Bar-Beach Miracle
Olubunmi Familoni
Olubunmi Familoni
I watch them pound the beach’s softness with the enthusiasm of their feet, chewing up wet sand with their scattered pacing; white gowns browned, swollen round with wind. The wild wind whipping bits of prayers from their lips and scattering them into the air and water; the water flinging itself at their feet and spitting in their open faces in salty disdain of their prayers. . .
I watch the Woli Agba dip a barren woman in the water; I see the big angry water rise and snatch her from his grip and swallow her whole under a wave. . .He throws his empty hands up in the air as if in surrender to the water’s power. Ha!
A man is doing Victor Uwaifo’s Guitar Boy in the black distance, doing it confidently as if the song belongs to him; the sweet-sweet notes wafting in and out on the whims of the wind – if you see mammy-water o . . . you run a-way. . .sweet-sweet melody . . .
‘. . . Make I pray for you.’
Before I can Amen this, a hand has been laid on my lolling Lazarus from behind; a hand warm with healing; a breath hot with lust on my neck . . . He is risen!
My wife, unaware of this erectile resurrection that has taken place nearby, continues losing her prayers to the whipping wind and beating the sand with her feet. She is going to say her god answered her prayers and healed me, and she’ll dance and roll on the ground. And I’ll let her.
But for now, I’m going to follow my Healer to her room on the other side of the beach, the black side where the man’s Guitar Boy is still being carried in and out of the air by this wind . . .
I watch the Woli Agba dip a barren woman in the water; I see the big angry water rise and snatch her from his grip and swallow her whole under a wave. . .He throws his empty hands up in the air as if in surrender to the water’s power. Ha!
A man is doing Victor Uwaifo’s Guitar Boy in the black distance, doing it confidently as if the song belongs to him; the sweet-sweet notes wafting in and out on the whims of the wind – if you see mammy-water o . . . you run a-way. . .sweet-sweet melody . . .
‘. . . Make I pray for you.’
Before I can Amen this, a hand has been laid on my lolling Lazarus from behind; a hand warm with healing; a breath hot with lust on my neck . . . He is risen!
My wife, unaware of this erectile resurrection that has taken place nearby, continues losing her prayers to the whipping wind and beating the sand with her feet. She is going to say her god answered her prayers and healed me, and she’ll dance and roll on the ground. And I’ll let her.
But for now, I’m going to follow my Healer to her room on the other side of the beach, the black side where the man’s Guitar Boy is still being carried in and out of the air by this wind . . .
Olubunmi Familoni writes plays, screenplays and short fiction. His debut collection of stories, Smithereens of Death, won the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for short stories in 2015 and his play, Every Single Day, was selected by the British Council as part of the Lagos Theatre Festival in 2016.