Their callused hands knowledgeably skimmed around the jagged edge of the faded earthenware plate as they ate. Six pairs of hands, neatly interweaving between each other, separating a rounded sphere of pounded yam and dipping it into the egusi soup. At least that was the goal, but in reality the hands were asynchronous, and it was only chance that the food made its way into eager stomachs. Invariably the oldest siblings ate as much as they liked, and the smaller siblings divided whatever remained and then slept through the ravages of hunger. Outside, soot from the charcoal stove permeated the air, leaving its impression in places inside of them no one could see. The ginger sun's last rays had disappeared behind the village and left kerosene lamps in their wake. The small kerosene lamps inside the squat structure illuminated fading wallpaper peeling from the walls, couches sunken in from repeated weight-bearing, and a crimson carpet old enough to tell stories like grandmothers do.
Julius Obi was the smallest of his six siblings though not the youngest, to many of the villagers easily overlooked and forgotten, but to his mother the most obedient and respectful child. She gave him the name Julius, when his father had wanted to name him something like Oluwayemi after his great uncle the soldier in the Biafran war. This was after she'd named her oldest son Brutus, and the whispering amongst the villagers intensified. At dinnertime, Julius usually got in three or four swallows of pounded yam before the food vanished before his sluggish, blinking gaze. The siblings would then leap to their feet to complete their chores, of which there was an abundant and continuous supply.
After dinner, his mother approached Julius while he was sweeping the dust from the front of the compound with a corn broom. She surveyed his sunken cheeks before pressing an extra bowl of pounded yam and egusi against his side, and he was surprised to see a prized piece of shaki as well. He didn't mention a word to the others as he devoured the contents of the bowl under the shadow of night. The plate was so clean, his sister Amaka did not raise her head when he slipped it in amongst the rest of the dishes.
No one could deny he was his mother's child. They both had skin like charcoal, smooth and velvety, the color of the sky when you suddenly wake up from a dream in the middle of the night. Their eyes were half-lidded and dull, and they observed the world twice as much as they engaged in it. They were soft-spoken. Even at the market while she was selling her smoked fish, everyone told Mrs. Obi, "Abeg, we can't hear you. Please speak up." She didn't smile, but spoke louder the next time. She never smiled. The villagers didn't give a her a reason to. The first time Julius had accompanied Mama Obi to the market, it was impossible not to hear the loud-mouthed whispers flung in their direction.
"Look at her, no husband. She thinks she can raise all those kids on her own. When they were telling her not to leave her husband, she didn't want to listen. Well, look at her now."
If you looked, you would see Mama Obi lived in a small house with two rooms, a living room, a bedroom with mattresses on the floor, and an outhouse in the back. The girls slept in the bedroom with Mama Obi, and the boys slept on a thin mattress in the living room. Mama Obi had one goat that could be sold if necessary. Every day she woke up before the crack of dawn and walked to the market in her slippers and sold smoked fish in the market. For breakfast they ate garri soaked in water, and they gathered for one meal at the day's close when everyone had returned from their daily odd jobs. At the age of ten, Julius Obi had not yet been to the primary school two and a half hours away by foot.
Tomorrow was his first day of school.
After the evening chores, his older siblings gave him advice. "They will flog you if you don't answer the question correctly." This was Brutus, his eldest sibling, an unflappable authority figure. When they were younger, Brutus would make up rules for them to obey while their parents turned a blind eye. The other siblings weren't allowed to look at him for the first 30 minutes after waking; they would greet him with "Precious, Elder Brother" and genuflect like royalty; heat the water for his baths to slightly above tepid and stand at the ready with cool water for him to rinse off on scalding days. Julius and his siblings were granted a reprieve when Brutus went away to the Leader's Academy boarding school at age thirteen. The school was a four-hour drive away, sometimes longer depending on the temperament of the road. When he returned home three years later after a series of poorly executed mischiefs and appalling grades, his things were packed and laid in front of the house. His father refused to come out and explain what had transpired, especially after the school's correspondence had described Brutus as "one of the most recalcitrant students we have ever had the displeasure of trying to educate." Instead, the housekeeper gave him the address for his mother's house with a mixture of pity and newfound condescension.
Brutus turned around and walked 10 kilometers back to Chief Obi's compound the first time he surveyed his mother's new home. There, the gateman would not allow him inside but also did not turn him away. When Brutus returned to his mother's house, he tried to pretend nothing had changed. It was hard for Julius to pay attention to his older brother's rules when they slept with their feet pressed against each other's heads. Brutus was no longer Chief Obi's eldest son with the silky-smooth leather dress shoes, freshly cut hair, and upturned nose who would one day inherit the family's business (the assortment of discreet deals, favors, and less-than-savory exchanges constituting a business in the village).
But Brutus could still do a convincing impression of his former self. "They will have no choice but to flog you. Especially someone like you who doesn't even know your times tables."
"I've already memorized my times tables, so they won't flog me for that," Julius returned. He was going through an old math textbook donated by a cousin. He alternated between this textbook and a small pocket dictionary he'd found discarded on the roadside just between his village and the next village. He plucked the words out of the dictionary and casually dropped them into conversations, a practice confusing to some of his family members and aggravating to the rest. Julius quickly outgrew his cousin's math textbook and the pocket dictionary.
Each week Julius visited the village library arranged by Mr. Solomon, a retired professor from Lagos who had returned to the village to rest and then discovered rest was the last thing on his mind. He spoiled the plot of whatever book he was recommending in his excitement to "train young minds" and did not recommend books on topics he was unfamiliar with. Each market day, he rolled his jeep under the shade of trees near Mrs. Agba's meat pies and jollof rice stand and propped the trunk open. Unlike the contents of the physics and geography books, the arrangement of the library defied a natural order. Sometimes there was a pile of government law, other times economics, always a statistics or algebra textbook. Mr. Solomon unceremoniously selected them from his home library and presented the wares to the populace hoping they would find exactly what they were looking for by chance. Julius had read almost every single book and lingered for longer than he was welcome asking the professor to clarify concepts.
"What does gravity feel like? Rather, why can't I feel it, sir?"
"Julius, others are waiting." The professor would take off his glasses with the string around his ears and rub them on the front of his buttoned-down shirt. The dome of his head gleamed underneath the sun, but Julius thought it gleamed a little bit more after he asked his questions. "For such a small boy, you ask too many questions."
"But, Professor, no one is waiting," Julius would tell him. The Professor pretended not to hear but called out to Julius that he'd better return the book on time when he turned to leave. Sometimes he followed this with a comment under his breath about how Mama Obi was raising impertinent children.
Brutus lay on the couch, his arms crossed beneath his head, his eyes half-closed as he chewed on a thin twig. He gestured towards Julius offhandedly. "They will flog you for something, I'm sure. And if the instructors don't flog you, the senior students will."
"Don't mind him," said Amaka, slapping her brother's arm. "Anyway, there is no money, so Julius may not even finish the school year." She was studying sewing with Aunt Stella in the village. By the fading kerosene light, she was taking in the seams of Julius's uniform. In their past lives, Amaka had been top girl at her secondary school and set all the fashion trends for her classmates. After the move, she went to school three times a week, then twice, and then stopped going and never spoke about it. Once they'd run into her former classmate Shola at the market, who was wearing her skirt with high socks the way Amaka used to wear hers. Amaka had set her mouth in a thin line but still managed to greet her friend with an abundance of enthusiasm. She wore her threadbare dress and long-suffering sandals like they were the newest fashion trends.
Julius had long ago learned to tune out his siblings. Amaka would take over Aunt Stella's sewing shop. Brutus was already learning to plant and harvest corn, cassava, yams, plantains. The 12-year old twins Lola and Chigozie were becoming experts in haggling at the market and came home each day grinning as wide as an ear of corn while presenting their yield. Only his younger sister Rosemary would sometimes look over his shoulder while he was reviewing his books. All his elder siblings had unceremoniously quit school, some out of a genuine desire to support the family, others he suspected because they now had a good reason not to go.
He shined his sole pair of Sunday shoes with a cloth and a bit of shoe polish.
Amaka shook out the uniform. "Okay, here Julius, try this on."
He went into a corner of the living room and tried on the outfit. It was a standard issue, green uniform handed down from Brutus to Chigozie and now Julius. The top was still too big, and the shoulder seams ballooned out. But Amaka had made the pants the right length. Julius turned this way and the other to inspect his new uniform as Lola began clapping her hands. He couldn't help but break into an excited dance.
Lola shouted. "Look at Julius! So, all this while, we just had to send you to school to get you to smile and dance. Mama, come look at Julius."
She was already there, had perhaps been there for several moments. Her quiet presence, while soothing, made for unannounced entrances. Mama Obi glided over to Julius and adjusted his collar.
"I hope you plan to iron this. It's looking very tattered." She then adjusted her wrapper and glanced around at her children without seeming to really see them. She used to wear a pair of thin-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose. They had been lost in the move, and she sometimes looked lost without them. "Oya, why are you children still up? We have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
"It's a big day for Julius tomorrow, oh," continued Lola. "He must go to school and make A's and become a businessman. Since he likes to read his books so much."
"No, Julius will be a doctor," argued Rosemary. "Remember that time I fell from climbing the tree and he wrapped my leg?" They smiled. They didn't like to think about the limp that made her slow walking to the market.
"Nonsense, Julius can only be an accountant since he doesn't like to talk. All he will do is crunch numbers," Amaka said, smiling at her handiwork.
Amaka had a perfect row of gleaming, white teeth. The rest of them had small gaps in the front. When Amaka talked, she was usually so loud, everyone stopped and listened. If anyone wanted to know something about the little Obi family, they would just ask Amaka. Now Amaka asked him, "What do you want to be when you grow up, Julius?"
He could barely make out their faces as the last embers of kerosene light began to flicker out. His answer was barely formed. He wanted more than he could articulate; it would be irresponsible for him to spill out the current limitations of his mind. He was certain school would show him what he was missing, but he was even more afraid it would not.
Mama Obi arranged for their neighbor's children to accompany him to primary school. Just as the faintest dawn was rising, there they were at the periphery of the trees lining the compound, curiosity drawing their gazes, fear simultaneously repelling them. All sorts of stories had been told about Mama Obi's leaning house. She was a witch and soaked the arms of legs of children overnight until all the flesh fell off the bones before feeding the stew to her own children. At night, she leaned on a broomstick and flew away, dropping curses on households like fat droplets of rain. If anyone passed away overnight in the village, Mama Obi was certain to have played a part in it. They crossed themselves multiple times as they waited for Julius Obi to emerge.
He had ironed his uniform several times with starch such that it was as stiff as cardboard when he carefully donned the outfit. The shoe polish on his shoes left inky imprints on the sand as he approached the group awaiting him at the edge of his compound.
They took one look at him and grinned at each other, their mouths pulling with restrained humor, their fear evaporating like the morning mist.
"Oh, Julius." He recognized Jacob, their ringleader. "You will be competing with the professor with this get-up. Is that what we should call you then? Professor Julius?"
Julius suppressed a small smile of his own. It wasn't the worse thing he could be called. "Leave me alone, Jacob. I'm not going to take any of your wahala. I know I'm small, but my punches will still mess up your face." There was no way Julius could take on any of them, but Brutus was twice his size and fought without mercy.
The journey began, past each of the rag-tag compounds of their village, where small boys and girls were up early to sweep the dust collected in the front of the houses. The older boys left with their fathers to the farm, wielding cutlasses over their broad shoulders, hastening to get in hours of toil before the sun blistered the backs of their ears. The group of school-goers swelled as they walked over barely formed, sandy and rocky roads, with overarching banana and plantain trees interspersed with palm trees under which he would have loved to sit for a moment of reprieve. As the second hour loomed, Julius grew tired. He noticed the others pulling clear bags of water from their bags and dotting their foreheads with handkerchiefs. He made a mental note to bring these things with him next time.
"Well, Professor, we're here," Jacob announced, gesturing to a sign proclaiming entry to Oluwa Primary School. A gate led to a group of identical low concrete buildings. Jacob directed him to the registration building.
The secretary wore fox-shaped glasses and a green headdress with red flowers. She peered down at him and then at a large ledger with neatly printed, infinitesimally small handwriting. It must have held all the students who had ever trained at this primary school. Julius could imagine what she was observing when she raised her eyes to look at him once again. He appeared as tired and damp as his uniform.
"Why haven't you been in school before, Julius? Don't you know every little boy should be getting an education?"
He cleared his throat. "No money, madam."
Her face contorted as if he had disclosed a transmissible disease. "Where are your textbooks?" She was scrutinizing him now, inspecting the small satchel he was carrying.
He presented the old math textbook he had all but memorized.
"That one is very outdated. No one uses that textbook anymore."
"Sorry, madam."
She handed him a neat, handwritten schedule. "It's okay, I know students like you, you will stay for one week, and then you won't come back. Please, it's time for morning exercises."
He carefully folded the schedule after taking a quick glimpse. Mathematics. English Language. Christian Religious Knowledge. Home Economics.
After morning exercises, he was assigned a desk in the far back of the class near another boy like him. Emmanuel was from the village next door to his own, which had not seen electricity in years. When night came, it swallowed his village whole. Unlike Julius, he carried nothing with him and squinted at the class when the instructor asked him to stand in front and introduce himself.
"Please, my name is Emmanuel. I'm from the Shoki village. Greetings, everyone."
"Welcome, Emmanuel," the class droned.
When it was Julius's turn, he noticed the boys in the front row had brand new textbooks, multiple pens of different colors, and notebooks so fresh their spines cracked when a student opened it to a brand-new page. Their uniforms looked immaculate.
"My name is Julius Obi," he said. "I'm from Ashawi village."
"The one whose mother left her husband?" a voice called from the back. Julius looked around in search of the voice and his eyes landed on Emmanuel sitting in a desk in the back of the room.
The instructor, Mr. Chidubem, looked at him to see whether he was a troublemaker. The students in the front row exchanged snickers.
"That's my mother," said Julius Obi. He raised his voice. "Many of your mothers wish they had left their husbands." Their eyes followed him back to his seat.
Emmanuel patted him on the back. "My father is useless. All he does is sit at home, spend our money on palm wine, and yell at all of us, especially my mother."
Julius pretended not to hear him.
He kept up with class by writing notes with the nub of his pencil in the margins of his math textbook. In English language, he knew most of the words individually but struggled to put them together in new sentences. They were tasked with writing a paragraph about Nigerian Independence Day, a day that was a continual source of pride amongst them while failing to induce the metamorphic change the country was still awaiting. Mr. Chidubem asked Julius to read his essay aloud. Julius could not read his expression, but it reminded him of when Brutus would challenge him to a race around their compound knowing he would win.
Julius rose from his seat slowly and stared at the page of the textbook he had used to write his essay. A droplet of sweat traveled down the back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emmanuel's head bent over a blank piece of paper, relieved to have escaped the instructor's scrutiny.
"The Nigerian Independence Day..."
The conclusion of the essay was greeted with riotous chuckles.
"Hey, all of you quiet." Mr. Chidubem said with one strike of his fist to the desk. Later, students would refer to him as "Judge Chidi" and cry "Order, Order" as a tribute to that infamous, attention-grabbing strike. He surveyed the room until all the mirth had sufficiently dissipated.
"Class, Julius is an example of an illiterate. This is why you need to come to school and do your homework."
Julius legs wobbled as he sat back down in his desk.
Emmanuel nudged him with his elbow. "Hey, he would be illiterate, too, if he was in our position. Why does he think we're here anyway?"
So, were they the same then? After all the visits to the library, the pocket dictionary, his distinguished manner of speaking? Regardless of these things, Mr. Chidubem and his classmates observed them sitting in the far back of the classroom and saw two birds of a feather.
Following the last class of the day, Mr. Chidubem announced there would be tutoring sessions in the evening.
"How is this possible?" Julius asked Jacob.
Jacob shrugged. "Only those in boarding school can go to the evening sessions. Then they will teach new lessons and tomorrow they will continue from there."
Once lessons wrapped up, the group of them gathered at the gate. Those in boarding school had changed into shorts and were kicking around a soccer ball in the field at the center of the school buildings.
They walked home, the sun on their backs.
Once he got back to his house, Julius scrubbed the sweat and dirt from his uniform with a jug of water and hung it up to dry. At their evening meal, there was one bowl at the center of the living room, a jagged edge broken off that time Rosemary had clipped the kitchen door when her ankle suddenly gave out, as it sometimes did. There were three pieces of shaki, one each for Brutus, Lola, and Chigozie. The garri was too soft because there was too much water and too little garri. Julius watched his siblings eat.
He went outside to complete his chores. Mama Obi did not come out with an extra bowl.
She said nothing, which only upset him more. Either she could not see the change in him, or she refused to see it. He thought she understood his innate desires to live inside the world he read about in books. Though she never spoke of her past, he had gathered from family and old friends that she had been born in Abuja to an upper middle-class family and met a young man from Ashawi village while she was working as a secretary at a bank. Michael Obi had left the village at a young age in search of what Ashawi could not offer him. When investors met Michael Obi, they found his bright-eyed, industrious personality reminded them of their younger selves. They showered him with a series of business opportunities that always seemed to fall through. Yet he could always talk his way into getting another loan or gift. Christine Yemi and Michael Obi met when he attempted to break into real estate and ended up falling prey to a devious contractor who disappeared with all his money. When Michael Obi had stridden into the bank, his chin lifted and not so much as a cursory glance in her direction, Christine couldn't help but eavesdrop as he argued for one uninterrupted hour how he deserved yet another loan. When he was on his way out of the building, his fists curled from the failed effort, she ran after him and offered him all her savings if she could assist with managing the business. Christine's family was enraged. Her father had envisioned a life of comfort for his only daughter and had arranged a marriage for her with the son of his closest friend and business partner. They forbade her from spending time with Michael Obi. But she paid them no mind. She rented a flat for him to stay in Abuja and cooked him meals three times a week. At this point of the story, Michael Obi's sister Florence always winked at his mother and said, "She needed a reason to keep coming back to the flat. And one day, she didn't leave."
Her family disowned Christine once she started living with the "pauper" Michael Obi. The real reason why she had made this decision quickly became clear. As her father's daughter, Christine would never have been allowed to take control of the family business. Within years, Christine built an empire with Michael Obi acting as the salesman and Christine commandeering their operations. As the population swelled in Lagos, Christine bought up concrete slabs and instructed Michael Obi to sell them at obscene prices to housing developers. As their capital grew, they were able to do the same with fertilizer, imported cloth, cars, anything they could get their hands on. They built a house in Lagos and owned multiple cars. They had a maid to wash clothes and one to wash dishes and one to prepare all their meals. The villagers gave Michael Obi the title of Chief when he no longer needed it, and Christine became the Chief's wife.
Then Chief Obi woke up one morning and felt Ashawi calling him home. He sometimes took a leisurely drive around Lagos with his long-time driver. Most of the time he and his driver sat in traffic for so long, their conversation withered, leaving behind a poignant silence. When he looked outside of the window at the other rows of cars, he felt unremarkable and estranged from the people around him. No one knew the real Michael. If he ceased to exist, they might shift their weight from one foot to another, but ultimately life would carry on. He started to dream of his childhood spent racing his friends down the dirt road. Of the air clean and untainted air. And of how at night, he could count every star and wish for what he thought he wanted.
The feeling would not subside. He was done with Lagos, done with the city, ready to return home where he belonged. He and Christine Obi shuttered the mansion, piled into the white jeep with all the belongings they had accrued, and returned to Ashawi, where he built an even larger mansion and hired even more house help. The other villagers gaped at the display of grandeur. They welcomed Chief Obi back as one of their own who had accomplished the impossible and praised him relentlessly. His extended family members could not utter a sentence in the village without bringing up their relative Chief Obi. Michael Obi realized he had not felt such unadulterated admiration in a long time, and that he needed them just as much they needed him. In a very dark corner of his mind, he was aware he had done little to deserve this level of adoration. Each morning, he began to look across the long dining table at his wife wearing her thin-framed glasses and going over the company spreadsheets.
Mrs. Christine Obi, formerly known as Madam Obi, was not like the rest of the village women. Lagos and Ashawi were indistinguishable in her mind. She drove the white jeep instead of letting the drivers take her where she wanted to go. She went to the city and returned with the back seats bulging with packages and boxes. On Sundays, she refused to go to church and instead placed slices of cucumbers over her eyes and laid down on the couch in her bathrobe. She never joined the women's meeting and never helped with any of the newborn deliveries, which sent wails into the night that didn't reach her slumbering ears.
Christine Obi had five miscarriages before she had her first child. The village women began to whisper she was cursed and urged Chief Obi to take a different wife. And just as the whispers were rising to a furor, Brutus was born with a sense of self-importance that protected her for a few years. Then, in a rush, came the rest of the siblings, each offering a diminishing modicum of safety. And despite the many years passed, Chief Obi could not ignore the stirring in his blood, a cry for which there was no answer. Perhaps this was what Julius was feeling now.
"Mama, I want to quit school."
"Nonsense. Do you know how much I worked so you could go?"
How could she stand to be here? When she had once worn silk and organza? When she could order whatever meal she wanted in the morning and not even look up when it was set in front of her. And her feet, which she soaked in Epsom salt each evening: once there'd been a house worker who would trim her nails meticulously and paint them the color of the sea.
Julius asked the question that would have earned any of his other siblings a slap across the face. "Why did you leave Papa?"
Now she saw the change, the first cracks in the earth between them. They stared at each other from across an unintelligible expanse.
"I did not expect such rudeness from you. After everything I've done for you?"
"If you never left Papa, we would have money to go to boarding school!"
"Nobody is keeping you away from him. He could take you if he wanted to. But you have never seen his car here, have you? I'm the one who puts food in front of you. I buy the clothes on your back. Otherwise, you'd be one of those boys on the streets with no food to eat and nowhere to rest your head at night. And if you ever speak to me like that again, that is exactly what you can look forward to." Her chin was lifted in impertinence. Julius could imagine this was exactly how she had looked when she had walked out of the house the final time, her eyes blackened and bulging, making it impossible to see in the night, the crisscrossed purple bruises her arms had become, the knots hidden in her curly, tangled hair. With six children lined up right behind her, rubbing sleep from their eyes, not realizing the magnitude of what they were leaving behind.
Shielded in darkness the next morning, Julius emerged from their compound with a bag of water on his hip and a handkerchief tucked in his back pocket. The path to school was imprinted in his head, and he had spent the remainder of the night recounting the steps repeatedly. Over the hills, the sun began to rise and accompany him. It turned a red eye as he approached the stout buildings of Oluwa Primary School and went directly to his own. He found a nearby twig and wiggled it into the simple lock. The classroom was dark. For a moment he looked longingly at the front row and imagined himself amongst the ranks, answering questions with gusto. But the journey had been long, and he was running low on time. He opened the locker of books and began to stuff all the books into his satchel with urgency. At any moment, he expected the door to creak open and someone to announce, "Thief!"
But the moment did not come.
He finished packing in the books and spared a moment to cast another glance over the room. Yesterday had been his first and his last day. They had seen the last of Julius Obi, and he didn't know whether he or his classmates would be more pleased. He lugged the books over his shoulder, enjoying the heft of the bag and anticipating the many hours he would spend in the company of his new books. Julius turned to the door, and then turned around again to take a seat in the front row.
"Yes, Mr. Chidubem," Julius said. "The correct pronunciation is re-cal-ci-trant. This word means to oppose authority and to lack discipline. You have a class of recalcitrant students who cannot appreciate a student of such distinction, such merit, of a caliber no one has ever seen or encountered before. Some students are simply recalcitrant for the sake of being recalcitrant, because they see others are recalcitrant and they want to fit in. This is because they cannot see the futility of their actions."
"I'm aware of the meaning."
Julius stood with such a jolt, the bag went flying and its contents splayed across the front of the classroom floor. He bent his head as a shadow darkened the door.
"I'm a common thief, Mr. Chidubem. You may flog me in the center of the school. You may call the policemen to carry me from this school building. In fact, you may announce it at morning prayers today that Julius Obi is a common thief, a re-cal-ci-trant thief with no respect for the Oluwa school or for any of his classmates."
"That's quite alright," Mr. Chidubem moved closer, taking in the evidence of his crime. "You said your name is Julius?" Now he folded himself into a plastic chair, which appeared uncomfortable. In fact, many of the items in the classroom looked like mismatched objects belonging to different classrooms. Julius noticed the orange bucket used to wash the chalkboard was cracked on the side and the desk was missing one of its feet. Was this really the place he was running from? Julius felt pangs of remorse and embarrassment, expanding to fill each of the empty seats in the classroom.
He started to answer the instructor's question. "That's right sir, my name is Julius..." he trailed off. Perhaps the policemen didn't need to know where exactly they could find him. Now that the Biafran war was over, many of the ex-soldiers had infiltrated the police forces and their appetite for violence surpassed the petty operations of their jobs. "My name is Julius Obi."
"So how did you expect this to go?"
Julius's gaze drifted back to the floor. "You don't care about students like me. I have to do this on my own."
"Do what on your own?"
"Get out of my village."
"Doesn't everyone? You think you're better than the other students?"
"No?"
He gestured towards the chair. "Sit down." Mr. Chidubem walked to the freshly scrubbed chalkboard, one of the chores the students rotated after class with insufficient enthusiasm. "I was once like you. Dirty. Pitiful, ill-fitting uniform. Desperate to learn, even more desperate to please."
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. I'm still here." Mr. Chidubem wrote down, "How to Write an Essay." "The world isn't going to listen to you, it doesn't care that you don't have two kobos to scrape together and your stomach is empty. You have to make them listen."
"Why are you doing this?"
"You will scrub this classroom from top to bottom every morning before our lessons begin at 5:00 AM. Everything must be spotless. After that you will sit in this middle seat in the front row, and you must prove to me you do belong here."
"Why do I have to prove I belong here? Meanwhile Emmanuel and Jacob can laugh at me every time I open my mouth! It would be better if you let me go. Can I just keep one of the textbooks? You have so many. I could even pay you... well, I might not be able to pay you, but I will remember you were kind to me, sir!"
Mr. Chidubem's face became hard like his mother's had the previous night. "No more back talking from you. Please, the five parts of an essay."
Each morning, Julius Obi faithfully cleaned the classroom and sat in the front row while Mr. Chidubem strung together words, diagrams, and figures on the blackboard. At the end of the school year, he was the head boy in his class, a position he maintained even as he advanced to secondary school. At the market, Mama Obi held her head a little higher and could not suppress the small smile curving her lips when the villagers praised her son. Over the years, Mr. Chidubem became more of a mentor to him than a tutor. He shared books he had acquired from university with Julius, but it was never enough. The more Julius read, the more he felt the village shrinking around him. His hunger for knowledge had become like the first crackles of a flame only knowing it wanted more.
Julius Obi realized the villagers would buy the same stockfish every market day until they died. They would gather at a fire pit passing kola nuts and soaking their tongues with palm wine. At these gatherings, the village elders would denounce the corruption of the Nigerian government, praise the newest Fela record, or discuss the western world as though it was another universe they could not touch.
The time would come when he could no longer observe at the fire or stay awake at night reading about faraway places by the light of the full moon. Julius had inherited his father's unrest.
Out of a plethora of options, his immediate circle of friends was puzzled with the final job decision Julius made. On the last day of secondary school, they congregated on a corner of the field, basking in the glow of their certificates and graduation pins. Jacob was going to the University of Nigeria to study economics. Emmanuel had an agreement with Mr. Chidubem to stay on as a teaching assistant in the hopes of one day becoming a teacher himself.
Julius suppressed a small smile. He had waited to go last. "I'm going to work at the airport."
Jacob gaped. "Mr. Professor! You can't be serious. You're meant to join me at university. I've already envisioned our room together, me helping you find a woman who can tolerate your tendency to pontificate, and you helping me pass my first-year courses."
Julius didn't comment further, which prompted Jacob to complain about how Julius could be verbose on topics of government policy and circumspect on matters of life itself.
On his first day of his new job, Julius wore a uniform tailored to fit him perfectly. Each day, he thumbed through passports and stamped them, his fingers lingering over the stiff pages. He felt heady with power. His brain was expanding. Britain. India. USA. Singapore. Julius could pick up the accents after hearing them a handful of times. Regular travelers began to recognize him with a broad smile, impressed with how much he knew about their cultures and how he could engage in conversations about innumerable topics.
The road leading out of the village had led him here. The thing he had long been seeking was within reach—he could feel it. He aggressively saved each paycheck in anticipation. His boss laughed when Julius talked about getting a passport for himself. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a passport? It's impossible for someone like you with no connections. My friend, please go do your job and stop wasting my time." Julius thought briefly of his father, the venerable Chief Obi, but his mother's pride made it impossible for him to ask for help. He would have to make it on his own.
Julius was promoted quickly from ticket agent to a liaison for the high-profile guests flowing through the airport. His job was to ensure they didn't lift a finger throughout their journeys. Businessmen. Lawyers. Journalists. Julius learned how to speak to all of them. He adapted a casual yet formal tone and squaring of his shoulders, allowing him to exist adjacent to their worlds without truly being a part of it. He learned they enjoyed being greeted by their first names, how they liked their drinks, how their partners stayed up on long nights waiting for them to come home. Julius spent those nights with them in the guest lounge sipping tall, frothy glasses of beer and picking their brains. During prolonged layovers, Julius sometimes eschewed the list of sanctioned restaurants he was given and instead took his clients to his favorite haunts. Julius particularly enjoying watching them eat spicy food. He took them to an outdoor restaurant where they folded themselves into plastic chairs and inhaled steaming bowls of pepper soup as their eyes watered. Alongside draughts of palm wine, Julius fed them stories of his childhood. At first, he did so with hesitation. What could they possibly want with the information? But then he began to cultivate certain stories—the hours-long journey to Oluwa Primary School, hundreds of villagers gathering to dance and cook on holidays, a busy day at the market—adding new details during each retelling based on the reactions he received. His clients found certain aspects of his stories quaint and others they absorbed with silent pity. However, the chief reaction amongst all else was fascination. He had spent so long reading about the worlds they inhabited, it never occurred to him they, too, were peering in from the other side of the looking glass. The exchange felt equal. Like Julius, they were searching for an experience they had never had before, and perhaps they thought they could find it in the bottom of a spicy bowl of soup.
It wasn't long before Julius returned to his boss's office with a resignation letter in one hand and his freshly bound passport in the other. He would never forget the look in his boss's eyes because it was not the last time he would see such a look.
"You don't take no for an answer, do you, boy?
"America?" Amaka pressed her hands against her cheeks. "Julius? In America?"
Brutus sat straight up in the chair in his policeman's uniform. He hardly ever changed out of this uniform when he came home for visits, leading Julius to wonder whether he was always conducting police business. "There's no way you can go, it's not safe. This is crazy talk. Mama, tell him!"
Mama Obi's sight had been diminishing for some time. Now she lived in almost total darkness. Julius had to reach out an arm to her sitting in a chair across from him so she could find him. When had she grown so diminutive and frail? These years had been heavy for her to carry.
The hot flash of her gaze reminded him of the young and formidable Christine Obi. "I always knew this day would come. You are a special child, Julius. Go with my blessing."
As he packed to leave for the US, he couldn't help but think of what he would leave behind in Ashawi village. The taste of fresh goat meat roasted on a spitfire on Christmas Eve. The sweetness of a breeze from the south and the soft clay-like sand sinking in between his toes. The palm and coconut trees shielding him from the intense gaze of the sun. The swift stream broke the monotony of the forest with a rush of sound and flickers of cool vapor. Knowing the small house well enough to navigate it with his eyes closed, and then helping Mama find her favorite headdress when her eyes started to fail. Feeling the weight of Chigozie's misplaced feet across his face when they were sleeping. Making Rosemary smile with a joke he'd heard on campus. Telling Amaka everyone liked her so much, they forgot which family she came from. Walking to the village where the twins would haggle for the best price and humming loudly to drown out the insults. The smile splitting Emmanuel's face in half when he received his certificate of completion. The mysterious path leading out of the village, which had always looked more promising than the path he knew.
