Page 30

Amidst the sea of books, broken woods and glass shards, Alex stooped before the man he'd tossed into a chair, who looked dazed, a mottled hand cradling his jaw. He pulled out a pen from his pocket, and wrote down something in a book, hands trembling.

“Send an account number to that number,” he said. “And rest assured, we're doing everything possible to clear Uncle's name permanently. If you were a tad reasonable, we might have walked you through the process. But walk with me.”

Mr. Joshua kept staring.

“You reveal whatever the hell you want to.

The people believe. Then, the questions pour in.

How and why did they meet? Was Uncle perchance…

soliciting? What do you think would happen when you tell them he took a minor under his care?

If you're half as smart as you think you are, you'll treat that nasty cut, keep your mouth shut and allow us finish what we started.”

Without waiting for a reply, he rose, gripped Timi's arm and all but dragged him out of the dinghy flat.

The First of Him.

Three days later, and The Boy still hadn't found the time to return to the doctor with the different face. Who, he was certain, had forgotten about him.

He kept his face averted, as he placed a plastic bowl of water in front of a beefy man with exposed chest hairs that looked like armies of crawling black ants.

A fist clamped on his wrist as the boy turned to leave, causing him to stumble.

“Look at me,” the man said in Yoruba.

The boy fixed his eyes on the sweaty hairy hand on him, swallowing the bile threatening.

The fist yanked him closer. “I said look at me, boy!”

By now, the activities in the busy restaurant had reduced, and the boy's body prickled from the stares boring into it. His worst nightmare was manifesting in the cruellest of ways. A hall filled with all those faces demanding he looked at them? He'd hoped madness would stay away a little longer.

“Ahan, Akinolu, leave Eyi alone joor,” a coquettish voice exclaimed.

The man turned towards it. “I can't believe you're fighting for your boyfriend in my presence, or you think say I no know?”

From the corner of the boy's eyes, several of the serving ladies gathered. Bisi, the one who had spoken and the one who had sent him to the doctor, stood in front with arms folded across her enormous breasts.

“Are you jealous?” she asked with a sly smile, and sniggers filled the room.

The man yanked at the boy's arm. “Of who ? This…this thin, dried corpse? What does he have that has you all over him, sharing him around like your palm-oil stew?”

“Big gbola!” A voice shouted from within the diners. “It's not by big chests. All these small schoolboys carry pass.”

Raucous laughter erupted, blending with the drowning noise in the boy's head .

This only increased the man's ire. He released the boy's wrist and reached for his shorts' elastic.

His heavily bearded face immediately morphed into an oblong one. All bones and sunken flesh. Gnarled hand holding a stick, and another creeping into his shorts.

“I'm a man like you, you shouldn't feel anything. Resist the devil. Your desires are a sin before God.”

Then, the agonising pain. The freeze. The chants.

“What…what is happening to him?” Someone whispered.

But he was far gone. Thrashing on the floor he'd collapsed to and wailing gutturally. “Please, don't kill me, sir. I'll be good. I'll be good. God forgive me.”

“Bring water!” Another voice screamed. “It's like he's convulsing.”

Cold water doused the boy, but instead of curtailing the thrashing, it increased it.

The boy felt himself being lifted up, crushed in between soft flesh reeking familiarly of fermented cassava and iced fish. He began swinging, throat emitting hoarse cries he didn't recognise.

“Drop him. Immediately.”

The voice was thin, but sharp enough to silence the chaos around and inside the boy. He would recognise that voice anywhere. The doctor with the different face hadn't forgotten him. He'd come for him.

“Who's that?” Someone asked.

“He's the new doctor from the city.”

Steady hands gripped the boy's arms and lifted him from the floor they'd dropped him. “Can you walk?” the doctor asked.

The boy went for a nod, but a dizzy lightness gripped him, and he felt himself fall.

The doctor insisted he wasn't deranged, the boy believed the doctor knew nothing. But his ignorance had created a little spark within the deadness inside the boy. And he would take it over anything his life was worth.

The doctor had approached Iya Fati, demanding the boy be allowed to work for only a few hours till late afternoon.

He then took to parking at the restaurant's gate in his Camry at the end of the boy's shift, honking for him to get in.

With Bisi and the other girls frowning from the window, the short walk from the busy restaurant to the car soon began to feel like a journey to freedom, with the doctor smiling at the end of it.

“...and you know what the woman said?” the doctor asked as they drove to an appointment, a month after the rescue. His compulsory new job as the doctor's medical assistant required him tagging along.

“She said the drugs were too big,” the doctor answered himself. “So, for her first dose, she’d cut it in bits, wrapped it up in eba and swallowed it. This was a glycerine suppository. It’s for constipation and should have gone into where we poop from. Thank God she came to me on time.”

The doctor glanced at him and exclaimed. “Is that a smile? I’m sure you’re laughing hard inside, aren’t you? If you were there, you wouldn’t have laughed.”

The boy placed his cheeks against cold glass, watching streams of rain pater down the misted windshield. His facial muscles hadn’t moved, but the doctor was that good. Reading him even when he couldn't read himself.

“Okay, to be honest, I may have laughed a little.” The gear groaned in protest, causing the car to rattle before picking up. “But only after I had made sure she was safe. I bet you wanted to know.”

Mind Reading. The doctor's part time job.

“I don't mind that you don't speak much though. Makes you a great listener. Unlike my siblings. They never want to know about my work.”

The doctor switched the wiper off and wound down his window. The boy followed suit, then stuck his head out, inhaling the wonderful cool smell of wet tar.

“I know you have many words,” the doctor continued talking.

“I see it in your eyes. Especially those times when you hold up the I.V tube or the tray.

You're too queasy to choose my path that's for sure.

So, what do you want to be in the future?

Lawyer? Pilot? Teacher? Accountant? Err…

astronaut? The police? Oh, no, not that?

How about actor? Nah, I don't want that for you, too fake. How about…errr…a writer? A poet, perhaps…”

The boy stared straight ahead, avoiding the doctor’s heavy gaze.

“...oh my God, that's it, isn't it?”

The boy frowned. Okay, the man was taking the mindreading thing too far. Because he could bet his Sunday shirt no muscle on his face had moved. How could he tell he used to love writing?

“I bet you read too. It's how you learnt to love words. When next I go to Ayanfe, you should come with me. I'll buy you enough novels. When you're done, I'll buy you more. Will keep buying until you decide to start writing yours.”

His fingers sought the band on his wrist. He hated when the doctor said things like this, and how his heart leapt. He knew it would never happen. Not when freedom and happiness were like the solar eclipse he'd once witnessed.

“The whole sky will turn dark as night,” Mr. Bolu, his Geography teacher had told the class. “Make sure you don't look at the sun directly, or you'll go blind.”

They talked about nothing else for the whole week.

Then, the day came, and they all stood outside the dormitories; faces raised to the sky.

Because they were boys, and disobedience was an inherent quality.

The sun had grown dimmer alright, but it had also grown dimmer the previous day and many days before that when it threatened to rain.

They also didn't witness the moon covering the sun.

No darkness. No blindness. No bragging rights. Dashed hopes. Crushed dreams.

Exactly what freedom and happiness were. The possibility of them realer than their reality. Just like the doctor's promises.

However, three weeks later, while on another round of house calls, the doctor took an unexpected detour. And it took the boy a minute to realise where they were headed.

Since the doctor took him under his wings, the boy had been waiting for when he would eventually ask.

He must have heard from the townies. The mysterious case of the dismembered police SHO.

Great Prophet Emmanuel's boy-boy who lasted for only three months because he was too evil for God's holy presence.

The sixteen-year-old boy who had gone through women more times than what ten average men would go through in their lifetime.

But he hadn't heard of the boy with the forbidden poems. Or the boy who shared house with the Witches of the West. If he did, he wouldn't have turned into that street covered in red sand. Or headed for a rickety black gate, where the damaged pieces that made up the boy's fractured whole resided.

The shivers descended then, so violent, the chair in which he sat vibrated. The doctor took one look at him and made a U-turn in a screech of tires.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” the doctor kept saying as he sped along the narrow roads. “I got your address from one of the girls and only wanted to ask for permission to take you to Ayanfe, since we would be spending some days there.”

The boy knew then, that if he must enjoy for a little longer the possibility of freedom the doctor offered, he had to open his mouth and vomit the darkness he'd locked deep within him.

Two outcomes. Either the doctor threw him out immediately, or he waited until he no longer had use for him, then threw him out. But they were all better options compared to the Witches of the West sinking their talons into the good old doctor and turning his mind against the boy.

That night, surrounded by the pale-yellow light and heat from a lit lantern in the doctor's little parlour, the boy told his story.

The words came out haltingly at first, but the more he talked, the more they swelled in size and impact.

He left nothing out. From the moment under an orange tree where he experienced indescribable fulfilment, to waking up to water drenching him.

To being forced to lay bare his soul to a crowd of boys.

The lynching that came after. From the boys, the prophet and his women.

To the women suddenly appearing, in all shapes and forms. And to the one who had opened the door to his hell.

He dumped all on the doctor's thin shoulders.

“Ma knows. Everything,” the boy whispered. “I heard her. She has a record tape she gives to t…them. And they must…record…” The boy swallowed. “She wants them to chase the sickness completely. But I'm okay now. I swear I'm okay. ”

“Jesus. Jesus,” the doctor kept muttering.

Then, the tears came, and the boy grew awkward. He'd never seen a grown man cry.

“It's okay,” the boy said. “It's not that bad anymore. My…girlfriend, Bisi, she's okay. She doesn't smell very badly, and she said we can marry. Then, the others will stop coming. The faces may stop changing.”

The tears only increased, and the boy went silent, eyes dry, watching and waiting for the doctor's face to change.

Instead, a hand reached out. He jerked away from it, but the doctor didn't let go until he relaxed back into his foetal position on the single armchair. Then, the doctor stooped at his feet.

“Eyi, look at me.”

He dared not. He couldn't lose this one to the sea of monstrous faces.

Fingers snaked underneath his jaw and forced him to look. The doctor's eyes were red and dull with brows furrowed, but that was it. No distortion. No teeth bared in disgusted snarls. Not a slightest hint of condemnation. What his face held instead was something he hadn't seen in a long time.

Compassion and understanding.

Only then, did the boy's eyes begin to burn.

“I want you to listen to me carefully,” the doctor said softly but firmly.

“In three weeks, I'll be returning to Lagos, and you are coming with me.

I've already checked out a school you can resit your WAEC exams in.

Then, I'll send you to the university. You can choose whatever course you like; it doesn't matter. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

The Boy stared, unable to form words. For what could be said when possibility and reality finally merged?

In three weeks, the boy would turn seventeen. Mummy Grace, the owner of the kiosk some blocks away from his house, had said to him last Christmas. “You played the number 47 that's why you got the biggest balloon. Any number with seven is a lucky number.”

And for the first time in his life, the boy had the courage to think himself lucky.