Everybody is going to see the water edging towards the town’s major civilization: a blue-painted hotel which is a few metres away from the lake’s pavilion. And she’s here to see too. She’s our First Girl. She’s watching the water belly houses, leaving only weathered, riddled-with-holes roofs. She has played with the children near the Ngegwu outlet and watched the town brim with its usual excesses still – men bawling over bottles of beer, flies chorusing a buzzing refrain at the mouth of the bottles, madmen giggling to themselves, flaunting their messiness — as if nothing is happening. The flood has eaten up the market, erupting the buried dirt, and pushing them onto the major roads. The market is now a mass of dirtied sea, cellophane wrappers and tins and cans afloat on the expanse land which formerly brimmed with people. The women now sell on the major road, their usual chaos raging, the sun blistering their skin and the stench from the gutters, like a decomposed goat, adding to the unbearableness. First Girl shrugs and looks on like others who’re there, who point to the water and speculate with unfaltering assuredness when the flood will stop.
A girl comes from First Girl’s right, from the side where fish-selling women beat medium-sized bowls, speaking at the top of their voices about the expected excess supply of fish after the flood. She’s fondling a stick of sweets with childlike possessiveness. She’s too dark. And too dark means that she’s darker than First Girl who’s only a shade away from brown-skinned. She’s shorter too, wearing sandals, her flowery-patterned gown reaching her knees. She’s our Second Girl. First Girl thinks she won’t be more than twelve. Second Girl claps and grins. Children do all of that: clapping when they see each other, looking at faces, singling out the returnees (the flood refugees), regarding them before thinking of making friends. First Girl thinks of it as rudeness. Or power. Being the ones who offer refuge to the displaced, the townspeople must feel a certain sense of superiority.
“What is your name?” Second Girl asks in Oguta, words deeply pronounced, syllables properly placed, when she reaches First Girl. Her voice is deep, in some ways not girly.
First Girl tells her, warming up her face in a smile. Second Girl says her name, swanking her sweet before First Girl. Maybe to show off the idea that she too could afford luxurious things. She reels on, exuberant. The flood has taken their house, she says to First Girl, and they now stay with her uncle. First Girl tells her about her house which was standing unperturbed by the threatening waters. She holds Second Girl in awe. Such freeness, unlashed by the tightness of a newfound friendship. There’s something in the way she longs to tell about herself — about her pregnant mother who asks her to rub her back and legs every night, about her uncle who scolds her mother asking her to leave the poor girl alone — that speaks of unbolting, of uncaging. As if she’ll never have this chance to speak about herself after now. She seems unstoppable and First Girl is already thinking of the days they’ll be together in Oguta, playing ten-ten, like First Girl has seen the children do: standing on one leg and flailing the other, back, forth and sideways. Second Girl thumps the air in an urban fashion when she finds out they live two houses apart.
First Girl talks about her school, a big school in the town and Second Girl dwindles and flinches. First Girl regrets why she’s said that because Second Girl is longing so much for an affinity between them, for a closeness, more closely-knitted than the concentrated housing in Oguta. The second Girl goes to the local primary school. First Girl imagines her in the uniform, in the blue pinafore, white socks pulled to below her knee, bag strapped to her back, skipping all the dusty way to school.
Second Girl smiles as if she knew the thoughts wilding in First Girl’s mind and brandishes her knowledge of the town. She points to the blue-painted hotel behind them, with music seeping to them from there, and tells her the flood will get there. First Girl feels a fresh wave of respect for her, the precision in her predictive tone, the way she never bothers to think it may not eventually happen, and she’ll be telling a lie. She only swallows, never saying anything. Second Girl looks at her, wondering aloud why she never speaks a lot, asking if she’s banned from talking to them.
First Girl glances away, lacking anything to say. Two women at the mouth of the lake are haggling over who owns a particular head out of two heads of plantain. They’re at each other’s faces, brawling. Others around are either too weakened by the boat ride to separate them or are now used to such scenes that it doesn’t matter to them. A voice from one of the makeshift fish stalls plunges her back. Both of them swirl. A pregnant woman is shouting Second Girl’s name. Second Girl whispers, “My mother,” and runs off. She stops halfway. “Come and play with me tomorrow,” she says and bolts.
There’s a plea in her voice. Like a person seeking and longing for a mate to talk to, for companionship. As she skips to her mother, First Girl imagines what she’ll tell Mama to be allowed a chance to play with her.
Later that night, with Mama asking about where she’s been to that evening, she tells them, plate of yam porridge emitting trails of steam. Papa pushes his yam around the ceramic plate, smearing the pink flowery pattern at the brim with oil. Mama asks who she was with, stuffing her mouth with a piece of yam, her hands reaching to the glass of water stationed between her and Papa so that it looks as though they share a glass. Mama isn’t satisfied with the curt reply of “A girl,” First Girl has given her. Her forehead is pleated with concern. The town is not good, especially now that the rogues from the farm across the lake are back in town.
First Girl tells her the girl’s name, all the while forming in her mind how to request a chance to be with Second Girl. Mama’s eyes become dimmed by the layers of skin shrouding them. A frown.
“Is it Nkonyeni?” Mama asks. First Girl nods.
Mama looks at Papa accusingly, eyes flaring with reproach. Papa flinches, drops the fork and shoots a glare at First Girl. She’s confused, scripted all over her face like the scribblings of a crèche pupil. Mama speaks next. About warning First Girl about whom to follow, about certain people they should’ve been cautious beforehand to stop her from following.
She gazes from Mama to Papa. She only digs into her yam, not sure if her mouth can receive them again. Papa looks up at her, then clutches his half-filled glass and gulps the water with fevered thirst. He tells her she’s not going to see Second Girl. She blurts, “Why?” But Mama scowled at her, zipping the other questions, burying other curiosities.
The next morning, she sees Second Girl running to the public tap, swinging her bucket. She looks away, at Guy’s Spot, blue table and chairs arranged but still empty. She wants to call her to their compound, open the tap and both of them would laugh at the rushing water, scooping as much as they can with their palms. But Mama’s words play in her mind. They’re words she won’t want to remember, but seeing the girl and the way Mama has placed the barrier, she remembers them.
“They’re ohu,” Mama said, leading her to her bedroom the previous night. First Girl’s face was scrunched at that. When she asked who they were, her mother was quick to explain, with an unbolted loath laden in the way she spoke about them. They’re the descendants of the former slaves of the town. They’re not people freeborns were supposed to talk to. They have bad blood. Even though First Girl thought Mama exaggerated this, intense fear gripped her. They were the us Second Girl had worried about, the forbidden us. She ducked under the blanket, and wished that Second Girl was free the way the town defined free.
Second girl comes again with her bucket balanced on her head. Before her, children walk in groups, shouting at each other. She walks alone, wiping drops of water off her face with one hand. She looks up. She sees First Girl. She waves, her lips cracking into a smile. First Girl doesn’t wave back. She stares, eye tucked in. She wishes to disappear. You made the wrong choice of a friend, Mama said. As if there’s anything right about friendship. Second girl stops waving, begins to walk fast. Not looking back.
Behind her, First Girl feels Mama’s breath on her.
Read – A Needle of Survival – A Short Story by Ahmadu Adamu, Nigeria
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