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What Lies on the other Side

Nisola Jegede

    In a scholarly scanty but noisy library, Bewaji peered hard at the Physics notebook in front of her. Her examinations were starting in the week that followed and like a potential good student, she was reading. Or at least, trying to read. The sun flowing through the patched net hanging raggedly from the disintegrating woods that made up the window in front of her signalled it was noon.
    Bewaji was a student of Pascal Royale College, a gaudily finished secondary school that had nothing majestic or regal about it. If anything, the school defined ignobility on a high level. From its crumbling walls which were smudged with contradictory but bright colours to the rotted ceilings, it was like every government school situated within the local government.
    Simply put, Pascal Royale College was of the poor, for the poor and by the poor. It was attended by students from families who could not bear to say their children attended the almost free but sincerely battered government schools.
    Several times today, in frustration, Bewaji had rolled up the long sleeves of her sweat-stained, light blue shirt (a part of her school’s uniform), which was hanging from her skinny arms as if to berate the book in front of her. As of now, if you’d seen the manner with which she had stared vehemently at the opened page of her book in the last forty minutes, you would believe she would have, at least, memorized a paragraph.
    However, Bewaji had not been able to sift any information from the book into herself. No word, diagram, theory, or laws sank into her head. This was not because of the persistent chattering of the two female junior students sitting at her left or the skirmish odour of urine and feces from the nearby toilet.
    It was because she was restless. She had been experiencing that feeling she often had whenever something bad wanted to happened. That feeling that made her want to cry. That same feeling she had for weeks before her aunt died in her sleep. That same feeling she had before her father was killed by an oncoming trailer. As of the moment, Bewaji had been experiencing that feeling for two weeks now and was beginning to feel drowned by a form of sensational failure. She wished she could grasp what was about to happen. Taking a tired breath, Bewaji splayed her form on the wooden, shaky chair beneath her before she took a look around her. Among the four occupants of the once royal blue painted library, only Senior Tomi, a girl from the S.S.S 3 class seemed to be studying. With a pair of thick eyeglasses embracing her large face, her enlarged eyes hungrily scanned the tiny words in the thick textbook in front of her before she scribbled wildly on a notebook placed beside the textbook. She repeated these actions in a frenzied manner as if she was scared of not reading enough.
    Intimidated by Senior Tomi’s actions, Bewaji righted herself from her loose position. She opened another page of the book in front of her ... Maybe she had a problem learning the last page and the pages before it. Maybe a new page will be easier to assimilate. Intimately, she looked at the drawings and theories that made up the new page she had opened.
    Again, her troubled mind detached her brain from the words in the book. Frustrated, she hastily rolled up the sleeves of her shirt which were already dangling from her arms and scratched her lowly cut hair. When had Mrs. Abba taught her class the Laws of Motion? Or the theory of Special Relativity? None of the words before her made perfect sense.
    So, Bewaji distracted her troubled thoughts and feelings by making her eyes wander to the trivial things around her; a big spider trying to crawl up the net that covered the window in front of her; a lizard nodding its head from a hole in the wall adjacent her; the broken TECNO phone in front of the junior students.
    Her eyes lingered on the last object for a few minutes before they landed on the students. Stupid, she thought. She wondered if they’d chosen to forget that phones were contraband when the week before, the headmaster, Mr. Tinu, had crushed all the phones he instructed the teachers to seize from the students. Despite the huge number of students who often brought their phones to school, the teachers were only able to seize quite a few from those who were caught unaware and had been unable to tape their phone properly under their chairs or hide them between broken ceilings.
    In her mind’s eyes, now, Bewaji could see Mr. Tinu’s very bald head shimmering with sweat in the sun. He had sniffed heavily while he thumped the phones, which were in nylon, with a too effective stone that ensured the technological objects were brought to ruins as soon as possible. Still, the students whose phones were destroyed had been angry enough to break the windshield of Mr. Tinu’s red 2009 Toyota. To the day Bewaji was in the library, tension simmered in the school since the school’s administrators found no culprit to punish for the injury that was done to Mr. Tinu’s car.
    With these thoughts racing the tracks of her mind, Bewaji’s eyes wandered to the examination timetable which clutched the peeling, painted wall beside the window in front of her. It was the third timetable that had been written in the last two weeks. The edges of the present timetable were green since a chunk of eba, thickened cassava flour, had been substituted for gum so that it wouldn’t be easy for the students to tear it off like they had torn the last two.
    Bewaji’s eyes went to the column that should contain her class’s first paper, and what she saw in it made her fall off her chair. The juniors stopped chatting. Alongside Senior Tomi, they stared at her. Although Bewaji saw their lips moved, she couldn’t hear a word they said. All Bewaji heard was repeated bangs from her heart.
    Her first paper was Chemistry.
    Without shaking off the dust from her royal blue skirt, Bewaji lifted herself from the partially cemented floor, moved closer to the timetable, and took another look at the first column beside her class, S.S.S 1. “Chemistry” was writing in capital letters with eligible handwriting. But the first timetable had Physics on it as her class’s initial paper, she thought nervously. Quickly, her nervousness turned to anger the instance she knew what must have happened. Everyone in the school had a firsthand, secondhand, thirdhand, and fourthhand knowledge that there was a silent war between the students and teachers. Now, the teachers had totally altered the third timetable! How could they do this? How can they punish everyone for the wrong made by few? Still, refusing to believe the change of subjects on the timetable, Bewaji turned to the only person in the library who could give her a cogent answer. She turned towards Senior Tomi and said, “Senior Tomi, do you know the timetable had been changed?”
    “Of course. It was changed this morning after the last one was torn” the latter replied with her eyes glued to the textbook but the condescending tone in which she made the last statement revealed her wrath towards the students who had torn the last timetable.
    “Do you know- know some-erm- subjects and their time have been changed?”
    “Yes,” this time Senior Tomi looked at Bewaji.
    “I k-know. I w-was just ask-asking.”
    The gleam in Tomi’s eyes showed she did not believe Bewaji was just asking but she returned her attention to the books in front of her probably to avoid what the other seniors in her class often termed, ‘unnecessary disrespect’ from students in classes below them.
    Bewaji’s legs were unable to move away from the presence of the timetable. Anger choked her. Fear paralyzed her. She remained in that state for more than five minutes before she slowly straightened her chair, dusted her shirt before she sat down.
    The weight of the crisis she found herself in settled like a hammer in the pit if her stomach. This weight battled with the anger simmering in her but the latter won. She garnered a heavy stabilizing breath in her lungs for a brief moment. She pulled together strength to settle her trembling hands by clinching her palms together. Since today is Thursday and examinations start on Monday, I can definitely read Chemistry and finish it before then, she desperately tried to reassure herself. However, deep inside her, she knew she could not catch up with the effected change; she had been trying to read Physics for a week and she hadn’t been able to learn a topic.
    Anxiety clouded her anger and took its place. What was she going to tell her mother who’d spent all her time hawking loaves of bread to send her to Pascal Royale College? Bewaji’s stomach churned. Still, gnawing on these thoughts, her attention was spilled when one of the junior students flew from her seat.
    The junior’s chair flew backward and shattered. But no one spared it a glance. All eyes, Senior Tomi’s inclusive, were on the junior student.
    “The federal government had just endorsed a break due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” she read from her phone eagerly.
    Bewaji’s heart chanted break, break, break before it suddenly clicked in her head. “-all schools, places of religion, companies, and all offices should be shut till further notice,” she heard the junior end the article she was reading.
    “Oh, no,” Senior Tomi was saying.
    Bewaji felt like singing rapturously. A smile gradually formed on her face. With joyous expressions, the juniors quickly packed their unopened books. Senior Tomi did the same but in slower actions. Before she left the library, she gave the other occupants in the library a look that made her eyes seemed like jumpy, unruly roasted groundnuts. It was a look that spoke volumes but the others returned it with opened victorious smiles.
    By the time Bewaji calmed her overly excited heartbeats, she was the only student left in the library. For a while, she regarded the examination timetable with her plump lips curled in contempt and satisfaction. Leaning towards it, she spent time separating the outstretched paper from the wall bits by bits. When she was done, she was sweaty and the tips of her short fingernails were painfully numb. All the same, the contentment carousing through her overpowered the pain.
    Humming an Afro-pop, Bewaji picked her notebook before walking to the cracking door that detached the library from the rest of the school. As soon as she got closer to the door, deep, low voices connected to her ears and she paused. Quietly, to avoid been heard, she thrust her upper body forward in a silentless manner and peeped through the thin space created by the slightly opened door.
    She saw two hunched figures grumbling to each other in low voices to being heard. They were Mr. Adebowale Benson, the Economics teacher and Senior Bode, an S.S.S 3 student who was also the school’s head boy. Instantly, Bewaji’s victory regarding the examinations took a rear seat. The two men of identical height and weight stared into each other’s eyes exasperatedly as they spoke.
    What were they discussing? Bewaji asked internally while regarding the two men who had been popular around the school lately.
    The students of Pascal Royal College could never have believed they could dislike Mr. Benson more until Senior Bode used a cane on the former three months ago during the assembly time. Before this incident, all the students in Pascal Royale College, regardless of the class and age, agreed that Mr. Benson loved it too much when students respect him and they hated him for it, especially since he hunted so much for high esteem in and outside of the school.
    Despite this, the morning Senior Bode flogged Mr. Benson, all the students in the college had been shocked at the former’s audacity. The fact that Senior Bode, an average looking guy, was the most intelligent student in the school who smiled and respected everyone made the occurrence very unclear and inexplicable. It became more confusing when he shouted, “She was my girlfriend!”
    It was later everyone learnt that Mr. Benson had set his eyes on Senior Bode’s girlfriend, Ngozi, a girl in S S.S 2 class, and had asked her out several times. To put a stop to the teacher’s advances, she mentioned, to him, that her boyfriend was Senior Bode. That seemed to be a very big mistake because it spurred Mr. Benson to flog Senior Bode and Senior Ngozi, for the weakest issues. All until Senior Bode spoke and flogged him in return. Still, Senior Bode would have been expelled if his mother had not knelt in front of Mr. Tinu, placed her hands on her head, and begged for a chance that her son graduates from the school.
    This episode constructed an avenue for students to make it a point to frustrate Mr. Benson. Quickly, plans were made by the students in each class on how to agonize the teacher. Soon enough, all Mr. Benson’s lesson notes got missing. He searched for his phone all day only to find it in his drawer (which he had checked). The food in his cooler was often substituted with everything except food. It was a war zone between Senior Bode’s supporters and Mr. Benson.
    Hence, when Bewaji saw the two men grumbling at each other at the present, Bewaji wondered what they had to say to each other. Her ears yearned to discern the meaning of the menacing gnarls that flowed from their lips. As she tried to hear them clearly, she bumped into the weightless door. It crackled noisily and the gnarls stopped. The duo looked her way. When they realized it was her, Mr. Benson’s shameful facial expression veered into distrust while Senior Bode smiled at her as if he had not just bared his teeth at the teacher. The smile made his not-so-good-looking expression turn awkward.
    “What are you doing there?” Mr. Benson asked her antipathetically.
    Bewaji meant to say she was trying to read but still in the sphere of being spoken, the words got glued to her throat, and what came out instead was, “ehn ... I am fine.” Embarrassed by this, she scrambled away from the library and the gnarly scene.
    Walking through the corridor that led to her class, Bewaji no longer thought about what the two men were discussing. Around her, there was no unnatural stillness that should be planted in a school during the perilous week that stood before the examinations week. It seemed that most of the students in Pascal Royale College were certainly not trying to cram in a bit of last-minute reading with the thudding laughter and jokes that flowed into Bewaji’s ears from the classes she passed on her way to her class.
    These sounds of laughter were all it took for Bewaji to remember the stay-at-home order made by her country’s governmental body and forget any speculations she might have regarding Mr. Benson’s discussion with Senior Bode. Smiling Bewaji hastened her steps. Already, for the rest of her time in school on that day, she saw herself in her class, playing Monopoly, the only modern game the class had bought and kept well. She could feel her fingers around the game’s torn and dirty bills buying unrealistic houses and lands. The stay-at-home order was a good thing and it came at the right time, she thought blissfully.
    The stay-at-home order was atrocious, despicable, and horrible, and should be stopped as soon as possible, Bewaji thought agitatedly one afternoon in the second week the lockdown had been in place. She was sitting on a long, wooden bench placed on the corridor in front of a large, doddering three storey-building known as Ayangalu’s House. Almost all of her co-tenants milled around her, making it seem as if she was in a market. A few of them, amongst others, were arguing that all political parties in the country shared the same policy that revolved around impoverishing the masses. However, Mr. Agbalagba, a man who lived on the second floor of Ayangalu’s House, had taut nerves in his bony neck as argued otherwise.
    Most of the people, who chose only to stare at the arguers and not interfere with the arguments, gave him looks that spoke volumes about how stupid they thought he was. All these people verbally uttered nothing because Mr. Agbalagba was an ardent supporter of the country’s ruling party. Despite the legion of counterarguments seething through their minds, they knew better than to trust a soul when discussing the country’s political affairs. After all, umteen people have disappeared because they objected to the policies of another political party.
    Unlike most of her co-tenants who watched the scene with interest and heavy condemnation, Bewaji half-heartedly listened and watched the blazing scene. She was too busy searching for ways to placate the Queen of Hunger that had taken refuge in her stomach. Since she had not eaten in the last twenty-four hours, the latter had savagely protested by emitting cacophonic sounds. In return, Bewaji had shuffled her feet or mimicked several animals’ cries several times to cloud the groans of hunger emitted from her stomach.
    However, the loud arguments enabled her moments of freedom as she won’t have to impersonate the sounds of a cow (which had been next animal on her list to imitate). Even so, that did not stop her from itching slap the defensive words out of Mr. Agbalagba’s thin lips every time some of his vomity words met her ears.
    How could he faithfully defend a political party that had kept the loss of small businesses on high? Had his vulcanizer business not been affected? Is that not the reason his worn-out clothes hung from threadlike bones? Had his political party not promised food during the pandemic but refused to provide anything?
    The blossoming agreement aside, Bewaji believed all political discontentions were basically pointless since it had already been accepted that all the leaders in her country, be it political, traditional, and religious, were the same; they do the wrong things for the wrong objectives.
    A political party would choose candidates for political positions based on financial gain. Then the ‘almost-politicians/established-politicians’, who are in search of power, would go to the other leaders and seek their help. At last, after getting their desire, the politicians would gradually perch on several political positions then begin their careers in an anti-clockwise motion. When these politicians had their fill, they would install a person, sometimes, their children, who would trace the same political path of the predecessor.
    A gust of wind suddenly howled, pushing several flints from the broken ceiling of the house to the people assembled in front of Ayangalu’s House. The argument was paused as everyone took time in picking out the wooden and steely flints from their clothes and hair. At that moment, Bewaji frustratedly thought how she could not determine the number of times she, alongside her co-tenants, had removed several broken pieces of the building’s asbestos and rusted aluminum roof from their clothes.
    The three storey-building, Ayangalu’s House, where Bewaji and her family lived, made Pascal Royale College seem exquisite. The building looked as though it was a large badly painted chicken coop drawn by a cranky child. The inscriptions stuck to the sides of the house had several missing alphabets that used to read, ‘Ayangalu’s House’. Remnants of the washed off burgundy paint around the storey building was spiced with the ash-colored cement placed unartistically to block some crackled surfaces.
    The most obvious injury done to the house was the prominent break in the roof that let in a large portion of rain or sun, depending on the weather. The fact that the building housed almost sixty adults and children did nothing to salvage the situation. Bewaji was often thankful that her family was the first room downstairs and not on the last floor that was littered with large buckets to minimize the flow of water during raining seasons.
    By the time Bewaji finished removing the flint from her secondhand gown, the argument had resumed with Mr. Agbalagba shouting at the top of his voice about the youth empowerment organizations some government officials had started. Instantly, Papa Tochukwu, an old, quiet man who lived with his two grandchildren in the room beside the one-room Bewaji and her family lived, raised his withering walking stick, and told the shouting man to keep shut in his tiny voice. This was so comical that laughter filled the corridor. Embarrassed, Mr. Agbalagba towards his room, muttering that others were to blind to see the goodness of the country’s politicians.
    Still laughing with the others, Bewaji felt tiny fingers clutched at her cloth. She turned towards that angle, into the sight of her crying younger sister, Motunrayo. The six years old girl removed her thumb from her mouth before she said, “I am hungry,” in Yoruba. After she spoke, she returned the thumb between her lips forming a petulant pout.
    Bewaji blinked at her, her mouth opened and closed.
    She thought about the quite little eba in the one-room she shared with her mother and sister. The morsel had been made yesterday afternoon from the last grains of cassava flakes they had. If she gave the food to Motunrayo, there wouldn’t be any food left. That was a situation she had to prevent. So, Bewaji pulled Motunrayo into her laps. She would play with her until she fell asleep. However, the latter slid back to her feet as soon as she settled on Bewaji’s lap.
    “I don’t want to sleep. I want to eat. That is how you did not give me food yesterday night. You made me sleep. When I woke up this morning, you said I should wait. This is afternoon and I am hungry, ” the young girl rushing all her words in Yoruba in the midst of her tears with her thumb between her quivering lips. “I don’t want to die like that boy in the news who died when he did not eat.”
    Motunrayo’s wail-like words brought silence to the corridor and everyone’s attention towards them. Angry, Bewaji’s eyes flashed and she looked at Motunrayo like a terminal disease. The girl’s welling eyes did nothing to assuage Bewaji’s boiling stomach. She wanted to slap her. After all, beyond the meal of rice the three of them shared yesterday’s morning, only Motunrayo, had eaten eba yesterday afternoon. Could she not wait for twenty-four hours before the next meal, Bewaji thought, breathing heavily.
    She glanced around the corridor with an unfriendly glare. She felt like shouting at others not to judge her since she had also heard most of them frequently bemoaning hunger in, and the inability to buy foodstuffs. Instead, she gnashed her teeth very hard, took Motunrayo by the ear towards their room. As the young girl cried harder, Bewaji felt satisfaction mingled within her. In the room, she placed the last morsel of eba and Okra soup in front of Motunrayo who was seated on a mat. Quickly, the latter’s hand moved between the plate and her mouth as if Bewaji would change her mind about feeding her.
    Bewaji saw this, tears filled her eyes, and she regretted pulling her sister’s ears.
    “I am sorry,” she whispered aloud.
    However, Motunrayo was not listening. Her attention was too fixated on the bowl in front of her. Bewaji swallowed the tears cooking in her throat and tried to pull her sister closer to her. Still, Motunrayo jerked away and battled with the food in front of her. Bewaji looked around the room in order from moving to join her sister. Soon, her eyes found the empty basket and cartons which were often filled, before the stay-at-home period, with the loaves her mother sold. She hated the sight of them. She hated the cloying sweetness the spread around the room.
    But, at present, she would do anything to perceive that same cloyness or feel the warmness they brought to the room. She would give the last cash in her kóló, her carriable bank, to have a taste of them. She wished her mother would be able to get some loaves at Babalola’s bakery. At the moment, she won’t mind eating anything, even grass. Bewaji’s eyes went to the old wall clock hanging beside the door. It was at 3 o’clock. It was over four hours since her mother left to Babalola’s Bakery. What is going on? Bewaji stood up and paced around, her shuffling feet unified with her groaning stomach. She prayed her mother had not been arrested for walking on the streets since no one must be caught outside their homes.
    Her feet moved around the room freely without bumping into anything. It felt strange. Before the stay-at-home order, the room was a landscape of battleground formed by the intermingling of papers and clothes. Now, that they have more time to pick up the pieces of paper apart from the clothes, the room felt distant as if it was imagined. Just like she had imagined being a student of Pascal Royal College.
    She missed it now. She missed pranking the teachers. She even missed Mr. Benson’s attitude of strutting about the school like its owner. She must be getting out of her mind, she thought.
    She slumped on the worn tweed couch where she often hid whenever she played boju-boju, the game of hide and seek, with Motunrayo. Her gaze skimmed the pictures on the unpainted wall. Her eyes clung to one of the pictures. The one with her father smiling in his green overall work clothes.
    She smiled, revealing a similar set of teeth her father showed in the picture. Since he died five years ago, she never missed his sweaty hugs as she did now. He was always painting houses, changing pipes, attaching fallen apart woods, cleaning the gutters; doing everything he could to feed them. Bewaji wondered if her family would have been suffering from hunger at the moment if he had been alive but deep in her mind, she knew her mother had done more than her best. She didn’t know how long she remained in that position with her crowded mind walking through exerted tracks but when she became conscious of her surroundings, Motunrayo had her tongue against the surface of the plate that had contained okra soup while Enitan, their mother, walked through the net that served as the door to the room.
    Enitan had a red nose cover covering half of her sweat-stained face in a jaunty manner since one of its straps was broken. And she was empty-handed. Bewaji wanted to cry out. She wanted to hit the wall. She felt hunger embrace every part of her.
    Enitan removed the nose cover from her dusty face and sat on the fading, torn carpet that covered the room halfway. She felt a cloud of shame hover around her as massaged her dusty, sour feet. Her stomach groaned alongside with Bewaji’s as if they were partaking in a stomach-wailing session. No word was needed between mother and daughter. Feeling disgraced, Enitan pointed her stressed-wrinkled face towards her feet.
    Enitan and her eldest daughter maintained this position for the rest of the day while Motunrayo oscillated between the room and the corridor as she played with her friends. As if she knew she had eaten the last meal, Motunrayo didn’t ask for any food that day. When the sky became dark, only Motunrayo slept on the thin mat the family often shared. Bewaji slept on the couch while her mother remained on the carpet with their gnarly stomachs.
    Thankfully, the next day Uncle Tunde, Babaloja’s Bakery’s driver, called Enitan that he bakery had decided to produce several floury delicacies after many disturbances. However, since it was an underground work, there would be a hike in price.
    Nobody thought of the increase in price. Most importantly, Ayangalu’s House’s residents and neighbours were joyous they would fill their bellies with food even if it was only with bread. It was the best news they have heard in a long time. Bewaji broke her kóló and gave Enitan her savings so they could buy more loaves. The relief all of them felt when they saw the baked loaves in their tiny, transparent nylon was so palatable that most of them had their eyes filled to the brim with moisture.
    That day, they ordered from Babaloja’s Bakery, twice.

^^^^^^^^^^

    Having gotten a means to get their stomachs relatively filled, Bewaji’s family and co-tenants were wailing about almost nothing. Silence reigned in Ayangalu’s House. It was a thick, unusual silence they were not used to. Before the stay-at-home order, most of them, like Enitan, worked in the local government’s market. Hence, most of them decided to crumple their silence and aired their views regarding the issues buried with their nation and leaders. Serendipitously, all the news outlets within and outside the country were more than available to share everything that was true and untrue.
    By this time, the latter part of April had crept in and it sprinkled rainfall from the sky. Bewaji loved this period the most because she won’t have to fetch water from the third house away from Ayangalu’s House. Also, she’d get to relish the bellowing breeze at night. At times, when rain was not lashing at the earth, after chores, the people in the house would squeeze themselves in the corridor and argue about the period the government would send palliatives to their local government.
    At such times, Bewaji and her friends, Ewa and Chioma, might not listen to these arguments. Rather, they’d gossip about Brother Yemi, a dark, tall but skinny guy whom they had developed a mutual crush on even though he barely acknowledged their existence. Since Brother Yemi lived in Ayangalu’s House, it was easy for the girls to moon and simper on his actions. When they were not fawning on Brother Yemi, they would play afteranwan and tinko-tinko, the games that involved slapping of hands. It took them time and series of games to began to listen to the elders’ arguments regarding the country. Nonetheless, when she paid full attention to the contentions, she was glad she did. It became her favourite moments. It became everyone’s best moments.
    Even Aunty Biola, a shy corper, volunteered to read the news from different news outlets during the evenings. In a sonorous voice, Aunty Biola would read the headlines before the story. Afterward, she’d explain the story in Yoruba, or sometimes in pidgin, to most of the elders, who did not understand the English language. The difficulties in Aunty Biola’s ‘job’ were most obvious when she had to explain more than two times in the two different languages, depending on the language the confused person understood. To Bewaji, Aunty Biola must love the ‘job’ because she never complained or increased the tone of her voice. For Bewaji, the elders’ comments regarding the news were often more interesting than the news and these comments were often given when they understood the news. It was easier to know when the elders of Ayangalu’s House understood the news; the moment comprehension dawned on their eyes, they would give their comments in rapid Yoruba or crackled Pidgins.
    It was during Ayangalu’s House ‘news hours’ they discovered that the citizens of the country had prayed and hoped leaders would venture on international journeys. With the elation in their heart seeding into their words, people joked about how the country’s politicians were no longer taking tax-funded trips outside the country for the slightest headache as most countries they in the world was swarm with Coronavirus.
    They learnt that several people and institutions such as Approach Bank PLC or Mr. Akube, who ran for a position in the last election but lost, donated billions of naira. With these huge donations and the increasing number of Coronavirus’s patience, an argument spiked in Ayangalu’s House one evening. Some tenants, such as Iya Segun, who sold pepper at Ete junction, and Papa Tochukwu contended that the leaders in the country must have escalated the number of the victims so as to get more donations from people. To defend their claims, they said no one, except their leaders who were perpetual international travellers, had come out to say he or she had the virus.
    Other listeners grunted affirmatively after Iya Segun and Papa Tochukwu shared their views but said nothing. Their words don’t matter, Bewaji thought, as she saw several expressions of agreement on their faces.When it was announced that a big national politician died of the virus, you would have thought that an extremely free education scheme had been publicized with the look of contentment on the tenants’ faces. Once Aunty Biola revealed that the man, who was like a godfather in the leading political party in the country, Bewaji’s expression mirrored the tenants’. At least, the death of a country’s uprooter should be met with joy and relief.
    Days later, no one in Ayangalu’s House showed any surprise when Aunty Biola read that politicians broke their rule (of not more than twenty people in a place) during the dead politician’s burial to offer their condolences. In fact, it would have been unexpected, to the people, if the country’s politicians followed the rules they had made. A man, that seemed blind to the abrasive treatment in the country, spoke fervently in a footage, screaming that the leaders should be careful not to spread the virus.
    Yet, about two hours later, Aunty Biola read out that a senator had countered the man by saying, “we became the leaders so that we would be immune to the laws and orders given in the country.”
    “I hope all of them would get- em- what is that rich man’s killer again? Colonavirus,” Mr. Garuba appended in his Hausa accent. Everyone laughed at this. This laughter slowly diminished and gave way to outrage when the footage circulated. In the footage, a man, who had been among the group of morticians that buried the demised politician, was seen dumping with the protective gear he had worn in a street filled with carefree kids. Everyone cursed the man. His penis would dry off. He would get the virus. Such was the atmosphere that reigned in Ayangalu’s House for weeks. Until the middle of May when Aunty Biola announced that a ‘group of brothers’ had been going from house to house, stealing and killing some of their victims.
    Instantly, the feeling of bliss and happiness that clambered on the people in Ayangalu’s House vanished. All at once, everyone felt chilled and hot as videos of wailing victims were passed around the gathering.
    Everybody shared a knowing look but nobody had to think twice before they understood the meaning of ‘a gang of brothers’. It is customary, in the country, not to say ‘thieves’ or ‘robbers’ because the person next to you might be amongst them, and speaking about stealing to such person would be wrong to probe a sleeping tiger. Therefore, people often called them terms like; ‘brothers’, ‘owners of heaven’, and other respectable expressions as if it would, in a way, put a stop to the horrific act.
    From that day, several news stories of robberies filled every gossipy blog. Stories that touch hearts were read. Pictures of those who were killed by robbers were sent out. Government officials told the citizens to stop wailing. In reply, trembling and enraged voices emitted hues and cries.
    Silence loomed above the corridor as the people listened to the narration of these events as they tumbled from Aunty Biola’s thin lips. These stories made Bewaji understand that those who were not in positions of power, that is, those on the other side of existence, would always remain invulnerable to all forms of attacks and deathly situations.
    During free moments, they started to replay robbery scenes that would involve Ayangalu’s House. At the end of these imaginations, she wouldn’t be worried. She was sure everyone, including their neighbours, knew that no one in Ayangalu’s House had valuables hidden among the rubbles of the building. Therefore, while her mother nailed two hazardous looking locks to their door, she drowned out the annoying thuds of the hammer and slept.
    With no help coming from the government, another change soon rigged the air: all news apps were littered with pictures of people who had gone out of their homes at night, taking turns to protect the things that mattered to them. The videos were with the people on the streets seated around a huge bonfire while others roamed about till the early hours of the morning.
    Soon, the people in Kosowo Street, where Ayangalu’s House was located, started the same practice. A large tire was burnt at the center of the street, with its flames reaching out to lick the sky. A crowd of people gathered a few meters away from the fire which was giving out periodical sounds of shots as if angered by the uncommon turbulence that was fast dominating the night. Outside, Bewaji would play tinkotinko for several hours with Chioma and Ewa, while they talked about how their life used-to-be normal when they don’t have to stay cooped in the house. These sessions were often pleasant until Bewaji’s younger sister, Motunrayo would cry out that her elder sister should follow her to the toilet so that she could urinate.
    Sometimes, she would listen to loud, boring arguments like the absence of good food or the fact an official in the country’s centre for disease control had confessed to being paid to increase the number of the Coronavirus’s patients.
    At the end of May, the panic and news regarding the gang shrivelled. People stopped moving out at night and in Ayangalu’s House, the news hour continued. It was only as if the terrific robberies had not happened. The only factor that depicted the panicky moments was planted in the thick shade of blackness (made from burnt tires) worn by the road.
    However, the gang seemed to have another plan because they visited Ayangalu’s house ten days after the people stopped crawling the streets at night.
    The day the incident occurred was a normal day; the residents of the house had their usual meal of bread and water. They listened to the depressing news read by Aunty Books before night fell and they retired to their beds.
    Bewaji had no idea how the gang entered the house or the room. She woke up when her body needed empty bowels only to find her mother kneeling and sniffling silently in front of some men. Instantly, her body forgot the need to urinate. She heard a surprisingly velvety voice of a man ask Enitan to put out her money. Her mother whispered aloud that she had no money. Bewaji’s eyes widened as her mind came into full consciousness of the situation. Her heart was beating very fast as she fought hard to still herself so she won’t give away her awakeness to the robbers. She listened to the chilled silence that followed her mother’s words. What could she do? How could she attract attention to their room? Bewaji thought desperately.
    In the numbers she couldn’t count, her stomach jolted and she heard echoing wind wailing outside the house. She craned her neck and squinted her eyes in the poor-lantern-lighted atmosphere and she saw four men in black masks and clothing. They assumed confident positions on the tweed couch. They would leave when they discover they had nothing, Bewaji told herself. Again, the voice that spoke earlier repeated that Enitan should pull out the money she has. Feverishly, Enitan replied that she had no money because she had spent every dime she had on the loaves of bread arranged in the baskets at a corner of the room. That’s true, Bewaji thought with fear spreading in her stomach. They had ordered bread that evening. Bewaji heard her mother quietly added that the men could take the bread if they wanted. The guy who spoke to Enitan dragged the tip of his gun. Bewaji did not know it was on the carpeted floor, creating sounds that made the room seem colder. The noise brought Bewaji’s attention to the gun sitting coldly on the floor in front of the guys. She felt as if her sanity had splattered on the floor. This was not how she imagined the robbery scenes. She had imagined that they would leave when they discovered they had nothing. Suddenly, Bewaji knew the men won’t leave until they took something from the room but she wished and prayed that wouldn’t happen. She became afraid of closing her eyes or opening them for the horror she might miss or see.When the guy asked if Enitan was sure she had no money, the latter managed to make a full but shaky statement in Yoruba, “P-pl-lease sir. I don’t have any money. You can ch-check the room. I have nothing to hide. I- I don’t have any money.”
    One of the men who had not spoken stood up and moved around the cramped room. When he turned to Enitan, exasperation seemed to be etched into every part of his body.
    “Are you saying you don’t have money even if it means I shoot your little, sleeping girl?” he asked with the poised gun in his hand directed towards Bewaji and Motunrayo.Within seconds, Bewaji spunned on the mat until she was seated on its edges, against the wall. Her hands inch to wake Motunrayo and pull her away from where the gun was pointed. In quick moments, eyes followed her movements while Enitan’s screams were muffled by a palm. One of the masked men moved to Bewaji and whacked a palm hard across her face against the wall.
    Pain took residence in Bewaji’s body. Blood droplets trailed her cheeks. She couldn’t cry if she wanted to because terror had come upon her, taken her voice before throwing it out in between the space created by the curtain covering the window.
    At that moment, Bewaji smelt death whipped around the atmosphere.
    “Please, I will do anything you want. Just leave my children alone.” Enitan sobbed through the palm across her mouth with desperation ringing through her voice. “Are you saying you still don’t have any money?” Enitan said nothing.
    After brief moments of silence, one of the masked men said “let’s leave them. I don’t think there is a dime in this house.”
    “We can’t. Don’t you know it is a sin not to have money?” another said. The question clung to the air, desperate for an answer it won’t get.
    The guy whose palm stood against Enitan’s lips pushed her away and silently scuttled behind his gang who was moving towards the door.
    Everything happened so fast that Enitan and Bewaji almost missed the bullet that went out a gun which was deliberately trained on Motunrayo. The jerky movements of the young girl’s body and the spreading blood gave it away. Motunrayo slowly stilled but the blood didn’t.
    Shaking her head as if in denial, Bewaji pulled away from her sister. Without any tears glazing her eyes, her gaze turned blurry. Just like those on the other side, that same place she and her family were, that same place of penetratable death and anguish, she had once again been swept by the river of pain. She shut her eyelids firmly against then both.

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