Makoko

New short fiction about a place, a family and child trauma — from Bibiana Ossai

Summer 2009

Helena watched her mommy, Adaure, style her hair with chapped fingers in their house in Makoko. She often heard the people call it the Venice of Lagos, the nightmare of a fantasy and a hellhole. A city with its spine located on the coast of mainland Lagos. And in this city, wooden shacks like hers are built on stilt along the lagoon and some on land.

One time she asked her mommy what it meant for their community to be called a Venice by all the rich looking visitors and outsiders. Her mommy simply responded, “Everyone likes good things and Venice is a nicer name for this floating slum of a community. We ride canoes everywhere and we live on water. This here, where we are living is our own Venice, our own island.”

That summer afternoon, she felt her mommy’s sagging breasts in a yellow shirt brush her neck. She looked at her mommy’s face in the mirror, scarred by dried wounds in the shape of tiny slash marks. She suppressed herself from saying anything by sucking her lip. The woman she saw was a shadow of the woman that used to laugh and gist with other women, a woman who sang as she cooked, a woman whose face was ripe like a mango. All these was before her daddy, Ekene’s abuse began to show on the older woman’s body, which she noticed at the age of eleven.

She and her mommy dressed up and left for the city’s famous Elegushi beach by rowing one of their boats to the harbour. On their way, they passed by women who smoked fish, and peddled food and ornaments. Some children wearing only oversized t-shirts and faded shorts rowed mini boats. Others accompanied their mothers rowing boats containing their goods. Girls sang and played ten ten, and Helena echoed the song. She watched boys chase each other in a game like hide and seek on wooden verandas raised on stilts. Meanwhile, they rowed their boat away from a tangle of untethered boats that slithered through the tar labyrinth of waters.

The boat docked at Pier port, Oduduwa Drive Yaba. They trekked to a bus stop where they boarded a molue bus. It was one of the rare times Helena travelled outside of her community. They arrived in the main part of the city bustling with vibrant colours, rowdy stalls, and traders. Helena locked her palm with her mommy’s.

The city smelled of spring — green leaves, fruit, fried African beignet, boiled corn. She stuck herself to her mommy’s side amid bodies rough like rock. The strides of men and women were heavy. Helena’s eyes captured catfish wriggling in plastic bowls. She watched people’s dresses sway in the breeze, same as tattered kites. They located the bus going to Elegushi beach and they entered it. In the bus, people exchanged spit and swiped sweat.

Helena laid her backpack after placing her Capri Sun and Crackers on the beach wrapper at the beach. She closed her eyes to mesmerize herself to the sea air that whisked her soul into the world of a story space. A world that reverberated with the tune of musical instruments and that was as beautiful as a garden. She imagined her family without her daddy complaining like a broken parrot. She listened to her heartbeat ringing from the earth.

Lying there on the beach wrapper, the picture of her daddy beating her mommy like the pounding of yam awoke her. She got up to find her mommy gazing at the ocean embedded in a world of her own. After watching her worrisome face, Helena took her rough hands so that they looked at each other. Her mommy still dressed, smiled before going for a swim far out into the deep blue waves. Helena watched as the woman, who appeared to be as cheery as sweet tomatoes, dipped into the ocean. She watched her body submerge deeper into the glimmering sea. It throbbed upon shore in rhythmic beats like curtain folds.

A couple of minutes later that seemed longer to Helena, her mommy came out from the ocean with her soaked white dress, her dark skin glistening with her brunette hair resting on her shoulders. Waterdrops pebbled themselves around her neck like the pearls of Mami Wata. Helena saw an egret fly past Adaure as she walked out of the water, back to the shore. And as she walked on the shore, the smooth sand with tiny stones covered her feet like shoes. Helena feeling agitated, fidgeted, and wiggled her way out of the warm embrace that her mommy gave to her after squeezing the water from her dress. She wanted to leave because she was afraid and when she looked up, she found dark purple bruises that now appeared in place of makeup on her mommy’s face.

“Can we go back home now?” Helena asked in a voice smothered with grease. She could not bear to spend an extra minute on the shore.

Her mommy agreed and they put their things back into the large black tote bag, and left for the bus stop, together. As they walked away, back into the main city, Helena looked back to get a glimpse of the rise and fall of the ocean wave. Before they made it out of the beach, Adaure stopped, bent, and whispered, “We’re going to leave your father this night.”

“But where would we go to?” Helena asked, half-pleased and half-frightened that the only place available for them was that house. The house that suffocated them, that buried joy, that was a ticking bomb, that was a man who always looked for skin to devour; a man that she called ‘her daddy.’ Everything in the house burned.

Helena’s mind wandered back to one evening when she returned to the house from playing suwe with her friends Feyi and Musa in the one of the rare sandy places in Makoko, she found her mommy roasting fish to sell. She went and joined her mommy to narrate how a boy that chased her fell into the black dirty water. Luckily, an uncle helped bring him out of it. When Adaure did not respond with words of chastisement or “I’ve warned you to stop running in all these dangerous places,” Helena knew something was wrong. That evening, she searched for her mommy’s face that was hidden under a bucket hat and that was when she discovered the bleeding lips and blemishes. It occurred to her right then that the screams she had heard those nights she was ten years old were not from her dream. Three years later at the age of thirteen, everything was still the same.

They resumed walking as she listened to her mommy’s escape plan from the house. The number one rule was to act normal to avoid any suspicion. She was to remain in the only room in their shack no matter what happened, while her mommy would prepare dinner as usual. Her daddy would most likely return home drunk and stay in the sitting room. After eating, he would fall asleep like a dead man, snoring. That would be their chance to escape. Helena listened to Adaure share that she had been saving in secret, for the day they escaped from the life of selling only roasted fish and onion pepper sauce, but most importantly, from her father. Hearing this, brought back memories to Helena as she remembered the nights her father locked her mommy outside to sleep on the cold ground, after he punched, kicked, and stomped on her. There were scars, bruises, and some dead skin that her mommy could no longer hide. With her mind faraway, the only thing she heard was a promise that they would go anywhere. Anywhere else must be better than that house.

On their way back home, the streets in Lagos Island city came alive in the evening. The traffic on the major road was significant. The different cars lined up on separate lanes depicted the state of the city. Some cars looked like bags of money; what Helena heard some people refer to as the national cake. Others were cars with damaged exhaust pipes that released thick fumes as pungent as tear gas, which pretty much represented her life; the constant smell of smoked fish and the polluted sea that surrounded her house. She saw people searching for treasures in dustbins. People who ate the remnants from restaurants. And there were those who laid cardboard over shitty water or urine under bridges. Whatever the case was, she thought of two different peas existing in the same pod.

Helena listened to passengers in the bus request for their change. Outside, she heard an okada rider play afro songs from his mini radio, while a female child hawker screamed, “Gala! Gala!!” as she chased after a blue luxury car driving a girl the same age as herself. A white garment pastor insulted the bus driver that bumped into his car. She pictured him preaching to his congregation, “Do not be quick to anger. You must turn the other cheek,” like the pastors who came to evangelize in her community.

The thought of the pastor preaching about turning the other cheek reminded her of her parents’ relationship. The first time she heard a pastor preach this, it was in the community church on Sunday, and she glanced at the empty seat beside her. The place that was meant to be occupied by her mommy was void. That day, Adaure refused to attend because of what people would say, how they would gossip about their family. Make-up was no longer strong enough to create a façade of what people assumed about them, about her daddy who was loved by everyone in the community for being generous despite his lack of employment.

Sometimes, she watched him from behind, avoiding his face because the man she saw was different from the person that people described. The only thing he did right was to pay the house rent and to make sure their house was not affected by the downpour of rains. Her mommy’s words about escaping lingered in her mind again. She knew her daddy was not the best, but she was uncertain whether she wanted to leave him behind. It was hard to leave behind the man she has always known. Before he became the monster, he was a loving man who appeased she and her mommy with the good things he could afford. She shook her head as they drove past the scene, dwelling on what was happening weighed her down and made her afraid of the journey.

Helena watched her mommy making pounded yam with meatless soup from the window. The steam from the food danced in the air and she sniffed it. She gripped the wooden sill with her palms to allow the cool night breeze to brush her small round face. Then she stuck her fingers into the many punctures made by wear and tear on the window net. It made her chuckle until her eyes traced the stars mapped across the dark sky. She caught her mommy staring at her with a slight smile and it made her giggle. Her daddy’s scowling voice and loud belches interrupted this moment. If she could compare him to anything, it would be a fisherman’s empty net. A dry well — not that she had seen any, but she could imagine it. She could imagine the crowns her father wore on his feet. She continued to trace lines that resembled a chaotic system of planets. Each line was like a thread. A bandage that she and her mommy used to patch up the wounds in their family.

“Adaure when food go ready? Why is it taking so long?” Helena heard her father complain in a drunk pidgin. She leaned back on her bed and ducked her head out of the window again.

She listened to her mommy’s response that sounded like the careful selection of stones from beans. It was loud enough for a seat partner in a Danfo to hear and silent for the driver’s ears. Every word ended with the kissing of teeth — “Shey na mi choose this one bucket, one life? Other people will go to work to provide food for their family; your own is to go to the beer parlour to sit down. Where is the food? You want to chop with that your dirty mouth when you did not drop money for it. Make you just thank God say I kind, useless man.”

Their eyes met before her mommy resumed the pounding of yam in a small wooden mortar. Helena listened to the soup bubbling and the rickety sound of the ocean. She tapped her fingers on the edge of the window, while praying in her heart that they would be able to make the escape from their house that is not a home. She prayed in her heart so, not even the walls would know of their plans.

Sometime later, her mommy put off the charcoal stove and served her daddy’s food on the stainless tray. She rolled backward onto the bed and out of it. She raced to the door where she peeped through the broken keyhole. Ekene slapped the tray away from her mommy’s hands and dragged her to their pen marked sofa. The soup crept onto the floor. Her obsidian eyes lingered on it until she noticed her mommy’s feet flailing like a captured hen.

Helena chewed her lower lip and rubbed her ankles against each other. It was not the first time she caught her parents brawling. But that night as she watched her parents fight each other, she knew something was different. She pinched her arm when she saw her daddy throttle her mommy’s throat the way she knew how to wring a wet cloth dry. Tears dropped from her eyes to the floor. She ran out of the room with her tiny feet slapping the ground, when her Adaure’s hands dropped to their sides. Helena wailed but no one listened to her. She whimpered a few inches from where her mommy laid under her daddy’s elephant body. She rumpled the hems of her nightwear. With her eyes almost buried in tears, Helena jumped her daddy by his thick neck to pull him away. He threw her across the room. Her body collided with their vintage television that was not working. She saw her Adaure’s eyes close before hers did the same.

The following morning, everything was a blur. Helena wiped the drool on the edge of her mouth and dragged her wounded body from the floor. She woke up to the sound of white egrets, women pounding, whirring boat sounds, and singing. She shook her legs when she found a giant cockroach climbing it. Feeling pressed, she went outside to use the communal latrine shared by fourteen households. On her way, she remembered glimpses of the incident from the previous night. She ran back to the house even as urine dripped down her thighs. She checked the bedroom for her parents, they were not there. She searched a compartment cupboard, under the bed, went to the living room, the pile of faded clothes and checked under the couch. For a moment, she felt dizzy, confused, and she shook her legs to stop herself from peeing on her body. Their one-bedroom shack felt bigger than its normal size. She clasped her head when she heard her heavy breathing and heartbeat pounding her chest.

Panting and crying, she ran to the backyard hoping to find her mommy roasting fish but there was no one there. The ground was dry and the air around her smelled of the sea. A gust of wind blew on her as she stood on the stilt walkway. She could not shake off the feeling of dread that tugged her chest. The harsh calls of the egrets paralyzed her before she turned around in search again for her mommy or at least her daddy.

She ran through the maze of wet clothes hung on a low rope that slapped her face as she walked through, then went from door to door, knocking and banging with her feet and knuckles. But everyone she asked said they had not seen either of her parents anywhere. They told her to wait in the house for them because they might have gone to the bar or as usual maybe her daddy was at the beer parlour drinking with other fishermen. Knowing what she had seen last night, it was hard to believe them. She did not know what to believe and was not even sure if she had seen it happen or not. She remembered the broken TV and how real it was. Helena snuck onto a family friend’s boat to search for her mommy at the market. A smear of dry blood stained the neck of her pyjamas and a faint smell of urine oozed from her body.

The boat docked at the Pier in Oduduwa Dr., Yaba. Helena trekked about a mile into the city, looking for the market. She found herself lost in the bustle of the city. She arrived at a road with the traffic light on green while on the other side was a food kiosk. Her stomach growled and rumbled as she stared at the kiosk as though the very act would quench her hunger. She brushed the body of a boy who looked two years younger than herself to cross when the light turned red. His eyes looked heavy like they carried within them an untold story. But what she found enchanting were not his eyes, it was the sausage roll in his palm. They stared at each other with her hands placed on her bulging stomach. Her mouth gaped with dripping saliva until her gaze shifted back to the snack that he held. The boy broke the roll into half and gave her one part that Helena grabbed before crossing to the other side. She paced behind the boy and his mommy, careful not to lose sight of them on the pedestrian pathway.

Not too long after, the boy and his mommy stopped and entered a toy store located in a quiet area of the market. Helena remained outside, where she peered into the window. She saw different types, sizes, and shapes of toys through the cylindrical window. None like she had ever seen before. They had beautiful colours, and some came to life. Unlike the already used toys her parents gave her every year on her birthday.

Helena followed the boy whose eyes remained on the floor as he followed his mommy, step after step. A store attendant approached the mother-son duo and guided them to a tall shelf of toys. He appeared withdrawn, so his mommy ruffled his hair and showed him the toys arranged on the shelves. The boy’s face lit up, arousing her curiosity. She saw him stretch his hands deep into the belly of the shelf. He brought out a mechanical wooden box with a broken key attached to its right side. Once the boy turned the key, a melancholic lullaby came out of it.

The music brought tears to Helena’s eyes. When they fell on her lips, she licked them off. She saw her mommy in the sun’s reflection on the mirror before the reflection disappeared. When the music came to an end, she removed her face from the window. She caught the boy staring at her, and she stared right back at him. Helena placed her right palm on the window. The icy blue and faded purple color of her pyjamas were a stark contrast to her deep caramel skin.

Helena trekked for a couple of miles more in the opposite direction of the toy store. She collapsed in front of an orphanage with an exterior garden décor. The matron wearing Bordeaux lipstick and a black dress shook Helena awake. The woman guided her into the orphanage. There was a green garden and children’s flip-flops scattered everywhere. Inside the building, she offered Helena a stainless cup of water and toasted sandwich. They went into her office where the woman dressed Helena’s wound with a bandage from a first aid kit.

“Do you know how we can find your parents?” the matron asked Helena, but she shook her head.

The matron placed a finger on her lips in a pensive mood. “I will have to take you to the police station tomorrow so they can help you find your parents.” Helena gripped the woman’s wrist and shook her head again with a teary eye.

The woman continued, “You can make yourself feel at home tonight. Other children are living here. If they fail to find your parents, we will try to make this place a new home for you.” She ran her hand through Helena’s scattered cornrows and smiled at her.

“Home,” Helena repeated the word that had an unfamiliar ring, after the woman uttered it. She was only used to the house she lived in with her parents. A house that seemed foggy and a memory that was cracked.

“Finish your food so I can take you to the room where you would stay,” the matron said before returning to her seat.

That evening, Helena whistled the melancholic lullaby she had heard from the music box. It swayed its way into the halls and clouds like a hot air balloon. She swished her legs and danced her head in opposite directions as she munched her food. The laughter and whimsical chatter of children circulated in the playroom on the building’s second floor.

Summer ‘11

Two years later at the age of fifteen, Helena now called Nnena after getting adopted by a young igbo couple, chased after a motorcycle on the tarred road of mainland Lagos city to retrieve her art portfolio stuck to the rear end of the machine. She flagged the motorcycle hoping to be noticed by the biker through his side mirror and he finally came to a stop. He waited for her at the junction under an overhead so she could take her purse that hung on the rear of the bike. After collecting the portfolio, she stopped to rest on a metal pole, next to the pedestrian path. With her palm placed on her chest, she took in deep breathes. And the smell of roasted plantain, boiled corn, fried pepper, fish, and beans from the various stalls lined on the other side of the street masked her nose. This was combined with the rotten smell like spoiled egg emitting from open drainages that buzzed with houseflies.

She heard a preacher spurt out jumbled holy words amid the afternoon chaos while standing on a mounted platform, not far from the food stalls on one side of the T-section road. He went on about life being a race, “This is a journey, a race, and some of you are lost. You feel alone and abandoned. This city is swallowing you up, but you are not alone. You lost sheep come back home. The Lord is calling you.” On the other side of the T-section, molues’ conductors in the bus garage hollered their routes for passers-by with their mouths swaggering to every word.

Once she felt better, Nnena turned around to check for the street sign to find what direction to follow. She heard a wind chime decorated with sunbirds and it pulled her like a magnet into the toy store that resembles the one in her dreams, the one in her paintings, the one she always thought was not real because most of her memory became fragmented after she ended up at the orphanage. Some were kept at bay, while there were some that floated like nightmares or dreams, the toy store was one. Other times, she heard seagulls mewing, the rowing of boats, and only remembered the blurry images of her parents.

Inside, she moved from aisle to aisle and glanced at the toys with her fingers sweeping the shelves. Her wandering eyes followed a boy flying a toy plane across the room, until he stumbled upon a pile of old toys, and a wooden music box rolled out from it. She picked it up and wiped it with her palm. Then she turned its key and it whistled into the air a rain-like tune.

She closed her eyes to soak up the tune with her body facing the glass. When it stopped playing, she dropped the box back. On her way out of the store, her portfolio dropped to the ground, and the painting inside popped out of it. She picked it up to place it back into the portfolio and that was when she saw the young girl she had drawn. The girl wore an icy and faded purple pyjamas, and she peered out of a window at a floating field of wooden shacks. The girl was her. Using the GPS on her phone, she went out of the store and found her way out of computer village to take the bus going to her Art school in Gbagada.

On her way down to the bus stop outside the village, she became the object of catcalls by a group of men waiting for customers on their okadas (bikes). She ignored them because interacting with them could lead to problems and make the men think she enjoyed the attention. Afar off, she heard a woman shout the name “Helena” and the familiar sound of the voice overwhelmed her. It made her tear up, but she blamed the tears on the gusty afternoon. Momentarily, she pictured herself skipping like the woman’s daughter with her mother begging her to stop. The name is the only she precious thing she kept from the past and she uses it to run an art website.

The city was especially busy that afternoon. Outside the gate of computer village, beggars sat on the ground, some children in dirty oversized clothes picked bottles and other recyclable items from bins while flashy cars were parked outside a telecommunication building. Nnena shook her head at the sad appearances and hunger of these people. She ran past them towards the bus stop before the bus left. While trying to adjust her portfolio on her shoulder, her fingers brushed the scar that went from the back of her head to her right ear. The scar from when her body hit the television.

Her legs felt heavy like she was coming out of a sea as she ran to catch the bus. The blurred memories that seemed so distant for nine years, crawled up, and stretched their roots in her brain. They came back to her like thrashing waves. She found herself caught in the web of past and present, a childhood of a labyrinth and stones, an adulthood that suddenly felt slippery. She remembered all the memories she fought to keep at bay. Not knowing what to do with the recovered memories of what happened that night two years ago, she dropped to the ground and wept for her mommy. And just as she expected, people gathered around and watched her like a spectacle. She forced herself into the bus, but instead of heading to the art school, she went home. She ran and sat on her desk where she sketched a vivid portrait of her mommy’s dark skin face in black and white, with swollen lips. The portrait brought some more tears to her face.

Bibiana Ossai is a Nigerian writer and a Ph.D. Fiction student at Texas Tech University. Her writings appear in The Dark magazine, African Writer magazine, and Flash Fiction magazine, among others. Her Twitter handle is @BibianaOssai. You can find her website using the link bibianaossai.com.