LOVE MEDICINE (2)

‘Nsima! Nsima!’ someone in the corridor was yelling and when it went on for too long, the baritone voice was out there calling for Nsima and ordering the television to be put off.

‘People are outside needing water to buy but you’re inside watching TV. You don’t know how many people are out there wishing to have the opportunity you’re taking for granted. The little money you’re making might seem like nothing to you but millions right now are desperately looking for such just to feed. Nsima, you better learn to be serious with any business I ask you to handle. Watching movies all your life won’t help you in any way.’

‘Grandpa, I wasn’t watching any movie.’

‘As if I didn’t hear the sound from the telly? Go out there and attend to the customers!’

I went to bring a block as the lad ran outside.

Abasiama had raised three courses of blocks when Nsima’s grandmother walked in to assess our work.

With a voice at a level slightly above a whisper, she said: ‘So this man really means to build a kitchen here for that woman? How mean could these people be!’

‘No. He said,’ the mason replied, ‘that it’s going to be a store that things placed here would be put in as he’d use the veranda to relax.’

‘He’s lying,’ the woman replied with a wry smile. ‘He wants to build a kitchen for that woman. That woman had been doing all sorts of things to claim everything as she controlled him to act as she wanted and I’m sure he’d eaten her love medicine. Or how would a once sensible man suddenly be totally senseless?’

There was a puzzled look on Abasiama’s face but as I had also heard Nsima’s grandfather speak, I said in the same low tone as the two others with me: ‘Daddy said it’s a store …’

Nsima’s grandfather was chatting heartily with someone, looked like a guest, deep in his living room and so his wife had ample time here to make her accusations.

‘It’s a lie,’ the elderly woman again said with the same wry smile as before. ‘Let me empty my mind before these things would kill me. That woman wants to control him and take everything he owns. She has poisoned his mind against me and he now sees me as his enemy. Could you imagine an old man who terribly was sick and I ran around to see him back on his feet is now accusing me of trying to kill him? That’s why he’s building this kitchen so she would be cooking here for him.’

We had nothing more to add but pretended to return to our work.

‘I learnt this love medicine can make a man mad and I’m now beginning to believe it’s true. Before you complete the work, you’d realize what I’m saying,’ Nsima’s grandmother added and walked away.

My body had used up the food I ate in the morning. Though the lockdown had made food vendors scarce on the streets of the town, each time I went to pick a block, I was keenly watching for sellers of affordable items I’d use to replenish myself as the work robustly progressed. As I found nothing appealing, I’d contemplated taking permission from Abasiama to go look for a kiosk to get edible articles that would arrest the ongoing rioting in my gut.

The lady who plucked the feathers of the chicken addressed me as I passed by her kitchen where she had returned to cook. ‘When you put down the block, come back and take this.’

What it was I didn’t see but I put down the block and returned to meet the woman. I stood on the veranda with my soiled hands and clothes to receive a tray loaded with a big container of ice-cold water, two plates of beans laced with plantain, dry garri in two bowls and two spoons, one filled with salt. I met Abasiama with the tray.

‘The woman that was plucking feathers from the chicken gave us this,’ I said, standing behind the mason who was rubbing the mortar around a block with his trowel. He abruptly stopped, turned around and seeing the things in the tray, beamed. He pointed to the nearest stack of blocks and asked me to put the tray there.

Work automatically stopped as I was asked to arrange for a comfortable place where we could sit and eat. As he drew his portion of food close to himself and I drew mine close to myself, he was beaming and whispering words to me.

‘I built that small apartment at the back. And when Nsima was in nursery school, then my machine didn’t break down, I was paid daily to take him to and from school – the boy is her, I mean Nsima’s grandma, first daughter’s second son. That young woman sweeping the yard in the morning is her first son’s wife. Nsima and all the other children in the compound are her grandchildren. The lady giving us food is her co-wife …’

I quickly jumped in to clarify what all along had been bugging my mind. ‘The old man just married the second wife?’

‘No. He was a real big man in the Ministry of Works for many years and had married them a long time ago. Nsima’s grandma is a retired nurse and has four children – two boys and two girls. Her co-wife has three girls (all married) and a boy, the youngest of them all who is in the university but Nsima’s grandma’s sons are all graduates. Her first son owned the big shop outside and the bus distributing pure water.’

While going out to bring materials for work, I’d seen people buying sachet water in bags and the adult man resembling Nsima would pull in his bus and would load with the salesgirl the bags of water into it.

I asked the mason further: ‘So Nsima’s grandma’s daughters are not married?’

‘They are but seemed to have issues with their marriages,’ Abasiama replied. ‘But what I wanted to say is, all this while I’d been working here, it’s only her co-wife who would give me food to eat and cold water to drink seeing I was sweating hard under the sun to do good work for them.’

I smiled. I knew where Abasiama was coming from. Just leaving college, I’d applied for a place in the civil service to hold the chalk and teach pupils in the classroom. While waiting for an appointment letter (which was rare these days), I was selectively doing menial jobs and sometimes, I would work with the mason. Wherever we had worked, the mason eulogized those who would go out of their way to appreciate him. In the past among our folk, giving food and drink to those who worked for you (like in clearing the farm or building a hut) was tradition but the practice seemed to have faded away with time especially here in the heart of our town. But Abasiama thought it should be the norm.

‘Nsima’s grandma belongs to the new school,’ I said. ‘She puts everything in the money she pays you.’

Abasiama blinked dismissively at me. ‘How many times have I worked for her and she cheated me? She’d even collect money for the pure water I’d ask for to quench my thirst while working for her. New school, my foot!’

I returned to my food, smiling and attempted rushing it while Abasiama was ceremoniously and joyously eating his. I was hoping to spirit the eating utensils back before the retired nurse could return as she would definitely, if she caught us eating her rival’s food, not fail to dump us in the same madhouse with her husband.

THE END

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