At shop 1208, Goddy stared at me in flesh and blood. He thought I was a ghost. My presence reminded him of his bitter past.
By Taju Tijani
The DJ was dropping legendary soulful music of the iconic 80’s. Brother Johnson, Kool & The Gang, Shalamar, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sister Sledge, MC Hammer, Donna Summer, The Temptations, Bonny M, Lionel Richie, El DeBarge, Marvin Gaye, James Ingram, Billy Ocean, Fredie Jackson, Michael Jackson, Anita Baker, Cyndi Lauper and many others. The smartly furnished living room in Borehamwood in a hidden corner of Hertfordshire was our sweating hole for the night. Old faces from my kindergarten years jammed the party. We danced. We threw banters. We flirted. We drank. We ate to the point of gluttony.
Ngozi Nnaji and Goddy Nwoye waltzed the night away. Ngozi wore a pink chiffon over a chic looking, dark, baggy trouser. She made her hair in cornrow and looked majestically pretty. Goddy was in a blue Tommy Hilfiger shirt over a Wagner’s jean trouser and a white trainer. He held the hands of his wife of 22 years as they celebrated the graduation ceremony of Ngozi all over again. The time she was celebrating the bagging of her Master’s degree in law. Her friends were on the stage plastering her forehead with money. The joy of the night was palpably evident.
The memory of Ladipo market was forgotten by Goddy. Goddy was a rugged Nnewi-born hustler. Lagos toughened Goddy and he became extremely street smart. He knew all the nooks and crannies of Lagos mainland. I remembered when we used to go fishing and crabbing at the very ground where we have the National Theatre at Iganmu. We went fishing in the morning. We went crabbing at night. Goddy became a legend of the crabbing business. He knew all the nondescript hiding places of every crab on the ground.
Bored to death by the juvenile crabbing business, Goddy signed up to be a mechanic along Brickfield Road. Years later he bought his own danfo. Years later, he abandoned the danfo business and leased a shop at Ladipo to sell spare parts. His disarming smile, persuasive skills and fluency in Yoruba language made him an object of envy among his fellow Ndigbo spare parts dealers. He became popular, personable and promising in the business and soon he became very successful. He met Ngozi at the Tejuosho market and from the onset, Goddy was besotted by the charm of his new found love.
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The relationship had a hallmark of its own oddities. If opposite could attract as is the popular maxim, Goddy and Ngozi were a classic case. Ngozi was born, bread and buttered in Lagos and graduated with a 2:1 in Law from Nsukka. She was a studious, serious and diligent student in all her years at Nsukka. She flirted with student politics but dropped it for a more rigorous application of her talent for her degree. She returned to Lagos after her youth service year in the desert of Sokoto State to take up a job at a telecommunication company in Ikeja.
Then Goddy landed in her universe. They became engaged. I would never know what did the trick. Goddy adored her educated wife. Ngozi too adored her businessman husband. They had a fantastic time together and enjoyed every minute of the relationship. There were no gasps of doubt in the relationship. They were made for each other. Goddy was a determined and focused Lagos boy. Ngozi was a cerebral and calculating woman with zero tolerance for shoddiness. She walked the streets of Opebi in Ikeja for two years until Goddy won the struggle with Nigeria. Goddy got a UK visa.
The visa was meant to be a harbinger of a better life abroad. The optimism of Goddy knew no bounds. Six months later Ngozi snatched her own visa and relocated to join her waiting husband. Ngozi had become a shadow of her former self. She looked scrawny, sickly and famished. I was aghast when I first met her in London. I thought she contracted HIV-AIDS. Goddy fattened her up and Ngozi regained her prettiness. Goddy drove across London as a cab driver. He was a dedicated and trustworthy driver. His mates in the business respected his commitment to the job. He made a fortune and bought a house in a white-dominated neighbourhood of Borehamwood.
The big beastly looking Mercedes Benz roared into the car park. It idled for a minute then the engine stopped. The driver adjusted his bushy moustache and beard through the roof mirror. Ngozi smiled through her office window. She instinctively knew it was Chudi. The tall, dapper, muscular, fair skinned and athletic looking “Yellow Bobo” clutched to his laptop as he dashed into Ngozi’s office. Chudi Agu, was the IT man Friday that came in to sort out systems issues in Ngozi’s office. He was wifeless, a bachelor and a stubborn hedonist.
The world of Goddy collapsed when he heard that Ngozi fell – helplessly and shamefully for the amorous talons of “Yellow Bobo”. Before the collapse, Ngozi had been confiding in me some intimate details about Goddy. I dismissed them all and stood behind Goddy. We must live with honesty and integrity and the remembrance of time past when sacrifices were made. Goddy was a good egg. A fantastic dad. He was loaded with the typical Igbo gene – hard working, pain bearing, single-minded and being responsible for the family and their well-being. He epitomized the virtues associated with Nnewi people.
I found myself in the middle of two restless spirits looking for meaning and excitement to rekindle a stale existence. Ngozi was now into bug bucks. She had been to Dubai, New York, Berlin and Paris on vacation while Goddy was stuck at home with their three kids and his cabbing job. As the income gap widened so Ngozi began to widen her social contacts for higher opportunities. Again, Goddy stuck to his cabbing – resolutely stuck in one place and not looking for any social contacts to change his destiny.
Goddy called me. He bared his mind to me in a bar along Kilburn High Road. He was in a nostalgic mode. We spoke Yoruba throughout. He broke down. I offered my handkerchief. I was silent throughout. That was my therapy to this old warrior fighting to salvage his family. As he was talking, I was thinking about the mystery of love – its comedy, tragedy, pain, comfort, entrance and now the exit. Ngozi has made her exit. Goddy still held on to the ropes of an escape horse. Ngozi pushed Goddy out of his home. Ngozi kept the three kids under her care. Ngozi bolted with the man who gave her attention, care and fun she had been dreaming for.
“Teejay, I’m going back to Nigeria. I’m going back to Ladipo market. My life here is fucked,” Goddy began.
“Your life is not fucked mate, get a grip. I spoke to Ngozi and she said few things that are fundamental. You get too stuck in one place. You did not give the marriage the oomph it needs. You are not ambitiously desperate. Ngozi is. You are not. Life can punish the sluggish. I may be saying insane thing but that is the reality,” I spoke frankly.
“Teejay, you are mad. What are you saying mate? With all the things I did for Ngozi and the kids. She is an opportunist, a cheat and very wicked. I pampered her. I sacrificed all for her.” Goddy fought back.
“You forgot yourself. You did not invest in yourself. You held the ladder for Ngozi to climb up while you refused to climb the ladder yourself,” I declared.
He sipped his scotch and Pepsi drink. He looked at his watch and disappeared into the night. Three years later……
I made my way to Ladipo market. Goddy Nwoye spotted a large beard. He looked heavier than when he was in London. At shop 1208, Goddy stared at me in flesh and blood. He thought I was a ghost. My presence reminded him of his bitter past. He could not warm up to me. He motioned to me to sit beside him in his tiny oily shop. Goddy slurred in his speech. He suffered a fatal stroke that has paralyzed him. I took out my phone. I showed him pictures of Nonso, Chichi and Amaka – his beautiful children left behind in London.
Tears, tears and more tears. I patted his back. I got up quietly and melted into the noisy metal mayhem of Ladipo market.