Running Away Solves Everything

Ekene

I’m sitting on the couch eating breakfast and watching the Wild N Out  when the channel gets changed to Cartoon Network. At first, I think that I had dozed off and while chewing and it was automatically tuned, but then I see Emelie on the couch beside me holding the remote.

“Does anyone not have respect for the boy who just returned from a long six years of strife, terror and suffering,” I fuss. “or at least sympathy?” When I look up to the white square-divided ceiling, I spot cobwebs. A couple actually, but I keep mute.

“Meh,” Emelie laughs at me. After saying meh and laughing, he actually had the effrontery to still stare with his arms crossed and his legs on the headrest of the couch and stare at those disgustingly fake rangers pull of useless stunts on the TV and laugh. I’m going to hurt this boy. I’m going to cut those wings.

We’re in the downstairs sitting room, far away from Mum, so I can yell, “Will you change that back before I slap some sense into you?” He doesn’t even make any effort to do as I say. Like, he is literally in the same position he was when I fussed, so I throw a pillow at him. I guess it’s because I was still holding my empty bowl with the stainless spoon in my mouth.

He’s so damn sluggish about it and this was the episode when Davido featured on the show.

“Change it!” I’m all super serious now, and I can see the fear in his eyes when I get up and he throws the remote control at me. Where has respect gone to? Isn’t this baby Emelie of yesterday? I want to slap him, but I’m not feeling incredibly tempered at all right now, so I just eye him instead. He’s wearing black ripped jeans with a white polka dotted shirt and socks, looking all smart and rugged at the same time. I can’t lie, I’m proud of his dress sense. He’s sat up straight and I’m stomping back to my empty bowl practicing an angry voice.

“Why are you wearing school bag?” I don’t say all that’s in my head, because it’s going to show that I care.

“Saturday lesson.” I guess he didn’t too, but I don’t look at his face.

“Aren’t you late? It’s 9 already.” Luckily, his school wasn’t at all far from where we stay. Taking a bike to the estate gate and a keke to the school, you’d reach your destination in less than thirty minutes even with a go-slow. Cut that time in half, then minus five if you use a bike to the school. “Mummy is taking you, right?”

His face is still and glued on the TV, still, because he’s not interested in what’s on it, but has no choice but to watch. “Are you sure she hasn’t forgotten?” Now, this is serious. Children of these days just said whatever they said without even thinking. Like, for instance, I couldn’t have ever called Mum out for being forgetful. Even if I were being tortured.

“Emelie, check what Mummy is doing?” I’m not really sure if he wants to even go or not, but I know he has to. Quitting is never a good thing to learn at this age, and also, if he’s this lazy now, he’d not even survive CKCC at all. He didn’t pass the common entrance this year, and next year, he’s not going to have any other choice but to.

He’s gone upstairs and back, so he reports, “Just lying down. You know Mummy does not sleep.” The house is unusually quiet and I don’t know what’s going on, but when he tells me Ezinne fell asleep in he and Ebuka’s room, I know Ebuka is also sleeping and that the akamu they drank as breakfast was the cause of all this early Saturday morning sloth.

“Okay, let me go and bath. I’ll take you to school.” Not that I drive or anything, but we’ll ride a bike together.

But just as I rinse my body completely and sing out of the bathroom, I hear my Mum scream, “Jesus! No! No no no! Jesus!” That’s too many Nos, but as I get to her door with a short and shirt on now, it’s locked and she’s inside crying badly, but just then the tab rings downstairs and I think Emelie picks it.