by Toni Kan
But it all ended the day I stole a wallet. This wallet wasn’t filled with money but with pictures and cards. A note, scrawled on the back of the picture of a smiling man, read:
“Mummy Rose, you took me from the streets and gave me a new life at Sweet Home. Without you I would be dead now, burnt on the streets like a common thief. But today I am a doctor and even though I do not know what God looks like, when I close my eyes and think of God, I see your face. Love always, Keme.”
I would read the note, turn the picture over to look at the smiling face of Keme, and then read the note again. He was tall and big and dressed in convocation garb. Looking at him, I became suddenly dissatisfied with my life. I was like someone coming awake from a bad dream.
‘Let’s find this woman,’ I said to Michael.
‘How?’ he asked, through a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘See this card. It says “Rose McGowan, Founder, Sweet Home for Boys” and there’s an address in Yaba.’
‘So, how will you say you got her wallet?’ Michael asked. ‘I found it on the streets,’ I said.
‘And?’ he asked.
‘And I decided to return it to the owner.’
‘Dis boy, kai-kai has turned your head. If that woman sees you, she will lock you up.’
‘Michael, let’s try. Our life can change and we can be like Keme.’
Michael stood up, flung his half-smoked cigarette into the overflowing gutter and exhaled loudly.
‘Daniel, too much hope is not good for people like us,’ he said and walked away.
I left early the next morning, afraid that dallying would weaken my resolve. I took a bus to Sabo, then got on a bike that took me to Oyadiran estate.
When you pick a pocket or reach into a woman’s bag and pick a naira note or wallet or mobile phone, your mind is focused on two things: filching what you can, and not getting caught. You usually don’t know what your victim looks like. So when Rose McGowan came to the door after I’d spoken to the maid, I was surprised to see an ageing woman with an American accent.
‘Yes, wetin I go do for you?’ she asked in pidgin as she took in my shabby appearance.
I didn’t speak. I reached into my back pocket as she flinched and took a step back. She relaxed as I pulled out the wallet and extended it to her.
‘Where did you find that?’ she asked, reaching out to take it.
‘Mummy Rose, I am a street boy and I need your help,’ I said and then burst into tears.
I wake up and the ceiling is white. There is a ceiling fan and it is whirring slowly. I am sweating and my heart is pounding, but it is not from fear but from excitement. I have been here for months but I still feel like a hungry man who has stumbled on a feast. I still cannot believe that it is all true and real.
I swing my legs off the bed. I find my slippers and walk outside. The sun is bright. It is a lazy Sunday afternoon and Michael is lying on his back under the almond tree behind the hostel and reading a novel. I sit on the grass beside him and knock the book out of his hands.
‘Mikolo!’ I say and Michael laughs.
‘May his soul rest in peace,’ Michael says.
Baba Ejiga died two weeks after I ran away. A jealous husband had surprised him atop his wife and pierced him through the heart with a rusty dagger. This was two months before I went back for Michael.
‘After he died, I couldn’t stop thinking of what he said when you left,’ Michael told me on his first night at Sweet Home for Boys.
‘What did he say?’
He said, ‘That boy wasn’t supposed to be here.’ After we buried him, I sat in his shack and for the first time I wondered why I didn’t leave with you.’
I am fourteen years old now and I am dying. My liver is ruined, eaten away by all that kai-kai I drank like water in the days when I lived rough.
Michael was supposed to take over my top bunk and the new canvas shoes I got for Christmas, when I die.
But my friend has beaten me to it. Two weeks ago, we buried Michael, the one with the healthy liver, the one who didn’t have the angel of death hovering over him.
Now that he is dead, everyone says he knew he was going to die because of the things he did that Saturday afternoon when we all got up to go to the river.
‘I’m not going,’ Michael had said to me when I tapped him on the chest and roused him from the light sleep he had fallen into as he listened to music on his new MP3 player, the one he got as a prize for coming first in the spelling competition.
‘Why?’ I asked, pulling the wrapper off him.
‘I want to sleep,’ he said and tried to grab the wrapper from me, but I was holding on too tight and the wrapper tore.
‘See, see. You tore it,’ Michael said and jumped off the bed.
I ran but he didn’t give chase. He just walked out of the hostel and sat on the dwarf fence that ringed the building, and stared out into the distance as if expecting somebody. I knew he wasn’t expecting anybody because no one ever comes to visit.
‘Sorry,’ I said, touching him, but he brushed off my hand.
‘Leave me alone.’
Michael didn’t talk to me until we left and he didn’t even speak to me when he ran behind us and joined our group. Once or twice on our walk, I would ask a question and look at him, but he would ignore me and stare straight ahead.
‘See, the twins of Ikorodu, they are fighting,’ someone said and the other boys sniggered.
Michael and I were the closest in the hostel and we never, ever, seemed to fight, so no one could understand why we weren’t talking.
When we got to the river and separated into two groups, Michael said he wasn’t going to play and just sat on the sand, watching.
When I think about it now, I guess that’s why so many people say he knew he was going to die. Everything he did that day was strange. First, he said he didn’t want to come. Then, when he did, he said he didn’t want to play with us. And then, he didn’t want to talk to me.
Michael would still be alive if he had stayed back at the hostel. Or if he had come with us and just sat on the sand like he wanted to. But he didn’t. Every time the ball bounced outside the line, Michael would jump up and chase after it. Then, when he got the ball, usually from the river, he would throw it up and spike.
I wasn’t looking. I had stubbed the big toe of my left foot and broken my toe nail. I was trying to peel off the broken nail which was still hanging from my toe when I heard my name.
I looked up and all the boys were running to the river bank.
I saw his back, I heard him scream, a watery gurgle more like, and then he was gone, the waves frothing where his red shirt billowed in the rushing water.
The Car They Borrowed
There is blood on the driver’s seat.
This is the first thing Bunor notices as he pulls open the door of his new car. A white, blood-stained kaftan is draped over the front passenger’s seat. Bunor jumps back in horror. He takes a look at the shimmering black paint. He walks to the back and checks the black sticker his wife gave him two days earlier, the day after he brought the car home. He had liked the legend: “If God bi fo mi!”
It is his car. There’s no mistake about it.
He circles back to the front and peers in. ‘There is a smudge on the seat’. He reaches in a finger and his finger comes up with blood. He wipes it on the steering wheel and stands back to look at his car again. That is when he realises that the engine is running, like they said it would be.
‘You will go to Mobil Filling station at 3 o’clock; you know the one on the expressway? Cross to the other side and you will see your car. The engine will be running. Get in and drive home and forget about this meeting.’
Bunor sits up in bed at 5.30am. He hasn’t slept well. Like a child with a new toy who can’t wait to show it off, he tosses and turns as he thinks of how he will make an entrance at the end-of-year party his village folk hold every year in the city where he lives. He will arrive late to ensure everyone sees him when he lets his
wife out of his car before finding a place to park. After years of trundling around town in that old jalopy, he is going to savour his moment of glory. Those who used to laugh at him in the days when his old car would not start are in for a big surprise.
Rolling out of bed, he goes to the bathroom that stands between the children’s room and the one he shares with his wife. He lifts the toilet seat and recoils in disgust.
‘Martha! Martha!!’
The house help comes running in from the living room where she sleeps, clutching her wrapper to her chest.
‘How many times will I tell you to always flush the toilet before you sleep, eh?’ he asks, and slaps her with his open palm. The sudden and unexpected blow knocks the girl off her feet and, as she tries to steady herself, her wrapper slips and she is naked before her master. Bunor looks at her full breasts and his eyes widen.
‘Oya, flush that thing before I kill you,’ he says, standing there and watching as she tries to make herself decent under his gaze.
While he is at his business, his thoughts are still on the house girl. Her ripe nakedness has surprised him. Was it not just yesterday that his wife brought her home, a mere ten-year-old with pimples for breasts? He wonders whether she is still a virgin and just thinking about her makes him grow hard.
Bunor returns to bed with an urgent need. He turns his wife over and pulls off her wrapper.
‘Bunor…’ she begins to say as he parts her legs and covers her lips with his.
‘We need your car for just four hours,’ the fat one says, staring straight at Bunor and Bunor can smell ganja on his breath.
He sleeps after making love to his wife. And it is almost daylight when he rises. Bunor picks up his shorts from the floor and walks downstairs, whistling and scratching as he goes.
The landlord’s son is washing the landlord’s old, weatherbeaten 505 saloon, the one he has driven for twelve years.
‘Only God knows what he does with the rent he gets from all these houses he owns,’ Bunor had said to his wife as they walked upstairs two nights before, after he had gone to ask the landlord to bless his new car for him.
‘It’s not everyone who likes a fine car,’ Angie had replied. ‘Remember, he has all those wives and children to take care of.’
‘Who told you that? The man doesn’t take care of anybody. Four wives and he is still looking outside. And who says people don’t like fine cars? Those who say that are the kind of men who marry ugly wives because they don’t want other men to look at their wives. Me, I looked well-well before I married you. Who will see this backside and say he wants an ugly woman?’ Bunor hit his wife playfully on the backside.
‘Bunor,’ she remonstrated. ‘That’s all you know.’
‘At least, I know something,’ he said and they both laughed.
He had married her straight out of secondary school, after meeting her while on a short visit to see his mother, who had just left hospital.
‘Give me grandchildren before I die,’ his mother had said.
‘Mama, I will,’ he said with a sigh, as he settled beside her on the long settee. ‘I came to see how you are doing.’
He saw Angie a short while later. Light of build and fair of skin, she pleased him the way a ripe fruit pleases the eyes even before the tongue has known its tangy sweetness.
His mother smiled when her son’s eyes lingered on the girl, watching her as she busied herself around the house, washing dishes, making lunch and serving mother and son.
‘You say she is Offor’s daughter?’ Bunor asked for the umpteenth time and his mother smiled to herself, pleased that her son was pleased.
‘That’s what I said,’ she told him, as she dipped her ball of fufu in the soup.
‘But how come I never met her before?’ Bunor asked, licking his fingers and looking at the young woman from the corner of his eye. His mother’s unspoken reply was a knowing smile.
Bunor returned two months later to make Angie his wife before taking her back with him to the city. She made him a happy man, but it was a happiness that brought him anxiety. At home, he loved to watch her walk around his room naked. He loved to gaze upon her mature but innocent beauty but he soon discovered that he was not the only one who liked to look upon his wife. He knew that when other men looked, they also saw what he saw and that knowledge made him sick to the heart, especially since he was only a young man starting out in life. They lived, then, in a one room apartment with a bed, chair and stool for furniture. He didn’t own a TV set; there was just a small transistor radio permanently tuned to a station that played Congolese music.
His humble station in life was a source of worry because he knew that a richer man could easily tempt his prize away with money, or the things money could buy, things he could ill afford. And it didn’t help, either, that he had married her as a virgin. Bunor lived in mortal fear of Angie being tempted to see if what she was getting at home was the best there was.
When he made his fears known to Uzor, his best friend, Uzor had been quiet for a heartbeat and then said, ‘You must test her and then you must beat her.’
‘What do you mean, test her? What kind of test?’ Bunor asked and Uzor had pulled him close and whispered in his ears.
‘Once you do it, she will never try any nonsense.’
That Saturday, Bunor came home earlier than usual and stood outside the door waiting for Angie, who had been to visit an old classmate who had just married and moved to the city.
‘Where have you been all day?’ he asked, the moment she stepped into the corridor that led to their room.
‘I told you I was going to visit Nelly,’ she said.
‘And you didn’t see any other dress to wear?’ he asked, looking with disgust at the pink print dress she had on.
‘Bunor! But you bought me this dress. Are you sure everything is okay?’ she asked and his reply was a slap that cut her lower lip. As she raised her hand to wipe the blood, Bunor pushed her down on the bed, pulled up her dress, tore off her panties and inserted two fingers into her. He pulled his fingers out and then stuck them under his nose.
‘God has saved you,’ he said and barged out of the room as Angie lay there, shivering.
Even though Angie passed the test, Bunor never let go. He was still susceptible to random attacks of jealousy. Sometimes, they would be at their town’s meeting and if he noticed a man looking in her direction, Bunor would turn to her, his face a hideous mask of jealousy and rage.
‘Why did you wear that red lipstick, eh? I told you not to wear it. Oya, go and wipe it off.’ And like an obedient child, Angie would rise to do his bidding.
Her calm subservience was not enough. To him, it could well have been a mask for adultery so he took to watching her, paying young boys and girls in their compound and on their street to monitor her and whenever he heard reports about her that suggested something might be amiss, he would beat her, venting his frustration through violence. He was like a man who had stolen a whistle but could not blow it for fear of discovery.
‘Who was the man in the red car?’ he asked one Saturday night as he walked into their apartment. Bunor had been drinking, as usual, and had just learnt from one of his spies that his wife had been spotted talking to a man in a red car that afternoon.
‘What red car?’ she asked him, setting down the tray that contained his food on the three-legged stool.
‘You know what red car,’ he said and slapped her so hard she fell on the stool and overturned the tray. The sight of the wasted food and the accumulated silt of his dark frustrations fuelled his rage and he beat and slapped and kicked her until she was a bleeding and whimpering heap on the floor.
Angie was rushed, bleeding, to the hospital that night.
‘If you bring this woman here again, I will report you to the police, you hear me?’ the doctor said to Bunor inside his office. ‘If you do not want her in your house, send her home. She is somebody’s child, you know.’
‘I am sorry, doctor,’ Bunor said, stan
ding there like a naughty school boy summoned to the staff room.
‘You better be,’ the doctor said, flopping into a seat. ‘I’m sure you know we have to keep her here. She just had a miscarriage.’
The doctor’s words were like a whip on his bare skin and Bunor’s eyes watered with tears.
‘Doctor, what did you just say?’
‘I said you just kicked your child out of her womb and you are lucky I am not calling the police.’
That was the last time Bunor laid a finger on his wife.
‘Give us the car keys,’ the one with the full moustache says to Bunor, a gun appearing as if by magic in his hand. ‘We just need to borrow it for a while.’
Bunor is listening but really not hearing him. His mind is on the whiff of marijuana floating in the air between them.
Bunor is nineteen and formal education as he knows it has just come to an end. He has received his secondary school leaving certificate and is out celebrating with his friends. They have borrowed two cars from two sets of well-to-do parents and gone for a picnic.
Bongos Ikwe’s voice is issuing out of loudspeakers. His deep voice is singing ‘What’s gonna be is gonna be, there’s nothing to do about it,’ and the young men and women are echoing the words, aware that the cushioned life is over. Now, they must stare life eyeball to eyeball as young adults.
Bunor is sitting away from the group. A joint is burning between his fingers, its thick smoke pluming into the air. His mind is on his impending trip to Lagos where he is to join his uncle’s business, effectively ending his dream of university education. He always knew secondary school would be all his parents could afford but now that it has come to pass, Bunor feels the loss keenly.