Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

My cellular rang. It was Merit.

‘Did you remember to watch the documentary on Cash Daddy?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Oh, you really should have. It was quite interesting. His villagers even have a special song they composed to extol his good works.’

I sang a bit of it and laughed. She may have laughed, she may not.

‘O dighi onye di ka nna anyi Cash Daddy, onye Chineke nyere anyi gozie anyi,’ I sang some more.

I laughed; she certainly did not.

‘Merit, is everything OK?’

‘Kingsley, why did you lie to me?’ Her tone of voice could have slain Goliath.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m so upset with you. I don’t believe you had me fooled. Did you really think I wasn’t going to find out? Kingsley, what do you do for a living?’

Her question struck me like thunder.

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m into contracts and investments,’ I replied calmly, though sirens were blaring in my head. ‘I already told you that before.’

‘Kingsley, stop! How long were you going to keep lying to me?’

‘Merit, honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She was silent.

‘Merit, I’ve-,’

‘I’m not that type of girl, OK? I’m not into guys like you. Just stay out of my life. Please.’

She hung up.

I was numb. I kept staring at my phone screen and replaying Merit’s words and wondering when this latest nightmare would end. How could a relationship that seemed to be going so well suddenly turn awry?

I sank back in the chair. It was all my fault. I should have known that, sooner or later, she would hear something. Merit might not have been so mad if I had told her myself. After all, 419er or no, was I not still Kingsley? Was I not the man who had come to my family’s rescue after my father had failed? Was I not the man setting aside my own dreams for the sake of my mother and my siblings? Was I not the man still making efforts to reach out to my mother, even when she had been so judgmental and unreasonable?

I flung the phone on the table and hissed. I felt like screaming, grabbing the crockery from the table, and flinging each item against the wall. Instead, I placed my head in my hands and leaned my elbows on the dining table.

What a rotten world. Other poor people found women to marry them, other 419ers were besieged with desperate Misses. Many mothers would give an arm and a leg to have an opara like me. Yet my own mother was still bound by the mental shackles of a husband who had lived from beginning to end in a cloud. Maybe I was the one who suffered from bad luck – surrounded by ingrates and utopians. But no matter what, my siblings would have the best education I could afford. And I would never go back to a life of poverty and lack. Not for anyone dead or alive.

Perhaps Merit would understand. By morning, her anger would have subsided and I would explain everything to her. I was not a criminal. I had gone into 419 so that my mother could live in comfort and my siblings have a good education. Yes, I should have told her but I was not sure how to broach the topic, and I was very sorry for deceiving her. Besides, things were on the verge of changing. I would soon start work at the Ministry of Works and Transport. I would soon have a respectable job. I would soon have business investments.

Godfrey and his friends brought their noise back downstairs.

‘Charity, is Kingsley still in the dining room?’ I heard Godfrey ask from the staircase.

I raised my head quickly and turned back to my meal. My appetite had definitely fled, but I dipped my hands into the soup and pretended to be deep in chow.

His friends sat in the living room with my other siblings while Godfrey strutted over to me, pulled a dining chair noisily, and sat. The fragrance of his freshly sprayed Eternity wiped out every trace of the egusi aroma from the air.

‘Kings, there’s something I’ve been wanting to discuss with you,’ he began without any ceremony.

I looked at his two friends sitting within earshot of us and looked back at him. He did not seem to mind their presence, so why should I?

‘Kingsley, I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I’ve decided that I want to quit school. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I’ve decided that there’s no point. I really don’t want to go on. I’m thinking of going into business.’

‘You want to go into business?’

‘Yes. I’m tired of school. There’s no reason for me to keep wasting my time in school when there’s so much money to be made out there. The sooner I start making my own money, the better.’

Without a doubt, this boy was crazy. From the depths of my vexation, I borrowed from Cash Daddy’s patented lingo.

‘Godfrey, is your head correct? Have you been drinking? Are you on drugs?’

He appeared surprised at my reaction. Then he toughened up his face and seemed to be bracing himself for a stronger argument.

‘Kings, let me ex-’

‘Shut up!’ I barked. Like Azuka, he sounded so idiotically confident. ‘Just forget about it. End of discussion. Forget it. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s not my business what else you do with your life, but you must remain in school and you must graduate. Don’t ever raise the matter again.’

Godfrey watched me while I washed my hands, put my phone into my pocket, grabbed my glass of water, and stood. When I started walking away, he also stood.

‘Kings, you’re the last person I’d expect to be making such a fuss. Look at you. After all your education, you’re not even doing anything with your degree. What was the point? Do you think I don’t want to make my own money for myself? You’re just being hypocritical.’

The glass cup dropped from my hand and colonised a large portion of the marble floor. I stopped in my tracks and mutated into another being. My brother had the guts to spew this breed of rubbish after everything I had been through for them? Was I being hypocritical when I put their welfare and comfort ahead of mine? I turned round and gave him a wholehearted slap on the face.

‘Do you think this is the sort of life I wanted to live?! Do you think I had much choice?!’

I slapped him again, grabbed his shirtfront, and pushed him against the wall.

‘Don’t you realise that I made the sacrifice for you people?!’

I tightened my grip on his shirt, pulled him towards me, and screamed into his face.

‘I am the opara! I did it for you people! Do you understand me?!’

Right from childhood, Godfrey had had the formation of a gangster. He did not squeal, he did not try to escape, he did not beg for me to stop. And because of the age difference that granted me automatic authority to discipline him, he dared not fight back. He just stood there looking at me through squinted eyes and using his arms to shield himself from my blows.

By this time, Eugene, Charity, Godfrey’s two friends, my cook, my washer man, my gardener, my mother’s niece’s daughter had gathered. They all pleaded and begged and blocked. They were wasting their time.

‘Kings, pleeeeease! Please leave him! Please leave him!’ Charity wept and screamed.

I dragged my brother by his shirt collar and yanked him towards the staircase. I turned round to the sympathetic crowd.

‘Nobody should follow me upstairs!’ I warned.

My cook, whose communication with me never exceeded ‘Yes, sir!’ ‘No, sir!’, shouted, ‘Oga, abeg no kill am, abeg no kill am!’ and ventured up the first stair. I pulled off the right foot of my natural viper snakeskin slippers and flung it at his head. The slipper missed, but he learnt his lesson.

I hauled Godfrey into his bedroom and deposited him in a heap on the floor. I shut the bedroom door and looked round. The first thing that caught my eyes was the sound system that stood by his dresser. I punched it. It fell with a huge crash.