delicate bone structure with my father’s heavy, angular face, and the combination of my father’s strange eyes with my mother’s reticence unnerved most people. My grandmother joked that I would have been dubbed a seer in older times. I just wanted to be seen. So when one day during the long vacation Victor came to sit on the uncomfortable wooden chairs on the verandah, I took little notice of the fact that I was the only other person there.
He was very tall, and the process of folding himself into the chair was fascinating to watch; I didn’t realize I was staring. “You have remarkable eyes.” He said it offhandedly, looking straight ahead, so that it took me a while to realize he was talking to me. I was a shy person, or maybe I was just unused to people talking to me for no apparent reason. Either way I could think of no reply, especially since I disliked my eyes intensely. I wanted Ifesinachi’s grey, or Lotachukwunna’s light brown. Mine were the generic almost black dark brown, the pupils much wider than average so that people stared, then quickly looked away. The silence stretched like a humid afternoon until he said, “You are Kodichi’s sister.” I didn’t know if it was a question, but I hated being referred to as So-and-so’s sister. I said, quietly, “I’m Kamsiyonna”, and wondered why he was still here. “I live two streets away. Your grandma is very hospitable; she often sends me food after Mass. I have seen you around many times.” I had tuned him out, but I heard that; I ran errands for grandma whenever we visited. I felt otherwise I would fade into the walls and my family would forget I was there, and only realize they had left me behind after school started back home and my uniforms remained unworn. But he had seen me around many times. I looked up. He continued, in his matter-of-fact way, “You’re quiet, but you see things. Your eyes look like they have plenty to say.” He smiled.
Everyday after that, we sat on the verandah and let the time slip by, and I listened to his offhand, matter-of-fact postulations, hardly responding except to laugh at his dry wit or nod. He had an opinion on everything. I no longer noticed when no one asked where I’d been at bedtime. He seemed only to want an ear, and I was glad of someone who would talk and not expect replies. So instead of speaking I looked carefully at him, etching every detail on my memory so that I could recall them after he left. He noticed everything about me too, and I fancied that he could hear my thoughts, so I answered him in my head, disagreeing sometimes, contributing sometimes, but always, always delighting in the sound of his voice that was directed at me, his eyes that were looking at only me. He wrote beautiful poems, said I inspired them. He said I had an old soul; an artist’s soul that felt things deeply and transcended human forms of communication. Sometimes I believed him expressly, other times I thought he was full of sentimental crap. But I was always on the verandah, waiting for his serious eyes to appear far above the perimeter wall, eyes that looked like they were missing something because he didn’t wear glasses. He would go inside and greet my grandma, then come out and sit. I didn’t think about my siblings when he was around, didn’t compare myself to them, didn’t mope over my shortcomings. The only other things that could do that for me were books or cake and custard.
One day he came by, and asked me to go and wear a dress. I wondered, but I didn’t say anything. When I came back out he led me outside the house, opened a car door, and walked around to the driver’s side. I was perplexed, and felt stupid for it, but the truth was I had never thought of his existence outside my grandma’s before. He’d always been, to me, like the teachers in my primary school who ceased to exist after the bell, and then materialized again the next day for assembly. “I didn’t know you drove.” The inanity of it struck me as soon as I said it. Of course he drove; he was old enough. I realized then that I didn’t know his age. I blurted out the question, “How old are you?” a long while later, after testing it on my tongue, wondering why I should ask at all. He looked puzzled, and smiled. “That’s strange. I’ve seen you everyday of the last two weeks, and we barely know anything about each other.” That evening, at the beach, I learned about his family, his work, his past. And words poured from me like from a long-unused tap, rusty and uncertain at first, then with a speed and a force of conviction that surprised me even more than him.
“People will take notice of me one day. I’ll make them. I’ll become a superstar, like Beyonce.” I said it firmly, even though I didn’t know how that would happen. I was nothing like Beyonce. He gave me an indulgent smile, one that said you’re young yet. I smiled too, and then he kissed me. It was not my first kiss; I was sixteen after all, but I had never been kissed like that before. It made me feel far taller than my 5’3”, and strong and beautiful and there. I thought about what I was doing, kissing someone as old as Munachi, our second-born, and then I felt daring as well. That was when I knew, the way I sometimes know things, that I would sleep with him when he asked, and get pregnant for him. Beyond that I didn’t know. When he broke the kiss I felt the wet sand irritating in between my toes, and heard the small waves, and saw the dark sky. I might be late tonight, but it would not be an issue. “I should get home.”
After that day he took me all over Lagos, and I heard my own voice more and more, stronger each time. So when he took me to his house five weeks later, and stood behind me, and started to nibble on my earlobes, I moved in closer. And as he guided me to his bedroom and undressed me, as I instinctively protected my nakedness from his eyes, as he gently pushed into me, I felt myself becoming more solid, more real. I thought about how people back home poured sand on ghosts to make them disappear, wondered what they did to bring them back. Afterwards, as he dreamed, I thought about going back home, wondered when my mother would know. She would see me then, really see me, and never be able to stop. I knew my father would be unable to look through me when I brought my baby home. I thought about them saying my name, in hushed tones; Kamsiyonna this and Kamsiyonna that. I would never be black-and-white again; I would be Kamsiyonna in full Technicolor. I smiled, and slept.


If you enjoyed reading this story, and would love to read another, here's a link: http://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/1527/quality_street/