Igba-boi
Igba-boi means to serve another.
Arinze liked to eat rice, palm oil rice made with iru (locust beans), and stock fish. He only ate out of the white and blue bowl he got on his fourth birthday; the plate was almost a year old but still withheld the tantrums and angry fits of the nearly five-year-old child.
That same plate was the object of commotion in Eze’s house that fateful morning. Chisom, the igba-boi, had prepared breakfast like he always did. Yam and egg for the parents, the lovely family he was sent to work with for three years. It had been two years and nine months, and although there were some hitches, the shop oiled strong under his faithful watch.
Sometimes he imagined himself as the owner, controlling goods in and out of Wuse market, trucks branded in his name. “Soon,” he countered the intrusive thoughts, “and uncle Eze will send me my way, well geared enough to start my business.” “Soon,” he sang as he sat up from the six-by-three bed, he slept on in the visitor’s room.
Chisom slept close enough to the child’s room so that he could help if aunty Chidinma needed any help at night.
Soon.
And sometimes, he didn’t want to go. Everything here was easy, unlike at home, where meals were not sure, and he slept on a wretched mat with his four siblings, mother, and father. But after this was greener pastures, maybe he would even marry a woman half as beautiful as aunty Chidinma, but that was almost becoming but a dream.
Things had mysteriously been going missing around the house, and it happened again.
“Chisom, where is this boy’s bowl?”
Uncle Eze held a pankere over Chisom as he shook and pleaded for mercy. Arinze was heard from miles away, yelling and hollering, his mother tried to make him eat from a different plate, but he wouldn’t have it.
“Why are you doing this to us, is it because I have not made you pay for those things you obviously stole?”
Uncle Eze struck Chisom hard across the face.
“Stand up! Immediately, pack your things. You are leaving this house today.” Chisom fainted at the utterance of those words; they had warned him and his parents about instances like this, people they had gone to serve for periods swindling the boys out of their money. Still, he was certain uncle Eze and aunty Chidima wouldn’t do that to him.
“Please, I swear, I did not steal anything.” Chisom rolled on the floor, begging the gods to save him. They didn’t.
His mother had bought a new mat in his absence, and his father had developed a chronic illness. The hut now smelled like deprivation and pain.
Arinze turned five.
He always had such queer playing habits, like using his mother’s gold earrings as characters in his lego.
His white and blue bowl was a roundabout in his train set. He’d gotten upset when it was too slippery and dumped it at the bottom of his toy bucket.
