This House Is Not for Sale (2 page)

W
e were all woken up one morning by shouts of thief! thief! We were summoned to the large sitting room, the parlor. One of the women who lived in the house was kneeling down on the floor and was crying. Her name was Ndozo. She was one among the many women that sold for Grandpa in the market. She also had a little son whose nose was always snotty and who wore three aluminum crucifixes tied on a string around his neck and a talisman around the waist. They said she had been stealing from the money made from sales. She was one of the trusted ones. She was one of those that counted the money at the end of each day. She was accused of helping herself to some of the money.

“How long have you been stealing from the sales money?” one of the older men living in the house asked her.

Her interrogator's name was Sibe-Sibe. He had lived in the house for so long that no one remembered what he was exactly. He occupied that unclear borderland between servant and freeborn. All the servants feared him. Grandpa respected and trusted him.

“Not for such a long time,” she said.

“One month? One year? Three months? Just tell us how long?”

“I don't remember how long,” she said. “It is the devil. I promise never to do it again.”

“We will show how we deal with thieves in the Family House.”

Someone grabbed a Tiger razor blade from its packet and began to scrape off her hair. There was no pretense or attempt at giving her a proper haircut, the shoddier the job, the better, this haircut was intended to humiliate, not beautify. Soon most of her hair was on the floor though there were still small tufts of hair on some parts of her scalp. Some parts of her scalp were bleeding where the blade had nicked her skin.

They stripped her of her clothes, leaving only her underskirt made of different-colored cotton fabric. They made a necklace out of snail shells and strung it around her neck. She was given two empty milk cans and told to start clapping them together like cymbals. We were told to follow her as she was forced to walk out of the house half-naked.

“I will never steal again. It was the devil. I don't know why I did. This is my family. I have no other family. Please, I promise not to steal again.”

But Grandpa wanted to use her to set an example. He said that it was important that we saw how thieves were treated so that we would never be tempted to steal in our lives.

As she was led down the steps out into the streets the men told her to sing. One of the men was holding a long
koboko
horse whip and would mockingly act as if he were going to whip her, at which she'd jump and the snail shells would make a mild rattling sound. She clapped the empty milk cans together and began to walk down the street as we followed her. We were told to make booing noises and jeer at her as we walked behind her. As soon as we left the house because it was still early morning, we passed by people bringing out their wares and women frying
akara
. They would pause in their morning activity and turn to us and she would be made to stand before them as she clapped the empty milk tins together and sing and we ululated behind her.

“What did you do?” they'd ask, even though they already knew from seeing her shaved head and the snail shell mock necklace around her neck.

“I stole.”

“And what did you steal?”

“I stole money from the sales box.”

“And what did you do with the money?”

“It was the devil that made me do it.”

“Will you ever steal again?” they'd ask her.

“No, I will never steal again,” she would say.

“Now do your song and dance for us again. It is a good song, we like hearing it.”

She would dance and clap her empty milk cans together as she sang:

We moved from the Family House through different streets and warrens and side streets. At some point she said she was thirsty because the sun was out and burning but she was immediately told to shut her mouth. She said she wanted to urinate but she was told to pee on herself. She said her throat was hurting and that she was losing her voice, but they asked if she would have stopped stealing if she hadn't been caught.

“It was the devil that made me do it,” she said.

We were getting tired too, but still we walked and walked a bit more and she stopped and sang and stopped and sang and people asked her what she had done.

When we got back home she was told to go and kneel in the same corner where she had been kneeling when we woke up. She was not allowed to touch her son.

“You see how thieves are treated in the Family House?” we were asked.

“That is exactly what will happen to anyone who steals in this house, including my own children and grandchildren.”

The next morning when we woke up, Ndozo had vanished, leaving her infant son behind.

There were lots of stories about her disappearance. Some said she had been so consumed by shame, she had gone and thrown herself into the lagoon. Others said she had run back to her parents. Nobody could recall who her parents were. She was one of those that had come to live in the house in exchange for some money owed Grandpa until the money was paid back, then she could return to her family. But it was said that whoever borrowed from Grandpa was never in a position to repay because he jinxed them and many of them remained in the house and had children who also became a part of the Family House, helping around the house until they became old enough to go and start selling in the store.

It was said that before Ndozo left the house she had placed a curse on the house, saying that just as she had been put to shame that the house and its inhabitants would eventually be humiliated and come to shame.

Someone said that Grandpa had whispered that she was not going to be missed and that she had done a good thing by leaving her son behind.

Years later, a car parked in front of the Family House and a plump woman stepped out. She was dressed expensively. She shielded her eyes as she looked at the house, as if she needed to reassure herself that this was indeed her destination. She walked through the gate and entered the compound. It was
Ndozo. She greeted and asked for Grandpa. She excused herself and went back to the car. The driver began to carry things into the house. Plastic containers and clothes. She said she had come to take her son back with her. She was now a big trader in plastics in the neighboring country. She said she had been blessed with everything, good fortune and riches; her business had prospered. She had started out as an apprentice, selling plastics to a big trader over there, and because she was good in business, knew how to attract customers, and sell at a profit, all of them skills she had acquired from living in the Family House, she had made the business of her boss grow. She said that all she was today she owed to her time selling for Grandpa. Her boss soon opened a shop of her own for her and the shop had really grown in size. She was now a big distributor of plastics. She even had people selling for her. She was sorry for that theft of a long time ago but she was also happy that something good had come out of it. Here she was today, prosperous and independent. She had people selling for her and she would be disappointed if they stole from her. She was here to make restitution. She had found love, she had met a man who loved her and they were married, but she had been unable to conceive. People said that a woman must choose between the kind of wealth that can be counted, such as money and landed property and cars, and the type that cannot be counted, for you can count the number of cattle that you have but you do not count your children. Where was her son? she asked. She wanted to see him and touch him with her hands. In all the years that had
gone by there had not been a day that his face and thoughts of him had left her mind.

There was silence. They let her words sink in, then they came at her like angry wasps.

“And you want us to believe your story. Your story is too sweet to be true.”

“You have been stealing from the money box in the store before you were caught.”

“You must have been sending all the money to your partners in the neighboring country who must have invested it for you.”

“You were selling plastics, indeed. Don't we have plastic sellers here, how many of them have become rich, if what you claim is true.”

“And you think you can just come back here and take your son back. Suppose we tell you that he fell sick and died, what then?”

She began to cry, and all of a sudden she was the old Ndozo. Her expensive clothes began to look like a masquerade costume. She said she knew it in her soul that her son was still alive. She said they should compute all the money and interest of the money she took from the money box all those years ago and she would pay it back.

She said she was ready to give all she owned to the family if only she could be allowed to leave with her son.

“And all the salt, all the pepper, all the soap, all the medicines, and all the clothes the boy had worn these years, was she ready to pay for them too?”

She pleaded with them to tell her what it was going to cost her.

“Suppose we tell you that the boy is dead. That after you left for days the boy refused to eat or drink. He kept pointing at the road, asking for his mother. Asking when she would return to cuddle the way he was used to being cuddled at night. He was told that his mother would soon be back. He cried even more and as he cried his body became hot and he began running a fever and then fainted. He was rushed to the hospital but the doctor said it was too late, his heart was already broken; the doctor said he had never seen a heart that broken in one so young.”

“I know in my heart, the way only a mother can know, that my son is still alive, I can hear his heart beating.”

“How can you call yourself a mother when you abandoned him when he most needed a mother's warmth, the joy of hearing you call his name, telling him that the evening meal is ready and he leaves his playmates and comes running toward you, his nose in the air, drinking in the aroma of well-made soup.”

“All the years I have been away, I have always thought about him and about this house. I know I did bad and that was why I left. I have always wanted to ask for forgiveness for what I did and show my gratitude. I always thought that this will be a day of joy and reunion and reconciliation.”

“So what were you expecting? You were expecting us to roll out the drums for a common thief who stole from the money box and fled to set up her own trading business with money stolen from this house?”

“To worsen matters you also left your own son to die in our hands.”

At every turn they countered her pleading. They turned on her. They twisted her words. Her voice turned hoarse from begging. Her knees went sore from kneeling on the hard ground. The tears on her face formed a crusty, salty dry rivulet.

Finally she stood up and left.

Here is what we heard. She took all the things she had brought with her to share with people in the Family House. She took them to the Beggars Lane. That night, the king of beggars told all the female beggars to follow her to the Family House. When it was midnight, they all bared their buttocks on the house and began to rain curses on the house. They cursed and prayed for evil to befall us and did not stop until dawn began to whisper gently into the ears of dusk and then they departed.

Ndozo left for her trading post along the border and never returned. Her son was still alive but he grew up never knowing who his mother was.

M
y cousin Ibegbunemkaotitojialimchi, meaning “O save me from my enemies so I can live to the evening of my days on this good earth,” or Ibe for short, was staying in the Family House that summer too. Unlike some of us who would be going back to our homes after the long summer holidays before school reopened at the end of the rainy season, Ibe and his mom didn't know when they would be returning to their home in the North. He and his mother left the North because his father had married a second wife. Ibe was the same age as me, but he appeared to know more about the ways of the world. He knew many secrets. He claimed he could perform magic tricks. He claimed he could speak many languages, including a smattering of Hindi, Chinese, and some Arabic.

Ibe said if one wanted to beat one's opponent's team in a soccer match then one must go and capture the biggest redheaded
agama
lizard that one could find.
Agama
lizards were abundant
,
always sunning themselves unconcernedly on cement blocks in the adjoining uncompleted building. Kill the
agama
lizard, Ibe said, and tie a little piece of red cloth around the lizard's neck, drive a pin through the lizard's head and bury it in a hole by your goalpost. According to Ibe, you have effectively
tied
your opponent and no matter how much they tried they could never get the ball past your goal mouth or score a goal against you.

Ibe said it was also possible to padlock an enemy's brain so the person would fail their exams. Here's how—buy a Yeti or Tokoz padlock, unlock the padlock, and simultaneously whisper your enemy's name and the incantation
read and forget, read and forget
seven times, as you lock the padlock and throw the keys away. When your enemy gets into the exam hall, he'll forget all he has read because you have effectively padlocked his brain.

Ibe said the best soccer coaches gave their players tea laced with an intoxicating pill capsule
.
This way, the players never got tired while playing and had relentless stamina. He said the reason why India never featured in the soccer World Cup was because they had strong magic. In their first and only appearance in the World Cup
,
according to Ibe, they had scored over a dozen goals against their opponent. Their opponent's goalkeeper later told the sporting press that each time an Indian player shot the ball in his direction
,
he saw over a
dozen soccer balls hurtling toward him and became confused as to which to catch; he inevitably caught the wrong one. Ibe said this was the reason why Indians had moved on to cricket, where it was normal to score a century.

Ibe said if one loved a girl and did not want her to leave you for another boy, then one should mix one's blood with that of the girl in a blood covenant. A blood covenant was easy, he said. Make an incision on the girl's wrist and make an incision on yours with a sharp razor blade, allow a drop of blood from your wrist to drop into the incision on her wrist to mix your blood with hers; both of you should then dip your finger into the mixed blood and touch it to your tongue. After the blood covenant, if the girl attempts to leave you for another boy, she'll lose her mind and go insane. He knew a girl who wandered around the streets in the northern part of the country half-naked, picking up rubbish. Everyone knew it was because she had broken a blood covenant with her boyfriend.

Ibe said if you want to see your girl in your dreams, place her picture under your pillow and call her name seven times before you fall asleep, and she'll most certainly come to you in the dream.

Ibe said that if you wanted to know all life's secrets, all you needed to do was read a book called
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
. The book contained all the secrets of the world, including the secret way to riches. But there was a catch, according to Ibe. The book must be read at midnight by the light of a lone red candle. The candle must not burn out before one
finished reading the entire book. If the candle burns out and one has not finished reading the entire book, madness was sure to follow. Ibe claimed he owned the book and had a red candle too, but was waiting a few more years before reading the book and growing very rich.

Ibe said he knew how to make a potion out of leaves and feathers that could protect us from snakebites and scorpion stings, but he was not going to show it to me because, from past experience, each time he used the potion, snakes and scorpions would crawl out of their holes and would begin following him around almost as if they were taunting him to find out if his potion was effective or not.

Ibe said the market in the town where they had lived in the North was a place of wonder and spectacles. He said that magicians and entertainers came to the market and that he and his friends were allowed to go watch them. He said he had once watched as a magician brought out a sharp sword and attempted to run it through his own belly, but the sharp sword was unable to cut through the skin. The magician had then asked for a volunteer from the crowd. A few volunteers had come forward, including Ibe. They tried cutting the man with the sword but the sword would not cut through the skin. Ibe said when he attempted cutting the magician's belly with the sword, the skin felt like steel.

Ibe said that his father worked for the federal government. His father worked for the national telephone service as a telephone operator. His father could not leave his post because he was an important man. He could reach the head of the country
through his little finger. He said his father had memorized the entire country's telephone numbers and area codes. He was an important man.

Ibe said that he did not like the girls in this city because they had flat noses. The girls in the northern part of the country were fair skinned and had pointed noses. They were shy but beautiful.

Ibe said he was going to order a talisman from India called
pocketneverdries
. He said if one had the talisman in one's pocket, one will never run out of money to spend, one will always have the correct amount of money down to the smallest change to make all one's purchases.

Ibe said our
suya
here tasted stringy and was completely juiceless because the meat was from old cows, whereas the
suya
in the North was juicy and succulent because it was made from young calves and rams.

Ibe's mom went to the post office every Friday to check if there was a letter from her husband. He was supposed to write and tell her when he was coming to beg Grandfather so she could return to his house. Whenever she returned from the post office empty-handed, as always she would lock herself in her room and would not talk with anyone for a few days.

Ibe said one could make money from hiring out one's services to a beggar as a stickboy. One simply led the beggar by his stick and went with him from door to door shouting
Bambi Allah
. He said he once had a part-time gig as a stickboy. But he also said the beggars over here were all con men: they only pretended to be blind but they were not really blind. He
said they applied gum arabic to their eyes to appear blind and washed off the adhesive at night before they prayed.

Ibe said that this our city was a bad city because unlike in the North, where there was a sign saying
WELCOME TO THE NORTH
.
COME AND LIVE IN PEACE
, no sign welcomed anyone to this city except for the billboard proclaiming
YOU ARE NOW IN THIS CITY.
According to Ibe, nobody was welcome here and one was here at one's own risk.

Ibe said the strongest man in the whole world was not Mighty Igor, the wrestler we all watched on World Wide Wrestling every Thursday at 8:00
PM
, but a man called Kill-We. Kill-We had a single bone, unlike us mere mortals, who had multiple bones. He could pull a stationary tractor trailer with one hand. As a result of his special powers the government had to build him a special house outside of town limits because when he snored in his old house, which was in the town center, the foundations of nearby houses shook and his neighbors couldn't sleep. Ibe said Kill-We toured all the schools in the North showing off his prowess—splitting logs of wood with his bare hands and breaking cement blocks with the edge of his palm.

Ibe said that down the street from the house where they lived in the North also lived two
men
who were not really men but women. They walked like women, they tied wrappers on their chests, they waved their hands about like women when they talked and their eyes were ringed with kohl and they painted their fingernails and toenails bright red with nail polish. According to Ibe, at night important and rich men
in gleaming black Mercedes-Benz cars came to visit the men who were not really men but women and take them out to town. The men who were not really men but women would return in the early hours of the morning heavily loaded with gifts. They would go to the market and buy stuff to cook. They made such delicious chicken stew with lots of thyme, curry,
tomapep
, and pure groundnut oil; one could smell the aroma of their stew a mile away.

Ibe said that entertainers brought monkeys, hyenas, and baboons to perform in the market. Some of the monkeys were dressed up in ties and some dressed up as women. The monkeys performed dancing tricks. At the command of their owner they would lie down and jerk their waists around like common
karuwa
.

Ibe said it was fine to steal from idols because there was only one God. Idols were blind, they could not see, they were dumb and could not speak. We would wander away from the Family House to where three roads intersected to pick up shiny coins left there by idol worshippers for good luck. He would boldly pick up the pennies, three-penny and five-penny coins. He would kick aside and upturn little sacrificial earthenware pots that contained palm oil and little dead chicks. He would gather all the coins and we would use the money to rent chopper bicycles from the bicycle repairer. We would spend the remainder of the money to buy
suya
beef kebab. He would take a bite and complain,
kai northern suya is best I would not eat this suya for free in the North.

Ibe said idols had no tongues and it was good to steal from
them though he did believe in magic. He said most drivers that plied the road in the northern part of the country had special magical powers that helped them vanish if they were involved in an accident. At the point at which their vehicle collided with another, their magical power made them vanish and then they would come walking toward the wrecked car from the opposite direction without a scratch. Ibe said he would get this amulet as soon as he was old enough to drive. He said he had tried to drive but was not tall enough to see through the windshield while seated.

Ibe said we were going on a big
mission
. We were going to be like Harrison Ford in
The Temple of Doom
. We both wore pretend helmets that he had made from foolscap sheets. Ibe was the leader of the expedition. We passed the area where three roads intersected. We left the major road. We headed toward the outskirts. Facing us was a small building. It was no bigger than a small shed. It was held up by solid timber pillars on four sides and roofed with corrugated iron sheets now turning rusty. Inside was a large mud sculpture of a matronly figure of a woman carrying newborn babies in both hands. Behind her were bottles of Mirinda, Crush, and Fanta. So many bottles. Some looked like they had been there for a long time; their crown corks were getting rusty. Fresh and cooked eggs lay around. There were lots of shiny coins everywhere; some half hidden in different crevices on the mud sculpture
,
and there were cowry shells too. On the ground and lying around were different colors and makes of plastic baby dolls and sweets and toffee. Ibe said that these were things left
for the goddess by ignorant women who wanted babies. Ibe said that men and women made babies by sleeping together. Ibe said
let the mission begin.
Ibe put a couple of sweets in his mouth and told me to do the same. I put a Hacks in my mouth but spat it out when he wasn't looking. I did not like its peppery taste. Ibe began to scoop coins into his pockets. What are you waiting for? he asked. This is free money. I took a few coins and then we heard approaching footsteps and we fled.

Ibe said we should go to the cinema and watch an Indian movie starring Amitabh Bachchan or Dharmendra. Ibe said Indian actresses were the most beautiful women in the whole wide world. He said they were even more beautiful when they were dancing and that sometimes in the movies while they were dancing, it would start to rain and what luck this was because the rain would plaster their wet saris to their skin and one could catch a glimpse of their breasts.

Ibe paid for the movie with the money we got from the
mission
. Ibe bought
suya
, Ibe bought Fanta, Ibe bought Wall's ice cream, Ibe bought FanYogo, Ibe bought Fan ice orange slush, Ibe bought
guguru
, Ibe bought
epa
. Ibe said we should walk into the movie theater like Harrison Ford walking into the Temple of Doom, we should walk in with a swagger and we should be swaying from side to side because no one could stop us. We did.

Ibe's stomach is distended and swollen like that of Baba-Uwa the
otapiapia
seller who wears a false beard and pads up his
stomach with old clothes and dances around the neighborhood of the Family House screaming
only one drop
,
only one drop
is all you need to kill the cockroach, the mosquito, the lice, the mice, the ant, and the bedbug bugging your life, only one drop of
otapiapia
is all you need.

Ibe said I should come close. I go closer to him. Ibe is sweating. Ibe is clutching his stomach like some pregnant woman holding her jiggling stomach as she rushes to catch a
danfo
bus. Ibe says we must keep our secrets secret. Ibe said the difference between men and women is that men can keep secrets. Ibe's breath is stinky, smelly and damp and green and fetid like the shrine of the goddess. Ibe said do not breathe a word of what happened to anybody. Ibe's breathing is coming out with some difficulty like that of an old transport lorry.