covers were to be Peter’s. If we got more than enough to split evenly this way, we were going to scratch the covers till the names disappeared and write our player numbers with red ink.
There was no guard at the gate, so we walked in. We searched for covers but there were none. We were too late; the hall had been cleaned up. We went outside to the dumpster behind the hotel. The guard was there smoking cigarettes. He offered them to us. I refused, and he chased us away.
When our hens are grown, they will lay eggs of their own. Then we will sell them for money. We will buy a crate of soda, and drink as often as we like. We will have our own teams and players.
Peter is unhappy with this work. He is focused on the nail in front of him, squinting like the sun is in his eyes even though we are in the shade of the cashew tree, straightening nails as he is supposed to, bottom first then the top, over and over. There is an interesting melody in this repeated banging, easy to get swept up in, gbam gbam gbam, shake your head, gbam gbam gbam, from side to side.
He is sitting with his legs crossed under him like he is in a mosque about to pray.
“Andrew? Are you hungry?” he asks. Looking up at me.
He is just like Mother, staring and squinting like that. I do not mention that. Instead I say, “Let us go and search for something to eat.”
We leave our pile of nails there and go looking for our friend. His name is Solomon, but everyone calls him If You See My Mama. He is a good dancer. He dances all the time. Anytime there’s loud music. Especially when there’s a ready audience, like people gathered at the beer parlor or at Rosetta’s snooker joint. People sometimes give him money. Most give him food.
I can do what he does, dance galala like Daddy Showkey, but I have no plans to dance for food. To dance for food, you have to be able both to dance and to eat anything. I don’t like stew without pepper. I cannot stand vegetable soup with crayfish in it. Peter can’t eat eggs or beans.
Solomon lives with his mother in the house where the TV repairman Uncle George lives. There is a pile of broken televisions on the veranda outside their house. There is a big one with a brown wood-paneled back, the TV like a long rectangle lying on its side. Sometimes, the littler kids sit in it and pretend to be newscasters reading the evening news.
I am Frank Olize
And I am Abike Dabiri
This is NTA Newsline
Today there is no one sitting inside the TV. We go into the house and find Solomon’s mother’s room. It is the third on the left. The one with a charismatic renewal sticker on the door.
It says HONORING MARY, NEVER WORSHIPPING. I have no idea what it means.
Solomon is inside. He opens the door only when he hears my voice.
“Andy dudu.” He calls me by the nickname I hate. His room smells like freshly cooked egusi soup, so I let it go.
“If You See My Mama,” I sing out loud.
“Tell am say I dey for Lagos,” he replies.
“I no get trouble.” Peter supplies this last part. Solomon and I laugh at him because he still makes r sound like w.
“Sit down,” Solomon says as he laughs. “I wan turn garri. You go chop?”
“What type of soup do you have?” I ask.
“Egusi,” he says.
“Nice,” Peter says.
Peter and I sit on the floor. There is a curtain with little blue fish and yellow bubbles demarcating the bed from the rest of the room. Solomon kneels by the bed and pulls out a tiny stove and an old Mobil tin gallon out from under it. He opens the door and places the stove and keg outside. As he pours kerosene into the stove, I tell him what we are up to.
“We are building a chicken coop.”
“Since when?” he asks.
“A few days now,” I reply.
“For sell or for choppin?”
“Both,” I say.
“For selling,” Peter says.
Solomon comes back into the room, picking up a kettle and a box of matches. There is a covered plastic drum at the foot of the bed. He opens it, puts a cup in it, and fills the kettle with water.
“This is the perfect time for chicken business,” he says to us. “It will be almost Christmas by the time the chickens are big, then you can sell them for even more money because of Christmas rush.”
We did not think it would take that long to raise chickens.
“Let me tell you where you can get maize for free.” Solomon puts the kettle to boil and comes to sit on a stool next to us.
“What for?” Peter asks.
“Where?” I ask at the same time.
“For feeding your chickens na.” He looks at Peter like a fly is on his nose. He turns to me and asks, “You know where the bakery is?”
“Not really.” This time I am not ashamed of not knowing. Solomon has lived here since he was five years old. Father brought us here this year to live with his mother, our grandmother. We do not know where our father lives now.
“It is bit far. I don’t know how to describe it. There is the borehole with three huge water tanks right next to it,” Solomon says.
“Our sisters will know,” Peter says.
“Every morning when my mother goes to buy bread for sale from the bakery,” Solomon continues, “there’s always fresh maize in a calabash. She says people leave it there as offerings to spirits.”
We will take maize offered to spirits for our hens.
When Solomon is done, he brings the food in two bowls, one for garri, the other for soup. He sets it right in the middle of the room. Peter and I sit next to each other, Solomon sits on the opposite side facing us. I have a feeling that I have been here before. That all this has happened already, and I am just now remembering it.
“You better don’t touch my meat,” Solomon says to Peter.
“Sorry. It was a mistake,” Peter says, and the feeling is now stronger than it has ever been. I force myself to eat but I can no longer do it. I am searching inside my brain to know what I remember, what happens after this. There’s nothing. My mouth is bitter, my stomach feels like I drank cement mix.
Solomon says something to me, but I don’t hear it. Peter laughs and replies.
“—he say he wan free money.”
They finish the food, but we do not get up. We are talking in this room, a multipurpose room where I can see everything Solomon’s mother has got—plates, pots, and pans poking out of old moving boxes, a pile of old clothes in a brown leather box with a broken handle. There is a black-and-white TV
