I got up and picked up the pestle, it was
very heavy so I used both hands. So this is the lethal weapon, I can’t even
hold it properly without staggering. I dropped it back on the floor quietly
even though I knew by now I had done enough to be discovered.
I continued moving leftward along the
passage way on the third and last floor where five of the twelve rooms in the
house are located. As I walked I looked at the numerous pictures of our family.
The one that has kept on fascinating me every time I see it is the electronic
photo frame that contained 289 pictures of my parent’s second weeding ten years
ago. My mom looked beautiful and glamourous even at the age of 40 then and now
as she approaches 50 she still looks like someone in her early 30’s.
I skipped past the master bedroom and
suddenly I skipped back. I got to the door and waited to hear sounds to confirm
if she was in, I took the risk and opened the door and fell on my knees
immediately eyes closed. If you can’t win a battle with an enemy that is
stronger than you then have to temporary retreat and lose in view of
strengthening to win the war.
I didn’t know what got into me but
everything I did I didn’t do it because I had suddenly realised my mistakes and
my laziness but because the pains my body had been suffering for the past ten
years. I must had been shedding tears of pain for the ten years of consistent
assault as I spoke these nice words that would make even the queen of witches
heart melt in pity.
I started ‘Mom I know I have been the worst
child ever known in the entire history of mankind. I know I have been an
advocate of the devil ever since I was born and I have been constantly been
possessed by demons all my life. Mom I know I always make you sad, angry,
temperamental, angry and to appear silly. Mom I know you think i haven’t
learnt my lessons’
‘I am tired of hearing you yell at me, I
now want to see you praising me and been proud of me once again. I have
committed many atrocities and I know that I don’t deserve your forgiveness but
mom find it in your loving heart to forgive me. I am ready to go for special
deliverance to transform myself from a sinner to a saint.
I have committed many sins mom, I’ve stolen
your money, I’ve disobeyed you, I’ve sold some of your jewelleries, I keep on
increasing the telephone bill and have been rude to your friends. Mom I’m sorry
I called your best friends Mrs Sylva a witch and even flattened her tyres which
I denied then, I’m sorry I served Mrs Eze water from a pond and she fell ill on
the spot, I’m sorry I put pins on all the cushions when your friends came for a
fellowship, mom I even broke Mr. Lancelot wiper and put bugs in your BMW. I’m
the one that poured Champagne in your car radiator. I’m the one who stole your
ATM card. I’m the one who threw away your tiara.
Mom I have done so many tricks on you and I
can’t name them all but mom I am ready to change this time for good. Mom I
realise my wickedness, the only one who has been practicing witchcraft without
knowing is me. I have done so much evils that hurt people, things I will never
allow anyone to do to me. I’ve been a fool, have lived a negative life all my
life, I’m an embarrassment to you and the family name I have soiled badly. Mom
pass your judgement on me, beat me till I move no more, paralyse me in your
anger and break me in your fury I deserve it all.
Mom if that is not enough, feed me to the
dogs and let the vultures have their share of my miserable body. Mom if you are
willing to forgive and accept me once again I will change for God. Mom from now
on I say goodbye to laziness, goodbye to sleep, goodbye to lousiness and
goodbye to disobedience. From now on mom I will be a symbol of obedience, I
will be like David and Samuel and not like Ahab nor Saul. I will listen to you
and honour you for the rest of my life. No more dirty tricks for me ever again.
Mom please place me back in your heart.
I went on and on promising things I know I
would never do even if you placed a pistol on my head. I promised I would
always clean up my home, do my chores and even more without been prompted to do
so. I promised I would get better grades in school, score 300 marks in Jamb and
get all distinctions in my WAEC and NECO exams. I promised to be the child she
had never had or imagined she could have, I promised to emulate her and follow
her to church every day she wanted to go. I kept on going on and on till a hand
touched me, much softer and smaller than my mom’s own.
‘Get up Hardy, your mom is not here’. Those
words made me open my eyes at once. I saw the face and blinked thrice just to
be sure. She was smiling at me, no, she must have been laughing. I got up and
shoved the girl away.
‘Where is my mom?’ I raised my voice high
enough I knew my mom will be coming around soon. Still smiling she said ‘Nice
to see you have finally decided to change. I am worried you will soon be in the
hospital again or the mortuary.’
That statement must have provoked me
because I slapped her till I heard her crying. Young girl my age but not even
pretty in any sense of the word, Hilda was one of those French girls you see
that make you destroy any notion that all European girls are extremely
beautiful. She couldn’t pass for pretty, a normal girl who is in the middle
between normal and ugly looking.
She kept on crying loudly and if I don’t do
something quickly my mom would killed me there. I wrapped my hands around the
troll and kept saying ‘I am sorry.’ That must have done the trick because she
stopped crying and embraced me firmly. If I remained in that position for
another ten seconds I would throw up. My belly began to trouble me, it must be
empty.
‘I needed to eat something.’ I said trying
to endure the offensive fragrance of her body. She must have been sweating from
doing her work and now I’m the grand receiver of it. She smiled and let go.
Whatever she must have been thinking would never come to pass, not in this
world or the next world because a fox doesn’t marry a pig.
I left the room trying not to look back and
see the smiling of a troll but I did and asked ‘Where is my mom?’ This time she
answered me ‘Your mother is at the door talking to Mrs. Eze.’ I smiled at the
troll and nearly said thank you. I hurried down the stairs straight to the
second floor. One thing I don’t like about this mansion is there is no straight
stairs to get down to the ground floor. An elevator would be more appropriate
in this huge mansion than the boring stairs that doesn’t even lead straight
down to the ground floor.
I got to the second floor and had to go
round the passageway past the three visitor’s room and then Hilda’s room. Found
the stairs that led to the ground floor and hurried down. My belly kept on
hurting me and I felt I already had ulcer. I walked a little and by-passed the
living room through a small corridor that leads to the door to our underground
basement so large it could hid thousands of people in it conveniently and made
my way for the kitchen in a crooked manner.
As I passed I could hear my mom laughing
and sharing her custom gossips as she talked to Mrs. Eze. Heard something about
the latest designs in the market that goes for ten thousand dollars and how
daddy Itshekiri got his maid pregnant and how his wife is now in an asylum in
Ibadan and how mummy Kanuri’s husband was arrested by the JTF to clear strong
allegations of terrorism. I wanted to hear more so I hid myself beside the
floor lamp which was a bad idea since it barely hid me. They talked about me
and evaluated my worthlessness and debated my laziness. I wanted to hear more
but when women gossip like this time suffers. I entered the kitchen and
searched for what to eat. There was yam, scorched egg and rice but it was cold.
I put on the burner to warm it up but even that will that five to ten minutes
and each time I attempt to warm food I end up burning it.
I searched the kitchen for any other thing
I could eat. I turned my gaze towards the direction of the kitchen door to be
sure no one was looking at me, I opened the pot of stew and used a spoon to
pick two pieces of beef and dropped it on a plate. I settled down to eat it on
the mini-table at the centre of the kitchen where Hilda always eats. I picked a
meat with my hands and watched the stew roll done my palms and just before it
got to my wrist I licked it up, I did this twice before sucking off the stew
from the meat. The stew was delicious I sucked the stew out of the second and
licked the plates. Only my tongue could testify to the sweetness of the stew. I
picked up the first meat and bit half of it.
I was so engrossed into what I eating and
didn’t notice when Hilda entered the kitchen. She said ‘Just look at him eating
like as if he has never seen food in his life-time’. She touched my shoulders
and brightened up with a smile, I took one look at her and decided I won’t look
at her again until I have finished eating before she spoils my appetite with
her looks. I kept on eating like the hungry wolf I was.
‘I will help you warm the food before you
burn it’ she said. I didn’t even say thank you before she moved over to help
me. I looked at her briefly and smiled, if only she had a quarter of the looks
of Zaynab then I might be interested in her but clearly she’s just a smart
girl. Since my mom adopted her fifteen years ago just weeks after my birth, she
has been doing well academically coming tops in her school. My mom was still in
the ward with Hilda’s mother who died giving birth to her, from her
conversation with her she found out Hilda father abandoned both mother and
daughter so when she died shortly after giving birth to Hilda she adopted
Hilda. She is the daughter my mom is most proud of.
I don’t consider her my sister although I
call her sis when my mom is around, when she’s not I call her bitch secretly to
my friends because if my mom hears it I would be in a coffin buried under the
ground. All the members of this family are good-looking and thank goodness it is
only ten times she appeared in the family photo and they are all on the second
floor. Maybe I am a little over-exaggerating her ugliness but she doesn’t look
pretty, she’s just a plain normal Jane.
‘Thank you’ I said. She turned to look at
me ‘It’s the least I can for a lazy likeable boy like you’. I looked at her and
felt cheerful. She had that magic of melting a depression into an impression. I
pity her now for the way I ruthlessly tortured her five years ago that made her
move from the room beside mine down to the second floor. I constantly placed
rodents in her room and cockroaches to share a bed with her, if there were two
things she hated most after snakes they are rodents and cockroaches.
The reason I didn’t use snakes was because
I’m as scared of snakes and even more as Hilda. I remembered six years ago just
as I was about to write my common entrance to gain admission into the jungle I
saw a snake in the garden and I screamed till I lost my voice and attracted the
whole Ikeja to the scene.
Barely two weeks of sleeping with rodents
and cockroaches and screaming like a girl who had just been raped brutally, I
decided to advise her to move to the second floor to end her misery. She
immediately read beyond the scripts that I was behind her predicament but still
she moved and played a trick on me that made me despise her so much till date.
She placed a bunch of moths in my clothes,
my beds and everywhere in my room. I entered my room that fateful day glowing
with a smile after completing the days trick on another girl when I saw the
months I screamed like a girl and wept. I could pick cockroaches and rodents
but moths I fear them. Those things give me a nightmare with their dusty
bodies, their antennas, abdomen and thorax. I will prefer a year in hell than
to be in the same room with any ugly creatures that have an antenna, an abdomen
and a thorax and that includes butterflies. I hate bugs. It took me just five
minutes and I went to beg her to remove them for me, she did but she still
stayed in the second floor to grease my ego.
‘So are you ready to tell me who your
boyfriend is? Does he look just like you?’ I said intending to hurt her. If she
was hurt she didn’t show it, she just smiled and kept on frying eggs for me. I
looked at her face for a long time wanting to see her depressed but instead she
kept smiling and humming a song. I may have good looks but I was no singer, my
voice alone was a better solution to a scarecrow to a farmer. She possessed one
of the most melodious voices in the world. I would prefer to listen to her sing
than to listen to some musicians, she was that good and even better.
One of the reasons and probably the only
reason why the Redeem Church we attend is increasing in congregation attendance
is because of her voice and not the sermons of the Head Pastor that sent
two-thirds of his congregation to sleep just as he mounts the podium and as if
to show her importance after the choir is done half of the youth flee from the
church. The voice makes her look beautiful in your head and it’s only later you
realise you have fallen in love with a plain Jane. If she ever chose to through
plastic surgery and transform her body and do all those breast implants she would
have more fans flocking around her.
‘Will you sing for me?’ I said quacking adding
‘It’s better than listening to opera.’ She turned at me and looked at with me
with her beautiful blue eyes. ‘Do you want me to sing or should I just tell you
who my boyfriend is?’
I picked the boyfriend, I really wanted to know
that lucky guy. ‘Who is the lucky guy? I really want to meet him and
congratulate him for a job well done.’ She didn’t say anything for some time
and just as I was about to tell her I was waiting she said ‘You are the lucky
guy. You are my boyfriend.’
She kept stirring the eggs and didn’t look
at me. I got up as I finished eating the meat and pecked her on the check and
said ‘As long as you will keep singing to me and cooking delicacies for me then
you might just be my girlfriend.’ She didn’t look at me back and I got back to
my seat.
Hope she didn’t take me seriously because I
didn’t mean what I said. I just hope Hilda will find that lucky boy who would
make her happy. I picked up an apple and started chewing the fruit. I didn’t
know how much time I had before my mom comes looking for me but at least my
experience on woman talk tells me I still have about at least three hours more to
go if not the whole day.
She served me my food and I thanked her
again. She smiled and said ‘I know you didn’t mean what you said earlier. I
would have loved to be your girlfriend if I didn’t know about your many
defects. You are cool on the outside but on the inside it’s the opposite.’
I looked at her and almost insulted her immediately
if not for the fact she had prepared my meal for me. I barely ate half-way when
she said ‘Look at the way you are eating like a dog, you eat like those
road-side beggars.’ That did the trick, I couldn’t take it anymore. I said ‘You
this troll when last did you shave your armpit. Get yourself a warm bath your
body odour is interrupting with the delicious aroma of my food.’
I don’t know what pained her so much, I got
a slap which I followed with my hands. The slap was so hot my checks burnt and
felt like hot iron on my face. I held my face in agony. If not because of my
resolve to never cry before a girl I would have shed tears on the spot.
She must have felt really hurt because she
just cried and moved out of the kitchen. Before she left I made sure to tell
her how bad her breathe was even though it wasn’t. She burst into louder tears
and I knew now my mom would come calling sooner than expected.
I finished eating my meal and washed my
plates to avoid another conflict. I took out a bunch of cold grapes from the
fridge and started eating it. Hilda and my mom says I eat a lot and I would get
fat soon but with the looks of things I look very much like a model on diet.
I felt sorry for Hilda, although she is not
my type she wasn’t that bad. I have seen real trolls some of my friends date,
if I were to compare her with those she will get a pretty mark. She would find
herself a boyfriend soon if she wants one, her voice is one of a kind.
I remember last year when I brought Vincent
my long-lost primary school friend who I just got in contact with after nearly
six years of separation. He passed through the witch cross-examination as every
one of my friends I bring home does and surprisingly he passed after half an
hour. He met Hilda singing and immediately fell in love with her but Hilda was
cold to him when she heard he was my blossom friend and other reasons best
known to her. I told her he liked her, she told me to get lost. Vincent is not
bad-looking but also not good-looking boy and he has a defect he was a stammer.
I thought the two would be a match made in heaven.
‘Do you think I can date someone like that?
He can’t ever talk properly. I know his type and I don’t like them’. She said
when I pledged with her to at least talk to him.
‘A little chat won’t kill you. I don’t know
what he sees in you but the guy is clearly attracted to you. He keeps asking
after you and telling me of dreams he has been having of you’. I said fabricating
that last part to sell him better.
‘So you are now his mouthpiece? Good for
nothing boys who don’t even know what to do with their lives than to waste it
on fantasies’. She yelled and walked out threatening to tell the witch about my
affair with Zaynab and my attempt to make her date a stammer. The threat was
convincing enough and I didn’t bother her again about the topic, lying to
Vincent I talked to her every day.
This holiday he hasn’t yet called but it is
just the third day into my two-month holiday. I give him till next week before
he starts calling me again or I call him. I marvelled at his strange interest
in Hilda when Ronke a far beautiful and sophisticated girl is begging for
attention. I asked him once what he finds so fascinating about Hilda when he
has Ronke clamouring for attention. His response was ‘Hilda is beautiful on the
inside and Ronke is beautiful on the outside. Her beauty on the inside is what
has attracted me to her, it is very rare to find people like that.’ I looked at
him like what was this guy talking about, beauty on the inside, do you see the
inside? Will you date the inside?
I finished devouring the grapes and felt
full. I had settled my belly now to settle my mother. I decided to go and meet
her at the door, greet her friend and tell her I was sorry. I left the kitchen,
passed the stairs leading to the basement and headed for the front door through
the small living room.
I prayed for success in my mission. I needed
all the luck I could get right now. The TV was on but no one was around to
watch it. I looked round the small living room to be sure my mom and her friend
had not decided to move to sit down here and talk better. I didn’t see anyone.
The small living room where my mom and dad received not so important guest wasn’t
that small, it was the size of my classroom in school, portraits of dad, mom, grandfather
and grandmother hung on the wall. My dad has told me a lot about my
grandparents who were the wealthiest black people in France, they owned FIRST
group of companies that had influence all over Europe and Africa which spread
to Asia and the Americans under my dad. FIRST group of companies consisted of FIRST
Global Oil and Gas Company, they owned a law firm FIRST Law firm, FIRST supermarket,
FIRST cosmetics and a lot more I haven’t heard of. Today my dad is one of the
wealthiest in Africa.
He never loses any opportunity to praise
his parents and even his grandparents who started FIRST supermarket. He always
tells me I would one day take over the company. My dad treats me like a prince
my mom treats me like a savage. I won’t ever contemplate taking over such a
company, so much money, so much fame and so much to conquer, this is one
adventure I won’t ever want to miss.
I got to the front door and didn’t see my
mom, I moved outside and checked round our massive compound, the swimming pool,
the bar, the garden but I didn’t see her or her friends. I checked the garage
shouting her name but she wasn’t there. I noticed her Ferrari 458 Italia was
not in the garage, had she driven out. I heard someone screaming my name and I
quickly hid under her BMW Alpina Roadster V8. I heard it again more clearly I knew
I must have done something wrong again. I saw Mrs. Eze the gossip general leaving
I knew immediately it was the witch that called me.
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