Wrestling by Augustine Okam

We are liars. Not the acquired kind; it is the congenital kind. Our mothers lied to us in-utero, and the lies seeped through their growing placentas to corrupt our developing brains. This is the only reason why we brag and hit our bony, flat chests saying we no longer bed-wet, that we never did, not even when we were in diapers, even if our mothers wake us up in the middle of the night to pee and still have to wash the wet, rubber bed sheets the next morning. We are children of mothers who cook egusi soup that would make your throat fall off from want. When you pass them on the street, fading wrappers and loose blouses on their waists and sagging breasts, they would reek of ogiri, and even then you will not be able to turn your nose away. Our mothers are like that, they don’t have paying jobs, but they are always tired. They don’t show affection to our fathers, sometimes they fight with them, but sure enough, biennially, they show up to the Primary Health Center with abdomens bursting out of their maternity gowns. Our mothers are liars, not very good ones, the lies glaring, like when they started the rumor that  deaf Asako, the man that spends his days sitting under the mango shade and smoking Indian hemp was the one that set De Nonso’s house on fire even though we all knew it was one of his sons, the one that returned from Lagos with dirty dreadlocks and a Rastafarian accent.

We play a lot, too, but never with artificial things: dolls with smooth skin and long hair you can braid, toy cars that require A4 batteries and remote controls. But we watch other children with skin the color of raw, plucked chicken play with them and long to play with them in our hearts but remind ourselves that our mothers said dolls are evil spirits. We sate our want of exotic playthings every chance we get from De Uchenna’s LG television that is bulging at the back like it is carrying a baby the wrong way, and because our fathers spend their day on their motorcycles driving people from Ahia-ọhụrụ to Abacha junction, and spend their evening at the kiosk pouring dry gin into their emaciated stomachs until they walk home staggering, we decide that our heroes must be inside the moving pictures. Sometimes our hero is the Indian woman moving her waist like the lubed wheels of a bicycle, other times he is John Cena throwing grown adults on the floor like they were small children. But most of the time he is Sameer Khan blocking bullets and batons with his oiled, muscular arms.

In the afternoons when our mothers are out hawking because Nigeria is now very hard, and our fathers ride around market carrying no one because everyone now prefers to trek to save money, I and Chidindu and Obinna and Ebube and Mmaduabuchi and Ego walk to De Nonso’s building site with the blocks of cement and pit sand to play wrestling, a new game we started since Nneka and Mary’s family moved away and there weren’t enough girls to play ‘mummy and daddy.’ To play wrestling we sneak palm oil from our mothers’ kitchen and apply it on our arms and legs so that our skin shines like Sameer’s, and strip to our underwear. Then the person who stole the palm oil for the day chooses an opponent, and we encircle them shouting ‘Sameer Khan, Sameer Khan,’ until one person throws the other to the ground, and we lift the victor on our shoulders and dance around the building site.

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Chidindu grabs a handful of sand and throws it in my face, indicating he wants me as his opponent and blinding me at the same time. I fall down and dig my right index finger into my eye, trying to remove the sand. Obinna and Ebube gather around me, pry my eyelids open, and start blowing air and saliva into my eyes. Chidindu laughs. It starts as a chuckle like he isn’t sure why no one else is laughing yet, mumble something against pressed lips, then he starts releasing bursts of laughter like he’s been trying to hold them back and he just cannot. He falls flat on the ground, an epileptic in the full swing of a seizure, except we know of an epileptic that lives at the end of our street and even he doesn’t laugh like he is trying to swallow a human being. I grab a fistful of sand and launch towards him, and as he tries to get up and away from me, he trips and hits his head on a block of cement. He makes like he decided to fall into a deep sleep all of a sudden. We rush toward him and start pushing him from all sides. His body wobbles with each shove, but remains motionless when our arms are away. We stand around him, the silence binding us together, we exchange glances and we know. We are liars and there’s a deaf man smoking Indian hemp across the street.

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AUGUSTINE OKAM — Augustine is a Nigerian writer. His writing has appeared in Jellyfish Review, A Coup of Owls, Temz Review, among others. He is currently a student at Ebonyi State University where he is pursuing his MBBS degree.

Art by OJO VICTORIA ILEMOBAYO — Ojo is a dynamic photographer and literary enthusiast. She is also in the field of editing photos and videos. She enjoys reading, traveling, discussing poetry, chatting, and watching movies. Some of her works can be found in brilliant magazines and anthologies.