The people who are not in the city think that city boys eat roses for breakfast. Mother likes to say that those who think they have many people around will see soon-soon that life is for one person at a time. I am growing every day, like father, I am working-working because if you do not have many people around you by birth, you will have to work them by force. 

Before mother and father told us we will search for happiness in better places, me and Tamuno did not know that happiness was anything more our muddy streets, plenty fishes and tyre games. We would wake up every morning and run to the river before father to wash his boat and nets. We did not wait till the first cock cry because that is when the lazy men like to go to the river – after we have finished picking the best of fishes. Father told us that while washing the nets, we should whistle beautiful songs because nature likes to hear beautiful things. We will obey him and sing, but sweeter songs always comes when we are counting our money after morning sales. 

Our afternoons were spent on the ghetto streets of Rumuekpirikom, that kind of happiness of poor people that photographers are quick to share to the world. Amara, in Lagos, showed me a picture on her facebook-internet. She said, “This looks like your village o. See these boys wearing pant and playing with tyre outside.   No shame”. But me and Tamuno did not have to ask father or mother for anything and hear “money no dey o”, like in this city. 

The people who are not in the city think that city people eat dollar money for lunch. The people who are in the city think that village people eat sand-sand for lunch. 

Father says we will stay at his friend’s place in the city while he looks for a big job that will help him rent a house. He says his friend is very rich, that the city has made him rich. Father tells us he will be very rich too and we ask him what it means to be very rich. He tells us, “No more running-running to water every morning. Plenty money for big-big car, big-big house. You and Tamuno go go correct school like other rich man pikin dem for city, dey speak correct oyibo. Your Mama go dey tie better wrapper for waist. Everybody go know say levels don change”.

Mother is showing us how she will start walking when she gets her new wrappers. We are laughing and father’s head is swelling. I can see it in the way he is stretching his neck and nodding. He is proud in advance. 

The city that we get to is not very fine. Mother says the place is c-ysalled “Beggar”; we laugh and say no wonder. But the road is fine small, no sand-sand everywhere. Everybody is shouting and doing fast-fast, these okada people almost tear my clothes when we come down from the bus. We are standing with our ghana-must-go bags in the middle of many people and looking around at everybody. Tamuno is complaining that he is hungry and piss is holding him. He is not a big boy. I am 17 years and he is 13 years.   

That night after father told us we will be rich, Tamuno dragged me for us to take one last long walk around the streets. We were sad small about the friends we would miss, our special foods and mostly our fish. We were close to the house when he asked me, “Bura, you think our father will get all those things he said?”

“I think we should pray for every good thing to come.” 

Father is hitting his phone on his head. He is pacing up and down and mother’s hand is on his shoulder, telling him to calm down. Tamuno is back from wee-weeing and is sitting down on his bag next to me. We have moved to a corner of the bus park. 

“You get 1h abeg? I dey haje”

I open my bag, give him two hundred naira and look at him as he is going to stand with the people in front of a woman roasting corn. Father has found a bench far away from us and is just looking at his phone. The only thing I am thinking of is what I will look like in the school uniform with thick jacket. Tamuno did not like school when we were in the village but on our walk, he told me he will start reading plenty books when we get to the city. For me, I like to work hard with father. All that book-book is not for me but I like the uniform jacket. I will go to school for the jacket. 

Mother walks to me and sits on Tamuno’s bag.

“Why Paale face dey like that?”

“En friend number nor dey go. It was ringing at first but e con dey talk switched off. Papa Yare don scam us.”

Her shoulder is sad so I bend too. People in the bus park start to go small-small until it is night and we now know that we don’t have anywhere to go. Nobody is really looking at us except for some “nawa o” and the way they quickly throw away their eyes so that we will not ask them for help. We share Tamuno’s roasted corn with the bread mother has bought for dinner. Father does not leave the bench for the rest of the night. 

I cannot sleep all through the night, I am thinking if father will take us back to the village in the morning. I am planning to run away if he says such because I have already told my friends

I will come back with big car. Once once, water is coming out from the sides of my eyes. I know I am not crying; it is the cold. Father will be cold too. Who will not be cold?

The moon is still out when people start coming to the park. It is like the time we always run to the river, I am guessing 5 am. Father is still sitting on the bench with his head facing the ground. Once once, he will beat off mosquito from his body. He does not look at us at all. I know he is saying “shame no gree me” in his mind. 

I am sure those boys are coming out from the other corner of the bus park. Some of them are big like me; others are small like Tamuno or even smaller. I see them come out of the corner and stand to stretch their bodies before running into the crowd. Some are running out of the park, some are running to carry people’s heavy bags and some are standing somehow with their eyes going round-round at everybody. I am not in their minds to know what they are thinking but something is telling me they are thinking bad things. They even look like the boy that dragged mother’s purse from her bag in the village market. That time, I told mother I am a big boy, I will find the boy and deal with him. But mother said I should not go. She said those bad boys will drag me and force me to be like them. 

“How can they force me to be a bad boy?”

“You have a little mind, Bura. But you wan know everything.”

Father is coming towards us and his eyes are very red. Chai. The cold entered him wellwell. 

“Mama Bura, wake up.” She shifts Tamuno’s head on her laps and sits up. “You go carry Tamuno go village. Me and Bura go stay here. When we make small money, we go send una make una take come meet us.”

I smile. This is my father; he is always thinking-thinking. Father does not say no after saying yes. I know father will be very rich and we will look for Papa Yare and deal with him.

 Mother stands up to face him. She wants to say something but she does not know what to say. Tamuno is sobbing already. Small boy like him. 

“Father, allow Tamuno to stay with us. The city will make him strong. This nonsense crycry go stop.”

Father does not hug mother goodbye. I am a big boy, I only nod at her. Tamuno gives her his shambala to hold for him, I can see it in his eyes that he wants to hug her instead. She is not happy to leave us but the city is no starting place for women. Mother knows that.

                                                        * * *

It is two weeks since mother went back to the village and we have not heard from her. Me and father and Tamuno are living in one small wooden house and we are eating only once every day. Sometimes we eat two times when any of Tamuno’s girlfriends steal food from their mothers to give him. The girls here like Tamuno very well; everybody says he is a fine boy. For me, he is a small boy. He cannot choose one girl; he will just be talking-talking about every girl he sees. 

Amara is the only girl that says she likes me. It is good for me sef, her family is rich not like all Tamuno’s girlfriends that live in wooden houses like us. Amara says she is 15 years but her breast is too big for that. Her bum-bum is small sha. But she is fine o, yellow paw paw. And anytime she comes near me, I smell this very fine perfume on her that makes me want to hug her.

I don’t know if I like her. 

The first time I met Amara, I was sleeping in my friend’s house when she came to buy roasted fish from his mother. People come from far-far just to buy fish from Tayo’s mother. And I like to sleep in their wooden house because their bed is big not like our bed that is flat to the ground. I told her Tayo’s mother is not at home and she asked me where I live. Me, with my sleepy-sleepy eyes, I told her.  Since then, everybody says I am Amara’s boyfriend. I have never asked her if it is true.

Father says he is working in a factory that makes Ankara materials. Sometimes morning shift, sometimes night shift, while Tamuno and I go to the market to carry bags for people to get money to soak garri. If it is on days when we have the strength to make more money, we will use it to buy Mama Tayo’s fish and enough groundnuts with ice block. This is how we have learnt to drink garri here. If you see the way these Yoruba people make mouth with their Ijebu garri, you will think that the red oil in yellow garri is a mistake. Meanwhile, Ijebu garri is just white and can slap-slap somebody. It is only when you add enough groundnut with salt, milk, sugar and if you have enough money for fish, then you will want to drink it every day.

Father is supposed to be on morning shift today but he comes home too early. He looks like he wants to be cold but father is a strong man. He cannot be cold like that. He comes to call me and Tamuno from Tayo’s house that we need to talk. I am thinking he wants to tell us he is tired of this struggle. I know that father was happier with the fishes. We drag ourselves behind him and go to our house. Our small wooden house has a flat bed by the corner with our bags that contain our clothes beside it. The stove with two small pots and plates are at the other side of the room. The room is big small but there is no carpet on the ground. Because we have only one window, our room always smells dust-dust but father says this will not last long.

“As your Mama dey travel go village that last two weeks, their bus run enter bush.”

He is nodding and looking at Tamuno. Tamuno’s eyes are begging for a miracle from his mouth.

“I go go village by weekend make we begin arrange her burial.”

Father has tried hard to not allow the cold get him. He says he has to go back to work immediately. He does not come back this night.

* * *

The market is very busy today because tomorrow will be public holiday – October 1st, exactly one month that we are in this city. Father has travelled and come back, he says almost everyone in the village came for mother’s burial. He has put a blue and white carpet in our room and Tamuno has started hiding small-small cigarette sticks under it. 

The market is very tight but these truck drivers will still force their way in. This big truck carrying many tubers of yam stops in front of some shops and I notice that everyone is busy, nobody will see me take just one tuber. I will buy fish from Mama Tayo and prepare porridge yam for us to eat in the night and be happy. I squeeze my body into the crowd of women selecting yams and pick up one big yam. I am turning it around and looking to see if anyone is watching me. The truck driver opens his door to come out so I quickly slip out while the women are telling themselves that the yams are very big and healthy.

“What do you think you are doing?!” He grabs my shoulder and I turn to look at him, my hands will not let the yam go.

Papa Yare.

He releases me and the first thing I want to do is throw the yam on his head. I adjust myself on the ground.

“Don’t do this next time. They will burn you alive”

I want to tell him that I will burn him alive but Tayo is the only person who knows I am now a bad boy because he is also a bad boy. 

Father says he has seen Papa Yare many times driving his truck on his way to work. He says that Papa Yare is also a struggling man and he saves for a whole year just to show off in the village during Christmas. I will still burn Papa Yare alive.

* * *

It is almost every day that Amara comes to see me. Sometimes we watch videos on her phone, sometimes we talk and other times I just want to be alone but I have never sent her away.

She says she saw a picture on her facebook-internet and I will laugh when I see it. “This looks like your village o. See these boys wearing pant and playing with tyre outside.   No shame”. She starts laughing but I don’t laugh with her. 

“Why are you not laughing?”

“What do you want from me?”

“What?”

“I am a bad boy.”

“No. You are a sweet boy. Everybody calls you that.”

This is where I laugh. I laugh and tell her it is the bad boys that named me sweet boy because I am one of them. I tell her how Tayo told me he wants to show me where the big boys of the city meet and I went with him. It is hard for me to describe how they held me down and pulled my trousers and the biggest boy forced his big penis into my bum-bum. It was after he poured his white water on me that he shouted, “This one is a sweet boy o” and all the bad boys start to call me sweet boy. I don’t care that she squeezes her face as I tell her how my shit was blood for many days and Tayo said that big boys who are bad boys shit blood so they cannot be afraid of blood. I tell her of Papa Yare, that I told the bad boys about him and they have captured him. It is tonight that I will burn him alive. I tell her that if Papa Yare had not deceived my father, my mother would still be alive, Tamuno would not have cigarettes under the carpet and I would not be called sweet boy. She says, “Well, at least you met me” and I shake my head and tell her, “If you had seen my mother, you will never think you are beautiful”.

Now now, my eye is scratching me. I don’t know where this cold is from but it is very strong. Amara goes to the door, tells me, “You are a bad boy; and a sweet boy. You should not cry” and closes the door without noise after her.

• * * *

Father says his God has done justice to the person who wronged him. He heard the news that Papa Yare’s bones were dropped in front of his house this morning and he has come to share it with us. Tamuno is not listening. I think he is taking harder things now.

“This place is not for me, father. I am going back to the village tomorrow.”

Father is nodding, he understands. I want to tell him that he did not fail me, that I have handled the person who did. I want to tell him that maybe I should have done better with Tamuno but it is not too late for him to take over. I want to tell him that I am not going back to get rich in the village but there is happiness I cannot find in this city – at least not yet. But he is nodding and I am nodding and he says, “Go well,” and I swallow hard and he swallows hard and we smile.

• * * *

Amara has come with white rice and Japanese sauce for dinner. I remember fish stew in the village and tell her I have made up my mind to return to the village tomorrow. She says I should eat first. I take the first spoon and I want to stay back for her. The second spoon reminds me that Japanese sauce is only for tonight.

Okey-Onyema, Sharon Onyinyechukwu is a graduate of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her works have been published and are forthcoming in anthologies, print and online magazines like The Muse Journal, Nantygreens Online Magazine, Liminal Transit Review, Arts Lounge, amongst others. She served as the Associate Editor (Prose) for The Muse No. 49.