Joseph Akinkunmi is a Nigerian writer. He is passionate about movie subtitles and good short story collections. Outside writing, he is concerned about climate change and the effects of anthropogenic stressors on the environment.
Zigzags
I do not remember the exact day I first saw Chinedu. It was not dramatic, was not memorable. This, perhaps, is why it was blown like chaff out my memory. The year though, I remember, although with dangling precision. I think it was the year my older cousin attempted physical combat with a witchdoctor’s son and had his short run with sanity squelched. Macpherson was governor then and I, a very young man with clean-shaven head and dreams of going to the new University College in Ibadan to study something, was working under a carpenter in Ota. I did not know what it was I wanted to study, except that I wanted to study. I wanted more than the primary school education my family had struggled to get me. I wanted my English fancy and upper-class-like. I wanted to, as I now hear my grandson, Carl, sing out loud with headphones clamped to his ears, ‘move my family out the projects.’ Chinedu called this dream stupid.
I was sitting in my boss’ workshop one evening, on the large table we did most of our cutting on, sawdust coating the table and my hands. Threads from the edges of my roughly scissored trousers brushed my shin and swayed in the breeze. Some boys were in the workshop listening to me as I talked. My boss was the one who had lit the fire of the conversation, hypothesizing about finding thousands of pounds and how he was going to spend them. He sa on one of the benches, his back against a wooden pole, and his shirt was drawn up to expose his bulging stomach. He smiled as he listened to me speak. I knew he liked me. I was his only apprentice with some kind of formal education and I could speak good English. He liked that and, occasionally, he would speak to me in broken English instead of his usual Yoruba, especially when new customers came in. I think it was his way of declaring to them that he was different, that he was better than the other carpenters who had never seen the walls of any educational institution. He had dropped out halfway through primary school because his parents could not continue funding his education and, although he wanted to go back, they insisted that he learnt a trade to support his family instead. We were comrades in this regard, except that I completed primary school.
I spoke in pidgin juggled with Yoruba. Sometimes I spoke in plain English to confuse the boys who didn’t understand it, to remind them I was better, for the thrill of seeing the pained looks on their faces too. ‘I will go to university with the money,’ I said. ‘The college in Ibadan. After that, na London.’
‘Tunji, won’t you give us some of it?’ my boss asked in Yoruba.
I answered in English. ‘I will give you.’
His response was a grin.
Bayo, the only one of the boys who did not understand any English at all, burst out, ‘What rubbish is this one saying? You were asked a question in Yoruba but you’re speaking English.’
Bayo’s words sparked cackling and laughter, and even I, who initially took offense, let out a chuckle.
I continued in English to piss off Bayo. ‘I will build a house for my parents and share the money with my family and friends.’ Many of the boys struggled to follow. They had to hear first, digest and translate the words to what they understood them to mean in Yoruba, piece them together and then attempt to grasp the whole thing. Maybe it wasn’t this hard for them. ‘But first of all,’ I continued, ‘I will separate the money I will use for school. If I go to school, I will be able to continue taking care of my family and the money will not finish.’
‘That’s just stupid.’
Before Chinedu spoke, I did not realise he was in the room. I did not even know his name. I only knew I had seen him around the workshop a few times, talking to some of the boys.
I stared at him, my eyes steaming with passion. I was enraged, first by his arrogance, then by his disrespect. He was younger than I was, clearly. This was evidenced by the two strands of facial hair glued to my jawline and the fact that his face was bare, smooth as a babe’s butt. He had bushy hair and wide eyes. He matched me in height, and I was quite tall—even if only in my own eyes. I also noticed—a little impressed, a little vexed, a little intimidated—how clean his English sounded. I had to juggle the English I learnt in school with the one I picked sitting by the oil lamp, letting the words in the old dictionary my father got me wear my eyes out, just so I could speak as fluently as I did. And here was a stranger, a small boy, openly challenging my champion status, my monopoly on being the only one who spoke very good English in the neighbourhood.
The thought that Chinedu was more educated annoyed me. But it was not as infuriating as the laughter that splurged and reverberated in the workshop. The boys understood what Chinedu said perfectly. No translation was needed. It was almost culture for us, after all, to master the vulgarities and offensive words in a language first, whether or not we went on to learn the rest. Even if they did not understand, the switch in my countenance was comedy enough.
I jumped off the table. The boys’ eyes followed me and their lips exchanged whispers, which only riled me more. I took swift strides towards Chinedu and pulled him up by the collar of his shirt.
‘Am I your mate?’ I breathed the question into his face.
He did not answer.
Annoyed by his silence, I gave him a whack across his face. His response was a blow that reset the configuration of my jaw. It might have been the reason it took long for my facial hair to develop past those two strands.
One of the boys quickly got between us and pulled us apart. I was grateful for this because I had lost feeling where Chinedu’s hand met my face. But I did not stop trying to wrest myself from my boss’ arms, which were now around my waist, pulling me away from the fight. I gesticulated and yelled at Chinedu, making threats and verbal constructs of the things I would do to him if I got my hands on him. As I made the threats, I secretly prayed my boss would maintain his grip on me and not release me back into the fight. I was not confident I could beat Chinedu, but I had to save face.
∞
Chinedu became my friend a few weeks after that exchange. My boss calmed me down the evening of the fight and gave me a serious tongue-lashing. He spoke to me in Yoruba, not once mixing it with English. He believed messages passed in Yoruba went straight to the heart undiluted.
I spoke to Chinedu when he walked into the workshop the morning after the fight. It was a terse ‘good morning’ I said, my voice cowering behind something within me. My boss had made me promise to apologize. Before Chinedu responded, I muttered ‘I’m sorry’ and marched past him, scurrying out the workshop before anyone else noticed my dearth of toughness.
My friendship with Chinedu was the kind that grew slowly, the strength of our bond thickening and toughening unobtrusively. Our first conversations were greetings and weak passes. We began to make comments and trade one-liners in other people’s conversations until we started to light the flame of our conversations ourselves.
Chinedu was an Igbo boy who spoke an okay Yoruba and good English. I think his Igbo was good too. I did not know for sure—the only Igbo word I knew at the time was bia. He spoke a little too wisely for his age. Sometimes I felt intimidated by these things. I was older and older should have meant wiser, better, but sometimes I felt I was not enough. I spoke good English,
but I did not speak three languages. For a while, before our relationship took root in stone, nearly all my conversations with him slathered on my heart the spirit of competition, some kind of diluted jealousy. I recovered.
It was Chinedu who taught me, in theory, most of what I first knew about sex: I did not always have to be inside; there were other ways to make her squeal from ecstasy. I remember the shock on my face the first time Chinedu suggested we go to a brothel. He had said it so casually—the way he said everything he said.
‘I prefer the girls with big breasts,’ he said. ‘Which one do you like? Big breasts?’
I did not reply immediately. Breasts. The ease with which he said it. I, who had been cultured from birth to speak in euphemisms and half-sentences, could not just forget my home training and reply with the same wantonness he asked his question.
He chuckled when I did not respond. ‘Tunji, have you never?’ He shook his head suggestively. ‘At all?’ At this point his laughter flooded the air. ‘You always remind me you’re older, but I have had more sex than you.’
I was flustered, too scrambled in the head to defend my ego. ‘Who said I haven’t been with a girl before?’
Chinedu only laughed harder. ‘“Been with a girl.” Just say sex. Grown men just say sex.’
‘Isn’t there something better to discuss?’
‘How much do you have?’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind. I know a place and the honeys there don’t charge much.’
‘I’m not going with you.’
‘Don’t be silly. There’s no sweeter feeling than—’
‘I’ve heard.’
‘Then let’s go,’ he said. ‘The girl from last time probably misses my—’
‘I said I’ve heard.’
He laughed.
I got laid that night—Chinedu paid. Her name was Aminat. She had slim fingers and spoke no English. Chinedu had recommended her.
∞
Chinedu apologized for calling my dreams stupid one day. He threw the words out while we were in the middle of an unrelated conversation.
‘Sorry I rubbished the things you said the other day.’ He buried what we were saying quickly and steered the conversation to why he called my dreams stupid. ‘I was offended but I had no right to be. My brother used to talk like that too and it reminded me of him.’
‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘My parents spent so much money sending him to school. England,’ he said. ‘Maybe he loved school. Or maybe he loved England, but he planned to go back for a Master’s after working for a while. He died on his way to work—his first day. All his big big dreams and my parents’ hopes, flushed into the gutter.’
‘Wow.’ I dragged the sound, stretching it into a natural death. I had never been good at mollifying people with any kind of grief.
‘Life makes no sense, you know?’
I nodded slowly in agreement. I truly did not know. I thought that life made sense and education was all that was necessary to clear the nebulous areas in it.
‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’ I asked.
‘Had. My parents gave birth to only the two of us.’
I nodded, thinking about my own many siblings and repressed laughter. Chinedu’s parents were rich—they had enough money to send their son to England—but they had only two children. I did not know many rich people with many children. They seemed to give birth on a budget. It was poor people, like my parents, who pumped out litters and stopped only when too
fatigued to go on. My mother churned out six, stopping at me. It seemed to be comedy for the poor, laying children like eggs—just in case tragedy befell one or two, perhaps. Or maybe they hoped that if they pushed out many, at least one would make it in life. Maybe it was insurance that even if none of them really became successful, the stipends each one spared to send home would all come together to be something in their old age—something to warm the pockets, my father called it.
‘My parents withdrew me from school,’ Chinedu said. I opened my mouth to reply but he continued. ‘Actually, I was expelled.’
‘What happened?’
‘Anger issues, truancy, beating up a teacher.’ He sniggered. ‘No. I did not beat up a teacher. I only returned the teacher’s slap—the same way I returned the one you gave me.’
‘When were you expelled?’
‘Three months ago.’
‘What class were you in?’
‘Does it matter?’ he said. ‘It’s reflex, you know? Returning slaps. Anger is hard to control. My parents keep trying to mould me into my brother, trying to replace him with me.’ He looked away, his eyes a little wistful. ‘In this life you have to be free, you know? You have to be yourself. I haven’t discovered who I am, who that myself that I must be is. Even though I don’t
know yet, I don’t want to live another person’s life—my brother’s or my parents’.’ He let out a dry laugh and hissed. ‘My parents…’ His eyes spent some time on his fingers as he flexed them. ‘I could go to England or, as you want to, Ibadan and study whatever it is my parents want me to. I could come out top of the class and die, first day at work like my brother. Or I could die of pancreatic cancer in my first year of univ—‘
‘What is pancreatic cancer?’
‘I’m not sure—a new disease.’
He talked on and I listened, wanting to empathize but finding it difficult to. He told me how, after he got expelled, his parents came to dump him with his uncle here so he could ‘have sense.’ If he saw life differently, they said, maybe he would see how lucky he was.
‘Life is in zigzags,’ he said. ‘It’s disasters camouflaged in egg shells. You tread on them, careful at first, because they break into things—beautiful sometimes. And then you get comfortable and you begin to walk more casually then, suddenly, you break into some tragedy. Sometimes the disasters come early, no matter how careful you are.’
I wanted to ask Chinedu the meaning of ‘camouflaged’ but I did not want to break his flow.
‘My mother likes to say everything is vanity. I don’t know why my parents bother then, since they know everything is vanity. They should let me do what I want. You never know what’s going to happen, so live life on your terms. If I don’t want to go to school, leave me alone. If na harem I wan spend my remaining days, free me.’
I laughed at his words, not so much because they were funny, but because he rarely spoke pidgin. His father was a wealthy businessman and his mother was a big-time trader in Lagos, so they raised him up quite posh.
∞
I saw Chinedu’s mother the day she decided Chinedu had gained enough sense from living with his uncle. Or maybe she reached the decision that he could not have any more sense. In the two years I had known him, I had not really seen any change. His mother did not look as I had imagined she would from Chinedu’s stories. She did not have the heavy air and intimidating presence of rich people I had assumed she would have. When Chinedu introduced me to her, I folded back into my skin at first. But her smile reached her eyes when she asked my name and so I liked her.
Chinedu went back to Lagos with his mother the following week. His father had, through connections or whatever means, lobbied with his school to readmit him. The condition was that he kept a spotless record from re-entry to graduation. Any misconduct, he was out for good. Chinedu had bragged to me that he wouldn’t last a week there: It just wasn’t his life. He would
not be put into a mould. He made some other declarations. When he I saw him again the following year, he was still a student.
Before Chinedu’s mother came to take him back to school, I did not think I would miss him when he left. But he left, and I missed him. He had become the only person I really talked to.
Chinedu came for two holidays at his uncle’s house after returning to school. At the end of the second, his last, he called me outside the workshop to talk.
‘I’m going to Ibadan next year,’ he said. ‘I passed my exams.’
I wanted to laugh at the joke. But he had not said it with his usual dryness and his face was heavy with seriousness, so I knew it was not a joke and I did not laugh.
When I went home that night, I pressed my face against the weaving of my mat and sobbed. I wanted to feel happy for Chinedu, but it was difficult. There was a tightness in my chest I wanted to empty with the tears pooling in my eyes. My eyes dried quickly but the tightness remained. I did not sleep till morning. I lay down, the roof of my house a blurry thing
in front of my eyes. My mother always said she did not like announcing her successes because the small witches around her would try to steal them from her. People did not like to see others progress: it embittered them. As I lay on my back and parted my lips occasionally to let out air, I began to wonder if the small witches my mother talked about had nights like this too, nights their minds got clogged and the news of a friend’s success came and anchored boulders in their hearts, reminding them of their own inadequacies. I felt ashamed of myself because it made sense to me, the jealousy and envy that made people set roadblocks for each other. I had always considered myself different, immune to such diseases of the soul and mind. Schooling in Ibadan was my dream. Chinedu did not even want it, yet life had given it to him served on a fine plate.
∞
A year later, the tightness had not left my chest. It went on long vacations and returned whenever I started thinking I had made peace with the fact that life did not always make sense. It darkened my thoughts and reminded me that while I was working my youth cutting wood and nailing chairs, Chinedu was in some nest in Ibadan receiving lectures and having a future.
‘Life doesn’t always make sense.’ It was something Chinedu said, not me. It had become my mantra though, something I said as an apology to my dreams. I used to think life made sense. Now, I imagined the murky areas of it I thought education could clear laughing and jeering at me, reminding me that even if I was right and education was the key to easing life’s bumpiness, I would never have it. There were times thoughts would flood me and I would panic, afraid I was going to end up like my boss, afraid I was not living my best life, afraid I would fade into a mediocre middle age.
About three years after Chinedu left, I left my boss and started my own workshop. I had made peace with my lot and settled into the life of a carpenter. My beard was now quite defined, and I no longer fantasized about going to university. I was too old to pick up from where I left and begin secondary school. I did not have that many years to give away. And so I worked, pouring my whole being into my vocation, fuelled by the desire to not be average, to not be ordinary. Sometimes when I got home at night, I spent hours with my dictionary, memorising words and their usage with the same diligence I studied them in primary school.
‘You don’t know all the words in that book yet?’ my mother often asked.
Some nights I refused to light the oil lamp to read. I pushed the dictionary aside and slept. Who was I trying to impress with my English?
I still thought of Chinedu from time to time. He had to be done with university or near finishing. I wondered how he was doing, what trail he was blazing with his degree while I made furniture and varnished wood, and sometimes I wished him well.
If I wanted to see Chinedu, it was easy. I had his address and I had made enough money to travel to Lagos and come back, but not enough to match his class. So I did not go. It was the complex of the poor, the thing which held me back. I was afraid he would laugh at me if he saw me again. I was, after all, a mockery of my dreams. We were no longer the boys who befriended each other, a little blind to class. We were adults now and adults were more harbouring of contempt, more likely to evaluate, more willing to relegate people to the gutters of their minds.
Readers can reach Joseph on Twitter @iamm_bravo or via his email address, theakinkunmi@gmail.com.