CHAPTER TWO

The knife came.

Yes it came. Bloody motherfuckers, they want to kill me after enjoying moments and moments of randy sex… wait, how did they do it? My Daddy, the selfish bastard! What may have been the thoughts that crisis-crossed the evil lair that could be described as his heart while he was busy pleasuring himself on top of my mummy? … Did he think thoughts of love? Did he think of having her as a wife? And propagating us young ones someday? No way! I don’t think so. The bastard must have spreaded my mummy’s legs very widely apart and ravaged recklessly at her rustic innocence. Bastard! Pleasuring on my mummy as you like because she was much too foolish to tell lust apart from love, much too non – confident about her personality and self, and her mummy having died giving birth to her, and her daddy, although a multi-millionaire ten times over, simply too busy to play with her, always felt abandoned in her glassy and palatial mansion.

         My mummy needed love and believed in fairy tales. “He’ll come upon his chariot, blazing in silver and gold. Your knight in shinning amour and sweep you away from the wicked witch in the big castle and you’ll live forever and a day! Knowing  nothing else but pure love. Love like that shared between a butterfly and the faithful flowers that never fails to supply it with sweet juices. And you’ll never be unhappy again”.

The nanny told my mummy that! And she believed it!

Granted, my mummy is human and fallible and being nineteen and a head stuffed up with M & B and silhouette novels, was glullible and you took advantage of all that… And now you’ve brought me to the butcher to be killed! I Oyifyorda. Yes! That’s my name. For I have named myself, the indestructible one, the one who never dies and has greatness bestowed on him.

I shall live. Yes, I shall live, for I have chosen my own destiny. My fate is in my hands. I shall survive it. This filthy – crazy – one – thousand naira-dim – lit roomed – ABORTION!

And then you’ll see! Dearest Daddy – you’ll see!

The knife came.

But it came in the form of a hand. A gloved hand reaching through my mummy’s womb and coming forth into the room where I was cocooned. May God Almighty wither the wicked hand and damn it to hell and the fourteenth descendants of the owner of the hand. Yes! It is I Oyifyorda. I have spoken!

           The hand came. The hand is coming, it is coming o! Everybody come and see o! The gloved wicked hand of the butcher! It is looking for me. To pull me out. To drop me into the gutter. The pit latrine. To be cursed about and spitted upon by passerby in the morning. To be shitted upon by gluttons when they go to ease off in between meals, forgetting that people are starving in Afghanistan and Ethiopia. I Oyifyorda! The future UN ambassador to the world’s poor and needy. No way. I’m not going out like this.

The hand is fishing for me. It is fishing for me o! It goes to the right and I go to the left. It goes to the left, and I to the right.

Now we’re playing hide and seek in the luscious garden of my mother’s womb.

…and just when am truly beginning to enjoy the game, the good-for nothing – freezed-deceased-son-of-a-thousand-fathers is tired. He has given up! He can’t find me. Beautiful! The butcher does not even know his goddamn job!

 I’m not complaining – I’m sure you know what I mean. Yeah, sure you do.

I can hear my mummy screaming her head off. Oh! Dear mummy… why did you agree to this crazy scheme in the first place? Why did you mummy? Why did you?

Oh! My mummy. Wait; just wait until I come out of here, when I catch the bastard? When I catch the bastard? – My father!

Outside. My mummy is still crying. She’s moaning softly now and some birds have come to sit at the window looking in on my mummy and asking themselves “What kind of creatures are humans that they kill their unborns? We’re glad we’re birds. Birds are very Godly creatures; we multiply. These are a race that deducts!” Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. They refuse to be contaminated. They are not coming back. They want no part of it. How the humans practice their religion!

 “Excuse me, Mr. Olotu” the butcher is saying to my Dad” I think the foetus, the child in your girlfriend’s womb is really very desperate to live and I suggest you let him”. “Besides”, he continued in devious whisper and his voice echoed again back to me” your girlfriend may be hurt, her womb may be ruptured if I probe too hard”.

“I don’t give a damn! Kill the bastard child! I’m leaving for Paris in two weeks on her father’s ticket! This will jeopardize everything. Get rid of the bastard”, my Dad’s reply as he stormed out of the room.

Goodness! He… you call me a bastard? You… who is your father anyway? If you’re half the man that I am… (What does it matter?) Come inside this room like you did so irresponsively many times before and fight like a man!

Now it is raining very slowly. The pellets makes music on the zinc roofs, as my mummy begins to cry afresh. Rain is God’s way of making certain that everything on earth keeps growing. But here’s human that wants to destroy. Tonight, the rain isn’t only a symbol of growth, but God is slowly crying as well. A damn pity for my mummy and the sins against innocence…

And because of this. And all the countable and uncountable sins of the world; Jesus,  whom God had sent to redeem mankind.

Whom some have since said is the son of God. And also his holy spirit. And even God himself! Whom some others have simply referred, as the loyal and dutiful servant and prophet of Allah, empowered to raise the dead and cure all kinds of illnesses by the leave of God. Whom, some others yet have not even regarded as anything; simply raised his hands to his face,  and wept!