Story-Iyawo Nylon Bag

The compound was silent. This was normal because everyone had gone out on their respective businesses, both honest and dishonest. The street where the house was located was equally quiet. The street was not a busy street to start with, and since it was a week day, it was even quieter. A car passed by occasionally, breaking the silence of the environment but the break was temporary. Once the vehicle passed, the silence descended like a heavy blanket once again.

Chilo yawned and stretched like a lazy cat on the floor. She rolled on her stomach and rested her chin on her folded arms. As much as she loved the solitude, sometimes the silence got to her. Lying on the battered settee in the other side of the living room, her three year old brother dozed fitfully. She and her brother were the only occupants in the compound. Her mother had gone to work while her older siblings were away at school. Her parents couldn’t afford her school fees so she had to stay behind and babysit her brother. She tried not to think too much about school and books. She had finished primary school the previous academic year. Mother told her not to worry, that Jss1 wasn’t at all what it was hyped to be. As soon as Daddy got a job, she would enrol in one of the best schools around, so she wasn’t to worry her little head about school and what not.

The problem was Mummy had been singing the same tune for a long time now. The first term of the new academic session had passed, the second term too, and now, the third term was almost rounding up and Mum was still saying the same thing. Well, she didn’t want to make too much of a big fuss about it. They were going through hard times, as Mother reminded them every minute. Most times, the family only ate when Daddy went out to go hustle. Mum was a teacher in a public primary school and to say her salary was peanuts was an understatement. Sometimes Mum didn’t go to work because she couldn’t afford the transport fare. Those days when she stayed home, she sat stone faced in the parlour and waited for Daddy to come home from his job hunting. A lot of the times Daddy came back home very late at night. As soon as he stepped into the house, Mum would ask “how far?” Daddy would wearily sink into the one of the raggedy arm chairs in the living room, sigh and reply “nothing yet”. Mummy would sit still for some minutes, silent and contemplative, then get up and grimly enter into the kitchen to go bring out whatever dinner she had been able to hustle up. On good days, dinner consisted of watery soup with tiny bits of crayfish floating around in the concoction and eba made from sour garri, the type people called Ijebu garri. Whether the garri was truly processed in Ijebu land, she never could tell. One day while grimacing and swallowing the hard mounds, she had asked her mother. Mother had simply told her to shut up and eat before her elder siblings, who were rushing the food, finished the eba. On bad days, dinner was a full cup of water.

Chilo yawned again, loudly enough to wake her brother. He stirred restlessly and went back to sleep.

Yesterday had been a good day. They had had jollof rice and fried fish for dinner. Whenever they had rice for dinner, it meant Mum had just been paid her salary. The salary usually didn’t last more than a few days, most of it going into settling into debts that had been incurred during the course of the previous month. “Give Nne Ebuka this money, tell her I am thanking her and it is for the dericas of beans and garri I bought from her last month”, or, “Here, go and give this money to that shylock Nasiru. Tell him it’s for the soap I bought last week”. Nasiru was the neighbourhood Northerner. She didn’t particularly like him, ever since the day she had stood in the burning afternoon heat for thirty minutes pleading with him to sell her a bar soap worth ten naira. “Please sir, Mum will pay you tomorrow”, she had begged. And begged. And begged yet some more. Nasiru had ignored her and when he