The Spider King's Daughter (2 page)

‘Funkẹ, which university are you going to?’

‘My mum thinks I should choose Brown but I think it’s too expensive. The tuition fees alone are forty thousand dollars. What about you, Chisom?’

‘I think Duke. Their fees are even higher.’ The whole class could hear the triumph in her voice.

‘So, Abikẹ,’ Funkẹ said, turning to me, ‘have you decided where you’re going?’

‘Yale.’

The good thing about applying from Nigeria was that most of the process could be done by someone else. My father had paid a PhD holder to fill out my forms and sit the SATs for me. I had taken the exams under a different name and been pleased to see that my score would have been adequate.

‘Wow. So, Abikẹ, how much are Yale’s fees?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Chisom. The cost makes no difference to my dad.’

Forest House was filled with people like these girls: a little money, a lot of noise.

_{* * *}

‘Settle down, class, settle down.’ Mr Akingbọla bustled in, his trousers gripping his buttocks. ‘I said, settle down.’

Someone at the back shouted, ‘Bum-master in the building.’

‘Who was that?’

He turned to face us with his large nostrils flaring. ‘I said, who was that?’ He slapped the teacher’s desk.
‘Don’t let meh hask hagain.’

When Mr Akingbọla was agitated, he spread his aitches freely. This always made the girls titter and the boys copy their fathers’ deep laughs.

‘Hexcuse meh, sir, have you travelled before?’

‘How can he? He’s too endowed for the plane seat.’

Again another wave of laughter swept through the room.

‘Silence. Can you talk to your fathers like that?’ He was fast descending into his trademark rant. We were spoilt, we were useless, we would never amount to much.

‘Even if your parents are successful, you—’

Already, half the lesson was gone. A paper plane flew through the air and landed on his desk. This was getting ridiculous.

‘Listen to Mr Akingbọla.’

I needed only one person to hear me.

‘Listen to Abikẹ.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Some respect, please.’

‘Yeah.’

The class fell quiet.

‘You will not succeed.’ Mr Akingbọla’s voice rang out, our sudden silence reproaching him. He shuffled his papers, arranging and re-arranging until he was calm.

‘Today, we are going to continue our lesson on titration. When we want to find out the acid concentration of a substance this process can be used. What other processes can it be used for? Chike.’

Chike answered and Mr Akingbọla droned on, the questions that followed every statement always managing to miss me. I felt no need to display my knowledge. On previous occasions, when he had put me on the spot, the class was allowed to become uncontrollable. He learnt fast.

‘Next week,’ he said in closing, ‘we are going to conduct a practical experiment on acid-base titration. Make sure you . . .’

I wonder if the hawker will be on the road today.

The Datsun stopped abruptly, narrowly missing my legs.

‘Clear from there,’ the driver said, banging on his horn.

‘Are you mad? You no dey see road?’

‘My friend, comot or I go jam you.’

‘You dey craze? Oya jam me.’

‘Comot.’

‘I said jam me today.’

The man swerved into the next lane.

‘Idiot.’

‘Your mama,’ I spread the five fingers of my right hand and spat.

Fire for fire: that is the only way to survive on the road. When I first started I used to mind my manners. Yes please, no thank you, like my mother taught me, but those manners were for a boy who was meant to go to university and work in a law firm. She never told me what to do if a customer sprinted away with my money. She never gave me advice on how to handle the touts that came here sometimes asking for ‘tax’. I had dealt with one that morning, a slim, feral-looking man.

‘Trading levy,’ he had said.

‘I don pay your people already.’

‘Nah lie.’

‘I tell you I don pay. No harass me. They know me in this area.’

‘Who are you?’

‘You don’t know me?’

He was clearly a newcomer unattached to the main body of touts or he would have called my bluff. Instead he spat and moved on to the next hawker.

‘Trading levy.’

I looked round and saw that there were only a few of us left on the road. Traffic had eased which meant that it was time for our break. To save money, I rarely bought lunch outside but I liked to sit with the boys while they ate.

‘Runner G,’ someone said, announcing my presence to the group. They raised their heads from plates piled with rice and red stew, the cubes of meat almost invisible in the mounds. I slapped some palms and rubbed a few backs before joining the circle of hawkers.

The recharge card men are the undisputed leaders of our group. Their branded jerseys set them apart: yellow for MTN, lime green for GLO, red for VMOBILE. Next come those who sell the unusual: framed photographs of past presidents, pots, bed sheets, crockery. Then the food sellers of which there is a hierarchy: ice-cream sellers with bicycles, ice-cream sellers with sacks, foreign sweets, foreign fruits and right at the bottom of the list, anything local: boiled peanuts, scraped oranges, plantain chips. These local things were mostly for women, though sometimes a man who had fallen on hard times could find himself with a tray of groundnuts balanced on his head.

‘So, Runner G, wetin you go chop?’

Already the owner of the
buka
was lumbering towards me, her large feet spreading dust with every step.

‘Aunty, I no want chop today. Thank you.’

‘Why now?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You sure you no go eat?’

‘I’m sure.’

She patted my head, depositing something slick on to my hair. ‘Just manage this one.’

From a secret compartment in her bra, she drew out a clear plastic bag, unknotted it and slid a piece of fried meat into my hand.

‘Thank you.’

She nodded before trundling off to another group.

‘Abeg no sit here if you don finish eating.’ Her voice was harsh again, the Mama Put we all knew.

When I turned, the boys had smirks on their faces. ‘Runner G, it be like say that woman want marry you.’

‘Well, I have no marriage plans at the moment.’

‘No be so I hear o,’ one of the recharge card men said, his voice hoarse with mirth and cigarettes. ‘This woman get serious plans for you.’

‘Abi o? You are a young man. You still get bedroom power,’ a fruit seller said, gesturing and leering at the same time.

I stood. ‘I’d better be going. I have work.’

A chorus of jeering and cajoling rose from the group. ‘Ah ah, oh boy no vex.’

‘We just dey play.’

‘You sef, allow now,’ a fellow ice-cream seller said, pulling me back on to my chair. I let myself be dragged down. Not long after the conversation continued.

‘You watch match on Saturday?’

‘Yes o. Arsenal mess up.’

‘No be so.’

‘Nah so. Arsenal play rubbish. They no get good defence.’

‘No talk nonsense. Arsenal get good defence. The referee just dey cheat.’

‘Abeg leave football. You hear say they catch one senator with fifty million naira in his car?’

‘That one nah old news.’

‘No be old news. Nah last week it happen.’

‘Another one don happen this week. Yesterday, they catch the man’s wife with hundred million.’

‘Just one family dey eat all that money?’

‘Nah so I hear o.’

What would Forest House people say if they saw us? Not that I care. In fact I wish one of them would drive past on a day I manage to keep the hawker for a few minutes after he has given me my change. I imagine their eyes leaving their business to follow us as he walks beside my jeep. The thought makes me smile.

I should be sensible and start taking another route but my magpie tendencies won’t let me. The other day, as six ice-cream sellers flocked to my window, I was pleased to see that I could pick out my hawker easily. He stood almost a head taller than the rest and he had a shine the others lacked. He still refuses to ask for my name. If I were a hawker, I would kill to know a girl with a car like mine.

There is one thing I am uncomfortable with. He is friends with a beggar who is missing an arm and possibly a portion of his senses. This man tried to intimidate me by holding his oozing stump over my window and leering into the backseat. On one side I had my hawker; on the other was this creature. Of course I had to give him money. A whole five-hundred-naira note and all he could say was thank you. Maybe I can befriend a hawker but surely not one who speaks to beggars.

I met Mr T about a year ago, when I was still hawking sweets. We were both chasing after the same car and surprisingly he was faster. A full five seconds before me, his pus-filled stump was hovering over the polished window of the Benz.

On one side, I held up my rack and my customer pointed at a pack of Mentos. On the other, Mr T brought his stump closer to the transparent glass and his benefactress shrank and scrabbled for her purse. Out of one window fluttered a crisp two-hundred-naira note. Out of the other sank a dirty fifty. We were both tired from our dash and we ended up sitting next to each other on the side of the road.

‘Would you like some mints?’

I offered the pack by reflex, immediately wanting to withdraw when I remembered how little I had sold. My father taught us to always act like waiters, or hosts as he preferred to say. He was an effacing man, always scanning a room looking for someone to serve. Offer your seat, offer a drink, offer your mints. It was easy to play the host when you were rich. I hoped the beggar would decline.

He took the pack, unwound the foil and placed a mint in his mouth. His jaws crushed this first white disk, then the next and the next until all that was left was the wrapping.

‘How much?’

‘It’s a gift.’

‘There’s no free thing in Lagos. How much?’

‘It’s OK.’

‘If that is so then follow me.’

I watched him walk away. The distance between us grew as pride and other things filled my head. You know you’ve fallen when you are a hawker that is friends with beggars.

The space widened.

If your old friends could see you.

It was about ten metres now.

If only he wasn’t dead.

At this sickening note of self-pity, I propelled myself forward.

Under a nearby bridge was a pile of cardboard strips and scrawled above this heap was a sign that said: SIT HERE AND CARRY MY CURSE. Mr T took me there and asked that I sit. I bent my knees in compliance, read the message and promptly stood.

‘I brought you here to pay you with something more precious than naira. Many have wanted to know what I am about to tell you. One man from America even asked for an interview. He came with a tape recorder and notebook. I refused him. You will be the first person to hear my story in the past twenty years.’

I knew that when you had fallen, the memories that charted your decline became invaluable. Yet, I did not want the story. It was too important to be exchanged for a pack of mints but it was worthless to me. Before I could say no, he had begun.

_{* * *}

‘I haven’t always lived like this and I used to be quite handsome. Or so my wife told me. You smile. Because you think I was incapable of being a husband?’

His stump waved my apology away.

‘You are right, perhaps I was. She was never the same after I married her. I offered all the things eighties Nigeria promised, a good job, servants, two cars. We both failed and I ended up in Oilet Grand Insurance. Do you know it?’

I shook my head.

‘It was a horrible place. All day I read claims that I knew I would deny. Seven years into what I thought would be the rest of my life, I was fired. No pension. No reference. After that, things started disappearing. First my wife, then the car, then the gateman, then finally the house. Still, when my daughter and I moved here, I was hopeful.’

The cardboard pile did not look big enough for two people. Perhaps the daughter had moved out and built her own cardboard house.

‘She started to lose weight a few weeks after we moved here. Her skin became stretched like the pastry of a meat pie, a meatless meat pie. With our money almost gone, I had two options: begging or armed robbery.’

‘You could have become a hawker.’

‘It was not so easy in those days. The soldiers could come at any time and lock you up for illegal trading. I used to leave her here and work on a nearby street. I soon discovered that poverty was not enough to be successful.

‘“You are lucky to have been born like that,” I said one day to a beggar who had no left leg. He smiled with teeth that were bloody from chewing kola. “Oh, this one no be luck,” he said patting his stump. “I still dey pay for it.” God forbid! God forbid bad thing. Then her skin stretched tighter and her belly began to protrude. I went back. He gave me an address. I went there and—’

‘Were you awake?’

‘Of course I wasn’t awake! What type of stupid question is that? You think it hurt less because I was unconscious?’

‘Calm down, please.’

‘I am calm!’ He banged the cardboard, his head jerking up and down. I stood, eager to distance myself from this beggar who was attracting stares. ‘Come back. I am calm now. You can come back. She died two weeks later because I was too foolish to remember that you can’t beg while your stump is healing, you can’t think for the pain, you can’t feed your two-year-old daughter.’

I stood there unable to find words that would blend sympathy into my suspicions. Where were his parents? His
relatives
? His friends? And how had he slid into poverty so easily? Even in Lagos, the white collar was not so loose that one could be an insurance man on Monday and a beggar by Friday.

In our case, there had been clear signs. The domestic staff were the first to go. Then our garage emptied, then the flat-screen TV was sold, leaving a square patch lighter than the rest of the wall. Yet, it was only when the landlord came to our house with policemen that I realised that this phase of our lives was not temporary.

Still we didn’t become beggars after we left Maryland. No relatives came to our rescue – my mother is estranged from her family and my father’s relatives are too poor – but his friends gave generously in the months following his death. Even if there were no family members, did this beggar have no friends that could have tided him over till he found another job? And that he would have found another job, if he had really worked in an insurance company, was almost certain.

‘The prophet promised that one day the opportunity for revenge would arise,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘So what is your name?’

‘They call me Runner G on the road. What is yours?’

‘They used to call me Mr T in my office.’