"Godwin" I called.
"Yes Aunty", he replied. I heard his fat feet stomping on the floor as he rushed into the room breathing heavily, and smiling like an excited monkey.
"How many times have I told you to stop running when I call you", I yelled at him. "Do you want to fall and break the floor with this your fat body".
He said "No", bending his head downwards and tapping his foot. The mere fact that he was fat annoyed me. That he was happy annoyed me the more.
"Did I not tell you to sweep this room", I asked, using my eyes to search for the cane I bought specially for him.
"I swept it, Aunty", he said. He was shaking, he knew what was coming next. He knew that I would flog him till he urinates on his shorts.
"You swept what? Is that not sand I am seeing near that cupboard? Is that not a biscuit wrapper close to the door?"
He was following my gaze, looking for sand and biscuit wrapper, but he couldn't see any, because there was none. And I wasn't seeing things, I just needed a reason to flog the fat and happy boy, for being fat and happy.
"I am sorry, Aunty", he said. I gave him a wicked look.
It was easier to take my frustration out on him. It helped me calm down. Mummy just looked at me, she never said anything about anything since she got sick. She only talked when she wanted water, or food, or she needed to see somebody. Her sharp voice had become something of a distant world. It was too long ago I heard it that I had stopped seeing her in that light. I could only think of her as what she was now; sick, forgetful, unable to talk.
"Go away", I said to Anthony. I watched his back, at his big buttocks that shaked as if they were packed with water.
Mukasolu walked in, and stood akimbo "Aunty, Tony is crying".
I opened my mouth to talk, but the words couldn't just come out.
She sat on a stool near the window, her long silk night gown sweeping the floor. She never took me seriously, she was never scared of me like her other sibling. It was as if she understood me, as if she could read into my silence, as if we communicated when we hardly did.
"When are we leaving here" she asked.
" The day after tomorrow".
"I don't like this village", she said.
"Me too", I told her.
"I don't like your daddy too, the way he looks at big mama", she said.
"Me too", she replied.
"I don't like men", she said, and I looked at her with my strength, with my whole soul, and she looked at me back, as if saying it was not enough, and she needed to express it, show me how much she hated men, maybe by killing a man. I remembered the day in the hospital when I asked the doctor, if she would ever forget that she was raped by her father, and he said No.
"Do you remember anything about your dad", I asked her.
"Yes", she said, looking out of the window. I could see her nipples from her silk night gown. She had large nipples, and I imagined that no man or child would ever suck it.
"I know that he was the reason my mother killed herself". She said.
"Do you think of your mother often", I asked.
"Everyday, morning and night", she said.
Muka was a defiant girl, filled with so much negative energy like me, only that she was stronger than me. While I looked for little, happy, fat boys to flog and scream at, she had defined herself as a person who hates men. It made sense to me. I didn't make sense to me. I couldn't say I hated men since I had sex with them for money. I couldn't say I hated my father since I liked to watch him talk, and I used to close my eyes and day dream about hugging him. I was incapable of strong emotions, of having principles.
"I also know what he did to me, when I was little", she said.
"Who", I asked before I realized she was talking about her dad. "What did he do to you?"
She stood up from the stool and sat close to mummy.
"It's time for her to take her drugs", she said.
"I have given her".
She was fourteen now, but she looked seventeen. She was beautiful, not in the way Aunty Nene or Ujunwa was beautiful. Hers was a more striking beauty, sharper, wicked. She didn't have large behinds like them. She had small firm buttocks. I wanted to feel them. I wanted to know if they were as hard as they looked.
"I am going outside". She left.
Mummy was snoring, her drugs usually knocks her off. She had been ill for two years. She hid it for a while. We all thought she was just quiet because of all of her life troubles, then we thought she was getting old. Until the day she fell and hit her head on the wooden handle of our sitting room sofa and the doctor said that she had high blood pressure and chronic depression. It was during the period that Janet died, and Bobo disappeared. The period when I began prostituting. Because Chidalu was in America - she travelled on holidays with one of her senator boyfriends - and Bobo was no where to be found. I had to leave school to take care of mummy, and Godwin, and Tony. I also had to fend for them. So I slept with more men than I could count in six months. In the most surprising way the money men gave me never seemed to be enough. It left as fast as it came. Mummy's health deteriorated by the day and I had to buy her more drugs. It happened so fast that I blended into the life I normally hear that people lived, a life that I never imagined would be mine.
We had been in the village for five days, Mama had finally died. She died in her sleep, peacefully. I hadn't want to come for the burial ceremony but Mummy had insisted that we came. I gave in, because a part of me longed to see daddy and I knew he would come.
For the five days I spent in the Village, moving around in the most unnoticeable way, I didn't for once speak to daddy. Not for lack of what to say to him, because I had so much to say, and lots of tears loaded in my sockets to cry. But, because he didn't speak to us - me, mummy, Muka or the boys. He didn't ask about Chidalu or Bobo. He didn't even look at us. And I knew that they - his village people - had done to him what they did to mummy's daddy. It had to be Juju. It had to be the strongest native doctor in the whole of the world that cooked the portion my daddy drank. That was how I could explain that he seeing us, feeling us, but he was not looking at us.
We arrived Lagos, in the evening, at about 6.30. My legs were aching, my back was heavy like I had balanced three bags of cement on it all day. Mummy slept through out the journey, that was what she did all day - sleep.
When we had settled in, and I had tucked mummy in her bed. I sent Muka, to buy moi - moi for dinner, while I had my bath and dressed up. I had to go and see one of the men I slept with. I had cut them down to five. I knew somewhere deep down it won't matter if they were five or ten, that it won't make me a better person, but I just did it anyway. I needed any little dignity I could scrape for myself. The man I was going to see was one of Ujunwa's contact. She had given me his number the day I called and begged her to send me some money, promising to pay her back. " Call him, tell him you are from me. This is my personal person. My biggest oga. I am doing this because it is you". She said.
"Thank you", I said with anger and shame and gratitude.
He was a short man, and immediately I saw him I knew he won't be an easy one. Short men tend to have big penis. He gave me 60,000 naira after our first meeting. As I held the wad of notes in my hands. I felt tears in my eyes that I couldn't hold back because of the stinging pain in between my legs.
"I am going to church" I told Muka, as I closed the door, and walked into the darkness of the night.
One thing I loved about Lagos was the night life. It was never too late to go anywhere. I boarded a taxi to Festac, and stopped at Golden Hotel. The receptionist was a slim girl with eyes as big as an owls. She was wearing a hair net, and her head sprang up from the table as I walked in. She was new, I could tell from the way she said "Sir, Ok Sir, Yes Sir", on the intercom as she informed him he had a guest.
I particularly liked Golden hotel because of the way the waiters didn't look at me. The way they made sure they didn't notice me. I felt less shame in the morning when I had to walk out of the hotel to board a taxi.
"Come to the bed" he said, as he lit a cigarette. I liked him because he didn't like to waste his time. He had no patience for small talks or lies. He didn't try to make me feel more important than I was. After sex, when he gave me money, he didn't say "Use it for transport", as if I could possibly use such huge amount of money for transport. He just paid me for my services without trying to pacify me after devouring my body. Having sex with him was a marathon. He could go on for one hour, of course stopping at interval, but that day he didn't last long. I wanted to ask what the problem was, but I couldn't because I didn't know how he would take it. We never discussed about things, anything at all. After sex we just slept or lie in silence, thinking. It was why he liked me, he said once, that he didn't have to try hard, he could just not do anything. I felt insulted, but then, it really does come with the business. He gave me a 40,000. That was his usual amount, I was grateful because I felt that he might give me half the money since he didn't stay long. I went into the bathroom. Everything had a mirror, even the bath tub. I saw my face everywhere. A face that didn't feel like mine, I figured if a person changed, inwardly, there should be outward change, may be a huge scar, or an entirely different face to remind me that I was no longer who I used to be. He was on the phone, when I came out all cleaned up. His short legs sticking out of the duvet that covered his body.
"I will drop you", he bounced off the bed.
"Ok", I said. I still couldn't ask him why, and he didn't explain why too. I had never felt such helplessness, such boundary between me and any human being. I slipped into my jeans, and wore my shirt, too tired to re apply my make up,
"I am done", I said to him.
We drove past Abulado busstop in silence, cold silence. I felt uneasy, sitting beside him as he drove, a closeness that shouldn't be. He would have called a cab, or told me to find my way. But he was driving me home at night, he wasn't heading my direction, or planning to see someone who stays close to my house, he really was driving me home.
He parked in front of house. "Do you know why I drove you here", he asked, and continued before I could answer "I needed to be outside, this life can really be frustrating".
I didn't know life could be frustrating for rich folks. I waited for him to spill and say what was bugging him. But he didn't, he pressed the unlock button of the car, a signal that I should get down. I hesitated a bit. I wanted to hear his problem, or tell him mine, or even stay with him. Anything that could make him feel better, but frustratingly I couldn't. I wasn't paid to care for him, he might not even acknowledge my concern, or believe that I truly cared. I could feel his sorrow as I stepped down from the car, but as I opened my door, and stepped into my house, I could feel myself dropping his sorrow at my door step and picking up mine. We all had our demons.
