Outcast IX

“Ha! I didn’t want to tell you in the presence of the customers. Esther tripped and fell. She didn’t know that agberos usually shit on the ground under the bridge” Clara narrated to aunty Patience. ‘Was she blind?’ Aunty Patience retorted with anger etched all over her face and her veins threatening to burst forth. As young as I was, I could not help but be shocked at her response. I wondered how on earth I could have known about the existence of the defecated floor. It had been barely a day since I left the loving arms of my mum and I couldn’t quantify the amount of shock I have had to absorb in my new home. ‘The one you threw away will be your food for today.’ she said as she scooped whatever was in the rice into a black nylon bag. Her contemptuous look made me feel like the fresh shit that still oozed from me despite my desperate attempts to wash it off at the borehole I had went with Clara to buy water for washing plates. The flies buzzing all around me didn’t help matters either. ‘C’mon will you clear the table and wash those plates Mumu’ Aunty Patience spat out in rage. I immediately realized the stark reality of my existence to Aunty Patience. I realized that this would be the norm of my life and I needed to invoke all the survivor instincts within me to survive. I kept at clearing the table and washing plates and serving water from the jerry can to the customers that wouldn’t buy “pure water”. Few hours later, we finished selling and proceeded to Oshodi market to buy ingredients for the next day. I was trudging behind aunty Patience half dead from hunger with the aluminum bowl I had used to convey the rice to the shop that morning she went about haggling price with the sellers and dumping everything she bought into the bowl on my head- meat, fish, pomo, pepper, onions. I wondered why she kept insisting on having ‘esha’ when it came to the tomatoes, pepper and onions with all maggots milling in and beside the ‘esha’ . I was to later realise it came cheaper. ‘Eleron this meat small na so so bone.’ Aunty Patience continued haggling with the frail looking man. My eyes did a quick count of the deep gashes on his cheeks; they were five on each cheek. I felt Clara’s tap on my back and turned to look at her. I didn’t know whether to be angry at Clara or not but I was angry and I needed to vent. She shoved a loaf of bread into my hand and the anger steam instantly condensed into tears of gratitude. I was about to mutter ‘thank you’ when she shush me placing a finger on her mouth. I got the message and quickly hid the bread, taking a bite only when aunty Patience turned her back to me. My life had quickly settled into this pattern in the weeks that followed and then it was the new school session. I was overjoyed when aunty Patience informed me that I will resume in the same school with Clara. The other children attended a very good school but Aunty Patience insisted that she couldn’t afford to put everybody in an expensive school. My first day in school was uneventful and as soon as it was break time, I stormed off to look for Clara in her class. She was a class ahead of me and I could see the look of gladness in her eyes when she saw me. We started gisting and before long, she had started telling me about her past. ‘Aunty Patience and my father were not living together before. Then I lived with my father. When I was in my father’s house, I used to attend a very expensive school before she moved in with us.’ Clara narrated. The lively look on her face had quickly turned gloomy. ‘As soon as she moved in with us, she turned me into the house help in my father’s house and I was no longer regular in school. She beats me whenever my father was not at home but always pretends to like me whenever my father was around making it impossible for my father to believe me when I told him how badly she treats me. When my father suddenly took ill and died two years ago, the family asked my mom to take me into custody and that was how I came to live with her’. Clara concluded with a melancholic look etched all over her face. ‘Hold on, you mean Aunty Patience is your biologically mother?’ I asked wondering if I had heard wrong. ‘Yes, she is my mother’. Clara replied. ‘Then why do you refer to her as ‘Aunty’ unlike her other children and who is the ‘she’ that moved in with you and your father?’ I asked, a barrage of questions quaking in my tumultuous mind. Clara went quiet and replied; ‘It’s a long story.’