An aggressive stance from an aggressive-looking man. He stands under the barren mango tree with a hint of a smile on his face. His skin is black, black like charcoal and he has a large stomach. The kind that introduces itself before he does.
Then there is his smell. Of tobacco, of palm wine, of trouble.
“Is it Kenechukwu?” I ask. The last born. The one who was more prone to trouble and always had daddy bailing him out from a station due to one misdemeanor or another.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” the man answers me. The vague smile still lingers. Perhaps he enjoys this, this torture of suspense.
“What is it then that you want?” I ask. A few moments ago it was Nkechi who had run into the room saying, “There is a man downstairs that says he is from garrison.”
It sounded funny: A man from garrison. It reminded me of a song I had sung in the church choir about the man from Galilee, the one who had come to save.
“What does he want?” I had asked. Did he come to save?
“I don’t know oo,” Nkechi had replied me. And so I had come running down.
If you must know ‘garrison’ is that bus stop so far away from Obigbo. The one where when it was announced loudly by the conductors that called the drivers ‘pilot’ in the large city buses, you had gotten forgotten yourself amongst the barrage of fortune preachers and herbal salesman.
Also, the bus stop was named after an actual garrison.
“Where is the madam of the house?” He finally asks.
“It is I,” I reply because I in fact am the Ada of the house and would take the place of ‘madam’ in the absence of my mother.
“No you are not,” he says defensively. He stands in a funny way, resting the weight of his body almost entirely on one leg. “I must speak to the madam, it is quite important.”
And so I send Nkechi off. She runs at top speed to our mother’s roadside shop where she sells hair extensions and attachments and eats groundnut and gossips with her sales girls.
I imagine Nkechi telling my mother that a strange man had come all the way from garrison. I wondered what my mother’s reaction would be. Surprise? Shock? Or anxiety due to recollection? Perhaps I should have gone myself.
The man brings his hands out his pockets and crosses them. He switches his weight to his other leg. He looks at me and I look back. We continue in this strange dance of ours.
