Running Away Solves Everything

Tomilola

Kamsi yelled at me with all I had gone through for her.

We were on a queue at the ATM and I felt like a total nincompoop for bring it up there, but a bigger one for helping her in the first place.

“Did I tell you I wanted everyone to know a boy I didn’t know touched my butt?” She didn’t. “You mentioned my name, like twice. Did I tell you I wanted that?!” She was cross and I wasn’t even getting it yet, until she said, “Did you do this for me or you?”

I am just baffled at what she said, and I wonder what I would have to gain from jeopardizing my entire life like that. What I did was seriously the most selfless thing I had ever done for anyone. “I put my life on the line for you. So you could have just…”

“Yes! Super girl! You have to have everything under control.” What?! “Why don’t you control yourself?!” With that statement, I lost it. I stomached the insults when she asked if I did it for me, but this was the height of it. I could feel my neck against that coarse wall again, and I wonder, How did I do this for me?

“Fine!” I am behind her on the queue and I just pull out my phone from my jean purse, forward the recording to her on Whatsapp, and I let her know. “I just sent the recording. Do what you want.” Then, I stomp away.

I had taken five steps before I recalled that I was at the ATM to actually withdraw, and I stomp back to her. She had inserted her card and was transacting. I spent the time she stayed in front of the ATM arranging what I was going to shout at her in my head, and immediately she pulled out, I said it. “Everyone keeps running away from their truth! Why should you be different?” I took out the whole of yesterday to list out what could possibly go wrong from telling Kamsi and I came up with nothing, but she didn’t see anything right in what I did at all.
This feeling in my guts is new and harsh, and it’s making me want to swear never to help anyone ever again. On a Sunday. This still doesn’t mean I was doing it for me.

* * * * *

My brain is claustrophobic directly after Nneka removes one bud of her earpiece and shrieks, “Jesus! Tomi, the guy who I showed you yesterday that was harassing Kamsi is dead,” but I don’t show it. I am as chill as cold water.

“Let me see.” I say, stretching my hand to her phone and she removes the plugged earpiece and plays the video from the start. It’s recorded, so it must be viral and I must be in so much kasala.

There’s just a voice talking in the background and my heart screams for an escape as the camera view is of the hotel we were in that night. “We are here in Ocean View Hotel and Suites, Lekki after it was reportedly said that a gunshot was heard two nights ago. From room twenty-three B.” The newscaster shouldn’t be important right now, but from her wide eyes, I notice how eager she is to tell us the story, like she was there to start with. “A body was found dead here in this room that same night and you wouldn’t guess who it was.” I am not sure newscasters are allowed to put viewers in suspense but this one does. Demilade Anyanwu makes her own rules. She doesn’t say who the dead person is, even though I can fully describe him. Worse, even in my sleep.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” she hollers and walks to a valet, who says he had just started his shift and was the first one to discover Nathan’s body that night, while collecting used towels. “Can you tell us what else you saw?”

His Gucci eye bags show how tired he is and I suspect this isn’t his first questioning; that a police detective must have asked him something earlier. He is a bad stutterer and the tiredness crowns it all. “Ermm… He was bleeding from his stomach… and coughing…”

“Can not hold it anymore,” she cuts him short. “He was Nathaniel Domshak Tokzaka, the son of the Governor of Plateau State. Henry Tokzaka.” Then as a rather fierce picture of Henry Tokzaka appears on the phone and I gasp in terror, Nneka snatches the phone from my frail hands. “Shocking, rig…” Three seconds after, the video ends.

“Governor of Plateau,” she hisses at His. Excellency's image. “With all the money you have embezzled already you should have trained your son to have manners or at least bought him some decency. What have you done for our country, huh?” I am in so much shock, I don’t speak. I don’t have the slightest words to utter and even if in an hour or two I finally get some, I don’t know how they will come out. My mouth is sealed, probably stitched and stapled too. Then, she yells again after some time, “Wawu! His wife is Ibim Tokzaka, a former commissioner of Education of Plateau State and he was formerly the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives when Enugu's Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was The Speaker.” Wawu indeed. “Hmmm… His Excellency, Ho-no-ra-ble Pro-fes-sor Henry Tokzaka.”

Now, I’m both shivering and speechless. If they ever find out I did it, what would I do? My Dad is dead and he was just a chemical engineer while his practically owns Plateau and my mum is a secondary school principal; an ordinary teacher, and that spoilt brat who harassed me and Kamsi is the son of a previous commissioner. My heart begins to melt as my brain admits the fact that there’s no escaping this. I’m going to rot in jail. 

“Tomi, why are your hands shaking? You’re making me fear.” Nneka says this softly and I try to stop my hands from moving like salted earthworms despite the fact that they couldn’t. It’s no use trying, as that has been my panic method for as long as I can remember, while I shove everything inside. “Tomi!”

I look at Nneka's warm eyes and my cold hands and I feel I could use the heat I see in those eyes to create some warmth for my fingers at the least. I take a deep breath and I close my eyes, but she does not make a fuss and waits patiently, which is quite unlike her. “Nneka, I did it.” I like it that she doesn’t scream.

The lines of her black eye pencil—where her eyebrows used to be—are too distant when she asks, “What are you talking about?” and as I touch the walls waiting for the echo of her voice to leave the room, I tell her everything.

As I speak, my hands start to shake and stop at intervals, and the words from my mouth come out slow and steady to Nneka. Surely, from her dynamic facial expressions, they sink in, but I can’t stop thinking, I killed the only son of Hon. Prof. & Engr. (Mrs.) Henry Tokzaka and they are going to make sure prison becomes my abode.