Sleep

There’s nobody coming to help her

..…
‘I am learning how to do makeup. You can be my guinea pig,’ Efe tells me and laughs. ‘Won’t you be my guinea pig?’ she says, laughing even louder.
Don’t call me that you foul creature, the rebellious voice in my head replies.
‘With a little makeup, I’m sure I can cover up that nasty scar on your face,’ Efe says to me.
And no amount of makeup can cover how ugly you are.
Unconsciously, I reach up to touch the gash across my left cheek. It is clear evidence, even though I try to deny it sometimes, that my father had taken a broken bottle to my face in the heat of an argument with my mother when I stepped in to defend her.
‘Do you know what a bronzer is?’ Efe asks. ‘I’m sure you don’t.’
I know Efe is only friends with me so she can lord how great her life is over me. I try not to think about it. She lets me watch movies on her phone sometimes. I don’t have a phone and the old Tv in my house only receives local channels and they don’t show a lot of movies.
I smile at her as she goes on and on and on.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
When the bell rings at the end of the school day, I make to run out of the class before Efe can call on me. I am not fast enough.
‘Won’t you help me carry my school bag?’ She phrases this as a question. But we both know it’s not.
I want to say no, but I can’t. I can only run or say yes when it comes to Efe. And I had already failed at the former. I help her carry her bag all the way to her house, listening to her chatter about something new her father had bought. A fridge I think.
It usually takes an hour for me to walk directly home from her place and only forty minutes if I take a shortcut through the old church by the main road. I take the shortcut.
As I come out of the exit of the street near the church, I hear his voice before I see him; my father. He is shouting at the top of his voice in a local beer palour.
‘Una team no dey carry the cup dis year,’ he is yelling at another man.
I wonder where he had gotten the money to afford the three beers on his table. I turn my face away and walk to the other side of the road so he can’t see me. The last time I had seen him drinking in a bar and let him know I was near, he had called me over to show his drinking acquaintances how good of a dancer his daughter is.
‘Dance na,’ he urged me. I had stood there, transfixed and utterly ashamed. ‘Ufoma, you no go dance? Dey go spray you money oh.’
My hands started to tremble and the men started to laugh.
‘Comot for here,’ my father had told me. I was already running away before he even finished speaking.
The sparkly light bulbs on our neighbour’s fence tells me there is electricity in the neighbourhood but when I turn on the switch in our sitting room, the single light bulb in the middle of the room remains dark.
My mother hurries out of the kitchen, a ladle in her hand, a frown on her face.
‘Your papa don go use the money we wan take pay NEPA go do something else,’ my mother tells me, not replying my greeting with her usual high pitched, “vrendo”.
Then stop trusting him with money! That man is more useless than a warning label on a cigarette carton.
‘The NEPA people come cut our light this afternoon. I no know how I go take pay now. Na your sister give me that money oh.’
She rests her body on the wall and places a hand on her head. Then she starts to pray. Her entire body shakes as she battles unseen enemies with her prayers.
Woman, this is not the time to be praying. Throw that sorry loser of a man out of your house and find some peace!
She is sobbing now. And I just stare at her.
I had seen a picture of her when she was about my age stuck somewhere between the old newspapers my father hoards in the sitting room shelf. She was smiling in the picture, a crooked smile that made her look so radiant. Now her crooked smile no longer fits her face. Too many scars, too many wrinkles for someone her age, so little light in her eyes.
‘Oya go and drop your bag,’ she tells me.
I say nothing and walk past her to change before going to look for the kerosene lantern so I can do my homework. The smell of soot and smoke starts to compound in the shoebox that is our sitting room so I decide to go outside to the gated verandah.
It is just past six pm but the day is already dark. I lift my head from my homework to stare at the round bulbs on our neighbour’s fence. The light shining from it hurts my eyes.
I finish my homework quickly so I can warm up some soup for dinner. My sister returns as I pack my books. Her baggy grey shirt and khaki shorts are stained with splotches of cement and mud. She must have been to the new supermarket site to work. Even though she is just two years older than me, she has to work so we don’t go hungry. And it is telling on her.
A seventeen year old girl should not be looking like a middle aged woman. It’s not right. You should go to university.
She rubs her calloused palms together and taps my head. Her smile fades as her eyes narrows.
‘No light?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
‘Why? Our neighbour get light na.’
I shrug.
She walks into the house to speak to our mother.
I freeze when I hear a loud bang. My sister always throws things and speaks fluent urhobo when she is angry.
Her voice booms through the house like thunder as she tells our mother to do something about the situation.
‘I know say he don use that money take buy drink. I work for that money with my blood and tears,’ she says, her voice soaked with frustration.
She does not eat dinner with us that night. Instead she waits at the verandah for our father until he returns at midnight.
She does not let him near the verandah before she starts speaking.
‘Go and find job, no, you no wan work,’ my sister yells. ‘But you go fit eat my money. Use am dey drink! What sort of a father are you?’
My father laughs a dry laugh. ‘You wan fight me?’ he asks, his words slurred.
I take a peep out the window of the room I share with my sister. My mother tries to make sure they don’t fight by pleading with my father.
You are not supposed to be begging the nincompoop. Why are you so weak willed?
My hands start to shake when my father throws a blow in my sister’s direction. But she dodges it easily and lands a gut punch. My father falls to the ground and starts to throw up which sends my mother screaming.
My sister spits on him and walks into the night.
My hands continue to shake as I watch my mother try to help my father up. He slaps her hard across her face. I grab my cheek. The scar on it starts to hurt.
‘Na you dey make all this children dey disrespect me. A whole me.’ He raises his hand again.
I quickly turn away from the window. I shut my eyes and cover my ears. The pain on my cheek only gets worse.
You can cover your eyes and ears, but it’s still happening. Do something.
I don’t move. There’s no reason to.
The neighbours are not coming.
There’s nobody coming to help her.
The scar on my cheek is burning now.