I

There is a moment when you know someone has changed. It might be as slight as a glimmer in their eyes or as grand as a declaration from them. It might wash over you, the way cold water hits you on a harmattan morning causing your teeth to jam each other uncomfortably and your skin to tingle. Many times, you will ignore that change because you do not like it, you will ignore it like a cow ignores the ticks on its back. That moment, in its subtlety or grandeur, will mark a division in whatever connection you have with that person. There will be a before and after, whether you chose to acknowledge it or not will not matter because its existence is not yours to control because, once again, there is a moment when you know someone has changed.

With you that moment was a cold evening in Port-Harcourt and a sunny afternoon in Michigan – or at least that was what you told Achenyo over the Facetime call. 

The exact details of that call are lost to him, muddled in the mire of his memories, but he remembers how you sounded over the horrible internet connection; how, as you alternated between an annoying pixilation and clarity, your face – framed by an unkempt beard – seemed more distant than the oceans that separated both of you, how you used the cover of your pen to torture the small insect on your desk while you droned on to him about classes, tests, flings with random girls and your new friend, Ryan. 

Just before the call ended, you decapitated the insect and broke into a smile that sent a small shiver to his body causing him to sink deeper into the blanket he covered himself with.   

II

There is a specific way you miss a place that becomes a throbbing pain in your chest. You carry this pain because your mind picks one image and replays it repeatedly, each time more vivid than the previous so that as you walk the hallways of a university in a country that is not yours, you are transported to the hotness of the small kitchen in your home in Port-Harcourt. The sweet and spicy smell of coconut rice replaces the empty smell of the hallways, your mother’s voice telling you to give her the Cameroon pepper replaces the loud but vague murmur of the students, and the lingering taste of coffee is replaced by the coconut rice you have tasted a thousand times but cannot taste at that moment, no matter how hard your mind tries.

This is how your mind wanders. Your routine alternates between classes, your dorm room, and the odd visit to the coffee shop, but your mind is never with you in those moments. It is miles away, across oceans sitting on the weathered sofa – padded with thick blankets so people can sit comfortably – with your mother as you watch The Johnson’s on African Magic. You do not quite like the humor of the series, but seeing your mother throw her head back in laughter is like a hug of satisfaction. She is alone now so you relive these moments with a fear that you will not return to meet her. 

Other times, you are trying hard to focus in class, your fingers on your temple as if to control some superpower, but it fails. Your mind, again, wanders to your sister’s room which doubles as the home storage. Pillars of old books, pots and plates, electrical appliances – two dusty rice cookers and a microwave among others – that were never used, and clothes in dirty brown cartons towering over her never arranged bed. You crouch over her at the small table in the corner of the room the sunlight reaches and tell her the almighty formula to solve her quadratic equation. She frowns in defiance because her teacher did not teach her that method, but you persist because you, not her, are the one who went for the Senior Mathematics Olympiad competition – and won.  

It gradually gets more difficult for your mind to wander. Every time you want to remember your mother, you are held by your thoughts and told to perform small evils as some kind of appeasement, so you steal a muffin from the coffee shop and immediately regret it and leave a generous tip. Then you break all your roommate’s pencils but replace them. Then you leave the shower running but do not go back to turn it off. You do more evils without the regret or restitution and they become more elaborate, more thrilling especially when you put on the fire alarm setting off waves of pandemonium. 

Michigan was your mother’s idea. “Oga this is a scholarship, what nonsense are you saying about going to FUTO,” she said, dismissing your opinion about rejecting the scholarship so you could be close to her. She wanted the best for you and you wanted to always be with her, but the best at that point was not with her. It was five years away from her separated by a chasm of oceans because of an education Nigeria could not provide. You were scared because this is only the second time in your life you are away from your mother, and you know what happened the first time.

III

“You no suppose dey far from your mama,” Aunty Ify said, interrupting the silence.

You keep on selecting the beans, separating them in a way reminiscent of god separating the saints and sinners in the Bible, and do not look up at your aunty partly because you are too fixated on the task, partly because you are tired to the bone, and partly because you find her strange – and not in the interesting way.

“Na your mama hold your mind, na so our Papa talk before im die,” she continued. “You no see as you been dey for that school wey you go? But your mama no wan gree, she think sey her power strong pass.”

You head remains down but everything from your only term in boarding school comes rushing through that small window. You remember how you couldn’t concentrate in class, how Mr Oris asked you the functions of a mother during social studies class and you started shaking because you missed your mother sorely, so much that your mind did not have a base. Miss Cythia said during one CRS class, “the earth was without form and void”, and that is what your mind is away from your mother. So, you find form and void in the evil of your thoughts because good is not easy. You press a pillow over Bayo’s face because he insulted your mother, you bite off Malik’s ear because you think he is laughing at you, you descend into the evil so deeply and hate everyone except Achenyo because, like a child holding a kite during a windy day, he never lets go. 

IV

There is a sinister strangeness to Ryan that you cannot quite grasp. The closest emotion that can describe how you feel is the fear that courses through your body whenever you walk past dangerous places in Port Harcourt: you know that harm is imminent but you do not know how. The thing is, you are attracted to it because your mind longs for some definition. Absence from your mother makes your heart grow fonder. Of evil. And Ryan knows because he smiled at you that day you switched on the fire alarm and he has guided you through every deed in a way that you do not own yourself again. 

The phone rings one morning as you sharpen a small knife on a whetting stone, part of your plan to slash tyres of random cars in the parking lot during classes. You pick the call and hear Achenyo’s voice but do not quite hear it.

“Mother… phone… spoilt… call… soon…”

The call ends and you and Ryan leave and go to the parking lot for your daily dose of evildoing. While slashing tires, you see a small cat wander towards you, its fur brown like the jacket you are wearing. You walk away from it, but something keeps on throbbing in your mind becoming almost physical as you feel pulses in your hand. You keep on walking away, the distance from the cat amplifying the throbbing and pulsing, then you turn and quickly walk back to the cat and grab it by its tail as it tries to run away. It shrieks as you stick the knife deep into its side and you do it again. And again. And again. Till the cat is limp in your hand and the throbbing and pulsing has stopped. You look at the dead cat and almost feel regret, but you turn and see Ryan smile at you which stomps out the regret like the last embers of a fire.

You see Aunty Ify in a dream that night. You see her with a man you do not know but you know is your grandfather. 

V

Three weeks have passed and everyday you, supported by Ryan, have done a new evil: killed small animals, thrown rocks put in socks at people under the cover of darkness, stolen from stores and many other things. You no longer ask yourself why you do these things, you just do them like you breathe – without thinking or planning.  

So it comes as a shock when you walk towards your dorm with Ryan, hands bloodied from, not a small animal this time, a small person left in a puddle of blood beside the highway, when you see a familiar figure that had been buried in the recesses of your mind, covered by the dirt of your evils. 

You look at your mother, the familiar lines on her face multiplied by worry, and you begin to feel a small thing, like a tingle. When she holds you in her hug, you feel a warmth you had forgotten you missed and then you feel a thousand regrets for the things you have done: for the first time you hear the cat whimper as you stab it and you feel the struggle of the child whose blood remains on your hands.

You turn to look at Ryan, to reassure your evils, but you do not see him. He is gone. Your mother holds you as if to grab unto the atoms of your being and repeatedly says,

“Papa said this thing before he died, Papa said this thing before he died…”