I Do Not Come to You by Chance

by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Every human being deserved at least one person to laugh at his jokes, no matter how dry.

As soon as we arrived, I understood why Merit had been so eager to come here, why this was the place where everybody went these days. There was a white couple and child sitting at one table and two white men sitting at another. These ones were not real white people like Britons and Americans, though. They looked more like Lebanese or Syrians or one of that type of people, but it did not matter. I had observed the same phenomenon in every Nigerian city I had visited. Any joint that was frequented by any category of white people automatically shot up in ratings amongst indigenes.

The ticket holder of the NAP gubernatorial ticket was sitting on the bed with a towel wrapped around his waist, shouting into his cellular phone. There were three Indian girls in exotic Indian wear, massaging different parts of his body. Apparently, the local market was no longer sufficient; my uncle was now hiring expatriate genitalia.

‘There’s a pimple on my cheek,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Press it.’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘There’s a pimple on my cheek,’ Cash Daddy said again. ‘Press it.’ I realised that he was talking to his Indian girls. Apparently, none of them expected that talking or listening would be part of the job description. They ignored his instruction. ‘Kings, I don’t think these girls understand English. Explain to them what I’m saying.’

I sank back in the chair. It was all my fault. I should have known that, sooner or later, she would hear something. Merit might not have been so mad if I had told her myself. After all, 419er or no, was I not still Kingsley? Was I not the man who had come to my family’s rescue after my father had failed? Was I not the man setting aside my own dreams for the sake of my mother and my siblings? Was I not the man still making efforts to reach out to my mother, even when she had been so judgmental and unreasonable?

Of all the emotions that kept me wide awake that night, the one that stayed with me until the following morning was anger. I was angry with my mother, angry with my father, angry with myself for allowing my family to exercise so much control over my existence. Cash Daddy was right. Relatives were the cause of hip disease. And schizophrenia and dementia and hypertension and spontaneous combustion.