A single electric bulb hung from the ceiling and lit the room. There was a window in the wall that faced the door, but the wooden shutters were fastened with nails. The bed was lined against this wall. At the foot of the bed stood a sturdy, antique redwood dresser; on its varnished top sat a gilt-framed photograph. Dimié Abrakasa stripped to his underpants in front of the dresser, then pulled open the bottommost drawer and rummaged in it until he found a pair of jeans and his yellow T-shirt.
Méneia and Benaebi sat cross-legged in front of the TV. The light that streamed from the screen played on their still faces. Méneia was the spitting image of her mother, except that, where Daoju Anabraba had a beauty spot on her right cheek, Méneia, in the same place, sprouted a mole that was the size and appearance of a raisin. She was four years older than Benaebi, who, at eight years old, was shedding his milk teeth. He sucked his thumb.
His sister had tried everything in her power to wean him off this habit — from soaking his hands in bitterleaf sap to coating his fingers with chicken shit — but Benaebi persisted. When he wasn’t chewing his fingernails, his thumb was thrust through the gaps in his teeth. Several fingers of his two hands were cicatrized by whitlow, and the skin of his thumbs was as pale and shrivelled as lab specimens floating in a jar of formalin.
Dimié Abrakasa moved away from the dresser, and Méneia turned to face him, but her gaze remained on the screen.
“What are we eating, Dimié?” she asked.
Dimié Abrakasa walked to the head of the bed, rested his shoulders against the wall, and said: “There’s still garri in the house, abi?”
“But no soup,” Méneia replied.
Benaebi looked up, eyes glistening. “I’m hungry,” he said, as he sucked his thumb.
“What will we eat?” Méneia asked again.
Dimié Abrakasa glanced at his mother. Her face was closed, heavy as stone. Tendrils of lank brown hair clung to her cheek and fluttered each time she breathed out. Dimié Abrakasa turned back to Méneia. “Like how much do you think we need to cook enough soup to last till tomorrow?”
“Three hundred,” Méneia said, after a quick calculation.
“With fish or meat?”
“Meat.”
“Fish is cheaper.”
“But we used fish for the last two pots of soup!”
Her older brother made no reply, and Méneia, with a sigh, said, “Okay, fish. Two hundred will be enough. Or what do you think?”
“Yes,” Dimié Abrakasa said. “I have—” he turned out his pockets, producing clumps of paper and wisps of lint and some naira notes, “—one hundred and six, seven. . I have one hundred and seventy naira. What of you?”
“I have only ten naira, Dimié.”
“Bring it. And you, Benaebi?”
“I’m hungry,” Benaebi mumbled at the TV screen.
Méneia swung her head to look at him. “Benaebi!” she snapped, “remove that hand from your mouth before I slap you! Boo-boo-boo baby! Do you have any money?”
“I have fifty naira but I’m not giving you!”
“I’ve heard. Where is it?”
“I said I’m not—”
“Will you shut up? Where’s the money?”
“I gave it to Mma this morning.”
All eyes turned to the bed. Méneia broke the silence. “H’m,” she sniffed, “that one is gone. What should we do, Dimié?”
“We have one-eighty,” Dimié Abrakasa said. He counted the notes, folded them into a wad, and stuck it in his right hip pocket. “Let me see—”
His words were cut off by a sudden, cataclysmal darkness. A power cut.
“Aw, NEPA!” Benaebi exclaimed, slapping his thigh. “Dog shit!”
“Shut up,” his sister said, “they’ll bring it back soon.” Then she added: “By God’s grace.”
Dimié Abrakasa edged round the sound of their voices. The subterranean dark, the stench of degraded alcohol, the whispering heat, had turned the room unbearable for him. He reached the door, pulled it open, emerged into the corridor. When he turned to shut the door, he met his mother’s gaze. She raised herself on one elbow, combed back her tousled hair with her fingers, and said, “Don’t even think of coming back to this house without my medicine.”
. 4 .
Dimié Abrakasa stepped into the harsh light of midafternoon. On the horizon, he saw a mass of bruise-dark clouds bearing down on the sun. The air was heavy, there was no wind. Rain was approaching. Dimié Abrakasa considered shortcutting through the back streets, but he remembered the money in his pocket, so headed for the open road.
The 1.3 kilometer Ernest Ikoli Road, started in September 1970 and finished nine months later, was for many years extolled — on account of its wideness and its drainage system, its gardened roundabouts and traffic lights and cat’s-eyes lane markers — as the model Nigerian city road, the road of the bright future. Once charcoal-black, the road was now an ash-gray stream that threw off sparks where the metal of embedded bolts and bottle tops caught the sunlight. Potholes strewed the asphalt, and the concrete sidewalks were shot with cracks. The roadside drains were silted over in some places, and trash choked in others. The revving engines and horn blares of commuters, the clang-and-bang of artisans, the roar of a populace world-famous as a loudmouthed lot, beat the air. Theme music of city life.
After he passed Number II Sand Field and crossed the road to avoid an approaching pushcart piled high with yams, Dimié Abrakasa felt the urge to urinate. He stopped, looked around, moved forward a few steps, reached the mouth of the alley he’d spotted, and turned into it. The alley was in shadow. Relief from the sun’s glare heightened the pressure on his bladder, and he picked his way across the alley, holding his breath. The alley floor was dotted with shit mounds; the air stank of old urine. The windows of the story buildings that formed the sides of the alley were boarded up, and paint flakes curled off the lichened walls. A group of boys was gathered at the alley end.
Dimié Abrakasa halted, opened his fly, and ignoring the faded letters on the wall in front of him that spelled,
DO NOT UNIRATE OVERHERE ANYMORE
BY ORDER! THE LANDLORD
he splashed the wall. He arched his back and sighed in release, then shifted his foot to avoid the foaming stream. A thrill of excitement entered the boys’ voices. As he squeezed out the last drops, the boys raised a cheer — a shriek of agony rent the air. Startled, he jumped, and his fly-zipper snagged his flesh. He yelped with pain, and sucked in his breath. Then, with careful fingers, he freed himself from the grip of the zipper teeth.
Giving in to a curiosity so intense he could smell its cat breath, Dimié Abrakasa approached the boys. They made way; they absorbed him into their ranks. As he’d suspected, it was something subhuman they had ganged up on. He’d expected to see a mangy dog, or a goat lying in a pool of blood, but he found he was staring at the cowering form of a rag-draped madwoman. She was crouched on the ground in the center of the circle formed by the boys. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her hands covered her ears. The skin of her knees was scabrous; her hands were tree-root grimy. Her hair fell on her shoulders in thick, brownish clumps, and it was sprinkled with the confetti of garbage dumps. She reeked of disease.
Dimié Abrakasa turned his gaze to the boys. He counted heads, but when he got to the twelfth, someone moved to a new position, distracting him, and he was too close to the end to bother starting over. Some boys held sticks in their hands, others clutched bricks, and a few had both. He recognized two boys as schoolmates, but every other person was a stranger.