The slap-slap sound of someone who wore slippers could be heard. From how the sound echoed, as though in a deep hole, one could tell the slippers were made of leather. She was walking briskly along the tarred road, mumbling something beneath her breath, like an unknown incantation an ezemmuo might have made. She would murmur, then sob immediately. The sun was not yet up. Fog lingered above, as though an invisible support held it. Her hair was naked, no attachments, no wig, no weave-on, just a string of rubber band that held it like a knot at the back of her head. Her face was bare, no makeup, no lipstick. Her eyes were red, thick red, as though ose had been put into it. She was now sniffing. The sun had started peeping from behind a cloud, its little rays melting away the fog slowly. She wore a dress made of Ankara fabric. The Ankara fabric had faded floral patterns, hiding its initial beauty. Her dark skin looked hungry, longing for a moisturiser or Vaseline. Her name was Kodili, for that was the name her papa gave her.

She carried an obese Ghana-must-go with her right hand. It encompassed everything she had. Kodili got to a spot and stopped at once; she had heard something or someone. She shuddered, her heart pounding against her chest, generating the sound made when pounding akpu with a mortar and pestle. It was past six in the morning, and it was odd for the construction workers to be there that early. Normally, they came past 8 in the morning. She looked back quickly. No one. She dropped the ghana-must-go on the tarred road abruptly and began to weep. She thought it was him. She didn’t want to go back. His name was Gozie, a name she would never like to hear again.

*********

She first met him five years ago in her hometown, Awkuzu, precisely, in her Mama’s shop. Her Mama sold crates of minerals and pepper soup held in coolers. He came in with a group of boys that day. It was the same group who always came to the shop after playing football in the secondary school field nearby. They would often come in sweating profusely, panting and talking about the day’s game. About how the goalkeeper was onye uchu for not keeping the post well; about how the striker did his job well; about how the benchers were not given the opportunity to play. They would come in, ordering pure water, and chilled Fanta or Coke. They rarely ordered beer or stout. They were young men. Some were already students at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam, others worked as apprentices for rich Igbo businessmen who lived in Onitsha – businessmen who didn’t know the difference between l and r when they spoke. Her mama loved them coming around, because they always emptied her shop to some extent.

Gozie came with them that day; they were hailing him as they came into the shop, calling him odogwu and the best goalkeeper they’ve had yet. He was gleaming as beads of sweat rolled down from his head. She had never seen him before; she could sense he was a newbie in the group. Her eyes followed him until the boys all sat down around a wide circular plastic table within the shop vicinity. 

They were the only ones that came in that day; the other tables were empty. When her mama called her to take the drinks they had ordered, her face glowed. Ordinarily, Mama always served them, calling them “my customers” as she gave them drinks one by one, shaking hands with them and smiling, revealing her wrinkles owing to old age. She took the crate of Fanta to them, smiling in a way that felt odd to her. She noticed how their jerseys were glued to their wet skins. Goosebumps grew all over her arm as she handed Gozie his drink. He stared at her; others didn’t, they just took their drinks and kept talking about something related to Messi or Ronaldo.

“You look pretty like your mother”, Gozie commented. His breath filled the air she took in. It was stinky but different. She thought of whether to reply with a “thank you” or smile. She coughed. She coughed unexpectedly, like it were a reflex.

“Thank you”, she replied, smiling, showing all her teeth. And when she felt that the response wasn’t enough, she added immediately, “And you too”. 

As she left their table, she couldn’t explain what had just occurred. She kept smiling till they got home. As she lay on her Ute that night, a hand-woven mat made with straws, she kept on smiling. She didn’t understand why, but she knew that something had just begun.

This led to a series of episodes. Kodili began seeing Gozie every afternoon when no one was at home. They would meet under an Udala tree that stood close to Kodili’s home. They used that venue because it had been abandoned by people who liked the Udala fruit. About a decade ago, when the tree was planted, it looked promising as it grew. But when no fruit was forthcoming after a while, it was abandoned. They would stay there for hours, and make promises to one another: “you are my heartbeat”; “you are the air I breathe”; “I bu echi m”. Once, Gozie promised to purchase a car for her, and she smiled. She smiled because his dreams were too big for him. They would stay there for a while and flee when they heard the sound of someone approaching. 

One day, Gozie came with another dream of his.

“I am going to Amelika, and I want to take you with me”, He said, leaning close to the udala tree, holding her hands.

She chuckled at first, partly because of the way he pronounced the country – “Amelika”, and partly because of how big this particular dream, among others she had heard before, was. Gozie often reminded her of the other boys who were her classmates in school. Boys who could not properly generate good English sentences. They often mistook past tenses with future tenses. Once, one of such boys wrote a love letter and gave it to her friend, Nneka. She laughed hysterically when Nneka showed her the letter. The starting phrase was – “Dear Nneka baby, you was my clush”. To Kodili, Gozie was better than them because he knew how to construct good English sentences, the only issue lied in the fact that his “l” was his “r”, and his “r” was his “l”.

One of the reasons why she loved Gozie was that he never stopped dreaming. She loved the way he dreamt, his dreams looked hope personified, and the way he would always start with “one day” before stating another dream of his looked promising. But this dream, going to America, seemed impossible to Kodili.

She stopped laughing.

“Gozie…I like you, but… this dream is too big o”, Kodili said, her hands around his neck.

“Do you think I cannot do it?” Kodili had started sensing the disappointment in his voice.

“I believe … but how can you do it?”

“Don’t worry, my uncle, who lives there told me about a week ago that he wants me to come over, so I told him about you, and he agreed”, he said in igbo. She could sense the air of pride around him as he spoke.

“Gozie are you serious?”, Kodili asked, still feeling unsure. She knew he had an uncle there, but that was not enough to hold on to.

 

 

********

Kodili could smell a mixture of ogili, ose and crayfish in the air. She had boarded a bus and was on her way back to her hometown, Awkuzu. The woman who sat so close to her, bare-arm-touching-bare-arm, smelt of such mixture; probably she was a market woman. The smell was nauseating to Kodili, but she couldn’t say a word, because she was in Ontisha – hundreds of people smelled that way there. They had just passed the town of Umunnachi when she began to sob silently. The market woman who sat close to her noticed the sobbing and asked her calmly, in the tone of a caring mother: “Ogini, why are you crying?”

Kodili was not aware of the moment; as such, she did not respond until the woman tapped her lightly and asked the same question again. Kodili stared at her, surprised. It was typical for all people she had met to mind their business, but here was a woman wanting to be part of her sorrow.

Kodili stared at her, eyeball-to-eyeball, tears filled her eyes, confused about where to start. Should she start from the part where she naïvely ran away from her mama’s house with Gozie to Ontisha, believing they would go to America; or the part where she had to live in an uncompleted estate project, in a forgotten land in Onitsha; or the part where she had to live alongside other touts and malicious individuals; or the part where she had to live in an uncompleted building in that same land, sleeping only on a torn mat close to Gozie; or the part where she discovered that her next door neighbour was not really a mother as she thought but onye Akwuna who had her kids as a result of not using condom in some of her outings; or the part where Gozie’s uncle stopped picking his calls; or the part where she turned into the punching bag of Gozie at each life’s disappointment; or the part where she decided to leave after six years of being with that goat; or the part where on leaving that morning decided to leave two plates of food for Gozie close to his mat, emptying a can of rat poison in one and leaving the other clean, knowing fully well that he would eat both and perhaps die. 

She began to cry, tears flowing hotly down her cheeks. The market woman who had acted concerned now looked confused. Kodili rubbed her hands on her tummy at first, then began to squeeze it tightly with her hands in a fierce, aggressive manner as though she wanted to tear her tummy apart. Anger flowed through her veins because she knew she carried something there, her baby, their baby.