Chapter summary
Mama Bolu remembers Karo’s dispossession, identifies a helmeted watcher, and fears who now needs protection.
MAMA BOLU
Tuesday morning Mama Bolu opened her store at half past five, as she had done for eleven years, and by half past seven she had sold forty loaves, a crate of eggs and an argument. She was sixty-three, with a back like a question mark and eyes that missed nothing, least of all in the faces of people she had known since they were small.
That was why she put down the loaf she was wrapping when Karo walked in.
The girl looked as if she had not slept since Sunday. She wore the same faded hoodie, her hair was tied under a scarf, and she smiled the way she always smiled, with her mouth and nothing else. Mama Bolu had noticed that smile when Karo was six years old and had never known what to do with it.
“Mama, good morning. Two loaves and some plantain.”
“Karo, sit down. You look like something the cat refused.”
She had known Karo’s mother, Folasade, since they were girls selling gari at Isara market with their wrappers hitched up. Folasade was the beautiful one. At nineteen she became the second house of a timber contractor from Abeokuta, a man with a Mercedes and two compounds. Nobody in Isara said the words aloud. The Mercedes had a way of paying for things.
For fifteen years there was a Friday visitor, an envelope, school fees paid on time.
Then the man died on a Tuesday. On the Saturday the first wife’s people arrived at the burial with sticks and a lorry. They dragged Folasade out of the compound by her wrapper, in front of the whole town, with six-year-old Karo on her back, shouting that second houses do not bury husbands.
Mama Bolu had hidden them in her kitchen that night. She remembered the child most of all. Karo had sat on a sack of beans with her feet not touching the floor, watching the door. She had not cried. Not once, not even a little. She had only watched the door, as if she were memorising who might come through it.
“Mama.” The adult Karo had lowered her voice. “Sunday morning, when you took the picture with me. After I left. Did you see anybody?”
“See who? Half of Lagos was in that queue.”
“Anybody who asked about me.”
Mama Bolu frowned. Then she remembered, and she did not like how fast she remembered. “Funny you ask. There was a woman. She came on an okada and kept the helmet on the whole time. Jacket, gloves, boots, the full thing. A big woman, not fat, but big. She asked me whether the girl in the picture comes every
Sunday.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes. The poor child comes every Sunday for bread and plantain.” Mama Bolu shrugged. “She bought plantain and paid with a thousand and did not wait for the change. She smelled of perfume like a church wedding.”
“Flowers?”
“Plenty flowers. Powdery, like the inside of a new handbag.” She looked at the girl. “Why? Who is she?”
“Did she take off the helmet?”
“Not once.”
Karo went still.
It was not the stillness of fear. Mama Bolu had seen fear in many faces. She had seen this once before, in her own kitchen, on Folasade, on the night they were dragged out: the stillness of a woman doing sums.
“Mama.” Karo smiled the small smile. “If she comes again, call me before you say a word to her. Will you do that for me?”
“Karo, what have you done?”
“Nothing, Mama. I’m only a student.”
She paid for the bread and left the change on the counter, which she had never done in her life. Mama Bolu stood a long time with her hand on a loaf that was already wrapped.
Sixteen years ago she had hidden Folasade’s daughter from the people who wanted her gone. This morning, for the first time, she was not certain who needed to be hidden from whom.
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 13
The story continues in the next chapter.
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The featured photograph is used under the Pexels licence. Contextual scene illustrations are original editorial artwork created for this serial; the characters and events are fictional. Featured photograph source. Editorial design by akinakingbogun.com.
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