FRANKLIN OBIEKWE

Grasping at Straws

Mom gives me fifty naira every day for snacks. But I don’t spend it. I content myself with the jollof rice or fried plantains or porridge beans she tucks away in my little lunchbox on which there is a fading sticker of Spider-Man poised to leap. Kids at school spend their money on ice cream, toy cars, biscuits, comic books. I am always tempted to indulge in this carefree spending. But I resist the urge. Each day I return home, I bury my fifty-naira note between the brittle pages of my Harry Potter.

It began when I followed Mom to Oshodi Market. Bus conductors with forests in their armpits either clung to their rooftops volleying in guttural growls a stream of bus stops, or tried convincing whoever they saw, almost aggressively, to board their buses. I saw a line of SUVs following each other bumper-to-bumper and wondered which politician was behind it.

It was congested and rowdy here, fringed by clogged gutters exuding smells so thick and heavy they nauseated me. The roads were rutted with greening puddles reaching for a miry coalescence. I could not help wondering how these people perched by the roadside stayed here for hours on end, perhaps even lived here, inhaling these smells. These smells threatening to drag vomit from my bowels should I stay any longer.

The sun showed no mercy. It blazed the sky as if attempting to tear it apart, and baked the air so that when you breathed, oxygen became methane, igniting the hair in your nose. One legless man at a corner, clad in what looked like rags, face pooling with perspiration and crawling with deep crinkles, was clutching a rust-crusted umbrella in his left hand, shielding himself from the remorseless orb above. In his right hand was an old plastic plate he stretched out to pedestrians most of whom paid him no heed.

While Mom haggled over the price of a nightdress, I continued my quiet scrutiny. My gaze met a woman bringing her soiled fingers to her mouth signifying to me that she was hungry. A boy about my age was wheeling around an old man whose eyes looked like they were turned inside out, singing, fi sabil Allah, over and over. A gaggle of girls with such straggly hairs bounded up to Mom and me on our way out, asking for money. Mom yelled at them to stop following us.

In the car back home, she said that the man in the wheelchair was not blind, as if she were some physician who could tell who was blind and who wasn’t from looking at them. It was all a ruse to swindle innocent people like us out of our hard-earned money, she said. Beggars were like that. Deceptive people. They would always use your money for evil, for your downfall. Kindness here, she said, was needless.

I said nothing in response to this. I only wished she would take a moment, just a moment, to reflect on the unsettling fact that these people were merely grasping at straws and probably had no place to call home.

In the wake of her divorce from Dad last year, Mom got herself a boyfriend I’m quite sure she is older than. Maybe it is because, unlike Dad, he has no beard, just that thin tussocky tash sitting atop his upper lip. None of this is my concern anyway. The point is that I don’t like him. Don’t like that he enters our house whenever and however he pleases, choking the room with his fragrance that smells like sour tapioca. Don’t like that he asks me how school was as if he cares. Don’t like how he kisses Mom in front of me and tickles me in the ribs as though I were his puppy or something. Don’t like that Mom is working towards making him my stepfather.

I do not like how she seems to be giving him all the attention these days. She would be more empathetic towards those beggars if she and Dad were still together. This beardless dude of a boyfriend has rid her of her empathy. It has to be him.

Three months have flown by since I started saving my fifty naira. Since I last went with Mom to Oshodi Market. Today Mom tells me to dress up. Says we’re headed there to get some Christmas and New Year clothes. The drive is about an hour or so. While she buys and argues and insists that this pair of denims or that pinafore is too expensive, I stand at a corner not too far from her.

The sun has sloughed off some of its corrosive intensity. The harmattan air, though dust-laden, is so sharp it chaps and cleaves into two any lip that has not been moisturized. I take a moment to look around. I find these people still grasping. Grasping at straws. Plowing on despite the plurality of rebuffs.

I see the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb. All bound by that same single fate: homelessness.

It still reeks here. Just as nauseating as before.

Many minutes later, as Mom and I head back for the car with our purchases, I lag behind her, then stop walking altogether. She swivels around, asks what I am doing standing over there. Will I get back into the car?

I ignore her, and instead start edging towards the lot of people by the roadside still seeking their daily bread. I notice that my heart has started beating a little faster, a little harder against my chest. But with a deep sigh of resolve, I edge forward.

Where are you going? Mom tries to stop me, but halts after a step or two.

From the depth of my bulging pocket, I start dropping fifty naira notes, crisp and shimmering in the sunlight, into every hungry plate and starved palm I find. I can feel Mom’s eyes on me. Perhaps burning with rage or perhaps with a rekindled empathy. I don’t care what it is. These people are touching me, surrounding me like fans would a celebrity, beaming, saying things I don’t quite understand. I do, however, understand the gratitude in their hearts, the rapture of a prayer answered. And that is all that matters.

Franklin Obiekwe is an emerging writer from Nigeria. His inspiration comes from reading and observing the world around him. Find him on X at @ccfranklino.