Bespectacled

Being a human had been so hard for me. I guess it was because of my background. My childhood was messy. I was born into the hands of a 17 year old girl- life is a race, they say, and I have been in this race since I was a sperm cell, and I made it to the finish line, when a guy was in bed with her. The guy didn't reject the pregnancy. He became my dad at age 19. He was a low-life with no parents . My unschooled Grandma, my mum's mother in a broader sense, didn't send my mum out of the house. Instead she made a deal with them that she would be the one to name me.

I was named Blade Oriowo, I didn't know if it was an attempt to make me very different from the other kids with their indigenous names or she named me by the thing she first laid her eyes on. I hated that name. I would have liked to have my name changed for my birthday gift. Nothing else. As for the " Oriowo", which I would directly interpret as a head of wealth, well, in real sense it was greatly contrary to what we really are. We lived in the same place my Grandma had lived all her life, everything was the way it was years ago. My home wasn't an eye sore, it was a filth depot. I had tried arranging the place but it only changed the point of view of how it looked. And it had a particular long lasting stench that only we could embrace and we could never ever expunge. Visitors were liable to die young if they smelt it. It smelt of body sweats, old age, dirty clothes, moist and dead rats. It really was a home. Soon, at 18, my mum forfeited her education. Then she became everyman's woman. We grew apart and it was like she didn't care about me. For half of my life, I hated her.

My father, was the only favorite male I had. He was hippy, aggressive, mellow, a booze-hound and a chain smoker which as a result gave our house a tang of something like over-burnt stew. He liked me. He didn't love me. He gave me things, but trashed me at the slightest things. I preferred him to my mum. His occupation, that... I didn't know. I only knew he brought money home. As for my mum, it was a general knowledge that she collided with men for money. My Dad was aware but he didn't like it. He had no choice. He was living with us.

My education was taken care of by my dad. That, I will always be thankful for. He only paid when he saw me at home, when I was supposed to be at school. I was doing really good and preferred to stay at school because it was a hot zone – Mum and Dad were usually spitting in each other's face, some times, they got more physical.

Two years later, my Dad and mum coupled after their usual hot argument one night. And they kept taking rounds, shaking the whole place. What did I know? I was 2 years. What was I doing then? I think I was watching T.V. That old box of cathode ray-tube, it was going out of picture repeatedly, I kept trying to adjust the antenna to stop the static. Grandma was picking beans. She had ear issues so she couldn't hear well; most times we always had to shout in her ears, especially the left. Soon they came out sweating. I got to understand what they were doing that night when I grew, and whatever they were doing in the room produced another product. Another boy. I heard my mum cuss and declare that that was the last baby. Unlike me, he was given a better name. He was named by my father as Solomon. I wondered if that meant he was going to be greater than I am. Over the years, I was given the responsibility to take care of him; soon we drifted apart as we grew. I think it was me. And when I got to primary six, money was in my head. I wanted to make money and leave that place. I did the oddest job that men did. I saved and saved. I kept the money under our threadbare rug. Anytime I lifted the rug, it blew a whiff of awful incense like dung to my face. And when I smelt it, it felt so real in my mouth. I kept on doing menial, body-exhausting jobs... I even worked at a site.

One day, I came home to keep another wad under the rug. My remaining money was gone. Then I saw my mum walk into the room, in a dress I had never seen on her, with outrageous ornaments. They made her look like the god Lakshmi. Everything on her could buy us a new house. She turned to me and said:

" I took your money." my countenance had a restructure.

" What does a little boy like ya, wanna do with such amount of money?" She continued. If smoke do billow out of one's ears when angry, mine would have choked her.

" If ya want to get the money back, pay me back every dime I have spent on ya." She was talking like she knew what I would have said. I was frozen that time but my insides were on fire. She left my presence. She was off to a party. It was Friday, so it definitely was a party. My mind made me realize that the money I saved could have changed my life. And maybe I could have assisted my grandma in a way. I really owed her. My mum, like I preferred to call her, which if I called her mum, was a big slap on reality - was more or less an addition to the congested room. I even liked, not love, my brother than I did to my mum. I couldn't define what I had for her that time. I had to forget that money. I felt maybe I could only leave when I became a man.

Apart from the devastating fact that I wouldn't leave that place because of what she did; there was the feeling to leave the neighborhood but you not being able to do it... I didn't know if I was ever the only one who felt that way. Everyone on that street had lived there for long years, and if not years, decades; passed from generation to the other. However, some broke the jinx. Funny enough, a few of them came back. They came back to the mess they had left, the dusty, unstraight road with layers upon layers of all kinds of dirts, nylons going out of colour, passing in front of houses in fifties and probably sixties; houses with chipping blocks, broken windows, dingy public bathrooms, old inhabitants and sloven youths. They were to the hustle bustle of the neighborhood when it struck dawn, the loud music from the only guy with the job that requires a suit and tie; the wailing of kids under the torture of cold water whilst bathing and consequently, the scolding of there mothers. At times, it was someone shouting that something has been stolen or it was commotion about a man peeping through the bathroom door to see a naked bathing lady. Or it was loud sound of brush, violently scrubbing the tainted teeth of the young men who lived in the one story buildings, and spat the foams from the top... sometimes it fell like the poop of a pigeon on any hapless passerby.

That was the neighborhood I lived in. I lived in one of those old story buildings with pigeons at the rooftops... We lived beneath.