Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

‘How can she say you don’t have enough exercise books?’ she asked. ‘Is it not just three weeks ago that I bought some new ones for you?’

She awaited an answer from the scrawny lad standing beside her.

‘What happened to all your exercise books?’ she demanded.

Uncle Boniface looked at the floor and remained quiet. My father stood up and walked away to his bedroom. He never made any input when she was scolding the helps.

‘What have you done with all your exercise books?’ she asked again, snatching the bag that was hanging across his shoulder.

Uncle Boniface’s face darkened with dread.

My mother opened the bag and brought out his books. Three loose sheets fell out. She picked them up and started reading. With each passing moment, her eyes grew wider.

‘What is this?’

She looked up at Uncle Boniface and down at the sheets again. Then she turned to me.

‘Kings, what is this?’

I was in the last phase of demolishing a meat pie. My teeth froze when I recognised the exhibit in her hand. My mother dropped the schoolbag on the floor and flung the sheets of paper on the centre table. A chunky piece of pastry got stuck in my throat.

‘Kings, when did you start writing love letters?! Tell me. When? How? What is this?!’

I could understand her shock. My mother was not the most devoted of Roman Catholics, but she tried her best. She put her hands over my eyes whenever a man and woman were kissing on television; she asked me to go into my room as soon as she perceived that they were on their way to having sex; she once asked me to shut up and stop talking rubbish when I told her about a girl in my class who was so pretty. I could easily imagine the terrible thoughts that were plaguing her mind about where I picked up the lyrics and the inclination to write a full-fledged love letter.

‘Who taught you how to write love letters?’ she asked. ‘Boniface, what are you doing to my son? Tell me, what is this?’

With each question, she swung her head towards the person to whom it was directed. When neither I nor Uncle Boniface agreed to speak, my mother returned a verdict.

‘Kingsley, go and kneel down facing the wall and raise your two hands in the air.’

Eager to show repentance, I rushed to start my punishment.

‘Make sure that I don’t see your two hands touching,’ she shouted after me.

I knelt down by the dining table and obeyed her instructions to the letter. Then I heard her hand slam against Uncle Boniface’s head.

‘Yeeeee!’

‘Oh, you want to start teaching my son how to be useless, eh?’

I heard another slam.

‘Arggggh!’

‘You want him to be useless like you.’

Another slam. And another and another. Knowing my mother’s usual style when dealing with undisciplined house helps, by now she must have had the front of his shirt firmly in her grip.

‘Mama Kingsley, pleeeeese!’

‘Don’t worry,’ she replied calmly, but out of breath. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll have a scar on your body that will remind you never to try spoiling my son again.’

He must have torn himself away from her grip and fled for dear life. She chased him into the kitchen and back out again. I turned briefly and saw that she had upgraded her weapon to a broom. With the dazzling agility of a decathlete, she chased him round the living room and cornered him between the television and my father’s chair. She continued trouncing him until my father came out of the bedroom.

‘Augustina, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t wear yourself out because of this nincompoop. Leave him alone.’

She abandoned the howling prey by the wall and went into the bedroom with my father. Shortly after, he came out.

‘Kingsley,’ he called, ‘come here.’

I followed. I knew that my mother had narrated the little she knew, and that he was now about to ask me to pack my bags and leave his house. Inside the bedroom, my mother was sitting on the bed, looking as if someone had died.

‘How did you end up writing a love letter for Boniface?’ my father asked.

I narrated my very minor part in the fiasco. With each new detail, my father’s face became more ferocious and my mother’s eyes spread wider and wider.

‘Pull down your shorts,’ my father said as soon as I finished.

I did. In my mind, I calculated the best place for me to spend the night after my father asked me to pack up. Perhaps I could go to the beautiful grotto in the Saint Finbarr’s Church and share the huge shelter with the Blessed Virgin Mary’s statue. They had told us in catechism classes that she was the friend of all little children.

My father held my two hands in front of me with his one hand and used my mother’s koboko to lash me with his other. I wriggled and screamed. After ten strokes that left me unable to sit upright for days, I was banned from communicating with Uncle Boniface whenever my parents were not around.

All these years later, my father still considered Uncle Boniface a pot of poo. So I could understand my mother’s reluctance to broach this subject with him. Still, I persisted.

‘Just talk to him about it and see what he says.’

‘OK,’ she replied. ‘I can’t promise that it’ll be today, though. I’ll have to wait for the right time. You know how your daddy is.’

‘Yes,’ I sighed. I did.

It was not just one of those days when everything seemed to go awry. That day, the devil must have ridden his Cadillac right across our courtyard and parked in front of our house. While brushing my teeth in the morning, I felt some foreign bodies in my mouth and spat out quickly.

‘Kings,’ my mother called from behind the bathroom door.

‘Yes, Mummy?’

‘When you finish, your daddy wants to speak with you.’

‘OK.’

‘Hurry up. He’s getting ready to go out.’

I stared into the sink and observed some bristles from my toothbrush drowning in the white foam. I would have to buy a new toothbrush from my next pocket money.

My father was dressed in grey suit and tie, and sitting straight on their bed. My mother was more relaxed on a pillow behind him. Ever since his retirement, apart from going to the clinic for checkups, he rarely left the house on a weekday morning. But last week, the announcement had been broadcast over and over again on the radio. There was going to be a verification exercise for pensioners.

The government was worried about several ghosts collecting pensions. People who left this world more than twenty years ago were still having monthly funds paid into their accounts, and the government was determined to certify how many people on their books were still breathing. Having the pensioners turn up in person and verified one by one seemed like the best method of confirmation, yet this was the second such exercise the government had conducted in the past fourteen months. Normally, my mother should have been at her shop by now, but whenever my father was going out, she waited so that they could leave the house together.

‘Yes, Daddy?’ I said.

‘Your mummy was telling me that you want to leave Umuahia,’ he began.

‘Yes, Daddy.’

‘What are your reasons?’

I explained in detail. Exactly what I had told my mother, plus some.

‘ Lagos is out of the question,’ he said when I finished. ‘Definitely out of the question.’

He went into a bout of coughing. My mother leaned over and rubbed his back.

‘Isn’t it possible for you to tell them that you’re not feeling well?’ she asked. ‘The way you’re breathing, I think maybe you should stay at home.’

‘Hmm. Have you forgotten Osakwe?’

The recollection caused a faint breeze of fright to blow through my pores and right into my marrow. Osakwe was my father’s former colleague who had been bedridden with some unknown ailment for several years. During the last verification exercise, his children had asked for an exemption, but the people at the pension office insisted that all pensioners – no exception – must appear in person. So the children hired a taxi, lifted their father from his sickbed for the first time in years, and carried him all the way there. They left the door of the taxi open and went inside to call the pension officers who came out and confirmed that Osakwe was still alive and pension-worthy. Shortly after the taxi began the homeward journey, the children discovered that their father had left this world.