By Som Adedayor
1.
It was evening and the matches were over when you came to me beside the goal post. The sky had emptied itself of the sun. Darkness had poured into the atmosphere like dye into water. And the houses around the stadium had put on their bulbs and security lamps. You didn’t say a word, and I didn’t look up. You watched me take off the soccer boots and roll the hoses off my legs. I had packed my things in my Cowbell backpack, slung it across my shoulder, ready to go, before you talked, a hand rubbing your neck.
“Neymar, right?” you said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You play like him, actually.” You removed a reed stuck to your leg. The hairs on your leg are a long and curly and wiry tangled tuft, almost invisible against your dark skin.
“Thanks.” I looked away.
“What’s your real name sef?”
“Modupe.”
Earlier during the matches, you’d half-run towards me, wagging a finger at my nose. You looked strange even though I thought I had seen you a long time before then. The anchor pendant swung against your sweaty chest as you spoke: Dat shot goal na. Why you con say e no score? You no wan make my team play? You scowled. The words came out as hasty bubbles, syllables chasing syllables. Your teammates held you back and called me all sorts of names. Broke, chill, di boy na chicken na. Hin no sabi. I tried to shut out my ears and focus instead on the singing birds atop the cassia trees behind the stadium fence. I backed away from you, trying to prevent the knot in my chest from letting loose.Your guys finally calmed you. You took the ball, kicked it hard over the fence, and muttered as you went to sit behind the post.
Now, I looked up and said, “Why were those guys calling you Broke?”
You chuckled and said, “You’ll soon find out.”
Just then a guy in a lemon tank shirt came over to tell me the Manchester United match was starting soon. We jogged off, our legs kicking up dust against the stadium rusted gate. You were a fixed figure behind, watching us jog off.
2.
The next day, you came to join me on the floorboard between the broken fence. We were the only ones on the field. I had watched your dark figure sway, like a drunk shadow, towards me in the hot glare of the sun, in the middle where the grassy field was all a circle of sand. When you got to me, you extended your right hand and scratched your forehead with the other.
“What’s on, bluv?”
“Cool.” I took your hand, and we snapped fingers behind each other’s thumb.
Two guys were coming towards us from the other side of the stadium. One of them had the black-and-white ball under his arm. I noticed, as you kept your gaze straight, back bent, that you were concentrating on them. When you finally found yourself, you said, “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“It’s nothing, bruh,” I said. “I understand.”
“So are you a Man U fan?”
“Nope. Juventus,” I said. I wished you would stop asking questions. I still wanted to hear your voice, though. Your voice was thick but soft and bubbly like liquid soap.
“Oh. You guys did well against Man U.” We both stood up to meet the rolling ball. The two guys were nearby, and the one with the ball had kicked it. I caught it with my right foot. Then you stood to take a pass from me, kicking the ball high in the sky, when I did pass, as if to hit the sun.
3.
It took a few weeks before you reappeared. When Matthew, my next-door neighbour and church member, brought you to our house, I needed a stare to know who was who. I heard him tell mummy that you were the new chaplain’s son at Bowen University before she let you in. You gave me a sliding handshake and sat on my study chair as soon as you entered. I asked why you’d not been coming to the field for the past three weeks. You said you had been ill. Did I not know? Typhoid. You’d been admitted to the hospital.
“Sorry, man,” I said.
You picked up an old exercise book under my OAU Post UTME Crush and asked where I got the Alma Rome Baptist College notebook. I looked up from my phone and said I attended summer lessons at the school throughout my junior classes.
“And do you know me?”
“You?” I sat up in the bed, rested my back on the wall, and began to flatten the edges of the pillow with my palms.
“I know you nah,” you said. “Who doesn’t know you? Are you not Novice, the girls’guy? I remembered we started calling you Novice during junior-class-one summer because you couldn’t hold the table tennis bat. Yeah. Novi for short.” You let out honey-thick chuckles. You dropped the book and added, amidst chuckling, that only God knows how many love letters I read then. Then you said: “I was sha wondering the day I saw you on the field.”
I squinted my eyes at you. Then I slowly lowered my gaze, my eyes doing the smiling.
You took Stay with Me from my bookshelf and said, “O boy, you fancy fiction o. No wonder the shelf in the hallway is so big. But, wait, do you only read African books?”
“Nope.”
“Interesting,” you said. You flipped through the brown pages that smelt like newly printed newspapers. I suppressed the urge to laugh. I was sure you didn’t know much about foreign books.
Later, you fiddled with my phone, an old Infinix Smart. Your touches popped against the soft screen as I devoured the plate of jollof rice Mummy had brought in. You didn’t eat even when I said Mummy had fried one of her chickens to a golden brown for you. You just busied yourself with my phone, feet softly tapping on the red rug. Each time you spoke, the cadence of your voice added flavour to the aroma wafting in the room.
“It’s getting late,” you said after a while. Still seated, you switched on the desk lamp and drew down the window curtains. Then you stood up to stretch, hands slightly brushing against the ceiling fan. I cracked one lastchicken bone, packed the food onto the bedside table, and led you to the door.
Outside, the moon was a brilliant silver. It cast tall, slanted shadows of bushes, houses, and shops across the untarred road. We walked on the left side. We were scared that if we didn’t, a car would come from behind and knock us down. We both laughed when you said this. After a while, I tapped you on the shoulder. You removed your earphones, and I asked if you were not going home too late.
“No jor,” you said. “This is just past eight.”
“Ok o.”
At the grammar school before the main road, where you would turn left for a five-minute walk to Bowen gate, you typed your number on my phone and backed away. You were bouncing to the music. (I later found out that you didn’t take your iPhone X around because of the Yahoo contents on it.) As you turned away, the breeze blew your unbuttoned shirt to reveal, on your inner shirt, the image of a plant with cracked hearts as leaves.
“Will you come to mine tomorrow?”
4.
The following day, I met you outside the fitness centre on campus. You leaned against a pole, arms folded across your chest. Every now and then you puffed your cheeks. The white of your tank shirt added a touch of brightness to your brown shorts and dark skin.
You beamed. “Hello.” Then you said you wanted me to see your flat. “You should meet my parents,” you said, scoffing. So, we headed for the staff quarters even though you were sure Reverend would be in the university chaplaincy. You told me Reverend wouldn’t be what I expected. He used a wheelchair. A surgeon had mistakenly needled his spinal cord. Stupid man. But stupid thing he wasn’t jailed. Dad didn’t charge him.
I didn’t know what to say. Sorry? Eyah?
Your mom was the only one at home. Your two sisters had gone to singing practice, and Reverend was in the chaplaincy. I searched for your eyes or nose on her face as she answered my greeting, smiling. If not for the voice, it’d be hard to believe you were related.
We sat in your room, talking and sipping chilled 5 alive. Your room was spacious. The walls were muted cream. A big brown wardrobe, the same colour as the wooden door, stood against the wall opposite a window above a neatly made bed. Different Baptist Student Fellowship stickers and stickers of Messi and Barcelona first XI stuck to the wardrobe doors. There were three glass jars of artificial flowers on the headboard. Adjacent to the wardrobe was a large wallpaper of Jesus touching a small red and fiery heart on his chest. The curtains and the bedsheets were the same shade of chocolate.
We talked about colours, flowers, butterflies, music, and football, arguing about things we differed on, before you said you wondered what my dad looked like. I hated talking about him. Even my family at large. Some things were better left unsaid. You were proud of being the last born and the only son. I wasn’t, although I was the only son among countless children. Anyway, I said, “He’s a polygamist.” You kept quiet, searching for words that wouldn’t hurt. When you changed the topic, I was grateful I wouldn’t have to tell how my birth had put enmity between mummy and daddy, how mummy was happy being the first wife before she gave birth to me.
You brought up universities. You had written the JAMB exam and were now expecting your result. I wrote mine last year and was now in OAU, part one. You had chosen Tai Solarin University of Education instead of Bowen University because you wanted to be free from home. But now you regretted it. You wished you could be in the same university with me.
I tried to let you know OAU was good but over hyped. Students suffered. Accommodation was terrible. Most of us paid so much to get hostels off-campus. Ditto transportation. Bus drivers would pack twenty-six people in an eighteen-seater after charging twice the regular price. And even the Students’ Union was paralyzed.
“Can you believe students were reading under solar streetlamps and in front of ATM screens last semester?”
“No light?”
“For one good month.”
“Oh,” you said, bringing the tall, slim glass cup down from your mouth.
“It was serious. I did an evening exam last semester, four to six, with candlelight. A girl mistakenly burned her answer sheet and she was not allowed to take another sheet. Time was up.”
5.
The first time I let the knot in my chest loose was on a Friday night. It was quarter past ten, and I was already sleeping when you came into my room in a crew neck underwear. The vest clung to you, as though clipped at the back, showing your muscles, like a boutique mannequin. I imagined how smooth your six-pack was. You sat on the study chair, panting.
“Kí ló ṣẹlẹ̀?”
“Don’t mind them.” You swiped at the air as if to zap off whatever was there.
“Who?”
You hissed, stood up, leaned your head against the wall above the study desk. “Everyone. Oyin and Joke.”
“What did they do this time?”
“Stupid sisters.”
“They’re your elders. Wetin dem do sef?”
“Well, leave that for now. Can I sleep here?”
“Of course.” I went quiet. Then I said, “Mummy and Love have gone to vigil.”
In the darkness of midnight, I woke to you towering over me. You pinned down my arms and legs by my sides and brought your face close. I did not shrug. I closed my eyes instead, waiting for your warm breath. Our hearts thumped. Lips fluffed. Tongues rolled. The knot loosened and released breath of warm air, the air shooting out of my mouth like water out of a toy gun.
At dawn, shortly before mummy and Love came back, you told me, sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, ready to leave, forehead cupped by a palm, that your sisters now knew about you.
6.
Then you showed one cool Saturday. I was strapping a teddy bear to Love’s back with Mummy’s Ankara wrapper.
“Let me tie the wrapper,” I said, trying to get hold of Love, who was running away from me.
“No, no, no,” she said as she toddled towards the door.
You helped her open the door and said, “Don’t mind him jare. It’s ok as it is.” You returned and sank into the study chair. Then you said, “Reverend knows.”
“That you press button?”
“Don’t be naïve. Since when have I told you I’ve stopped scamming? He knows about me. He might even be suspecting you.”
“Shit. For real?”
“Don’t know jor.” You hissed and buried your face in your palms. Then you said, “It’s Oyin and Joke.”
“So, what are we going to do?” I asked. My breathing was its normal speed, but warmer.
“Don’t know. Reverend is unpredictable.” Then you said, “But chillax.”
We stayed in silence for a while before you got sleepy. I made space for you on the bed, and you joined me. We were cuddling when it started raining. Water poured in hard torrents, hitting the roof and the netting of the closed louvres. We could hear it slam against the roof like the sound of a thousand radios searching for stations.
“I’m going to church camp next week,” I whispered. “Osogbo. It’s CACSA, our type of CAC.” You were quiet. Then you drew your face closer under the duvet.
7.
I followed you to the sports complex for dance rehearsal the next morning. Rehearsal had started, and people were already in the basketball court, twirling their waists. I waited on brick sitters. Not long after the tutor’s bellowing and feet stubbing begun, two girls, one dimple-cheeked, the other slightly bow-legged, came over to me on their way to the eatery.
“I know you from somewhere,” dimple-cheeked said. She smiled and her dimples deepened.
I looked up from my phone and said, “Oh. But I don’t think I’ve seen this face before.” I fixed my gaze on the dimple and shook my head like a child. When bow-legged said that I should chaperone them all the way to the eatery, I looked at you and you said something I didn’t catch, lips moving rapidly, the rap of breath like mosquito coil smoke in the morning cold.
The girls ordered chicken and chips with chilled Hollandia yogurt. And because dimple-cheeked said she knew you well-well, I got involved in the talking, flirting, and selfie-ing.
Later, while walking me back home, you kept quiet and gazed ahead of us until we got to the gate where you’d turn back.
“Mo,” you said, wrapping your arm around me. “Those girls are mean. They can make you do what you don’t want. You know I—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting you off.
8.
It was drizzling when we got to Osogbo and there was the smell of rainwater and new grass in the air. There were beetle-eaten, overgrown plants in sight around a big, fenced houses and big schools. I was sure I wasn’t going to like it here as houses glided across the windows of the bus. I just didn’t know why. Maybe it was the endless clusters of things: houses, vehicles, people. But the unsettling hangs over the place like fate.
The welcome service was loud. The hall was overcrowded, and people outside clustered around the windows. Excessive cheering, wowing, and clapping followed every good performance. The girl beside me, a bigger version of Ariana Grande, sang. When she was done, the moderator didn’t have to say, Clap for Jesus, before people started clapping. When she came back to sit, she wore a smile that made me think of how best to take her pictures. I shrugged off the thought and I began to think of how and where you’d be without me.
Later, I got a bed space in a corridor-like room with pairs of iron bunks facing each other. I stared at the topaz bulbs from my top bunk bed and thought of you, even though we’d just spoken for several minutes on the phone.
On Monday, I went to Holy Mary Garden at St. Charles Grammar School near the campgrounds. There were well-groomed ixoras, bougainvilleas, hibiscuses, and butterflies. I took pictures of all the flowers and butterflies, clicking and flashing. I had had the intention of sending them to you on WhatsApp before my Olympus point-and-shoot camera flickered off. I knelt as I inspected it. I was scared that it was the end of the camera and, perhaps for a while, the end of my budding photography career even though I knew the battery was just dead.
On Tuesday, I spent the cold night at a bar, sipping Desperado from a tumbler as speakers blared into the cool air. Waitresses walked up and down in the dim red light, balancing silver trays and swaying their buttocks. Ladies in bras and pants twerked to Wizkid’s “Daddy Yo”. At the table behind me were five loud guys. They chatted as they drank and exhaled thick clouds of marijuana smoke.
On Wednesday, I attended the evening Bible study. I sat facing a slender girl who would not stop staring at me. She had bulging eyeballs and long lashes. She wore a jacket over her loose gown. After the study, she came over and said hello, taking my hand in hers, warm and soft like a newborn chick, and I felt softened.
On Thursday, I watched a football match at a viewing centre on the nearest expressway to the campgrounds.
Shouts of goal! were muted by the sound of bottles breaking. A riot had broken out. It was bound to happen. The fans of the two teams had taunted each other from the first minute. When a United player scored, in the very last minute, without a chance for Chelsea to equalize, the United fans were excessive in their celebration. The situation climaxed with some Chelsea fans physically retaliating, leaving a United fan dead.
On Friday, two days to the end of the camp, you called. Your voice was hoarse, and you talked like you had a weight in your belly. “Reverend is dead. He died in his sleep,” you said, your voice trailing off. Then, breaking off and on, you said: “We’re going to the East for the burial. I don’t know if we will come back. We now have to vacate the university property, anyway.”
Then the call ended abruptly. Poor network? Airtime? I called countless times afterwards, repeating “Hello, Broke” to a dead line. You didn’t pick.
On Saturday, I got my things and left.
9.
In the bus I thought about Broke, Kizz Daniel’s “Sofa” pouring into my ears, my head a loud mindless radio. It was difficult to think about Broke. There are too many memories of him and too little patient to focus on one. But the night we stayed back at the stadium came more frequently to me. He had said it was too early for him to go home. He was likely quarrelling with one of his sisters or both. But I didn’t mention that. I let us stay back, chatting.
We talked long into the night. So long my back ached. So much I needed to regularly stand up from the grass to stretch myself. Broke, too. He did the same. We didn’t even talk about anything serious. Only chitchats about the hottest football legends from our favourite clubs, the upcoming Afrobeats singles we were most excited about, the wettest wet season we’d ever experienced and the like. Most of which I couldn’t recollect. But I recalled Broke saying, mischief in his eyes, laughter in throat: “At least I won’t stay 14 years in jail when I embezzle.” We must have mentioned the fact that Post UTME results were out and he had been given him Political Science.
On our way home we came across some guys smoking on the front window of an uncompleted building, opposite the police lounge. They were shirtless. The light atop their pots glowed, shinning and dimming like orange stars. Broke went over and gave all of them slapping handshakes. I stayed back on the untarred road, arms akimbo. I was itching to leave.
“Ruddy. Ponche. Fobia. Chenfu…” I heard Broke say before each handshake.
“Haafa, Broke? Who be that guy?” A toad-like voice blasted the chilled, moonlit air.
“Na my nigga, bro,” Broke said.
“E no fit greet?”
“Abeg no vex. E no sabi,” Broke said and came back to me.
When we were out of the reach of their stale breath, Broke said, “They’re yahoo guys. I don’t want to have anything to do with them anymore.” I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about my legs. I felt as if my body had become too heavy for them to carry and I hoped I wouldn’t fall.
10.
The bus comes to a final halt at Hospital Road junction, where I will turn left to board a bike. The bike will drop me in front of Bowen’s main gate, and I will pick my way to the staff quarters. Then, I will see a black Hilux parked in front of Broke’s apartment from two poles away. It is mostly loaded with travelling bags of different sizes and materials and cooking utensils. A few shirtless men are carrying stuff from the house into the truck, their feet brushing against the cordylines at the doorstep as they come and go E