We are struggling young boys but that wasn’t how we started. Our mother’s death turned the tide against us. She was a successful cocoa trader, not-too-beautiful but strong, slightly educated but affluent, prayerful and more prosperous than our father. I wonder why she had to marry that kind of man; lazy, women-fond, selfish and insatiable, lateron we learnt age was not on her side when he met him. She sponsored every single thing that made its way into the house, every single thing, except Bisade, Kemi and I’s making.
Ajike was not a troublemaker, she wasn’t the speechy type. She worked in silence and God rewarded her openly. We flaunted the latest gear, we attended the best school in town, she always had our back. Everything changed on that fateful morning she slipped while trying to run away from her father who wanted to beat her. We were just 15, 13 and 10 when she died, it was last year.
Needless to say her death ended so many beautiful things. We knew our father would never continue paying for our lavish school fees but he could have at least enrolled us in a run-of-the mill school. Never! education became a forbidden topic.
Succumbing to the idea of apprenticeship was harder than Chinese algebra, we cried River Jordan out of our faces that night. It took Kemi a long while to understand the ropes of hairdressing. Ajike’s Kemi whose lead in class fetched many plaques and more shopping spree had to be stooped that low.
Bisade settled down to tailoring and learnt fast. No steady income but he managed stipends from mending torn shirts, his boss was that magnanimous. My mechanic job provided next to nothing. The only thing i learnt pretty well after months of hard training was identifying equipment, forget the rest, i fumbled at them effortlessly, my mind was never in it and so i had to quit.
The money i get daily from carrying pans of mixed cement at the construction site near my street and barrow pushing was more than a life saver. I managed to save some money for Kemi’s school fees, we withdrew her from learning hairdressing after she came back one night with a swollen face. She ill-treated a customer’s hair and got her face stamped.
Hunger was no strange tune in the house. Our step-mother who we had looked up to to snuff the deadly tune out of our lives helped in increasing it. Useless woman, she was the first to notify our father of my untimely exit at the workshop. She can’t pull through barreness i swear.
There was mostly nothing to eat at home, our father was never moved by our pale faces. Aunty Yetunde, our step-mother throws her awkward plump body infront of the stove when cooking, when she’s done she takes the whole pot inside and minutes later you hear them laughing like idiots.
She comes out shortly after and dumps plates bearing thoroughly sucked-out bones and stained lumps of eba into the sink for who else but me to wash. May God just judge my father and that childless cargo too. How can a father hate his children that much. Or is he under a spell?
When Jibola, Bisade’s apprentice colleague brought what you people call Mogbo moya business to us. It didn’t take long to sink in. As God would have it, we found an event centre close to our house, thankfully it was ever busy on saturdays. That erased the transport fare challenge.
We stroll in as guests of whatever party was going on. We do weddings, strictly weddings because other ceremonies might find us out and we are always smart enough to look out for wedding programmes and cram the name of the couple incase any shit happens. Nobody will even find us out by God’s Grace. And those cheap ankara clothes always help in raising our value.
Forget it, we look neat in them even though they never match the regular aso-ebi. But chiefly, the food we eat every saturday sustains us till the following morning, once in a while we manage to get some take-away, and that lasts us for 2days.
I met Aunty Yetunde gobbling the asaro i brought for Kemi one evening. Anger brewed in me. The invectives i didn’t use on her have probably not been coined, it was great joy to see her bow in shame. It wasn’t only the words that made me happiest, but the perfect opportunity it gave me to unleash all the venom she and my father had planted in us.
She dragged her feet away, looking like a forgiven thief. That night, I waited for my father’s roaring voice but it never came, she didn’t have the nerves to report herself. Now you know everything about us.
Wow…………..I hope and Pray God sends a helper to you.
Amazing write up, love the approach, suddenly you stopped writing short stories, give us one this year biko. Nice one, I'm still laughing at the phrase, "the only thing i learnt pretty well after months of hard training was identifying equipment, forget the rest, i fumbled at them effortlessly"