It is very easy to be condemnatory about people whose appearance doesn’t appeal to us; it is even easier to say this and that, to be disapproving of people we know nothing about… It’s human nature.
She has a friend who sells groceries at a store beside a laundry shop. She usually stop by to chit chat with him some days when she had nothing else to do after dropping her baby at the day care center. she is a writer, although she would tell you instead that it’s something she is doing to keep in form and to pass away time pending when she would get another job. There was once an argument between she and that her friend; it had started with a random question she asked one time she couldn’t help but comment on the group of women who usually sit together inside Ruby’s place; a make up/ saloon shop at the opposite side of the road and sip iced tea over other people’s life. Their victims are celebrities mostly, but sometimes it is their neighbor or an absent member of the group.

she had argued that there are many sides to a story, and that the truth sometimes isn’t always the truth because everyone who tells a story would tell from their own side, their own version.

He argued that there are just two main sides to a story although could be said to be three: The truth, the distorted truth and the lie. The distorted truth and the lie doesn’t really have any literal difference, a lie is a lie. Hence, the two sides to a story are the truth and the lie.
Then he pointed towards the make up shop and said “whatever they are saying there cannot be the truth. Even if it were, it would be edited; an edited truth is a distorted truth; a distorted truth is a lie”. She had laughed and said “you see it’s the same thing we both are saying, just from two different sides”.

He always sits in front of the laundry shop smoking without care. He is a stranger in the area even though that’s where he grew up. rumor has it that he recently returned to their family house at crowther street after seven wasted years. ” i sabi the mama well well”, one of the rumor mongers once told her. “she nor be my friend o, but she dey always buy market from my hand; she be my customer. i been hear say na the boy stubborn head and him yama-yama life na him make the mama die quick. chai! that fine woman”. Another time, she had overheard the gossip group in Ruby’s place talking about him when she went to retouch her hair. “do you know his father disowned him?” a plump one had asked another, an equally plump and ugly woman. “are you serious” she had replied. “is that why he left home?”. ” for where, na the papa pursue am comot for house o” the owner of the saloon had interjected. She had then clapped her hands i the usual gossip style and uttered “wonder shall never cease…hmm!”.

She doesn’t know him, hasn’t spoken to him before and cannot in any way say if what she heard were true or not. She can’t help looking at him every time she passes and would always wonder how someone could be so nonchalant about his life; the way he smokes, how he sits in front of the laundry shop every day, like someone who have nothing to do, no where to go, no responsibilities, no care. And she would shake her head in disgust and in pity and mutter to herself “a wasted life indeed”. One time their gaze met; she was returning home after dropping her baby at the daycare center, she had stopped by at the friend’s store to pay courtesy. As she was leaving, she wanted only to take a cursory look at him but he was already looking at her. He greeted her good day but she didn’t reply.

It rained heavily that evening; a slight drizzle that quickly turned torrential. The sky was grey black when she left home to pick her daughter at the daycare center, she knew it would rain so she took an umbrella hoping to be back home before the drizzle turned into a shower. She didn’t waste time with her usual pleasantries with the daycare owner, she strapped her baby firmly behind her and quickened her pace. The first splatter of the torrent hit her umbrella when she had gone just few blocks from the daycare center. She quickened her pace further but that only got her close to a huge mango tree beside the road where she took shelter. she hoped she would see out the rain and when it got more intense, she started waving towards passing cars, hoping one of them would stop and give her a ride to as near home as possible but none of those cars stopped, not even the ones whose owners she saw at the daycare center. Dejected, she stood and watched them pass reading the stickers pasted on their rear windshield. ” I AM A WINNER”, “2017 MY YEAR OF EVERLASTING JOY”, “GIVERS NEVER LACK”, “JESUS is LORD”, “MARK 12:31”. “MATTHEW 22:39”. Some were so big they cover a large part of the car’s rear windshield. She stood there, lost i thoughts as the rain continued to pour, her sandal and the hem of her dress already soaked with muddy water.

She didn’t notice the car as it drove towards her, she didn’t knew when it stopped. it was the car horn that jerked her out of her reverie just as the driver was winding down the passenger’s window. She was overwhelmed with embarrassment when she who the driver was. It was him; the chimney, the one she had heard so many bad things about, the guy whose greetings she had ignored a number of times. Then she remembered she didn’t saw him in his usual smoking spot earlier when she was going to the daycare center to pick her daughter…

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