By a Stroke of Luck (Novel)

 

Chapter 1: Adunni

Monday, 4^th February

It was one of those days where enjoying my dream rather than my reality led to me rattling in the morning. First; scampering in and out of the bathroom and then shoving my school uniform on. I knew I wasn’t properly dressed, but doing so would put me at a disadvantage of being locked out of the school gate for the fifth time barely a month after resumption. My mom had left early for her shop and didn’t see any reason to wake me up.

I checked my watch, “Oh no! 8:12 a.m. How am I going to make it in time?” I said just before the iron protector clanged loudly as I locked it. I felt irresponsible as the eyes of shop owners on our street settled on me thanks to our uncompleted dwarf fence.

I skidded off, wearing my tie and raced down our street to meet Sule’s last bus scuttling off to Magodo. His buses made three trips to Magodo in the morning before the usual trips around the city. On some days he was in a good mood, I paid half my fare or nothing at all. I entered the bus and greeted Sule. It was something I always had to do whether I felt like it or not, just like I added auntie or uncle automatically to anyone five years older than me.  “You should greet anyone older than you first and your elders with courtesy. It’s not too much. Don’t be a rotten child.” My mom said to me after I failed to greet an elder properly one Sunday. I greeted with an even bigger smile hoping not to pay any fare.

“Adunni, you don late again abi?” Sule remarked as he revved the engine,

I hissed silently, perusing my bag to ensure I didn’t miss anything when packing last night. Maths and biology homework—check. Ruler—check. Calculator—check.  Pen—check. Diary—check.

It seemed like since I began my new school, oversleeping had become a thing, with my dopamine inducing night sessions of visualizing my perfect boyfriend and brainstorming on my self-embarked project: Operation find My Father which had already began taking a toll on me.

 Perfect boyfriend  list

1. Hot, really hot, smoking hot. So handsome that all my friends ask me—how did you get this lucky?

2. Perfectly trimmed eyebrows or even better naturally trimmed (no bushy brows please)

3. Tall, not lanky, no afro hair please (Sexy low cut with great hairline)

4. Good command of English (No startling accents please)

5. Smells fresh all the time

6. Makes me laugh all the time.

 Still, in my diary, I went through the list of my scribbling and my other potential fathers. I also jotted down the probabilities of his characteristic features which were not peculiar to my mom.

 Thought Ramblings

1. My father can’t be white, since I’m full black blooded.

2. He must be tall (I think), I’m mom’s height already and she’s 5ft 4. I think I’ll outgrow her.

3. He must have lived in Osun state for some time to have met mom while growing up.

4. I think he must have a pointed nose since I do have one and mom’s nose is flat.                                

 

	Face book list
Name	Background	Doubts
1. Seye Royce	Lives in London, works at Proctor &Gamble, Born May 26, 1956, Architect.	Probably  never been to Nigeria
2. Remilekun Royce	Lives in Lagos, legal partner at Olaniwun & Associates, Born 1984	His Facebook is dry like a desert, no clue he’s even alive.
3. Ochiefu Royce	Resides in Anambra state, self-employed, no D.O.B	This guy is Igbo, I don’t think my mom has ever been to the East. How else would she meet him?

 

I pondered on the fact that only three men bearing Royce had what I could even consider a social media account. My next assignment was to search the men out on Linkedin and if I could see other black men bearing Royce. Hopefully, they would be on there. The Mr. Ochiefu seemed to me like a wealthy illiterate, a building material importer who had been lucky to be among the few buyers of Rolls Royce in Nigeria. Hence, the fake surname Royce. His Facebook was flooded with pictures of him and his family inside, beside and on the Rolls Royce. The other two men weren’t active on the platform with Mr. Remilekun having posted last in 2016.

I let out a grunt and slapped my face in frustration with my right hand.

“Oga abeg shift small, no dey squeeze me for here.” A beefy woman chided in the background as she wobbled on her seat.

“Where you want make I shift to, no be you dey squeeze me for here?” The man who replied had been conversing with his friend in fluent pidgin about how his neighbour won the lotto a week ago and how confident he was that he too would soon win once he visited the shaman the following week.

Their argument lingered till the woman exchanged seats with a slimmer passenger. I glanced at my watch, it was almost 8:30 a.m., and I was still a block away from my school. There was no way I could arrive at school in three minutes.

It took twenty-five minutes to get to my school—one of the reasons I didn’t it unlike the former which was a leisure fifteen-minute walk. I told my mother I didn’t like the new school she enrolled me, but she paid deaf ears. As usual, my words didn’t matter much to her unless they were my basic needs or essentials.

I closed my diary and put it in my bag. I felt the bundle of cash my mom handed me the previous night.

“That’s fifty thousand.” She said handing me the money “Give this to Ladi, that’s my contribution for the month. Make sure you keep it well. I don’t want to hear stories. Keep it at the bottom of your bag.” She told me, deadpan and returned inside, it was a wad of crisp five hundred naira notes.

Ladi was the thrift collector with an already pregnant sixth girlfriend. I wondered why many people, including my mother, trusted him with their money. He was very loose like a canyon spreading his seed around Lagos. Fathering almost eleven children and counting. They said he had good hands; and that money collected from his ajo usually flourished their businesses. But then who was I to argue, my mother’s food business moved from the roadside to a small kiosk, then to an eight-by-eight store when she started thrifting with him two years ago and I was glad that she’d be moving to a bigger store in the coming weeks. Perhaps those crazy myths weren’t wrong after all.

I was so sure it was going to be a good day when Sule didn’t collect money from me because that two hundred naira meant a lot to me and my savings. I thanked him profusely and raced down my school street, heaving heavily, I banged on, immediately after I got to the school gate.

“Who is that, banging the gate like a terrorist?” Ranti the gateman quipped. “Oh, latecomer it’s you.” He said once he saw me through the peephole.

“Good morning, abeg open the gate.” I pleaded.

He scoffed. “I can’t open the gate for you, you’re in senior class…do you know what time it is?” He was at it again, unyielding and difficult to be pacified.

I pressed harder. “Mr. Ranti, please, please just open the gate. This will be the last time I come late, I beg you.”

“Was that not what you said last week? Abeg go o, I can’t talk too much. I don’t want them to sack me.”

“Please now, just help me,” I begged, even curtsying because I desperately needed to get in. but it turned out to be another day that tardiness got the better of me.

He hissed and turned around.  I couldn’t believe he would lock me outside almost every week for school my mom paid fees to enroll my back over my left shoulder and walked away reluctantly. There was no point staying anyway. Mr. Ranti still wouldn’t open the gate.

I looked forward to scoring a perfect ten on the Chemistry homework after spending hours on it the night before.

Going back home again would make all our neighbours assume I had been sent home for unpaid tuition fees and that would send my mother into a frenzy. The last time I came home after I had been locked out again, she told me squarely; “You had better stay there.”

Spent from running, I dragged my feet along till I halted at the entrance of the school street and made a run for it when vehicles plying were at a distance I could dash off. I remembered the money I was carrying and rotated my bag to the front of my chest while people passing by threw wondering glances that didn’t need to be spoken—why is this school girl not in school?

Next stop was Ladi’s house. When I got there, I met his brother Wale exhaling smoke like a put-out fire. I waved the smoke away to help my deep need for clear oxygen at the time.  After greeting him in Yoruba, I stated why I was there. “I’m looking for Boda Ladi.” I said boldly, my brain taking note of the surrounding in seconds. My hands clutched the strap of my bag as it sat on my shoulders. I had worn the bag properly so as not to raise suspicion since I entered the gated compound.

He replied to me in pidgin implying, “He’s not at home. He has gone out since morning.” His voice was gruff and hasty. His lips darkened unnaturally too and his reddened eyes reminded me of the warning usually at the back of cigarette packs—smokers are liable to die young.

I nodded and asked, “Okay, when will he be back?”

 He answered. “What happened? Do you want to contribute now now?”

“Um no…no.”

I knew better not to say yes, because he could whisk my bag and the money in it away and then my mother would kill me.

“Has he impregnated you too?”

“Ehn!” Was all I could muster. God forbid.

Then he continued with an explanation which I didn’t ask for. “He has taken the pregnant one to check whether she’s pregnant at the health centre? I can give you the address o.”

“Never mind,” I answered quickly and turned around to leave. “Thank you,” I said metres away but audibly.

I knew just the right spot to wait at—the Elesho’s uncompleted building. It was six stories and was still in its skeletal form with all the exposed pillars and partially filled brick walls. It was never completed because the children of the late Chief Elesho fought over the property in court and preferred that it should be a carcass rather than belong to any of them. Now strangers dwelt in it rent-free for over fourteen years.

For me, it was my soothing place, where I felt on top of the world, where fresh ideas came to me instantly, and where I could reel in the moment with my passion which was drawing and painting. That was the highest floor, I had brought a chair there in January. And it was there I made most of my sketches as an aspiring architect, my mini studio. I had always known that I wanted to be the next Zaha Hadid of Africa.

No one had ever found me there. It was no man’s property…literarily. From where I stood, I could see the horizon from where the sun rose and went down at dusk. The layered metropolis brimming with active Lagos hustlers eager to seize what kept their lives going—money.

Approaching the third floor, a man holding a child accosted me; “Ah ah! Who are you? What are you doing up there eh?” I easily guessed he was a grump.

I ignored him but couldn’t help staring at his toddler who needed medical attention.

“I said who are you and where are you coming from?” He asked again in a hoarse tone. Obviously, he was one of the new illegal residents from his mismatched Ankara and rash-baked son.

Instead, I walked away. I could hear him sternly warning me not to return hence he’d deal with me by alerting his fellow refugees about a thief.

I opened the three poorly constructed windows I made with some zinc and leftover plywood, dropped my school bag on the chair, impaled a canvas on the easel and began to brainstorm what other colours would fit into the time-loop piece I began working on a week ago. “It has to be perfect,” I said to myself while opening my paint brush palettes ready to begin the day’s work. I saved for a year to buy the complete drawing set from my measly pocket money.