Adetoro’s eyelids yearned to be closed despite his willingness to be awake. He stared at his asbestos ceiling for a minute, his mind empty, as it usually is on mornings. The crow of his rooster alerted him and he sprang from the worn mattress laid on the cold concrete floor of the single room he had rented to call home. He had slept naked.
After he yawned, stretched his arms and unlocked the bones in his knuckles, he reached for his white jalabiya hanging by a nail that protruded from the wall. Next to it hung a frame that enclosed a picture of himself at the Nigerian Youth Service Camp, with his left leg raised up, right arm stretched forward, and mouth open – the camera had captured the moment he commanded his platoon to make a U-turn. Adetoro put on the jalabiya and began to whistle a tune. He turned on the torchlight of his phone to look for his chewing stick, which he found in a blue plastic cup at the opposite end of his mattress. He shoved it inside his mouth, dragged his feet to his bathroom that was separated from his room with a lace curtain that once must have been white, picked up the bucket, and headed outside. His wooden door didn’t have a functional knob, but the lock worked; hence, Adetoro opened it, after using the key, by inserting his hand in a space between the door and the wall to remove a rag he used to keep out rats and other inconvenient vermin. He pulled the door open.
It was January: as he walked through the grass in his compound to get to the well, the dew that settled onto the grass clung to the hem of his jalabiya. By the time he arrived at the well, his jalabiya was soaked and his feet were itchy from the wet grass. This didn’t pose an inconvenience to Adetoro because it was a common occurrence for him every morning. He opened the well and peered into the darkness that occupied it at dawn. He removed his chewing stick from his mouth, spat on the ground, and continued chewing the stick. He grabbed the ifami that hung by a nail at the side of the well and plunged it into the well. The thud it made when it hit the water satisfied Adetoro. He tugged the ifami until it became heavy, a signal that it had scooped water, and he drew it up. He poured the water into his bucket and plunged the ifami into the well again.
The evening before, around 5:02 p.m., Adetoro had held his head as he watched blood flow from the body of a man in a straight line, as if it was receiving command from somewhere only the elements of the blood could see. Dread occupied his stomach and pushed out the food he had eaten earlier. Adetoro retched into a patch of bush he was standing near. He looked at the blood again and was reminded of the river that deceived him with its calm surface, only for him to get in and find it was a lure: the blood flowed like the river.
When Adetoro woke up in the morning, the first thing he whispered to himself from years of habit that fear had ingrained into him after he watched his mother get thrown to death by a lorry while crossing the road was, “Ki ona ma gbe mi mi – May the road not swallow me.” He whispered it to himself five times. He washed his face with water and repeated the affirmation that began as a prayer. Adetoro again saw the lifelessness that had taken hold of the man’s body and winced; it could have been him. The accident happened at the spot where he had been standing before he, Adetoro, crossed the road. The man had fallen to his knees and crushed his forehead to the red ground, where a keener eye would have detected dung. But the eyes of Adetoro only saw the ground that God had created for him to walk on, where the road didn’t swallow him.
Adetoro now filled his bucket and carried it back to his room. The dew had reduced in density: the rising sun glowed on the horizon. Adetoro dropped the bucket in his bathroom and removed his jalabiya. He flung it into the room and heard it fall on the ground rather than on the bed he had aimed for. He removed the chewing stick from his mouth, dropped what was left of it in the sink, scooped some water from the bucket into his mouth, gargled it, and spat it out. He watched tiny shreds of the chewing stick float away in the water.
Before the accident, Adetoro had been on his way to watch Arsenal and Manchester United play. He walked on the untarred part of the road that was designated for pedestrians, and seeing the woman across the road who sold bole, he felt a need to eat bole. To satisfy himself, Adetoro would have to cross to the other side of the road where the woman conducted her business, and while the thought tired him, it didn’t outweigh his need for bole. Later, Adetoro would see this need as an intervention from the spirit of his deceased mother who had not been sleeping in heaven. He crossed the road and strolled to the woman. He was haggling the price of a robust, perfectly roasted bole from 400 naira to 150 naira when he heard a screech that was followed by a scream that punctured his appetite: it curled his fingers and made his mouth dry.
In the report he gave to the police later as a witness, he said that despite hearing the sounds, the accident happened before he could turn and see – and that, while he remembered turning immediately, he missed the exact moment the accident occurred. He finished by confessing he had no idea accidents happened so quickly. The policewoman responded that accidents are rarely seen, just heard.
Adetoro scooped water onto his body with a small bowl and shivered. He thought he should have boiled some water to mix with the water from the well. He scooped another bowl of water onto his body, then another, and another. He dropped the bowl inside the bucket of water, took his Dettol soap and blue mosquito net sponge, rubbed the soap into the sponge till it lathered, and began to scrub his body. He started with his armpits, moved to his chest, lathered the sponge with soap again, and scrubbed his head. The lather dripped to his face and he kept his eyes tightly shut. He scrubbed his face and the back of his neck, from which a memory came to him. He was a young boy of about seven or eight years old – he wasn’t sure – and his mother was bathing him outside their house after it had rained. He remembered the water was collected from the rain and the bucket was metallic. His mother sat on a low stool. She placed the bucket, now filled with water, and a small bowl with white soap and a sponge floating in it beside her. She told him to take off his clothes and squat beside her. The rainwater was cold. She was singing a song he knew when he was young but had not stayed in his memory.
He remembered that he opened his eyes to look at his mother because she told him to put his left leg on her lap for her to scrub when the soap stung him in his eyes. He was stung so badly that he rubbed his eyes sternly with his hands, screaming, “Oju mi! Oju mi!” His mother rose to scoop water from the bucket to wash his eyes, with affectionate laughter. The pain of the sting remained evergreen in his memory.
The early morning cold intensified; Adetoro shivered and hurriedly rinsed himself. He scrubbed his rough feet with a black stone and rinsed the residue of dirt from his body. He took his towel from the nail he had hung it by beside the bathroom door and dried himself. He went to the Ghana Must Go that had all of his clothes and chose a white shirt, brown trousers, and blue checkered boxers. He dropped his towel and stood in front of the mirror in his room. His head appeared elongated in the mirror, and his torso stretched irregularly; the contortion made him angry, and he hissed, with a note to himself to never trust anyone to buy him a mirror ever again. The next time he wanted to get one, he would go to the market himself. Aunty Dupe, who lived with her husband in the single room next to his, was on her way to the market one day when he pleaded with her to get him a mirror, giving her 1,000 naira for this mirror that he now describes as devilish.
Adetoro fitted the buttons of the shirt into the holes. He took out his hairbrush and untangled his hair. He brought out his Kiwi brown polish and polished his 9,000 naira Loious Vuiton shoe to a shine. He wore them, took them off, wore his socks, and put on the shoes again. He carried his laptop bag that contained a jotter and some photocopied files he needed for work and slung it over his left shoulder. He remembered his 4,000 naira Doir perfume and took it out from his bedside drawer and drenched himself in it. Outside of his room, before he locked his door, he whispered to himself, “Ki ona ma gbe mi mi.”
As he locked his door, Aunty Dupe came out of her room.
“Aunty Dupe, good morning,” he called out to her. “How was your night? How is your husband? Se daada le ji?”
“Yes, yes, I woke up well, thanks to Jesus. My husband is fine too, he is yet to come back. You know how vigilante work is,” she responded, with mutual joy.
“Yes, yes, I know. When he comes back, greet him for me.”
“I will.”
“Today will favor you, Aunty Dupe.”
“Amen. You will also get to your work in one piece, Brother Adetoro.”
“Amen! Amen! Amen! By the blood of Jesus, amen!”
Adetoro dropped his key into his bag and walked into the morning sunlight. The primary school children behind his house were singing the national anthem. He made the decision to buy a new mirror later in the evening when he would be coming back from work; he was living a new life, and it was only proper to see himself in a mirror that reflected his proportions as they were.
Adetoro began to whistle and broke into a song he played occasionally on his phone by Chief Ebenezer Obey:“Kaka k’omolore f’ese ti, monamona a sise oluwa,” Adetoro sang as he walked to the main road to catch okada. “Rather than a destined child stumbling in the dark, lightning will illuminate his way.” ▪