Running Away Solves Everything

Tomilola

Had I invoked some indefinite quantity of Okonkwo on me?

Seven years may just seem lesser than twenty, thirty or life imprisonment, but they all had the same effects. Like Chinua Achebe pointed out, it was enough time for all hell to break loose. For all Things to fall apart. And this time, it is still going to be true. First of all, my school. Seven years means I would be leaving the prison at twenty-five. Would I still go back to undergraduate studies? With the impending ASUU strikes and all? With the actuality that time isn't that kind of friend that answers to anyone's call. For heaven's sake, seven years is enough time for me to become a doctor. Now, with Màámi at this stage of her life, won't I consider her? She wouldn't be the same after I've returned. I'm aware of Rotimi and his glitches. What if he doesn't treat her as he ought to. I would return to her all grey and weary. That would most definitely be change. Then there's the factor that can't be evaded. Every fiend of mine, Nneka in more than particular, would make a mockery of me. The ladies who call me a heroine now in words and writing would not even have me in their memories. Talk less of the hallucination of being reckoned a heroine, one I was becoming accustomed to.

I may have said that going to prison was something I could not dodge, but deep inside, I wanted to escape it. I prayed for a miracle. I would do anything for a miracle. Then and Now. And in all my grumbling and vague wishing, I don't hold Nelson Rohilahla Mandela in esteem.

They could as well sentence me to death by hanging, I wonder. That wouldn't be the first time I've heard of such. At least this way it's sure I'd bite the dust a heroine.

Somehow, Kamal is sadder than everyone else in this court. For failing me? Well, no he didn't. I never had hope to start with it. I never stood a chance against the Governor. Newspapers and television stations must have spelt that out, but I just had to try, didn't I? The first thing I do in my last three minutes of freedom for the next seven years is to hold Aunty Aruna's hands, looking in her eyes, as well as the glaring faces court folk give me. If they aren't too ruthful, they're viscerally reviling.

Tears don't even have the guts to show up at the corners of my eyes. I know better than to cry over something I can't change. But Kamal feels otherwise. I think he sobs as he says, "I'm so sorry," so I let him know it wasn't his fault, and that my years could have been much vaster, but he eased it. Astonishingly, that comes from the depths of my heart. I don't know why my insides are extremely peaceful with all that's going on, but they are. My being is used to everything around me being ruined and made into a mess so nothing can shock me. Not even when my ears twitch to the sound of a man yelling outside the courts.

His screams are less faint, so his words are now more audible and familiar than I want them to be. "She's innocent!" The man is coming closer, and I feel it. As a matter of fact, I didn't have to, because he was already here. "My sister is innocent!" Taking a rather stiff position at the centre aisle. Now, if this young man, who happened to be my brother, raises a pistol above his head, pointing it just in front of him, the bullet wouldn't miss the judge. He was at that centre.

As the rowdiness begins, my envision of mum heaves into sight, but I'm carried away when the judge reacts. To leave or order some person to tame my brother, I was about to find out. Rotimi steps forward and he's besieged by four police officers, hence it was the taming.

"Let me speak," he demands.

We all heard what he said. Something about me being innocent. But this was a young man with a cast engulfing his biceps and triceps. Drunkenness wasn't a conclusion that was far-fetched. And so was sedation from injections. Or just unconditional tiredness. He could also have been prompted to speak due to affection for his sister. Anything could make anyone lay him aside as stupid. I wanted to believe him myself, but I didn't. My consciousness was already were it was sentenced. Just for my flesh to suddenly be in opposition as the judge stands where he is, and tells the officers to back up a little so Rotimi can speak.

"This man," he directs his finger to the governor. "Has manipulated the results of his son's autopsy."

Somehow, His Excellency doesn't yell to counter the young man questioning his integrity. This would portray insurmountable guilt in the eyes of naive audience, but that meant we were in the wrong court. It showed he was without faults and Rotimi couldn't be more heretic. The drunkenness, sedation, and the rest would come into the light any second from now.

Rotimi looks as puzzled as ever by the tranquility he perceives. "Wait... So..." He eyes me, then the governor and his wife, then the judge. "You didn't bother to know how the guy died?" His gaze remains on the judge and he would have been too threatening if it weren't for his vulnerable arm. "You just assumed my sister killed him?"

The judge had just about enough at the same time the police officers double in number. I look at Kamal and his eyes look back at me. Disoriented, I would tell you they were. And so were mine. What if Timi was right? I actually never knew where I had shot him. I just assumed it was his chest. That I had murdered him by mistake. But what autopsy was Rotimi talking about? Why didn't anyone want to hear about it?

"Get them out of here!" I hear from the big, high seat. And the officers do what they know how to do best. Follow orders blindly. Justice served? They didn't care. As long as they bagged their end of the month payment.

Rotimi's hand feels like that stone, in secondary school, we used for our dirty, slightly disfigured heels. The table that I'm jacked out of is what delineates us. Our dark, depressed foreheads being the only visible thing that binds us as they shackle our innocent wrists. Interrupting a court proceeding is the crime they handcuff him for. What he'd certainly, in less than hour, overcome. He's moved against his will, manhandled even in his vincibility, and I don't sense the smallest phobia in his spirit. It isn't his increased height or my leaking tear ducts. It is true.

I'm intensely heavy-hearted for Màámi. The broken being who rushes to her convicted babies. Màámi, one who they won't even be melancholic for. The world is dark but noisy as my seven years begins. Dismal through obscurity and malignant in disposition. What a brief way to describe what I'd loathe to call my end. However, it wasn't, and I couldn't say the same for injustice. This fight, one I would take part in till the very end, had just begun.