Say You're One of Them (Oprah's Book Club)

by Uwem Akpan

  Mama touched my shoulders and relieved me of the infant. She stripped Baby of the plastic rompers, cleaned him up, and put him in a nappy for the night. With a cushion wrested from Naema, who was sleeping, Mama padded the top of the carton into a cot. After placing Baby in it, she straightened the four corners of the carton and then folded up our mosquito net and hung it over them. It had been donated by an NGO, and Baba had not had a chance to pawn it yet. Then Mama wrapped her frame around the carton and slept.

  I WOKE UP BABA when Maisha returned, before dawn. He had been stroking his rosary beads, dozing and tilting until his head upset the mosquito netting. Mama had to continually elbow or kick him off. And each time, he opened his eyes with a practiced smile, thinking the Jaguar hour had arrived. The rain had stopped, but clouds kept the night dark. The city had gorged itself on the floods, and its skin had swelled and burst in places. The makeshift tables and stalls of street markets littered the landscape, torn and broken, as if there had been a bar fight. Garbage had spread all over the road: dried fish, stationery, trinkets, wilted green vegetables, plastic plates, wood carvings, underwear. Without the usual press of people, the ill-lit streets sounded hollow, amplifying the smallest of sounds. Long after a police car had passed, it could be heard negotiating potholes, the officers extorting their bribes—their Ex-mas kitu kidogo—from the people who could not afford to go to their up-country villages for the holidays.

  Maisha returned in an old Renault 16 taxi. She slouched in the back while the driver got out. Kneeling and applying pliers to open the back door, the driver let her out of the car. Baba’s sighs of disappointment were as loud as the muezzin who had begun to call Nairobi to prayer. My sister stepped out, then leaned on the car, exhausted. There were bags of food on the seat.

  She gestured at Baba to go away. He ignored her.

  “So where is our Jaguar and musungu?” Baba asked the taxi driver, peering into the shabby car as if it might be transformed at any moment.

  “What Jaguar? What musungu?” the driver asked, monitoring Maisha’s movements.

  “The nini Jaguar. . . . Where is my daughter coming from?” Baba asked him.

  “Me, I can’t answer you that question,” he told Baba, and pointed to his passenger.

  She bent in front of the only functioning headlamp to count out the fare. Her trousers were so tight that they had crinkled on her thighs and pockets; she struggled to get to the notes without breaking her artificial nails, which curved inward like talons. Yesterday, her hair had been low cut, gold, wavy, and crisp from a fresh perm. Now it stood up in places and lay flat in others, revealing patches of her scalp, which was bruised from the chemicals. It was hard to distinguish peeling face powder from damaged skin. To rid herself of an early outbreak of adolescent pimples, she had bleached her face into an uneven lightness. Her eyelids and the skin under her eyes had reacted the worst to the assorted creams she was applying, and tonight her fatigue seemed to have seeped under the burns, swelling her eyes.

  The driver could not easily roll up the window. He extended his arm to guard the food bags, his collateral. Baba brought out a six-inch nail and went for the worn tires. “What dawa have you given my daughter? She always comes home strong.”

  The driver crumpled immediately, his pleas laden with fright. “Mzee, my name is Karume. Paul Kinyanjui wa Karume. . . . Me, I be an upright Kenyan. I fear God.”

  “And you want to steal my daughter’s bags?”

  “No. Please, take the bags. Please,” the man begged, trying to restrain Baba from bursting his tires.

  “Aiie, Baba. You shame me. Shut up,” Maisha said weakly, pushing the money toward the driver.

  Baba collected the bags and strolled from the road, his nose full of good smells, until he suddenly broke into a run, to untie the trunk before Maisha reached the shack.

  The driver got into his car and was about to put the money into his breast pocket when he started frisking himself. Baba stood watching from the door of the shack. Soon it was as if the driver had soldier ants in his clothes. He unzipped his pockets, then zipped them again quickly, as if the thief were still lurking. He removed his coat, then his shirt, and searched them. He recounted his itinerary to the skies with eyes closed, his index finger wagging at invisible stars. He searched his socks, then he got down on all fours, scouring the wet ground. He dabbed at the sweat, or tears, running down his face. “Where is my money?” he said to Maisha, finally finding his voice. “Haki, it was in my pocket now, now.”

  Maisha charged forward and screeched at Baba until his stern face crumbled into a sheepish grin. He returned the fat wad of notes, giggling like the twins. The driver thanked her curtly, brushing his clothes with trembling hands. As soon as he’d reconnected the ignition wires to start the car, he creaked off, his horn blaring, his headlamp pointing up and to the left like an unblinking eye.

  MAISHA STAGGERED INTO THE shack, holding her perilously high heels over her shoulders. Mama had made room for her and the bags and had sprayed our home with insecticide to discourage mosquitoes. My siblings inside started to cough. As Maisha came in, Mama stood aside like a maid, wringing her hands. I could not look Maisha in the eye and did not know what to say.

  “Good night, Maisha,” I blurted out.

  She stopped, her tired body seized by shock. She searched my parents’ faces before tracing the voice to me.

  “Who told you to talk?” she said.

  “You leave full time, I run away. No school.”

  “You are going to school,” Maisha said. “Tuition is ready.”

  “Run away? Jigana, shut up,” Baba said. “You think you are family head now? ‘All are leaders’ causes riots. Stupid, mtu dufu! Nobody is leaving.”

  Maisha glared at us, and we all turned our backs to her as she opened the trunk to take out a blanket. The sweet smell of her Jaguar adventures filled the shack, overpowering the heavy scent of insecticide. Though her arrivals always reminded us that life could be better, tonight I hated the perfume.

  “Me and your mama don’t want full time, Maisha,” Baba said, picking his nails. “We refuse.”

  “Our daughter, things will get better,” Mama said. “Thanks for canceling our debt!”

  “You are welcome, Mama,” Maisha said.

  Mama’s face lit up with surprise; she was so used to being ignored. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Finally, she sobbed the words “Asante, Maisha, asante for everything!” and bowed repeatedly, her hands held before her, as if in prayer. The women looked into each other’s eyes in a way I had never seen before. They hugged and held on as if their hands were ropes that tied their two bodies together. In spite of the cold, beads of sweat broke out on Mama’s forehead, and her fingers trembled as she helped Maisha undo her earrings and necklace. Mama gently laid her down.

  I believed that Mama might have been able to persuade her to stay, but then Baba signaled to Mama to keep quiet so that he could be the negotiator.

  “Our daughter,” Baba said, “you need to rest and think carefully. As our people say, north ama south, east ama west, home the best . . .”

  “Maisha, no school for me!” I said. “I told Mama and Baba. They will return fee to you.”

  “Jigana, please, please, don’t argue,” Maisha said. “Even you. You cannot even pity me this night? Just for a few hours?”

  MY PARENTS SAT OUTSIDE, on the paint containers. I stood by the wall, away from them. I wanted to see Maisha one more time before she disappeared.

  Fog brought the dew down, thickening the darkness and turning the security lights into distant halos. We could hear Maisha twist and turn on the floor, cursing the limbs of her siblings and swatting at the mosquitoes. It was as if we were keeping a vigil of her last night with us. We were restless, the silence too heavy for us. Baba mumbled, blaming himself for not going more often to sweep the church premises. He agreed with Mama that if he had swept daily, instead of every other day, Saint Joseph the Worker would have bett
ered our lot. Mama snapped at him, because Baba had always told her that he was not interested in Saint Joseph’s favor but in a clean place for people to worship. Then Baba blamed her for no longer attending the KANU slum rallies to earn a few shillings.

  The night degenerated into growls and hisses. I preferred the distraction of the quarrel to the sound of Maisha’s uneasy breathing. When Maisha clapped one more time and turned over, Mama couldn’t stand it anymore. She rushed inside, took the mosquito net off the carton, and tied it to the rafters so that my sister was inside it. She sprayed the place again and brought Baby out to breast-feed. The coughing got worse. Baba tore down some of the walls to let in air, but, since the wind had subsided, it was of no use. He picked up the door and used it as a big fan to whip air into the shack.

  IN THE MORNING, ATIENO and Otieno came out first. They looked tired and were sniffling from the insecticide. They stood before us, spraying the morning with yellow urine, sneezing and whimpering.

  The streets began to fill. The street kids were up and had scattered into the day, like chickens feeding. Some moved about groggily, already drunk on kabire. One recounted his dreams to others at the top of his voice, gesticulating maniacally. Another was kneeling and trembling with prayer, his eyes shut as if he would never open them again. One man screamed and pointed at two kids, who were holding his wallet. No one was interested. His pocket was ripped to the zipper, leaving a square hole in the front of his trousers. He pulled out his shirt to hide his nakedness, then hurried away, an awkward smile straining his face. There was no sun, only a slow ripening of the sky.

  The twins started to wail and to attack Mama’s breasts. Baba spanked them hard. They sat on the ground with pent-up tears they were afraid to shed. Naema broke the spell. She came out and sat with me on the containers, grabbed my hands, and tried to cheer me up. “You are too sad, Jigana,” she said. “You want to marry the gal? Remember, it’s your turn to take Baby out.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Marry me, then—me am still here.” She stuck out her tongue at me. “I’m your sister too—more beautiful. Guy, do me photo trick . . . smile.” She was well rested and had slept off her initial shock at Maisha’s departure. Now she was herself again, taunting and talkative, her dimples deep and perfect. “You all must to let Maisha go.”

  “And you?” I said. “You only listen to Maisha.”

  “I’m big gal now, guy. Breadwinner. If you want school, I pay for you!”

  She blew me a kiss in the wind. Maisha’s creams were already lightening her ebony face.

  Before I could say anything, Naema erupted with mad laughter and ran into the shack. She almost knocked Baba down as she burst out with the bags of food we had forgotten. She placed them on the ground and tore into them, filling the morning with hope, beckoning all of us on. Baba bit into a chicken wing. Mama took a leg. The rest of us dug into the sour rice, mashed potatoes, salad, hamburgers, pizza, spaghetti, and sausages. We drank dead Coke and melted ice cream all mixed up. With her teeth, Naema opened bottles of Tusker and Castle beer. At first, we feasted in silence, on our knees, looking up frequently, like squirrels, to monitor one another’s intake. None of us thought to inflate the balloons or open the cards that Maisha had brought.

  Then the twins fell over on their backs, laughing and vomiting. As soon as they were done, they went straight back to eating, their mouths pink and white and green from ice cream and beer. We could not get them to keep quiet. A taxi pulled up and Maisha came out of the shack, dragging her trunk behind her. Our parents paused as the driver helped her put it into the car. My mother began to cry. Baba shouted at the streets.

  I sneaked inside and poured myself some fresh kabire and sniffed. I got my exercise book from the carton and ripped it into shreds. I brought my pen and pencil together and snapped them, the ink spurting into my palms like blue blood. I got out my only pair of trousers and two shirts and put them on, over my clothes.

  I avoided the uniform package. Sitting where the trunk had been, I wept. It was like a newly dug grave. I sniffed hastily, tilting the bottle up and down until the kabire came close to my nostrils.

  As the car pulled away with Maisha, our mourning attracted kids from the gangs. They circled the food, and I threw away the bottle and joined my family again. We struggled to stuff the food into our mouths, to stuff the bags back inside the shack, but the kids made off with the balloons and the cards.

  I hid among a group of retreating kids and slipped away. I ran through traffic, scaled the road divider, and disappeared into Nairobi. My last memory of my family was of the twins burping and giggling.

  Fattening for Gabon

  Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids. You had to keep a calm head or be as ruthless as the Badagry-Seme immigration people. If not, it could bring trouble to the family. What kept our family secret from the world in the three months Fofo Kpee planned to sell us were his sense of humor and the smuggler’s instinct he had developed as an agbero, a tout, at the border. My sister Yewa was five, and I was ten.

  Fofo Kpee was a smallish, hardworking man. Before the Gabon deal, as a simple agbero, he made a living getting people across the border without papers or just roughing them up for money. He also hired himself out in the harmattan season to harvest coconuts in the many plantations along the coast. He had his fair share of misfortune over the years, falling from trees and getting into scuffles at the border. Yet the man was upbeat about life. He seemed to smile at everything, partly because of a facial wound sustained in a fight when he was learning to be an agbero. Ridged and glossy, the scar ran down his left cheek and stopped at his upper lip, which was constricted; his mouth never fully closed. Though he tried to cover the scar with a big mustache, it shone like a bulb on a Christmas tree. His left eye looked bigger than the right because the lower eyelid came up short, pinched by the scar. Because of all this, sometimes people called him Smiley Kpee.

  A two-tone, blue silver 125cc Nanfang motorcycle was the last major purchase Fofo Kpee made that month when our lifestyle took an upswing and the Gabon plot thickened. He planned to use it to ferry people across the border between Benin and Nigeria to boost our family’s income.

  I could never forget that windy Tuesday evening when a wiry man brought him back on the new bike to our two-room home that faced the sea. I rushed out from behind the house, where I was cooking Abakaliki rice, to greet Fofo Kpee. His laugh was louder than the soft hum of the new machine. Our house was set back from the busy dirt road; a narrow sandy path connected them. On either side of the path and around our home was a cassava farm, a low wedge in between the tall, thick bushes, clumps of banana and plantain trees, and our abode. Our nearest neighbors lived a half kilometer down the road.

  I was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing the sea-green khaki shorts Fofo had just bought for me, and my feet were dusty from playing soccer. Yewa had been building sand castles under the mango tree in front of our house when the bike arrived.

  “Smiley Kpee, only two?” the man who brought Fofo exclaimed, disappointed. “No way, iro o! Where oders?”

  “Ah non, Big Guy, you go see oders . . . beaucoup,” said Fofo, a chuckle escaping his pinched mouth. He turned to us: “Mes enfants, hey, una no go greet Big Guy?”

  “Good evening, monsieur!” we said, and prostrated ourselves on the ground.

  The man turned away, ignoring us, his large eyes searching the road, his narrow forehead set in wrinkles. He had a small pointy nose. Although his head was clean shaven, his high cheekbones lay under a thin beard. He was in a tight pair of jeans, sandals, and an oversized, dirty-white corduroy shirt that hung on his lean frame like a furled sail, in spite of the wind. If not for his commanding height and presence, he could have been any other agbero at the border.

  “My friend, make we go inside, abeg,” Fofo Kpee pleaded with him. “Sit down and drink someting. Heineken, Star, Guinness?” He turned to me: “Kotchikpa, va acheter him de drink.” />
  “Rien . . . notting!” Big Guy said slowly and firmly, barely audible above the sea murmuring in the distance.

  Apart from the invitation to drink, we didn’t understand what they were talking about. But this didn’t worry us. Having an agbero as an uncle, we were used to people coming to harass him for various things at all hours of the day. So we knew he would laugh his way out of the man’s harassment now.

  “We never said two, but five,” Big Guy said, waving his fingers, some of which ended in dead nails, before Fofo. “Where de oder children now?”

  Fofo stepped away from the fingers, saying, “You know my arrangement wid your people?”

  “Quel peuple?” Big Guy taunted.

  “Your boss,” Fofo Kpee said.

  “But tu dois deal wid me—directement!”

  “Ah non, abeg, make we celebrate first. Gbòjé . . . relax.”

  “No, I dey very serious. Just moi.”

  “You? You want do me open eye?”

  “I no want frighten or cheat you. We dey do dis kind business like dis. . . . I dey warn you o. Abi, you want play wid fire?”

  “We dey dis deal togeder,” Fofo begged him. “No fear. Everyting go dey fine.”

  Big Guy shrugged and surveyed our surroundings, his eyes as suspicious as those of a traveler who has been duped at the border. He cast a disgusted glance at me and my sister and looked away. In the distance, the sun was a ball of gold in the foliage of the coconut plantation that guarded the approach to the Atlantic Ocean. The water that could take us abroad frothed gray and wild, resisting the sun’s gold brushes, and on this canvas of water, the coconut vistas cast their swaying grids. The wind from the sea blew at the land in a mild, endless breath.