Miko’s place had a certain scent different from the other video stores where cheap cassettes were plastered all over the place. Perhaps it was the too much camphor. The boy stood with his friend, Chike beside him. Their eyes glancing all over the shelves that promised from generic American action movies to the ones made just a river away from the famous bridge.
“We should get that!” Chike pointed a finger at a shelf.
Earlier today, the boy’s mother from her sewing machine had looked up and said, “Is the cable still on?”
The boy had shook his head and said “No,” from where he sat. His mother had reached out from the drawer of sewing machine where she had been all afternoon sewing a gown and produced wry notes and said, “Maybe we should get a movie.”
Normally Nnenna, the boy’s older sister was the one tasked with getting a home video for their night’s entertainment. Sometimes she went with the boy but most times she was trusted with getting something to the tune of everyone’s taste, except the boy of course, he was more in tune with animated characters. But now she sat at the desk of her room reading for her school exam from the somewhat dim desk light.
“Get a sweet movie oo,” she called after him. “A spicy movie!” she said.
“Nneka face your book,” their mother growled. “Go to Miko’s place, he’ll have something.”
And for the first time in his life, the boy was tasked with the movie for the night.
He peered at the movie Chike had pointed out. “My mother’s not going to watch that!” he said at the Japanese samurai cartoon Chike had pointed at. Chike giggled at his own joke of the boy’s mother enjoying an anime.
It was a slow evening and no one besides them was in the spacious shop of homevideos. Miko, who the boy never knew where the name came from, had given them their space and was outside the store now chatting with a few of his neighbours who bothered. His generating set was on and the closed doors muffled the loudspeakers set outside that blasted pop music.
They peered about the stockpile, the boy reluctant to a pick any one at first. “Do you remember that?” He asked his friend as he pointed to a particular American cartoon.
“Yea!” Chike said with a look of surprise on his face. “I can’t believe they still make those!” As little fans, they would carry the cassette’s papers and try to draw the animations on it. “I don’t even know where mine is.”
“That wasn’t yours,” the boy said. “It was mine, you never returned it.”
Chike scratched his head.
Their interest went to the Chinese section with movies that promised physically impossible body contortions. Contortions the boys tried out with other boys in their school.
The boy said a Chinese phrase from one of the movies they watched. His friend gave the adequate response and they burst out laughing.
The sliding door of the store noisily opened and for a moment their attention was drawn to the Miko who entered the room with a woman beside him.
“Have you guys seen any one yet?” Miko asked barely interested.
“No,” the boy answered.
Miko’s attention turned to the woman who wanted to buy a baby’s cartoon. The last time tge boy had watched a baby’s video in their neighbour’s house, he had being slightly irritated to the point of leaving. Why did everything have to be so dull? He had wondered.
A catchy cassette caught him and Chike’s gaze, a shiny superhero embroiled in his cape, flying over a glass building in the night sky. Also in the cassette’s picture was a black futuristic car which the boy considered cooler than all the cars he had ever seen in all his life.
“There’s just something about batman…” the boy began.
“Superman’s stronger than he is,” Chike said nonchalantly as if Batman was not worth his time. These were the kinds of argument they had in school during break time, listing their favourite superheroes and making comparisons about them, listing their superpowers and suggesting who could beat who from the different universes. The winner was declared by who was the loudest and had the most supporters and he and Chike were usually on different sides. While he was enamoured by intellect and wit, Chike favoured power, speed and ability to create massive destruction.
The boy looked longingly at the video cassette. What if he picked one up? His mother wasn’t a fan of superheroes and in fact most foreign movies, she would get angry because he was supposed to know that and she might make him return it and maybe twist his ears before she sent him back. But perhaps if he stalled a bit longer, it would be too late for her to send him back and they would just have to do with Batman. He stared longingly at the cassette.
“I have that,” Chike said.
“You do?” the boy asked elated.
Chike nodded, “Not that sweet. There wasn’t a lot of fighting going on, just talk, talk, talk.”
The boy thought a bit about when he could collect the film, “Can you bring it to school on Monday?”
Chike shrugged, then nodded.
When they packed books for school in the morning, they also packed their video cassettes for exchange in school. Sometimes the cassettes went round too much that it was no longer playable with a DVD player.
The woman who had come in previously, got her cassette player and after paying Miko, left the shop.
“Have you seen one?” Miko asked the boys.
They shook their heads.
“If you see, I dey outside,” Miko said then he left the room, closing the door noisily with the volume of the music increasing and decreasing with the opening and closing of the door.
A favourite bit came on in the speakers outside and the boy tried dancing. His friend laughed at him, “God, you’re so wack!”
“Can you do any better?” he asked his friend.
“Yea, of course but not in here…”
They got to the section of wrestling and on cassettes, big men in costumes were pictured in motion.
“Did you watch the last wrestle mania?” Chike asked excitedly.
“My uncle told me it’s all acting!” the boy declared.
“It’s not acting!” Chike said defensively.
When the boy was smaller, he and Nnenna would wrestle in the large space of their parlor. They would shift the center table to an edge of the room and stalk themselves about the living room. They took the names of their favourite wrestlers and their mother would watch them with amusement and worry if she believed they were going to do something dangerous. That was before Nnenna started growing breast and his mother calmly explained to him that Nnenna couldn’t take part in such plays anymore.
Chike suddenly sneezed violently beside the boy. He held his nose for a bit then asked the boy, “What kind movie does your mother like?”
“Local movies,” the boy replied.
“Same with mine,” his friend said.
Just at the end of the room was an adjunct room divided with a curtain. Chike and the boy looked at each and the boy began shaking his head. The rumours round school was that, that was where Miko kept adult cassettes. The boy was naturally curious about what was on adult cassettes.
“He’s not coming in now,” Chike said.
“No,” the boy shook his head not because he didn’t want to see what those movies were about but because Miko and his mother attended the same prayer group at church and if Miko caught him, Miko would probably tell on him to his mother. The boy’s mother had a strong aversion for those kinds of movies which she claimed corrupted children, which was funny to the boy because the Miko who was in her prayer group sold those movies.
The closest the boy had come to an adult movie was on the day Kunle called him to his class in school. Kunle was his sister’s set-mate who was trying to ask her out and now sent letters through the boy. That day he had called the boy from a distance and then gone into his class.
It was school over and school was emptying out. The senior block was mostly empty which the boy was grateful for even though at the moment he had the protection of Kunle. He walked up to the window of Kunle’s classroom. There were about five of them in the class and they took no notice of him as he stood by the corner of the window.
The boy recognized Kola who was the most notorious of his own set. It was Kola who the principal called out in assembly because he had being caught with a girl in the bushes after school. Kola was saying something. The boy always wondered what the bigger boys talked about and whether they liked the kind of films that he liked.
“Guy if you see the breast of that one.” From the corner of the window, the boy could see the wrapper of the film and on a big breasted white woman took a sexual pose.
He wondered if he could get a hold of it and when he would be able to watch. Not at home, anyone could walk in on him, maybe at Chika’s. Chika was usually alone at home for long periods of time.
The seniors continued talking from their pornography to actual sexual escapades. Perhaps this was what Kunle wanted to do to his sister. The boy wondered if Kunle knew he was still here and how he could escape now without being noticed. He was unlucky and it was Kola who saw him.
“You little rat!” Kola said. “What are you doing there hiding by the window and how long have you been there?”
Kunle looked embarrassed when he saw the boy, “I was the one that called him.” Then he said to the boy, “Why don’t we meet later?”
The boy ran off.
After salivating all over the film shelf, they returned to the section for local films and the boy peered about the shelf anxious about making a choice. Which would he pick and would his mother like it? And there were just too many of them.
Miko entered inside the room and walked over to the stereo speaker. The music coming from outside stopped and Miko selected another cassette to play.
“Have you seen any one yet?” Miko asked.
“We’re coming,” the boy said scared he had taken much of the man’s time.
“Pick that,” Chike said pointing at a particular movie. “My mother likes that one.”
The boy peered at the cassette his friend was pointing at. “No,” he said. “My mother doesn’t like that particular actor.”
He stared about the covers of the movies which almost all looked the same with over gesticulating actors posed in front of them. He stared about each cassette, which would his mother like? And what would Nnenna think about it? Faced with multiple choices, he wished it was Nnenna who was here. She always made it seem so easy.
He scanned the faces of the movie for his mother’s favourite actress. Maybe he should pick one of those but there were at least nine of the movies with that same actress and his mother had seen six and didn’t like the last one.
“Chike, help me pick one,” the boy said.
“That one,” Chike said pointing.
“No,” he said.
“That other one.”
“I don’t like how it looks, it seems… somehow.”
Chike groaned, “Pick one yourself then.”
The boy rolled his eyes, if it were so easy, he would have picked one and been out of here soonest.
He picked up a cassette from the shelf, then picked up another. He placed the first one back on the shelf and stood with the second undecided.
“Uncle Miko,” he called.
Miko looked up to him.
“When did they get this one,” he asked.
“This week,” Miko said.
The boy stared at the first one he had picked up and wondered if it would be better than the one in his hands. The scenario reminded him of when writing his multi-choice exams, he would pick an option, be unsure and change and when the results came in, the original answer was correct. Sometimes he was lucky and it was the other way round so he couldn’t draw much wisdom from his past experience. He placed the second back and picked up the very first one he had picked.
“Uncle Miko, can I test this one?”
Miko received the cassette from him, pulled it out from the wrapper and placed it into the record player to see if it was working.
The dust and dryness of the harmattan welcomed them when they left the video store and also the noise. It was deep evening and the sun hung lazily in the horizon spreading a red embalm round the city.
In this moments, the boy found the city poetic. From the noise which was a sharp contrast from the inside of his home, to the large open gutters, to the cars zooming past the streets and the street children playing with tyres along the paths.
“Do you ever imagine yourself in a movie?” the boy asked his friend.
His friend looked about a bit and said, “Yes.”
“What do you think it would be about?”
“Oh, I would be this crazy superhero and I would have a crazy car.”
“One day,” the boy began, he pinched his nostril which became irritable from the harmattan dryness. “I’ll like to make a movie about this place.”
“What would it be about?” His friend asked him.
He shrugged, “I don’t know.” They continued walking in the windy streets.
When he got home, the living room was empty and the cloth his mother had being sewing laid unfinished on the machine. A smell wafted from the kitchen and the boy heard the sizzling of something frying and shatter from his mother and sister.
He closed the front door behind him.
“Uche?” his mother called from the kitchen. “Is that you?”
“Yes mummy, I’m home.”
“Where have you been?” she appeared at the doorway of the kitchen cum parlour. “You sure spent a lot of time at that video store. Did you get a film?”
“Yes,” he brandished the cassette in front of his mother.
That night as they ate they dinner and the film played, the boy watched the expression of his mother as she peered at the screen. At one point, his sister pointed and laughed and his mother smiled as she continued eating. He stared back at the movie, a certain kind of satisfaction overwhelming him, he had made the right choice.
