Lower Class

One of these days, you will wake up to find your wife absent from her side of the bed. You will check the kitchen and the toilet - the only other rooms in the apartment. Her clothes are will not be in the cupboard. Her ghana-must-go bag will have disappeared. She will have taken the children with her. You will call her parents who you know call you an olori buruku behind your back. They will tell you they do not know where she is. You will call her friend, the only one you know, the talkative one that acts like life is all about getting as many words out of your mouth as possible. She too will say she has not seen her. You will call your children's school teacher to ask if they have been to school. She will calmly say "no". You will be sad but not too sad, because you will have been expecting it.

You will walk out of the house and get into your taxi cab or kabukabu, knowing you will have to make enough money to cover what you owe Kazeem. You will be thinking how much you hate that boy, the condescending air with which he lends you money. Your car will not start and you will look for a stone nearby and use it to knock some sense into the battery. It still won't start and you will need the help of a few neighbours to help you push the car, as they will have done the day before that. And the one before that. At last, the engines will come alive. You will picture your wife now in her parents' house because that is where she will be. She will be ready to move into your former boss, Big Man's house as his fourth wife. You will rue the time you worked as his personal driver and introduced him to your wife. On your way to work, you will be stuck in a traffic jam for two hours. That is where your petrol will be exhausted and when the cause of the traffic is done, you will be the reason for another traffic with your car in the middle of the road. You will pick a keg from the backseat and walk to the nearest filling station with the small change in your hand. You will buy three litres and when you get back to your car, it will have been towed away by the authorities. Another problem. Where will you find five thousand naira to pay? You will walk back home dejectedly. Your fellow cab drivers will call to ask why you have not resumed work and you will tell them that you have a cold, that your dead mother's spirit has not made the harmattan weather good for your body. You will not want them to know, because they will have too many problems of their own to help you with yours.

You will approach the landlord and brief him of your plight. Not about the runaway wife palaver but that of the towed vehicle. You will beg him to lend you ten thousand naira till the next week and he will laugh hysterically. He will snort as he does before an insult and say, "pay the rent of the last two months and I will consider thinking of almost giving you money." You will leave with your pride beneath the soles of your feet. You will sit in your small apartment and think of your life. You will remember Iya Saki from the village, the way she used to look at you with scornful eyes. You will remember your stepmother who always forced you to eat her suspicious-looking soup. You will remember the tales that your mother used to tell you, tales of witches that could steal a child's destiny by staring at him or cooking for him. Fleetingly, the memories of your childhood will flood your head. You will remember playing with your friends in the neighbourhood when the moon has come out, eating coconuts and listening to gory stories told by Iya Agba. Back to reality, you will think of your wife whose beauty is a magnet to the pockets of rich men. You will think of her threats to leave you the previous day. "Shameless man! You cannot even pay our rent," are going to be the words you remember her saying last. You will spit on the floor and wipe it with your bare foot and swear on your mother's grave to never return to the house without having enough money to pay off all your debts. With no plan at all, you will walk out of the house like a stray dog. You are going to walk to the streets and sit at a bus-stop, just watching. Bored, you will stand up to leave and just then, a car from nowhere will splash muddy water on your ankara attire. You will curse the careless driver and wait for whoever it is to come down and apologise. But the driver just zooms off. You will stand startled, with the plate number of the car etched unto your brain. In your blind rage, you will stop an okada man, squeeze fifty naira into his wet palm and tell him to follow that car to wherever it goes. You will hop on his motorcycle and off you go. The chase is quite thrilling, you will think. At least it will be if the car actually knows it is being followed. It will stop in front of a restaurant, one of those kinds with decorations that discourage poop people from going in. The okada man will stop and demand more money. While arguing with him, the driver of the car will come out - a young girl in her twenties, wearing red lipstick, a tight dress and heels. You will think of how you are old enough to be her father. You will imagine her to be a minister's daughter or a governor's mistress, because only spoilt rich girls have sports cars and splash water on their father's mate. Before you can shout at her, the okada man will pull you back. She will walk into the restaurant without taking notice of you. Upon giving him an extra fifty naira note, he is going to leave you alone and then you'll try to run into the restaurant to confront the girl but you will be stopped by the gaurds who see the rage in your eyes.

"Let me teach that stupid girl a lesson. I am not her father's mate! See my clothes oga security, see!"

Your anger over your life will consume you and you are going to lose your mind. We both know that you are uncontrollable and quite irrational when you are angry. On this particular day, it will be no different. You will pick a stone on the floor and throw it on the windscreen. The headlights will be smashed by your fists. You will hulk yourself on the car's roof and jump on it till there is a dent. The gaurds will be helpless against you. The girl, horrified, will come out screaming in tears. She will call the police and you will be handcuffed to the station where you will be thrown into a cell alongside other criminals. I know you have always dreamt of what prison feels like but you won't have to dream anymore. It will become a reality. Sardined among rapists, murderers, robbers and downright psycopaths, your courage will bleed to death. Just when you are thrown into the jail, a tattoed man with two missing front teeth and a belly the size of your late father's wine calabash will walk up to you, flanked by four skinny fellow prisoners. He will scan you from head to toe and ask you for your name. You will hiss at first, refusing to answer him. It will prove to be the biggest mistake of your life. All you will later remember is blows landing on your head, blood spilling from your mouths as you lay weak on the floor. He will be saying something about him being the kingpin of the cell, the chief who you must pay homage to. You will not really pay attention because the echoes of his voice will have shrunk to nothingness in comparison to the pain that now travels all over your body. The last time you broke a bone was when you were a child, foolishly climbing roofs and jumping down. But on this fateful day, you will break more that a small bone in the leg. Your skull, ribs, neck and foot will never be the same again. The police will not do anything and the irony hits you: they arrest people for being lawless and throw them into prison so that they can be even more unlawful. You will shake your head at the prison situation. Well, you won't be able to literally shake it because your neck will be stiff, but in your mind at least. An old man in the corner of the room will watch you with sympathetic eyes. He will remind of your dead father. Or perhaps it will be his spirit. You can't say for sure because at that moment, it will be right to say "your head is not correct."

You will pass out and only wake up when a sergeant comes to take you outside. Someone will have come to bail you out. "Who could it be? I don't have any rich friends. No one knows I'm here." You will wonder who has come for your bail. You will then see who it is and your jaw will drop. It will be the young girl in her twenties with the red lipstick, tight dress and high heels - the girl that owns the car.

"I see you are a poor man with no worthy family member to pay back the damage," she will say with the most patronising tone ever. "So I'm going to pity you because I'm expecting a house from chief and I feel I should be more generous to the less-priviledged. I know poverty must have toyed with your brain. Please, let him go."

Those words will sink into your head and you will not even care about your freedom anymore. You will walk home reeking of defeat and humiliation. You will think of how the little girl disgraced you with her condescension. You will get home and sleep on the floor. You will close your eyes and you will dream - not of broken bones or towed vehicles, but of coconuts, palmtreets, tasty soup, children's laughter and gory tales. And you will wake up to another day. Another day with its own story. Another day as a lower-class citizen of Nigeria.