30.
Ehis was dreaming about women, money and tall buildings when his mother woke him from his orgy. He woke up, stretching his eyes and arms to see her waking his sister and slowly packing all their clothes into the travelling bag that they had brought from Lagos. Ofure was speaking so raggedly, breathing and pacing fast.
Ehis didn’t understood most of it but he knew that his parent’s ignorance had come into play again. His father was cursed and that was why their luck was jinxed? Ehis did not like his father but he knew that he was too much of an illiterate to compete with the employment that the world was offering to young and older educated individuals. His sister had gotten pregnant because she had chosen to pick her interest over her priorities. He had simply been misused by the institution that he trusted and was scared to return back to the borders of morality that he once clung to. But he was happy that they would be ditching his lazy cursed father and he helped his mother pack her load and quickly, they disappeared into the night.
When the cock crow thundered and the bird’s song slipped into Collin’s dreams, he woke up and ate. He remembered the events of the day before, where he had engaged in a war of words with his wife. She had threatened to leave and he had boasted that he would find her wherever she went. A lie he had hoped would speak logic to her emotions. He knocked and entered his mother’s hut. All he found there was an unarranged bed, a dusty slippers and his mother’s bed where a long time ago, he snuggled under her warmth and damned the responsibilities that his age demanded.
Collins knew that he would never find his wife, and he would never see his children again.
I will come to you again,
A second time,
And again, a third,
I will cleanse your tongue and straighten your curse,
I will guide you through walls and fly you above seas,
Your hunch, I will heal,
A voice, to you, I will give,
To you who gave me life and ended it.
‘He will be here soon. He gave me this address, he will be here soon’.
The children are sitting on their boxes, under the scathing sun, watching their mother pace and waiting for the guardian angel she mentions. The man who will take them as their own and lead them back into the light.
They wait until the heat turns windy and soon dark clouds are hovering above them.
‘I think it is going to rain’. Esosa warns
But the mother is wrapped in a world of her own. She can already taste the happiness that is promised her. The son is lying on his back, closing his eyes and hoping that their messiah comes sooner and saves him. None of them see the trailer behind them. Speeding and warning that it has no horns. If Ofure was paying attention then she would have seen the crowd running towards her, telling her to save herself and the children who appear to be sleeping behind her. But the mother keeps pacing, back and forth, spying for the familiar hoot and waiting. Waiting and waiting.
It takes her by storm, stiffening her tongue and decapitating her thoughts. She kneels and screams silence. The people hover around her, covering the bodies and trying to gather the body parts. The impact had been so loud that it has dragged people close to the mother who appears to be living and dying in that single moment. She does not cry, she does not jump. She kneels close to her children and lie beside them.
‘He will be here soon. He will be here soon’.