A high-pitched, bone-piercing scream awakens you. For several seconds you wonder if what you have heard is from a dream in which you’d been running away from someone or something. You sit up and stare into the darkness, momentarily unaware of where you are. The second scream jolts you fully awake. You scramble to your feet as two things immediately cross your mind. The first is whether the scream is coming from inside the house, and the next is if anyone else in the household has heard what you have heard. The living room is dark except for a shard of light from the streetlight that comes through the curtain and falls onto the sofa that serves as your bed.

Then, all is silent again. 

The third scream is not as loud as the previous one. It is barely a scream. It sounds more like a muffled cry, and when you hear it, you stumble out into the hallway. You start towards the boys’ bedroom but quickly realize that not only did the scream come from their mother’s bedroom, but the noise has not roused them. It does not surprise you because, over time, you have learned that they are both heavy sleepers. You are contemplating what to do next when she exits clumsily from her room and quickly shuts the door behind her. She closes her eyes and puts her back against the door. Both hands are behind her, grasping the door handle. There is something in the room that has not only frightened her but which she does not want to come out. 

She opens her eyes but does not look in your direction. It appears that she does not see you, despite the small space that is between you. She stares vacantly ahead and is more preoccupied with making sure that whatever is behind the door of the room does not come out. Her chest heaves up and down. The striated muscles in her head are throbbing and beads of sweat dot her brow. You try to interpret the look on her face. It appears to be a mixture of incredulity and sheer horror. 

Then you step forward in the darkness. 

The movement startles her momentarily, and then she stares at you through what seems like a fog of disbelief. You concentrate your gaze on her face, as she catches her breath and responds to the unasked question, “Cat.”

You’re not sure what it is that you’ve heard and do not want to repeat it, in case you are mistaken, but she repeats it, “Cat.” She takes a deep breath, all the while searching your face to see if there is any way you have understood what she has just said. And then she whispers, her chest heaving up and down, “There is a cat in my room.”

You step back for a moment and then repeat the word, “Cat.”

She nods her head, her face awash with relief as she realizes that she is getting through to you.

You have been a part of the household for a little under two months. Yet, you are sure that a cat is not part of the home. And so, you want to ask her if she is sure that there is a cat in her room, but then you bite your tongue, especially as you consider what she says next, “My enemies will not succeed. They are the ones that sent this cat…”

A sigh of exasperation escapes you as you consider that as much as you know about the person before you, if enemies are dispatching cats to people’s homes for sinister reasons, she was more likely to be on the sending end than on the receiving end. 

“Are you sure you saw a cat? Maybe you were dreaming or something.”

She gives you an eviscerating look and kisses her teeth before responding with an elevated harshness in her voice, “I am telling you that there is a cat inside that room. God will not allow me to see cats in my dream.” You want to respond that it appears that God wants her to see cats in real life instead, but you add it to the collection of bite marks on your tongue.

You have both been standing in front of the door of her room for what seems like an eternity, and she has not let go of the door handle, but after her last statement she steps forward and pushes you to the door.

“I want you to go and get that thing out of my room.”

“The cat?”

“No, the dog.” The petrifying ordeal had clearly not robbed her of the ability to be sarcastic. 

“But…”

She narrows her eyes and gives you a look that silences any attempt to argue. Her face is illuminated by the dim light in the hallway. It serves as a spotlight on the maleficence that inhabits her and which you have become accustomed to. She nudges you towards the door and when you glance back at her, she points with her mouth, urging you to continue your mission.

“Wait,” she interrupts. 

And you are momentarily relieved that at least she has decided to be reasonable for once. But that relief is a short-lived emotion, decimated by what she says next.

“When you enter there, get me my phone first and then go back and look for the cat.”

The first thing that you see when you enter the room is the green light of the digital clock on her bedside table indicating that it is 3:27 in the morning. The sulfuric odor of onions hits you and you remember that she’d had dinner in her bedroom hours earlier. You stumble over a pile of clothes in the corner and steady yourself as you pick your steps slowly towards the bedside table. There is no sign of a cat.

“Do you see my phone?” her raspy voice pierces through the closed door.

You see it but don’t respond, instead picking it up and walking to the door. She shields the doorway when you open the door slightly and does not even look at you, grabbing the phone from your hand before slamming the door shut. 

You exhale. Your back to the door. Your eyes closed. From outside the door, you can hear her muffled voice as she is talking to someone who is praying with her as she begins to speak in tongues. You roll your eyes and then hear something in the corner of the room next to the window. It sounds like purring and your heart starts to beat as something moves from the side of her bed.

***

There is a particular constellation of circumstances that has brought you to this point. Things had been going smoothly for you. You’d gained admission into the university of your choice to study accounting, which is what you’d always wanted. You had your plans all laid out: Four years to get the degree, and then two years to qualify as a chartered accountant during which time you would have completed the National Youth Service Corps program and gotten a job with a bank or an accounting firm. Accountants are in demand in Lagos, and you knew some way or other you would be hired somewhere. Plus, you were hungry and ambitious and a hard worker. 

But then, something happened that you were not prepared for. In the second semester of your first year, the National Association of University Lecturers declared a nationwide strike due to non-payment of salaries. At first, everyone believed the issue would be resolved in a short amount of time. But days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. Months that left you with less to do. It was a peculiar place to be. You’d never had your education interrupted before and there is a sense of exasperation that accompanies the appalling uncertainty that sees your well-laid plans unravel and you are helpless to do anything about it. 

It is during the third month that you succumb to the kind of vague interest that idleness breeds and wander into the beer parlor down the street. You are more interested in the pool table that was recently acquired, and which has given the place a nascent prominence in the neighborhood. Later, you will find it difficult to explain what happens a few minutes after you arrive at the beer parlor. 

When you saw the guns, you thought it was a robbery and instantly regretted having left home with the amount of money that you did. Seeing the men in police uniforms confused you even more, and it’s not until you were being bundled into one of the police vans that you realized that it was a sting operation. Everyone in the bar was taken into custody. The discussion of each person’s culpability or blamelessness would be discussed at the station. No one argues with the man with the gun. 

It is early afternoon, and the policemen have time on their hands and space in the van for the dozen people that they round up. It would be hours before you would learn that the inept bar attendant had been dealing drugs on the side and had been the target of the operation. The rest of you had just been collateral damage. 

When your mother comes to the station to pick you up, there is no explanation that you can offer that will make her believe that you are not involved in drugs or any other nefarious activities. The car ride home from the police station is quiet and that is what makes it worse. The best way to gauge the extent of a misdeed was from the response it generated from your mother. The way she furrows her brow revealing the deep ridges. The way she bites her bottom lip. You know from experience that she is questioning herself as she often does in the years that she has been raising you and your sister as a single parent. She is an even-tempered woman who does not easily go berserk when things go awry. 

The next evening the Chairman visited.   

The Chairman had been the first chairman of Ajeronmi Local Government where your family has resided all your life. It is a post that he has not held for several years, but once a chairman always a chairman. He’d gained more notoriety for his guile than for his competence as a legislator. His tenure at the local government had been trailed with claims of malfeasance. There are reports of funds allocated to certain projects bilked to finance the chairman’s own personal projects. Notwithstanding that, too many in the community, your mother included, continued to ingratiate themselves to him. And because he resides there, your entire neighborhood is a nest of the Chairman’s acolytes. It irks you to no end that your mother counts herself as one of these. 

It is the second time in your life that the Chairman has been called to intervene in a matter that concerns you. The first time was a few years before when, during an argument with your sister, you had used a curse word to insult her. Your mother, adopting her usual mute approach, had invited the Chairman to give you some advice. If you had been allowed to speak, you would have let the Chairman know that the first time you had heard those foul words, was a few days before from one of his sons.  

And now, here is the Chairman again, sitting in your living room sipping from a small glass of Schnapps. He has a penchant for page boy caps, a style that distinguishes him in the neighborhood, and he has set his cap on the small coffee table in front of him. He begins his pontification by letting you know that there is nothing in this life that is worth losing your self-respect or betraying the moral compass that good breeding has bestowed on you. 

“Your mother is a good woman. She is really trying for you and your sister. And this is how you repay her?”

You have learned to hide your contempt for him and remain silent as he continues what you consider to be an unusually long speech that is not different from the one that he had made years before. When he is done, he asks you to apologize to your mother for the trauma that you have put her through and extracts a promise from you that you will act more responsibly in the future. Even though his tone may sound avuncular to your mother, you will always remember it as condescending. 

When you deliver your monotonous apology and promise, you are dismissed. 

It is in your absence that the Chairman introduces a new dimension into the intervention he has been asked to participate in.

He reminds your mother that you had been born in Great Britain in the late 1970s, and that makes you a bona fide citizen of that country. He asks her to consider sending you back there to complete your studies, given the current precarity of the university system in the country. Years later, when you discover that it was at the Chairman’s behest that you had returned to the land of your birth, you are not quite sure what to make of it since you had always despised him. By that time, a short illness will have taken the Chairman’s life.

You are surprised when your mother begins to activate the process for your departure. You are even more astonished at the swiftness with which things fall into place. One day, you and your mother are presenting yourselves to a stern-looking Consular Officer at the British High Commission. A week later, you are picking up your passport, which has a stamp inside one of its pages bearing the words, ‘Right of Abode.’ 

The universities had not yet re-opened. That evening, you and your mother watch the evening news, which conveys the grim updates of the ongoing scarcity of petrol in the city, and that the university lecturers and the federal government have reached a stalemate in their negotiations. 

Your mother sighs heavily, and you are not sure whether she is inwardly confirming that this decision she has made concerning your future is the right one. She has arranged for you to stay with the daughter of one of her friends while you get settled.

“Morenike has lived in London for nearly twenty years. She went to school there and is happily married with two boys.” 

You want to remind your mother that she has already told you this, but then you realize that she needs to repeat it over and over as a mantra to herself, to convince herself that she is doing the right thing. You have never lived in any other household except the one headed by your mother, and this gives you a fair amount of apprehension because you are not sure what to expect. 

And there is the fact that your mother’s vision of your future does not extend beyond London. Even when you picked up your passport, she had thanked God for your “London visa.” You are still nursing the bite marks on your tongue from restraining yourself from correcting her that what you have received is neither a visa nor does it grant you access to London alone. 

You know of a friend’s sister who lives in Manchester and had attended university there, and there have been times when you’ve wanted to bring this up to your mother. But that would mean having to let your friend know about your plans and that would mean breaking the oath of secrecy that you have been forced to keep around your plans. No one knows you are traveling in a few days. Not even the Chairman whose sage advice had set everything in motion.

Besides, your mother’s mind works like traffic going in only one direction and once she has set her mind on London, nothing will veer her away from it.

That evening begins a series of moments that will serve as a memory for the time when your mother becomes a disembodied voice over the phone. You will remember intimate details.

The whirring of the standing fan in the background as she tells you, “When you live in someone else’s home, you have to remember to be humble and not make yourself like a lodger. Always contribute something to the household.”

The clipped tone of her voice, “When you earn your first paycheck, use it to buy something for the household, so you are not seen as a liability.”

The softness with which she had conveyed her solemn advice, “Always remember to pray first thing in the morning and last thing at night. God is everywhere.”

The power had gone out just as she finished that sentence, plunging the room into darkness. You are thankful for this because your stoic demeanor was starting to crumble and the last thing you wanted was to display any fragile emotion around her. 

You are appreciative of the nuggets of wisdom that she dispenses and there is a closeness that is beginning to form between you, that saddens you because you had often been at odds with her. You now regret all the times that you had wasted fighting over something as nonsensical as curfew. Here you are about to make your own way in the world as an independent person and even though you should be euphoric, there is a melancholy feeling that cages you in, making it all somewhat bittersweet. 

The night before you are scheduled to depart, a thief jumps over the fence which surrounds the compound of the building next door to your home. It is common knowledge that people traveling overseas usually keep their travel plans to themselves for security reasons more than anything else, lest they attract criminals in search of foreign currency. So, your mother becomes fiercely troubled when she thinks that your household is the target of a robbery. It turns out that this bandit is nothing more than a petty criminal who was out to siphon the already scarce petrol from the parked cars and sell it for a pretty penny on the black market. Some male residents in the compound beat him senseless. They then threaten to pour a cup of the petrol he tried to steal down his throat and chase it down with a lit matchstick. It takes the intervention of a God-fearing elder in the neighborhood who convinces the men to hand the criminal over to the law enforcement authorities, and they grudgingly do so. 

Your mother watches all this unfold from her bedroom window. Her face is weathered with worry as she is overcome by an intense foreboding and her level of anxiety heightens. 

“Maybe it is a sign,” she says, biting her bottom lip as she ties and unties the wrapper that hangs loosely around her waist.

“A sign of what?” you ask calmly, trying to hide your irritation.

“That you should not go ni,” she responds her face etched in disbelief that you would even ask what she meant.

This is the convoluted jujitsu that you have become accustomed to performing around your mother’s anxiety from the moment that you have begun to plan your departure.

You look from her to the open suitcase on the bed in front of you where you are putting in items for your journey. On the table behind her sits your passport and your ticket for a flight that leaves in a few hours. This is the one time that you wish your sister was home, but she is safely ensconced in boarding school, on the other side of town. When you and your mother dropped her off, a few days before, she’d reminded you of the list of items that she wanted you to send to her from the abroad, which she had sent to your email twice, so that you could not use any excuse that you had lost them. She’d given you a warm hug and a toothy grin before skipping off with her coterie of giggly friends. 

Your mother plops herself on the bed with a loud sigh. Her movement makes the suitcase bounce. You steady it with your hand, throw a half-folded shirt in it and go to sit beside her. She murmurs something under her breath.

“What did you say?” you ask as softly as you can.

“If one does not eat yam because of palm oil. One must eat palm oil because of yam,” she repeats.

She sees the puzzled look on your face and her eyes crease in a smile which transforms into a hearty laugh. You also start to laugh, nervously at first but then it becomes a full belly laugh, and you are both laughing hard. You really don’t understand what is funny or what your mother has just said, or why she said it, but you welcome the lightheartedness of the moment like one would receive a precious gem. 

You mother takes you in her arms and rocks you back and forth, releasing you to take your face in her hands and that is when you see the tears in her eyes.

Hours later at the airport, the emotions are all over the place as you prepare to say your farewells. 

She holds you tightly in a warm embrace and whispers in your ear, “Ranti omo eni ti on se.” As if there is ever a smidgen of possibility that you would forget whose child you are. 

This time you do not fight back the tears and you are still wiping them from your eyes as you join the rest of the passengers who board the British Airways flight bound for London Heathrow airport. 

As you settle into your assigned seat, you examine your passport for the umpteenth time in so many days, noting that in exactly three months, you will be celebrating your nineteenth birthday. You have not been to the UK since you left when you were a toddler, and you have no recollection of what life is like there. 

You are asleep for the last part of the journey, and you awaken in time to look out of the window and watch the ground rise to meet you as the plane begins its descent onto the tarmac. You listen intently to the droning sound of the engine as the plane taxis to the terminal as your new reality sets in.

Ahead of you at the immigration counter, a plump woman in a tight fitted romper and open-toed slippers with toenails so long that they could serve as weapons, is engaged in a terse exchange with a young immigration officer who asks her, “What do you mean you came to buy a market?”

“You ask me what I am doing here in your country and I tell you say I come buy market.”

“I am not sure I understand what you mean. You came to the UK to buy a market. That does not make sense.”

She kisses her teeth, stamps one foot, then the other, and swings her arms in frustration. She slams a thick, brown envelope on the counter and says, “See money, I come buy market.” Looking around, she catches your eye and says in a pleading voice, “Jo aburo, mo wa ra oja, is it not I come buy market in the English.”

You look away immediately without responding. You have just landed and the last thing that you need is to draw unnecessary attention to yourself. Years later when you recall this incident, you will regret not having intervened.

The situation resolves itself when an older immigration officer comes behind the younger one whose face has started to turn pink, and whispers something in his ear. The woman is allowed to pass, which she does in a huff, mumbling to herself. It is perhaps the exasperation of the ordeal that prevents the beleaguered immigration officer from asking you any questions when it is your turn, as he stamps your passport and waves you through.   

There is no red carpet rolled out to celebrate your arrival. No one comes to you with arms wide open and a warm greeting. You walk past the crowd of people and the curt or emotional reunions that are taking place around you. Friends and relatives are here to meet the other passengers, but you remain alone. This does not surprise you. You already knew not to expect anyone to be there to receive you. But there is one additional instruction. You are to call your mother before you leave the airport. You purchase an international calling card, find a payphone, and do just that. 

“Thank God for journey mercies,” her voice peals through the scratchy connection. You congratulate yourself that you can keep the conversation brief as you tell her that you have to begin the second leg of your journey.

You have an address and directions: 

Take the Tube from Heathrow on the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square where you will change to the Northern Line which is the black line and take train going to Modern get off at Oval and come out of the station and take the bus 36 going to New Cross Gate and get off at the seventh stop, Warner Road. Walk to Keswick House Road.

The signs at the airport confirm the directions that you have. Just before you buy your ticket, you pick up a train map from a display case and ask the attendant where you have to go to pay for it. He has a hard time understanding you and when he does, he is slightly bemused when he tells you, “It’s free mate,” rewarding you with a wide smile. You feel slightly foolish at this first mistake, and you resolve to do better at paying attention.

You purchase your ticket with no complications and are delighted to see that the interior of the train stations and even the trains themselves are shaped like a tube. You are also relieved that you have traveled light with just a rolling suitcase because people are walking at a rapid pace, and no one is stopping for anyone or anything. And that is another thing that keeps you spellbound in addition to the distinctive smell and sights. You have never been in a place with such a wide assortment of people. You have only seen this sort of imagery on television and now that it is playing out in front of you, you are captivated by it. 

You scrutinize the Tube map like an oracle, the jagged, multicolored lines and the names of the stations intimidate you at first but then you find where you are and trace the line to the trajectory that you need to take. When you get on the first train, you choose to remain standing, holding on to the railing with your suitcase anchored in a corner by the lower part of your left leg. You had chosen to stand by the unopened door but when the train stops at a station where that door opens to let passengers on and off, you are momentarily befuddled and move to the center of the train where you decide to take a seat with your suitcase now in front of you, its bulk prevents people from passing in front of you and you say sorry a couple of times but stop doing so when you realize that no one requested or is accepting an apology from you. 

Even though you remain on high alert throughout your train journey, you nearly miss your first stop to change because the automated female voice that has been instructing those getting on and off the train to mind the gap while simultaneously announcing the next stops has pronounced it as Lester Square and you have been reading it in your mind as Lee Chester Square. 

It is when you exit the train station at Oval and walk towards the bus stop that you see London overground for the first time and you notice that the cars drive on the right side. The train ticket does not cover you for the bus ride and you begin to fumble for the coins when the driver yells, “Exact change, only” through the partition that separates him from the passengers. A combination of your bulky suitcase and your inability to identify the right amount of change delays you from doing the right thing and you can sense the driver’s impatience. 

A young lady on the bus steps up and drops the coins in the slot for you and a wave of relief washes over you as you express your gratitude to her. 

“Don’t mention it,” she responds cheerily, and before she takes her seat, she tells you, “You can put your suitcase over there.” Indicating an elevated part of the bus, just behind the driver which is the exact size of your suitcase. You want to smile back at the Good Samaritan that just helped you, but she has her nose in a book and everyone else on the bus seems to be content to mind their own business even though you are awash with embarrassment as it is evident that you are a newcomer to the city, but no one seems to notice or care.

***

A dour woman with a sense of calm authority, the first thing you notice when you meet your hostess is that she has a world-weary demeanor. From the little you know about her, she is not as old as she appears to be, but from the moment she opens the door of the flat where you will cohabitate with her, she drags her feet as she walks, and the loose-fitting clothing that she has on makes her look heavier than she is. Your journey from the airport to her home has taken nearly two hours and it is almost nine in the morning. Yet, she looks like she has just rolled out of bed and is not preparing to go anywhere. You wonder if she is ill, but time will tell you that this is the way she chooses to be. She sizes you up with a close-lipped smile and in a somewhat emphatic tone, she makes a vague reference to a job that you must get immediately. The lack of warmth in her voice makes your self-confidence momentarily plummet.

There is a strong smell of dampness in the entire flat and you wonder if there has been a flooding somewhere in the interior. She asks you if you are hungry and then proceeds to give you directions to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant asking you to get something for her as well and does not give you any money for the purchase. This was probably one of the first signs of how the domestic arrangement would be.

She has two boys and informs you that her husband has taken up with some other woman in London, and she is raising her boys alone. 

“The people in Lagos do not know, so please keep it to yourself,” she states, matter-of-factly, her eyes shifting from side to side. It may surprise her to know that whatever salacious details surrounding her spouse’s marital indiscretions she is trying to conceal are the least of your worries. 

She introduces you to her boys. There will always be a distance between you and them in the household. You do not intend to establish any emotional bonds or attachments. But even from afar, you make a few observations. The younger one who is about nine years old is gregarious and affable. His brother who looks a couple of years older, is quiet and contemplative in a slightly unsettling way; he has a seriousness that is unusual for a boy his age. 

Your arrangement with your hostess is that you must pay all the household bills, half of the rent, and provide money for groceries in exchange for a roof over your head and a bed on the lumpy sofa in the living room. You ask yourself several times how you got enmeshed in this odd and unfair arrangement and attribute your predicament to your mother’s idiosyncratic approach to things. 

Your hostess does not work but spends her time watching television in her bedroom, especially the Christian television stations where the voice of a preacher streams through the small confines of the flat, pontificating about hellfire, the rapture, and evil spirits. It does not take you long to realize that she is praying for her husband to come back. In one prayer session that she joins by phone and chooses to put on speaker, the person on the other line prays for the woman who has entrapped her husband to be consumed by the Holy Ghost fire. She responds with a heartfelt and joyous, Amen! 

You ask yourself what is Christianly about wanting another human being to be consumed by fire. 

The only time she leaves the flat is on Sundays to go to church, which is an all-day affair. You are relieved that she does not invite you to accompany her, besides you already have your own work to do. 

One time, when your paths cross and she and the boys are arriving just before you leave for a night job, you solicitously ask the younger boy, “How was church today?” He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly and responds, “Same. We just go there to play while the adults do crazy stuff at the front.”

His older brother punches him in the shoulder to silence him while he gives you an acidic glare.

It has not taken you long to find a job. The clerk at the job center who registers you the day after you arrive is stupefied by your ability to communicate in English.

“You have only been in this country for a day, and you speak English so well, you must be a bloody genius.”

 You receive what you believe is a strong compliment with a sheepish grin on your face. In a few years you will recall the exchange and recognize the insult embedded in the seemingly harmless comment.

 A month passes by quickly and you get into a rhythm of waking and working. Driven by an invigorating sense of purpose. When you call home, which you do once a week, you give your mother obscure details about your life. Yes, you have a job. (You have three – working in a call center, as a security guard, and at a grocery store). Yes, Morenike is very nice. (Actually, she is an indolent sluggard who is driven by a religious fanaticism that compels her to believe that some invisible enemies are the source of all her travails). Her husband is very nice and accommodating (You would not know what he looked like if you were asked to pick him from a line-up. There are not even pictures of him in the flat). Yes, you are contributing to the household expenses (You are paying half of the rent and are responsible for a myriad of other expenses that should not fall under your bailiwick if only Morenike would get off her lazy behind and get a job). Yes. You have not forgotten that you are not there to work, and you should try to enroll in university. (The truth is based on your assessment; you do not think you will remain in London to go to university, and you have reached out to your friend who has connected you to his sister in Manchester, and your conversations with her have led you to understand that life in London is a lot more expensive than is worth it).

But you keep all this to yourself and paint a rosy picture of your new life to your mother who has that strong assurance that she made the right decision. For a reason that you are unable to explain, there are instances when scenes from the day of your departure from Lagos plays like a movie reel in your head. Specifically, when she said the words about eating yam with palm oil. You still don’t know what it means but those words become a constant drumbeat in your head, and you recite them like a creed as you go through the motions of life. 

You make friends at your jobs and adopt a feigned sense of confidence even though you doubt yourself often. You learn to make small talk and fall into the rhythm of casual banter, especially about the British weather. You are Yoruba, and your people have greetings for everything from sitting down to standing up. But nothing could have prepared you for whole conversations you will have about the weather. They are often catalyzed by a casual remark by a colleague who says, “Looks like rain” and when you respond, “Sure does.” It triggers off an entire discourse on rain that you did not think was possible but that you wholeheartedly participate in. 

Even though a lot of what you earn goes to the household that you live in, you still manage to adopt a system of parsimony that you adhere to with devotion. You have been raised in a household where thrift is a point of pride, so the reflexes of economizing are already second nature to you. You have an invigorating sense of purpose, and even though your academic goals have been temporarily derailed, you are still determined to pursue them with single-minded devotion. 

***

The cat’s fur has a comforting softness, and you pick it up gently and stroke it. It lets out a faint purr. It has been hiding behind the curtain by the window and you had been stunned when you saw it move. Up until that moment, you would have sworn that the cat had been a figment of Morenike’s imagination. You let out a low laugh as you can still hear the prayer racket from the living room. Someone like her with her staunch Christian beliefs about enemies dispatching malevolent attacks in her direction and an obvious aversion for feline beasts would have been scared beyond her wits at the sight of a cat in the middle of the night. You are almost tempted to leave the cat behind in the room and tell her that you have not seen it and see what happens then. But she has taken over your ‘room’ and you pity the poor cat which would probably want nothing more than to leave the room. You lean out to close the open window and see a low hanging branch from the adjacent tree. It is quite likely the cat had adopted some form of dexterity to enter the room from there.

When you exit the room, she stands before you and immediately she notices the cat in your arms, she squeals in fright. She says something to the person on the phone and there is a similar uproar. 

You are amazed that her boys are still asleep through all this cacophony or perhaps they are awake and have chosen not to get immersed in their mother’s messiness. 

You hesitate in the hallway, trying to find your shoes and when she notices you lingering, she snaps her fingers in your direction and orders sharply, “Get that thing out of this place, now now now. Roboboroboshiribobo, I rebuke you in Jesus’ Name.” You wonder if she is rebuking you or the cat.

The day is just starting to break, and it is when the coolness of the air hits you that you realize that you have no idea what to do with this cat. You walk for about two minutes with the cat cradled against your chest and stop to catch your breath. It is at that moment that you look up, and notice a flyer taped to a utility pole and from the illumination of the streetlight, you read that someone is offering a reward for the return of a cat that looks exactly like the one you have in your arms. 

You pull the flyer from its position and fold it and stick it in the pocket of your jacket.

“Okay, Mr. Nibbles,’ you whisper. “Let’s go and find Emily.”

You find the address easily. It is two streets down and you have a little bit of trepidation when you ring the doorbell. A light comes on and you hear footsteps inside. A voice from within squeals in delight as you realize they have seen you and your feline companion through the peephole at the door. The door swings open, and a young woman stands before you in a dressing gown. 

“You found him. I am so happy that you found him.” Emily’s face is glowing as she looks like she could burst into tears of elation any moment as you place Mr. Nibbles in her open arms. You recognize Emily even though she does not appear to recognize you. She is the one that paid your bus fare on the day you arrived. You want to tell her, but you hesitate, especially when she insists on paying you the reward money. At first, you politely decline, but when she insisted again, you think of one thing that you can do with 50 pounds. 

Hours later, when you’re on the train from London to Manchester, you realize it’s nearly the end of the month, and your former hostess would have expected you to pay half of the rent and a miscellany of bills, and you don’t feel the slightest bit of remorse for having left without saying goodbye.

© Jola Naibi

About the Author:

Jola Naibi was raised in Lagos, went to school in the U.K., has lived in Switzerland and now calls the U.S. her home. She has been writing fiction for more than twenty years and is the author of TerraCotta Beauty, a collection of short stories which captures the essence of life in the city of Lagos. Her work has been featured in Afreada and midnight & indigo. Her short essay entitled there are things that your privilege will not let you see was featured in Grub Street Literary Magazine and received an award from Columbia University. She is one of the co-editors of the Thriving Writers Literary Magazine, a Baltimore-based online space for uplifting creative voices. Find her on Twitter/X @JolaNaibi and IG @jolanaibi.

*Feature image by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash