Standing over three mid-sized kerosene stoves, Jude does not see the pack of gangly teenage boys watching him from the top floor of a three-storey uncompleted building. He is in a makeshift kitchen behind his roadside food stall, a crude structure propped up with plywood and aluminum zinc sheets. Inside the food stall are two long rectangular tables covered with plastic flowery table mats, low benches on either side of the tables. A curtain of tinkling brown beads flows over the entrance; it announces the arrival of a customer. Now, the beads are still, the food stall empty. Jude is thinking about what the day’s profits would amount to, for Jovi. They have antenatal bills to pay, prenatal vitamins to buy, a baby cot, a mosquito net, bibs, socks, nappies, clothes. Jovi had said nappies and clothes were secondary, she could use old pieces of cloths for nappies and has already arranged to get used baby clothes from her older sisters. Jude smiles; he’s grateful for a woman like his Jovi; her words put strength on his spine, she keeps the dream behind his eyes reeling. Jude dreams of opening his own restaurant someday. He and Jovi have already picked out the name: Óro Food and Lounge. Óro, gold. A befitting name for his golden dreams. Jovi would be his first staff, and when their child grows up, she’d join the business too. With his family, he’ll build something huge in Warri, a restaurant people will talk about for generations, Jude is certain. But for now, this roadside food stall will do.
Jude stirs the pot in front of him – a large pot of tomato stew, deep red, fried to perfection. Oil floats atop, bubbling, along with meat parts: beef cuts, intestines, floaters, tripes, livers, cow legs, cow tails, ponmo, and over three dozen hardboiled eggs. They swirl about in the stew as Jude stirs; he’s careful not to scrape the burnt layer at the bottom. He’d burnt the stew intentionally—his customers loved the aroma of burnt tomato stew. Next to the stew is a large pot of lightly salted white rice and beans, boiled together, just so: not too soft, not too hard, the way his customers liked them. The third pot is much smaller, containing banga soup. Jude is trying out serving local soups alongside rice and beans. In the seven months since he opened this food stall, he has only served rice and beans, which is all he can afford to cook. But he has been saving, skimping on expenses. Now, he is expanding into soups. He made the banga soup himself, boiling the palm nuts until very tender and when the nuts were soft to the touch, he poured the cooked nuts into a large wooden mortar, one of his first reinvestments into his business, and used his long pestle to pound the nuts, and now here is his soup, spicy, aromatic, ready for his customers. For the next weeks, Jude plans to add more soups to his daily rotation: egusi, goat meat pepper soup, ohwo, okro. He has an idea for a rotating menu, one that will keep his customers inquiring, asking for more. When he opens a restaurant, he’ll have a stable menu with a plethora of dishes, always available. He decides now that he will leave the decoration of the restaurant to Jovi. Should he sell all his food today, Jovi could pay her outstanding antenatal bills and buy some items for the baby. They are only two months away; their baby, his baby girl is almost here. Jude’s smile broadens, stretching over his round chubby face. And then, a small prickle at the back of his neck interrupts his daydreaming. He turns around, but he doesn’t see the pack of teenage boys watching him from a small window on the third floor of the uncompleted building that looms over his food stall.
Soon, it will be 1 p.m. and civil servants and teachers, students, receptionists and secretaries, managers and business owners, would crawl out of their classrooms and jobs and gather around his stall to buy lunch. Jude turns down the heat on all three stoves to keep the food simmering. He takes two small plastic flasks and fills one with rice and beans, stew and several beef parts, and the other he fills with banga soup. Lunch and dinner for him and Jovi. He will take the flasks home, shower quickly, and return to serve his customers.
The door to his kitchen, a slice of rusty zinc sheets and damp plywood, is barely hanging on its hinges. Jude carefully shuts it behind him. He is not worried, for no one has ever tried to rob him in all the time he has been cooking and selling in this location. It is a good location, sandwiched between a public primary and secondary school, two government parastatals, and a row of small private businesses. His rice and beans are often gone within an hour, but he’ll have to see how the banga soup performs with the customers today, Jude thinks as he makes the short walk to the one room apartment he shares with Jovi. The sun is high and his shadow, a short stout thing, walks near him. He feels again the sensation of being watched but when he turns around, he doesn’t see anyone.
The street is mostly empty. A few persons are lounging on verandas and others have retreated into their homes, hiding from the high noon sun. Jude takes one more glance around, up and down the street, then at his food stall and when he confirms nothing is amiss, he takes a right turn into the building where he rents a room. It is a crowded one storey building of single-room flats and shared kitchens and bathrooms. Jude doesn’t like the building but it is all he can afford for now. By the time the child is born, he will have enough to move into a less crowded and more hygienic flat, perhaps even a full one bedroom, with a living room and his own kitchen and bathroom. And after that, there is the issue of Jovi’s bride price. He knows her family hates him for putting her in the way of motherhood before paying her bride price. When he had found out about the pregnancy, back when Jovi’s stomach was still flat and it was almost impossible for him to believe that a child, his child, was really growing inside her, he had taken wine to her father to apologize and promised that immediately he was well off, he would do right by Jovi. Jovi’s father had accepted the wine and given him a list of items to bring when he was ready. Jude saved the list in a paper file. He has been buying the items in bits: a dozen kolanuts, alligator peppers, bottles of schnapps and London dry gin, two rows of Hollandaise cloths. What is left is the palm wine, about 20 litres, some aromatics, and the bride price itself, only five naira. Jovi’s father had said the money was symbolic; he wasn’t selling his daughter. Now Jude smile melts into a small chuckle, he rubs a hand over his face, unable to believe his luck: a business, a wife, a child. The lines are finally falling into pleasant places for him. He makes the sign of the cross and decides he will attend evening mass later in the day.
*
The pack of teenage boys watch Jude. They wait all of a minute before climbing down the building where they had slept, protected only by the vast night sky. And when Jude turns a corner, they make for his kitchen. The boys are former child street beggars, turned truck pushers, metal scrap sellers, market pickpockets, and now, outright thieves. The year is 1984, austerity measures are in place. No one needs truck pushers anymore, and the boys couldn’t find any metal scraps to sell. The market women they had arrangements with to hawk their wares along the road for a fraction of profits also do not need hawkers anymore. The boys have a plan though, they would learn a trade: carpentry, car mechanic, electric technicians, plumbing, anything to get off the streets. But first, they need to save up to pay for an apprenticeship. And they are saving. Emmanuel, the leader of the gang, wears their savings inside a pair of stolen boots he never takes off. He would rather they steal food than spend their growing apprenticeship money. And it is the aroma of Jude’s food that has brought them here. They had heard of Jude’s meals from other street boys—his crisply fried stew, spicy, with enough oil to soak each grain of rice. In Jude’s kitchen, the boys scoop stew and rice into cellophane bags moving as fast and quietly as they can, or so they think.
They are just about done when Jude charges in, screaming: ole, ole, thieves, thieves!
Here’s what happens when a thief is caught in Warri: someone will donate a worn tire, there are always available worn tires, the tire will be pushed down the head of said thief, another person will bring a gallon of fuel, but in most cases, the fuel will be hurriedly sucked out of a car parked by the roadside. And then, there will be a crowd of judge and jury, frenzied, justified in their anger, for why are thieves terrorizing hardworking people? From the crowd of judge and jury, someone will douse fuel over the thief, another will throw a flame. A barbeque party.
The boys had seen it happen to other street children time and time again. The smell of burning human hair and flesh never leaves one’s memory. It is why Emmanuel decided he and his brothers must get off the streets, why he is saving what pennies they earned or stole for an apprenticeship, and why, as Jude screams, ole, ole, thieves, thieves, his voice loud, summoning neighbours and passersby into the kitchen, Emmanuel reaches for the tall wooden pestle resting on a side wall. He means to ward off Jude, to give himself and his brothers a chance to escape, but like any growing teenage boy, he underestimates the strength in his arms. The pestle strikes Jude on the head, and then Jude is on the ground, fingers twitching, blood pooling out of his ears.
*
First, Jovi smells the burning and knows that thieves have been caught. The smell of burning human hair nauseated her. She wonders if Jude is at the scene of the burning, if he saw the thieves, if he knows who they tried to rob. She shuts the door and window to keep out the harsh smell of burning human skin, but it is no use. The smell slithers inside the room. The rice she had just eaten lolls around her stomach. She makes to run to the bathroom she and Jude shares with four other families, but her feet are too swollen, her body too heavy. She makes it to the veranda, leans over a small steel bucket, and empties her stomach. The smell is like fingernails scratching her inside, dragging up every morsel she had eaten. She retches in the bucket, the effort hammers at her ribs. Jovi is still leaning over the bucket when she hears a neighbor saying something about Jude.
Jude?
Jude.
The shock of seeing Jude lying on the floor in his kitchen besides simmering pots of tomato stew, rice and beans, and banga soup, sand and blood congealed under his head, his eyes wide open, round, as though in disbelief, hands reaching out, sends Jovi into labor. Jude, who only minutes ago had kissed her forehead and said he would come check on her after the lunchtime rush. Jude, who had said he would make enough today so they could start buying items for the baby, their baby.
Jude?
Jude.
*
The baby’s skin is a dull pink, her head is completely bald, and she is too small to be in the world. The doctor places her in an incubator. While Jovi and the baby are in the hospital, Jude’s siblings go to the room she had shared with him. Jude’s brothers say they do not know Jovi since Jude never formally introduced her to them. She is not a wife; the child the neighbours said she bore is not their brother’s. They pull down Jude’s clothes and shoes from the hangers. They take the stereo and a second-hand black and white television. They drag out from the room a single red couch and twin-size mattress into a waiting truck. Then they climb on a stool and bring down the ceiling fan. When the room is satisfactorily empty, save for two Ghana-must-go bags that contains Jovi’s clothes, Jude’s brothers leave.
Jovi’s family comes to take her clothes from the room, and two months later, when the baby is finally strong enough to breathe on her own, they take Jovi home to her father. Jovi names the baby Óro, after her father’s golden dream. One day, about six months after Jude’s murder, Jovi wakes up to the aroma of burning tomato stew. She sniffs, gets up abruptly calling for Jude.
Jude?
Jude.
The realization of his murder, the memory of his head lying on the floor against a pool of congealed blood the exact color of the simmering tomato stew, stabs so hard at Jovi’s heart that it simply gives up trying.
*
Óro is the harbinger of death, Jovi’s family think. They eye her warily in the days after Jovi died. What kind of child’s arrival takes both father and mother? But Óro’s face settles into a younger version of her mother’s: the same sleek black skin, round bright eyes, a high forehead, and a dark dot of a birthmark on the side of her neck. She is an exact copy of her mother. Grief has to make way for a lackluster love. Óro lives first with her grandparents, and when they die shortly after she turns six, she’s bounced around the homes of her mother’s siblings. She stays a school term here, another school term there, living with any relative who can pay her school fees, buy school uniforms and books for a term or two. Military heads of state succeed each other: people stand in long lines for milk, rice, yams, and kerosene. Óro’s relatives send her around to the home of anyone who can afford an extra plate; and this rootlessness becomes evident in her school results. She struggles with school work, making just enough points to move on to the next class, and in difficult years when she moves schools within the school year, she has to repeat classes. By the time she is done with junior secondary school, Óro accepts she is not cut out for more education.
She decides to learn a trade, hair dressing or tailoring, she tells the aunt she lives with at the time, her mother’s youngest sister. But her aunt encourages her to get through secondary school, and it was then, in senior secondary school that Óro discovers Foods and Nutrition. The ideas in the subject feels natural, like something she has always known. Foods, she knows. The chemical components, the way ingredients balanced and enhanced each other, the science of taste. She finds that she understands without being taught. For once, Óro comes first in a subject and receives an award. During cooking exams, the Foods and Nutrition teacher says she has never tasted food so good, or a cake baked just so, to perfection. The girl is a natural chef, the teacher tells the entire school, and Óro, puffed with the satisfaction of excelling at something, goes home to her aunt and say with certainty: Aunty, I am going to be a chef. She thinks the shock she sees on her aunt’s face, the way her mouth hangs slightly open is because being a chef is unconventional; children her age want to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, not chefs. Until then, no one has told Óro about her father dying besides simmering pots of tomato stew, banga soup, and hot rice and beans. It’s a difficult conversation to have, Óro’s relatives agree. What is the point of telling the girl that her father was murdered over food, that the aroma of tomato stew killed her mother? They talk over the idea; they decide not to tell Óro, for she is only a child. Why taint a child with the many injustices of life?
The aunt remains concerned, skeptical of the family’s decision, but she abides. When Óro is done with secondary school, she goes on to University for Food Science, and after, she starts a job in a food factory, supervising the production of canned foods, biscuits, and sweets. On weekends, she cooks in her aunt’s kitchen, experimenting with flavors. Once, she makes bay leaf ice cream; another time she makes shortbread cookies with rosemary and mild chili peppers. Her pastries are a thing to behold: soft, buttery, mildly sweet, savory. Neighbours line up to taste Óro’s goodness. One weekend, someone ask: why don’t you open a shop, eh?
Óro starts with a small show glass to display her pastries, in front of her aunt’s house. She wakes up at 4 a.m. and bakes meat pies, egg rolls, buns, puff-puff, fish rolls, doughnuts, sausages, and her signature rosemary chili shortbread. Her aunt is overly concerned, but she reasons that Óro’s shop is neither a roadside food stall nor a restaurant. Besides, she herself can use a little help with profits from Óro’s business. During the week, when Óro is at work, the aunt takes over, selling the pastries. She is amazed at how much people love her niece’s pastries, how they fly off the show glass in an hour or two, at most. She encourages Óro to reinvest, buy bigger show glasses. But too soon, Óro’s eyes are covered in stars, she is talking about quitting her job in the food factory to focus on cooking. She has it all planned out. She will name her restaurant, Óro Food and Lounge. Her aunt panics. She’s heard those words before. She recalls her late sister telling her about a dream restaurant. This time, her aunt does not listen to the family, she does not abide. She tells Óro about her father and the simmering pots of rice and beans, tomato stew, and banga soup, her mother’s heart succumbing over the aroma of burning tomato stew. Maybe you should only cook as a side gig, don’t pour your life into cooking, the aunt says. Óro thinks her aunt’s fear ridiculous; her father was murdered in an unfortunate accident. The thieves were killed, burnt to death. Her mother died from her heartbreak. A series of misfortunes. Nothing to do with her and her desire to cook. But her aunt insists and Óro, not wanting to seem ungrateful, lets go.
She tucks her dream behind her eyes. Then she meets a man, they marry, and she has a child, a boy whom she names after her father.
Working at the factory and raising a child becomes too much for Óro. She quits. While at home, she starts selling pastries again. Just a side thing, she tells her aunt, to assist her husband until her child is old enough for school. But after the first child, there is another, then a third, and a fourth. Óro never returns to work. Another former military dictator is now the President, resplendent in his white agbadas, and austerity measures make a grand return. Óro buys larger show glasses, she makes more pastries.
Then, a little cooler of rice and stew joins the pastries she sells in front of her house. She does not tell her husband about her father and the simmering pots of rice and beans, tomato stew, and banga soup. She cooks, she bakes; her family is surviving the difficult years; there is no familial misfortune to fear. When a neighbour ask a favor for a child’s birthday, Óro stumbles into a catering business. She starts cooking elaborate meals for weddings, funerals, birthdays. It’s not a brick and mortal restaurant, she tells her concerned aunt, there is no familial misfortune to fear.
In the year young people pour out onto the streets to protest the police, Óro buys a car, and when her husband loses his bank job, he joins her in the business, hauling heavy coolers and gold-plated serving bowls, transporting cooked meals to customers. Three and a half decades after her mother saw her father lying in a caked mix of blood and sand, Óro and her husband set out to cater a wedding, only an hour away. They heap layers of large rectangular aluminum pans filled with smoky jollof rice, spicy fried rice, egusi soup, ohwo and starch, goat meat pepper soup, boiled yams, peppered snails, and steamed moi-moi wrapped in banana leaves into the car. And they do not notice the car trailing them: four boys, all brothers, with eyes and dreams set on Óro. Only last month, the brothers found out she was paid millions of naira to cater to the funeral of a distant relative. The oldest boy had heard an aunt exclaiming about the food, the excellent chef, an oasis in the desert. All they need is a couple million naira, nothing too outlandish that Óro does not already have in her bank account. The plan is simple, they will grab Óro, her husband will deliver a ransom; and once they will receive the money; they will start a legitimate business afterward. This kidnapping is a one-time thing.
*
Music thrums out of the reception hall when Óro and her husband arrive around noon. A brilliant sun is pouring, and Óro thinks, what beautiful weather to work in. She knows from experience that she has less than an hour to set up before the newly wedded couple dances out of the church into the reception hall. She quickly climbs out of the car and opens the trunk. From the corner of her eyes, she sees the brothers approaching her and thinks they must be hungry wedding guests; they look too well dressed to be street boys. She is preparing to use her strict voice, to say that the boys must be seated in the hall before she hands out any food, when the boys grab her, and push a black sack over her head. Her surprise comes out in shrill screams. The brothers did not expect the husband to resist; they did not think he would jump out of the car with a dagger he had kept hidden under a foot mat, and so the oldest of the boys is startled at this sudden change of plans, at his younger brother screaming after Óro’s husband sinks the dagger into his head, dredging up blood so bright it turns pink under the high noon sun. The oldest brother points the gun that he had not planned to use at Óro, to deter the husband he reasons, but when another brother starts screaming, he presses down on the trigger, and the sound echoes, ricocheting off his chest and his outstretched hand, and Óro falls, blood pooling out of her head and splashing into the open trunk filled with disposable aluminum pans of smoky jollof rice, spicy fried rice, egusi soup, ohwo and starch, goat meat pepper soup, boiled yams, peppered snails, and steamed moi-moi wrapped in banana leaves.
*
Jude and Jovi stand by, waiting. And when the life slips out of their daughter’s eyes, they pick her up. Jude wipes off the congealed sand and blood from his daughter’s face. He kisses her for the first time since she was born. Finally, he thinks, his family is together, complete. And now Óro can join him and Jovi at the restaurant, she can help with today’s lunch hour rush.
About the Author:
Lucia Edafioka is from Warri, Nigeria. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona MFA program in fiction, and is currently a history PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University. Her essays and stories have appeared in Isele, Boston Review, Catapult, Popula, and the Lagos-Limbe Anthology. She has been shortlisted for the Isele Magazine Short Story Prize, Miles Morland Prize, and the Key West Novel-in-Progress Award, and has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation.
Isele Magazine 