MY MOM AGAIN!

My phone shrieked at about four that evening and forced me out of sleep. I woke up with a headache that was twice what I felt the previous day after the accident. I groped around for the phone, with each movement sending waves of pain in my head. 

'Turn that thing off,' Maria cried from the settee. She turned her body and faced the inner part of the settee. Her huge buttocks faced me, and I quickly minded my business and took my eyes away. I found the phone hiding under the edge of the mattress and looked at the screen, wondering and hating who was calling. 

It was my mom.

I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling the weight of ten bags of cement on my chest. I didn't want to talk to anyone—anyone except Talatu. 

'Hello, mom,' I said into the phone. 

'Paul,' she yelled. I heard the anxiety in her voice and knew the conversation will be difficult. 'What happened to you? I have been calling since yesterday. What happened to your phone? Are you having issue with the battery again?'

'No, mom. I misplaced it after the interview. I had to go back today to get it.' 

There was a long silence on her side end. I doubted if she believed what I said, but that was the best I could come up considering the ache ravaging my head. Mom always knew when I wasn't telling the truth, I don't know how she did it, but she always knew.

'This is the first time you are misplacing a phone,' she said. 'Tell me what really happened.'

A compliment and an accusation, I thought and yawned. Which do you want me to answer first, mom?

'I left it where we had the interview,' I said. 'I left in a hurry. But that's no problem; I've got it back.'

Another paused. 'You found it in the same place?'

'Yes,' I said. 'The phone is old enough to be my grandfather, who will take it?' Even Joseph the Brute said selling it wouldn't buy a pack of Benson and Hedges.

'It's still works and it's a Nokia,' mom said. 'It is the strongest--'

'Strongest phone in the world,' I said. 'That's true, mom. Well, I have it back; no worries.'

'So, how did it go?'

'What?'

'How did the interview go? Did you get the job?'

'Oh, not yet,' I said. 'I have to wait a couple of days before I can say if I got it or not.'

The third paused came then. 'Okay. How is Eric? Is he close by? Can I talk to him?'

'He is not here, mom,' I said and turned to the bed. Eric had turned his face to the wall, but I think he wasn't sleeping. 'I will give him your regards.'

There was another pause. This time it was longer and embarrassing. 

'Thank him for me then. And be careful. Don't get involved in anything illegal.'

'Mom, I am thirty-three years old; I know my right from my left.'

'Okay,' she said, and there was another hesitation. 'Call me later so you can speak to your brothers. They have gone to play basketball.'

'Okay,' I said and took the phone from my ear.

'Was that your mom?' Maria asked from the settee. 'She is worried about you, isn't she? Mothers can sense when their children are going through a bad situation. It's a maternal gift.'

'Yeah,' I replied. 'She has a gift for that alright; a gift for overprotection.'

'Does she nag?'

'All the time,' I said. 'But she is frustrated—who can blame her? She sent me to school so she can rest at this age, but she is still forced to take care of me.'

'I know how you feel,' Maria said. 'My uncle said I should get married if I can't find a job. That's why he asked me to return to the village in case someone comes home from abroad seeking a wife. He sees me as a liability now, but I don't blame him. He paid my fees for two degrees and still I can't fend for myself.'

I thought about Talatu. 'The pressure is double for ladies, isn't it? You have to get a job and you have to get a man. The good thing is that ladies can marry without getting a job while a man has to get a job before he marries.'

'Yeah,' Maria said. 'Without a job you can't start a family or do any other meaningful thing in life.' she sighed. 'And millions of us are in this state—educated, but unproductive and frustrated. We are like stars in the mud.'

'There are times I feel it's a curse to have gone to school. If I were a farmer, I won't have to be travelling from city to city seeking for a job that millions of other job seekers are gunning for, would I? I would have been in my village, farming.' I shook my head. 'I have considered going back to the village, but I am ashamed. What would I tell all those youths I have encouraged to go to school or to send their children to school? They will laugh at me and say I wasted the better part of my life schooling only to return to farming.'

Maria chuckled. 'Josephine, my classmate, has given up on the country and is now in Italy.'

'For prostitution, right?'

'What else? She called me one day before she travelled and said she was thinking of jumping over the Third Mainland Bridge. She said life wasn't worth living. And Josephine is one of the brightest in my class back in the university. I send her two thousand naira and I think that was what stopped her from jumping over the bridge. I kept in touch with her until the day she said she was travelling to Italy. She didn't tell me what she was going to do there, but both of us knew.' Maria scratched the middle of her hair and hit it with the edge of her palm. 'At least she is alive and doing something.'

 'Good God! Prostitution,' I said. 'A graduate.'

'What should she do?' Maria said. 'Life can push one to do unimaginable things. Things one would never—'

'It's not life,' Eric said from the bed, startling us. 'Life is more than fair to us in this country with the natural resources that we have. It's the fault of our selfish, incapable leaders. We were in the same category with the Asian Tigers but look at where they are today. And they don't have oil like we do but look at where they are. Today, they provide jobs for their graduates and their economies are growing. Look at us! We are still down on our knees, like invalids, worse than we were under the colonial masters.' He looked at Maria. 'It's not life that has not treated us well; it's our sub-human capacity that has led us to where we are.'

He got up and walked out of the room and Maria and I stared at each other. Maria smiled and I joined her.

My phone began to ring. I stared at until and my eyes grew wider. I looked at Maria.

'What?' she said. 

'Eric's number is calling me.'

'What?' Maria asked again.

I raised the phone to my ear. 'Hello?'

'It's...it's... this Paul?'

'Dracula?'

I raised my eyes to the door. Eric stood by the door, looking at me.

Dracula laughed into my ears. 'That's....that's...right.' He laughed some more. 'Is...is...is your leader there? I…I…want…want…to talk to him.'

Maria and Eric stared at me. They both had questions on their faces. 

'Okay,' I replied.

I stretched the phone to Eric. 'It's for you.' 

Eric collected the phone. 'Yes?'

He listened for a while, the puzzled look on his face easing away gradually. He listened for about five seconds, but it seemed like eternity. Dracula must be stammering like a secretary's keyboard.'

'Okay,' Eric said, stretching the word as if it was a rubber ring.

Another eternity passed before he said another "okay" and then he brought the phone down from his ear. Maria and I stared him with a curiosity huge enough to kill five hundred cats. 

'What does he want? Maria asked.

Eric walked to the mattress and sat. He lifted his eyes and looked at me and then his eyes shifted to Maria.

He smiled. 

'We are back in business!' he shouted, throwing his arms in the air. 'Our target is back! We are back in business.'