“What is this boy wanting?” I ask Mr. Kola.
“He’s a beggar,” Mr. Kola say.
In Ikati, we don’t have begging childrens. Even if the mama and papa of a child is not having moneys, they don’t send their childrens to beg. They wash and clean and pick dustbin, and the girls will marry and the mama and papa will collect bride-price and use to eat, but the childrens don’t beg for food.
“I am feeling a little hunger, sah,” I say after we move the car front again. It twist my stomach with no warning, the hunger, but I am talking with a low voice because I feel shame to be asking for food after all the help him and Iya have help me.
“You want a sausage roll?” he ask as he roll down the window on his side and use his hand to be calling one seller that is carrying tray of small, small bread on his head.
“Sauce or what-you-call-it?” I say.
“It is just bread with meat inside,” he say. “Sausage roll.”
“Yes, sah,” I say.
“How much?” Mr. Kola ask the man.
“One hundred naira,” the man say, and pull out one small bread from the tray. “Very hot. Fresh from bakery.”
“Give me three.” Mr. Kola use one hand to hold wheel-steering and another to pull out fresh notes of moneys from a bundle in his pocket. I watch the bundle, feeling sad at how he squeeze dirty money that cannot buy even two of the sausage for Iya this morning, as he is paying the man with the clean notes.
“Eat two, leave one for me,” he say, giving me the bag of food.
The meat inside is small, hard, feel like I am eating salty chewing gum, but I am too hungry, so I swallow it before I finish biting it.
The okadas on the road in Lagos is too plenty. Left, right, here, there is just the motorcycle-taxi everywhere, and they are entering in front of cars with no fear, inside out, moving around the road like streams of water. The people sitting on the back of the motorcycle are wearing one kind plastic cap that is too big for their head, and when I ask Mr. Kola what is it, he say, “That is a helmet. Everybody riding okada in Lagos must wear it or else the governor will put you in jail.”
“You will go to prison if you don’t wear helmet cap?” I ask as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Yes,” he say.
I want to ask more questions because what he is saying is not making sense, but I am seeing something else that is catching my eye: big bus. Plenty of them. Yellow with black lines on it. Some of them is carrying load that is tie to the bus, the other of them are carrying peoples. The one next to our car is having the door open. Some of the peoples inside the bus are lapping other peoples. There is one man holding the door open and his body is hanging outside it. The man is shouting, “Falomo straight! Enter with your correct change!”
“Why is he not sitting inside the bus?” I ask.
“Some bus conductors hang on to the bus in Lagos,” Mr. Kola say. “So that they can sell their seat. Thank God, the traffic is moving.”
Mr. Kola forward the car, and soon we are leaving all the noise behind us and climbing one road that is going up, up, above one river that is stretching far, far under us, and even if you stretch your neck and look it, you cannot see where the river is ending. On the river, there is a fisherman in the afar, looking like a stick on the water. White boats are going along of it too, canoes carrying peoples.
I drag my eyes away and look up at the green sign on top the road. “‘Third Mainland Bridge. Victoria Is-land. Ikoyi.’” I am reading the sign out loud, because I want Mr. Kola to know that I know English.
“Victoria Island,” Mr. Kola say. “High-land. Not Is-land.”
I don’t understand it. The sign is not reading “high-land,” but I keep my words to myself. “Is it where we are going? This Victoria Island place?”
“We are going to Ikoyi,” Mr. Kola say, and give me one kind look, as if he is wanting me to be jumping and dancing. “But I will take you to Victoria Island, so you see what it looks like, then we turn around and go to Big Madam’s house in Ikoyi. When you get to her house, you will understand. Big Madam has a mansion. Big house. She is rich, Adunni. Very rich.”
“That is good?” I ask.
“Money is always good,” he say, pressing his lips tight as if he is tired of all my questions.
We are driving like that in the silent, until we climb down from another up road and we are now inside town again. This time, everywhere is just shining and brighting. Tall buildings with wall of glass, and shape like ship, like hat, like choco-cubes, like circles, like triangles, all different shapes and color and size is left and right of us on the road.
“Eh!” I say, my eyes wide, looking everywhere.
“Yes,” Mr. Kola say. “It is very nice. Nice but busy. That glass building there is a bank. That blue one, far away, on the edge of the water, is the Civic Centre. This one here, with the hundred or so windows, is the Nigerian Law School. That hotel there, the very tall one that looks like is full of shining stars, is the top of the Intercontinental Hotel. Very expensive hotel. Five stars. Look, that is the Radisson Blu hotel. Let me link back to Ikoyi from here.”
We drive on a street with more buildings and plenty shops until Mr. Kola nod, say, “Look, Adunni, look at that shop, the one with mannequins in the window beside that GTBank, that’s Big Madam’s shop. She owns the entire building.”
I look the tall glass building Mr. Kola is pointing me, catch the shining and blinking blue and green letters on the roof of it: KAYLA’S FABRICS inside of the glass. There are two dolly babies with no hand, behind the window too, their skin like the peoples in the Abroad tee-vee. I never see a dolly baby that is tall like me in my life. One of the dolly baby is having costly-looking blue lace pin down on her body, and the other one be naked with two small breast on top the chest like a guava that didn’t ripe.
“Eh!” I say it again because only “eh” is coming to my head.
“Her daughter’s name is Kayla,” Mr. Kola say, keeping his eyes to the road. “That’s why it’s called Kayla’s Fabrics. Good, the traffic here is moving.” We keep driving, and Mr. Kola keep pointing to this shop, that mall, that office. Everything is too beautiful and too much loud for me to be following it all because it is filling my head and making it to be swelling big. When the car turn into one quiet road with green leaf trees on the left and right, and there is no more noise and glass and bank, then my head is no more wanting to burst.
“What do you think?” Mr. Kola ask. “Of Lagos?”
“Too much, sah,” I say. “Lagos is just a noise-making place with too much light and glass.”
Mr. Kola throw his head back and shift the cap on his head and laugh. “‘Noise-making place’ is a good way to describe it,” he say. “Big Madam lives at the end of this road.”