The Spider King's Daughter (5 page)

‘So, Abikẹ, where have you been?’

My father rarely asks such a direct question without knowing the answer.

‘The car had a fault so Hassan went to fetch a mechanic.’

He was standing but the distance between us made it seem like we were level. Tall, without being thickset; handsome without effeminacy: physically, most would say he is perfect. I have always thought there is a worrying sharpness about him.

‘What about this friend of yours?’ I had seen the IG many times in this study. Perhaps my father was now using his network.

‘Oh, the hawker? He’s just someone I buy stuff from. He’s very handsome though.’

I knew the last part would annoy him. He is like a normal father in some respects.

‘I’m not sure this is the kind of person you should be spending time with.’

He had stopped asking questions.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, picking up a leather-bound book that was lying on the cabinet.
Crime and Punishment
, I read off the spine.

‘Abikẹ, you know perfectly well what I mean.’

I put the tome down, smiling at the fingerprints I’d left on its dusty surface.

‘Well, usually I would agree but there’s something special about this hawker.’

I turned my back to him, facing the trophy cabinet where he kept his accolades, the yellow lighting caressing the oiled metals. Best Student: King’s College, 1974, I read off a recent addition.

‘You mean he’s handsome.’

My eyes darted to the image of him reflected in the cabinet glass. He was standing under a painting of himself and both pairs of eyes were looking into my back.

‘Yes,’ I replied, waiting for the reflection’s mouth to open before adding, ‘Also because there’s something odd about him. He doesn’t look like he belongs to “our kind” yet he acts like it.’

‘Don’t be naive. Anyone can pick up posh manners.’

‘Like you, Daddy?’ I asked, turning to stare directly into his face.

He is very proud of the fact that no classmate of his has ever recognised him. The Olu Johnson we know and love has come a long way from Olumide Jolomijo of fifty years ago.

‘Yes, like me, Abikẹ.’

‘Well, Daddy, don’t you think that someone smart enough to reinvent themselves deserves some curiosity? Like you.’

He smiled as we sat.

Mr Johnson: 1

Abikẹ: 1

_{* * *}

‘So who was that?’

‘A Lagosian Senator.’

‘Why did he come?’

‘He is looking for a rather large amount of money to rig the next election.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if he doesn’t win?’

‘I’m sponsoring his rival.’

In the stories he selects for me, he is always the wily fox; rarely brutal or cruel. It shows he values my opinion. He of all people should know better.

‘So, Abikẹ, why are the windows of my newest jeep still not tinted?’

Because how will my hawker see me when I drive past?

‘Because only government officials are allowed tinted windows in Lagos. Besides, it saves money.’

‘My money.’

‘Not forever.’

‘I do have other children.’

‘But you want Johnson Corporations to succeed when you’re dead.’

Abikẹ: 2

Mr Johnson: 1

We continued like this but the score remained the same. By the end of the evening, I had won. As usual, we went through the Wednesday ritual of a robust hug. I often tell myself, while he crushes me, that Frustration is his way of preparing me for the world. Playing becomes easier if I believe the game doesn’t stem from perverseness.

‘Abikẹ, I’d like to meet this hawker of yours.’

I hugged him back, my arms unable to exert a pressure his thick hide would feel.

‘Why not? I’ll invite him over sometime. Maybe one of these days you’ll run into each
other.’

As usual, it ended in a draw.

I looked at Aunty Precious’s heaving shoulders. She had not answered me.

‘Aunty Precious, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she mumbled, her head still buried in the crook of her arm.

‘Who was that?’

‘Nobody.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m fine. Just go.’

‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’

‘Go. Your mother and sister will be worried.’

She was leaning stiffly against the wall when I left, eyes closed, like a person who had fainted in a sitting position. It was a relief to step into the evening breeze. My mood soon sank when I remembered where I was going. Even the garbage wants to escape from my neighbourhood. At the end of each day, people pile their rubbish on to the side of the road and the next morning, you see the sweet wrappers and banana skins a few metres from where you left them, slowly being carried to their freedom by people’s unsuspecting feet. Oh, to be trash.

As I turned into my street, I was disgusted by the ugliness that even moonlight could not soften. The rubbish heaps that looked like burial mounds; the candlelit house fronts that shed light on scenes made uglier by the flickering jaundiced glow cast on them: melon-bellied children chasing a lame dog with sticks, a man squatting in the shadows, showing solidarity by shitting pellets into his neighbour’s compound.

I don’t know why people in my area get robbed. All our valuables put together and trebled would still be a fraction of what thieves could get from some of the houses I can think of. Whatever their logic, the armed robbers pay us a visit twice a month. We hear the gunshots, we cower and the next day we thank God it wasn’t us. There’s no talk of calling the police. We’re not their type.

We are luckier than most to have a two-bedroom flat all to ourselves. My father’s leftover money combined with the sporadic generosity of his old colleagues and friends was enough to pay rent for five years. The lease contract is in a drawer in my mother’s room. Sometimes I wonder what will happen when it runs out. I have some money saved, but it is for the shop I want to start.

As usual, when I got home, there were boys smoking on the bench by the stairwell, the tips of their sticks glowing red in the dark.

‘Boyo, how far?’ my neighbour’s fifteen-year-old son said, in a fake gruff voice.

‘Good evening, Ayo.’

‘I don tell you. My name be Rambo. You wan smoke?’ he said, offering me something that was too fat to be a cigarette.

‘No, thank you.’

When we first moved in, Ayo was the only boy in our block I approved of Jọkẹ speaking to. He went to school every day, he combed his hair every morning and he knew what he wanted to study in university.

‘If you no want smoke gerrout from here.’

A year ago I would have told Ayo to show some more respect. Ever since I saw him smash a bottle over a boy’s head in a fight, I have grown wary of him.

When I walked into our flat, my mother was sitting in the living room where I had left her. At least she wasn’t in her nightie.

‘Mummy, good evening.’

‘Welcome.’

‘How was your day?’

She looked at the table as if bewildered to find herself still sitting there. ‘It was good, I think.’

I walked into the room I shared with Jọkẹ.

‘Jọkẹ, I’m back.’

‘OK.’

There was a candle next to the bed and she was doing her homework on her lap.

‘Has Mummy eaten?’

‘I don’t know.’

This is how she is at home: curt, monosyllabic.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘I made noodles.’

‘Why didn’t you make for Mummy?’

‘I cooked them for her once and she said they looked like worms.’

I went out again.

‘Mummy, what do you want to eat?’

She stood and began to walk towards the kitchen. ‘That is what I should be asking you. Do you want yam pottage?’

The last time she tried to cook supper, Jọkẹ and I were out. When we came back, there was smoke in the apartment and a pot on the stove, burnt to black uselessness.

I led her back to the chair. ‘No, thank you. I’ve already eaten. What about you?’

‘Maybe a little bread.’

I spread margarine over a slice and waited until she had swallowed her first bite before returning to the room.

‘Jọkẹ, next time make sure she starts eating before you leave.’

‘OK.’

‘Or if it’s not too much to ask, you can sit with her while she eats.’

‘OK.’

‘And you can say something other than OK.’

‘OK.’

When I went outside, my mother was still nibbling on the white part, her teeth sinking into the bread a millimetre at a time.

Three months after he died, while we still had one car left and my mother was alert enough to drive it, she took me to the accident site and pointed at the blackened chassis of what had been my father’s car. Already the grass was beginning to reclaim it, growing round its geometric shape. We parked and walked down the slope.

‘It is empty,’ my mother said as I stuck my hand through a gaping window, clenching and unclenching my fist. My
father
was the only padding that had stood between life and a blackened skeleton, between before and after.

Sometimes, I search my memories for a clip of before and play it to myself. A favourite is the first time I saw snow. I was in New York and it was not snow like you saw in the movies. It was brown and gritty like sand.

‘What is it?’ I asked my father.

‘Snow.’

‘No,’ Jọkẹ said. ‘Snow is white.’

‘It stings,’ said my mother, ‘cover your eyes.’

Now it seems a lie that, once upon a time, my father’s bank account was full enough for the American embassy to grant us visas. But it is true. I have been to America. There are stamps in my expired passport to prove it. I have seen snow. For this there is no proof except the memories in my head. They are enough to remind me that once I knew more than Mile 12 and hawking and fetching water on Friday evenings.

It was before Abikẹ wanted to know about when she was asking all those questions.

I don’t share.

‘Do you want to come to my house this weekend?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Would you like to come to my house on Saturday?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Some friends are coming over and I thought you might like to come.’

I worried about inviting him. The papers are always full of armed robbers who are hawkers in the daytime.

‘Yeah, sure. What’s your address?’

Even if he is a thief, it is unlikely that he and his gang will get past my gate.

‘It’s fine. We’ll pick you up at one o’clock?’

‘That’s really nice, Abikẹ. I’ll be here.’

It’s possible my father is right. The speech and manners may be newly acquired. Or worse, the road may make him seem more polished than he is. If he doesn’t come to my house, I’ll never know if he can fit into my life.

‘Don’t be late.’

‘Same to you.’

‘The prophet said I would know.’

‘Know what?’

‘I will just know.’

More and more this prophet kept appearing in our conversations, his robes brushing our faces, his sandalled feet treading on our toes.

‘Tell me about the prophet.’

I shouldn’t have encouraged him. Once you go back further than two years with Mr T, he loses his lucidity, perhaps even a portion of his sanity. But I wanted to know what was hidden behind this character that he could not stop mentioning.

‘The prophet was a man that helped me through a bad time. Though not for free.’ He chuckled. ‘Nothing is free in Lagos.’

‘Surely a good prophet would not collect money for his prophecies.’

‘Shut up!’ he shouted, striking the cardboard we were sitting on. ‘You don’t know what you are speaking of. Besides, I didn’t need what I gave him.’

‘What did you give him?’

‘My hand.’

‘Your what?’

Suddenly I did not want to know the rest of this story, did not even want to know if it were true. He mistook my silence for interest.

‘I was wandering through the bush one day and I came upon him. He was standing absolutely still with his hands raised to the sky like this.’

He raised his good arm to the bridge, his gaunt fingers brushing the air.

‘I was in the bush because that’s where I buried my daughter. I carried her body four thousand steps outside Lagos. She was beginning to smell or I would have gone the full six thousand: a – a thousand for every year.’

There were many questions that could kick holes in this new fabrication of his: how did you keep your hand fresh but not your daughter? Why did you carry your fresh hand to your daughter’s funeral?

‘In the end I couldn’t even bury her. Try using one hand to dig a hole.’

I laughed, a short bark of a thing that left me feeling ashamed. This story could have been ripped from a home video: horror that melted into tragedy that swung into farce with the delivery of a line. Still, imagined or not, it was real to him, more real than the bridge he lived under.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I should be laughed at. Mr T the hero, marching off with my daughter slung over my shoulder. I should just have placed her in the ocean. It would have been better than the hole I couldn’t even cover properly.’

He was mumbling now, speaking to himself.

‘If I had put her in the ocean I would never have met the prophet and the prophet would never have given me the prophecy and I wouldn’t be alive now, because the only thing keeping me alive—’

‘So what was the prophet’s name?’

‘The man who cut it off told me to keep it and sell it. But the prophet’s prophecy was more valuable than mere naira.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said I would know when she came.’

‘Who?’

‘An exchange.’

‘What?’

He hissed. ‘You should not ask what you do not want to know.’

He was right.

‘I’m going to buy some
chin-chin
. Do you want?’

‘No thank you.’

I walked to one of the women who made it their business to provide finger food to the scum of Lagos. They sold under the lurid film posters that were plastered all over Abẹ Bridge. Why did they choose here, when their wooden tables could barely fit into the small space for pedestrians, when local street children buzzed around, looking for an opportunity to snatch and run, when most of their customers were men like me and Mr T?

‘Thank you, Aunty,’ I said, when she poured an extra cup of
chin-chin
into my bag.

‘No problem, my son.’

She was fat, like most of the women traders, their rolling flesh the best advert for their goods.

‘Buy biscuit!’ a particularly large one called out and before you knew it a round of Buy cake! and Buy buns! was heard under the bridge.

‘So how are things with your friend? Abikẹ something,’

‘Johnson,’ I said, pouring some
chin-chin
into Mr T’s lap. ‘She asked me to come to her house this Saturday.’

‘Finally, a breakthrough.’

It was a strange choice of words. One I would have commented on if I hadn’t caught sight of my cracked shoes.

‘I don’t have anything to wear.’

‘What’s wrong with what you’re wearing now? It’s better than what I have on.’

‘I can’t wear this. Imagine me in her house wearing this.’

‘I think you look fine.’

When I got home I searched my cupboards for something presentable. Everything was too small.

‘Jọkẹ, what do you think?’

She shook her head.

‘Mummy, what do you think?’

‘You know everything looks good on you.’

Aunty Precious proved more helpful. When I told her about Saturday, she offered to help me choose an outfit. At first I was uncomfortable. The only woman I’d ever been shopping with was my mother. I soon settled into the routine of sifting through the mounds of clothing and occasionally asking her opinion.

We had come to Yaba market, the home of cheap wooden stalls bowed under the weight of the average Nigerian’s need to look Western for as Eastern a price as possible. The stalls were jammed together, clothes flung together, people squashed together, sifting, lifting, arranging without thought to compatibility. If only I had grown up not knowing better then I wouldn’t feel degraded coming here.

‘So, who is this girl?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I said who is this girl that is worth all this trouble?’

‘How do you know it’s a girl?’

‘How about this?’

I looked at the green shirt with
POLO RALPH LOREN
stencilled across the front. Maybe Aunty Precious hadn’t noticed but Abikẹ certainly would.

‘Too bright.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Abikẹ.’

‘Abikẹ who?’

‘Johnson.’

‘What did you say her father’s name was?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Johnson I guess? Are you all right?’ She was clutching the shirt to her chest and breathing heavily.

‘Aunty Precious—’

Before I could ask who she thought Abikẹ’s father was, the stall owner interrupted.

‘Madam, no rumple my cloth.’

‘Sorry, don’t mind me. See I don fold am for you.’

She folded the shirt and then others that people had placed carelessly.

‘Stop looking so concerned. I’m OK. You can’t know this girl very well if you don’t even know her father’s name. Where are you going?’

‘Her house.’

‘She must be bold to ask you out.’

‘I don’t think it’s a date.’

‘Of course it’s a date. You have to match her boldness.’

She held a shirt against me. There was a small tremor in her hand but it was not marked enough for me to comment.

‘It’s pink,’ I said, looking at the shirt for the first time.

‘She’ll love it.’