The Spider King's Daughter

by Onuzo, Chibundu

  The recharge card men are the undisputed leaders of our group. Their branded jerseys set them apart: yellow for MTN, lime green for GLO, red for VMOBILE. Next come those who sell the unusual: framed photographs of past presidents, pots, bed sheets, crockery. Then the food sellers of which there is a hierarchy: ice-cream sellers with bicycles, ice-cream sellers with sacks, foreign sweets, foreign fruits and right at the bottom of the list, anything local: boiled peanuts, scraped oranges, plantain chips. These local things were mostly for women, though sometimes a man who had fallen on hard times could find himself with a tray of groundnuts balanced on his head.

  ‘So, Runner G, wetin you go chop?’

  Already the owner of the buka was lumbering towards me, her large feet spreading dust with every step.

  ‘Aunty, I no want chop today. Thank you.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You sure you no go eat?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  She patted my head, depositing something slick on to my hair. ‘Just manage this one.’

  From a secret compartment in her bra, she drew out a clear plastic bag, unknotted it and slid a piece of fried meat into my hand.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She nodded before trundling off to another group.

  ‘Abeg no sit here if you don finish eating.’ Her voice was harsh again, the Mama Put we all knew.

  When I turned, the boys had smirks on their faces. ‘Runner G, it be like say that woman want marry you.’

  ‘Well, I have no marriage plans at the moment.’

  ‘No be so I hear o,’ one of the recharge card men said, his voice hoarse with mirth and cigarettes. ‘This woman get serious plans for you.’

  ‘Abi o? You are a young man. You still get bedroom power,’ a fruit seller said, gesturing and leering at the same time.

  I stood. ‘I’d better be going. I have work.’

  A chorus of jeering and cajoling rose from the group. ‘Ah ah, oh boy no vex.’

  ‘We just dey play.’

  ‘You sef, allow now,’ a fellow ice-cream seller said, pulling me back on to my chair. I let myself be dragged down. Not long after the conversation continued.

  ‘You watch match on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes o. Arsenal mess up.’

  ‘No be so.’

  ‘Nah so. Arsenal play rubbish. They no get good defence.’

  ‘No talk nonsense. Arsenal get good defence. The referee just dey cheat.’

  ‘Abeg leave football. You hear say they catch one senator with fifty million naira in his car?’

  ‘That one nah old news.’

  ‘No be old news. Nah last week it happen.’

  ‘Another one don happen this week. Yesterday, they catch the man’s wife with hundred million.’

  ‘Just one family dey eat all that money?’

  ‘Nah so I hear o.’

  Chapter 4

  What would Forest House people say if they saw us? Not that I care. In fact I wish one of them would drive past on a day I manage to keep the hawker for a few minutes after he has given me my change. I imagine their eyes leaving their business to follow us as he walks beside my jeep. The thought makes me smile.

  I should be sensible and start taking another route but my magpie tendencies won’t let me. The other day, as six ice-cream sellers flocked to my window, I was pleased to see that I could pick out my hawker easily. He stood almost a head taller than the rest and he had a shine the others lacked. He still refuses to ask for my name. If I were a hawker, I would kill to know a girl with a car like mine.

  There is one thing I am uncomfortable with. He is friends with a beggar who is missing an arm and possibly a portion of his senses. This man tried to intimidate me by holding his oozing stump over my window and leering into the backseat. On one side I had my hawker; on the other was this creature. Of course I had to give him money. A whole five-hundred-naira note and all he could say was thank you. Maybe I can befriend a hawker but surely not one who speaks to beggars.

  I met Mr T about a year ago, when I was still hawking sweets. We were both chasing after the same car and surprisingly he was faster. A full five seconds before me, his pus-filled stump was hovering over the polished window of the Benz.

  On one side, I held up my rack and my customer pointed at a pack of Mentos. On the other, Mr T brought his stump closer to the transparent glass and his benefactress shrank and scrabbled for her purse. Out of one window fluttered a crisp two-hundred-naira note. Out of the other sank a dirty fifty. We were both tired from our dash and we ended up sitting next to each other on the side of the road.

  ‘Would you like some mints?’

  I offered the pack by reflex, immediately wanting to withdraw when I remembered how little I had sold. My father taught us to always act like waiters, or hosts as he preferred to say. He was an effacing man, always scanning a room looking for someone to serve. Offer your seat, offer a drink, offer your mints. It was easy to play the host when you were rich. I hoped the beggar would decline.

  He took the pack, unwound the foil and placed a mint in his mouth. His jaws crushed this first white disk, then the next and the next until all that was left was the wrapping.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘It’s a gift.’

  ‘There’s no free thing in Lagos. How much?’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘If that is so then follow me.’

  I watched him walk away. The distance between us grew as pride and other things filled my head. You know you’ve fallen when you are a hawker that is friends with beggars.

  The space widened.

  If your old friends could see you.

  It was about ten metres now.

  If only he wasn’t dead.

  At this sickening note of self-pity, I propelled myself forward.

  Under a nearby bridge was a pile of cardboard strips and scrawled above this heap was a sign that said: SIT HERE AND CARRY MY CURSE. Mr T took me there and asked that I sit. I bent my knees in compliance, read the message and promptly stood.

  ‘I brought you here to pay you with something more precious than naira. Many have wanted to know what I am about to tell you. One man from America even asked for an interview. He came with a tape recorder and notebook. I refused him. You will be the first person to hear my story in the past twenty years.’

  I knew that when you had fallen, the memories that charted your decline became invaluable. Yet, I did not want the story. It was too important to be exchanged for a pack of mints but it was worthless to me. Before I could say no, he had begun.

  * * *

  ‘I haven’t always lived like this and I used to be quite handsome. Or so my wife told me. You smile. Because you think I was incapable of being a husband?’

  His stump waved my apology away.

  ‘You are right, perhaps I was. She was never the same after I married her. I offered all the things eighties Nigeria promised, a good job, servants, two cars. We both failed and I ended up in Oilet Grand Insurance. Do you know it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It was a horrible place. All day I read claims that I knew I would deny. Seven years into what I thought would be the rest of my life, I was fired. No pension. No reference. After that, things started disappearing. First my wife, then the car, then the gateman, then finally the house. Still, when my daughter and I moved here, I was hopeful.’

  The cardboard pile did not look big enough for two people. Perhaps the daughter had moved out and built her own cardboard house.

  ‘She started to lose weight a few weeks after we moved here. Her skin became stretched like the pastry of a meat pie, a meatless meat pie. With our money almost gone, I had two options: begging or armed robbery.’

  ‘You could have become a hawker.’

  ‘It was not so easy in those days. The soldiers could come at any time and lock you up for illegal trading. I used to leave her here and work on a nearby street. I soon discovered that poverty was
not enough to be successful.

  ‘“You are lucky to have been born like that,” I said one day to a beggar who had no left leg. He smiled with teeth that were bloody from chewing kola. “Oh, this one no be luck,” he said patting his stump. “I still dey pay for it.” God forbid! God forbid bad thing. Then her skin stretched tighter and her belly began to protrude. I went back. He gave me an address. I went there and—’

  ‘Were you awake?’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t awake! What type of stupid question is that? You think it hurt less because I was unconscious?’

  ‘Calm down, please.’

  ‘I am calm!’ He banged the cardboard, his head jerking up and down. I stood, eager to distance myself from this beggar who was attracting stares. ‘Come back. I am calm now. You can come back. She died two weeks later because I was too foolish to remember that you can’t beg while your stump is healing, you can’t think for the pain, you can’t feed your two-year-old daughter.’

  I stood there unable to find words that would blend sympathy into my suspicions. Where were his parents? His relatives? His friends? And how had he slid into poverty so easily? Even in Lagos, the white collar was not so loose that one could be an insurance man on Monday and a beggar by Friday.

  In our case, there had been clear signs. The domestic staff were the first to go. Then our garage emptied, then the flat-screen TV was sold, leaving a square patch lighter than the rest of the wall. Yet, it was only when the landlord came to our house with policemen that I realised that this phase of our lives was not temporary.

  Still we didn’t become beggars after we left Maryland. No relatives came to our rescue – my mother is estranged from her family and my father’s relatives are too poor – but his friends gave generously in the months following his death. Even if there were no family members, did this beggar have no friends that could have tided him over till he found another job? And that he would have found another job, if he had really worked in an insurance company, was almost certain.

  ‘The prophet promised that one day the opportunity for revenge would arise,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘So what is your name?’

  ‘They call me Runner G on the road. What is yours?’

  ‘They used to call me Mr T in my office.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘Is it possible to make a car break down on purpose?’ I asked Hassan as I handed him the hawker’s ice cream.

  ‘Eh?’

  Milky saliva flew through a gap in his teeth and landed on the dashboard.

  ‘Don’t say eh? Say pardon me?’

  ‘Pah doon mi?’ he repeated, his inflections twisting the words into the vernacular.

  ‘No, not like that. Say after me: Paaaar-duuuuuhn-meee?’

  ‘Paaaaaah-dooooooooooo-miiiii?’

  It was hopeless.

  ‘Is it possible to break down a car on purpose?’

  ‘Pahdoomi? I get am correct?’

  ‘You only say “pardon me” when you did not hear what the other person said.’

  ‘Mo pah dọ.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘If “pahdoomi” means I no hear you, then “mo pah dọ” means I have heard.’

  ‘Just answer my question. Is it or is it not possible?’

  ‘Aunty, if you press your foot down and push the—’

  ‘So you know how to do it.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Tomorrow I want you to break down the car at the place where we see the hawker.’

  ‘Aunty, no. I cannot do such a thing.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Your daddy no go like it.’

  ‘My father has nothing to do with this, Hassan. You are my driver and you will make this car break down tomorrow or you will not have a job by the end of tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, ma.’

  * * *

  ‘Start. We’re getting close.’

  Hassan looked at me through the rear-view mirror. ‘I no believe I dey do this to your father’s car because of a hawker.’

  He wasn’t just a hawker. He was a hawker I was considering adding to my collection of friends. I was tired of people who went to Forest House, or schools just like it.

  Hassan slammed his foot down and the car made a whirring noise.

  ‘Hurry before we pass the place.’

  If after spending an hour with him, I discovered that beneath the good English he had the grasping manners and mindset of a street hawker, I would drive off and never take this route again.

  This time, the sound Hassan made was doubled.

  ‘Quick.’

  A third time and the car slowed down. Smoke began to stream out of the bonnet.

  ‘Hassan, can’t you see the smoke?’

  ‘Aunty, stop making noise. No be you who want car break down?’

  Smoke continued to pour out but I was silent until the car came to a halt. When I flung the door open, the unexpected noise made him cower to the steering.

  ‘Remember, wait an hour before you come back with a mechanic.’

  ‘Why I must bring mechanic?’

  ‘So it will look like the car actually broke down.’

  I climbed out and made a visor with my hand. Cars drove past without bothering to stop. Passers-by did the same. I could see my hawker walking towards us with his sack of ice cream.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I turned to Hassan. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know—’

  I gave him a look that sent him sprinting to the car front. When he opened the top, a cloud enveloped his head. By the time the fumes had subsided, my hawker was beside me.

  ‘Maybe you should go and get a mechanic, Hassan.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll stay here with the car.’

  ‘Your daddy no go like it.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m not sure o, Aunty.’

  ‘Hassan,’ I said softly, because my hawker was there.

  ‘Yes, ma.’

  He locked the car and left.

  Some of the girls on my road can be very forward. Like everyone who sells here, the road has made them brasher and louder. They spit with the boys, they argue with the boys, sometimes they even fight with the boys, scratching and biting until someone comes to drag them away. Yet, they never let us forget that they are girls. Their tops plunge low; buttons remain undone, cheap perfume clings to them. Not all are like this, but the ones I wish to speak to will not speak to me. They look down when I say hello, hiding their smiles behind their fingers until I am gone. When they do speak, I am sad to hear the broken words they call English.

  Still, whether brash or shy, all the girls on my road have a grace to their movements that I have seen nowhere else. In my old school, many of the girls walked with their eyes sweeping the floor. They were always being judged either for their bra size or their fashion sense and they learnt to look down. On the road, none of the girls care who is watching, or if they care, it is because they want to give the watcher a good show. Not only do they glide gracefully with burdens on their heads, they bend to pick money that has been flung at them; dash across roads with cars zooming by and the most daredevil do all this with a child strapped to their back.

  It was while I was watching a woman pass change to a conductor that the rich girl’s jeep drove past with smoke streaming from its bonnet. I watched it come to a halt and wondered if I should go and see what was wrong. The traffic rush would not start for at least another twenty minutes. By the time I reached her, the driver was peering into the car, his white shirt in danger from engine oil, his watch glinting in the sun. I looked down, painfully aware of the gap between us. When I looked up, the driver was gone.

  Sometimes I’d wondered what would happen if the rich girl climbed from her car to speak to me instead of sticking her head out of the window, then retreating into the safety of her AC. Now she was beside me and I could feel her
waiting for me to speak.

  Chapter 6

  ‘I didn’t think cars like this could break down.’

  I looked at the car, trying to see it through the hawker’s eyes. It is shiny and big and black, almost monstrous when compared with some of the things on the road.

  ‘I suppose there’s a first time for everything.’

  The sack balanced on his shoulder dripped water down his face. I followed a droplet as it slid down his temple. It was held up by an anomalous spot before rolling under his chin and disappearing into his shirt.

  ‘How was school?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘How was school?’

  ‘It was fine. How was hawking today?’

  ‘Fine.’

  The next silence seemed less awkward.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ I said.

  ‘I guessed so.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just look like a seventeen-year-old.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘I guessed so too.’

  He smiled and his white teeth suddenly contrasted with his skin.

  ‘Do you enjoy hawking?’

  He made a ‘Mm’ sound.

  ‘Have you been hawking for long?’

  He nodded but said nothing.

  ‘How did you become a hawker?’

  He opened his mouth then he shut it.

  ‘You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No it’s not that. I . . .’

  His words trailed off. Maybe this was not going to work. Hassan could not have gone far. If I called him, he would be back in five minutes. One last try then I was leaving.

  ‘We can sit on the car and talk.’

  ‘What about this?’ He pointed at the bag of ice cream propped against his thigh.

  I hoisted it up. It was heavier and colder than I expected but I continued. ‘This can come with us.’