101 Words

Grace wiped snot along her pyjama sleeve, sniffed hard, and held up a small marble. White, with a swish of pink.

“This is an alley chink. It’s worth five jaspers. It’s my favourite. I won it from Simon Hill. He stuck it up his nose and had to go to hospital. He was there for hours and needed two nurses and a doctor to pull it out. His mummy cried. His nose was red for ages, and it whistled. Danny Burton called him squeaky Simon.” Grace giggled.

Her granddad sighed. “For the sixth time, go and brush your teeth. It’s bedtime.”

Our placards were scarecrows held high. The images of our hearts were fists tinted red and black. Green-white-green scarves coiled our necks; we swayed the hoists of our billowing EndSARS flags to the sun. Cameras searched for bodies murdered for their sinful tattoos and dreadlocks. We wanted their ghosts to guzzle our homemade jollof rice. The best taste of our lives amid our swallowed hysteria. When night dawned, we felt change was near—what we wanted, what we will fight for until we gasped our last breath.

Kin-kin-kin-kin

Bullets came with their lights. We saw blood and ourselves clamoring for breath.

Spuds. Spuds with butter and salt. No, with sour cream. The potato, a root vegetable native to the Americas, is a member of the nightshade family. Why are potatoes called spuds? After a dagger-shaped spade? No. Or maybe after the Society for the Prevention of an Unhealthy Diet. Nope. The Irish Potato Famine began in 1845. The meaning of SPUD is lost in the fog of history, but the ashes of the man who invented the Pringles can is buried in a Pringles can.

The Ritalin kicks in. The world slides into focus. I’ll have potatoes with butter and salt, please.

“I don’t want to,”  whined seven-year-old Nathan.

“We have to,” his mother said. “We have to keep up with your work. I don’t know when your school will be open again. You can’t fall behind.”

She was trying to normalize the situation. They stuck to the school’s schedule while working at their kitchen table. They were trying to complete a math assignment, Nathan’s least favorite subject.

Looking up from the papers, she saw Nathan staring at her.

“What?” she asked, exasperated.

“What time is it?” Nathan queried.

She checked her phone.

“11:30.”

Nathan smiled and stood up. “It’s time for recess.”

He always got heartburn when he ate biscuits late at night. She said it was his own fault, that he should have shown some self-restraint. But tonight, he ate them anyway. In fact, he gobbled them up as he sat on his own in their small little kitchen. The dishes and bowls from earlier were still dotted around the living room, and he hadn’t bothered to clean up that coffee spillage which his brother-in-law had been mortified about. Because she was dead, put to rest earlier today. And he wanted to eat his biscuits, just so he could hear her voice.

His journey to warriorhood began today. Like all Mawé boys, thirteen-year-old Opa had prepared. Dozens of bullet ants collected from the Brazilian rainforest were sedated and woven into gloves he’d wear for this rite of passage. With his body and face painted, he bravely watched as tribal elders slipped the ceremonial gloves full of twisting, incensed ants onto his waiting hands. Opa felt the venom’s paralyzing effects as ants pierced his flesh relentlessly. He danced, enduring intense, excruciating pain. Ten minutes later, it was over, his hands numb, swollen, and shaking. This ritual 20 times, and he’d be a man.