Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

‘Sugar pie, all they gonna want is bribes,’ Wizard replied. ‘Hun, I’m gonna really need your help right now. I wanna see if you can show me that you really love me and that what we share is real. Can you do me a real big favour?’

Wizard must have been watching a lot of American movies. His gonna-wanna American-speak was quite fluent.

‘Sure, babe,’ the man wrote. ‘Anything I can do to help.’

‘Honeybunch, I wanna send the traveller’s cheques to you to pay into your bank account. Can you do that and send me the cash?’

Wizard broke off typing and turned quickly to us. ‘How much should I write? Is $2,000 OK?’

‘That’s too small,’ Ogbonna said. ‘Double it.’

‘Yes, double it,’ we concurred.

Wizard resumed.

‘What I’ve got in cheques is about $4,000. Honey, I gotta have some help real quick. Can you be the one to help me out here?’

Suzie went on to explain to her beau that the cheques would arrive within three days; she would send them by DHL. He should deposit the cheques as soon as he received them, and then send her the cash by Western Union. Since her own passport had been stolen, she would send him the name of one of her colleagues at the charity event so that he could send the Western Union in the colleague’s name. The lover boy, swept away by the current of true love, wasted no time in responding.

‘Anything for you, sweetie. I ain’t got that much in my cheque account right now but I could get some from my credit card and replace once I’ve cashed the cheques.’

All of us screamed the special scream. Wizard had made a hit.

It would take about eight days for the bank to process the documents, before the man realised that the cheques that had been paid into his account were fakes. I looked in a corner of the chat box and saw the photograph of the bearded, voluminous Caucasian. Then I looked in Wizard’s own box and saw the photograph of the trim, buxom blond who had no resemblance whatsoever to the V-shaped eighteen-year-old clicking away at the keyboard. My heart went out to the lonely man, but Wizard was untroubled.

‘Thanks honeysuckle,’ he wrote. ‘I knew I could really count on you. Please get it done ASAP cos I ain’t got nothing left on me no more.’

‘Sure, Suz,’ the man replied. ‘By the way, babe, you gotta take good care of yourself and watch out, OK? Maybe I should’ve warned you when you said you were going. I saw on CNN sometime that the folks in Nigeria are real dangerous.’

‘No problem, love,’ Wizard replied. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson and I’m gonna take real good care of myself from now.’

‘I love you babe,’ the man wrote. ‘I really can’t wait to meet you.’

‘Me, too,’ Wizard replied. ‘I promise we’re gonna have a swell time and you’re not gonna wanna let me go.’

Wizard wrote something vulgar. The man replied with something equally vulgar. Wizard topped it with something much more vulgar which Azuka had suggested, and then added one or two more unprintable things that he was going to do to the man when they met.

‘By the way, hun,’ the man added, ‘while you’re out there, you’d better watch out for diseases, especially HIV. I hear almost all of them over there have got it.’

All of us standing round the screen stopped giggling. In the ensuing silence, I could almost hear the whisperings of our National Pledge.

I pledge to Nigeria my country

To be faithful, loyal and honest

To serve Nigeria with all my strength

To defend her unity

And uphold her honour and glory

So help me God

Wizard seemed to have heard it as well. The faint voice of patriotism must have ministered to the young Nigerian.

‘It’s not like that in Nigeria,’ he replied. ‘It’s in South Africa that they’ve got it so bad.’

‘Is it? Anyway, you still be careful. All them places are all the same thing to me.’

Suddenly, I stopped feeling sorry for the mugu and remembered something I had to do. I went back to my desk, clicked the Send icon, and wished my urgent email Godspeed.

This business of being a man of means had taken me quite a while to get used to. Sometimes, I even forgot that my circumstances had changed. I was about to pass out on the floor the day my first cellular phone bill arrived, when I remembered that I could afford to pay it. I was storming my way out of an Aba ‘Big Boys’ shop in protest at the obese price tags, when I remembered that I had nothing to quarrel about, went back in and bought my Swatch wristwatch. My mother was also having a hard time getting used to the better life.

She had been delighted the day I visited home with the cooking gas and the wrappers and the rice, she told me how much I reminded her of my father when I brought a variety of McVitie’s biscuits and Just Juice for my siblings, but when I presented her with a bundle of oven fresh notes, her feelings took on a different shape.

‘Kings,’ she asked with fear, ‘how did you get all this money?’

‘Mummy, I told you I’ve been doing some work for Uncle Boniface. This is from my salary.’

‘What sort of work do you do?’

I had told her before.

‘I help out at his office. I take phone calls. I run small errands. I help him organise his business meetings…’

‘So how much is this salary he gives you for running errands?’

‘Well, it varies,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s all done on a commission basis.’

‘Commission – on errands?’

I fumbled with my shoelaces, pretending I had not heard.

My mother continued staring at the bundle in her lap without touching it, as if she expected the cash to rise up on its two feet and bite. She was about to ask another question when I laid firm hold of her Achilles’ heel and twisted.

‘Don’t worry, Mummy. I know how much you miss having Daddy around, but I’m your opara and I’m really going to take care of you. Very soon I’ll get my own house and all of you can come and be spending time with me.’

My mother smiled. For the first time since the money took up residence in her lap, she invited it into her fingers for a proper welcome. My dear mother had probably never handled so many notes at any one time in her entire life. Her smile grew very fat.

‘But make sure you keep looking for a proper job,’ she said. ‘You know this work for Boniface is only temporary.’

‘Mummy, don’t worry. I’ll keep looking.’

‘OK, come let me bless you.’

I knelt on the floor in front of her. She placed her right palm on the centre of my head. Legend had it that her own father had done the same thing when she brought him an envelope containing half of her very first salary. The other half had paid obeisance to her husband.

‘You will have good children who will take care of you in your old age,’ she began.

‘Amen,’ I replied.

‘You will find a good wife.’

‘Amen.’

‘Evil men and evil women will never come near you.’

‘Amen.’

‘You will continue to prosper.’

‘Amen.’

‘Wherever this money came from, more will continue to come.’

‘Amen.’

My mother’s prayers worked. A few weeks later, I made a $27,000 hit and moved from Cash Daddy’s mansion into a rented four-bedroom duplex in Aba.

Shortly after, I travelled to Umuahia.

My family rushed out when I arrived. Eugene and Charity hovered around my brand new Lexus. They stroked the body, sat inside, took turns at pretending to steer the wheel. My mother admired the car briefly and stood by the front door watching them. Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka peeped from behind the living room curtains. When my cellular phone rang, the excitement was just too much for my siblings to contain. They squealed like toddlers being tickled in their armpits and navel.