Water Woes

cave drawing image

by Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

Pete already pulled the engine, making my panting and pushing on the paddle useless. I quickly hauled the paddle out of the water and dropped it by the bowl of wriggling fish and folded net at the bottom of the canoe, the coloured vessel’s nose slicing the water waves at a kind of speed I never knew it could run. All my life nowhere had ever really felt completely safe for me. But as we pulled away from the jetty and its surrounding plushness, I wished I could stay in this canoe forever.

“I warned you, Nosa. You have messed us up!”

I ignored Osa’s childish whining, instead focusing on a shiver floating down my back as I pictured what could have happened if we had been caught. I remembered my time in the police cell and the floating turned my bowels. That cell was worse than our damp cabin back at the shanty town; our cabin that the health officers already said should not be fit for humans o. But police people did not care like that, so if they caught us right now, it’s in that horrid cell we’d sleep tonight. I looked at the sky stretching before us in the distance, and right now, as much as I hated our cabin, I longed for its algae-coated walls.

I turned my stare to Pete and Osa, and could tell that like mine, their hearts were beating like the boots of marching policemen the last time they came to the shanty town for their usual arrests. The fierce afternoon sun bounced around our sweaty, blackened faces from the water, stripping our guilt naked in its glare. Osa’s whining didn’t stop. But nobody was pursuing us. There was a long tail of roused water on our trail, and the calm wavy stretch on either side of it. The only person in sight was standing on the jetty we left behind at the edge of the beautiful Water Garden Estate, small like a giant toy in the distance, shaking her head it seemed, but making no attempt to pursue until Osa did the stupidest thing ever.

At first, I thought maybe Pete threw our day’s catch back into the water, but there was no way a few dozen fishes could make a splash that loud, plus Osa’s whining had finally ceased. Alas, it was the stupid boy jumping out and swimming his way back to the disappointed girl on the faraway jetty. The marching boots in my heart ascended into kicking and stamping. The glints in Pete’s eyes told me his heart was taking just as heavy a beating.

~

I cannot begin to tell you about life in Makoko and why I never felt safe in our small shanty town. The sun would rise and set and there still would be plenty left to be said. Everybody knows how squalid our Makoko is anyway. The floating cabins and raft houses sit on the dirty waters by the Third Mainland Bridge, where those of us whose parents cannot afford space on land cluster in our shared misery. The water is everything to us, giving us food to eat and taking back the pee and poo that we make of it. But we are not the reason the water is dirty o, blame that on the land-Lagosians. He who throws away the waste might not remember, but when it finds its way to us, we have nowhere to push it to. And when the health people come around, they see traces of the exoticism peeking through the dirtied moulds and algae coatings, all things we could never afford, they still mark us as dirty and blame us for polluting the water.

I didn’t always use to be a part of this mess. Until five years ago when I was seven, I had neither seen water this large nor known it was possible to live anywhere but on land. As I was told, my birth had killed my Ma, and because my Pa had walked away and not returned at the news, his pregnant sister, Aunt Philomena, who at the time was also grieving her own husband, had been saddled with my care. Aunt Philo raised me and her little son in the same house where she did housemaid work. In my heart, I knew my place, but nothing suggested that we were sons of the housemaid since we went to school, wore new clothes and watched TV in a big parlour with the other kids. The kids particularly loved my cousin because whenever the parents grilled us over the doors being left open, or a broken plate, or even a missing item—any offense at all—he was always the first to cave, breaking into tears and taking the fall even when he wasn’t the offender.

But when Aunt Philo’s Oga brought home a new wife, the woman brought with her a new way of doing things. Even the children of Aunt Philo’s Madam could no longer watch TV in the big parlour. As for us, the housemaid’s children, we were permanently banished to the mosquito-infested verandah behind the kitchen. Any illusion of safety I had nursed joined the mosquitoes to jest in my ears at night.

As things heated up between the new Madam and the old one, one day Aunt Philo announced that I was going to Lagos. Who wouldn’t want to come to Lagos with all the amazing things I had heard about it? A fluttering exhilaration nestled in my heart all the way through the five-hour journey, clouded by the confusion of Aunt Philo saying that my father had contacted her and asked for me. I did not know if I should be happy or sad. Perhaps I’d be safe with him? I did not even have any idea what he looked like. But I was coming to Lagos, eh? That was enough reason for my heart to race with excitement, until a skinny man with alcoholic breath and darkened fingernails approached me at the park, showed me a ragged picture of him and Aunty Philo holding hands in front of an old church building and took me to his waiting canoe at a rowdy edge of the lagoon.

He whistled tune after tune but spared me no words as he paddled me into this gloom. Water stretched forth in every direction, threatening to swallow us, but it was the broken woods and greenish rot on the sides of the canoe that filled my eyes with mists and fizzled my excitement like a pumped balloon losing air.

For the first couple of days, I was dazed by the abundance of water, the unending waves floating on its surface constantly reminding me that it was a living predator. Except for Pa, everyone here was nice and happy to meet me, but this was no comfort. I longed for the verandah behind the kitchen in Ondo. Back there, I was always eager for Oga and Madam to travel, because that was the only time their kids swam in the backyard pool and we always swam with them. But here, who jumps into the same water to swim where he passes pee and poo? And when everyone learned I had refused to swim, their niceness was gone. I began to dread them all just as much as I did the water, and eventually the health workers, and the police people, and everything else around here.

A little succour came with a destructive rain in my third week. At home alone, the wind howled its threat through all the carpentered joints, bullying the lantern’s flame to its death, spraying water in through any space it could find, and growing the small puddle on the floor as far as Pa’s flat foam. So much was going to get wet, and I didn’t know how to save them. A leatherback Bible by the foam flipped open, and I made out a number of thick papers scattering around it. I put them all back and tucked the Bible into a bunch of clothes folded beneath the ceiling. The next morning when I brought the Bible down, a moment of safety fell to my feet. It was an old picture and the lean face smiling up at me was unmistakably my Ma’s.

~

One day, two years ago, when I was starting to feel a little safe in this place, one of the health people in her cellophane coverings, mask, and rain boots stopped at Pete’s mother’s door. She had that cough that kept everyone up at night, like a car mechanic kickstarting a bad engine, louder than the cars running past on the nearby Third Mainland Bridge. She was too sick to stand up, but the health woman wouldn’t go away.

“Too much dirt around the pillars of your house, ma. Your house is literally floating on dirt. It needs to be removed.”

The health woman did not see Pete pull up his graffiti-splattered canoe and climb onto the wooden walkway between the houses. We all did, even her other health people, but only she didn’t. Even if she had seen him coming, I don’t think she would have stopped the hounding, because what could a small nine-year old boy with skinny arms and tattered clothes do anyway?

“Enough, madam!” Pete barked in the big voice he wore whenever he wanted to show himself. “You no see say the woman sick?”

She had turned around, and at his sight, pushed her head back like a gust of wind forced her to. But it only took seconds before she straightened herself and began to shout again. “But someone needs to fix it even if she’s sick, otherwise I’m going to mark this as unfit, and the bulldozers will be here by morning.”

Her words tickled me and other young kids watching the spectacle, so much that we all laughed like someone cracked a classic joke. We all, except for Pete, of course.

“All this big big grammar like Nosa, nawa o,” someone remarked and the laughter grew as eyes frantically sought me out. I gulped down my laughter like a dry morsel and shrugged like it would make the eyes shed off me.

Several murmurs followed as the laughter began to subside. The eyes dispersed too.

“Bulldozers on top water . . .?”

“She must be new . . .”

“You no fit threaten us, Madam . . .”

“We don dey here since before dem born you . . .”

“Who go vote for your governor if he bulldoze us . . .?”

Pete’s voice pierced its way through the mix, hoarse like a Danfo bus conductor call-practicing his bus-stops. “You say someone need to pack the dirty, Madam? Tell us who o, because no be anybody from here.”

The woman was not sure how to react, rattled by Pete’s authority, irritated by the ringworm patches on his hairless head, and scared bythe obvious animation of the redness in his eyes. She looked around at her other health people, then at the older people standing around. Nobody offered a way out. Her gloved hands went from her sides to her hips and back down her sides. “You tell me, dear boy. Who will pack the dirt?”

“The people wey throw the dirty inside the water,’ Pete said, bending towards the filth in the water to pick a greened Minion iPhone case. “Because as you fit see, this no be from around here.”

“It is here that I’m seeing it, so you people here have to clean it.”

“But you know inside your heart say this no be from here.”

“I don’t.”

“So you really think say na person for here buy this thing?” Pete’s bloodshot eyes swept around the small crowd, furrows lining his small forehead, effectively dismissing everyone as possible owners.

“Maybe you stole it.”

Talk about a sentence that sped up the day like the running video in a fast-forwarded VHS player. Before anyone could blink, Pete had dashed at the woman and they both made a big splash in the water. Mere minutes later, wailing sirens seized the air, drowning out our screams as slaps and kicks rained on us. Shortly after, a good number of us crammed into canoes towards Yaba, and from there, the back of a beatdown police van for a short trip to Adekunle Police Station.

Don’t even let me start about the hellish cell we were put in. It was many days before we saw the sun again. The lucky ones outside pre- sented a good enough reason for the police to release us, but when they gathered us at the foot of a huge tree outside the police station to tell the reason to us, it made Pete so angry and distraught that the police came and took him back to the cell. The rest of us had our heads bent by the weight of our hearts as we marched to the burial of the poor boy’s mother. She had died the night before.

~

Different people had different reasons for bullying me. For most of the young boys, it was because they thought I acted too good for this place. They knew I attended school in Ondo. I even told them how I won an essay competition in Primary 5, but still they said my “big big English” was fake. Funny, but I understood.

For the older people, they thought I was too slow when they sent me on errands. Of all the boys my age, I was the one who carried the least weight. They said I should wear skirts and play with the girls. Even for them, I understood.

Pete nko? Nobody had slapped me more in this life than him. My Pa used to keep him out of his mother’s cabin at night, and sometimes when he was done doing his thing with her they shouted and argued over how little he paid so loudly even I heard from our seven shacks away, sometimes ending in him beating her up. Then I would have to avoid Pete for days because if he saw me anywhere, he dragged me into a corner and slapped me like he was older than me, despite me being some months older than him. But I knew his reasons, so I understood.

The one I’d never understand was my Pa’s. I preferred him when he was piss-drunk. Being just drunk meant he would make jokes, banter with the other men in the drinking shed, whistle happy tunes, and maybe rub my head and tell me a little history when he returned home. I didn’t like that, especially because it sometimes ended with Ma’s picture making an appearance and him reminding me that I’m the reason she was no more. It had made all the affection I once had towards the picture turn sour. I preferred piss-drunk when Pa was falling over the walkway, pissing himself and speaking words only he understood. This was the only time I could be sure he would pass out long enough to not remember to blame me for any one of his misfortunes or the other. “Your mates are taking their fathers’ canoes out, Pete is taking his mother’s and returning with loads of fish, not you . . .”

Always I had to stop myself from reminding Pa that his canoe spent more time at the repairer’s than on water. He’d blame me for not bringing money home, and for not letting him bring money home, even for stealing imaginary money, because besides the never-drying puddle on our cabin-floor, the colony of algae lining the wooden walls, his flat foam and our pile of planks for sleeping, the clothes hanging down from one corner, the kerosene stove sitting in the other, and the bugs and mosquitoes, it was just me and him in the shack and I definitely did not take any money.

One unusual day when his canoe was back from the repairer and he was sober enough to fish, we were casting net a little distance from the shanty town, far but not far enough. Even I knew that to have a good day fishing, one needed to paddle as far away from our polluted end as possible. Perhaps Pa didn’t mind sweeping dead, contaminated fish up from the water’s bottom. It was hardly my concern because my eyes were struggling to stay open until a hurtful force smacked against my cheek. The end of the net I was holding dropped from my hand as I jolted from my dosing.

“Useless boy, sleeping when he suppose dey help me catch fish.”

“But Pa . . .” a cloud of tears formed over my eyes.

“Wetin?”

“Was it not your snoring in my ears that kept my eyes wide open at night?”

He rose, towering over me. I raised my arm over my face, thinking how it was too late to jump into the water and escape his beating in this hot sun. Then I felt him lift me off the bow seat and swing me around in the air, sitting back in his place before I even hit the water. Any other day, I’d think of my disdain for the water as well as the distance and beg to climb back in, but on this day, I surprised both of us and began a long swim back to Makoko.

~

When Pete’s Ma died and the government people dismantled her shack, he had no other place to go so he started staying with us. At first, he would sneak in very late when Pa was already snoring and settle on a plank by the door, disappearing before the cover of dusk lifted. Pa could hardly tell that he was living with us, despite having invited him in, but me, I always saw everything, because I couldn’t sleep with that volume of snoring, and I always wondered how Pete could.

The first thing that changed then was that Pete stopped bullying me. He even started to invite me with him on his coloured canoe. Then Pa stopped beating me, maybe because he started to see me and Pete together. The other boys too all became friendlier, and the older people even stopped sending me on errands. Before, I was wishing it was my Pa that died instead of Pete’s Ma, but obviously, none of these new things would have happened if it hadn’t been her. Pa dying would surely have made things worse for me, so suddenly I was thanking God that it was her that died and not him.

This new friendship popped my bubble of gloom and sprayed a colourful hue over everything.The croaks, chirps, and hoots from the distant bridge when day broke, all went from noise to a rhythmic medley. The meeting of the water’s waves and the morning sun went from a nagging disturbance to bouncing crystals. The occasional drama erupting from the slow-moving cars on the bridge in the distance became scenes of amusement, rather than a veiled world that I was shut away from. Even Pa’s snoring stopped mattering. Everyone offered me fish left, right, and centre. Pete’s friendship transmitted every single privilege he enjoyed as the starboy of the neighbourhood. It was almost like they forgot I was Nosa, the cry-cry boy with big big grammar who was perhaps more useless than his useless father.

One afternoon, I sat by the walkway beside our shack, whistling and eating fish, smacking flies away with my shirt in my other hand, thinking how valuable companionship was much better than being alone and being susceptible to bullying, until Pa’s canoe dragged its nose towards me, carrying a boy in fine clothes and shoes like the type you saw on rich children at the football field in Yaba. Like me, everyone had their eyes on him, wondering if he was another of those rich people who only remembered we existed when they had birthdays or needed to take “humanitarian” pictures.

“Why are you looking at your cousin like that?” Pa barked as he paddled in and stood up to disembark. “Don’t you recognize Osahon?”

My eyes widened with excitement. I jumped up and threw away what was left of my fish, rushing towards the canoe. “Osa! Osa! Osa!”

The boy, much taller than I remembered him to be, did not share my excitement, but he still managed to smile, climbing out and hugging me, then looked around and clutched his backpack behind him, as though scared somebody might snatch it.

When Pete paddled home later at sunset, I introduced him to my Aunty Philo’s son. They were exact age mates and they clicked like they had met somewhere before, talking and laughing into the night. Even after I told them I was going inside, hoping that would make them break up the talk and come with me, the sound of their chattering followed me to my sleeping plank, loud and more nauseating than Pa’s snoring ever was.

In the morning, I didn’t greet either of them and when they greeted me, my response was only an inaudible murmur. But my anger would only grow when by noon almost all the boys had come to say hi to the new posh boy, and all the girls had smiled and waved from their doors and windows, or as they paddled past our shack, all ignoring me.

“Where can I poopoo, please?” Osa leaned into the door to ask me after I left him outside to brood and stare at my Ma’s picture in the cabin. His fine English was as annoying as mine must have been to everyone when I first arrived.

I wanted to tell him that I usually waited until night before squatting over the walkway and dropping it into the water, but instead I said: “Go across the back, drop the tarpaulin on the roof, squat under it and do it into the water. Be careful though because anyone passing can see you.” I enjoyed the confusion that played across his face for a moment, and even more the words that followed. “Isn’t there any other way?” “I’m afraid not posh boy Osa.” I responded with meanness slithering through my voice.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Before I could answer, a lousy neighbour’s voice filled up the cabin from outside, calling my name a little too loudly. I hurried up and pushed past Osa by the door.

“Yes, Pa Dele.”

“Come join these girls,” he already turned his back, moving towards his docked canoe. “I need to arrange fish wey I dey go sell for market.”

“Should I come too sir?” It was Osa’s little voice flying over my shoulders.

Pa Dele looked back, his big smile showing several missing teeth as he waved his hand. “No o. You na butter boy, you no go fit carry that kain load.”

I couldn’t understand it. How was everyone suddenly liking this boy for the same things they all bullied me for?

When Pete returned that night, he produced a small nylon bag as we sat with our legs dangling over the water. With a lot of care, he unwrapped it to reveal soiled newspaper print crumpled inside. He set it down by Osa and said, “That na good suya. Try am.”

I hissed, climbed back onto the walkway and disappeared inside, ignoring their confused looks and trailing eyes.

~

Before Pete and I became close, the only thing I envied about him was his daringness. Who wanted a mother who inherited the best canoe in the neighbourhood but would rather stay in her cabin selling whatever it was the different men going in and coming out were buying? I guessed Pete’s way of turning a blind eye was taking ownership of the canoe at such a young age and letting it take him away every day. By sunrise, he would be gone and not return until it was dark. Only Ma Janet and Ma Hauwa who bought fish from him could tell you whether he was around or when he was coming back.

When his Ma caught an illness and started to smell, Pete began to stay around more to take care of her. All her men had stopped coming and my Pa who could not afford her before became her only customer. Everyone wondered how he coped with the smell. I was sure Pete did too because a few days ago when we were sharing akara on the walkway by the cabin and he let out a loud smelly fart, he made a funny face when Pa asked what he ate that made his fart smell so bad.

The first time I rode in his canoe, he paddled and paddled until there was no sight all around us but water kissing the sky. I asked where we were going and he simply smiled, showing his scarce dimples. When a horizon of buildings appeared in the distance, he pulled in the paddle and settled on the bow seat, a sense of satisfaction masking his lean face. As the houses grew bigger, his demeanour became less puzzling. With their patterned iron fences, the evenly painted high walls, some of the most exotic plants I had ever seen, and shiny cars that looked like giant toys, even I could stay here all day just looking.

Every single time I was on the canoe again with Pete, I hoped to see that beautiful place that made Oga in Ondo look poor. Sometimes he took me there, but most times we only went fishing, no sightseeing.

Almost every night afterwards, I lay on my plank, closed my eyes and tried to imagine how safe it would feel to live in a place like that.

It was only two days since Osa arrived, but that day he was out on the canoe with Pete. I could already tell Pete would take him there and the thought made my interiors boil like overheated soup. I paced the length and breadth of the entire walkway linking our neighbourhood, taking bend after bend, and finding my way back again. When the sun became a little too fierce, I sat in the shade of our cabin throwing fish bones and crab shells into the water. By evening, sleep stole in on me and eased the burning in my chest until I was roused by Osa, carrying a bag-load of fish and smiling like he kissed a girl.

“Since morning . . .?” I hissed. “You’re just coming. I guess you had fun.”

“Sorry Nosa,” he couldn’t turn off the brightness on his face. “You won’t believe what happened where Pete took me.”

“What happened?”

Pete strolled in at that point, his frame blocking out what was left of the sunlight in the doorway. “This your cousin na wa o. Just one trip, he don hook one of the big men daughter for Water Gardens Estate.” “Eh ehn?” I lifted my frame off the bed and my feet kissed the wet floor. “Big man daughter? How nau?”

We spent the rest of the evening sitting on the walkway, sharing yam and roasted fish while Pete told me of their day.

“We see the girl for one of those jetties,” he said with a mouthful of yam. “When she call us to come, me I think say she wan buy fish, but na the colours for my canoe she begin ask us about. Na so Osa too ask her about the book wey she dey read, talk say he don read am before.”

I glanced over at Osa, wearing my amazement on my face. An unshakeable sheepish grin had possessed his face.

“Before we know wetin dey happen, she don invite us to climb the jetty come sit down with her. Fine, big girl o. She even enter house bring us cold juice and biscuits.”

I’m not sure which stretched wider, my eyes or my mouth.

“Na so dem dey talk book after book like say the books na films. The girl like Osa o. She no even wan make we go.”

Osa didn’t, or rather, couldn’t say a word. His facial muscles must have hurt from how much he smiled.

“If you see as the house big. She say na only she dey, so she dey bored.” He slurred on bored and made a funny face. “She just come back from London. You know London?”

“Yes nau,” I scoffed. “London in UK nau.”

“Which one be Youkay again?” He shot a puzzled look at Osa whose head shot up and down, his face still wearing the stupid grin.

“UK is United Kingdom. Just like Abuja is the capital of Nigeria, London is the capital of UK,” I said, happy to contribute some useful information.

Pete picked himself up from the walkway and dusted the dirt from his buttocks. “Una too sabi book. Two of una. Na una problem be that.” I took in the veiled praise, turning my face to hide the smile. I looked up to see Osa still smiling. My irritation snapped mine out like a light switch. I sprang up and raced after Pete. “I’m following you tomorrow o.”

He glanced over his shoulder and stopped. “But she no go dey tomorrow. She tell Osa say she dey go write exam.”

“Yes, she said so,” Osa concurred.

“It doesn’t matter o,” I could hardly recognise my own voice beneath the sudden hardness that had seized it. From the looks on their faces, the other two couldn’t either.

“We are going tomorrow!” I had never been firmer.

My peers exchanged puzzled glances, then Pete shrugged and stuffed what was left of the yam in his hand into his mouth.

~

The intention was never to touch anything. We did not even plan to go beyond the jetty. In fact, when we first arrived there, Pete and Osa were fine with just looking at the jetty from inside the canoe, showing me where they sat the day before. I wanted to sit there too, and when Pete declined and made to paddle away, I took one step from the gunwale and impulsively dived into the water. In a few strokes, I was holding a pillar of the jetty and stretching to leap onto the platform.

I had thought Pete would be mad, but his face was the brightest I had ever seen it. When he and a visibly shaken Osa joined me on the jetty, he dug his dimples deep and held my shoulders. “So you sef get mind like this ehn, Nosa?”

I smiled, happy he was impressed.

We sat on the concrete floor of the jetty. Pete said there had been chairs there the day before. We didn’t mind, Pete and I. Osa did not sit down at all. He kept pacing as though his buttocks were holding a grudge with the floor, reminding us every minute that we shouldn’t be there.

Pete ignored him, and so did I. We stared ahead over the water. It was the same, but it looked really different from here. There was no dirt floating on it. There was no stench, and to either side, there were other jetties bordering other beautiful houses, not wood cabins standing in scattered rows on the water.

A pelican skirted across the surface towards us. When it got close, it rose into the air and flew into the compound behind, perching on the shiny bonnet of a car I was sure I had never seen before.

“Pete,” I called, peering over at the pelican. “Yes?”

“Won’t you like to touch that car?”

Osa gasped as though he had seen a ghost. I continued to ignore him.

“That one no be good idea o,” Pete responded, shaking his head. “But you said there is no one at home nau?” I protested. “See that bird, nobody is shooing it away. If it can touch it, why can’t we?”

Pete brooded over my words for a moment, and before I was even sure I wanted what I asked him, he had marched to the small gate that led inside the compound and was checking to see if it was locked.

“This is such a bad idea, Nosa,” Osa pleaded. “Please let’s go. We’ll come back tomorrow when she’s home and I will ask her to let us inside.”

I looked at him with pity in my eyes, then I ventured after Pete. The gate had no lock, and he was already halfway into it. Osa was on my heels, still pleading. I caught up with Pete and headed straight for the car, the pelican taking flight as we approached.

“Oh boy!” Pete exclaimed, his hands forming an arc over his mouth. “See machine!”

The car was indeed a view, like a beauty queen wearing a tiara, overly conscious that she truly was beautiful. Everything shone like the meeting of a shimmering sun and the wavy water; the glass, the body, the tyre, everything, especially the silvery image of a winged woman standing on the bonnet.

“Rolls Royce,” Osa mouthed, obviously reading the inscription around a RR beneath the silver woman’s image.

“Rose Ross,” Pete attempted the name.

Before I could correct him, some distant voices shook our hearts in our chests, and we all halved our heights. My eyes widened, just as much as Pete’s and Osa’s, and without any thoughts at all, I jumped and made for the small jetty gate. Pete and Osa were on my heels and while I dove into the water to swim to the canoe, they both leapt into the air instead and were inside before I could pull myself in. Pete was fumbling around the rear deck, Osa was shaking like electric current was running through his body. I reached for the paddle, plunged it into the water and began to motion the canoe away.

I kept looking over my shoulder at the open gate. Nobody appeared from behind it. Soon, Pete dropped his fuel keg at my feet and began to pull at the small engine. He pulled once, twice, thrice, and the rarely used engine spurted into life, springing the canoe forward and away from the jetty. I looked at him with a hint of victory on my face, then I looked at Osa whose face had been completely replaced with a mask of despair. His stare was fixated, and his eyes had a mist forming over them. I looked back in the direction of his stare and there was a tall girl standing on the jetty, motionless, just staring after us.

I thought of getting caught. I thought of police. I thought of the hot, tiny cell where thirteen people crammed, all pushing and avoiding the corner where there was a small, covered hole for pissing and defecating. I surely could not go back there, no!

The farther the canoe got us, the safer I felt in it. I thought of the right words to say to my peers since it was my idea that got us into this mess in the first place. I turned the words over in my mind, and just when I thought I had found the right mix was when I heard the splash. “Osa! Osa!” I jutted my frame over the edge of the canoe in desperation. “Stupid boy, come back! Do you think this is Ondo?”

The horror on my face etched deeper as the distance widened between his swimming figure and my stretched arm. He was swimming frantically, showing no sign that he even heard me. I hissed and turned to find Pete staring hard at me. His eyes had that stone-cold feel they always wore whenever he had me in a corner to slap me.

“I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I forgot he always did that whenever we got into trouble.”

“So we’re just going to let him go by himself?” Pete’s eyes said more than his mouth did. Before I could respond, he too rose, put a leg on an edge of the canoe and dove into the water.

I glanced after them in despair as they both stupidly swam towards the smallish figure on the distant jetty, their little arms stroking back and forth, away from the canoe. I knew that the honourable thing to do would be to jump into the water and join them in surrendering. I very much wanted to, but I did not possess that kind of courage. So, I dropped off the bow seat onto the fishing net on the canoe-floor, seek-ing comfort in the frantic speed of the coloured wooden vessel. This might not have been an ideal location for the fishes, wriggling in the water for survival, but it was for me, with them in their last moments on the canoe-floor.