Narrated in point of view of two main characters…YINKA and ADAEZE
YINKA
At first, the droning of the bus and Mama’s voice sounded as if echoing from miles and miles away between my half sleep and half consciousness. Then later, her voice was hurting my ears, almost replacing the cold wind with hot one. I adjusted myself on her big thighs and lifted my head from the front-seat, to see what the argument was all about.
It was the “molue” bus conductor. He asked Mama to change the twenty naira note, that it was soiled and torn in three parts. Mama was still arguing over the fact that the money collected from the lady across our seat was worse, compared to hers.
“Wetin you dey try talk, woman?” The lady’s voice catapulted into the air again, “You think say I no hear Yoruba? Na “n’gbati, n’gbati” you go dey talk scatter everywhere!”
Her voice was so heavy with Igbo accent. I was unable to see her, because the standing passengers were huddling together like matchsticks in a pack, in a way that made them assume uneven shadows of blockade.
Tired of exchanging Insult with her, Mama threw her attention out of the window, watching the peaceful landscapes. The conductor had proceeded with the T-fare collection. He seemed to have given up on Mama’s pathetic naira note.
Perhaps Mama was trying to tease the conductor that he was too fond of women, the way she always teased “Man’yi” at home. I grew up to hear Mama calling my father “Man’yi” (This man), and I was used to calling him by that, without being cautioned. My father didn’t care anyway. Only occasionally would I call “Daddy mi” (My Dad). I was the only child before Mama lost her womb, and Man’yi refused to marry another wife. They seemed to share a true love because, as I later heard, Mama was close to forty years before God could answer her prayer.
The bus was on Badagry expressway. Sleep rejected my eyes as I imitated Mama. I was carried away with the trees’ backward movement, running five times faster than the bus in their hundreds. And I watched the dusts as they assumed the image of a translucent brown garment spread all over the air. The wind whooshed and whispered into my ear as the bus succeeded with more speed.
The bus came to a halt at Agboju bustop. Then a handful of seated passengers alighted, creating a space for a few standing passengers. It was then I saw her. She was not a lady, but a fair woman with her daughter on her laps. Her fair daughter was also staring intently out of the window until her Mum asked her to sit right.
“Janet, you won’t break my legs. Sit properly. Can’t you see how your mates are sitting?” She said to her in a calm and motherly tone.
As if to confirm and prove her mother wrong, she cautiously turned her head around, and I saw an enchanting face, which made my heart jumped like a tennis ball hit hard by a bat. My blood began to boil beyond a reasonable degree, my eyes under a spell of vision. An angelic vision.
In the process of her survey, her eyes slowly met with mine, and our eyes gave a spark like two wires that accidentally joined on the high tension pole. She hurriedly escaped her eyes, as if she had seen a terrible thing in my eyeballs. If she was thirteen years old, I supposed. I would be a year older. Her school uniform was a blue pinafore and white blouse. I wished our eyes would meet again and again, before departing for our respective destinations. My hope began to sink when she diverted her attention outside again.
Towards the front aisle, another trouble was brewing between a young lady and a man among the standing passengers. The lady was complaining that a man behind her touched her backside. Her short skirt was really tight in a way that made her butt stand so high like a mountain. The blue skirt and blouse were made of “aposhe” fabric. The man in question argued that his hand had gone astray due the sudden decrease of the bus’ speed.
“Na mumu you call me, ehn?” Her voice grew taller as she confronted the man, who I quickly assumed as a corporate office man, owing to his white shirt, black trousers and red tie, “You touch my yansh three times and you say na by mistake. You think say I resemble all those ashawo you dey carry for road side…and…and…those ones wey you dey fuck for corner for club? For your information, I be married woman!” Each word had stumbled out of her throat like a huge stone.
Every ear on the bus had stood up at the mention of “Three times.”
All the seated passengers adjusted on their seats like court attendants about to witness a final judgment.
“Haven’t I told you “sorry”, you this lady? Better watch your tongue!” The man raised his voice and pointed his finger at her face, “I’m a true man of God. How dare you say I patronize prostitutes and night clubs. Have we ever met before?”
A laugh exploded among the young boys and students on the bus.
One of them chuckled, “A man of God…three times. Na wa o.”
And a person muttered something about the lady being a Calabar tribe.
“Hey, young woman…” a man on black suit in front of us cleared his throat, “you should not use such a vulgar and detrimental language where children are present.”
The lady insolently waved the man off, asserting that her dirty language was not in any way his “palava!”
“Do you know who you are talking to?!” The man made to stand up, probably to attack her, but was restrained by the old man beside him. “For crying out loud, this useless girl lacks home training. She is not even up to my last child! Please, let me deal with her. I will beat you the way I beat my students in the school!”
“The way you dey beat your wife for house abi!” She retorted, “We know men like you…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…Na so so grammar you go dey blow for your wife if she ask money for soup. You no go fit carry any responsibility for house. You no go fit train ya children. And you wan come beat me!” The lady uttered each word with gesticulations and demonstrations that seemed more awful than her words.
The man shook his head and smirked, then stretched his right hand in her direction, “Just…just take a good look at yourself. You are carrying such a catastrophic load behind you, and you still went ahead to wear this kind of demoralized and abominable wear. And ‘you’ call yourself a married woman? You are nothing, but a whore. I mean a professional prostitute!”
This time, most of the passengers thundered with laughter. Then our eyes met again. Janet and I. She smiled in my direction and I smiled back before she escaped her eyes again, each eyeball was gripping like a magnificent moon. Her round face was holding full lips and a cute flat nose. Two delicate perpendicular marks rested on her chin. As much as I could recall, her overall beauty was beyond explanation. I couldn’t tell if that smile was really meant for me.
I resumed watching the drama unfolding before me. Unfortunately, the calabar lady was already at her destination. She continued insulting the professor even when she alighted. Meanwhile, in between my “busy body”, the Igbo woman had started scolding her daughter.
“What have you been looking at? I don’t know what you planted around there, ehn, Adaeze!” She gesticulated in my direction.
That must be her native name. Ugh! I was secretly excited that she was also staring at me.
When the bus moved on, the thought that I was going to drop at the next junction dug a deep hole of sorrow in my heart. The possibility that I wouldn’t see her forever made me blink to hold back my tears, so that Mama wouldn’t ask why I was crying. Still, I managed to steal another look at her. Her face was bent down and her eyes seemed to glow red, fluttering and glistening like ocean-sand under a terrible sun. She seemed to be containing some tears too.
Then the unwanted time came when Mama shouted: “MAGBON junction wa o!” after which she said to me: “Adeyinka get up, you are late already.” And then she adjusted the collar of my school uniform (a pink shirt and blue shorts.)
That was how I lost her fourteen years back, until yesterday when I saw her at the company I work. I addressed her by “Madam!” And she stared at me with these suspicious eyes when the chairman was introducing her to the staff, as the new executive director of the company.
”And I have to tell you this,” the chairman had pointed out, “She is my son’s fiancée. Therefore, she is one of the eyes of this company.” Then a tempest of honour and dignity seemed to envelope her.
She blushed as we all chorused: “You are highly welcome, Madam!”
It’s not possible for her to recognize me anyway. And neither am I in the best position to approach and remind her, since we never exchanged words but strong feelings. Besides, she is now my big boss! Many prestigious men must have journeyed across her life before the chairman’s son. Adulthood affections would have washed away childhood fantasies.
I wouldn’t have discovered her identity if I didn’t see JANET WILLIAMS ADAEZE on a document the secretary was typing after the introduction. The lady told me it was her file. The name rang a bell in my head, which prompted me to observe her chin the next minute I saw her. I was so devastated on seeing those two marks fading into her smooth skin.
“What a small world….” was the statement I mumbled.
I have barely closed my eyes since last night. The “molue” bus scenario wouldn’t stop haunting me, as though it was yesterday. My mind keeps swinging between the past Janet and the present one.
Now, the time says 4:37am on the bedside clock. The bed gives a gentle creak as I turn cautiously, so as not to wake Adeola whose head is lying on my bare chests. In our school days at LASPOTECH, Adeola and I once planned to get married and have our first child under any condition, until last week. She insisted that I have to leave this single room and relocate to a flat apartment before she could spare any pregnancy.
When I asked: “Where do you want me to get money for a self-contain this time around, Deola?”
“You better find a better job or else!” She had nagged, after telling me about some of my school friends who were living in luxury, despite my own first class upper in business management.
“Come on, most of these guys dey into YAHOO things now,” I voiced out, “Mama always warned me against fraud….”
The argument went on like that for almost an hour. I wonder what has suddenly come over her. How do I fulfill such a dream from my forty thousand naira salary? For how many months would I gather such amount?
“Hmmmn…” My chest heaves with a long sigh.
Not this time when Mama urgently needs a grandson, to heal her wounded heart. Ever since Daddy died of cancer six years back, Mama hasn’t been herself. She had sold all her cloths and Daddy’s junk Taxi to sponsor my tertiary education, after which she moved to Ibadan, her hometown. How then would I prolong my precious mother’s life?
****
ADAEZE
To be continued…. (in Adaeze’s point of view)
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