A Child of One World

That ride, what a ride! This is the part where am supposed to cry but I can’t, I wont, not after that ride. It wasn’t just a ride through the streets, it was a ride through my life and I won’t shed any tears. It is said that women cry when in pain, men drink. I will not cry. And why should I? Some would tell me it is because I have been left with nothing. Nothing? Nothing is all I have had all my life. If having nothing would be a cause for crying, then my tear glands would have flown dry long ago. And I would have nothing to shed.
Like my neighbor mama Aluoch says, if things continue in this manner, she will one day throw herself in front of a speeding vehicle and bang; there goes nothing – her life. Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. Mama Aluoch has a funny twist to the way she would like to end the nothingness that is her life. When the day comes, she will patiently wait by the roadside until she sees a sleek and elegant Mercedes Benz, only then will she hurl herself onto the road. She can’t afford to be wiped off by a creaky and rusty Chevrolet or some other funny car. It has to be an expensive machine. It has to be an honorable death, a Mercedes death. That is the death I died yesterday, an honorable death, a Mercedes death.
Mine was not a Mercedes though, it was a sleek state of the art Toyota Lexus. What a ride! As we set off, I snugly surrendered myself to its feathery leather seat and let the music from the player soak into me. The music seeped in, bit by bit, carrying me to far far way places, places I have never been to, worlds I have never imagined, worlds other than the one world I have always lived in, my small world.
All this while Mr. expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips just drove on sweating profusely, wishing he could get a broom and sweep me out of the car. I didn’t care, I stuck on like a stubborn stain.
As we rode along the streets, I was this important woman looking out through the tinted glass, seeing everyone while not being seen. Outside I could see council workers sweeping the streets, emptying dustbins and slashing grass. All this for a mere five thousands shillings a month. But that was them, not me. I was this elegant woman, riding in a sleek car, donning expensive clothes and reeking of money.
I had the whole of the back seat to myself, Mr. expensive suit stuck to the steering wheel, squeezing it as if he wanted to strangle it but I didn’t care, like the stubborn stain I stuck on. There was a bar at one side of the rear doors. The alcohol sounded expensive. This is because the bottles clinked in this sophisticated manner every time the vehicle hit a bump or something. I passed my hand over the bottles and I noticed Mr. fleshy lips pursing them harder while glaring at me through the rear view mirror.
I withdrew my hand but not with fear, with dignity. In a manner actually suggesting that I don’t drink, praise the Lord! I don’t indulge in earthly pleasures, pleasures of the flesh and wiles of the devil, Hallelujah! I didn’t want his drinks, even my husband would not have wanted the drinks. I suppose a bottle costs almost three thousand shillings and the bar had three of the bottles. My husband would never drink such. Why should he when he would always go to Mama Junior’s place, spend fifty shillings and come home stupefied as if he had drunk all the alcohol there was at Mama Junior’s.
Baba Billy, that man of mine could drink. I had spent the early years of my marriage trying to stop him from drinking but after twenty five years of marriage, one gets used to it. That man could drink. The best I could do to curb his drinking was to take three quarters of his salary, which was about six thousand shillings and pay the rent, buy salt, flour and cooking fat and leave him the remaining two thousand so that he can drink. On good months, the two thousand would last him till the next pay but on others, he would be out by the middle of the month and I had to lend him some of my own money. Don’t ask me why I did it yet am a saved Christian. It was either I gave it to him or he took it. We used to keep our savings in a tin buried under the bed and nothing could stop him from getting the money if he wanted to. The act of asking me was just a way of showing that he at least cared about me and respected me.
Most people blame his death on the alcohol but I blame it on nothing. He was just doing his job like any other person, trying to eke a living. Baba Billy met his death while dispensing his services for the city council where he worked. He was a guard with the city council, we call them council askaris. Their job description includes chasing hawkers from the city center. Hawkers are considered an eyesore in the central business district of our city, they are this stubborn stain that defiles the standards of civilization and further more, they steal from the rich who use the city. On the day Baba Billy died, the council askaris and the hawkers were involved in running battles.
My husband had had a little too much to drink the previous day and during the fight, he was cornered by the hawkers. The hawkers and the askaris, both living in the slums as neighbors, both earning a pittance to make ends meet and both fighting in the name of making a living, fighting at the orders of the rich. Baba Billy never made it out alive.
But even if he had made it, he would never spend three thousand on a bottle of brandy when he can deposit that same amount at Mama Junior’s and have a whole month’s supply of alcohol. And furthermore, I would never let him do that knowing well that with that money, I can do a shopping that can last for two good months. So as I withdrew my hand from the bottles, I ensured that I did it with dignity, not with fear. I did it in a way that Mr. thick neck would know that I didn't want his alcohol and even if my husband were alive, he wouldn’t want it either.
The ride went on slowly, moving inch by inch in the thick traffic jam and with it, my journey into affluence progressed. If this woman riding in this car had three television monitors in the car, how many did she have at home. There was a television monitor on the dashboard for the driver and the co-driver while both the driver and the co-driver’s seats had monitors at their backs to serve the passengers in the back seat. If this were my car, mounted with three monitors, what about my house. I believe my house would have six screens. One in the sitting room, one in our bedroom, the third and fourth in both Billy and Anne’s bedrooms, a small one in the servants’ quarters and the last one in the lounge.
Since boys love football, I love gospel music and girls love soaps while maids love those Nigerian movies, it would be convenient if everyone had their own privacy to watch what they want. Baba Billy could watch his news in the sitting room while the guests could decide what to do with the television in the lounge. That is what I call peace. No fighting over the remote and better still, no having to pay five shillings to get into a crowded hall just to watch television as it is done in Onga city where everyone, including myself, lives.
Those television dens are not good places. That is where I lost my son Billy after my daughter Anne was gone. Billy was the eldest and I thought he would turn out fine. Anne on the other hand had problems early enough in life. She failed her primary exams terribly but I don’t blame her, the school she attended was no good and we couldn’t pay for a better one. I decided to take her for sewing lessons so that she could learn how to make clothes and acquire a craft that would later help her in life but the road does not tell the traveler what lurks ahead.
Okudi, that wicked man that was supposed to teach her how to make clothes added in a few lessons of his own, how to make babies. Anne couldn’t face me about it, she ran to the coast and I understand that nowadays she does the bad work with the tourists. All this and I can do nothing, I don’t know where the coast is. People fly from abroad to come and see the coast when I can’t afford to get enough money to go to the coast to redeem my daughter, not gaze at the sea, save my daughter!
After Okudi happened on my daughter, Billy started coming home late and every time I asked him where he’d been, he would always tell me that he had been watching football at the hall where people share television. I warned him about the bad boys who hang around that place but I knew I was kidding myself. Which bad boys? All those boys are children I saw growing up alongside my Billy. They are children whose parents lived a tin house away from mine or two sewage trenches away. If I believed they are bad, then their parents must surely believe that my Billy was bad too, they were all bad.
What I was really trying to put through Billy’s head was the fact that his father was not around anymore and he was supposed to seriously think of taking his father’s position in the house but the boy had grown so fond of the sister and coming home to a house without her was coming home to an empty house. As he stayed out late, he started smoking bhang with the boys at the television hall. The bhang got into his head and he started talking of wrongs that can never be righted, telling me about the slavery of blacks four hundred years ago, what did that have to do with me? I warned him and told him that bhang would bring him no good, just madness but he wouldn’t listen. They started a movement with his fellow bhang smokers called ‘No election without liberation, no more politricks’ but they were all arrested for various reasons. Some for possession of illegal substances, others for loitering while others went in for being poor. I hope when he finishes his seven year term he will have learnt that bhang smoking is for the mad men, not normal people living normally like we do, living normally like we do...
Anyway, whatever the case, it would sure be nice to be this woman who has six screens in her house and three in her car. Then, Billy would not have had to go watch football at the hall, never have had to smoke bhang and never have had to serve seven years.
Mr. Expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips realized that I had gazed long at the TV monitor behind his seat and decided to switch it off but that would not get me out. On and on I stuck like a stubborn stain sprawled against the white immaculate leather that was his car’s back seat where I sat.
As the car indicated to turn left into the council offices, I saw a smile of victory curve itself out of the thick fleshy lips. At long last, the ride was over and the stench would get out of his elegant machine. At the offices I explained how Mr. Expensive suit had refused to stop at a Zebra Crossing where I was stationed and how he talked rudely at me when I stopped him. I had therefore booked him and asked him to drive me over to the council offices so that I could charge him with the necessary fine. Mr. thick neck winked at my supervisor and I was asked to wait outside. After a while, he was escorted out to his car by my supervisor who on coming back asked me back into the office.
I was sacked. That even after the man identifying himself as Mr. important person and deep pockets, I still subjected him to such humility. That due to my action, he was threatening to withdraw his sponsorship for the council members’ Easter Holiday at the coast unless something was done about me. I had been a good worker for the almost twenty years I worked for the council, the supervisor went ahead to add, and he would not like to lose me but it was beyond him.
As I walked home to my world Onga city which is ten kilometers from the city center, all I could remember was that ride, that opulent ride on a cloud of affluence between the Zebra crossing on which I was stationed and the council offices. That was one ride out of my world and though it knocked my job dead, at least it was a Mercedes death, an honorable death. And though my neighbors think that I should be crying because I have lost my job and am now left with nothing, what they don’t know is that I have had nothing all along. I have never known what it feels to have something except when I was in that car. It is only then that I knew how it feels to be of that other world and for that, I will not cry.

©2008 Otiato Opali