LatinosUSA

“Our scars make us know that our past was real.”

— Jane Austen

“Your POS… Your POS here!”

A teenage girl hawks well garnished fried Ponmo from a mini-bucket strapped to her left side; waving a machine, commonly used at point of sale, for payment.

At 08:00pm sharp, Friday night, Magbon red-light district; a hangout spot pulsing with the community’s strange, addictive rhythm.

“Your POS… Your POS here!”

The teen called out, then approached a table seated around by men of goodwill; many men who thinks conquering Eden’s garden as reprisal for the betrayal — for the co-signed murder! One of the men, with a black tank top, revealing his right arm’s tattoo of strange images, smoking cigarettes like a chimney.

“I want to withdraw ₦10,000”

She chuckled, “should I include the charges?”

“Yes, please!”

From the still silence binding the two of them in a middle of transaction, muting the loud afrobeats jam, slamming through two opposite speakers — continued holding the silence.

The conversation that was expressed as an utter abandonment; then a cloudburst occur in connection with thunderstorm; violent uprushes of air, it pours down heavily.

“Please can I join you guys?” She asked hurriedly.

“Yes, you can!”

As she tried making up space for herself at the table, she overhears something that makes her choice unsettling; “omo you carry back o, one said with a smirk pointing the next man to her. She shrugged. They both giggled watching her take her place in the midst of many men like the Queen of a band of thieves. She cast a glance at everyone at the table. Analysing her escape if something goes wrong: stay dry and safe (maybe), and risk the night?

“What’s your name?”

“Shindara,” she said — stretching out her arms to see if the rain has subsided, maybe going home would be the next point of action, as it’s already getting dark — and uncertain, midnight is approaching (tick-tocking to her), the sky’s heavily leaking; and her poor single mother would be on the lookout for her. She thought.

Her mother, Iya Shindara is a 37-year-old roadside seller of affordable alcoholic beverage in sachet. The lost men; the lust men always congregate at her place when the sun is down, until late in the night, engaging in pointless banter, fueled by unrestrained desire for more. She claimed her husband had passed. That is the pass to be loose to everything that comes with open arms — to everything that deeps her face in their pockets — to everything that assures her of a day’s meal.

Although dropped out of JSS1, Shindara has towed the path already, shining in her youthful glo, and God-awful beauty, ‘Omo Pupa’ as she’s fondly referred to in the community. If men were a place, she goes in and out, at will.

“Now that’s late, what are your charges…”

“You mean, the POS thing?” She was curious.

“No, I want you for the night”

A whole night, tight with lots of closed thought, dark feelings and imaginings escaping via every sip of alcohol; the horn-man appearing real in every trace of her thinking, she muttured “Shindara” helplessly, hurling herself off the cold floor, and carried herself gracefully out of her room, still in the dress of two days ago. She is befuddled.

Knocking with frightened fist on the door of a house across the road, in a public compound where movement isn’t restricted — strangers and occupants alike. The mother’s face in the doorway, frozen!

“Good morning Iya Shindara, is there a problem?”

Eyes wide, “how are you Simbi? When last did you see Shindara?”

“Last week Thursday,” Simbi words dripped, then followed silence.

Caught up in dramatising her ordeal, thereby causing a scene — passer-by stopped to fill their ears with hearsay, and their eyes with a supposed complex image of what ifs…