Hello Everyone,
This is the continuation of fruits and fornication. It's worth a read, trust me.
Haleen va de ven
Though she can’t seem to grapple with the extreme heat and cold that comes with sheltering in market sheds, Enitan likes that she can always see the sky and the occasional flutters of cattle egrets sporting its blue expanse. So when fruit mother, after countless visits to Caretaker and several bottles of free Malt, announces that they have a proper house, adding with apparent satisfaction, “Enitan, this one na God oo. It is not easy for landlords to accept single mothers these days but Caretaker do well for us”, Enitan does not know what to think, she only knows she will miss the sky.
The new house proves to be nothing they are not used to- endless lines of short, crooked bungalows that look like outgrowths of the soil where they stand. Only this time, the jagged rows of rooms are tightly knitted, woven into a maze of awkward confusion, like an open show of identity crisis, a communal kraal whose defence is broken down.
For a while, nothing changes, just hawking and eating the wind. But soon enough, fruit mother begins to become restless. She begins to prowl around their sparsely furnished room, avoiding the neighbours contemptuously and passing through complicated mazes while hawking. She complains about her hair and ragged clothes, muttering to herself like a maddened ostrich,
“Raining Dollars wan finish me. He wants to take away my star, but I no go agree for am.”
This delirium takes its full course until one day she comes home with new clothes and a big makeup kit. From then on, Fruit mother thinks of nothing else but how well she must transform her stunned face into a feisty carnival, how she must get rid of the stretch marks at her shoulders and knees if she is to display her star beneath skimpy, colourful clothes. Money meant for feeding begins to disappear into the chemist’s purse, a remission of the numerous anti-fungus creams she buys.
Like a consequence of very bad actions, male visitors begin to casually stroll into the room, sit on their thin bed and stretch lazy legs across the room like they were crumbling continents. One of them complains about the heat in the room and the next day, an electric fan is standing close to the bed, funded by him. Another wonders why the room is devoid of colours and next thing, curtains and unnecessary artefacts are adorning all four walls- litters of gold in a dumpsite.
One of them muses about the indecency of fruit mother’s hawking, and like a joke, he builds a shed close by for her. Little by little, these men notice and transform the dull mimesis of fruit mother’s life into a bustling drama filled with too many acts. However, they never manage to notice Enitan with her unkempt look, her hair swimming in lice, how parched her lips get when hunger seams her stomach with pain.
On one of the regular days when she goes to the veranda to wait out the duration of a particular visit; as she listens to the soft laughter coming from the room, her own helpless breath and the tears choking her eyes, she meets Malik. Being a street kid, he is easily endeared to her bewildering unattractiveness like she has been cut in two and one half cannot be found. He makes her into a romp, teaching her how to win Baba Ijebu, how to make kites with paper and fly them, how to build houses with mud… how to play Boju-boju, hide and seek.*
Pinterest
At first, they play Bojuboju with other children- all of them running away from the seeker in scattered directions like fruits tumbling out of a tray unto the muddy floor. But soon, they begin to play Bojuboju alone. Enitan scurries around until Malik sneaks up to her in her hiding space and tickle her armpits till she squeals in laughter. During the evening, they slide behind windows and peep into people’s rooms. He sees more, being taller than she is, but he always makes sure to tell her about what he sees. It is only when he peeps through fruit mother’s slightly opened window that he refuses to tell her anything,
“You don’t need to know jare” he usually says with a borrowed manly voice.
“Why did I need not to know this one, this one?”
“Because your mummy like doing yamayama things”
“My mummy do not do yamayama jor, your own father is the one that do yamayama things. He will be praying on mat everyday but he will still beat mummy Ruka when he enter your house. One time like this, he call you Omo ale, Bastard child. If not because of Iya Saheed, he will have say you should start carrying market around, you think I did not hear, abi?...”
At this point, Malik usually keeps quiet, watching her ramble on in an amusing manner. Despite his twelve years old malnourished form, he knows better than to haggle over these matters, not to talk of the fact that no man talks back to the lady he loves. And he loves her a lot. Her kinky, dense hair excites him. Her tiny, hard nipples jutting out of her thin blouse, her thin thighs scarred everywhere due to careless falls and her sharp, alert yellow and brown eyes make him think of when he will grow beards like brother Saheed; when she will stop being eleven, so that he can take her to Mama Arike’s food joint and buy her a plate of Jollof rice. No, she likes beans and fried plantain more.
He will ask her to be his girlfriend… then they can kiss anytime they want…They will rent a house of their own. She will no longer be pushed outside by her mother again anytime those obese men she shows her old body to come around. She won’t have to stay in that stinking shed again and sell fruits to men who look through her transparent camisoles at her nipples and beat her buttocks when she wears only panties.
Then when they have enough money, they will buy a big bed and do what fruit mother and those men do together, that makes the bed shake with tremor. But this time, she will do it with him alone, only him…
He doesn’t know how long he thinks about this. But one evening, behind one of those windows, he impulsively draws her closer to him, puts his mouth in hers just like he sees them do in the soap operas he peeps at. She doesn’t react at first, only silently taking in the musky taste of his bad breath. But then, she begins to stroke his cheeks, sipping in the saliva falling slightly from his lips. After a while, they release each other, laugh at themselves and hold hands as they jump over a ditch nearby. This pulling her closer, stroking and touching depths with the mouth become habitual, like the gambling games they play, except this time they enjoy it a lot and nobody has to lose.