Another splash of water woke me up from my slumber. I had slept beside Obi - the young man that allowed me to sleep beside him on his carton.
"What the hell!!!" I screamed to see him standing right in front of me holding a bucket of water.
Is it a doctrine here to to use water in waking someone up?
"Well Mr sleepy head, it is 7:00am already, this place is not your father's house and it is time to vacate the bridge and look for something to do rather than sleeping" he replied while he dropped the bucket to bring out a dry - gin sachet from his back pocket that reads - Chelsea
"Take this, use it to wash your mouth and stay around while I look for money" he said stretching that horrible thing at me.
"Am very sure this doesn't look like a toothbrush or paste" I shrugged but he scoffed.
"Well this is better, you should be happy you have something to brush your teeth" he said and threw the sachet to me before urging me to get up for him to pack our sleeping carton and bucket to an unknown place.
Then I realized that we are both of the same height. Except that he has a thicker and darker skin. A deep scar ran across his shoulder which is very obvious since the only cloth he has been wearing is an armless Chelsea Polo and a short black jeans.
He must really like Chelsea
6fts tall, but he has a broader chest like someone who visit the gym constantly.
Speaking about clothes, I realized that I also have nothing to wear except the clothes I had wore from my house when my mom and I embarked on this journey.
Oh My Mom.
I curled back to the floor to begin another round of tears, they kept coming as the images of my mom being shot kept replaying in my brain.
"What are you doing?" I looked up to see Obi in front of me holding a face towel which he used to clean his slippers but he stopped when he noticed the tears from my eyes " what is wrong?" He asked and sat down beside me where I narrated all my ordeal to him but instead he smiled.
"Get over it soon before it takes you too" he said in a reassuring voice.
"It is not that easy, I've known her all my live. She has always been there for me after my dad died. She is the best mother I could ever have" I sniffed but he scoffed
"At least you can call her a mother and she loved you before she died, my own worse, i never knew my dad and my own mother hated me but she never ceased to show it. She was a prostitute and I was obviously disturbing her profession" he stopped to chuckle before he frowned. "when I was twelve, she couldn't bear it again and from Port Harcourt, she came to Lagos to drop me on the road and left without me"
"Are you kidding me?" I asked as I used the back of my hand to wipe my tears.
"I wish I was"
"That's so heartless of an human being talk less of a mother"
"Our people say there is nothing new under this sun so you see, I've accepted mine as fate. Everybody here also have their own story to tell but no one writes it on his or her head, we all have to shoulder our pain and move on. So my advice to you is that the sooner you get over it, the longer you live" he stood up and dust his butts "man must chop, am going out to work now. I gast to hustle" he announced like an engineer going to his site.
"Do you even have a CV?" I chuckled amidst tears
"Well I don't need a CV"
"How are you going to work"
YOU ARE READING
HIDDEN IN THE PUBLIC
Adventure"Obi no one would want to hear our story, no one understands neither do they care about us. We are nothing but outcast of the city" ******************** Thomas seems to have lost everything, his parent, his friends and even his way in Lagos city. He...
