I got off the bus and shielded my eyes from the bright noon sun. The congested open air bus station buzzed as conductors’ voices calling for passengers mingled with hawkers crying out for their share of attention. Despite the heat and noise and the fact that I hadn’t had a meal all day, my skin tingled with exhilaration as I tapped the piece of paper in my pocket. I’d been afraid to tell Mama that the admission list had been released. Instead, I’d told her I was going to tutor my friend Chima. I had spent the last two weeks oscillating between confidence that I would score high enough for an admission into the University of Lagos Medicine program, and being sick to my stomach about what it would mean if I didn’t. When I saw my name on the computer screen, I was so overwhelmed I vomited all over Chima’s bedroom floor. 

“Uncle, you wan buy bread?” A little girl pushed a loaf of bread in my face. 

“No,” I said. “Thank you.”

As I started the short walk home, I pulled out the printout of the admissions list, my name highlighted in bright yellow. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the joy on Mama’s face when I told her I was going to be a doctor. She would be proud.

When Papa died three years ago, his family descended on my mother like dust on a white cloth during his Ìsìnkú. They were able to release the hate they’d harbored ever since my Yoruba father told them he was marrying a Fulani bride, a hate that’d intensified when all the bad things they swore happened to men who married women from the north, never came to pass. They shaved Mama bald with a razor and for weeks, she was served food once a day in a broken dish meant to signify her shattered life, and for clothing, she was only allowed two swathes of black fabric—one to wrap around her nakedness and the other to serve as her mattress for the one month and one week she must sleep on the floor.

Mama never complained, both in honor of my father’s memory and to protect me; she accepted it all. My uncles ransacked our home for the documents to my father’s fabric shop, his car and his bank accounts, and took it all. After all, wives were visitors to their husband’s home and had no entitlement to an inheritance, especially a housewife like Mama. When the mourning period ended and she was allowed to be human again, Mama asked her mother-in-law how she was supposed to feed me, to which my grandmother spat on the ground and told her to be grateful they weren’t still in the days where wives were buried alive with their dead husbands. So in the dead of night, Mama took her only remaining possession, me, and we fled to the next town where she hired herself out as a day laborer while I went to school. We eventually landed at the Coker’s as house help— two for the price of one. Being a servant wasn’t much better than where we’d come from and Mama endured her fair share of abuse. One day, while I was doing the dishes and Mama cooking, Margaret, the Coker’s teenage daughter, marched into the kitchen and accused Mama of intentionally serving her cornflakes with sour milk. Before Mama could respond, she dumped the bowl on my mother’s head.

“You’re useless,” she said, hissing as she pushed past her.

As I helped Mama clean up, her face calm and undisturbed, my shock thawed into fury before dissolving into shame. 

“Mama, why aren’t you angry?”

She chuckled dryly. “Are you angry?”

I glanced at the door and lowered my voice. “Yes, I am.”

“Anger is only useful if you can use it to achieve something.” She lifted my chin to meet her gaze. “What are you going to achieve with yours?”

The only part of my life I’d ever had control over was my education and so I threw my very soul into it, dreaming of the day I would become something that would make Mama proud. One day she casually slipped “when you become a doctor…” into a conversation, and just like that, just like a compass held up to the night sky, I found my true north.

Mama, when I become a doctor, I will buy you a big house…

 The truth is I had no interest in medicine; it was simply my mode of repayment and a miniscule sacrifice that would be worth it to see Mama’s head held up with pride. This dream was a balm that soothed her on bad days, our inside joke when Mrs. Coker promised to let me take Mama’s position once she retired. It was a wordless prayer residing on our lips and in the darkest nights, our salvation.

My son, when you become a doctor, we will…

“Thief! “Thief!” 

Suddenly, screams rang out behind me and I turned just in time to collide with two young men running past me. The impact knocked me to the ground but the chaos rippling through the streets and the loud pops of gunfire, pushed me back to my feet. As people scattered in different directions, I tore down a side road and jumped into the first hiding place I found—an open gutter. Engulfed by the smell of waste and sewage, I perched low, my hands trembling as I checked my pocket for the paper; the feel of it reminding me that today was still a very good day. What seemed like forever later, I climbed out and turned back onto the main street.

The Police Anti-illegality Network officer was standing in the middle of the road and we made eye contact as I walked past him. 

“Stop right there.”

“Me?”

He aimed his rifle as he walked up to me. “Put your hands up.”

“Excuse me, sir.” I slowly raised my hands, “What did I do?”

Grabbing me by the collar, he pushed me to the ground. “Get down.”

“Sir, I don’t k—” The butt of his rifle against my mouth stole the rest of my words.

He pulled out a walkie talkie. “Alpha team, I’m on Sanya road and have one of the robbers. Come round and pick me up.”

I spat out the blood filling my mouth, “I am not a thief, sir. I was walking home.”

The officer eyed me. “You think I didn’t see you hiding in the gutter?”

“I was hiding because I heard gunshots and saw people running.”

“Do innocent people run?” he barked, “You will go and explain yourself at headquarters.”

My heart skipped a beat as the stories of people arrested by PAIN flashed through my mind; people detained to fill quotas and then tortured and imprisoned until their families’ wealth or connections got them out. My mother had neither. 

“Sir, I swear on my father’s grave, I am not a robber. I was just going home.” I slowly rose to my feet, “I have nothing on me, I did not steal anything.” 

The officer’s rifle butt slammed into my stomach knocking me back down. “Stay down!”

“That boy is not a thief.” Across the street, a woman appeared at a shop window, “He lives down this road. This is wrong!”

He cocked his gun and pointed it at her, “Do you want to join him?”

The woman gave me an apologetic look before closing the window. 

 I took a deep breath and stood up. “Sir, please. I just got my admission notice.” I reached for my back pocket, “I am going to be a doctor.”

“Hands out of your pocket,” he barked. “Get back on the ground.”

“Sir, please let me show y—”

The officer took a step back and raised his rifle. “I said get back on the ground. Now!”

I pulled out the paper. “I am going to be a d—”

Something snapped me back and the paper slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the ground. As my eyes traced its movement, I noticed a thin red line widening as it raced down my shirt. A breath later, white hot pain engulfed me, dropping me to my knees. 

Somewhere in the distance I heard a woman screaming. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed this boy.”

Soon the screams morphed into siren wails and a coldness snaked into my veins, but before the hands pulling at me could lift me, I slowly reached for the paper and placed it back in my pocket for Mama to find.

 She would be proud. 

About the Author:

Olivia Adekola is a Nigerian-American author passionate about stories that center the experiences of the African woman both on the continent and in the diaspora. 

*Feature image by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Unsplash