“These people were kind enough to bring their boy to help around the house. In return, we’ll make sure he’s taken care of. He’ll have a roof over his head, good food, and proper education. You’ll be nice to him, won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” I said with a humble sigh.
“Promise?”
Holding up my right hand, I agreed, not knowing what I was signing myself up for.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Okem to adapt to our household. Every day, we walked to school together and played games after we came home. In the first couple of months, other kids whispered and made fun of his gaunt looks. My girlfriends joined in the bullying also. Okem hardly cared until one of the kids called him a “glorified house-boy.” He fought the unfortunate child and ended up getting both of them bruised and disciplined in the process. I remember clearly when things slowly began to turn around. Amah, my best friend at the time, had come for a visit. Pointing at Okem’s shoes, she’d said, “Is that from the second-hand store?” in the most condescending tone I’d ever heard.
My heart had skipped a beat. I wished Amah hadn’t spoken, but she never let anything slide.
Before I could ask Okem to ignore her comment and focus on the dark clouds building up on the horizon, threatening heavy rain, he turned to Amah and responded calmly. “Were you speaking to me?”
Amah hissed, trembling slightly and looking over her shoulder.
That incident had forced me to start seeing Okem in a different light. He carried himself with a certain amount of pride and confidence that was odd for someone his age. Soon, the other kids noticed and began to accord him some respect.
* * *
I first moved in with my grandparents over a decade ago. My mother worked for a secret international government mission, and my father was the personal assistant to one of the top officials in the military. My parents traveled all the time, sometimes, for weeks on end. Living with them had been a security nightmare, or so my mother claimed. They were often targets for people who wanted access to the important officials they worked for. Growing up as an only child, since my parent’s jobs didn’t allow them to be in the same location most of the time, my grandfather convinced them to bring me to live with him and my grandmother.
My grandfather, or ‘Papa’ as I liked to call him, was a titled man—a chief. His usual attire, a red cap with three feathers stuck on one side, distinguished him from others. Men and women came into his presence daily to resolve all kinds of disputes, mostly domestic ones. I had always loved visiting my grandparents in their gorgeous country mansion in Ntebe. High ceilings, marble floors, polished stone pedestals bearing images of historical figures, and an orchard filled with mango trees and many varieties of oranges. What was there not to love? I couldn’t remember a Christmas holiday I didn’t spend with them, but when my mother told me I would leave my school and my friends—the ones I had played with for so many years—because I needed to move in with my grandparents, I sobbed for days. It didn’t help that they had given me the news only two days before they shipped me off. A week before I traveled to my grandparents, I had woken up crying after one of those dreams that ended up being an account of a future I was soon to experience.
In my dream, I was an unaccompanied minor on board a Nigeria Airways flight. The pilot and the air hostesses had treated me nicely, making sure I had extra treats on the plane after they saw my swollen eyes—the aftermath of non-stop crying. My shipment to Ntebe had happened in the same way.
My grandparents, having heard about my misery, were distraught upon my arrival. I could hear my grandfather’s heart shatter when he saw the pain in my eyes.
“Ogini Ona? What are you crying about?” he had asked.
I remember looking at him with tear-filled eyes. He had knelt before me, all six-foot-six of him, and covered my hand with his before raising my chin and staring at me with the kindest, most revealing eyes I’d ever seen—a moment I clearly remembered from my dream. At the time, I had thought his eyes were blue, but I later noticed the screen on the window that gave their brown shade a sapphire hue. He had winked at me as though he’d once shared that moment with me in another reality.
From that day onwards, my grandparents treated me like a princess. They gave me double my usual allowance and exempted me from chores, but only for one week as my grandmother didn’t want me to be completely spoiled. Before long, I made friends at my new school and settled into a new existence. This new existence included Ifedi, my nanny, who my grandparents brought to live with us soon after I moved in. I liked Ifedi the moment I met her. She was older than me by at least ten years, but she was child-like. She braided my puffy hair in a new style every week, massaged my feet until I fell asleep, and ate my leftovers so my grandmother wouldn’t scold me for wasting food. I liked her mostly because of the folktales she told me every night. I always assumed she concocted them to impress me, but I loved them anyway. Unlike the strict nanny I had when I lived with my parents, Ifedi brought so much excitement into my life.
My gift, or should I say my strange ability, to now and again catch glimpses of the future, was a welcome retreat at times. At other times, it presented an excruciating burden, so much so that I fought to force my brain to shut down to forget what I’d seen.
