(This story is my original story, first published by Ibua Journal after making the shortlist of its Pack Light Series. It is available for sale through the link provided:  https://ibuajournal.com/the-journal/other-side-of-the-coin/. All rights have since reverted to me.)

A man shook his hand vigorously from behind the windshield of a sleek Benz, a type and colour I sometimes drove in my dreams. A gold Rolex danced on his wrist and his neatly shaved face wore a nasty glower. I had run barefooted after his car, squirted Omo water from my old La Casera bottle on his windshield and wiped it clean. I had smiled, curtseyed, held out my palm and motioned it to my mouth, all while jogging to keep up with the car. His window stayed rolled up the whole time and all he could do was shake his finger at me and make such an ugly face. 

These rich people sha. Hiss.

I straightened up and looked over to the other side, expecting to see Kunle’s head, or at least the tips of his dirt-browned dreadlocks. I saw nothing. Knowing what that could mean, I slowed down so that the car could overtake me, then I crossed to its other side and there he was, bending over and keeping up with the back tyre, trying to unscrew the valve so the air in there could leak out. 

I dropped my bottle and wiper, and pulled him by the neck of his torn, faded tee, tearing it a little more and allowing the Benz to drive away without sensing the danger.

He staggered into me; I lost my balance and fell to the scorching asphalt between cars locked in slow-moving traffic. The rolling tyres and underside of the next car rushed at me, accompanied by deafening screeches that left the muscles around my face tightened, pulling my eyes shut.

I would never understand how everything fit into those few seconds, but it all came rushing back: stealing from the purse of a woman who was months into trying to adopt me, causing her to pull the plug; pouring extra pepper in the soup of a little boy who visited with his parents on an Easter afternoon, flaunting his fine clothes and refusing to play with orphanage kids; sneaking with Japhet to watch girls shower in the morning until I got caught, stripped, pushed into the shower and beaten black and blue while he escaped; disturbing my classroom so much I was sent to drama class, the only place I could be useful, according to the teacher; and that horror evening when fierce looking men and their machetes visited our orphanage. 

It seemed like eternity before I felt Kunle pull me up and out of the nightmarish reel. The tyre had skidded to a stop just inches from my face. Windows were rolling down and people were sticking out their heads to rain curses and jeers. With his arm around my neck and mine around his, we ran through the spaces between the cars, away from the road.

Away from the tall buildings and palms trees lining the interlocking-brick pavements on Allen Avenue, we scurried with sweaty, blackened faces, on bare feet and in tattered clothes. At the turn of a corner, we walked a little distance away from Allen Avenue until we reached a mechanic workshop. We went in and exited at the back. There a different world filled with people of our own kind welcomed us. They were playing lotto, drinking gin from yellow sachets, smoking hemp or cigarettes, or just lazing around. 

It was a large clearing with a highway on the Opebi link-bridge just above, held up by its big bulky pillars, forming the perimeter borders of the clearing. The bridge created a shade and provided shelter for people who had no place else to sleep. 

Lagos never slept, and so blaring horns and traffic noise were a constant thread in the fabric of this place. A greenish puddle ran through it, splitting it in two. The ground was littered with waste, and a big dump sat at one end of the puddle, sometimes spilling into it, blocking it and making it run over. To the beauty of upscale Lagos, this place was the dingy crevice that a mansion owner was usually oblivious to unless and until the rats running around in it blew their own cover by forgetting who owned the house. 

The spot I shared with Kunle was by a pillar close to the point where the puddle met the dump. I sat quietly, knees raised to my chin, rubbing the fresh, niggling scratches on my cheek, replaying the events of that afternoon. It didn’t take too long before the tale travelled around the clearing, and soon the lonely corner was playing host to everyone, their laughter and jest rising above the traffic noise and blaring horns above. 

I pulled my ankles closer and buried my face in my knees. Realizing it won’t work, I raised my head and scanned for Kunle. His dreadlocks and his deep baritone gave him away. I stood up and charged at him. He envisaged my thoughts and stepped quickly out of the way, leaving me to plunge head first into the puddle. The laughter soared to a higher modulation. I buried my head deeper into the mess, ignoring the repulsive pungency filling into my lungs and the nasty stings pricking at the open wound on my cheek, wishing it were possible never to get up again.

***

There were the mosquitoes, crickets, frogs, huge rats and scavenging feral cats. There was also the menacing cold. The biggest thing that kept me up at night, however, was the vibration of the pillars. I could tell what size of vehicle had just driven past with the intensity of each one. Whenever a heavy truck dragged past, there was a real fear that the entire bridge could crumble beneath its weight, but the bridge never did. 

“How long before it’s morning?” I nudged Kunle lightly, speaking just above a whisper.

He turned away and deepened his already too-loud snore.

I crawled up and propped my back against a pillar, allowing the vibrations to travel through my body as they came. I looked up to the moonlit sky and wondered if I would ever again see it from behind the safety and security of a window. I remembered how having a window to look out from at the orphanage, I always longed for one that I didn’t have to share with others. I remembered how it always felt like I was in the worst place possible, especially after my best friend, Japhet got adopted; how I hated God for not making me one of the kids who came to visit with their parents and from their own homes.

Whenever the incessant Jos riots broke out back then, we only ever heard the stories much later at the orphanage. Ours was a sacred space and trouble always curved away from it. But the particular one that brought the place down was different. We didn’t need anyone to tell us stories; we could already feel the heat long before we saw the fire. Screams and shouts littered the air and grew louder by the hour. There were mountains of smoke rising in the distance. I had secretly packed a bag and silently prayed for the rioters to reach us soon. It would be my ticket away from the orphanage and I could finally be free. I’d never trusted God, but that was one time I could say my prayers got answered. 

The guardians asked us to gather in the common room; they were going to start another prayer session. My plans were different, so I snuck away to hide behind the generator house close to the gate. I continued to mutter silent prayers and before long their answer started to stream in: fierce looking men wielding machetes, crashing down the gate and rushing into the compound. I heard screams as they began to drag out my friends and the guardians, but I did not look back. I was sprawled on the ground, my Ghana-Must-Go bag tied to one leg. I crawled out of the gate, and to avoid running into other rioters, into a gutter that ran through the length of the street. 

It felt like a scene from the movie, Hotel Rwanda. I remembered the night Japhet showed it to me in the toilet after lights out. My bowels caved at the horror and I couldn’t make it past a few scenes. I had now found myself thrust into scenes identical to those same ones I couldn’t stand. The screams and shouts from every side filled my ears, accompanied by the sound of machetes whipping through the air and tearing apart whatever they landed on. 

There was a limp figure before me in the gutter, lying awkwardly. Crawling over it, my palm landed on a warm patch of blood and my heart began to race like it would tear out from my chest. My stomach churned and purged its content, spewing vomit with forceful grunts. I thought someone might have heard me and quickly dragged myself into the enclosure of a culvert just ahead. 

I looked in the direction of the place that had been my home for as long as I could remember. Fierce flames licked into the atmosphere with a halo of thick smoke hanging above them. I couldn’t go back now even if I wanted to. A teardrop fell and soaked into my already wet trousers. Then another. Then it was a flood. 

The sobs shook my body as I watched rats trot around the length of the gutter, dipping their noses into the ground and running away when they noticed me. Time moved like an aged tortoise and after an endless stretch, the sun finally went down and took its brightness with it. 

The night after, I was seated with a number of cows at the back of a truck heading to Lagos. For that space, I had traded my shoes and a G-Shock wristwatch gifted to me by an orphanage visitor. The truck moved like it had no plans to get to its destination and the whole time I suffocated in the toxic stench of the cattle’s waste. Two days felt like forever but Lagos stood at the far end of it. 

It was dusk when we finally arrived. I was asked to alight at a bus park. The signs read ‘Ojota Motor-Park’. 

I had no idea where I was going; I just walked. People squeezed their faces and held their noses when I passed by them, so I stayed off the main road and wandered deep into the inner streets. Soon I found myself under a bridge. An elderly woman sold rice and spaghetti from behind a dimly lit wooden table. A few men sat in groups, arguing loudly. It was dark so they probably didn’t notice me at all. 

I found a lonely spot by a big pillar, close to the intersection of a dump and a lengthy puddle. I dropped my discoloured Ghana-Must-Go bag, laid beside it on a bed of earth and grass, and for the first time in three days, my body surrendered to deep sleep.

This was two years later and I was here on the same spot, sitting with my back to the pillar, counting vehicles as they sped past, soaking in their vibrations, slapping mosquitoes to death. The fellow who generously accepted and accommodated me here snored away at my feet as I waited for day to break.

***

Screams rented the air and buildings crumbled over each other. A wild fire raged and everything shook so much my vision split into multiple films. Something hit me in the ribs and I clutched at it. 

It was the morning after I arrived from Jos, I opened my eyes to the sun and it was a foot. My vision was stable, though blurry, but the shaking was still there, stronger with each passing car on the bridge above. I made to lift my head off the ground where I had passed out the night before. It banged terribly. The foot dug into my ribs again, I gasped in pain, peeled my back away from the floor, as my assailant dumped something into the space between us. It was my Ghana-Must-Go bag. 

“Smelling clothes and wet books, ehn?” he said in deep, intimidating baritone. His head had sharp features pointing in all directions: a long, drooping jaw; a pointed nose; ears like the open doors on the side of a car; dreadlocks that crowded the top of his head, spiking toward the sky. A knife scar ran across one cheek, opening a floodgate to the machete horrors I thought I had left behind.

“You carry nonsense for bag, come dey sleep for my space?” he bellowed again, looking increasingly agitated.

I was mute, frozen by fear. 

“Who you be?”

“I’m sorry sir,” I managed. “I’m Sam… from Jos.”

“Here resemble your room? Here resemble Jos?”

I could see eyes beginning to pry in our direction from all angles. I quickly got on my knees and started pleading: “I’m sorry sir… It was a riot sir… They killed all my family and burnt our house... I ran away and didn’t have anywhere to sleep… I’m sorry sir…”

My pleas seemed to appease him. He softened his stance and motioned to me to get up. “Eh ehn… Dem kill your family?”

I gave a diagonal nod.

“Tell me wetin happen…” 

I narrated it all to him.

By the time I was done, we were both sitting with our backs to the pillar. He had stood up a number of times to shout away or warn off prying eyes that wandered over to ask what was going on.

“Me, my name na Kunle,” he said as he began to tell me his own story.

His father was a gateman who lived with his wife and little boy in the small gatehouse of his very influential master’s mansion – the master, an Ife high chief. 

Once, the Ife/Modakeke communal clashes broke out and the chief was a primary target. Armed men visited his mansion; found him absent, but left everyone else they met dead. 

When the gateman’s little boy who had been sent on an errand returned, he met a crowd of people wailing in front of the burning house, with bodies laid on the ground by the roadside. He turned and ran away in tears. He wandered for months, begging for alms until he had enough to travel to Lagos. He had spent his years since navigating the murky waters at the bottom of the Lagos food chain. 

Just as he rounded up his story, a full-bearded man with a massive potbelly approached us. Kunle quickly jumped up and I followed suit. He gesticulated like a soccer player doing step-overs on the ball and ended it with a foot stamp and both his palms going up in the air. “Olu aye gbogbo Opebi, se kowale baba,” he saluted the man in Yoruba.

The man ignored and eyed me keenly. “Who be dis one?”

“Baba, na my little brother wey find me come from village o.”

The man’s eyes continued to rove over me before transferring to Kunle. His face set and his lips hardly moving, he said, “warn am say we no wan trouble here o.”

“This one no get any trouble baba.” Kunle asserted. I gave a timid nod in agreement.

The man turned away and Kunle turned back to me, “Na our chairman be that and he no dey take nonsense. Boy, you no go last one day on your own. Better stick with me.”

I nodded and scampered after him.

“Make we go my girlfriend place, go chop correct eba.”

“What about my bag,” I asked.

He hissed. “You no get any better inside. Nobody go touch am.”

***

His girlfriend’s name was Ada and her place wasn’t exactly her place. It was a woodshed restaurant where she served customers, mostly bus drivers, bricklayers and mechanics. Her madam was a fat Yoruba woman who sat in a plastic chair outside the shed with her bowl of money in her lap, monitoring everyone. Ada made us sit at the back of the shed where the madam could not see us; there she brought us a big bowl of yellow eba, another bowl of egusi soup and a third with water for washing our hands. 

It was the first proper meal I was having in days, but it was not the food that had my attention. It was her. 

Her face seemed to hold a constant smile, with big eyes and full brows. Her forehead was wide, properly matched with high cheekbones. She had lips like the thin stripes of a ripe and juicy tangerine. Each time she opened her mouth to speak, it was as though the lips would burst open and drip juice. I had never seen anyone as beautiful.

When Kunle introduced us and our eyes locked, she blushed and looked away. I did too. Kunle noticed and laughed.

“Abi you like my alakowe brother,” he said to her. “Make I transfer you give am. Only say na so so English he sabi, you no go fit understand him talk.”

She shrugged and shuffled away, shyness written all over her.

Kunle turned to me. “You don get girlfriend before?”

I shook my head.

“Na muscle dem dey use get girlfriend for here o,” he said.

I listened with rapt attention, a ball of eba sliding down my gullet.

“You see that my corner for under-bridge. No be anybody corner before.  When Ada come Lagos, she no sabi anybody. One guy tell her say he go help her find place to sleep, he come carry her go there. Me sef I dey waka for night, dey find where to sleep. Na im I come hear woman dey scream. People just dey, nobody go help. I run go there, I see three gende men, but I no run. I fight them till all of them run away. Na one of them tear me this scar for my face,” he pointed to his cheek.

The ball of eba in his hand was already getting dried by the time he was done.

Ada approached, carrying sachets of drinking water. We ate in silence until she had dropped the sachets and started to leave.

“So you got your scar because of her,” my voice was loud enough for just his ears.

“The scar and my corner for under-bridge. Na because of her chairman reward me with that place, otherwise I for no get where to sleep.” 

“And it’s because of that she’s your girlfriend?”

He swallowed a morsel and eyed me, his look hardening. “Yes… But you, make e no be because of her you no go get where to sleep again.”

I got the message loud and clear. 

In the distance, Ada was about to turn the corner, her big behind jiggling in her skirt like the water in the sachets she just dropped. She stole a glance over her shoulders and her eyes caught mine. I quickly looked away, threw a morsel of eba in my mouth and swallowed, only realizing then that I had not dipped it in soup first.

***

The weight of solid eba was a little too heavy for my tummy so early in the day. Kunle’s tummy carried the same weight but he wasn’t half as drowsy as I was. When I could no longer keep up with his pace, I stopped by a NEPA pole wearing layers of posters, many torn to make room for newer ones. I dropped my palms to my knees and called to him to stop. He looked back, slapped his palms against each other in disgust and came over to rest his back on the pole.

“Be like say I don make mistake o. For Lagos, person wey no work no suppose to chop. I don give you food chop now, you don tire, you no fit work.”

I straightened up and made to defend myself.

He waved me off. “Tell me sef, which kain work you sabi do?”

I had never given that a thought. At the orphanage we wrote essays about our future ambitions, but here he was asking me what I was capable of right now. I surely couldn’t mention law, medicine, engineering or any of the other fancy ones.

“Answer me nau,” he barked.

Something behind him on the pole caught my eyes and I pointed to it.

“Wetin?” he turned from me and stepped back to see more clearly.

It was an audition poster for aspiring actors.

“In my orphanage, I used to be the best actor in our drama group.”

He turned and ran his eyes searchingly over me, as if even though I was right there, I wasn’t what he expected to see. He shook his head and slapped his palms against each other again, talking to an imaginary audience. “Egba mi o. This one come Lagos come act film ni sha…”

Before I could respond, a speeding car ran into a large pothole nearby and sent the muddy water therein flying at us.

Kunle raised his hands in protest, his face wearing a daze bigger than mine. The car, a black Toyota Corolla with tinted windows pulled to a stop. As Kunle approached, it veered into motion and sped off in a trail of dust, leaving Kunle chasing after it, cursing loudly.

“These rich people sha,” I shook my head and made to wipe the mud off my clothes.

Kunle was never going to catch the car so I expected him to stop. Even though my tummy didn’t feel like it, when he didn’t stop, my legs kicked in and I joined the fruitless chase.

***

A shadow flew beneath the moon, light sprinkles dotted my face, and a thud hit the floor between my feet and the carton where Kunle was snoring, splashing water on both of us. The night’s breeze carried an argument to us, an angry lady in a car speeding away on the bridge. She or someone else in that car must have thrown out the sachet of water.

Kunle was up and fuming, prancing and spreading open his palm to curse after the car and its occupants who would never know their harmless missile had interrupted the night of two homeless urchins under the Opebi link-bridge.

He turned to find me sitting by the pillar, unmoved by the splash.

“You no sleep?”

I shook my head.

He moved toward the puddle, unzipped his shorts, shortly, a straight downpour curved to the ground from it.

“I don tell you plenty times say this bridge no fit fall. Na here we meet am, na here we go leave am.”

“I know,” I muttered.

“Wetin come do you wey you no sleep?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

He wiggled his manhood, packed it back into his shorts, zipped up and walked towards me. “Wetin you dey think about.” 

“Everything?”

“Everything like wetin?”

I cleared my throat, hoping to be able to separate my voice from the sobs that were lurking behind it. “The Jos riots and how it brought me here; your Ife/Modakeke story; how you took me in; the first time at Ada’s place; that time I told you I wanted to be an actor…”

His eyes brightened and a wicked smile flushed over his face. 

I was losing the battle to keep the sobs suppressed. A line broke from one eye, then the other. My voice became swarmed: “…how a car nearly crushed me to death yesterday, and how you crowned it by making me drink your urine in the puddle.”

He dropped to the ground beside me, slid an arm around my neck and pulled me close. “Oya no vex,” he said.

I nodded, but didn’t stop crying. 

“That your actor thing sha, just forget am make you find better work.”

I flashed a mean look and pulled away from his arm. A flash of lightening zigzagged across the sky, followed by several thunderclaps, stopping us both as he made to move back in.

Someone said earlier in the day that it might rain. I looked around the clearing and it seemed like we were the only ones there. I wasn’t surprised. Before my mishap the previous afternoon, we too had hoped we could make some money wiping windshields in traffic. We would have been able to pay security guards attached to some of the banks on Opebi road for a space in their gatehouses.

Nights like these were the worst here. On some when the rain came down in light showers, it was fine. But whenever it rained cats and dogs, sleep became a distant mirage. Strong ice-cold winds sprayed the rain in every direction, erasing every metre of dry ground. Till dawn, I would press my palms between my knees, grit my teeth, and pray for a miracle. 

The skies continued to rumble. The lightening and thunderclaps came again, this time with chilly winds. It promised to be one of those nights. 

Kunle stood up, rolled up our sleeping carton and placed them by the pillar. It all seemed normal to him and I couldn’t blame him. He lost the luxury of having a room too long ago to properly appreciate the safety of one. I only lost mine two years before and would give anything for one now. 

As the downpour pelted us that night, it flushed away whatever mental strength was left in me. I fell to my knees with my arms raised high and my face to the sky, screaming: “I can’t do this anymore, God!” “Do you even have ears or they just don’t work?” “Why did you create me just to suffer?”

Kunle’s mean laugh rose above the downpour. Between clenched, chattering teeth, he said, “I dey always tell you but you no dey hear. Even if God dey, no be for people like us.”

I ignored his taunts and continued to wail.

“Your problem na say, you dey always over-believe yourself,” he went into a full rant. “You go dey speak nonsense English like say you sef na rich person. You no be rich person, finish! Those big cars wey you dey drive for dream, na money dem dey take buy them for real life, and that money you no get. You be ghetto, like every other under-bridge person for here.”

“Can you please stop?” I managed through the shivers that had taken over my mouth.

“You see coins, na two side dem dey get. Na natural order be that. The metal for one side no fit just stand up, cross go the other side because e tire for im original side. You no fit be like rich people, lai lai! This ghetto, na your side be that...’

His words crawled under my skin, dissolved the cold and unlocked a level of strength. I had had enough. Without thinking, I flung my full weight at him, catching him this time and knocking him into the flood building from the downpour. I threw punches at his face with all my strength. My strength, however, was a horse to his elephant. His fist caught me on the chin, dipping my eyes in coloured flashes. Before I could regain myself, he turned me over and pummelled me until his knuckles bled, then he dragged me into the overflowing puddle.

It felt much safer than it did when I was in there earlier in the afternoon. Again, I wished it were possible never to get up again.

***

It was my birthday four days later and my face still wore pink patches of healing wounds and a number of purple swellings. I couldn’t stop talking about how excited I was to turn eighteen, so Kunle told Ada and she invited us to share a birthday meal at her place.

The last time I had anything remotely close was my fifteenth, two weeks before Japhet left for his new foster home. He had made his new parents set up a goodies table for me to share with the rest of the kids. Most of the clothes I wore now were the birthday presents they wrapped up the day with. I knew this evening’s get-together was unlikely to be anything like that, but my heart still raced looking forward to it. 

“As you don become adult now, if you see better money, wetin you go take am do?” Kunle teased on our way to Ada’s.

“Acting school,” I replied without hesitation. “I’ll register in acting school.”

“You and this your acting sha,” he said, shaking his head.

A few minutes later, Ada, Kunle and I were huddled around a small table behind the woodshed restaurant, but there was no meal to share. Ada’s hands were fidgety and from the redness of her eyes, I could tell she had been crying.

“Wetin happen?” Kunle asked in a low, caring tone.

She reached into a side pocket on her jean skirt and from it, produced a thin piece of plastic.

“Wetin be this?” Kunle’s voice was starting to lose the softness.

“Na pregnancy strip,” Ada said between sobs, her hands trembling. “I don get bele.”

Kunle’s face dissolved into a ball of excitement. He stood up and moved away from the table, hopping from one leg to the other, then jumping and thumping the air like a soccer player who just scored a goal.

“Talk true,” he turned for confirmation.

She nodded.

He rushed to her, lifted her off the ground and turned her around in circles. Her skirt rode way too high along her thighs in his arms. I couldn’t detach my eyes from the thighs, gulping a load of saliva at their yellowness. 

***

A yellow figure appeared in the distance and my heart began to race. I stood up from the table where the elderly woman sold rice and spaghetti and left the other men I was having soccer arguments with. 

When the figure grew bigger, it was Ada.

“Kunle is not around,” I said before she could say anything.

“I know,” she replied. “E wan go prison.”

“What!” my eyes lightened up in shock.

Her folded arms settled above her bulging tummy and her always-smiling face wore a hard look instead. “Person wan give am two million naira to go serve prison time for wetin he no do. He say na because of me and the baby he wan do am. Abeg, tell am say I no send am message o. I no want the money, make he stay na im I want.”

I could not find the strength to close my mouth until she was a small dot in the distance.

***

I sat in a rocking chair by the window, a saucer in one hand and a teacup in the other. It was 10am and there was a heavy downpour outside, slamming against the pane. Minutes later, I stood up, set the saucer and teacup down on the windowsill, unhooked a latch and threw open the window. A generous splash of wetness invaded my face and melted it into a big smile. This was my favourite thing to do when it rained, knowing it couldn’t touch me ever again unless I allowed it to.

I was lost in the moment until my phone’s ringtone broke my reverie. I pulled the window shut, picked a towel from an arm of the rocking chair, and made towards the phone. It was Ada calling. I breathed a deep sigh, hit the green button while wiping my face dry, and sunk into the call.

In it, the last two years ran past in a flash. Kunle received two million naira from a stranger. The money sent he, Ada and me in different directions: he to jail; Ada (and her baby) to a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Ikeja; me to a budding acting career. In that time, I had not seen him at all. His deal didn’t permit him to receive visitors since he was someone else in there. 

I saw Ada once, a few weeks after she had her baby. I was still in acting school and had just come off my first movie set. I couldn’t wait to tell someone about it and she had not had a single visitor since having her child. It was a perfect reunion until we hugged a little too long and a bulge rose in my pants. She had pulled away and I had to leave. We spoke on the phone occasionally, and although I was no longer a virgin, I did not trust myself to be able to resist her charm, so I stayed away.

Many times, I drove through Opebi in my Benz – a type and colour I’d sometimes driven in my dreams – seeing my face splattered across movie posters on walls, poles and pillars, looking forward to showing it off to Kunle when he got out. His gift of two hundred thousand naira was as hard to reject as it was to accept, and I couldn’t wait to show him the new life it had bought me on the other side of the coin.

I did not want to believe what the shaky voice on the other end was saying. Kunle was not coming back?

“Na since yesterday e suppose comot but I no see am… When I go there today, dem tell me say dem stab am knife six months ago…”

My knees gave way beneath me and sank into the furry Persian rug on the floor.

“Dem say na mistaken identity… Na another person dem wan stab… But you know say na same cloth everybody dey wear for prison… and people wey dey carry dreadlocks dey look alike from back…”

Her voice dissolved into heart-wrenching sobs and soon I was sprawled on the rug, sobbing too.

When she ran out of airtime, I called her back and for about an hour, we continued to pass comments in-between sobs.

“How is Kunle Junior,” I asked.

“He…

“Sorry, how is my son?”

She chuckled, “your son dey fine. He dey for day-care.”

“Where are you?”

“I dey house for Ikeja.”

I had pulled up by a green fence and was surveying the building within, remembering when Kunle and I came to inspect it. At that point, I was still trying to dissuade him from taking the money. 

“You get money wey you wan give me?” he had asked. 

I had no answer.

“Two years since you enter street, how much you don make?” 

No answer to that either.

“That same time go give me two million naira wey go help me take care of my family. E go pass now now and I go come back come meet them. You go dey take care of them for me nau, I trust you.”

He sounded so sure. I didn’t object then, but I hadn’t taken care of them like he thought I would. I knew staying away was for good reason but I couldn’t stop guilt from creeping over me.

I’m here to stay now, I said to myself as I climbed the steps to the front porch and rapped my knuckles on the door, my other hand still holding my phone to my ear. It shifted inwards almost immediately, as though she’d been behind it the whole time waiting for me to knock. 

I stepped in and there she stood, one hand to her ear with her phone hanging in-between. Her face was a wet mess – a wet, strikingly beautiful mess. She looked years younger than the last time I saw her. Our eyes locked and in hers I saw a million things her mouth wasn’t saying. The tangerine stripes lips had never been more inviting. Oh, my poor heart!