Omoyemi Adesoga Close

ALFRED

Every morning at Omoyemi Adesoga Close, the sky transforms from the soft grey of dawn into a brilliant blue, only to be quickly smothered by the thick, choking haze of carbon monoxide pouring from the endless stream of vehicles on Oladosu and Toyin streets. 

Some days drift by slowly, weighed down by mundane chores and long hours spent poring over the books scattered across our three bedroom flat. I am in my early teens and still tormented by my voracious reading appetite, but I have outgrown the stories that ruled my early years. Malory Towers, Famous Five and the other stories by Enid Blyton now see whimsical and rather childish.

Even the spine tingling tales of the Goosebumps series have lost their grip on me. Now my mind craves richer fare – the shadowy intrigues of Vatican exposés, the slow collapse of the Soviet empire, Brutus’s betrayal of Caesar, and the wrath of fearsome ancient gods in Africa and sometimes in Rome. 

When my eyes begin to ache from straining at the stiff, yellowing pages, I escape to the kitchen corridor and practice dance steps from my favorite music artists next to the fridge with music blasting on MTV until I am out of breath. 

I totter at the edge of womanhood, still painfully shy and unsure what to do with my changing body. The silent worlds of books and pulsing music are my refuge. They keep my mind from drowning in the overload of sensations I encounter daily.

I don’t make friends easily. Girls my age chatter about things I have already outgrown, and I quickly grow bored. My tolerance level is stuck at zero. I tire of being looked at, of being spoken to, so I retreat into the thick shroud of my own mind where the voices of the world fade into a distant, curious jabber. My insulation in this world is so complete and thorough, that when words are directed at me, they are received in garbled monotone.

Often, I am yanked out of this reverie by an indignant shout.

“Umari! I asked for my shoe, why are you giving me the soup spoon?”

Then I startle in a half daze and hurry away while the voice trails after me, filled with frustration.

“E be like say this pikin no dey hear well.”

When I meet Rosemary, the walls around me crack open. Suddenly, I don’t want to hide away from eyes and do not easily shut out her voice. I learn to laugh loud and laugh at myself. The voices inside my head are intrigued by Rosemary. They argue about and analyze her high pitched laughter that come paired with a scrunched up look of pain, so that it looks like she is crying and laughing at the same time. 

The voices like her command of pidgin English, a  language prohibited to us, the children, but one the adults at home frequently indulge in. They yearn for her on the spot jokes. Like that time when my mother, irate at meeting a task undone, scolded me in Ishiborr. Rosemary had turned, eyes wide in surprise once my mother’s back was turned.

“Chineke! Umari, una dey speak Chinese for una house?”

There are stories about Owerri, sometimes wistful, sometimes sad, and sometimes so ridiculous, I double over in the middle of Unity Road, hands on my knees, screeching with uncontrollable laughter.

“If my papa mess, we dey tell am thank you.”

“What? It’s a lie!”

“To God!”

“How can you tell him thank you for doing that?”

“Stay there! One day, as e dey gist us for compound, im mess. We forget, come shout daddy?! E say, ehn?! We come shout, thank you sir!”

Her narration acted out with comic expressions and animated hand gestures often floors me.

Raised in the opposite way, to question everything, including the directive and decisions of my parents, I cannot fathom such a thing. Yet, it is such a novel thing that I wish for a moment to experience such a mandated reverence for adult flatulence.

Rosemary is my escape and there is no better way to enjoy my day than with her. Until Alfred. 

One afternoon I open the door to Rosemary gesturing wildly at me.

“Come, come, come. I just see one fine boy for that una front flat.”

I frown at her and toss Jackie Collin’s Hollywood Wives to the sofa.

“Fine boy? The new neighbors?”

She pulls me outside and sure enough, there he is. Alfred. Tall. Yes, impossibly tall that he seemed to block out the sun when he towers over our diminutive five feet frames. Fair skinned and then bronze when the light hit his skin, he stood out easily in a crowd. His eyes moved over people and objects with a boredom that hinted at far deeper, more intricate layers of thought. 

At that moment, they sweep over us as we walk with tentative steps towards the gate. He watches us from where he sits, shirtless and toned, and with legs dangling off the half wall of his apartment corridor. I open my mouth to say hello, but I cough instead. It is a strangling, ugly sound. One that crushes my chest and sends stinging tears to my eyes. Rosemary is not so affected. 

“Good afternoon.”

He nods and his lips turn in a fraction of a polite smile. 

“Good afternoon.”

Rosemary steps forward with unexpected poise and offers him a handshake. I am both shocked and fascinated by the personality change. I lumber awkwardly behind, hiding and peeking at him from behind her.

“My name is Rosemary,” my friend says, switching to perfect English.

Alfred’s smile grows and he takes her hand.

“Alfred.”

He tilts his head and catches me staring. I duck right in time. Rosemary steps aside, exposing me. I stare at him, tongue tied and struck by the most agonizing shyness.

Rosemary points at me. “Umari.”

“Umari,” he says, nodding politely. “Hello Umari.”

I manage to find my voice.

“Hi.”

That day, I realize how long and hard the walk to Ipodo market is. I don’t want to stare at passersby and wonder what they are thinking as Rosemary greets another Igbo Uncle with a bookshop or spare parts shop. I want to go home. I want to stay home. With Alfred. 

I hurry Rosemary up. I pout about her haggling. I express my grievances with pedestrians that shove and push us out of the way in the narrow path before the market. I complain about the puddles near Cornerest Hotel, the sights, the sounds and even the way the commuters drive on Olowu Street. But my motives are transparent to Rosemary and she sees through me.

“You wan go back house abi? As you don see fine boy abi?”

Alfred is soon popular in the Close. Even the curvy aunties, the older ladies poured into tight jeans that hug every generous curve, their breasts lifted and shaped by tight, unforgiving bras, bat eyelashes at him. 

He stands out from the horde that is his family. They are ten of them at first, all crowded in that three bedroom, but soon, relatives fresh from the bus from Edo, swelling the head count in his apartment until it is a mini Edo outpost. Our idyllic neighborhood becomes a battlefield of clashing sounds. 

They shout the neighborhood awake every morning with loud, rowdy conversations. At evening, they cause a ruckus with clanging pots that fill up with rice and spicy meat which they take to one of the stalls opposite Airport Hotel to sell.

This change, though brutal, is a small price to pay for Alfred’s presence in the compound. Even my parents are enamoured. They exchange pleasantries with his mother in the easy way that adults often do and then  come back to say his father is Ejagham. Now bonded by half of his heritage, they welcome his visits and soon acquiesce to his request to connect his television to our cable.

Conversation improves with constant presence. He is affable but still somewhat distant. Rosemary is not pleased with the new camaraderie.

“So na like this you go thief my husband?”

One day, I step out from the bathroom and walk, towel clad to the living room to drop the Archie comic Aunty Ishorji had given me before leaving the country, on the dinning table. I find him standing before the television. Realizing that I had forgotten to lock the front door, I freeze in shock.

He barely notices me. Tv remote in his hand, he shuffles through channels until he settles for MTV where an episode of Beavis and Butthead is airing. When he turns to me, his face is empty of all expression, except for eyes that briefly narrow.

“Hi.”

I nod bashfully, unable to utter a word. He gestures backwards at the television.

“I came to change this.”

And just as he had come, he walks out of the house silently, leaving me with pleasant after effects of the surprise encounter. I cannot wait to tell Rosemary when I see her again.

“He saw me!” I squeal breathlessly, grabbing her hands and giving it a happy pump. “In my towel.”

Rosemary does not understand my excitement. 

“Ehen? As e see you for towel, wetin come happen?”

I pause under the watchful eyes of my friend and struggle with an answer. In the end, I give up and sigh dreamily.

“I don’t know….it was just nice.”

Rosemary shakes her head and announces an impromptu market run. I am too giddy to protest this time. I follow happily.

It is a while before I see Alfred again. I am lounging in the corridor of our apartment when he shows up. This time he sits beside me and peers at the bulky hardcover book on my thighs.

“What book is that?”

I turn the book around and read out the title.

“Legends and Myths of Greece and Rome.”

He nods thoughtfully and then somehow our eyes lock. Minutes dissolve in the chasm of time and it seems as though I might be the recipient of a romantic confession. I very gently tuck a non existent hair tendril behind my right ear and look downward at the checkered pattern of the terrazzo floor beneath my feet.

“Umari?”

My head snaps up immediately and I look at him with hopeful eyes.

“You must forget boys,” he says slowly, enunciating each word as if burning it into my memory. “You don’t need boys now. You need your books. That is all you need for now.”

It is a gentle let down, one so buttery soft and tender that I should be soothed by it, but I am not. I clutch my book tightly and nod automatically, hearing the death knell for my fevered teenage dream. He flashes me one last smile and immediately turns away to his apartment.

The disappointment fizzles after I return to the quiet fortress of my secondary school at New Bussa. There, the reality of Alfred does not intrude on my fantasy of him. I bedazzle my friend with stories of our encounters, often coated in embellishments that favor me.

Soon, truth becomes the lie and the lie becomes true, and I fall under rhe self hypnosis often suffered by hopeless romantics. I replay images and words from him until he is no longer a thought but a core part of my psyche.

So deeply entwined is my personality with this fantasy that on the day I am selected with Margaret Igabali to represent Unity House at an inter-house quiz competition in the dinning hall, his name is the invocation that protects my dignity.

When the questions touch on foreign affairs, my participation is evident and my voice clear. As I correctly supply Boris Yeltsin as the answer to the question about the first president of Russia, the pendulum swings to science. My knowledge of science consisting only of first twenty elements sung in a trippy, happy tune, I completely tune out.

As the science questions rain down on us, I learn to time my sigh with Margaret’s sigh, my distant calculating look with her own look and my fast scribbling with her own scribbling, until we are locked in performed synchronicity. Margaret often gets the answers right, much to my relief. 

In those intervals of mental laboring, I bow my head before paper and ink, lips thin, brows furrowed with the most mathematical genius frown I can muster and write with my paper angled away from Margaret’s eyes.

Alfred. Alfred. Alfred. Alfred. Alfred.

And then the bell rings. The points are calculated. We win. 

I fold my paper and put it carefully away like a talisman. The prison like consistency of boarding house, the ear splitting wail of the siren that marked our daily activities and the dreaded bullying of senior students, all seemed now palatable. I smile from the high table at the crowd of other boarders and squeeze the folded up paper in my hand.

Alfred.

© Umari Ayim.

2026