Hurray! It's Finally Here!!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you 'SPOTS', the first installment in my much anticipated CRUNCHIES series. Enjoy!
I’m sprawled on a sofa in the parlour, playing a football game on my Xbox. My league-topping Arsenal team is conceding an awful lot of goals today because, despite all my efforts, I can’t bring myself to concentrate. I hear the faint sounds of Mama’s shuffling feet from her room upstairs and tension tightens my chest. She’ll find out soon enough, that I know for sure.
She confirms my fears almost immediately and when I hear her high-pitched yelling of my name-‘Kanayo! Kanayo!!’ – I know that the trouble I’ve been anticipating has finally found me.
I hurry up the stairs and appear at the door to her room, trying to look upset about her interrupting my gaming but she completely ignores the look on my face. She is standing beside her wide open mini-fridge, anger swelling in her eyes. She has found out.
‘I kept some juice packs in this fridge for my guests this morning but I can’t find them anymore, where are they?’ She blurts.
‘I don’t know Mama’ I say instantly. She narrows her eyes at me.
‘I SAID’ she emphasizes, ‘where are the juice packs?’
‘Mama, I don’t know’ I say again- this time my voice rises an octave- ‘why don’t you ask Ogechi?’
‘Because your sister never does things like this, but you…’ she pauses and bites her lips bitterly, her face morphing into a pained expression. ‘Have you started again, Kanayo?’ she asks in a quieter tone, after a few seconds. I don’t reply, although I know what she’s talking about.
You see, I’ve always had this obsessive compulsion to pilfer things that aren’t mine, even if they’re useless to me. I just can’t help it. It’s been a problem for me right from my childhood. Mama has taken me to all the prophets she knows and I’ve been put through deliverance sessions, intense fasting, marathon prayers by the beach and even immersion in tubs of Holy Water, yet very little has changed.
‘You don’t know abi?’ Mama asks impatiently. Still, I don’t reply. With a sudden leap, she brushes past me and walks swiftly down the lobby. I know where she’s headed. My room.
My room is a giant mess of cluttered clothes and unwashed cups but, despite gazing around and absorbing all the details, Mama makes no comment about it. Instead, she begins to ransack the whole place and soon my room begins to look like a category-3 hurricane danced inside it. Just when I think she’s going to give up the search, she stretches her arm beneath my bed and produces the tattered polythene bag where I keep my old shoes. Immediately, a tight knot forms in my stomach. She dips her hand into the depths of the bag and extracts a juice pack, and then another. I’ve been discovered.
Instantly I get on my knees, pleading with tears flooding my face. Mama glares at me with a dangerous look which is a mixture of anger and disappointment.
‘Kanayo, I thought you promised me this would never happen again’ she says in a melancholic voice, her juice-pack laden hands quivering slightly, ‘what made you do this?’
Shame clamps my mouth shut and I find it impossible to answer her question. I simply keep on crying and promising never to do it again but we have been through this cycle so many times that Mama is unfazed by my display.
‘If you ever steal something again and lie about it to my face, I will put pepper in your eyes’ she threatens and motions me to rise. My head starts to swim at her last words and, as she makes to leave the room, I don’t realize when I blurt;
‘Mama, I think I’m a Kleptomaniac’
‘Klepto-gini?’ she turns around to face me again, ‘Klepto-what?’
‘Kleptomaniac, Mama’ I say again in a squeaky voice.
She laughs humorlessly and turns on her heels again. ‘I don’t think you’re a kleptomaniac, Kanayo. I think you’re possessed’ she jabs at me and walks out.
It’s 3AM and I can’t understand why I’m feeling this intense urge to go to the kitchen and raid Mama’s pot of vegetable soup.
We had the soup along with some fufu for dinner last night and, of course, it tasted absolutely delicious. Mama served me an ample quantity of the food and supplied me piece after piece of meat until I was satiated. So it baffles me that, while the rest of my family is soundly asleep, the kleptomaniac inside of me is steering me towards another crime.
You had enough trouble yesterday to last you a week, I berate myself, but it’s doesn’t suppress the urge.
I try to watch a movie and then try to read up random stuff on the internet, but it’s of no use. After an agonizing battle of wills, I lose hopelessly and watch as my feet lead me down the stairs into our dark kitchen.
I don’t turn on the lights. Using my phone’s flashlight, I take off the pot’s lid as noiselessly as I can and insert a tablespoon into the pot. I take a piece of red meat first- its rich deliciousness makes me whimper slightly- and then a large piece of stockfish. I’m munching on a chicken wing when, suddenly, I hear the kitchen door opening. Before I can blink, the kitchen lights are turned on and I see Mama. She stands in the doorway with her arms akimbo, flashing me a smile that is pregnant with meaning.
‘And here I was thinking a rat was running around in the kitchen, not knowing it was you’ she points at me, the smile still on her face. ‘With the way you begged me yesterday afternoon, one would think your leopard was actually ready to change its spots, but as always you keep proving that you’re not ready to change’.
She walks up to the gas cooker, lifts off the pot of soup and places it on the kitchen counter. She does the same to the pot of leftover fufu. I watch noiselessly as she does these, wondering what will come next. She carries a high chair from a corner of the kitchen and sets it beside the counter. Then she picks up a spatula and faces me.
‘Your father will definitely hear about this by daybreak’ she says, ‘but if you don’t want me to break your head right now, come here and finish what you started’.
She is pointing at the chair which she placed beside the counter. I walk gingerly towards it and sit down. I look in the pot of fufu and notice that the quantity in it is more than what my whole family consumes in one sitting. I look at Mama and- from the glowering look she casts at me- I know she is serious about my finishing it. I swallow hard but even my saliva finds it difficult to roll down my throat.
My nightmare has just begun.
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