The Girl with the Louding Voice(37)

I draw a breath, and it feel too thick, it block my throat, make me cough.

There are peoples squeezing their self on the road between the cars. Everybody is selling everything they are seeing to sell, even the mobile of telephone and DVD movie. One man is holding something like block-milk and pressing his nose on the window-glass on my side of the car.

“Buy cold ice cream!” he is saying. “Hello, baby girl,” he say to me. “No ice cream for you today?”

When we don’t give him answer, the man leave our front.

Another man jump in front of our car. He is wearing a green singlet and black trouser, holding a round bottle with foam-water inside of it. Before I can ask what he is doing, he press the bottle-cover and pour the foam-water on the front-glass of the car, pull a brown cloth from his pocket, and begins to wipe the water.

“Get away from my windscreen,” Mr. Kola say, pressing the horn, peen. “I swear I will jam you with my car. Move out of my way.”

But the man is not even doing as if he can hear Mr. Kola. He wipe the glass fast, fast, up and down, left and right. I am trying to not laugh because the cloth is leaving more dirty on the glass than before, and I am thinking maybe it is oil inside the bottle. When he finish the wiping, he shake the cloth, fold it, and put it inside his pocket. He smile, put his hand to his head, make a salute. “God bless you, sah,” he say, “we keep it clean for you to be seeing the road.”

“Look at this idiot,” Mr. Kola say, “he wants me to pay him for staining my windscreen. God punish you.”

I didn’t sure the man is hearing Mr. Kola. He is just standing there, showing his teeths in a smile, touching his head in salute, and saying, “God bless you, sah,” until Mr. Kola move the car front, and the man run off to the car behind us.

“Nuisance,” Mr. Kola say. “Idiot. Nuisance.”

The car move again to near one boy, about six years of age. His red t-shirt is hanging on his long neck like a hanger, red baffroom slippers on his feets. He is looking me, but his eyes feel like they are far away from this place, lost inside another city, another time of life. He touch his hand to his mouth, wave me bye-bye, touch his hand to his mouth again. There is a signboard on his neck: HUNGER. HELP PLS.

“What is this boy wanting?” I ask Mr. Kola.

“He’s a beggar,” Mr. Kola say.

In Ikati, we don’t have begging childrens. Even if the mama and papa of a child is not having moneys, they don’t send their childrens to beg. They wash and clean and pick dustbin, and the girls will marry and the mama and papa will collect bride-price and use to eat, but the childrens don’t beg for food.

“I am feeling a little hunger, sah,” I say after we move the car front again. It twist my stomach with no warning, the hunger, but I am talking with a low voice because I feel shame to be asking for food after all the help him and Iya have help me.

“You want a sausage roll?” he ask as he roll down the window on his side and use his hand to be calling one seller that is carrying tray of small, small bread on his head.

“Sauce or what-you-call-it?” I say.

“It is just bread with meat inside,” he say. “Sausage roll.”

“Yes, sah,” I say.

“How much?” Mr. Kola ask the man.

“One hundred naira,” the man say, and pull out one small bread from the tray. “Very hot. Fresh from bakery.”

“Give me three.” Mr. Kola use one hand to hold wheel-steering and another to pull out fresh notes of moneys from a bundle in his pocket. I watch the bundle, feeling sad at how he squeeze dirty money that cannot buy even two of the sausage for Iya this morning, as he is paying the man with the clean notes.

“Eat two, leave one for me,” he say, giving me the bag of food.

The meat inside is small, hard, feel like I am eating salty chewing gum, but I am too hungry, so I swallow it before I finish biting it.

The okadas on the road in Lagos is too plenty. Left, right, here, there is just the motorcycle-taxi everywhere, and they are entering in front of cars with no fear, inside out, moving around the road like streams of water. The people sitting on the back of the motorcycle are wearing one kind plastic cap that is too big for their head, and when I ask Mr. Kola what is it, he say, “That is a helmet. Everybody riding okada in Lagos must wear it or else the governor will put you in jail.”

“You will go to prison if you don’t wear helmet cap?” I ask as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Yes,” he say.

I want to ask more questions because what he is saying is not making sense, but I am seeing something else that is catching my eye: big bus. Plenty of them. Yellow with black lines on it. Some of them is carrying load that is tie to the bus, the other of them are carrying peoples. The one next to our car is having the door open. Some of the peoples inside the bus are lapping other peoples. There is one man holding the door open and his body is hanging outside it. The man is shouting, “Falomo straight! Enter with your correct change!”

“Why is he not sitting inside the bus?” I ask.

“Some bus conductors hang on to the bus in Lagos,” Mr. Kola say. “So that they can sell their seat. Thank God, the traffic is moving.”

Mr. Kola forward the car, and soon we are leaving all the noise behind us and climbing one road that is going up, up, above one river that is stretching far, far under us, and even if you stretch your neck and look it, you cannot see where the river is ending. On the river, there is a fisherman in the afar, looking like a stick on the water. White boats are going along of it too, canoes carrying peoples.