Aunty Oyibo
Even in a crowded space where everyone knows your name, nobody actually knows what is happening inside your head, and Aunty Oyibo is the most stranger to herself.
Aunty Oyibo thought about it again and still couldn’t offer an acceptable explanation as to why she pushed the boy into the well.
“It just happened,” she said again and again.
Five, maybe seven persons had asked her, in no gentle words, why she did what she did to the little boy, and they were all disappointed to get the same answer.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“How did it happen?”
“It just happened.”
They could go on and on with these questions and Aunty Oyibo would still have the same thing to say. If it were one of those foreign movies, Aunty Oyibo would explain that maybe it happened telepathically. But this is Ajah, Lagos, Nigeria, where you’re either pretending to be normal or you are outrightly mad.
Aunty Oyibo might have willingly admitted to the act, but she couldn’t say more about when, how, or why it happened. One minute it had just been one of those intrusive thoughts, and at the same time, it just… happened.
The caretaker, who surprisingly proved his agility when he put his back between Aunty Oyibo and the eager crowd, still maintained his middleman position as he gestured and spoke to the cluster of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Aunty Oyibo wondered how anyone could take him seriously as he stood there in his usual compound-style: a shirtless torso and old checkered boxers around his waist. He always dressed like he occupied the compound alone and nobody should dare be bothered about his near-nudity. Aunty Oyibo wondered if anyone would be this angry at her if he was the one rescued from the well instead of the little boy.
“Abeg make una calm down reason the matter,” he stretched his hands out and opened his palms. If anybody heard him, they refused to reason anything as voices rose over one another. “I know say the matter serious.” This only amplified the voices that demanded an answer or justice. Whether or not they actually cared for the boy didn’t matter; people were either here to watch, judge, or use the opportunity to weaponize the situation for their personal agenda.
As if on cue, someone from the crowd thought it necessary to point out that Aunty Oyibo goes to the beach a lot—“maybe what she did was a ritualistic act.” The crowd roared, split between those who agreed and those who pondered the information. The narrative was only abandoned when the Osun worshippers present at the crowding debunked such negative claim.
“But una sabi Oyibo, she no dey do like that. She no dey cause trouble,” the caretaker seized the opportunity to insist on his appeal. Their voices quieted to murmurs; some even shook their heads as if to say, I pity this girl.
The young man who lived in one of the one-bedroom flats of the first building flanking the right side of the compound from the gate, stood akimbo in the small of his front veranda. Aunty Oyibo could see that the shy smile that used to accompany his greetings had been replaced with the kind of look reserved only for something despicable. Aunty Oyibo would never forget this look.
But it doesn’t matter how many looks or words they throw at Aunty Oyibo; she doesn’t have anything different to say. Even if Aunty Oyibo tried to explain, she wouldn’t be able to help them understand that sometimes she can’t tell the difference between her conscious and subconscious mind. A thought can become an action before Aunty Oyibo realizes it. No doctor of psychology had examined or diagnosed her in the twenty-nine years of her life, but Aunty Oyibo knew that she’s different in a way that makes it difficult to pretend to be normal.
Even if anyone wanted to fight for her, they wouldn’t know where to go next after they had exhausted their defense of “the quiet Oyibo.” It especially didn’t help that just after the boy's rescue, she’d heard someone shoot a stray bullet at quiet people being snakes. But when Aunty Oyibo looked up and saw that it was from the man who she refused his invitation into his shack house some months ago, her lips curved.
It was a smirk that didn’t happen in Aunty Oyibo’s mind as she had thought. Those who saw it were ready to wipe it clean off her face even if they had to climb over the caretaker and his old checkered boxers. Still, the caretaker had bounced his melon-sized belly and insisted on his defense of her innocence. Whether he did it for the few times Aunty Oyibo brought him finger-licking foods or for the one time Aunty Oyibo hid his side chick in her room the day the caretaker’s wife surprised him, Aunty Oyibo didn’t know; but she made a mental note to thank him with the abacha he’s come to love—that is, if she makes it out unscathed.
The caretaker saw that if he reminded them of Aunty Oyibo’s familiarity, the rate of their rage, even if for personal agenda, was dampened. Some people paused to think about it. They nodded. Yes, they can say they know Aunty Oyibo, at least the version of her that everyone else can agree with. She is quiet and not a troublemaker. “Something must have happened.” They wanted to know what, but Aunty Oyibo found it difficult to explain what even she doesn’t fully understand. They would not understand that she had come to the well to fetch water with no intention to touch or push anyone.
Aunty Oyibo suddenly felt faint from the sun’s blast, the three dozen persons that formed an arch around her, the sight of the caretaker in his old checkered boxers, and the worms nibbling hungrily at her insides.
She turns to face the well, willing it to crack and open a hole beneath her feet. Maybe it’d satisfy everyone to see her receive a taste of her medicine.
This would be the first dry season that dries up the well to the point where one can draw a pail and see a handful of sand at the bottom of it. The little boy had been bent over the well, each leg on a bag of sand positioned to form an arch around the foot of the well for such purpose. While the boy gave his divided focus to drawing more water than sand, two younger kids played close by as they waited for the boy to be done so they could all go home and play together. These are children from the opposite compound, three of many who come to Aunty Oyibo’s compound to use the well.
Aunty Oyibo stood, with her bucket by her feet, not less than six feet behind the boy as she waited her turn. She worked her eyes from structure to structure as she took in the environment as if she hasn’t lived here for the past twenty-two months. Someone was in the process of setting up a shack house close to the fence; Aunty Oyibo noticed and wondered if they would not be bothered by the noise the well attracted.
When there was nothing more to see or wonder about the upcoming shack, Aunty Oyibo returned her gaze to watch the two little kids. They threw roll-on balls and watched them bounce. When a ball got too close to the well, the older kid picked it up and bounced it back. Aunty Oyibo thought of Big Brother O as she watched the kids; she imagined how disgusted he’d pretend to be at first, before he took off his footwear and got into character. It occurred to Aunty Oyibo that this will be the first time she’s thought about Big Brother O since she moved to Lagos. He had warned her that “Lagos would eat you up” but Aunty Oyibo was determined not to spend the rest of her life in Awka even if it meant getting eaten.
Aunty Oyibo then shifted her gaze to stare into the emptiness of her bucket and wondered if it’d be possible to fill it up with all of her fleeting thoughts. A voice said it’d take more than one bucket, another called out the first for thinking they’d need more than one bucket, and yet another voice reminded the second that all three are all one and the same. To distract herself from the thought and argument she had lost control of, Aunty Oyibo’s eyes drifted like smoke to the well.
The longer she watched the well, the farther back the voices got. Aunty Oyibo absentmindedly shuddered her shoulders as she watched the boy bend over the well for yet another draw. It worried her that everyone else seemed to not be bothered by the risk the bags of sand created. Aunty Oyibo, who has an unusual fear of heights, always argued with herself that any little thing could send someone who stood on the bags easily into the well.
The boy turned the fetcher over in his bucket, turned to the ground to empty the sand at the bottom of the pail, and threw it back for yet another draw. Aunty Oyibo wondered why it was sand that layered the bottom of the well and not mud. A voice called her dumb for asking such an obvious question, another defended that it wasn’t obvious, and just like before, Aunty Oyibo’s thoughts weren’t hers to control or contemplate.
But just like the caretaker is adamant, Aunty Oyibo was determined to have control. She focused her gaze on the little boy at the well and refused to think about anything else beyond what was before her eyes. Throw, empty, throw. The boy repeated the cycle again and again until Aunty Oyibo started to wonder if the boy’s bucket had an invisible hole. With tentacles, the voices in Aunty Oyibo’s mind climbed over the walls she had willed to be. They came with intrusive questions that created the scenario that Aunty Oyibo can only explain with: “It just happened.”
One voice had wondered what the bottom of a well felt like, another had wanted to know if the depth made any difference being this near dry, and the third just simply said that there was only one way to find out.
Aunty Oyibo wrapped her hands around her small body and shook her head. The little kids watched Aunty Oyibo from atop the stairs they had gone to rest on some minutes ago. When Aunty Oyibo couldn’t stop the thought about the boy falling into the well from reoccurring in her mind, Aunty Oyibo turned her back to the boy, the well, and the little kids. She thought if she looked away long enough, she’d save them both from the wonders of her mind.
But then the little kids screamed, people gathered. Two or four people climbed into the well and one person climbed out with the little boy. His mother, Aunty Oyibo’s favorite customer, was beyond hysterical as she cradled her shivering child like a wounded animal. Her eyes demanded explanations, but the rest of her died in fear for the boy’s life. The boy’s mother was one of those who nodded in agreement when the caretaker said “una sabi Aunty Oyibo,” but shook her head painfully when the shack house man said, “quiet people na green snake in green grass.”
Aunty Oyibo had nothing more to say. She hoped they would at least agree to a private settlement for the sake of familiarity. This was after all, not Aunty Oyibo’s idle character.
Out of nowhere, Aunty Oyibo found herself thinking of Nkwado, her whimsical friend who used to say that Aunty Oyibo lived a life of paradox like the hen and the egg or dream and the dreamer. Much like in this case, Aunty Oyibo didn’t know what came first: the thought or the action. When the thought suddenly left the corners of her mind and became an action, Aunty Oyibo didn’t know.
From behind the caretaker, Aunty Oyibo turned again to watch the faces. She noticed some of her neighbors were crouched around the mother and her wounded child, as if shielding them from the evil of Aunty Oyibo.
“It just happened,” Aunty Oyibo mouthed to herself as she looked away from the crowd to focus on the trio of pigeons that perched on one of the building’s zinc.
“E fit be say she dey cover for these children, make dem no collect punishment.” The caretaker was determined to offer a viable explanation. Aunty Oyibo didn’t care anymore what happened to her. It was an accident that just happened; there was nothing more she could explain to anyone.
The crowd ate and digested what the caretaker said as they exchanged glances with one another. One woman who lives in the compound marched to the center to stand in front of the caretaker, her heavy physique commanding anyone to challenge her. “Wetin caretaker talk fit be true, these children no dey always hear word. Aunty Oyibo no fit do this kind thing.” The stubborn ones had no choice but to nod in agreement as if they needed somebody else to validate their judgment.
The woman turns to Aunty Oyibo and asks her to confirm this new explanation. Aunty Oyibo was ready to throw away the fish line this woman’s narrative was offering her, but the voices that lived within would not let it happen.
Are you mad? Say yes.
For once they all agreed and so Aunty Oyibo said a lowly “yes.” The crowd hissed, turned around, and started marching out of the compound to face what’s left of the day. Some stayed to sympathize with the family and warn the children, some even suggested punishments to their parents, and some just stayed to gather more gossip material.
Aunty Oyibo left her broken bucket and torn jacket, and walked solemnly into her flat at the end of the second building that flanks the left of the compound from the gate.
Intrusive thoughts 1 - 0 Aunty Oyibo