Living With Mice - A Short Story by E. E. Sule
- By E. E. Sule
- Published January 3, 2010
- Fiction
-
Rating:
E. E. Sule
E. E. Sule is the pen-name for Dr. Sule E. Egya. He teaches Creative Writing, African Literature and Modern Literary Theory in the Department of English & Literary Studies, University of Abuja, Abuja FCT, Nigeria. He is the author of Impotent Heavens (a collection of short stories); Dream and Shame (a collection of short stories); Naked Sun (a volume of poetry); Knifing Tongues (a volume of poetry); The Writings of Zaynab Alkali (a critical book, co-authored with Umelo Ojinmah); In Their Voices and Visions: Conversations with New Nigerian Writers (a book of interviews), and What the Sea Told Me (a volume of poetry). His poems, short stories, literary and scholarly essays have appeared in journals, e-journals, anthologies and literary magazines in Nigeria, the USA, Germany, Spain, India, the UK, Senegal, etc. He has read his works to audiences both in Nigeria and abroad. In 2007, he had a nine-month writing residency in Senegal where he worked under the mentorship of the world class Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah.
View all Entries by E. E. Sule
We lived in a tenement house at Kawo. It contained thirteen room-and-parlours. What first struck me about the house was its brown zinc roof. The walls had become brittle with age. The paint, originally white, had turned yellow. The house had a large compound. The floor must have been ambitiously plastered before. There was a gutter running in front of the house. Each time I looked into the gutter I saw swollen carcasses of mouse. I also saw shits often wrapped in black polyethylene bags.
Mama could never see such a thing and keep quiet. “Father-of-my-children, this yard is infested with mice; it’s too dirty.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have got a better house.”
“I’ve tried my best. Let’s see what you can get for us.” Baba always said this in defence of his choices most of which we never liked.
Because he was a policeman, always on transfer, we kept changing houses now and then. It had always been this kind of house. My sister Okasuwa and I always worried aloud. He would tell us, “I learn to cut my coat according to my size.” My sister Okasuwa would reply, “The problem, Baba, is not with the cutting but with the coat.”
One day Okasuwa told me, “Perhaps Baba chose the rank of sergeant as his permanent coat. He’s been a sergeant ever since.”
“Fourteen years now,” I said. “Baba complains that there is no promotion in the police.”
“And you believe him? What about Femi’s father, much younger than Baba, who is an Inspector?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
We had to live with the mice. Each night was a nightmare for me. I often remained awake, to my indignation, listening to the chaotic movements of the mice. They romped on the spring of the bed on which my brother and I slept. They noisily scratched almost all the plates in our room. They chased one another and shrieked now and then. I wondered why the rest of my family could sleep so soundly (so I thought) every night while the mice partied around in our room.
“I don’t care about the mice. My headache in this house is the latrine,” Okasuwa told me.
“Oh yes. You’re shitting on top of shit, and you’re seeing the shit.”
“God! Can’t Baba and his co-tenants do something about it?”
“I hear they are waiting for the landlord.”
“But the landlord doesn’t shit here. What if he doesn’t come?” Okasuwa said, looking very dismayed.
“Well, I don’t know. Learn to go into the bush.”
“Which bush? Are there bushes in this Kaduna?”
“If you walk far enough you will see bush.”
I knew Okasuwa would never go into bush. She deliberately chose to live a different life from ours. She bought her own toilet soap, her own body cream, and her own towel. She hardly ate at home. She wore expensive clothes and shoes. She told me our room, even the entire house, was an oven; she went out every morning and returned late in the evening. She was learning tailoring at Kawo market.
It was Saturday morning. Somebody knocked on our door. “De Fada-of-dis-house dey?”
It was Papa Ofure.
“Yes, I dey,” Baba answered.
Baba was dressed for work. His head had grown too thin for his beret. It used to fit him. It used to make him handsome.
“Good morning. De landlord don come o,” said Papa Ofure, smiling.
“I hear you,” Baba said curtly.
Baba was in a bad mood. Mama had quarrelled with him because, for the third time, he said he did not have money to pay my school fees now. I had been driven out of school for not paying my school fees. Mama insisted that Baba borrowed money to pay because I was in my final year in secondary school. Nothing, not even my being in the final year, would make Baba borrow money from anyone. It was not his habit.
I followed Baba outside. I took a deep breath. The air outside felt healthier than the stuffy, urine-smelling air in our room. My siblings Anya and Osu would not stop wetting. A gentle breeze was ruffling the leaves of the large mango tree in our compound. Birds were chirping happily on the tree. It was a bright day though light clouds moved gently in the sky.
The house was fully awake. Mama Peter was shouting at Peter to finish shitting quickly. He was sitting on a potty. Ado was also sitting on a potty in front of their room, one of his small legs stretched, the other bent at the knee. His head rested on his left palm and he seemed to be dozing. I saw Rekiya, dressed in tattered pyjamas, playing with her new doll. Mama Bulus sat in front of her room, her fat legs stretched out. Turaki, her youngest child, sucked her large breast while standing. Mama Bayo had lit her stove beside her door, warming something that looked like leftover food. Her daughter, Julie, squatted beside her. The stove exuded dark smoke. I saw Ramatu, the daughter of Baba Rafatu’s first wife, tugging at her mother’s wrapper, whining. The mother was breastfeeding her new baby. Loud music was booming from Egahi’s room. Always, it was Fela. Always, it was Suffering and Smiling. From Papa Ofure’s room was the rapid rhythm of Edo music. Gospel music in Igbo was the steady signature of Papa Peter’s electronics. There were also songs in Hausa booming from both ends of the rectangular compound.
Near the latrines, a ramshackle outhouse with three doors, I saw six people standing, four carrying crumpled papers in their hands. Tanko, his palm gripping his kettle, his face wrinkling, was nearest the second latrine. Aunty the old Delta woman leaned on the wall, her kettle on the ground beside her. There were five buckets, three of them without handles, filled with water, sponge cases dancing in two of the buckets. They were lined up in front of the bathroom. Aminatu, one of Baba Rafatu’s adolescent daughters, bathed her siblings. “Kneel down well!” she shouted at the one she was washing, spanking her buttocks. Like her mother she was hot-tempered. There were other three of her siblings waiting for her. Beside her was also Ofure, my sister’s friend, bathing her younger brother.
Under the tree stood the landlord. Our house was his own share of inheritance from his recently deceased father. He was much younger than Egahi, the youngest tenant in our house. The landlord looked rather shabby. His blue riga lacked buttons at the cuffs and the neck. His baggy pair of jeans looked totally tattered at the cuffs. His long toenails were conspicuous from his weather-beaten sandals. He did not wear a cap. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes were bloodshot. He was smoking. He had a funny manner of exhaling the smoke. His thick, dark lips pouted leftward, gaping, his entire face slightly moving in that direction. The smoke came out of the gaping mouth and his large nostrils in jets.
Papa Peter, Egahi, Papa Ofure, Baba Ado, Baba Rafatu, Baba Bulus and Baba stood around him. Papa Peter had a towel around his neck. He did not wear any cloth; his stomach was hairy. His knee-length shorts dropped below the waistline, revealing the upper part of dirty underpants. It never stopped surprising me that his buttocks were larger than his wife’s. Papa Ofure was in his increasingly fading safari suit, one of the only two I always saw him in. He was the caretaker of the house. He was also the oldest man in our compound. He addressed everybody as “My Dear,” and often reminded us, especially when there was a quarrel, that we were all one big family. The cynical Baba Rafatu always challenged Papa Ofure’s mantra: “How you go talk say we be one big family? Who tell you say Yoruba and ’Ausa and Ibo don be one family before? I beg no tell me dat kin’ tin.” The pot-bellied, ebullient Baba Bulus wore a singlet over a very large towel tied on his waist. He was chewing a stick, occasionally scrubbing his teeth with it, and spitting on the ground. Egahi wore a T-shirt over a pair of straight jeans.
Baba Bayo limped out of his room carrying a small iron trap with a big mouse dangling from it.
“Chei! Dis one don eat ya food finish o,” Papa Peter told Baba Bayo.
“Abi! See how e big. Where de landlord dey sef?” Baba Bayo asked, standing on his good leg.
“See am na.” Papa Peter pointed at the landlord who was busy with the ash of his cigarette.
Baba Bayo pointed the trap and its content towards the landlord. “Aboki, you see wetin I catch. Na so so holes full everywhere.”
The landlord asked in anger, “Na my froblem?”
“No be ya problem, sha. But na you get de house.”
“In my house por Kabala flenty flenty rats dey. Eberywhere in Kaduna, rats boku. Aha, where ya rent?” He stretched his hand towards Baba Bayo.
Baba Bayo ignored him and limped out of the compound.
The landlord turned to the other men and said, “Yes, yes, I don come, make ebrybody bring za money.” He stuck a cigarette, which was a mere stub, between his lips and stretched out his hands, demanding. He was talking to no one in particular. The authority in his voice was unmistakable. “Is my house. Nobody is here pree of charge. I come here eberyday to ask por money. Why? I not a beggar.”
Baba spoke Hausa to him. “Muhammadu, I’ve not got my salary.”
He answered Baba in Hausa, smiling, “Officer, every time you complain of salary. Are you working free for the government?”
“Most of us in the government service are donkeys, Muhammadu. Can’t you see? Three months into the new year, the General has not signed budget. No budget no salary.”
Mama could never see such a thing and keep quiet. “Father-of-my-children, this yard is infested with mice; it’s too dirty.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have got a better house.”
“I’ve tried my best. Let’s see what you can get for us.” Baba always said this in defence of his choices most of which we never liked.
Because he was a policeman, always on transfer, we kept changing houses now and then. It had always been this kind of house. My sister Okasuwa and I always worried aloud. He would tell us, “I learn to cut my coat according to my size.” My sister Okasuwa would reply, “The problem, Baba, is not with the cutting but with the coat.”
One day Okasuwa told me, “Perhaps Baba chose the rank of sergeant as his permanent coat. He’s been a sergeant ever since.”
“Fourteen years now,” I said. “Baba complains that there is no promotion in the police.”
“And you believe him? What about Femi’s father, much younger than Baba, who is an Inspector?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
We had to live with the mice. Each night was a nightmare for me. I often remained awake, to my indignation, listening to the chaotic movements of the mice. They romped on the spring of the bed on which my brother and I slept. They noisily scratched almost all the plates in our room. They chased one another and shrieked now and then. I wondered why the rest of my family could sleep so soundly (so I thought) every night while the mice partied around in our room.
“I don’t care about the mice. My headache in this house is the latrine,” Okasuwa told me.
“Oh yes. You’re shitting on top of shit, and you’re seeing the shit.”
“God! Can’t Baba and his co-tenants do something about it?”
“I hear they are waiting for the landlord.”
“But the landlord doesn’t shit here. What if he doesn’t come?” Okasuwa said, looking very dismayed.
“Well, I don’t know. Learn to go into the bush.”
“Which bush? Are there bushes in this Kaduna?”
“If you walk far enough you will see bush.”
I knew Okasuwa would never go into bush. She deliberately chose to live a different life from ours. She bought her own toilet soap, her own body cream, and her own towel. She hardly ate at home. She wore expensive clothes and shoes. She told me our room, even the entire house, was an oven; she went out every morning and returned late in the evening. She was learning tailoring at Kawo market.
It was Saturday morning. Somebody knocked on our door. “De Fada-of-dis-house dey?”
It was Papa Ofure.
“Yes, I dey,” Baba answered.
Baba was dressed for work. His head had grown too thin for his beret. It used to fit him. It used to make him handsome.
“Good morning. De landlord don come o,” said Papa Ofure, smiling.
“I hear you,” Baba said curtly.
Baba was in a bad mood. Mama had quarrelled with him because, for the third time, he said he did not have money to pay my school fees now. I had been driven out of school for not paying my school fees. Mama insisted that Baba borrowed money to pay because I was in my final year in secondary school. Nothing, not even my being in the final year, would make Baba borrow money from anyone. It was not his habit.
I followed Baba outside. I took a deep breath. The air outside felt healthier than the stuffy, urine-smelling air in our room. My siblings Anya and Osu would not stop wetting. A gentle breeze was ruffling the leaves of the large mango tree in our compound. Birds were chirping happily on the tree. It was a bright day though light clouds moved gently in the sky.
The house was fully awake. Mama Peter was shouting at Peter to finish shitting quickly. He was sitting on a potty. Ado was also sitting on a potty in front of their room, one of his small legs stretched, the other bent at the knee. His head rested on his left palm and he seemed to be dozing. I saw Rekiya, dressed in tattered pyjamas, playing with her new doll. Mama Bulus sat in front of her room, her fat legs stretched out. Turaki, her youngest child, sucked her large breast while standing. Mama Bayo had lit her stove beside her door, warming something that looked like leftover food. Her daughter, Julie, squatted beside her. The stove exuded dark smoke. I saw Ramatu, the daughter of Baba Rafatu’s first wife, tugging at her mother’s wrapper, whining. The mother was breastfeeding her new baby. Loud music was booming from Egahi’s room. Always, it was Fela. Always, it was Suffering and Smiling. From Papa Ofure’s room was the rapid rhythm of Edo music. Gospel music in Igbo was the steady signature of Papa Peter’s electronics. There were also songs in Hausa booming from both ends of the rectangular compound.
Near the latrines, a ramshackle outhouse with three doors, I saw six people standing, four carrying crumpled papers in their hands. Tanko, his palm gripping his kettle, his face wrinkling, was nearest the second latrine. Aunty the old Delta woman leaned on the wall, her kettle on the ground beside her. There were five buckets, three of them without handles, filled with water, sponge cases dancing in two of the buckets. They were lined up in front of the bathroom. Aminatu, one of Baba Rafatu’s adolescent daughters, bathed her siblings. “Kneel down well!” she shouted at the one she was washing, spanking her buttocks. Like her mother she was hot-tempered. There were other three of her siblings waiting for her. Beside her was also Ofure, my sister’s friend, bathing her younger brother.
Under the tree stood the landlord. Our house was his own share of inheritance from his recently deceased father. He was much younger than Egahi, the youngest tenant in our house. The landlord looked rather shabby. His blue riga lacked buttons at the cuffs and the neck. His baggy pair of jeans looked totally tattered at the cuffs. His long toenails were conspicuous from his weather-beaten sandals. He did not wear a cap. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes were bloodshot. He was smoking. He had a funny manner of exhaling the smoke. His thick, dark lips pouted leftward, gaping, his entire face slightly moving in that direction. The smoke came out of the gaping mouth and his large nostrils in jets.
Papa Peter, Egahi, Papa Ofure, Baba Ado, Baba Rafatu, Baba Bulus and Baba stood around him. Papa Peter had a towel around his neck. He did not wear any cloth; his stomach was hairy. His knee-length shorts dropped below the waistline, revealing the upper part of dirty underpants. It never stopped surprising me that his buttocks were larger than his wife’s. Papa Ofure was in his increasingly fading safari suit, one of the only two I always saw him in. He was the caretaker of the house. He was also the oldest man in our compound. He addressed everybody as “My Dear,” and often reminded us, especially when there was a quarrel, that we were all one big family. The cynical Baba Rafatu always challenged Papa Ofure’s mantra: “How you go talk say we be one big family? Who tell you say Yoruba and ’Ausa and Ibo don be one family before? I beg no tell me dat kin’ tin.” The pot-bellied, ebullient Baba Bulus wore a singlet over a very large towel tied on his waist. He was chewing a stick, occasionally scrubbing his teeth with it, and spitting on the ground. Egahi wore a T-shirt over a pair of straight jeans.
Baba Bayo limped out of his room carrying a small iron trap with a big mouse dangling from it.
“Chei! Dis one don eat ya food finish o,” Papa Peter told Baba Bayo.
“Abi! See how e big. Where de landlord dey sef?” Baba Bayo asked, standing on his good leg.
“See am na.” Papa Peter pointed at the landlord who was busy with the ash of his cigarette.
Baba Bayo pointed the trap and its content towards the landlord. “Aboki, you see wetin I catch. Na so so holes full everywhere.”
The landlord asked in anger, “Na my froblem?”
“No be ya problem, sha. But na you get de house.”
“In my house por Kabala flenty flenty rats dey. Eberywhere in Kaduna, rats boku. Aha, where ya rent?” He stretched his hand towards Baba Bayo.
Baba Bayo ignored him and limped out of the compound.
The landlord turned to the other men and said, “Yes, yes, I don come, make ebrybody bring za money.” He stuck a cigarette, which was a mere stub, between his lips and stretched out his hands, demanding. He was talking to no one in particular. The authority in his voice was unmistakable. “Is my house. Nobody is here pree of charge. I come here eberyday to ask por money. Why? I not a beggar.”
Baba spoke Hausa to him. “Muhammadu, I’ve not got my salary.”
He answered Baba in Hausa, smiling, “Officer, every time you complain of salary. Are you working free for the government?”
“Most of us in the government service are donkeys, Muhammadu. Can’t you see? Three months into the new year, the General has not signed budget. No budget no salary.”