Patience skipped into the yard as the drizzling rain peed down on her pencil-sharp nose. Immediately, she twitched her nose at the smell of cinnamon and hopped to the kitchen. 

Without twisting around, Nana lifted the sweating lid from the burbling pot of pumpkin and unhooked a silvery spoon before serving the salivating soup into a china bowl. Of course, her granddaughter licked her lips while rubbing her whining tummy. 

Thereafter, the toothpick-thin girl drowned three slices of bread in the bowl. “How do pumpkins grow?” she asked, licking her fingers. First, Nana smacked kisses on her stony cheeks and then creaked a cupboard’s door. 

“Here,” said Nana, puffing out a long sigh before mining a sealed paper bag. 

“Pumpkins grow from seeds,” she said,  sprinkling the oval-shaped seeds on a white napkin. The next moment, Patience blew the foamy bubbles on the dishwasher and rinsed the jingling forks and knives. 

That afternoon, the needle-thin girl filled a tyre with loamy soil and drizzled it with water. Then she snoozed for three seconds in front of the tyre. Minutes later, she popped her cat-like eyes at the grey soil, waiting for the seeds to germinate. Soon she yawned her diary and tapped her fingers for the twining leaves to appear out of the soil. 

“It’ll be seconds before I spot the smooth-cornered leaves,” she said, spinning the minute arm of her tempo watch. 

The hairpin-thin girl could not blink as she feared the twin leaves might appear, so she cut holes at the bottom of a plastic bottle and suckled the meaty smoothie. 

Thereafter, the pin-thin girl crossed her fingers for that ‘aha’ moment when the two buds would push their way out of the ground.  Weeks later, no buds had appeared, and anger painted her face tomato-red. So, she sprayed litres of goat’s urine over the plant pot to quicken the two leaves. Now, she tucked her teeth into the bottom lip and dangled a cylinder lamp over the plant pot. 

“The leaves must pop out because there’s eye-blinding light,” she yelled, blowing the topsoil so the leaves can come out. That month, Patience home-schooled because she craved to see the two leaves. 

“What if the buds unlock the soil while I’m at the hostel?” she said, burning tears blurring her eyes, while curling in front of the plant pot. 

However, the two leaves refused to smile, so Patience stabbed the brackish sand with a blunt knife to bring the leaves up to the surface. That evening, she spotted a purple ant crawling towards the tyre. 

In response, the teen stomped the taxi-like termite and dismembered its legs for stealing the seeds. Finally, Nana bought her a comic book titled The A-Z of pumpkins.

-Mungambue@gmail.com