They stopped at Chioma’s apartment building. “Here, have the rest,” she said, giving him the package of biscuits. Then she ran in. Nnamdi bit into one of the buttery biscuits as he watched her open the gate and go inside. She was right: Kaleria used to be rich. But when the honey flows, the flies always smell it, Nnamdi thought. His mother had said this the night after his father’s murder, when she was in an especially dark mood.
“There must be something I can do,” Nnamdi muttered as he headed home. “I’ll bet if Daddy could, he’d fight them all as a ghost.”
Nnamdi’s home was surrounded by a concrete wall. It was topped with barbed wire and broken glass, and built into it was a red metal gate. Each time the gateman pushed the gate open, Nnamdi noticed its hinges were beginning to rust. It made his heart heavy because he knew that if his father were alive, they’d have had enough money to fix it.
“Mr. Oke,” Nnamdi called. He hiked up his schoolbag and knocked on the gate. When there was no answer, he knocked again. He frowned. Mr. Oke, the gateman, was always at his post, ready to open or close the gate. He’d been their gateman for over twenty years. The old man was a dear friend of his father’s. Even now that his mother could only pay him half of what he was paid before, he stayed on, living in the guest quarters.
“Mr. Oke, it’s me! Nnamdi!” Still no answer. “Where is he?” Then he heard it, ever so faintly. Sobbing. It was coming from beyond the gate. From inside the house? Nnamdi’s cheeks grew hot and a shiver leapt up his spine. He started banging like crazy on the gate. “Mr. Oke! Mr. Oke, are you there?! What is happening?! Mr. Oke!” A car slowly passed on the lumpy dirt road behind him. He didn’t turn around to see who it was. He didn’t care. “Mr. Oke!”
Finally, he heard footsteps approach the gate, the clang of it being unlocked, and there stood Mr. Oke, a worried look on his wrinkly brown face. “Come,” he said, taking Nnamdi’s hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Your mother was robbed on her way from the market,” he said. “In broad daylight!”
“What?”
They moved quickly across the compound. Mr. Oke opened the front door, and the sound of his mother’s sobbing was loud and clear. She was sitting on the couch, her head in her hands. Nnamdi ran inside.
“Mommy!” He threw his arms around her and hugged her. She leaned on him and sobbed into his shoulder.
“Nnamdi, why did your father leave us, o?!” she wailed. “Why did he leave us to suffer, o?!”
Nnamdi felt tears prick his eyes. He’d never seen his mother in such a state, even on the day she learned of his father’s death. No thief would have ever done this to her if his father were alive. Everyone knew who she was. But then again, his mother wouldn’t have been reduced to selling tapioca if his father were alive. Nnamdi looked at Mr. Oke with questioning eyes, unsure of what to do. Mr. Oke just shrugged.
“Mommy, what happened?” Nnamdi asked. “Where is your tray of tapioca?”
She looked at him, wiping the tears from her cheeks, and then straightened up, pursing her lips. Nnamdi gazed at his mother’s face. She’d become so dark now from all the time she spent in the sun, drying and then selling tapioca. A year after his father’s death, the little money they had had dried up and the police had turned a blind eye to their slain chief’s widow and son. Nnamdi had been unfamiliar with tapioca until his mother started selling it. He’d helped his mother arrange the shredded boiled stalks of cassava onto the tray every evening. “It’s poor man’s food,” his mother had said. “People chew it to keep hunger away.” They looked at each other and Nnamdi was sure she was thinking the same thing he was, that they were now in that group. Now something had happened to the food she sold to the poor.
“Mommy, what happened?”
“I dropped it,” his mother said. “It . . . it was that hoodlum, the one they keep shooting who always lives. The one they call Never Die. He followed me and waited until I was alone on the road and then demanded all my money! He said if I didn’t give it to him, he’d beat me right there on the road! I gave him all I had. Oh my God, what have I become, o?!” She started sobbing again.
“Get her some water,” Mr. Oke said.
Nnamdi nodded and rushed to the kitchen, glad to get away for a moment. As he opened a bottle of cold water and poured it into a glass, he took a deep, angry breath. “Some man of the house I am,” he grumbled. He closed his eyes. If I could only buy her a car, he thought. Then at least she wouldn’t have to walk in the hot sun the way she does and risk running into thieves. Even as he’d spoken to her, he’d noticed her feet. They looked tough as leather, despite the protection of her sandals, and her bunions looked a lot worse. Anger heated his chest. Anger at the police who had abandoned them. Anger at his own powerlessness. And most of all, anger at the Chief of Chiefs.
He took the glass of water to his mother and watched her drink. “Thank you, Nnamdi.”
He hugged his mother again.
Later, his feet took him to the back of the house, to his father’s garden. He walked among the weeds and sat down. His eye fell on a feeble but still living yam vine.
“I’ll take care of you,” he whispered to the plant. He’d take care of the whole garden from now on, he decided. He sighed and then he wished for one thing with all his heart: that he was a grown man who could protect his mother. As he caressed the yam’s delicate green vine, he knew full well that it was a stupid wish.
The Ikenga
NNAMDI HATED THE brand-new scratchy white caftan and pants he had to wear and he resisted the urge to scratch in front of everyone. He was hot, the music was too loud, and he didn’t want to talk to all these people. It seemed all of Kaleria had come out for the one-year memorial celebration of his father’s life.
There were coolers full of jollof rice and goat meat, vegetable soup, spicy stew and pounded yam, fried plantain, and plenty of beer and palm wine. Free food, free festivities. Everyone was invited. And everyone came. It was nine p.m., and the party would probably continue well into the early morning. Nnamdi wondered how his mother could afford all this. He also knew that if he asked, his mother would only say, “God provides.” Probably the women’s club had paid for it. If that were true, he wondered why they didn’t help out with money on other days.
His friends Ruff Diamond, Jide, and Hassan had come with their parents and siblings, of course. They stood near the wall, watching the guests mill about eating, talking, and dancing.
“Did you see that fine girl over there?” Ruff Diamond asked. He carried a plate of jollof rice and chicken in one hand and he shoveled some of the rice into his mouth with his plastic spoon.
“No,” Nnamdi said, rolling his eyes.