Part 6- The Journey In

The box set was called "Finding A Friend In Jesus."My Catholic roots begin to disintegrate as I read through the books. I did away with my hail Mary's and weekly confessions, as I realised that everything came directly from the father and to get to him was through Jesus Christ. I believed and it worked as I realised that Jesus was not just housed among the cold statues and incense in the musty church where I prayed,he was alive and at home with me. Giving my life to Christ at the age of ten fundamentally changed my thought patterns and my way of thinking,I was no longer bound by religiosity,rules and various regulations. I could pray and express myself however I liked,there were no more boundaries in my communication with Christ.He answered every prayer I ever uttered and where I was burdened he would carry my load.



The rest of the Christmas was spent visiting relatives,my favourite being my uncle Ibe,who always had time for us.Taking us on drives into parts of the city we had never seen and who always had a couple of Naira in his pocket for "Coke money."His wife with her face always painted to perfection was a popular caterer to the "Lagos big boys." Her food always tasted so good it was almost as if it were charmed. She would always cook up a storm of various dishes for our arrival,there would be pots of ofensala, jollof rice,chicken ogbono soup and pounded yam;She always cooked like she was expecting an army.Christmas was also the opportunity to eat as much chicken as we could get,as on regular weeks we could only get chicken on Sundays as a special treat.



With the roads getting busier and busier and our neighbourhood changing from a quiet suburb into a thriving mini metropolis my mother raising her beloved Alsatian dogs,and three of us wanted to live somewhere quieter.My father was also fed up with having to wake up three neighbours in the morning so they could move their cars out of the very narrow compound were the all the vehicles were stacked up one after the other.I looked forward to the move but would miss the hustle and bustle of Surulere which I had begun to know like the back of my hand.I would also miss the bright and shiny supermarket at the top of the road called UTC,going in there always reminded me of England,they had all the imported toys and books and a well stocked magazine and paper rack outside which I would browse until I was asked to pay for something by the shop assistant.On a good day I would time it to about forty five minutes in which i could read five comics,read two chapters of a book I could not afford but was almost half way through, and when her slippers would start to shuffle under the counter I knew it was time to make my purchase which was usually two comics usually of the supernatural variety.I Had also struck up an unlikely relationship with a mischievous and slightly psychotic house-girl about the same age as me who lived upstairs with the toilet flushing lady and her husband,she looked after their twelve month old baby called Junior.On arriving back from school I would tear up the stairs to find out what she was doing.Although she was supposedly eleven years old she appeared and acted slightly younger than me she could not read and did not attend school which I thought was strange at the time.what I found even more baffling was that she was left at home all day with a little baby.Her treatment of him was at best rudimentary,she would whip up all manner of foods to feed him with which in my eyes did not look to appetising ,his cerelac always looked to lumpy and she forced it down him adding intermittent spoons of water into his mouth for his digestion saying "na so madam show me" as he choked and cried trying to spit up the revolting mess being shoved down his throat.On finishing she would change his cloth nappy,I stood back with bated breath praying she would not stab him once again as I had seen her do many times with the large safety pin for his nappy.With the weight of the unmentionable amount of cerelac she had stuffed down him he would immediately fall asleep,we would then proceed to the kitchen were she would throw random things in the pot to cook so she could eat before madam came home, she often complained she never got meat to eat only bones ,I quietly mused that God must be taking away her meat in punishment for the way she treated that really beautiful baby surely she must know better.She wasn't a very good cook and nothing ever came out of that pot that tasted good.I felt sorry for her as she missed her mother who had sold her when she was eight to a calabar lady who had then passed her on to her madam.She often wept as she tidied up the remains of her unsuccessful meal and began to chop efo and grind crayfish for her madam to prepare when she returned from work late in the evening.I would also worry about the baby,as she would take out her sorrows on him with kicks and slaps,just as her madam had taken out her sorrows on her.I think this was the reason that drove me up there again and again,the baby was so small and vulnerable he would cry in pain as he was hit but when the pain subsided he would coo and smile at her not fully registering what she was doing to him but I was sure it was leaving an imprint.When I was there she was happier less likely to hit out at him,I was her break from the monotony as she was never let out except on short runs to the local shop for basic provisions.She would tell me stories about her life before she came to Lagos,spent swimming in the waters of Rivers State were she was from being told stories by her grandparents and having her long hair braided by her mother,hair which had now been shaved off by her new owner.I would bring her sweets and read to her my comic books and wonder why even if she was a slave she had to be mistreated,but there were always yells and screams from the children being beaten in the compound there heads being conked and their ears being twisted it seemed that this was the way my people parented their children.
I was late for my regular afternoon visit as we had extra lessons at school that day ,as I ran upstairs to the flat I had a dry metallic taste in my mouth,the front door was open and I heard her laughter and splashes,coming out of the bathroom I walked in on her drowning him under ice cold water she had filled the bath with......