CROWN OF ASH

BATH, BREAD, ABD BED

The bathroom behind the main house was bigger than the room where Ola had been born.

It had white tiles and a shower that gushed warm water, which he had never experienced in his life. A woman called Mama Joke, who cooked and cleaned for the household, stood in the doorway with her arms folded and her lips pressed tight, looking at the filth on the boy’s skin with the expression of someone assigned an impossible task.

“Trouble,” she muttered. “What kind of dirt is this? It looks like you’ve been sleeping in a gutter.”

“I slept in a kiosk,” Ola said.

Mama Joke’s face changed. The irritation drained out of it and something heavier moved in underneath. “Kiosk,” she repeated. “Ah. Come, my child. Take off that rag.”

She scrubbed him with a sponge and a bar of pink soap while the water ran black at his feet. She did not hurry, and she did not speak, and when she found the old welt on his back, a mark from his father’s belt on one of the bad nights, her hand paused a moment against it, then moved on without comment.

Afterwards, wrapped in a towel that was larger than he was, Ola was given a pair of children’s shorts and a shirt with a cartoon lion on it. They belonged to Dele’s nephew, Mama Joke said, who had outgrown them. They were too big, but Ola felt, as he put them on, like a different person. A cleaner one. A person who might have a place in the world.

Then she took him to the kitchen.

The smell reached him before he saw anything. Palm oil and pepper and onions, the deep sweet smell of stew that has been cooking for hours. On the counter stood a pot of white rice, steaming, and beside it a plate of fried plantain, golden at the edges. Mama Joke piled the plate high, put a spoon in his hand, and sat him down at the long kitchen table.

Ola stared at the food.

“Eat,” she said gently.

He took one spoonful, and then another, and then he lost himself entirely. He ate the way only the truly starved can eat, with his whole body, fast and without thought, scooping rice with his fingers when the spoon was too slow, wiping the plate clean with the last of the plantain. Mama Joke watched him in silence. When he had finished, she refilled the plate without being asked.

“Slow down,” she said. “Your stomach will hurt.”

“I don’t want them to take it,” Ola said with his mouth full.

“Take what?”

“The food.”

Mama Joke turned away quickly and busied herself at the sink. When she turned back, her eyes were red. “Nobody will take it,” she said. “Eat. It’s all yours.”

He ate until his stomach hurt, and then he sat with his hands folded on the table, afraid to move, afraid that if he did the whole thing would dissolve like a dream. Mama Joke dried her hands on her wrapper and looked him over.

“How old are you?”

“Six. Today is my birthday. No, it has already passed.”

“Your birthday?” She blinked. “Which day?”

“The day they left.”

She said nothing for a long time. Then she walked to the cupboard and took down a small packet of biscuits, the kind with cream in the middle, and set it on the table in front of him.

“Happy birthday, Ola,” she said softly.

He looked at the biscuits. He looked at her. And something in his chest, a thing that had been clenched tight for seven days, loosened a little, and he did not know what to do with the feeling, so he opened the packet and ate a biscuit and said nothing at all.

The bed they gave him was in a small room beside the kitchen, a room that had once been a store. It had a narrow mattress with a clean sheet, a single window, a rug on the floor. To Ola it was a palace. He lay down in the dark with the cartoon lion on his chest and listened to the night sounds of the compound: the murmur of men’s voices, a radio playing faintly, the distant bark of a dog, the soft creak of the house settling around him.

He was not asleep when the door opened.

He lay very still, with the old instinct tightening his muscles, and watched the shape in the doorway. It was Segun. He had taken off his chain and his shirt and wore only a white singlet and a wrapper tied at his waist. Without the black car and the guards, he looked smaller. Older. The scar on his face caught the light from the corridor.

He stood there for a long time, saying nothing. Then he stepped in and sat on the floor beside the mattress, his back against the wall.

“You never sleep,” he said.

“No, Boss.”

“Does fear worry you?”

Ola thought about it honestly. “Small.”

“Good.” Segun nodded. “Fear is a good thing. Fear keeps a person alive. But don’t let it rule you.” He was quiet for a moment. “Mama Joke told me you talk about food. That you don’t want them to take it.”

Ola felt a flush of shame. “Sorry, Boss.”

“No sorry.” Segun’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “I was like that once. When I was small, if they gave me food, I would hide it under my shirt. I wouldn’t eat it right away. I would keep it, because I wasn’t sure tomorrow would come.” He looked at his own hands, large and scarred, resting on his knees. “Tomorrow go come for you now. I promise.”

“Boss?”

“Yes?”

“Why you pick me?”

Segun was quiet so long that Ola thought he might not answer. When he finally spoke, it was almost to himself.

“I saw you on the road,” he said. “Everyone else walked past you. They saw a small boy in the gutter and looked the other way. But you didn’t beg. You didn’t cry. You just sat there, looking the world straight in the face, as if you were waiting for it to blink first.” A small, dry laugh. “I know that look. I have seen it in the mirror every day for twenty years.”

Ola did not know what to say.

“I am not a good man,” Segun said. “You will hear many things about me. Some of them are true. Some are worse than the truth. But I will tell you one thing today, so that you remember it.” He leaned forward, and his eyes caught the light. “As long as I am alive, you will never sleep on the road again. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Boss.”

“It is a promise.”

He stood, stretched until his joints cracked, and went to the door. On the threshold he stopped.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will show you your new house.”

The door closed softly. Ola lay in the dark, listening to the retreating footsteps, and a strange, enormous feeling rose up in him, bigger than gratitude, bigger than relief. It was a feeling he had no name for. Years later, when he was a man and had done things that would have made that small boy weep, he would understand what it had been.

It had been the beginning of loyalty. And loyalty, he would learn, is the most dangerous thing you can give to a man who deals in blood.

He slept at last, deeply, with the lion on his chest, and for the first time in weeks he did not dream of the rain.