A. Barrett - Love Is Power, or Something Like That - Stories

As he plodded up the stairs, Eghobamien Adrawus wondered where his weakness came from — was it the hunger gnawing his insides or the compunction that he still felt at the escape of the man in white, or maybe it was the beer that he’d shared with his colleagues. By the time he reached the landing of his floor, he knew it was not the alcohol.

He met Mama Adaobi on the balcony. She was herding a group of schoolchildren toward the stairs. He saw Osamiro first, then Ododo. He had not been aware, until now, that he owed her a debt of gratitude for dropping his children at school in her beat-up station wagon.

“Good morning, Daddy,” Osamiro greeted, but made no move to approach his father. When Ododo looked up to find the path blocked by the figure in black and army green, he tried to hide behind Mama Adaobi.

Even though she was a friend of his wife’s, that gave her no right, no right, Eghobamien Adrawus thought. He glared at Mama Adaobi until she looked up.

“You don remove your pot from my doormot?” he asked.

She stared at him with surprise. “Ah-ah, Papa Osas, you dey vex?”

“Just answer the question!” he snapped.

“I don remove am.”

“Good.” He stepped forward and dropped to his haunches before his children. His hand shot out and caught Ododo by the waistband. He pulled the reluctant child into his embrace, then shook him back and forth until the boy burst into strained laughter. “Good,” he repeated. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a single note from the roll of crisp five hundreds. To the ooh-ahs of the other children, he tucked it into Osamiro’s palm. “For you and your brother. Don’t tell Mummy,” he said with a wink.

When he entered the apartment, Estella was slumped in the recliner. Her eyes were closed. The window blinds were open and the TV was off. He stood in the center of the room, swaying. The belch that had been gathering force in his belly for hours, ever since he’d swallowed the first drink, erupted now. He raised his hand to wipe his lips and his rucksack slipped off his shoulder.

Estella leaped up and stood facing him — her eyes watching without blinking, the worm in her left eyelid wriggling.

“What is it?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said, and he began to talk. He talked about the anger that made him strike a man’s face with the leg of a cow. He talked about his too-tight boots and his sore feet, about the jail smell that woke him in the mornings, about the fear on the face of a woman who knows she will be raped. He talked about the man in white who smelled like a pot of flowers and gave out money like he was buying favors for the devil. He spoke so fast that spittle sprayed from his lips, then so slow, so low that she had to bend forward to catch the words. He was still talking as she took him by the arm and led him to the recliner, as she leaned over him to undo his buttons, as she stripped him to his underwear, her hands working with the sureness of routine. He talked till his voice became a murmur at the back of his throat. He talked himself to sleep. Then she folded his hands over his belly and rose to look down at him. She did not say anything. She did not have anything to say. Yet her gaze lay so heavy on him that when she finally turned away he smiled in his sleep, snuggled closer into the recliner, and said, “Good.”

I went to the dentist today for my smelling mouth problem and after the woman doctor said “Do ah!” she wrote something on her Yem-Kem notepad and told me I have halitosis. I nearly pissed inside my boxers when I heard that big word. I was sure it was one serious type of cancer. But when she told me that I should brush my teeth two times a day and eat fruit three times a day and drink plenty of water every day, I started to suspect that the English was too big for the thing that was doing me. So I asked her will it kill me. The woman looked at me like I was not a full-grown adult. But I was paying her money after all, and I know my right — so I asked her what does halitosis mean.

Smelling mouth. That’s what it means.

So now, let me tell you the reason why I went to the dentist today.

Yesterday, after I finished doing what I was doing in school, I went to where I will enter BRT bus. In case you don’t know, these are the new buses that the Lagos State governor imported brand-new from abroad. They are big and long like lorry, and they have their own special lane on the road, plus their own special bus stop, where there is no rushing and you must stand in queue. BRT buses are very popular. Why not? They are cheaper than danfo bus. Their body is still fresh, so therefore they will not tear your cloth. You must buy your ticket before you enter the bus and there is a bell inside that you will pull when you have reached your bus stop. The drivers and the conductors wear uniform and they are not riffraff. So you will save money and you will not be fighting with conductor to collect your change. You will not shout when you want to drop at your bus stop. No dirty conductor will take his smelling armpit and rub all over your face just because he is collecting his money. No drunkard driver will be driving speed like madman and will be cursing you when you tell him to take it easy. Also, in BRT, nobody will pick your pocket or touch your private part anyhow, not like in danfo, where they want to pack the whole of Lagos inside a fourteen-seater Toyota HiAce. So you see that there are many reasons why BRT buses are better than ordinary ones.

For me, the main reason why I only enter BRT bus is because of my smelling mouth problem. Every time I enter danfo, I must open my mouth. Whether it is to quarrel with the conductor for my change or it is to shout when the bus is passing my bus stop, I must open my mouth. And because they pack us like sardine, every time I open my mouth there is a problem. Even when I sit beside the window, it is still a problem. Either the person beside me will look me with bad eye, or the person at my back will say, “Who has messed?” or the whole bus will gather together and advise me to be brushing my teeth. I am sick and tired of this embarrassment. That is why I only enter BRT bus, where I don’t have to open my mouth.

It has reached the time that I will describe myself so that you will know the kind of person I am.

I am from Poteko in the South-South, but I am right now based in Lagos because I am pursuing my OND at LASPOTECH. I am the last born of my mother, and this year April 13 will make me twenty-two years on the dot. In my looks, I am somehow handsome and I am not too short. Also, I have muscles. Some of my Lagos friends are thinking that I have body because I used to do weight lifting before, but the real truth is, from the time I was small I used to follow my mother to her cocoyam farm — that is why I have muscles.

Anyhow, as I was telling you before, when I reached the BRT Park it was only air-conditioned buses that were remaining. (That is another good thing about BRT: some of them have air conditioners. But the bad thing is that the AC bus is more costly than the ones that don’t have AC. Still yet, even with air conditioner, BRT is cheaper than danfo.) So I paid the extra sixty naira for the AC bus — it pained me, I won’t lie — then I entered and selected one seat near the window. (There is no reason for me to be sitting near window in BRT, but I am used to it.) I was like the number seven person in the bus, so I knew I had to wait for long before the bus will full up. The driver had not put on the AC, so the bus was hot.

After small time, I opened the window for breeze to enter. I was feeling thirsty and I wanted to buy pure water from the hawkers, but I didn’t see any small children. As I was looking, one fat man who was wearing KAI uniform started to stroll near the bus. Immediately my eyes saw him, my brain picked that it looks like KAI are starting to do their work, that these days when it is schooltime you will not see any small children that are selling things. This governor, the man is trying o. First LASTMA, then LAWMA, then LASAA, then BRT, and now Kick Against Indiscipline. All that is remaining for the man to give us in Eko is PAP — poverty alleviation program. After that one, he can go to Aso Rock.