NOVEMBER 18th, 2009. I cannot remember the day before, nor the day after, but I remember that night, sharp as a knife. My brother and I were at home, alone. Watching Lion King. Then he barged in. Went straight to the bedroom and started throwing bags out. Our bags. Mummy came back. He fought with her, and tried to keep her from getting into the house. I was dazed, trembling. Mummy tried to get in through the kitchen window, and he ripped the curtains from their rods, and beat her with it. He beat her with the curtain rod. I was seven. Favour was four. Mummy was seven months pregnant.
Grandma came. One of mummy’s brothers came.
And that’s all I remember. About that night. I don’t remember where we slept.
I remember the flat vividly. Before the divorce. When we moved in, it was plain cement. He had it tiled, repainted, and tastefully furnished. We had a small aquarium, a circular electronic 3D display hoisted on the wall by the kitchen window, and a sign on the toilet door. Most people didn’t have that. The entrance had sliding doors, then a narrow hallway that led to the bedroom on the left, and the living room on the right. From the living room was the toilet, and by the right of the toilet was the kitchen window. The kitchen could be accessed from outside only.
Before we moved into this flat, we stayed with mummy’s elder brother.
The next few days were blank, and the next few months were blank. Grandma received a quit notice from her house, and we moved into an uncompleted building in Olota, after Ekoro junction, Ile-Epo. Us, grandma, and mummy’s youngest brother.
That was the beginning of the back and forth.
Mummy struggled. Grandma struggled. She got tiles from her pastor, but the Keke driver could not go down the sloping cul de sac that the house was located. Grandma hefted the bags of tiles to the house.
We didn’t go to school. Mummy left the house one day in January 2010, and came back in a yellow taxi with a baby in a white shawl. Flourish. On his naming ceremony our father sent his names via text. He didn’t come. Nobody from his side came.
Neighbours asked us when we patrolled the wells for water, “Is that your daddy?” Referring to my mummy’s youngest brother. No, I replied.
“Where’s your daddy?”
“He’s in London.”
Before the separation, we were very okay. We didn’t have a car, or millions, but we ate goodies and delicacies, paid bills on time, had luxurious furnishings, and had a bicycle. I was never sent home for school fees. So, we were very very okay. Now, we had barely enough to eat. Mummy set up a provision stall in the front of the house. She also went out to find work. I monitored the stall, Favour and I ate nearly half the biscuits on display, and I remember washing everyone’s clothes – mine, Favour’s, Mummy’s and Grandma’s. I almost died that afternoon. Mummy brought sweets in cartons from Cotonou to sell.
It is not all that jumbled in my memory. I remember mummy falling out with most of her family. One night, she went to work and we were locked in the room. Flourish began crying. Wailing. I made him tea in his feeding bottle, but he wouldn’t take it. Frustrated, I began crying too. I remember the door was locked because Grandma came to the door step, asking what was wrong with baby Flourish, and I could only croak. The only light was from a candle. I put Flourish down and poured sugar into his tea, hoping he would drink it. He drank it. Why do I remember this night, and not the others? Maybe I feel guilty about the sugar.
I remember my eighth birthday. Grandma sang for me in the morning, while I danced foolishly in the living room, pretending to be happy. The house was furnished with Grandma’s old, poor belongings. An old TV set, two beds in the bedroom, old, sagging, dull settees. The entrance led directly into the living room, with Grandma’s room by the right, and the other room by the left. Mummy told us to say our father was in London is anyone asked.
A couple of months after Flourish was born, mummy found a friend in the next street. Mummy Sharon. We lived there for a while. It must have been during this time Grandpa was moved in, because I remember taking food to him from Mummy Sharon’s apartment. Mummy enrolled us in Living Seed Schools. I was in Primary 4. Same school Sharon went to at the time.
That was the second to the last time I saw my father. He came to my school, with a large purple bag containing goodies and my first phone. He specifically told me the phone was mine, not my mum’s. Visafone. Then he left. How he found us, I don’t know. One especially fair boy jeered, saying no one from London could have gotten to Nigeria that fast. I didn’t know what to say. When I came first in class, a boy who always had running nose jeered, saying I cheated, since I had spent only one term in the school. I remember placing the phone under the Christian altar in mummy Sharon’s living room at night, thinking it was a safe place for it to be. Mummy laughed at me. I can’t remember if it was that night or some other night, but Mummy made pancakes one night, and we ate in the balcony.
I told her, “Nobody likes me.”
She said some comforting words, but I wasn’t comforted . If I was, I would remember what she said.
We came back from school one day and met Flourish's head shaven smooth. I remember when school told us to go home in a panic due to the forecast of acidic rain. Students gushed out of the narrow gate, and someone pushed me so violently I flew in the air and came crashing onto the side of my elbow. Nobody even looked to see who fell. It bled badly, and it left a scar the texture of sticky burnt rice. I still have it, albeit faint.
Suddenly we changed schools. Skyop. Primary 6. Sharon too. She was enrolled into the boarding house. Mummy’s elder sister worked at the school. During break she gave us meals, me and Favour.
‘”What did you eat this morning?” I remember her asking me this, vividly.
“Indomie.”
“What did you bring to school?”
“Indomie.”
She shook her head and tutted, and gave us yam and fried eggs.
I skipped primary 5 when I enrolled in Skyop. I was infamous in class. I felt ostracized, cause I came in the middle of the term, and the classmates were already in tight cliques. I spilled crackers on my uniform, I played too rough, I looked rough, and once I got into trouble when I mistakenly ripped a boy’s button off his shirt.
