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This is Where it Begins
It is dark, way past midnight and I am rushing down the corridor of our family home in the village, where we holiday once or twice a year. My bladder is almost bursting as I run to the only toilet in the house, but the toilet is locked. Beside the toilet is a step-in shower — the untiled ones with a cement screed floor — shared by other occupants of the house. Unwilling to go out in the haunting darkness outside, I relieve myself in the shower and go back to bed.
I wake up the morning after to the sound of slapping and crying. The house help is getting flak for the stink oozing from the bathroom. She keeps pleading her innocence in the negative space between intermittent slaps, but nobody believes her. I stand in the doorway leading to the living room where an older aunt is raining down on her. And I say nothing.
Two decades later, I am driving down a busy intersection. I am distracted for a brief second and wham! I slam into the rear of a danfo bus by an intersection where some Policemen are standing unconcerned, humbled by Lagos traffic. Immediately I rear-end the rickety bus, the driver comes down and goes ballistic. I don’t come down. I am sitting at the wheel wondering how to respond to this. Traffic is…
