Must Read: The Player

6 years ago

Must Read: The Player

Dad was 36 when he killed himself. My earliest memories of him was a guy that carried me on his shoulders whenever we went out. As I grew older, I noticed he was always happy. I also noticed, unlike the other fathers around, he was relatively younger and jobless. sometimes, he went around hustling to get something home, most times he just hung around the house, with his green Khaki shorts and a newspaper. Mum always complained that he was the laziest person she had ever seen.
she said his mates were the bread winners of their family but he instead spent his time gambling. They had a lot of fights as regards his gambling. I knew of the word even before I knew the meaning.

Another subject of their fights was infidelity.

Mum believed that was screwing all the house-wives in the estate. She knew because they don’t greet her well whenever she greets them.
she hated the way he wore only his shorts to the balcony, with his well sculptured body getting admiring glances from the married and unmarried. But as the years flew past, the table turned. The fights became about her infidelity, but unlike dad, she didn’t deny it, instead she reminded him that he was the one that forced her into whatever she was doing. I remember when dad had screamed during one of their fights, ” you can do whatever you want to far from here, but don’t sleep with people of this estate, the shame is killing me”.

It wasn’t like they didn’t have their good times.

Dad was a jovial guy, he was always happy except when he was fighting with mum. After their fights, he would come to our room to tell us that everything was alright, that we shouldn’t be worried, ” Mummy and Daddy were just discussing passionately about something important.” Hanatu, my younger sister was too young to understand what he was saying, I was too young to tell him I was old enough to know they were fighting.

I was also too young to tell him to reduce the grunts he and mummy make when having S£x, I am not disturbed with the noise, I just didn’t want the neighbors hearing mummy say ” AH,OH, YES BABY!”

I never really liked mum, and she knew it. I felt she was always too violent. she smacked my dad and I at will. I was sure dad was strong enough to beat her mercilessly, but he wasn’t like that.

Instead when she charges at him, he would run to my room and lock the door. Then we would laugh as mum ranted outside about how dad was straffing Ijeoma, or used the last money in the house to gamble. She complained that there was no money but she kept buying expensive clothes.
She was a secretary at a Multi-National Pharmaceutical company, although her salary wouldn’t have been impressive, she always had expensive attires.

Another reason why I detested her was because of Hanatu. I was young, but I knew dad and Mum’s genotype had contributed to her SS.

Mum blamed dad for the condition. Saying he had forced himself to marry her even though he was an AS. Dad explained that she was an AS too, but mum just raised her voice, saying he was a good for nothing play boy. So dad and I were the ones that took care of Hana, mum took care of herself.

Mum was very beautiful, same height as dad, very fine shape, light skinned. But dad was the star, no description would have been complete without saying, that man is fine oh! He was from Tunga, ruggedly handsome and always carrying a day old beard before it came into vogue. He was the most charming person around. Though he was jobless and a gambler, he was well liked by people around. He always had a joke for anybody that was close enough to hear.

He impregnated mum when he was 20, she was 17. Through lotto, he had won a three bedroom flat in Iba housing Estate, mum must have been impressed that such a young guy could own a house. She quickly spread her legs and that produced me. It took a while for her to realize that a gambler never always won. Though they never got married, he knocked her up once more and Hanatu was the fruit.

While Hanatu was named after his mother in Tunga, I was named after his Ghanaian best friend, Fifi Owusu. Many drunken nights, he would tell me about their escapades in the Volta-region of Ghana, before he was deported at age 17 because he had no papers. Most of my friends made jest of my name, especially the Yoruba ones who called me “FuFu”.

With dad dead and Mum gone, things not only changed drastically, they also moved in a new direction.