Ring! Ring!
‘That’s the phone! Hello!’
‘Is your mother home?’
‘No Auntie, she’s not.’
‘And your father?’
‘He’s not home, either!’
‘Anybody I can leave a message with?’
‘Only me, Auntie.’
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m six.’
‘How can they leave you at home all by yourself? Where have Mummy and Daddy gone to?’
‘Mummy went to look for kerosene. She says she can’t afford gas anymore, even if she finds it. Daddy has gone to the ‘Black Market’ to look for fuel. My brother and sister went with our house-help to look for water. Nobody wants me to go with them because I’d slow them down.’
‘My dear, you are bright for your age. I’m sure you can take a message. Tell Mummy Auntie Alice phoned to ask if she has found a station that has kerosene. I have looked everywhere and I can’t find any. And if your Daddy comes back with fuel, I am interested in the location of his ‘Black Market’. As for water, tell Mummy I’ve found a clean gutter. That apart from the thrash that house-helps occasionally throw into it, it doesn’t seem there is anything toxic in its water; that if I’m able to keep the brats off long enough, the water settles. I’ll tell her how to treat the water when I see her. She should ring me; we’ll talk about it.’
‘Okay Auntie. Em…but Auntie, she can’t ring you.’
‘Now why ever not, my child?’
‘Our phone, it’s on toss.’
‘Goodness! You wouldn’t know if Daddy has not paid the NITEL bills, would you?’
‘Indeed, I know! He’s been grumbling about NITEL’s inefficiency. They were supposed to take us out of toss two weeks ago when Daddy paid the bills.’
‘Hey, poor child, how can you be a real six year-old if you get saddled with so much adult worries?’
‘Mummy and Daddy tell us everything, so that if anything should happens to them before we’re grown up we’d know enough to survive. If they don’t tell us anyway, we’d still know it, Auntie. The hourly news on both the radio and television would be full of it. Besides, I only got to know about kerosene about a week ago when Mummy bought the stove. When I asked her what it was for, she told me about how gas has risen from 25 Naira to 350. I can’t even count that far yet. Again, we’d never eaten anything that was not bread and tea for breakfast, now we’d have to do without it.’
‘Poor, poor child.!’
‘No Auntie, I don’t think I’m poor. I know poorer children. They eat what’s thrown into garbage bins and gutters. I’m not poor, Auntie.’
‘But it’s not fair for your Mummy to tell you so much about these things!’
‘What things Auntie?’
‘For instance, why should they talk about what will happen if they die?’ Why should they die?’
‘Don’t you know? Daddy says it’s by God’s grace we’re alive today. He says that the reason for so many obituary announcements of young men and women is the harsh economic, social and political situation the country is in. Daddy says that every grown-up person in Nigeria ought to be very sad. And he says that sadness can kill more than cancer.’
‘Good God!’
‘Yes, and Auntie, Daddy says that any grown-up Nigerian who is happy, really happy, is either a rogue or is not capable of thinking. That to think in present-day Nigeria is enough to give one a heart attack!’
‘Your Daddy says all these things to you?’
‘Yes Auntie, and much more!’
‘Your vocabulary is certainly not that of a six-year old!’
‘Thank you, Auntie.’
‘I don’t mean that as a compliment.’
‘What’s a compliment?’
‘Never mind!’
‘Auntie Alice?’
‘Yes, child?’
‘Will things ever get better? I mean the way they do in films?’
‘I don’t know, child, but we could pray. We just have to pray that God takes control. Our leaders are certainly incapable of doing anything about anything. We’ll soon be needing special license to import breathable air!’
‘Auntie, now you sound like my Daddy!’
‘Yes, poor precocious dear. Tell your mother I’ll call her again. And don’t forget to pray for our country!’
First published in OKIKE - An African Journal of New Writing (No. 37, October, 1997); pp 3 – 5.
Remember those days before the GSM?
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