Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

Different public awareness campaigns had been encouraging people to turn out for the voters’ registration process. The posters, the announcements on radio and television, insisted that it was a civic responsibility and the only opportunity to make a change. Apparently, the public were responding well. A reporter had turned up at one of the voters’ registration centres in Enugu and was interviewing the masses.

‘How long have you been waiting here?’ she asked.

In the background, a multitude was buzzing around.

‘I’ve been here since 6 a.m.,’ the man replied.

‘That means you’ve been waiting for about ten hours.’

‘It’s my civic responsibility,’ he replied proudly. The haggard man had my father’s Nigeria-is-a-land-flowing-with-bottled-milk-and-jarred-honey tone of voice. ‘This current regime has done nothing for us and it’s time for change. I’m ready to pay any price to vote.’

Pity that such a well-spoken man had been taken in by all that hogwash. The only power to change anything that needed changing was the power of cash.

My cellular rang. I reached across the vast mattress and grabbed it from the edge of my sixth pillow. Real feathers. John Lewis, House of Fraser.

‘Where are you?’ Cash Daddy bellowed.

‘I’m at home.’

‘I’m just coming from the golf club,’ he said. ‘You know it’s not everybody who wants to join that they allow. I’m going to see one girl… that beautiful girl from Liberia who’s been begging to have a baby for me. Today’s her birthday.’

He paused. I knew he could not have finished.

‘Honestly, I won’t mind allowing her to have a baby for me, but Liberia ’s too far. You know how these women behave. One day she’ll just wake up and tell me she’s taking my child back with her to Liberia and I don’t want that type of rubbish. You know they all have one kind of funny accent. I won’t spend long at the birthday. I just want to show my face and dash her some small pocket money. From there, I’ll go straight home. Come and see me.’

At Cash Daddy’s mansion, the gateman threw open the gates before I honked the horn. I parked my Grand Cherokee Jeep beside Cash Daddy’s latest Acura. I strode inside and headed for the stairs. The four young men seated at the dining table greeted me fervently. I mumbled a reply and marched up, taking the stairs three at a time.

In Cash Daddy’s bedroom, I glanced around. Then I pushed the door of the bathroom. He was scrubbing himself in the shower.

‘Kings, Kings! How are you?’

‘I’m fine, tha-’

‘Have you heard from Dibia about the documents for your UK visa?’

‘Yes. He said they’ll be ready soon.’

‘Very good, very good.’ He looked me over from top to toe and wagged his finger at me. ‘Make sure you buy some proper clothes before we go. You can’t follow me around looking like this.’

Cash Daddy paused to scrub under his arms while I surveyed my shirt – new, but obviously not good enough. Well, truth be told, despite my Swatch and my Lexus, I had not yet completely relaxed into the habit of lavishing things like clothes on myself. Some of Wizard and Ogbonna’s shirts could have funded my siblings’ tuition for two whole semesters.

‘As soon as we come back,’ Cash Daddy continued, ‘tell him to start working on documents for your US visa. Those ones might take a little longer. You know the Americans are much more difficult.’

I nodded. I had heard that the American was the one embassy where no officials agreed to have their palms greased in exchange for visas or for keeping closed eyes about spurious documents. Even booking an interview date with either of their embassies, in Abuja or Lagos, could take several months. But Dibia’s skill was truly a gift from God. It had never failed.

‘Honestly, America ’s the place,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Not just that the people are very generous, you can’t even say you’ve ever been abroad until you’ve been to America. Kai!’

He stopped scrubbing and jerked his head as if trying to contain the weight of the memories that had just come upon him.

‘Is it the houses… is it the food… is it the roads… is it the women…? You’ll see all types of women with all types of complexions; you won’t even know which one to choose. In America, you’ll understand why it’s good to have money, because you’ll keep seeing things to spend it on.’

He stepped out of the shower and yanked a large towel to start drying his body. Once again, I wondered how the scrawny urchin who had lived with my family all those years ago, had metamorphosed into this fleshy edifice. Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long. I half expected his bloated belly to wriggle free of his body and start break-dancing on the tiled floor in front of us. It seemed to have a life of its own. He dropped the used towel on the floor and grabbed one of the many toothbrushes in a glass mug on the washbasin.

‘Come and put some toothpaste for me,’ he said.

I reached out for the tube of Colgate. Despite my extreme carefulness, his belly still brushed against my hand. He held out his toothbrush while I squeezed the white paste. When I had finished my task, I withdrew to a less discomforting distance.

‘By the way,’ he continued, in a more subdued and official tone. ‘I have an emergency meeting with the police commissioner tomorrow and I want you to be there.’

‘Do we have any problems?’ I had never accompanied him to see the commissioner before.

Cash Daddy grated his throat twice and spat.

‘One should remove the hand of the monkey from the soup before it becomes a human hand. The main reason for the meeting is for us to make sure that there’s no problem. He didn’t tell me much, but it looks like there are some places where we’ve made one or two mistakes and he wants us to take it easy.’

His cellular phone rang. I rushed to pick it up from the bathroom mat and held it out to him. Cash Daddy glanced at the screen and made a quick sign of the cross like a priest being pursued by the devil. I knew immediately that it was his wife calling. Something to do with the children. Conversing with his wife was one of those uncommon occurrences when Cash Daddy did more listening than talking.

When he finished, he chuckled, and asked if I had seen the latest photographs of his children. I had not.

‘Ah. I just got them. Come let me show you.’

He led the way out of the bathroom, stopping briefly at the door to scratch the inside of his thigh. He opened his bedside drawer and extracted some photographs. He handed them to me with the sort of smile that you have when presenting a beloved friend with a priceless surprise gift. I tried to appear commensurately keen.

In the first one, the five cherubs and their mother were all dressed up – the two girls in long, flowing frocks, the three boys in black dinner jackets and red bow ties, their mother in a clingy, sparkly red dress that made her look like a tall goldfish. He explained that they had all attended some ceremony in the eldest child’s school. This eldest son was enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Oxford.

‘He even won an award,’ Cash Daddy beamed proudly. ‘Anyway, I’m not surprised. Whatever the python gives birth to must eventually be long. I know that boy is going to be great in this world. Greater than me even.’

The children all looked like distant cousins of Princes William and Harry. Graceful and illustrious. There was not the slightest trace of that untamed look on their faces, the look that neither diverse currencies nor worldly comforts had quite erased from their father’s countenance. I tried to imagine the distinguished accents that would come forth when they spoke.