Giggles and Grades: Goodnight Tanfe
Unfortunately, It Wasn’t Paradise
There are many ways to tell ourselves about the future, and each method comes with a disclaimer that there must be room for error. No certainties, only speculations.
Optimism sounds like marketing adverts, where they promise you a better life if only you buy a product, and pessimism on the other end of the scale sounds like someone is trying to help your situation.
We all love good news, but we pay more attention to the bad news.
They said I’d be great in this life, but I have paid attention more to outcomes of what my life could become when I do not follow the laid down rules of successful people.
‘You are a product of your own choices.’ is a mantra that has been drilled so much into my brain — now there is a hole in it.
She never said it with a threatening tone. It was always said in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s I-WILL-BE-BACK tone, with emphasis on each word.
Now I wish she was here to repeat those words to me. I recall the comfortable emotions that sat deep within my heart, the thought of being a child to her, and how she used words to love all of us, her children.
The words she would say before putting us to bed. She always reminded us that we were one, and then a goodnight kiss followed.
It was in everything. How she held the knickers out, for Temi to climb into. How she’d tell Tosan to always write a letter to her, even when he did not have much to say. All these were fed to the mouth of death.
First was Temi, who died of sickle cell anemia after several crises, then Tosan slept and never woke up — without any symptoms or signs.
You’d think death was satisfied.
They were my official team for everything mischievous and good, and with each demise, the world’s millstones were garlanded around my neck.
I did not know how to be, or what to be, anymore.
Years have gone by, and even now as the only surviving child, when I open my mouth to say these things, words escape.
It’s ten years since Temi and Tosan left this world.
Everything has changed.
I extended my hand to grasp at the wind with each stride, struggling for air with every push forward, but first I ran out of money, so I had to commit this crime again to have something to eat today.
The truth is I’ve gone through this same route before — stealing to get something to eat and also being chased long enough to imagine what death felt like, even though it just never happened.
I told death humorously, ‘Not today!’ On that day it heard me.
The rich have good stories to tell to themselves and their children, and even the bad stories they tell are about the things they did to make themselves richer. They don’t tell their children those stories. Suckers! I’m not sure why they even tell the good stories in the first place.
Who asked to hear them? Proud fools.
Everything has changed. Our ouch and aww have now been changed to chei and kai.
We used to be rich and gentrified. Highly respected and refined, but not anymore. The demise of my siblings seems to have washed away any dot of fortunate events that we could hold onto.
Mum was fired. Her lawyer could not win the sexual harassment suit filed against her boss. She didn’t want to come forward as a witness at first, but then she did — hoping that the stars would shine on her with a good settlement and that is to say the least.
They lost fair and square!
Sexual harassment can be trivialized by companies and even result in hostility against victims like my mum. She was fired immediately.
The ‘You are a product of your own choices.’ still came without a threatening tone even after what happened. Things changed, but she didn’t.
Dad’s job was still intact. That was all to it. He was denied several promotions, and it was difficult to get another job.
I watched everything slip away gradually. I couldn’t save it, it also couldn’t save me.
Dewunmi, the unassuming fellow from the shop where the catchy tune of Naira Marley’s ‘abi ki n pe rexxie…’ resonates, inadvertently provided me with a thorough overview of this small town’s layout. Positioned across the store I had just pilfered from, he divulged the identities of prominent figures in the community and pinpointed areas deemed off-limits by the locals.
He was sixteen, a naive church boy. The best part of Dewunmi was that he was painfully introverted. He never thought I’d use the information he was giving me for anything malicious.
The touts knew their way around these places, but not me; I’ve always been an omo-get-inside person till Mum and Dad were killed two years ago as a result of a gunfight that day in Mushin market.
They were not even aware of what caused the fight, but they fell into the heat of it, and today, all I know of their bodies are the stories I was told.
The death that once heard me thought it humorous enough to pay me back.
As I try to escape for my life once again, I see that the hurt still lingers somewhere, but I can’t keep living my life that way. With the hurt. With the thoughts.
My parents were never on good terms with their relatives, so I had to fend for myself as an only child now after they died. I stayed back at my parent’s old house till the rent expired and was forced out.
I hid from the landlady and her boys for almost a year till Tanfe sold me out for a pardon from her rent which was due too. You would think the good times we had would birth loyalty, even if it was just in the tiniest way.
Tanfe. Her hair, her skin, her smile. The way she would confidently walk knowing all the men would turn to take a look. She would move gallantly with her head up on any day. She took no prisoners, even on good days. She was a catch, even on bad days. She was mine every day.
Lady Tina got the police to arrest me as soon as she got Tanfe to cave. When they realized they couldn’t beat the rent out of me, they let me go. Not back into the house, my bags were already outside the gates.
The rain had beat it up as it had been there for almost a week now. The clothes were already smelling. All of them were soaked, smelly, and no longer washable, how much more, wearable.
Tanfe looked up from her window as I tried to salvage a few things but closed the curtain as soon as my eyes caught hers. Tanfe was my only love story. She was everything I knew as a girlfriend.
There are anecdotes in a love story that are too difficult to tell. Some questions will also remain unanswered no matter how long you live. The optimists have said it is okay to still believe that good things will happen to you.
I hope that good things happen today.
The community security members have already made it their responsibility to prevent my escape. I can hear the sound emanating from every direction.
As I navigate familiar alleys, pursued by relentless justice seekers, I see it’s the same one I escaped with the last time. This adrenaline rush fuels my light, a tale I’ll love to tell Tanfe again when we ever get together again.
Perhaps, she’d want to hear again about how I dodged through the hands that almost caught me. She’d prefer to learn about my nimbleness in a way that differs from how others may have described it to her.
I didn’t take the betrayal of the other time as a dealbreaker, she probably caved because she had no other option.
Maybe we can see past the stain of betrayal from our past.
Perhaps someday, we could each have children. Children who won’t experience the pain of being orphaned, who won’t resort to theft when they’re desperate. Children who will always have a home to call their own. Children who will discover love without fear of hiding it.
That’s as many maybes in a lifetime.
As the chase intensified, and my ears could hear the voices of angry men charging toward me, I knew there was something wrong.
It looked like an ambush as I got into an open space with different blockades.
‘How did they know this route?’ were the words that echoed in my thoughts before the next thing happened.
A bullet from behind pierced through the flesh in my left leg and my whole weight fell to the floor.
Someone might have given me away.
I looked up in pain as I watched them bring the car tyres and the fuel.
I looked up to see Dewunmi standing side by side with one of the chief security officers.
I saw Tanfe too.
She sobbed, knowing it was the end — my end.
Betrayal once more looms, as shadows gather with a sinister purpose, bringing forth a fate sealed in flames. Indeed, You’d think death was satisfied, but not in this life — perhaps, in another one.
Goodnight, Tanfe.
Thank you for reading!
