C4 Issue 2: Fall 2011

by Chamber Four

  “Well, finish your watermelon then,” he said, knowing what she meant. He did not want to have this conversation right now. It was just like those damn seeds, just there to interrupt what was otherwise something delicious.

  “I’m serious,” she said, glancing up at him while one finger twirled a strand of hair.

  “I told you I can’t be that for you,” he said. His body was humming as he watched her index finger circle the strand. He wanted to speed this fight up. “I guess I should go then.” He walked inside and across her living room, just fast enough so it didn’t seem obvious that he was waiting for her.

  He reached the door knob and inched it around until the door popped open. She was really going to make him leave the apartment. Well, fine, he would, and he slammed the door behind him. He walked down the hall and pressed the elevator button, just for good measure, just to show her that he was serious and she shouldn’t keep trying to pull this shit with him because one day he really would leave. He waited to hear her door open and have her thin arms wrap about him, dragging him back inside.

  The elevator dinged with its arrival. She’d probably call to him from her balcony. This would really show her how serious he was about leaving. He walked out of the elevator, through the lobby, and into the parking lot. He wouldn’t even look up, but just wait for her to call to him. He meandered towards his car, waiting for any sound from her.

  He glanced down, trying to find his keys in his pocket but not really wanting to find them. And there, next to his shoe, wedged between the cracks of the pavement, sprawling on a mattress of dirt was a watermelon seed.

  Headache

  By Tunji Ajibade

  No one beyond Iso-Pako visited Pa and Ma and I, until Grandma arrived. Then Uncle Pate came, and Aunty Ilali, and Juwa, my friend. I knew why Juwa came. He arrived months before the others, and he came because of me, and he asked me questions about Iso-Pako: why we walked on sawdust, and lived in houses made of wood planks with rusted iron sheets for roofs. Juwa asked me questions about Grandma also. He asked why he rarely saw her outside since she arrived at our house, why she cried all day long, and why she came to our house at all.

  I told Juwa about how Ma and Pa got married. But I did not to tell him why Grandma had come to our house, because Ma said I should not tell anyone. Juwa told me about his mother and father, about his father’s work and about his mother’s work, and he showed me his father’s private library with books that were as big as my head, and the four cars that his father parked on the premises of their house at Grovesnor’s Lane.

  Juwa and I sat together on a stone in front of our house one day, and as I thought of Grandma who was in Ma and Pa’s bedroom, I could see the pink high-rise that loomed above and behind rusted roofs, and far away in Grovesnor’s Lane. I knew it had Juwa’s apartment on its tenth floor. As I tried to count which floor was the tenth, Juwa’s Queen’s English blocked my thought.

  “Let’s see whose stone can reach that dog.” Then he threw a stone and shouted, “It’s a goal!” He placed a finger on the frame of his glasses and pushed them back up his nose.

  Juwa told me he was born in London, but I already knew it. I knew the first day I saw him on the football pitch, with his light brown skin, and his words that came through his nose like the newscasters that I watched on SKY TV in Segzy Restaurant.

  I said, “It cannot be a goal because, one: the stone landed near the dog’s feet. And two: you cheated. You didn’t wait for me to get set before you played.”

  * * *

  “You can throw your own when you are ready.”

  “We need to agree on the rules before the game starts. There are rules to any game. If we abide by the rules, then we can talk about a fair victory.” I knew in my mind I quoted the words of the spokesperson for Democracy Advocates, an NGO group that once came to sensitize us at Iso-Pako Community High School.

  Juwa said, “Okay, there is only one rule. Don’t lean forward when you throw, or you will be disqualified.”

  “An adjustment: whoever leans forward will only lose the point for that set, even if the stone gets to the dog.”

  The dog belonged to Zico, one of the boys on Obama Street, and it once ate my okete, the one I killed near the shed at the sawmill where Pa had his office. I had wondered at the time what the okete ate, whether it ate sawdust at the sawmill, because it was fat, and it pained me when the dog ate it up after I had disemboweled it and placed it on Ma’s fireplace to roast. I had planned to give Juwa a part of the okete meat, so that he would eat okete for the first time and say “Oh, it tastes so nice,” as he said the day I gave him sobo to drink. He said sobo was better than processed juice, a pack of which he took to school everyday. I never told him that he missed the okete that I had planned to give him. I thought it was good Juwa repaid the dog for its greed if he threw stones and hit it. Juwa threw a stone after we agreed on the rules. The stone was still in the air, on its way, when the dog got up and walked away. I laughed.

  Juwa said, “Why did you laugh?”

  A car came round the corner, up on Obama Street. I saw it because it was the first car to come to our street since I returned from school and sat on the stone where Juwa met me. It was a Range Rover, which Juwa called “Reindz,” and was one of his father’s cars. Its big tires, with treads as wide as my thumb, were covered in sawdust like the undersides of my school sandals.

  The car stopped on the street, and its occupant spoke to a woman who sat in front of a house with a tray that had loaves of bread she sold. The woman raised a hand, and pointed down the street. The car rolled. I said, “Juwa, see Range,” and I bent over to look at the underside of my sandals, the sandals Ma bought for me after I had been given six lashes of the cane at school, accused of coming to school with bare feet. I removed the sandal on my right foot and banged its underside on the ground, on the layers of sawdust that was our ground. Sawdust could pass for earth anywhere in Iso-Pako, except that shoes and sandals picked it where it felt like foam under the feet, where it had not been trodden for years.

  Range rolled to a halt and it was parked across the street, opposite the stone on which Juwa and me sat. A man came down from the car and closed the door. He was in the middle of the street before he pressed a button in his hand. I heard the car’s kuun. The man walked over to us.

  He said, “Hello boys. Where is Pa James’ house here?”

  I pointed to the wooden house behind me and said, “That is it.”

  My eyes followed him to the door, before I turned around to look at the car again. “I think he is my mother’s brother,” I said to Juwa as the man knocked on the door and stepped into the house.

  Juwa laughed. I turned to look at him, the same way I had looked at Mama the day she said that her brother lived in J-Town, but she would never go and beg him for anything. Pa was sick at the time, and he was on a bed in the only clinic in Iso-Pako. Mama had stayed with him for three days, and for three days she didn’t sell roasted corn in front of our house. Nurses said Pa needed more drugs, that Ma would have to pay another one thousand naira for the drugs.

  When I returned home from school one day, I found that there was not a single cup of garri in the house, so I went to see Ma at the clinic. I had sat on a bench at the clinic, my head on its plywood wall, and watched Ma cry. I didn’t ask her not to cry, as my mind was filled with garri. I began to think that I should have gone to Juwa’s house. I calculated if I would meet Juwa at lunch. I couldn’t, it was too late. He would have had his lunch, and sat down to do his homework, after which he would go to the football pitch. I tried to recollect the last time we both ate from the almond fruit tree behind their house, whether the tree would have ripe almonds, or if it had already grown tiny, white flowers, after which green stony fruits would stick out among the leaves. I thought of the mango tree, too. But I knew those trees had nothing on them. I had climbed the branches and searched under their leaves for mangoes the last time Juwa and I played behind their house.


  My mind was still on what else I could eat when I heard Ma say, as she sobbed, that the only person who had the money she needed to buy drug for Pa was her brother who lived in J-Town, a thing that made me turn to look at her, my eyeballs out as though a lion had roared, and was on its way to where I stood, frozen to a spot.

  Ma’s brother lived in J-Town? My first thought was that I didn’t hear Ma well. Then I thought maybe her cry did not let her think the way she should. Ma’s brother in J-Town? I was in Class Two in Iso-Pako Community High School, but Ma never mentioned it to me that she had a brother, though she had said Grandma didn’t want her to marry Pa and that everyone had sided with Grandma. Ma had also mentioned Aunty Ilali, but I never met her, not until after Grandma came to our house one night, crying, pleading with Ma that she had to stay with us in our one bedroom and parlour, or else Ma would have a corpse to bury.

  My eyes were still on Juwa after he laughed and I said, “Do you think I don’t know why you laughed?”

  He stopped and looked at me, “Why, do you think I laughed?”

  I said, “Tell the truth.”

  But he laughed again.

  I turned my back to him, my face squeezed together.

  Juwa said, “I thought it was a joke, like the April fool you played on me that time.”

  I jumped to my feet and laughed, haa-haa-haa, heee-heee-heee. Juwa stared at me, the way he did whenever I won one of our arguments. I laughed like that each time I remembered the April fool thing, and it was one way I got him to go on his knees. We were on the football pitch on that day, the day of the April fool. No, I was on the football pitch, on Grovesnor’s Lane. We all met at the pitch, we boys from Iso-Pako and boys from Grovesnor’s Lane. We walked some two kilometers to the pitch, but they stepped out of their houses, their highrise, and walked across their mowed lawns, across the street, to the pitch. Juwa was in soccer boots that day when we met at the pitch for the first time, red soccer boots with black stripes, the type I saw on the feet of Ramirez of Chelsea FC, England, and which made my eyelids open and close like the wings of a pigeon that had just taken off. We played five against five, and my team won the first set. One of us left, and as the captain I was to select another player among those waiting for their turn to play. Everyone raised their hands when I looked at those seated at the steps of the classrooms of the Elementary school that had closed for the day. I had stared at Juwa’s red boots and I couldn’t turn away from them. I pointed at him.

  Juwa missed passes and gave wrong passes, but I sent the ball his way all the time. I didn’t know why I passed the ball to him, I just did, and then stared at the boots as their owner tried to dribble past opponents. He would fall on his buttocks, gbaam! and then raise his hands up, to indicate a foul, a thing the referee ignored.

  Juwa’s cheeks were round, and I imagined he had butter and bread to eat every day. This made me wish I lived in the same house with him in Grovesnor’s Lane. He was my height, the height our Games Master at Iso-Pako Community High School said qualified me for the 200 Meters Junior Boys relay team. I suspected we were the same age, too. Like me, he was in Class Two, at St. Gregory International College.

  When Juwa continued to lose the ball to opponents on that first day, and we conceded the first goal, I had turned to look at Juwa’s house, the pink highrise that was across the street from the Elementary school and said, “Juwa, your mother is calling you.” He had turned to look at the front of the house, looked at me, and said, “Mum called me?” to which I said, “Yes.” Then he shouted, “Mum! Mum has come!” and ran away from the pitch, out of the premises of the Elementary School; his bare legs that had no yam on the calf were hardly lifted off the ground as he ran kiti-kata-kiti-kata.

  I selected another player. We scored the first goal, scored the second, and won the set before Juwa returned. I shouted, “April fool!” when he returned and he had said, “You are a bad boy, and I am going to report you to my Dad. I thought you said my Mum has returned.” He breathed in short gasps, his chest moved up and down as he spoke, because he had just climbed the staircase ten floors up and down again. He walked me halfway home when we left the pitch that day.

  I was still laughing about April Fool when I turned around to see Pa up the street. He was on his way back from work, from his office, his office at the sawmill that was made of wood, where he worked for the Sawmillers Association, Iso-Pako Branch. I had leafed through his files, and I knew he kept records of old and new members, took minutes of their weekly meetings, wrote letters on their behalf, as well as kept a book of the monthly dues each member paid, or had not paid. Pa’s eyes were on the Range as soon as he turned the corner on Obama street, I could see.

  I said, “Welcome, Pa,” and took the bag he had under his arm, the bag that made boys on Obama street name Pa Baba Alajo, collector of voluntary contributions. I had threatened to report them to Pa, but I never did. I didn’t because I was among them whenever we called Alhaji Rauf Owodunni, Agboworin. We gave him the name because Alhaji Rauf always carried in his hand a jute bag, the size of my school bag, which we imagined contained all the money he made each day at Alhaji Rauf Owodunni Wood Industry.

  Pa said, “Na who get dat car?”

  “The Range Rover Jeep, you mean? Its owner is in our house.”

  Pa said, “Pate dey for ma house?”

  “Uncle Pate? Maybe he is the one.”

  “Na ’im. Na Pate. I know ’im car well-well. Even if I dey sleep sef, I go no say na ’im car be dat. ’E dey drive am pass the main street wey dey de oder side of ma office. I dey see am all de time, but ’e no dey see me.”

  Juwa said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “Oh, ma boy. How you dey? You come see ya friend, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How ya Papa?”

  “Dad is doing fine, sir.”

  “And ya Mama?”

  “Mum’s cool.”

  “Good, good. Good boy. Your friend don give you sonting chop?”

  Juwa looked at me, and I said, “Pa, there is nothing in the house that I can give...”

  Pa’s forehead came up with lines as he spoke to me, thick lines like those that showed near his nostrils each time Ma said that there was no more palm oil to cook okro.

  Pa said, “You don’t be silly. You don ask me, and I no give you money make you take buy sonting for ya friend? You never ask me, you say noting dey for house.”

  Then he turned to Juwa and smiled. “Good boy, I go send your friend, make ’e go buy you meneral wey you go drink. I know you like meneral, eh?”

  Juwa nodded his head, as he lifted his right foot up to stand on his left. Then he lifted his left leg and stood on his right, his hands locked behind his back.

  Pa put his hand in the pocket of his shirt. His tie got in the way, and he brushed it aside. He removed his hand from his breast pocket and put it in the pocket of his trousers. He shook each of the two pockets as though he wanted to brush away an ant that had bitten him down under.

  Pa turned to me and said, “C’mon, bring ma bag.” I gave the bag to him, and he searched. When he gave me a fifty naira note, he said, “’E get de meneral wey dem dey sell for forty naira, eh? Na dat one you go buy.”

  “It is the one that is fifty naira that Mama Kudira has.”

  “You don’t be silly. Na only Mama Kudira dey sell meneral? Go anoda place go buy. Make sure you bring back ma balance o.”

  Pa walked towards the house after he told Juwa, “Wait for ya friend, you hear? ’E go come back now?”

  I waited for Pa to enter the house, and I beckoned to Juwa to come with me.

  Juwa said, “Is your Mum not at home?”

  “She is inside the house with Grandma.”

  “I should thank her for what she gave me last week. My Dad said I should thank her, too.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s funny?” Juwa asked, pushing his eyeglasses back over his nostrils.

  “Nothing.”

&nbs
p; I didn’t want Juwa to know the problem Ma had with Pa over the bottle of honey that she gave him. The day Ma gave Juwa the honey, Pa had sat on his wooden deckchair outside our house, his torso bare, after he returned from work. He had said, “Vero, wey ma dinner?”

  Dinner was the only meal Pa ate in the house each day because he left for his office early. But he would call for his dinner as though it was semolina and vegetable with crayfish, as if it was the kind of meal I ate in Juwa’s house.

  “Vero, wey ma dinner?” Pa repeated.

  Ma pushed me along where she sat near the fireplace; there was a bowl in my right hand that had cassava foofoo the size of my fist, and a bowl in my left hand that had orunla soup from chopped, dried okro.

  “Take de food go give ya Papa,” Ma said with a smile on a corner of her mouth. “Or you no hear say hunger dey catch am?” Her voice sounded as though the meal was ready long ago and I had refused to take it to him.

  “Vero,” Pa called after I had placed the bowls on the table in front of him. He had leaned out of his deckchair towards the table. He lifted a side of the bowl of orunla; a thing that made the soup flow to one side like saliva that draws away from the lips slowly, and in a long line.

  “Vero,” Pa called again.

  “Eh, na me be dis,” Ma said as she stood before Pa’s table. “Wetin happen?”

  “You ask me wetin happen, eh?” Pa looked up and said. “Wetin be dis?” He tilted the bowl of soup towards Ma.

  Ma said, “No be soup be dis?”

  “Soup without meat?”

  “You no give me money to buy meat.”

  “Ehn, you no sell anytin today?”

  “I don take de money do sonting.”

  “Wetin you take de money do?” Pa asked.

  “I buy honey.”

  “Honee? Wetin you want take honee do?”

  “I want chop am.”

  “Ehn, so you wan’ begin dey enjoy honee for dis house. But me, make I dey take soup without meat, eh? Okay go bring de honee. Make I pour my own for dis soup. Dat mean say na honee be ma meat today.”