In my sixth year of life I mastered flatulence. I learned the ways of silent-deadly and how to use loud-harmless to diffuse a situation. In mastering flatulence I mastered life.
I learned mccarthyism. I learned that he who smelled it probably had not dealt it (usually I had dealt it) but I understood that once the sacrificial lamb had been chosen, I had to go with it at the right moment. Never first, the forerunner is beheaded too often or derided for a madman. Not too early, for fear of being seen to be trying too hard to deflect blame. And not too late because not participating in the calling out of farters could see you quickly labelled a farter. I learned the flows and gullies of nuance, from the flows and gullies of farts and the flows and gullies of quickly shifting public opinion in Mr Adeyemo’s primary four class.
The many lessons I learned from having an overactive colon have served me well in my relationships with people and my political career, but the most important lesson I learned was about justice and sometimes, the lack thereof.
I sat next to a girl named Mary that year. She was taller than I was, had skin like lightly heated palm oil and wore glasses that had the string to keep them from falling off her face. Sometimes I was overcome by the urge to do something to impress her and I like to think that sometimes I did impress her. However whatever impressions I had made would be quickly blown away with each new rectal betrayal. I had a simple problem; skilled as I had become at hiding my methane indiscretions, I could never hide them from Mary. And it is not that she had some preternatural knowledge of my emission, she just had the singular displeasure of sitting next to me. But for some reason Mary never ousted me. She pinched me on the thigh a couple times to reprimand my duplicity, but she bore my effervesce in silence until one day she could not take it any more.
I had an aunt (she wasn’t really an aunt, but she was my mother’s friend so she was an aunt) who used to make the most delicious eggs with chilli powder and corned beef. Her name is not important here because she once told me I had eti-ejo (snake ears) which made me cry until my mother told me snakes don’t have ears, which made me cry even harder because I felt stupid for crying in the first place. What is important here is that I would gorge myself on her eggs. Perhaps what is even more important here is that eggs and chilli powder make for quite the explosive mix. Perhaps the vileness of their digested combination can somehow be harnessed for the good of all humanity, but I know that day is far off. They tasted delicious going in, but they made my belly swell and burned with forget-me-not vengeance when they made their egress. But gorge myself I did.
It was after one such Sunday of gorging myself that back in school I realised that there was a need to let a little steam from the engine. Shifting my buttocks to one side so as to use my weight to minimise the rippling (it’s the rippling that creates the sound, you’re welcome) I let out a beauty of a silent and deadly into the world. It was the kind of destructive masterpiece that made your belly ache and left the memory of itself sitting on the back of your tongue even hours after you’d put the ceiling fan on 6. It was my masterpiece, it would be my doom and I could tell from the moment the smell hit my nostrils.
Mary gagged and looked at me in incredulity. I had begun my deflection routine, suddenly engrossed in the book before me but it seemed this time I had gone a bit too far. She accused me loudly.
“Dimeji why did you mess now?”
Perhaps I had done too good a job deflecting blame, perhaps it was whispered behind my back that I was a farter, but I could feel the swelling tide of the public wind shifting against me. There was nothing to be done but to put my head down on the table and wait for it all to blow over.
It wasn’t going to blow over. This was the kind of fart that told of greater things to come, it was the kind of fart that hung on to your patella and coloured the amala that you would eat that afternoon in the faint green scent of egg and beans. It was the kind of fart that drove out all other senses with its own pungent immediacy. The class erupted into madness.
“HMMM! THAT’S SO SMELLY!”
“HMM” “HMM” “HMM” “MESSY MESSY DIMEJI”
I just sat at the table and put my head down and didn’t say a word. I didn’t attempt to defend myself. I understood the weight of my crime, and I knew I had to bear it. I just sat at the table with my head down, waiting for the eternity of disgust at my actions and glee at my being caught to end.
Mr Adeyemo’s deep voice cut through the noise.
“Why is everybody except Dimeji screaming? can’t you all see how composed he is? can’t you all follow his example? All of you, get on your knees and put your hands up!”
Sometimes I remember the look on Mary’s face when school was let out, murder sitting on the bridge of her nose, the point of confluence for the malice streaming from her eyes. I wish I could go back and say I was sorry, beg forgiveness. I wish I could say I did such a thing. Instead, I stuck my tongue out at her and said “ntoi”.
