By Mazpa Ejikem

“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all”

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are.

*

First, we are growing in the shadows of our Papas — silhouettes of round, lanky, tall, pot-bellied, wasted, and stooping men with knock knees and bowlegs — and we are growing to look like them, or at least that is what people are saying. They are saying, you be your Papa carbon copy; ị dị ka nna gị; o mu oju baba rẹ. But we are not sure if what they are saying is true. Even when we are sneaking into our poor Mamas’ tired make-up bags that is only containing eye pencils, white powder, Aboniki balm, and a broken mirror, or when we are standing on our toes just to peep inside the side-mirrors of the old Molues that are parking in our Face-Me-I-Face-You compounds, we are not seeing this resemblance, and we do not care. Anything they say, we will just be smiling, like the foolish innocent boys that we are: seven, eight plus, nine by November and almost ten-years-old. 

Inside inside our hearts, we know that we are not like our Papas. We have dreams. Bigger dreams. And we are carrying them with the lice on our head and inside our worn-out school bags that are hanging lazily from our shoulders and striking our buttocks anytime we are running to school. Sometimes, after we have put on our school uniforms and have taken two or three spoons of the Tuwo shinkafa, Ewa-goyin, Akamu and Cassava leaf soup remaining from the previous night, our Papas hold our arms and call us by our names: Lotanna, Oreoluwa, Fahad, Emmanuel, and Ita, and are asking us, what are your dreams? They are saying it in Ibibio, Pidgin, Igbo, Hausa and Egbira because they are not knowing how to speak correct English. And we are telling them with our little chattering voices, that we are doctors, lawyers, pilots, engineers, and governors — to be. Sometimes, we are simply saying that we do not know, and our Papas are showing their brown teeth and laughing at our ignorance. Sometimes, they are patting our backs, the way Papas like to pat their sons, and are reminding us that we are going to be late for school if we are not going fast fast. So, we are running off like Belgium rats. We are running into the big world. We are chasing our dreams all over Bwari, Enugu, and Ibadan. We are trekking to school and squeezing our tiny bodies through the busy markets of Onitsha, Lagos, and Aba. We are returning to do our homework in our jam-packed houses — one-bedrooms full of old clothes and cockroaches in Nnewi, Uyo and Bayelsa. We are falling asleep and pouring saliva on the drawings of dogs and goats and in our Modules and Readers. We wake up sweating and itching everywhere. We are breathing the air coming inside from the potty at the backyard. We are hungry, and our stomachs are starting to cry for Ofe Ogbono, Yam Porridge, Ewedu, and Jollof Rice. We open our mouths wide and yawn. We stretch. And when we are hearing the other children outside in the compound, we forget our hunger and join them to play ororo, police and thief, boju-boju and tinko-tinko.  

*

As we are growing and seeing plenty things, the internet is surprising us too much because anything we are asking it, it is answering us. So, even though we do not have our own handsets, we like to borrow from our friends, who like to borrow from their Mamas when their Mamas are falling asleep with their mouths open in the parlour. We are staying long in odd places so that we can live inside the ‘internet world’ that is more interesting than our own. We are staying in the latrine, inside abandoned motor cars, at the back of a big mango tree and under the bed, just to be pressing handsets. We are squinting, and we are shining our eyes wide. We are smiling and laughing, but not too loudly, so that nobody will be hearing us. We are drawing our eyebrows together and holding our breathing because the things we are seeing on the glowing screen is fantabulous. We are listening carefully for footsteps, because we do not want to be caught; to be stopped from meeting all the stars, all of them in our imaginations: Michael Jackson, P-square, Didier Drogba, Alicia Keys and Chris Brown. We are wishing and wishing until we are dozing and sleeping off, holding pure fantasies inside our hands. 

Soon, we are wanting phones of our own, so we learn to be begging and saving and stealing money. We buy fairly used Motorola, secondhand Nokia, or Express Music that we are using rubber band to hold in one piece. We are very happy, and our world is looking complete because we are now enjoying Google, Wikipedia, Pornhub and Facebook all the time. We are enjoying nakedness, colours, beauty and music. The music is something else. It is making us very crazy. Sometimes on Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday, we are lying that we are not feeling fine so that we will not go to school. We will stay back home, alone, with the doors locked from inside, and we will be twisting our bodies to Beyonce and Lady Gaga. The first time we are kissing a boy, it is inside one of these songs. That day, the music is loud, and we are not feeling our bodies anymore. We feel like we are floating.   

*

We learn the world is hard the hard way. The first lectures are titled 'Loss’. But this is not the first time we are learning it. We have lost our pencils, stockings, kayan wasa and purses of rubber bands and crayons. But this one is different. It is paining us inside our chest because our Mamas and brothers and friends are dying because of high blood pressure, strong malaria, too much sugar inside the blood and motor accidents (because the roads have plenty potholes, and the drivers like to clear their eyes with Ogogoro and Kai-Kai early in the morning before they enter the road). Sometimes, we are not even knowing what is killing them. But life will be going on. That is what our friends are telling us when we go to spend the night in their houses because we are afraid to sleep with the smell of dead bodies. They are saying that we should drown our sorrows inside the whisky and lift our pains to Baba God inside the smoke coming out from the igbo in our mouths. We drink. We high. We vomit. And we sleep.    

But the world does not stop teaching us. These days, the world is looking at us somehow. With the corner of their eyes. Like we are Boko Haram people. Maybe it is the way we are walking — like girls, or the way our hands are moving everywhere when we are talking, like our sisters. Sometimes, our Mamas and Papas call us into their rooms in the middle of the night and ask, Ṣe o fẹ awọn ọmọkunrin? Do you like boys? And we raise our voices and swear, Allah ya haramta! God forbid! We say we are looking at girls.

Sometimes, it is the woman who is selling Bolé and Fish at the junction or the mechanic who is always squeezing our little sisters’ tiny breasts that is making fun of us when we come around: See as you dey do like woman; Nwoke-nwanyi! Homo! And we are feeling embarrassed, and we turn around and go back home. As we are walking away, we are feeling their eyes x-raying our souls from our backs and we are starting to walk stiff, like bamboo sticks, with our legs far apart and anger swelling inside our bellies. When we reach our houses, we hide and start to cry.  

Again, the other day, the day before Easter and Eidel-kabir, the preacher is sweating from the tip of his nose and talking about Leviticus, Prophet Lut and Gomorah. He is shouting that those men who are liking men should repent or else they would receive the wrath of the Allah, Chineke, and Osanobwa. Our Mamas are there with us, and they turn to look at us one kain, and we are looking away. That night our Mamas sneak us out of the house into the shrines of Prophet Japhet, Bro. Uwhokori and Imam Sadiq. There, we are lying naked in the middle of small rooms. There is candle, incense, and holy water. There is our Mamas standing by the door with their arms folded under their breasts. They are watching and praying and singing and crying as the men in a white jellabiya and cassocks are lashing us koboko and knacking our heads with the cross of calvary. They are speaking in tongues and saying that they will cure us of our diseases. Our flesh is tearing all, blood and water everywhere. Our eyes are doing like the world is spinning around us. We are screaming and weeping and confessing that by His stripes we are healed. 

*

So, we start to have girlfriends — Amarachi, Bisola, Cassandra, Habibah and Ejiroghene. We are saying  that we love them so much. We are not sure we know what love means. It is what we are hearing people say when we are watching TV and listening to the FM. We are holding their hands. We are kissing them on their cheeks when nobody is watching us. They are smiling like mumu and calling us sweet, sweet names like Honey pie, Nkem, Sweetheart and Ifemi. But inside our heads, we like to be watching other boys: the ones that are wearing sweatpants and sleeveless jersey tops to walk about; the ones that are always playing football on the streets on Sundays, when the roads are less busy, and everyone is having the time to. Sometimes, we are watching our girlfriends’ elder brothers — the ones that like to do big boy — and we are wishing many many things. 

One day we are asking our girlfriends to take our man-hoods inside their mouths, and they do it. Under the staircase, in the toilet, inside dark places between a motor car and a wall. The yellow moon is making their foreheads shiny and golden as they are sweating and trying to sustain our hardness so that we can feel good. We are helping them by thinking of Jalil, Donald, Udo, Chibuzor and Dami inside our heads and small time, we come in their faces.   

*

There is fire everywhere. It is burning loud in Yenegoa, Port-Harcourt and Upper Iweka. It is raining flames all over Jos, Warri, and Osogbo. The fire touches us and we are shrinking. We are folding ourselves into very tiny pieces and inserting them into cracks on the wall. It is how we are protecting our lives when the atmosphere is becoming too hot to bear. Sometimes we are seeing a heavy cloud of darkness that is hanging over our heads and whispering like masquerades into our ears that we are not belonging here. We want to carry our bags and run because we cannot stand our skin burning with the curses that are coming out of the lips of strange people who think that we should be stoned to death, buried alive or burnt to ashes. People who are looking at us as if we are wild things. Is it not what they are doing to Duke, Aminu, Inah, Chukwuemeriwo and Makinde? They are hitting them on their heads, necks, bellies, and chests, with bamboo sticks, iron rods, four-by-four woods, and big stones, as big as our heads. The boys are crashing down, and as if it is not even enough, they are putting rings of tyres around their necks and setting them ablaze with petrol that is even scarce. Even when the army people are passing by, they just stop, and look for a small time, then they start their engine and drive away.

Those boys were our friends and brothers and classmates. They were beautiful, slim, plump, tall, hairy, innocent, and simple people. They were selling memory cards in Plaza, washing cars by the road, hawking cold pure water and Fanta, and taking their Papas' Red Bororo, Muturu and N’dama to the field. But because they are looking for love, because the world is not understanding their kind of love, the world is killing them. After the bodies have become ashes, we go home feeling sad. We are forcing ourselves to eat the Pounded yam and Egusi, Ukwa, Miyan Kuka and Efo Riro, that our Mamas have prepared because the fire is melting our appetite too. Our Papas open their mouths and say, it serves them right! Our Papas are calling them abominations, mad people and evil children that will be bringing curse to their families. Our Papas are talking this thing in the same way they are talking about kidnappers, Fulani herdsmen and armed robbers. Our Mamas are just staring at nothing on the ground and saying nothing. Small time, we stand up and tell them that we cannot eat anymore, that our bellies are full and we are feeling sleepy.

*

Many years pass and we are seeing on our handsets and in the cybercafé that we have been admitted into Delta State University, University of Maiduguri, Federal University of Technology, and Alvan Ikoku College of Education. We are going to study English and Literature, Pharmacy, Law, Anatomy, Banking and Agriculture. There, we are going to meet our lovers in the main library, inside the lecture rooms, at the keke park, and inside a bus going to somewhere. There, we will draw the curtains close and kiss with our tongues. We will drink spirit and smoke weed. We will fuck and we will be happy. But still, we will be afraid because we are not knowing how the world will end for all of us: Fire? Disease? Accident? Rope around our neck? Or sharp things that can cut the threads in our wrists that is linking us to reality? 

*

Now, we are grown-ass men. We are twenty-five plus, twenty-seven and half, and nearly thirty. We are engineers, lawyers, writers, fashion designers and runway models. We are sitting in Crunches, Pleasure Park, Shoprite and Tinapa. We are taking a walk through Yankari National Park , Lekki Leisure Lake and Tarkwa Bay Beach. We are saying soft things to women who do not know us: Priscilla, Folake, Edidiong, Nkechi and Jamilat; we are telling them that we are so very much in love with them. They look inside our eyes and say they love us with all their hearts. We are also telling them that we are not like our Papas. They are busy giggling and laughing. We are telling them that we do not like mirrors. They are asking, why? We are saying that it is because we have dreams. Big dreams that are bigger than the things we see in the mirrors. They are demanding, tell me about your dreams, and in response we give them wedding rings in the presence of cheering spectators. Our Papas and Mamas are there, and we see how their faces are drawn into laugher and joy. 

One week later, we are in a conference room in Kenya; on an emergency duty at the National Hospital, Abuja; on a business trip in Ghana; off-shore; and in bed with our lovers —Chukwuebuka, Hamzah, Michael, Olubunmi and Sinebari; in three, four, five-star hotels in Lagos, Owerri, Kano and South Africa. There, our bodies become one, and after we have made love, they take our hands, squeeze them gently and ask us about our new wives. We smile and say, she is very happy.

This story was originally published in Daybreak: An Anthology of New Nigerian Fiction.

Mazpa Ejikem (@mazpa_md) is a Nigerian physician and writer whose work has appeared in Pank Magazine, Daybreak (an anthology), Afritondo, AFREADA and elsewhere. Emerging with 15 academic awards, he was named Best Graduating Student of his medical college in 2019. He is a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship finalist and a winner of the 2018 LIPFest Poetry Prize, 2020 Collins Elesiro Literary Prize and 2021 ALITFest Prize for Short Stories. He was named finalist for the 2019 AWDT African Writers Awards —Short Story Category, and the 2019 K & L Prize for Short Fiction. He currently spends his time teaching, reading, and thinking deeply about practicing medicine.

- All rights to this story remain with the author. Please do not repost or reproduce this material without permission.

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