Running Away Solves Everything

Chapter 9- Tomilola

Court day. As you’d know, I was charged with murder, so there’s no way I could have been bailed. An eye for an eye, they’d say. Therefore, I spent three weeks getting close to Jesus in the most uncomfortable way there was.

Ought to be drab, but in my favour, as long as I do what the lawyer Ekene’s mother hired calls being delusive. I would act like I’m insane and cook up some fable about why I killed Nathan.

“Before you know it, Eid El Kabir will come,” my lawyer got into character. “My mummy said I should follow my brother to kill my cow.” He beat his chest like a chimpanzee, and I almost urinated at that spot. “It is my cow, and I will kill it, because I can. Let my cow come again! I will kill it again! My daddy bought it before he died and said we should kill it!”

I didn’t think twice before I bluntly refused. I couldn’t do that. No way!

“Then, you’re on thin ice.” He adjusted his tie, his dark eyelids subtly dimming as his expectations of an ovation were dismissed. “What’s your story? How do you convince those people you didn’t murder that young man?”

“I didn’t.”

“They don’t know that. In fact, they want to believe you did.” He was right. His parents had me arrested, because they had some affirmation that I was overflowing with guilt. He crossed his arms and strained his neck forward. “From what you told me, you didn’t do it… but you did it.”

Two heavy lumps of saliva gulped down my throat.

“Hmmm…” He got up and paced the room we were secluded in. “Just be sane as you can be. Answer the other lawyer’s questions smoothly. Perhaps, saying Mississippi under your breath before you reply would help. The court should only tell two things from your facial appearance; innocence and extreme harmlessness. I don’t need you to cry. It’s not the nuclear Holocaust.” He started to leave for the door when he just stopped to stroke his beardless chin. “No evidence of guilt and no proof of innocence. You can get off with just community service if you follow my instructions, Miss. Adefuye.”

Prima donna of a lawyer left me staring at the space the open door made after saying I should place all my trust in him. All of it. It’s not that I couldn’t do that, but more of my trust is in Life imprisonment. Life imprisonment, the punishment for committing a murder. Life imprisonment, what I would merit.

Neither am I in my dirty clothes nor discomforting handcuffs when I enter the courtroom. Innocence, extreme harmlessness, I repeat over and over again. Innocence, extreme harmlessness. The court atmosphere is cooler than the cell's and even with my head chanting Innocence and extreme harmlessness, there’s this void that can’t quit thinking of how other jailed girls call me lucky, yet unlucky in their own dialects. Lucky, because my case is treated with so much urgency, and unlucky, because that urgency couldn’t end well for me, as political connections, which influence judgment, won’t favour me. Miss. Tomilola Adefuye versus His Excellency, Henry Tokzaka. I wouldn’t even prevail in my own dreams.

I would slump and die right about now, as I get up to revere the male judge. I say this as my brain loiters on the strong hypothesis that says, All men are the same, and that’s where my trust is thrust at. Life imprisonment, my flesh awaits.

“Court in session.”

I’m the defendant at the right hand side facing the judge, and as the lawyer on the left gets up, I grieve at his first words. “Permission to call Miss. Adefuye to the bench?”

“Permission granted.” A voice I would now be able to distinguish. Deep as the forest. Fierce as Chiwetel Ejiofor's.

As I walk to the lower compartment at the left of the judge, the wig of the opposing lawyer is what meets my eye. Rotimi had cajoled me into watching How To Get Away With Murder with him, and that’s where my skin elopes, until I sit.

“Miss. Adefuye,” I know he’s not on my side, but his deceptive voice could have made me think otherwise. “You’re in University I suppose?”

“Yes.” Innocence.

“Which one?”

Harmlessness. “Unilag.”

“Oh!” He eyes the judge, then flaunts at my lawyer. “The same as Late. Master. Domshak Tokzaka.” I want to nod, but as he fixes those rotund eyes on me, I don’t. “What was your relationship with Master. Domshak? Can you let the court know.”

Innocence, Harmlessness. “Just schoolmates.” I make sure my voice is audible.

“Just Schoolmates? So why were you with him in his hotel room?”

“Objection, my Lord,” flies out of my lawyer’s mouth, and in less than a second, the gavel says it’s overruled.

“He was harassing me.” I wasn’t sure this lawyer could attack me so suddenly. The beans in my gut tousles in discord.

“Harassing you? So, why didn’t anyone hear you scream?”

He doesn’t let me speak.

“Why did you feel like arm candy as you strolled with him to the room? Or isn’t that how you felt?”

I didn’t! “I didn’t.” He forced himself on me! “He forced himself on me.”

“That’s okay,” he dismisses my irrelevant gestures. “But did you hear the gunshot?”

I know where he’s headed, so I look at my lawyer, who doesn’t try to get up. “Yes.”

“Where were you when it was sounded?” He doesn’t wait for my brain to process this. “Weren’t you in the same room as Master Domshak at that moment? And since you say he harassed you, you had to teach him a lesson. Like, kill him?”

“Objection, my Lord.”

“You were the one who fired the gun.” He speaks so fast, sneaking them between the spoken words of my lawyer and the judge, I don’t have time to breath. Innocence, harmlessness.

“Objection sustained.”

He takes a self-gratifying bow. “That’ll be all, my Lord.”

The room doesn’t stop spinning when I get up from the witness box, even till I place my butt on the bench beside my lawyer. “Kamal, that was bad right?”

I don’t hear, smell or feel anything, but as my tongue captures an acrid sensation cleaved to my enamel, I sight a figure walking to where I had returned from. Kamal was still beside me, so it was clear, whomsoever that skirt belonged to wasn’t on my side. I squeeze the feel of his trousers to keep my eyes from shutting. Amidst the blackness buried beyond my eyelids, Yolanda Adams screams at me. “You can’t get away with this!”

It’s a too familiar article of clothing that hangs below her waist. I’ve seen that before. I’ve felt that before. I’ve apparently worn that before.

Collapsing to the Earth is what makes me notice that hell's not so distant beneath me. The blurry unknown could have been my domicile while playing a game of trust fall with a host of demons. Swinging on the most fragile branch of a tree. Let loose from the crystalline grip of the star, descending like a projected rock. But nothing could cause me to taste ground dirt as swiftly as I did than discovering that someone I could have titled my best friend… was giving a testimony to contradict mine.