Story 2: The Morning.
So, the boy woke up with a bang. His heart was beating faster than normal. His eyebrows arched to produce that frown of confusion and the beads of sweat dropped in agreement with the fact that it was just a dream. He sat upon his bed, which was a little bit ruffled from all that turning and tossing throughout the night. He would lay it when it was time to get out of bed. That was his tradition- lay the bed first thing in the morning. He looked around, in the darkness. It was pointless- he couldn’t see anything. He searched for his small torch on the bed but it was unavoidably absent. Where could the torch be? He was always meticulous about his possessions. It was going to be the handwork of that lousy child- Edidiong. She probably “borrowed” it again without his permission. It pissed him off but there was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing.
Forgetting about the torch, he felt his neck for his rosary. He clutched it right and said a little prayer, asking God to watch over him and take away the terrible nightmare. That was one of the things Mother taught him. She would say “Freke, no matter what happens, make sure you pray.” Poor Mother! He sighed and shook his head. He had pushed those memories to a very far place. It was not a good decision for them to resurface at the moment.
The dream… It was really scary. He would be really careful around these people. What if God was sending him a message? Or what if the devil was trying to play mind games with him? What if he was finally going his mother’s way? No! He should never think like that. In the dream, it was Friday. He was at home. You would wonder why a 10-year-old was not in school. They said he was not fit to go to school. It was confirmed through the whispers from the neighbours and the looks he got when he walked down the street. So, Uncle Ubong and Aunty Benny made him stay home and do all the housework (Aunty Benny was his mother’s younger sister. He never really knew her until now. She was not one to visit or phone regularly). They said his mother had spoilt him too much especially since he didn’t have a father figure, so he had to learn. Sometimes, the learning came in form of the seven-mouthed whip, Uncle Ubong’s belt or the wire. When he first arrived a year ago, they had taken him to a pastor who specialized in removing evil spirits. The pastor echoed his aunt and uncle’s words- “This one has many ogbanje inside him”. After many days of prayer, vigorous shaking, saliva bathing and sprinkles of holy water, he was declared clean. Even so, it didn’t stop the whispers.
He was washing clothes inside the house while whistling the tune to “I have a dream”. Mother loved those old school songs. They would sit outside in the verandah and listen to her radio. The memories- again. He tried to use the detergent with moderation because Aunty Benny flogged him the first time he washed their clothes. She said he used too much. He knew it wasn’t his fault; the clothes were very dirty. From that time, he learnt the mechanics of washing clothes clean with a very “moderate” amount of detergent. He was washing Aunty Benny’s undies when he heard little noise. It sounded like footsteps.” Who could that be?”, he thought. They lived in a storey building with four flats. Usually, everyone had gone about their daily business and there was no gateman in the compound. Besides, the door was supposed to be locked.
With a good measure of courage and some curiosity, he rinsed his hands and wiped them clean on his faded jeans. He tiptoed from inside the laundry room and peeped inside the sitting room. He saw two men in black with a big “Ghana-must-go” bag. He became very scared and almost immediately touched his rosary. He couldn’t open his mouth to pray lest his whispers are heard as the house was very silent. He considered his chances. The only way out was the back door. He would have to pass the corridor and then the kitchen. The backdoor was in the kitchen. The men entered his aunt’s room first. With this, he stealthily started to move out of the laundry room. He tiptoed his way to the kitchen but his joy was short-lived as he discovered the back door was locked. He had forgotten the key on the dining table. He sat down on the floor and put his hands on his face. The tears were already preparing to rain. He wiped his eyes and looked up. The last thing he remembered was looking into two pairs of eyes and the smell of that handkerchief they used to cover his nose.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself bound in the corner of a small office. He could see that the two men were talking to another man. They called him boss. The boss was thanking them and explaining that the boy’s aunt and uncle had been paid for providing the merchandise. Freke thought they were talking about another child until he heard the boss say “Those people living at 17, Okoro Road”. He knew that was the address of their house. The pain in his heart multiplied. His uncle and aunt had sold him to some wicked people. A little cry slipped out and instantly, all eyes were on him. “So the little devil is awake”, said the boss. One of the men looked at him and laughed “Dem talk say im mama dey Yaba left so de pikin sef get craze for head”. Then, it all came back: The day his mother ran mad. The doctors said she had been in depression and had been using some hard drugs. He couldn’t recognize his mother the last time he saw her. He couldn’t put the image of the mother who told him to pray together with the one in the mental hospital for using hard drugs.
A guy named Rotimi was called from outside the office. Rotimi took him to another room, this one bigger than the previous one he was coming from. Inside the room, there were beds and on the beds, there were boys, a lot of them. The boys looked tired, skinny and generally unkept. He wanted to cry but his tears never really poured down in the day, especially in front of other people. He kept them for the night when there was no one to see or hear. He was given a bed and that was how life in the camp began. Freke quickly learnt that the camp was used for human trafficking and that boys were sold every day to rich people as houseboys or sex slaves. The first night, he made a friend- Preye. As he slept on the bed, he cried so much that he thought the whole bed would be soaked.
That was the dream. As he thought about it, he became more confused. He decided that he would run away after everyone had left the house. He didn’t have a destination but he would run. It was better than being sold and trafficked. He decided he would sleep some more. After all, he would need his energy to run.
As Freke opened his eyes for the second day that morning, he yawned and rubbed his eyes. The scene before him looked like a dream, in fact, the one he had the previous night. He rubbed his eyes again and pinched his skin. “No, it can’t be”, he thought. Just then, a boy who looked to be his age, wearing a pair of glasses, walked up to him. He said, “You look confused. Still can’t believe you’ve been kidnapped, right? Anyways, welcome to the camp. My name is Preye”.
ADEDEJI EBUNOREOFE
