The rants of an antsy girl

20/02/2020

Thursday

Perhaps if I ever got to pass JAMB eventually, and I graduated from pharmacy and then applied for a job, if I was asked on my CV about my many skills, I would include stealth. How I had sneaked past all those many security men and cameras and even my mother was a thing of pure professionalism, something that only a handful, like myself, can do.
I muse.
In the long run, my mother and my dad would eventually find out that I snuck out of the home, but I left a note saying that I went out for a walk. A long walk alone and that I was fine and that my phone's battery was dead and they would believe me. Of course it was an obvious lie but something in me makes me view my parents as wisely foolish people who think they know it all and close minded oldies. Somehow, I hang on to the hope that they hate my very guts because of my failure and will be most certainly happy that I have left the house, but I feel guilty as soon as I think of it. They may not love me but they did not hate me so much to want me out of the house.
Technically, they want me out of the house, but not out of the house to be homeless.
Also, I hope they don't get to find out that I had hit Mr Akhere on the head with Anjola's umbrella, forced three tablets of my dad's piritin down his throat and locked him in the small room and then I switched off the monitor in the tech room since kamaru fixed it in.
I should be called the queen of stealth.
I had it all planned when I got the call from Efosa.
He had walked into the room, looking cynically smug as always. He wanted to rip my offering out of me without my consent.
He had gripped the front of my blouse and lifted me up from the old chair, licking his lips like my grandmother's dog does and when his hands slipped under my skirt and into my underwear, I bashed his head with Anjola's umbrella. After which I fell. Then I bashed it and bashed it again until there was blood pouring on his goat dung hair.
I must say, I am proud of myself these days.
My only fear is that no one finds him.
When I met Efosa where he had asked to meet, at Uniben maingate, I flung myself hard at him and told him I was sorry. There, I realized I had never genuinely felt sorry as I did at the moment.
'I am sorry too,' he said after we separated. I was perplexed because he was totally on the right of the issue and he  had no need to apologise. I was fully at fault. Selfish and self centered to those that truly cared about me. Efosa was not my dad, nor was he Laju that I had to treat him in such way. Though he called me about Laju.
'You don't have to be sorry. I realized that I am very selfish.'
'Well, yes you are...' he had reluctantly agreed, 'But I should have told you and not left when you needed me. I understand what it means to witness deaths and threats, especially on your family.'
Sometimes, that is several times after we made up today, I wonder what kind of substance Efosa's heart was made from.
Although we made up, Efosa refused for us to chit chat even though I was bursting with many things to talk about. He said that the situation at hand was pressing.
It is even though I initially thought it was not.
It was a video. It was sent to Efosa by a private number.
The mystery texter.
Inside the clip, I saw Laju.
It is so heartbreaking.
They were some girls and some boys and from the video, I could see how dim the room was. It must have been somebody's room off campus because there were many plastic chairs that looked like they were foreign to the room- borrowed from nearby. There was a low wooden table and on it there were bottles of beer; Star lager, Smirnoff Ice, Gulder and some that I did not recognize.
That was not the bad part.
There were lots of kits and small bottles, drug bottles, there were urine test bottles, syringes and many other things that my eyes could not bear to see. There was sisha.
I had thought I had seen it all until I saw Laju. She was talking with the others above the sound of loud marlian music, the kind that Destiny and his friends danced to in the grand sitting room. Somehow I wished it was Destiny there instead of Laju.
Laju is a small child. A baby. She knows nothing. She is too innocent and perfect for this kind of thing.
But it was not the music. It was something else. It was the tube tied tightly around her left upper arm and the swab she was pressing down on her elbow,   the so familiar look of perfection and intelligence was not on her face. She looked confused and unfocused and she had this smile. I cannot explain it. It was like it was frozen on her face even though her lips moved every so often and there was a deadness in her eyes from what I could see.
For the first time since she fell in the toilet many years back, I was genuinely scared for Laju.
She started to laugh and then suddenly it froze on her face and she hysterical started holding her head, nobody seemed to care.
All that is left to haunt me now is the blood that trickled down her nostril. Her left nostril.
Now we have just stopped in front of NDDC hostel, it looks even less dignified than when I came to pull Laju's ears.
Laju!
Efosa Combs his hand through his hair as we enter the gates.
'I know it is fine. She is okay.' He keeps muttering.
I feel otherwise. I know it is not but I am too scared to acknowledge my intuition.
There are two bored looking Porters there, one unapologetically black bald man and a shorter man on a stained shirt.
I go back outside because I know what they will ask;
'Her room number, her department, her name, her level'
Useless things that will eventually amount to nothing.
When Efosa comes outside, he gives me a hopeless look. The people are very lax about security. They ask that we wait until twenty four hours, until Jesus is telling Laju to depart from him because if eventually Laju dies today, she is definitely going to hell.
'Just pray,' Efosa urges in a bid of positivity.
I want to flare out and ask him why I should but I bite my tongue and will myself to pray.
I am a sinner, I say to God.
I also hate Laju, but please help her.
Perhaps God did really care because just as we lost hope and I decide that I will tell my Dad everything, Laju calls. Not Laju, but her friend or roommate. Whichever.
'Laju!' I breath in desperation.
'This is not Laju. I am Didey, Janet's roommate. Am I speaking with Joan? Her sister?'
My heart sits up. Hopefully this will be helpful. Laju, Janet- the same person.
'Good evening o. Please I called to know if Janet is at home with you. We haven't seen her since she went out with her course mate yesterday afternoon and she left her phone to charge.'
I almost loose my breath but Efosa mouths that I calmed down and replied the caller, the Didey of a girl.
'Good...Good evening. Laj- I mean Janet is not at home. Did she say where she...Where she was going to?'
I hear background talk like,  where she say she dey go sef?
My heart dances batà.
'Ekosodin?' the Didey asks the people in the background, then to me, 'They say she said she was going to Ekosodin with her course mate.'
'To do what?!' I cry, Efosa's eyes almost pop with curiosity.
'I really don't know. We'll ask around sha and call you once we get anything.'
'Please, please do!'
The girl ends the call.
The my phone buzzes with a text.

Where are the notes I asked to be crammed? The spot offered none to me!

'We are going, Efosa.' I say with so much confidence as I read the text.
'Where?'
'Where we should have gone to the other time. Ikpoba.'

...

It is almost four in the evening when we get to the place. It is indefinite that this is the exact place and the place looks so disgusting and busy, the road teeming with commuter buses and cars groaning up and down the slope. The river is so dirty that it seems like the kind of set up for one of those ogbanje people my mother's church people pray against everytime.
Until a hooded man that reminds me of Suby's so called Damian appears from nowhere and crosses over to the other side of the very busy road. I can feel it in my very bones that he is the mystery texter. He just has to be the one.
'Run after that guy, That's him!'
We run across the road, drivers honking at us, cursing us, calling us names like ozuo.
I did not care though and I don't think Efosa did too. I feel a kind of vengeful rage that I had never felt before.
The guy runs off and it is almost like we are being led to a place. We follow him through a dirt road, paved on each side with tall wild grasses. It seemed that we had entered into another world and as we ran the blades of the grasses cut into my skin. Efosa is miles ahead of me and I try to Increase my pace. My chest heaves with fire.
We run and run for a very long time till we come to a clearing, it is getting dark by then.
I bend and grip my knees because all the running is making me nauseous. The person is not in view except some algaed uncompleted building. In the stead of the man we were pursuing, is Zita.
Zita!
Efosa runs back to me and drags me forward, he is not letting linger because suddenly the atmosphere tenses into the kind you would expect in a lion's den. I feel threatened and endangered but also, I feel rage.
When we get close to Zita and I confirm that it is really her, I push Efosa away and slap her across her skin.
That skin- so free of blemish like nothing ever happened. She looked like nothing close to fire from a matchstick had ever been close to her in her entire life. To think that my Dad is still paying the hospital for someone who was not Zita.
'Zita! What are you doing here?!'
Zita looks amused and joyful. I want to tear her head from her neck. Efosa is trying to comprehend everything because he knows that Zita is at the University teaching hospital, because he went with me. And because he saw her.
'Joan!' she replies in feigned surprise and then pulls a sly smile.
'What do you mean Joan?' I ask. The disgust  I feel is overwhelming. How can she stand there like nothing is wrong? Like I am supposed to do nothing as I have seen her. Like I am supposed to not react to her presence. I must give the mystery texter credit: He really is unpredictable.
'How your mother?' she asks, still sly.
Efosa's steps crunch up to where I am standing.
I lean on my left leg and fold my arms across chest in defiance.
'She is fine. How was coma?'
For some reason, I have this sudden boldness and I look her in the eyes. Those beady eyes: they looked so familiar.
Zita laughs. I realize then that I have never actually seen her smile, let alone laugh. All those months she worked at the house.
'Your humour is pitiful!' She spits after her bout of laughter. She begins to examine her nails then and at that moment, I notice how weird it is to see Zita without her oil stained apron, with so much Independence. Not the Zita that put up without looks of disdain because of my Dad's measly ten thousand every month.
The biggest shock of my life currently, is that Zita is not burnt.
'If you are here, who··· who is at the hospital?'
Zita sighs, like my questions mean nothing. I almost want to run to her and slap her silly but I have to be calm, like Efosa even if I doubt he is quiet and collected out of maturity. Questions swim in his eyes.
'There is a proverb,' Zita starts. 'The shadow of a man is his first identity. I have know since that you Ofortokun peoples are easy to trick. One thing like this and you people believe it. You digest whatever. Your mind is closed like drum.'
It begins to seem like my brain is hurting. Efosa clears his throat out of the indigestion of information.
'Your father is there, he thinks his money can make up for his brainless head!' she spits, 'Your mother is occupying curse. She have forsake things and she have put the fuel that start the fire in the beginning. It is her I pity.'
She shakes her head. My heart thumps clumsily.
'But... But how?' Efosa
She smiles and does the villain walk- the silly, slow two steps catwalk with the most dangerous look she could've mustered.
'You know, like I say earlier. Your father thinks money can make up for loss of brain but I say no. We prove him wrong, we prove that intelligent is superior than plenty of money. Always money money money and the poor suffer, the people without no privilege suffer. I suffer.'
Then in a deadpan, she says, 'It is worth telling as story.'
I gulp. It dawns on me now that intelligence is not even a matter of how well you speak, talk more of riches.
Oh God!