Epiphany Magazine
05/21/2024
"TriniBoys" by Daniel Ogba - Epiphany Magazine
"With O.J. there was an abyss of recklessness I was willing to dive into, a waxing appetite for danger I was unsure I could swallow."
Daniel Ogba
Writer
Nigeria
Nigeria
"With O.J. there was an abyss of recklessness I was willing to dive into, a waxing appetite for danger I was unsure I could swallow."
Today is Sunday. After the longer than usual morning devotion, the sun is already breaking in through the curtain when your mother asks you to go into the kitchen and bring down the deep pot from the shelf; she wants to make vegetable soup. "Won't you go to church?"
1. Trouble wore a plain black t-shirt and facecap the day it visited Flat 6. Kainayo made sure the key turned twice in the lockhole, clicked secure, before she hid the bunch underneath the wooly green foot mat and left for Ogige that morning.
This evening, Betty watched him from across the room - downing glass after glass of bourbon, throwing his head back in stylish laughter that seemed to erupt from the vaults of his stomach at one of the men's jokes, the lights bouncing off his eyes, highlighting in full contrast his geographical features .
I didn't know Eduboy was from Aba, till someone casually mentioned it during football training. It was my team against his, they were whooping our behinds like mad. There was this courting he gave me, and I just tumbled like a brakeless Volvo. Someone said, "Onye egwu, nwayo, na your brother be that."
"Girl arrived home from Peace Park with our mother one January afternoon, gawky, and smelling of dried sweat and dead fish and fermented cocoyam; she smelt so villagey and we would not talk to her. And, of course, she spoke no English."
"But there are certain memories that have refused to leave. Even when you fight to forget them, to make them remain, you know, memories, they refuse to go. Instead, they pitch a tent somewhere at the base of your brain, lie dormant and pretty till the day they decide to manifest."
Tonight your mother will draw you into the house by the ear. You will wince in pain as you struggle to set yourself free from her grip but her grip will be too strong. Her hands had seen grief and struggles and have moulded words into daily bread so they've become so strong, so hard they rarely set a thing free without leaving markings.
"Our mistakes correct us. Perhaps we need to forget. We should practise forgetting, reaching for oblivion." Drawing on what is said to be the real-life story of Ludovica Fernandes Mano, Eduardo Agualusa weaves a deeply affectionate tale of a country baptized in chaos, with a host of characters submerged in or trying to flee from it.
