‘Honestly, America’s the place,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Not just that the people are very generous, you can’t even say you’ve ever been abroad until you’ve been to America. Kai!’
He stopped scrubbing and jerked his head as if trying to contain the weight of the memories that had just come upon him.
‘Is it the houses . . . is it the food . . . is it the roads . . . is it the women . . . ? You’ll see all types of women with all types of complexions; you won’t even know which one to choose. In America, you’ll understand why it’s good to have money, because you’ll keep seeing things to spend it on.’
He stepped out of the shower and yanked a large towel to start drying his body. Once again, I wondered how the scrawny urchin who had lived with my family all those years ago, had metamorphosed into this fleshy edifice. Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long. I half expected his bloated belly to wriggle free of his body and start break-dancing on the tiled floor in front of us. It seemed to have a life of its own. He dropped the used towel on the floor and grabbed one of the many toothbrushes in a glass mug on the washbasin.
‘Come and put some toothpaste for me,’ he said.
I reached out for the tube of Colgate. Despite my extreme carefulness, his belly still brushed against my hand. He held out his toothbrush while I squeezed the white paste. When I had finished my task, I withdrew to a less discomforting distance.
‘By the way,’ he continued, in a more subdued and official tone. ‘I have an emergency meeting with the police commissioner tomorrow and I want you to be there.’
‘Do we have any problems?’ I had never accompanied him to see the commissioner before.
Cash Daddy grated his throat twice and spat.
‘One should remove the hand of the monkey from the soup before it becomes a human hand. The main reason for the meeting is for us to make sure that there’s no problem. He didn’t tell me much, but it looks like there are some places where we’ve made one or two mistakes and he wants us to take it easy.’
His cellular phone rang. I rushed to pick it up from the bathroom mat and held it out to him. Cash Daddy glanced at the screen and made a quick sign of the cross like a priest being pursued by the devil. I knew immediately that it was his wife calling. Something to do with the children. Conversing with his wife was one of those uncommon occurrences when Cash Daddy did more listening than talking.
When he finished, he chuckled, and asked if I had seen the latest photographs of his children. I had not.
‘Ah. I just got them. Come let me show you.’
He led the way out of the bathroom, stopping briefly at the door to scratch the inside of his thigh. He opened his bedside drawer and extracted some photographs. He handed them to me with the sort of smile that you have when presenting a beloved friend with a priceless surprise gift. I tried to appear commensurately keen.
In the first one, the five cherubs and their mother were all dressed up - the two girls in long, flowing frocks, the three boys in black dinner jackets and red bow ties, their mother in a clingy, sparkly red dress that made her look like a tall goldfish. He explained that they had all attended some ceremony in the eldest child’s school. This eldest son was enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Oxford.
‘He even won an award,’ Cash Daddy beamed proudly. ‘Anyway, I’m not surprised. Whatever the python gives birth to must eventually be long. I know that boy is going to be great in this world. Greater than me even.’
The children all looked like distant cousins of Princes William and Harry. Graceful and illustrious. There was not the slightest trace of that untamed look on their faces, the look that neither diverse currencies nor worldly comforts had quite erased from their father’s countenance. I tried to imagine the distinguished accents that would come forth when they spoke.
Interesting - these offspring of Uncle Boniface, the money-miss-road, were the aristocrats of tomorrow.
Cash Daddy’s voice smashed into my musings.
‘I’ve told you to hurry up and get married,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re waiting for. The advice I always give young men is: once you start making money, after buying your first set of cars, your next investment should be a wife. You should have been married long ago.’
He was right. I should have been married a long time ago. I should also have been working in Shell or Mobil or Schlumberger and coming home to Ola every night. Unfortunately, that was life.
He inspected his physique in the full-length mirror. While he squeezed into a pair of Versace jeans and a silk Yves Saint Laurent shirt, he talked about business and some new ideas.
‘I’m also thinking of employing some more of these young boys who know more about the internet. The only person we have is Wizard. He’s good, but the boy is a thief. He can even steal from inside a woman’s womb without anybody noticing. And two things I can’t stand are people who steal and people who are disloyal.’
He turned away from the mirror and looked at me.
‘What of your brother?’ he asked.
I blinked.
‘I mean Godfrey,’ he clarified.
‘Never.’
‘But he appears quite sma—’
‘Never.’
He must have understood that the matter was very closed. He stopped talking and looked back at his image in the mirror.
My phone rang. It was my father’s third sister’s son.
‘Ebuka, please call me back later. I’m in a meeting.’
‘Kings, go on and take your call,’ Cash Daddy said.
‘No, it’s OK, I can—’
‘Take your call.’
Ebuka needed some money to buy his GCE forms.
‘But I sent you money to buy forms a short while ago,’ I said.
‘Brother Kings, that one was different. That one was for my SSCE. I’ve already bought the form and filled it. If you want, I can bring the receipt for you to see.’
‘OK, come and see me in the house tomorrow evening and collect some money.’
There was no need giving him my address. All my relatives from far and near now knew where I lived. There seemed to be a benevolent fairy whose job it was to pass on my contact details to any two-winged insect that flew past.
‘Brother, thank you very much,’ he said.
Cash Daddy was brushing his eyebrows and flashing his teeth in front of the mirror. His grooming was always lengthy before he got satisfied.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘has it occurred to you that I’m now too big to be chasing dollars around? Come.’
He held me by the upper arm and escorted me to the window. He walked very close, almost leaning his chest against my shoulder. For a while, we stood and stared out of the glass panes without speaking. The window overlooked his front gate.
Almost all the buildings on Iweka and on farther streets were in total darkness. NEPA had struck. In the distance, I made out the bright lights of World Bank’s humongous house. Like Cash Daddy, he had a power generator. After a while, I peeped at my uncle. He had a faraway gaze on his face, like an emperor wondering by how much more he should reduce his subjects’ taxes.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘do you sometimes feel as if God is talking to you?’
I gave it some thought.
‘No.’
He turned away from the window and looked at me.
‘Kings, don’t you read your Bible?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘You should read your Bible often and memorise passages,’ he said, shaking his head slowly and wagging his finger at me. ‘It’s very, very important.’
Sermon over, he returned his eyes to the window and took in a deep breath.
‘Kings,’ he exhaled, ‘each time I stand and look out through this window, I feel as if God is talking to me. It’s as if I can hear Him saying that He’s given me the land as far as my eyes can see, just like He said to Papa Abraham.’
He paused and looked at me.
‘Kings, I’ve decided to run for governor of Abia State in the coming elections.’
The fact that I did not drop to the floor with shock was simply supernatural.
Twenty-four
My regular visits to Umuahia came with mixed feelings. A blend of nostalgia about the good old days - the times spent there as a child - and anger about the hard times - our poverty and my father’s illness and premature death. These days, a new feeling had been stirred into the concoction - apprehension about facing my mother.
Heads turned as my Lexus sped through the streets. Eyes followed in wonder and admiration. Without braking, I honked at some pedestrians occupying the better part of a pothole-riddled road. The three men jumped away in fright. My windows were up and the air-conditioning was on full blast, so I could barely make out their invectives.
I noticed that the scallywags had now gone beyond traffic signs and dustbins. There were election posters on the face and torso of the bronze statue in the Michael Opara Square. To think that Cash Daddy’s face would soon be joining them. He had not yet made his gubernatorial aspirations publicly known, so none of his posters were out. If not for the potbellied, important-looking strangers with whom he had been holding endless meetings at the office, I would have assumed he had changed his mind.
I parked beside Mr Nwude’s blue Volkswagen. The back windscreen of the faithful car was completely gone and had been replaced by a cellophane sheet. I made a mental note to greet his family before I left. As usual, I would pretend it was a gift for the children and give them some cash.
As soon as I switched off my engine, Charity screamed. Nanoseconds later, she dashed out of the house.
‘Kings, I didn’t know you were coming today!’
We hugged.
‘How’s school?’
‘We’re closing soon,’ she said with excitement. ‘Kings, I’m coming to spend my holidays with you. I’ve already told Mummy and she said it’s OK.’
My siblings could go in and out of my house anytime they pleased without giving me notice. I had reminded them several times.
‘But that means Mummy will be at home alone,’ she said with concern. ‘Eugene is not likely to come back till after Easter.’
‘Don’t worry. We can both drive down to visit her often. What of your JAMB forms? Have you bought them?’
‘Since last week.’
‘OK, we’ll fill them together before I leave.’
I gave Charity the McVities biscuits and the pair of high heels I’d bought for her. She accompanied me to my mother’s bedroom.
‘Mummy, Kings is here,’ she chimed.
As I was about to open the door, Charity held back my hand.
‘Kings,’ she whispered with tilted head and pleading eyes, ‘can I use your phone? Please?’
Two of Charity’s friends had land phones in their houses. Each time I was around, she wanted to ring them with my cellular, never mind that she saw them in school almost every day. I handed her the phone and she scampered back to the living room, gleeful as a fly.
My mother was lying in bed - staring - with her upper body propped up on two pillows. For a widow whose first son had come to visit, her smile appeared some seconds too late.
‘Mummy.’
‘Kings.’
I sat beside her and entered her embrace. Even that was not as cosy as it should have been. Her face appeared more furrowed than on my last visit. She was wearing one of her old dresses stained with the sticky fluid from my father’s unripe plantains. Maybe it was her age, maybe it was her grief, but the hair on my mother’s head was taking its time in growing back. And I could see her scalp clearly through the grey strands. Unlike the former, the new growth was scanty.
‘Mummy, how have you been getting on?’
‘I’m fine.’
With cheeks pressed against her face, I scanned the room with my eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been when my father was alive. His jumper was still hooked to the wardrobe door. His bathroom slippers were arranged neatly at the foot of the bed, as if he were about to step right into them. A half-empty bottle of Old Spice aftershave lotion was sitting beside a half-empty Vaseline hair cream jar on his side of the dresser. In a corner of the room, I sighted the machines I had recently purchased for my mother’s shop. The large, brown cartons were sealed and unopened. I pulled myself away from her and walked towards them. My suspicions were confirmed.
‘Mummy,’ I asked wearily, ‘what about these machines? Haven’t you started using them yet?’
My mother bent her eyes to the floor. She was composing another lie.
When I replaced the television in the house, came back to visit, and saw the old one back in its place, my mother had said it was because she could not figure out how the new one worked. When I mentioned repainting and refurbishing the flat, she had said she preferred if it remained the exact way it was when my father was alive, never mind that I had promised not to tamper with his favourite armchair. When I bought a generator to supply electricity when NEPA took the light, she had said it made too much noise. I hated seeing her put herself through all this just to make a point. Now I watched her struggle to make up another excuse.
She raised her eyes.
‘Kingsley, the only thing that can make me happy is if you get a proper job. You know I’m very uncomfortable with whatever work it is you say you’re doing for Boniface.’
‘Mummy, I’m working and I’m doing this for all of you.’
‘Kings, if you really want to make me happy, you’ll stop it.’
She said the ‘it’ with force. My mother was a person who could provide a euphemism for every embarrassing word that existed. Her cache included at least fifty different replacements for sex and for the various private body parts. She had more for single mothers and divorcees. But when it came to 419, this ability had completely failed her. She never had a name for exactly what it was that she wanted me to stop.
I was tempted to change the topic by telling her that her brother was planning to be the next governor of Abia State, but that would simply be kindling another inferno. On behalf of her absent husband, my mother would probably explode with outrage. It was better to just go straight to the point of my visit.