RESOLVE

Chapter Three.

Okay, he began to seem familiar as I took closer looks at him, but I couldn't fathom where I'd seen him.

"Aunti, is me Jude, I works under oga kene", He nearly squirmed from my unwavering gaze, wringing his hands nervously or maybe from his poor English structure.

I wasn't one to make someone uncomfortable, so I jumped into Pidgin English, quickly recognising him as one of Kene's boys.

"Ah Jude, sorry o I no quick recognise you", I said with a small smile. "How you dey na?"

"We dey manage o, God dey". He never stopped smiling, showing his pearly white teeth with a gap in the middle.

This place was pretty good for a makeshift shelter, but I wanted to avoid getting wet by the slightest drop of rain.

"Ah Ejima, you just dey fine anyhow o, see as you dey glow", Jude complimented me, glancing down at the scar on my hand to confirm If I wasn't Somi. I smiled, noticing what he did.

"Abeg no dey whine me, na manage me just dey manage", I waved it off playfully.

"No o, if na dah one no go there o, you no dey manage this one at all , you too cute!" I laughed at his choice of words. "We no dey see you around again, I hear say you don stop work there."

"Eh dah one na long story, How's your boss?" I waved it off again, avoiding details and slipping back to English.

His eyes weren't reaching mine. He was shy.

"Oga Kene travel go Calabar, then go Abuja again, but he don come back Sha" I didn't see Jide-Kene as someone that would travel to both destinations within such a short period, and I wondered if something was up.

"Hope all is well o", I tried to clarify my doubts. The Cheshire cat grin Jude pasted on his face said that all was well.

He indicated that he was waiting for someone and I didn't want to spend time there with the weather like this.

"Greet everyone for me o. I'll come around sometime, make I waka abeg, the weather no be here, take care."

I turned to face the whirlwind again, saw a tricycle approaching, and decided to board it rather than wait for the rain under a static shelter.

"Okay na, greet your sister o, take care". He waved as I nodded and made my way to the Keke, flagging it down.

I told the driver my destination and joined the other passengers, relieved to leave the whirlwind for a while finally. However, my mind returned to Kene until I saw the older woman with a child in the tricycle.

She reminded me of mama and our days back in Rivers State with her doting on the child, causing nostalgia to hit me.

That woman cared for my sisters and me more than my birth mother.

I recalled a time during one Easter holiday when we'd gone to stay with her in the village as usual. I'd gone to the market with mama's house help, Nnedah, to buy meat. I was ten years old then.

Nnedah had asked me my thoughts on the price of the meat which we were given in our native Ikwerre dialect. I replied to her in English, telling her to provide the man with the amount he'd asked for, even calling out the amount of money mama had given us to purchase the meat out loud, ignorant of the signs she was giving me with her eyes to keep quiet.

She'd given me a knock on my head. When we left the meat sellers' abattoir, I'd cried all the way home even though she'd apologised at some point.

Nnedah was forced to explain why I was crying at home, and mama was so vexed that she'd laid a finger on me. Mama had scolded her in our language and pidgin English, asking her if she'd sat down to teach me how to speak our dialect for a day.