It was a crisp, sunny Wednesday afternoon. I had just returned from school with my kid brother, James. We were both exhausted, our skin brown and sticky with the mixture of dust and dried sweat that coated our entire epidermis. Our school uniforms which were sparkling white when we left for school in the morning was now patterned with different shades of brown and our hair anything but tidy. Mother always got furious any day we came home looking like that; she would feed our ears with angry words about how she had to work for hours to make enough cash to buy soap and how she could have spent her time doing more profitable things other than washing dirty clothes every evening, but it seemed her young lads were hell-bent on becoming the youngest football stars in the world.

“Segun, I’ve told you to stop coming home looking like this. You and your brother.” Mother yelled, her eyes bulging and nostrils flaring. “Do you know how long it took me to wash those clothes yesterday?”

I stood transfixed, not sure if she particularly wanted me to answer the question. She stood so close I could feel her warm breath on my face, her upper body slightly tilted forward and hands akimbo – signs that we were most likely in for a serious beat down. While I was cooking up various lies in my head to bail us out of the situation, James, who had been holding my left hand all along, loosened his grip and ran towards her. He jumped on her neck and hugged her tightly, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“Mum we’re sorry, it won’t happen again. Can I have my food now?” James bantered, kissing her severally on the cheeks.

“Shoosh, J-James, you’re going to get me all m-messed up.” Mother protested amidst chuckles, but James just wasn’t satisfied with the response he got. He kept tickling and kissing her all over. “Okay James, o-kay…you can have your food now baby, but you’ll first have to get yourself out of your dirty school uniform and get yourself washed, okay?” Mother acquiesced, setting James down and still laughing gleefully.

James kissed her a couple more times before letting go of her neck and dashed to his room. I was still rooted where I stood, partly happy we didn’t get punished and partly praying mother would offer to bathe James herself as I was so tired.

“Segun, get yourself and your brother cleaned up and come to the kitchen for your food.” Mother ordered as she turned to leave for the kitchen.

“Oh crap”, I mused.

I dragged myself to my room, undressed and joined James in the bathroom. He had undressed too and was splashing water everywhere, as usual. After bathing, we got dressed and headed to the kitchen for our meal. Mother had prepared Amala and Ewedu soup for lunch, James’ favourite. No one prepares Amala better than my mum. I still marvel at the way she’d skilfully stir the yam flour in boiling water till the mixture formed a thick dark-brown morsel, soft and totally devoid of the tiny lumps that form in the morsel as a result of improper mixing.

We chatted away happily at the dining table as we had our meal. Mother always enjoyed listening to us talk about how we had spent the day. Sometimes she’d simply giggle as we narrated our puerile escapades. Most times she’d laugh so hard and have to take a gulp of water after, as though to quench the thirst for more laughter. James always had a story to tell, most of which were utterly preposterous, although the way he’d gesticulate while telling his stories would leave everyone reeling with laughter.

After the meal, mother and James went to their rooms, leaving me behind to do the dishes. There had been a total blackout for days, so our after-school cartoons had been replaced with afternoon naps since mother could not afford a generator. I washed the plates and went to my room.

I tossed and rolled in bed, unable to sleep. I hugged my teddy bear tightly and squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to force an intimacy with sleep. But sleep wouldn’t be coerced. It stood at a distance watching my futile attempts at relieving my voluntary muscles of active duty.

After several failed attempts at slipping into oblivion I was forced to open my eyes. My eyelids ached. I freed the teddy from my death grip and turned to my right side, facing the door. It was a fairly big room, at least for an eight-year old boy. The room itself was painted pink, beautifully decorated with pictures of my favourite cartoon characters pasted here and there; Simba of Lion King, Pocahontas, Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, and a myriad of others. The only window in the room was etched in the wall right beside my bed, facing the entrance to the room. A giant-sized wardrobe spanned the space between the door and the wall adjacent, down at the other corner of the room. A fluffy red rug ran the length and breadth of the space on the floor. My room had a slight touch of opulence, but it was nothing compared to what I used to have.

My dad died when I was three years old. His death changed everything. He was a very successful Igbo businessman based in Anambra state, Nigeria, although his business was such that required him to make frequent trips to Lagos – he was a car dealer. It was on one of such trips that he had met my mother, a Yoruba woman who was then a Law student of University of Lagos, Akoka. He married her when she was in her final year in school and whisked her off to Anambra immediately after she graduated. He didn’t even allow her attend Law School. Apparently, she didn’t need to. My dad made more money than he knew what to do with. He had a large fleet of exotic cars and had built numerous houses; the one he lived in with my mum was a mansion. All my mum had to do was be his wife. The only strenuous duty she had was to make sure the house was in order, which basically involved her sitting down and giving out instructions to her servants who would get the work done. She had married a successful man, a young one at that.

If there was anyone that my dad loved more than himself, it was my mum. The love was so strong that when his family members pressured him into having another wife after five years that my mum couldn’t give him a child, he vehemently declined. On several occasions he practically chased them out of his house when they came to discuss the issue with him. Word quickly went round the family that my mum had beguiled him by some fetish means, but that didn’t dissuade my dad from remaining faithful to his wife.

Seven years after my mum married my dad, I was born. My birth brought my mum peace, peace that her in-laws had all but carted away. Out of joy she named me Oluwasegun (meaning God conquered), and my dad, out of love, allowed it stick as my first name even though I had other igbo names.

I grew up to recognise a family adorned with love and wealth. Every weekend we would travel to different parts of the country visiting choice locations with breathtaking tourist attractions. We’d visit the Obudu Mountain Resort in Calabar to relax and enjoy the idyllic tranquillity and captivating scenery of nature at its greenest, where the trees and vegetation seem to thrill visitors with a breath of refreshing newness. Often times we’d travel to Jos to behold the beauty of alluring wildlife at Yankari Game Reserve, and later cool off at the Wiki Warm Springs. My favourite trips were those we made to the beaches in Lagos, were the cool damp breeze from the flowing seas seem to convey a magical aura that could purify your soul as you draw each breath, and the sand seemed to strengthen our family bond as we lay to watch the yellow sun descend into the horizon in the evening.

Three years after I was born, my mum conceived again. My dad’s love for her practically tripled, his joy knew no bounds. He couldn’t wait for his second child to be born, little did he know he wasn’t going to be around to witness it; he died two months after…and that was when our problems started. My mum’s in-laws had been silenced, but it was for a while. When my father died, they sprang up with renewed vigour. They came in large numbers the same way they’d been coming before I was born, only this time with a more ridiculous accusation; that my mum killed her husband so she could acquire his properties. I was very young then and it just made it all sound more ridiculous to me. I was at home with my mum the day we got news of his death; he was on his way to Lagos when he suffered a ghastly motor accident that instantly claimed his life. That day, my mum almost ran mad, she wailed endlessly in anguish. So my puerile mind found it hard to understand how my mum’s in-laws could come few days later to claim she murdered her own husband.

They locked the house and took my mum and I to my father’s village, where I saw her go through the meanest of treatments. First, they shaved every strand of hair off her head. Dressed in a black flowing gown, she wailed bitterly as some mean-looking haggard old women held her down and took turns to shave her head with a small razor. After that, she was made to sleep in the same room where my dad’s corpse laid for three days. On the night of the fourth day, they brought her out, placed a calabash filled with water in her hands and asked her to drink. At first she broke down in tears and totally refused, but later yielded when her in-laws threatened that her refusal to drink lends credence to the fact that she killed her husband, and that she was going to be stoned to death. I couldn’t understand how gulping down a bowl of water could exonerate her of her supposed crime, neither could I understand why my mum would so vehemently refuse a drink; after all she had been through, it seemed like the perfect thing she needed. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that the water was to serve no purpose of refreshment; it was taken from the water that was used to bathe my dad’s corpse.

At my dad’s burial his friends and associates swore heaven and earth to take care of my mum and me, and her unborn baby. She found comfort in their soothing words. Too tired to wail, she just allowed the tears flow down her cheeks. In the few days that preceded my dad’s burial I had seen her transform from the very beautiful woman that she used to be to a tired sullen bald woman. She had aged considerably, and her eyes had swollen from excessive weeping, although beyond the tears I saw a spark. Buried in the corridors of her glance was a burning determination to fight, to survive.

After my dad’s burial, his brothers took over his properties and barred my mum and me from even going close to any of his houses. My dad died without writing a will. My mum, having nothing left in Anambra, had to move us back to Lagos to pick up the pieces of whatever was left of her life. Her poor parents had died soon after she got married and had left her with nothing, and being their only child, she had nowhere to go.

On getting to Lagos, she found a local church that agreed to help us after hearing our unfortunate story. The church took us in and allowed us stay in one of the rooms in their boys’ quarters. They occasionally gave us food and gave my mum some money to keep body and soul together. After a while my mum decided to seek help from her late husband’s friends who had earlier promised to help her. She sought them with high hopes knowing her problems would soon be a thing of the past, but her hopes got dashed as fast as they were formed. The nice ones promised her heaven on earth only if she could agree to an affair with them, the ones that were not so nice simply threw her out of their offices. These were men that had appeared to be extremely loyal to her husband when he was alive. One night, after a visit to one of her late husband’s friends, she came back looking strange; her appearance was rough, her skirt looked a lot crumpled and I noticed some small parts of her blouse had been torn. When I asked her what happened, she drew me close and hugged me tight,

“Segun, I swear I’m going to get us out of this,” she said firmly. Her voice carried a lot of will and determination…and pain, even though it was only a decibel louder than a whisper. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, but she didn’t cry.

After that night, my mum did practically everything she could lay her hands on; from selling bottled water in traffic to frying bean cakes by the roadside, sometimes she would wash people’s clothes to make extra cash. She’d labour day and night and barely make enough money to feed us. The more her stomach protruded, the more things got difficult. Moving about became excruciatingly painful for her so I eventually had to join in and help out. I was just four years old. I’d sell bottled water in traffic while she fried the bean cakes by the roadside.

When it was time for my mum’s delivery, she couldn’t afford a maternity centre so she delivered the baby at home. She was helped by some of the older women in the church we stayed. She delivered the baby and named him James.

The next two years proved to be the most challenging. After James was born, mum decided to learn fashion designing which took all her time and lasted a year. She could no longer continue frying the bean cakes and all we depended on was what the church gave us and the little sales I made. Things however started to turn around a year after mum finished her training and started her own business. She worked really hard and saved enough money to rent a three-bedroom apartment which we later moved into. I resumed school and James also started schooling.

It wasn’t easy on my mum at all during the trying times. She was still pretty young although her hardship had forced signs of old age out of her; the strands of grey hair on her head were fast dominating the black ones and wrinkles formed at the corner of her eyes whenever she smiled, although the wrinkles couldn’t bury the beauty her face wielded. There were days I’d see her almost completely broken, but with a stroke of daring courage she’d bounce back. She seemed to derive her strength from her children, the resolve to give them a better life being her main driving force. It was clearly evident that we, her children, brought her so much joy, especially James. James had always been the life of the family, despite the fact that he was born in a period when things were at their roughest. His warm and friendly disposition earned him soft spots with everybody, especially my mum. His cute young face seemed to have a smile permanently etched in it; people at the church even sometimes joke that while other children cried when they were born, James came out with a big smile on his face. I always had a feeling there was something about James that reminded my mum of her late husband; sometimes when he made her smile, her eyes would light up with a special kind of flame and the smile on her lips would linger a little longer while her eyes would seem to drift past reality into some ecstatic memories. James never gets punished by my mum, and that was why I wasn’t too surprised that he got us out of trouble with mum earlier that afternoon.

“Segun!” Mum’s voice jolted me back into reality. I scampered out of bed and made for her room.

“Yes mum,” I replied as I entered her room and sat on her bed, “You called me”.

She turned to rest on her back. “What would you like to have for dinner?” she asked, yawning. A drop of tear ran down the side of her sleepy face and I wiped it with the tip of my thumb. She smiled.

“Err…it’s been a while we ate fried rice.” I replied, a bit ecstatic.

“No problem, we’d have fried rice. I think we have all the ingredients we need. Oh, we’ve exhausted the green peas. Take two hundred naira from my purse and get a can of green peas.”

I picked the money from her purse which was on a reading table at the other end of the room. On my way out she asked what James was doing and I told her he was sleeping.

“That boy has been sleeping since,” I added. “Do you want me to wake him?”

“No, leave him, let him sleep. He must be very tired.”

Outside the house, I paused for a while. I was reluctant to run the errand alone. I wanted to go with James so we could play some more. A voice in my head reminded me that mum told me to leave him. I quickly silenced that voice and ran back inside, heading straight to James’ room. I wish I hadn’t.

“James, wake up. Mum is making fried rice. Let’s go buy green peas.” I said quietly, rocking him in his bed.

He stirred. “ooo…I want to sleep!” he replied sleepily. He turned, backing me.

If fried rice wouldn’t get James out of bed, I knew exactly what would.

“Stick sweets, James. I’ll buy you stick sweets if you come with me.” I was rocking him even more vigorously now.

He turned sluggishly to face me. “How many?” His eyes were now slightly open, a fine line of dried saliva ran down his left cheek.

I held three fingers in his face. “Three, James, three.” I replied smiling, relieved that the stick sweets was doing the trick.

He ran his eyes consecutively from one finger to the other as though he wanted to be sure they were not playing tricks on him. “Make it four,” he said, looking in my face.

“Okay, I’ll buy you four then. Hurry so we can come back early.”

He stood up and wiped his left cheek with the back of his palm, smearing the white line over his face. I took him to the bathroom and rinsed his face with water. As I was drying his face with a towel, he grabbed the two hundred naira note at the tip of my pocket and dashed out.

“James!” I shouted, running after him.

We decided to get the sweets first since the shop we’d get it from was at the other side of the road and required us crossing. At the shop, James took four stick sweets from the seller’s containers while I paid. He held the four sweets in his hand; he was eyeing them hungrily, considering which one to devour first. I grabbed the sweets from his hand and took off.

“Segun!” he yelled, dashing after me.

I was barely at the other end of the road when I heard it; a screech, a sharp piercing scream, silence…then noise. My neck jolted backwards on impulse, the image I saw would register in my mind forever; James body sprawled lifeless on the tarred road, a little distance away from a stationary black sedan car. People started trooping out of their shops in large numbers. The driver of the vehicle that knocked James down, seeing he could be mobbed, revved his engine and zoomed off. Some of the onlookers went after him on motorcycles while the rest gathered around James’ body, sulking.

I scurried to the spot of the incidence and made my way through the crowd that had gathered to where James’ body sprawled. His clothes were torn to shreds, blood gushed out from his wounds and every bone in his body appeared to be broken. His arms twisted awkwardly around him. I knelt beside him and grabbed his shoulders, propping him up. Hot tears quickly formed in my eyes.

“James, stand up please, let’s go home. Mum is making fried rice, remember?” I was gently shaking his body as tears poured down my eyes.

“Your stick sweets, James, you can have them now. I promise I’ll buy more, just stand up please.” A part of me actually hoped stick sweets would do the trick again, but it didn’t.

The people gathered around still stood watching. “Don’t just stand there, do something. He’s not dead!” I yelled at them, looking from one person to another, but none of them seemed to have heard me.

I was wailing uncontrollably. I just couldn’t imagine the pain that James’ death would bring to my mum. Those smiles would be gone forever. I grabbed him tighter and shook him even more vehemently,

“JAMES!”




THE END

I'll read up when I'm bored.

protegesol:
I'll read up when I'm bored.

Pretty lengthy yeah? I know.

Nuges11:


Aww....you're far too kind sir. Hope you enjoyed the story

Hell yeah!

Fatalveli:
Hell yeah!

I'm glad you did

You should check this one out too:

https://www.nairaland.com/2071088/oh-sleep

Nuges11:


Aww....you're far too kind sir. Hope you enjoyed the story

don't tel me it's d end o
I've always known u to have some hidden talents
boss nairaland is Waiting to unveil u soonest

Am here,would take time out to read when it is dawn

Bluestarry:
am here.. Go on don't stop na.....

I'm afraid that's the end of the story sir

kingphilip:

don't tel me it's d end o
I've always known u to have some hidden talents boss nairaland is Waiting to unveil u soonest

Hehehe....thanks boss

Fembleez1:
Am here,would take time out to read when it is dawn

You're most welcome

If this is the same Nuges11 that partook in the short story competition held here some time ago, then I'm not surprised. You've always been a brilliant writer. This story is another feather to your cap.

I think you should insert "THE END" at the base of the writeup to indicate that it is completed. Otherwise the readers will continue clamouring for more.

Moderators, I'm endorsing/recommending this thread for the frontpage. Thanks in advance.

Tags; Obinnau, Mynd44, Ishilove, Royver, Larrysun.

Wow!! Wow!! Wow!!,.............I've read some stories here on NL but this short story stands out to be the best have read so far



I like the way you evoke the environment which adds some extraordinary qualities to the narrative techniques............you are just wow!!



But take note:-


"Ghastly motor accident that claimed his life (segun and james' father)."

First,'motor accident?'.
The accident that occurs on the road involving vehicles is not motor accident;not motor vehicle accident;not traffic accident but ROAD ACCIDENT.


Second,"Ghastly,..............that claimed his life"..........please be aware,any accident that involves the loss of life is 'FATAL' while the one whereby people sustain injuries but without the loss of life is 'GHASTLY'.



Roughly»»»»,"ghastly motor accident that claimed his life",..........should be........."fatal road accident that claimed his life".




I have learnt something from your write-up/s that I so much admire and would work on to perfect it.



All in all boss,you are absolutely spot-on
More ink to your pen and more power to your elbow

Wow

Too long

Keneking:
Too long

It's a SHORT story, yet you're complaining it is too long.

This is the reason why the Europeans will always be ahead of us. If you want to hide wisdom from the blackman, hide it in a book.

very nice! I love literature
Those of you talking trash should go and sleep jare

Ishilove:

It's a SHORT story, yet you're complaining it is too long.

This is the reason why the Europeans will always be ahead of us. If you want to hide wisdom from the blackman, hide it in a book.

Ironically, i read it through but needed to book some space just in case it makes bad sorry front page. Nice choice of words and great writing style

Ishilove:

It's a SHORT story, yet you're complaining it is too long.

This is the reason why the Europeans will always be ahead of us. If you want to hide wisdom from the blackman, hide it in a book.

I swear that's one of our many problems in this country. Many can't pick up books and read. May God deliver us. Lol
Ayamlaykorn

One is supposed to read all this.At three...you knew everything about your dad...you be Einstein....?