GHOST (The Shadow in the Dark)

part thirty two

    I had been so tired that I slept off as soon as Ken dropped me at my hostel and I had woken up by 12:PM the next day, the longest sleep I had after Ghost’s death. The first thing I did was to call Ken who told me to find a way to get to his house. I quickly took a shower and took a cab straight to his house at 21st street.
   His mum and dad were around. He said he called her that night and first thing they did was to book a flight to Benin. From the little I had watched from Nigeria movies before I switched over to Asian movies, I concluded I was in trouble and they were going to send Saheed and his siblings back to the street but I was wrong. Ken’s mum was dressing up Malik when I entered the parlor after Ken had tried to convince me his parents did not bite. He was looking so tiny but he was smiling, his cough still there. Jamila and Saheed were also smiling confusing me. And when Ken introduced me as Ella, his close friend, his mother playfully attacked me as the girl her son could not stop talking about. His dad was having a chat with Saheed. I got to know that the three siblings were flying back to Lagos with them so Ken could concentrate and so they could start school. I sat down surprised about their actions, it was completely different from what I had been made to believe rich parents acted. They always had one son and treated everyone as trash, then that son always fell in love with a poor girl who his parents would refused and so on. Nigerian movies had been deceiving me. Ken’s parents, were very receptive. They spoke Yoruba with Ken and Ken was always hugging his mum. A kind of family I would never have. They told me to take care of Ken and they also assured me Malik would be taken care of by their doctor as soon as they get back to Lagos.  Saheed and Jamila almost choked me with hugs and Ken had to rescue me. I had to stay back while Ken followed them back to the airport.
  Ken did not allow me go back but forced me to read for our next paper. Ken told me he hardly had friends growing up because the average people believed he was proud because his parents were rich not knowing his dad treated him like a house boy. His dad was an engineer and made him join the painters to paint their house and he forced him to go to his palm plantation with laborers and paid him same amount with them. He never allowed him to drive his car till he turned twenty. He said his father struggled when he was young and he wanted his son to know that life had many sides. It was only his mum who had it smooth, she was from a rich family. His father refused him from going to a private university. He had to write Jamb twice, (the exam one had to write before entering Nigerian universities) before he was given English and Literature Arts. All I could tell him was his family was rare.
    The days passed by, all looking the same, grey and black. It became worse the day I wrote my final paper because Ken was travelling home. His parents had some business for him to run within the break. He begged me to follow him that his mum would be happy to see me but I refused. He travelled after I promised him I would not hurt myself but kept calling me five times in a day. A week after he had travelled, he forced me to open a Facebook account to be exchanging pictures, then I also had to download Whatsapp.  He sent me a video of his new family swimming in their swimming pool each sitting on a floater. He was spinning Jamila as she screamed from excitement while Saheed was helping Malik to swim. He told me the good news, that his parents were in love with the three siblings and they were going to officially adopt them. I asked him if he was not bothered he was no longer the only heir and he had told me he was never interested in his father’s wealth from the beginning. His father had installed in him a passion to create his own wealth. It gave me joy to watch them so excited and happy. Even Malik was looking fleshy.
   I had nothing to do but to live through my emptiness each day. Going home was not an option, I stayed back and read texts for the second semester. That was the only thing that distracted me a bit. It became worse each day and I felt enclosed in nothingness. Ibrahim was no longer working and at a point, I felt Ghost never happened, I felt it was all a mirage but my emptiness and gnawing endless loneliness was enough proof that he existed. But that too was disappearing causing me to fear.