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The season started with a heavy rain on a Thursday evening in Ilorin. All afternoon the sky had grown a restless gray, and was waiting to be broken. My younger sister, Kemi, went to the window when the first drops fell on the zinc roof.

"It has started!" she screamed, and clapped them.

I sat on the old wooden chair in the parlor, and a half-read novel was lying open on my knees. However, as soon as she spoke it out, I was pulled in the same way that I had been since childhood. It was not water that was falling, it was rhythm, it was a song.


Out of doors the compound already reeked of dust becoming earth. The children of the surrounding houses came out barefooted and squealed. The beating of the rain upon the tin roof increased in volume until it had the sound of drums playing over-head.


"Gbenga, let us go!" Kemi replied, and was already tightening her wrapper round her waist.


![ai-generated-8404742_1280.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/sammywrite/ALAGUD9YEHEdVo8NvEbh7VdUBwMBFZsGm19mCAz8sE6aLFr4qEakj2PB7JrDY5F.png)

[Image Source](https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-woman-dance-horse-8404742/)

I laughed. "You will fall and slip one day, Kemi."


"And you will be the one to catch me," smiled she.

We went out, into the tempest. The water was chilly on my flesh, and soaked my shirt in a few seconds. The stage was turned into the compound, the spotlight into the rain. People standing on the verandah of the neighbors, some laughing, some shaking their heads at the view of us.

"Don't disgrace me oh!" Mama was calling at the kitchen door, but it was rather a warning than an admonition.

Kemi turned and, wrapping her arms over her head, her wrapper over her legs. She moved about dancing in exultation and her feet became puddles growing round us fast. I got up with her, and at first I was very awkward, but then the beat of the falling rain swept me away.


It was not practised, not drilled. It was freedom.

We heard the thunder talking in the sky above us like a talking drum, lightning was flashing as though the sky itself were applauding to us. One time Kemi raised her lifted her face, and closed her eyes and opened her lips as though to drink the entire sky.


I flashed back to the time when I was younger, around ten or eleven and Papa was living. He would even go out to dance in the rain and say, "Life is too short not to dance with the sky." Now that memory was tugging at me, with its sweetness and anguish mingling, like palm wine, which is bitter and smooth at the same time.



![dance-4699212_1280.webp.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/sammywrite/23wWtj5rbukdKwrLf5fe2BhazKLnM7fCu5bFRg8JkfuDVEe9zkC3ChJmSRSJxop1RoXsx.jpg)

[Image Source](https://pixabay.com/illustrations/dance-young-rain-female-happy-4699212/)

Kemi must have had it, she slowed her steps and her footsteps were softer. "Do you remember how Papa used to spin me till I screamed? asked she through the clamour of the rain."

"Yes," I said, smiling. "And then Mama would scream and say, you will snap that baby to the neck!"

We both laughed. It seemed to me just a minute that Papa was there with us, standing behind the wall of the rain.

But then came the harder part. The bare earth was growing oily. The downpour was unsparing and my motions became heavier. It still was the joy, but it had become something different a struggle with the storm. My legs ached, yet I pushed on.


"Gbenga, don't stop!" Kemi called. "Dance against it!"

So I did. I put up my wings and walked the earth saying to the storm: I have not gone. The downfall struck more, but I struck more.

The applause of neighbors was general, and some even cheered. Children of the next compound came and shouted high, "Go on! Go on!"


And then came silence. No longer of the rain, it fell still, but in me. All my body remained motionless, with just my feet moving. Kemi stopped too, watching me. It was a dance in itself, the dance of silence in which the heart is more communicative than the body.

At last I began moving more slowly, with more deliberation. My footsteps made circles in the damp earth round and round like I was pursuing something that could not get away. It was frustrating, but I continued to run, as to quit was to give up.

And then all at once the dance came to be something delicate. My foot fell in a piece of glass concealed in the mud. I winced but did not stop. The bite was keen but the time went on. Beauty and pain were together at that moment, the rain concealing the tears which might have flowed.

Her eyes were wide, and Kemi shook her head. "I am fine," I said.

We continued dancing, when the night became dark, when the compound lights were turned off, and the storm and our feelings were all we had. One step, and another, and the place where our feet would be.

We finally slowed down when the rain started subsiding. Gasping and wet and chilled we stood together, laughing at each other like idiots. The neighbors had taken their way in. The children were long gone.

Nothing was left but night, we were in it.

Kemi touched my arm. "Gbenga, I think we were dancing with the spirit of Papa."


I nodded but said nothing. There are those that do not need to be said.

We returned to the house dripping water on the clean floor of Mama, and we kept on smiling, and we could still hear the music of rain within us.





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