Ugochukwu would sit afar signalling me with his
hands to notice his presence whenever he arrives at
the dark shade near our small stall.
He sits there most nights watching the customers
who patronize our small petty trade at the Ojuga
market,waiting patiently for mama to go home first with her wares,mostly palm oil and stockfish on a
white pan placed on her head,a small sized stool on
her hand,the rest is now left for me to take home. Mama has scolded him once when she noticed his
advances on me,her shrill voice shouted "onye ori!",
when he was about to leave the argument between
them on why he follows me around.
His shoulders raised high with ego and he walked
pass with such bravura. Buyers bidding price with sellers and market women
arguing made the scene noisy every evening after
the main market business men had left,children
chasing each other bare footed along the semi tarred
road which go muddy when the rain comes.
Tables align on each corner leaving huge space inbetween for passer-by,the local made lantern
mpanaka- a small kerosene container with wool at
end which exude soots while letting out it's yellow
light shines its hazy light that moves with the blown
wind direction.
Little Nneoma ran over a bottle of palm oil,a young boy who looks much more less her age had chased
her into breaking the two hundred and fourty naira
worth of oil.
Immediately her mother rained her back with slaps
that sounds like two palms hitting each other. "Ifukwa ekwensu!," she said. She now mutter in a low tone cursing why she came
to the market today,Nneoma staring her with keen
bewilderment of what her actions might have lead to
and if her mother will punish her more as seen on
her back,lashes of cane scars. The small night market smell of onions,stockfish and
heavy spices which is mostly percieved in the thick
humid air,over the extreme end of the street lay
rubbish of vegetables and spoilt fruits and cartons of
already bought cosmetics.pigs grunt as they nosed at
the dirt and happiness leaped my heart when mama told me she's going home. Ugochukwu crept out of his hide-out to sit beside
me,he smells of white mushrooms whenever he
raises his hands to explain what he meant,tufts of
black hair scattered over his jaw which broadens out
his face giving him the egyptian look on his dark
skin,a little lower to his left is a white scar on his chin.His friends mostly rogues and street urchins call
him "pharoah". His popularity now turned me to pharaoah's
girlfriend as he would sit near me after mama has left
and most times i notice he's busy staring at my
bossoms.
Felt uneasy with it earlier and would close up the
cleavage that shows any part of my pert breasts,i let him look as i get to know him more,he's not touching
it in the open market anyway.
He always fumbles crisps of fifty naira notes into my
hands,refused at first but it later turned to a tradition
which i gladly welcome each time he visits.
Never bothered to ask him "where the money came from", but he said he's a business man when he
introduced himself,weeks later came when he
announced to me he had find a house. "Can you come and visit me",he said.He was the only
one among his friends that went to a secondary
school.He brags with it everyday. It was the week Our biology teacher was teaching us
reproductive system,sex organs and courtship
display.
Our keen interest was more when she started
explaining sexual intercourse,the serene class room
that was once full of giggles and laughter was as calm as our school library.
Everything she explained,i imagined on spot with
ugochukwu.
Lost in these fantasies,she left the class without my
notice,leaving an embattled elemchi to struggle with
the ideas of choosing the devil or the deep blue sea. Mama always held on to her rosary beads on her
hand,she took up the daily morning mass routine
after papa has left and in less than a year kelechi
followed suit.
Mama believed uncle chike is using his charms on us
since he came immediately after papa's burial for nkuchi nwanyi rites-a rites that adjoin him the duties
of a husband over mama. Mama said, "He smells like ogwugwu goat",a stunted
domestic goat belonging to ogwugwu deity that
roams around the village looking for female goats to
climb,bleating at their backs whenever they refused
him. Maybe uncle chike is,he went as far as moving the
case to umunna which has been on for years
now,claiming that he has right over mama.His brisk
walk like a tortoise submerged in it's shell,always on
clothes that looks like mama's oversized maternity
gown in his squirrel sized body.His nostrils is filled most times with the brown powder particles-utaba
which grandma used to lick when she was alive too. We heard bank robbery and people shot to death
everyday.papa had died from a stray bullet when he
was going to one of his morning masses,that week
mama threw away her rosary beads and nearly ran
mad.weeks later,the umuada shaved off her entire
hair for the funeral rites and i laughed at her new gangster look. The priest that came during the burial of papa
demanded she pour sand into his grave yard which
was against the custom,as uncle chike was arguing
with the priest,mama took the sand and threw it at
the coffin and the whole crowd that came dispersed
shouting "Alu!,Alu!". A grave offense that needs a mother cow to cleanse
and appease the gods. The governor then brought a new set of vigilantee
group,when he announced it on our white
television,our landlord shouted and disturbed the
whole neighbourhood arguing about how the new
'bakassi boys' will combat crime. Ugochukwu hands were trembling the next day he
met me,he said he has fever and i told him i will come
and see him after school tomorrow.He was calm and
averted the new vigilantee topic when i raised it.
His one room apartment was sparsely
furnitured,television and a video cassette player near the window end,a small bed and a center table with a
greenish rug to decorate the ground.The side of the
green curtains gave space for little light to enter.
He offered me juice with which i took the first and
finsihed it in one gulp,he advances close with each
drink he poured in my glass.His breadth was heavy and fast when he came close enough,he started
muttering words that were so faint,within me,i knew
what he want and i craved for it too,just waiting for
him to take the first step. He fiddled at my undergarment and in what seem like
in few minutes we were locked up in our arms and
his saliva nauseated me.He was so eager to be in
control,and in all that sharp pain,the last i could
remeber is the contempt on his face as his graps
trembled and i felt as he shrinked and a hot flush ran inside me. Weeks later ugochukwu didn't come to our shop and
i thought maybe he got what he wanted and left.
That night old soldier gave me a parcel someone
brought for me,'old soldier' was the name we gave to
the badly squinted stout man who live inside a
cubicle near the pen house,he told us stories of the civil war and how he gallantly fought a battalion with
his bare hands. He helped kelechi to write papa's
eulogy which he never read to the disgruntled crowd
that came for mgbalu.
Black,wrapped with polythene and tied with rope,i
read ugochukwu's letter that said he's at enugu for a business trip and would come back when he's
through.
I wanted to write him back telling him what
happened after my last visit to his house,how i threw
up every minute and then,but fear of old soldier
going through it and mama getting to know of it.she has been suspicious,how often the excuses that
came from me.
Maybe he knew and sent money enough to take care
of our mistake. Afuluenu adviced i should take a mixture of salt and
Guinness stout which burnt down my throat to the
stomach,this i preferred to the physical abortion she
said its painful and would likely damage the
womb,she had done it twice. That night i prayed to
the lord for killing a human being with promise of going to confession next week. It took mama another month to notice the
pregnancy.within those period arm robbery has
declined to its minimum.mama sang and praise the
lord for the new dreaded boys that slaughter
humans like cows on abbatoirs in streets and in open
market places.The judge is their charms and amulets which tells who is a criminal,who has killed and who
is about to kill?
Crowds gather whenever they want to kill any of
their culprits,not shielding them from the eyes of the
children that wander the streets or the mothers that
gave birth to them. They caught the notorious criminal - derico whom
they showed on television and also news spread
when they caught the famous prophet of nawgu
whom papa had visited his ministry every
wednesday during his life time and would hang his
cross over our small alter.mama and mama egbuche gossiped about it when she came over to our house
a day after his death only for them to kill her son a
fortnight later,mama sang a song on justice taking its
full course and hummed the verse she couldn't
remember in our stuffy room filled with our
clothes,the white ceiling has began to peel off,scrapes of white chalk would fall on our urine-
smelling mattress,chidi would always wet dream and
mess the whole place,mama would always say,"leave
him,when you were like him you do more than
these".
She pampers chidi since she knew it's what had stopped uncle chike and his brothers from taking
over papa's land in our village,a single male madness
that puts women in no other place than objects with
little value. I started planning on how to travel to aunty ebere's
place.mama found out about the pregnancy,she
screeched on how she was a virgin before she got
married to papa and how she averted the woes
thrown to her by boys of her age and she threw my
bag out of the house and memories of papa sprang up my mind,he wouldn't have allowed it. Her actions justifies the chaste she preaches to her
fellow women and to catholic girls organization
whenever she's sent to advice us on our monthly
meetings. Old soldier accompanied me to the park,boarded the
lorry that was heading to enugu,later arrived at
aunty ebere's transekulu house. Jide,aunty ebere's husband broke the news of chidi's
death to us few days to my arrival.Aunty ebere is
mama's sister,she works at the state civil service
comission and would always blame mama anytime
she comes around for leaving school to marry
Geoffrey.Geoffrey was papa's english name. The day i arrived at there house,she mocked me
saying,"history has repeated itself,only that this time
the father is no where to be found."
I wanted to reply,to tell her that ugochukwu is here
in enugu and that he's probably by now a successful
business man. Jide stares me the same way ugochukwu does,i
noticed my bossoms has increased as well as my
belly and its no way comparable to aunty
ebere's,which hides with her skinny body.
Aunty ebere said she went to our house and found
uncle chike in our bed and mama told her it keeps him from taking over the land.
That night i imagined uncle chike in our bed and on
top of mama,the same goat after been refused,now
dines with the ever unrelenting princess.The child in
my belly now moves often,he would look like
ugochukwu or maybe like papa who always believe in reincarnation. Aunty ebere taught me most times what to
do,though she had no child of her own.she once said
she will take the child if it's a girl and that mama
should pray for it to be a boy so that he will save her
from uncle chike's ensnared slavery. Mama learnt of how uncle chike plan to still covet the
land and sale to Oguadimma who lives a stone throw
from our compound in the village the same day she
learnt i was put to bed of a baby boy,he reported him
immediately with claims of my child whom we are yet
to name.He came with the same scar with ugochukwu,exactly at the left side of his chin,then i
wondered whether ugochukwu is still alive. Aunty ebere said he looks like papa,same big nose
and a big head.
"Omaka,mma papa gi." she said. Later went home to meet mama alone at the
house,two weeks after my delivery,she prepared ofe
nsala with small fingerlings-elem which are only seen
in late september and spiced it well with uziza-the
local black spice. Mama said it helps to clear all clumped blood that
didn't pass out during delivery,"O na adi mma",she
said.That night saw me questioning mama whether
she has seen ugochukwu,she let out her wry laugh
and told me they caught him in our landlord's pen
house few weeks ago and the knife showed its end of the road for him. I left mama,went outside and the moon was so high
in the sky,shining like there are street lights around.if
only she knew the criminal was ikem's father,if only
ugochukwu would have stayed at enugu and only
come back few months after they disbanded the
'Bakassi boys'. if only we had good judicial system were criminals are convicted and prosecuted rather
than leaving their fates on the hands of charms,after
which they were lynched in the face of the joyous
crowd that hunger to see their blood smeared on the
coal tar. "Mama,his name will be ikem and ugochukwu is his
father", i said and mama didn't utter a word.

Nice story, but it needs work. Some of the backstory was distracting and some of the beautiful pictures you started to paint went unfinished. Plus, you switched your tenses. Still a fine tale though. Well done

@op

Please try spacing your story to aid reading it.

Cuddlemii: @op

Please try spacing your story to aid reading it.

okay cuddlemii...i copied it from my facebook page and i thought it will paste like dat,my bad...
@ billy rubin....okay,which of d backstory,note taken in terms of the tenses

@Poster, you might have a nice story going on there, but to be honest, you need to work on your formatting.

It's such a big block of text you've got there, I personally found it discouraging. You also need to do something about your sentences. Might be a word wrap thing that could be easily rectified at your end.

Do that bit, then I'll review your story and drop my comments (promise)