By Michael Agugom
He wanted to outsmart himself. He stood before the mirror and waited. His reflection in the mirror also waited. He wanted to prove to his other-self in the mirror that he was an island boy, a boy from the creeks. He had heard Timi De-Bull say creek boys are the smartest in the world, that creek boys don’t come last in any endeavor. The same Timi that had called him born-throwey. He hankered after being perceived as smart. His mind told him if he could catch his reflection in the mirror unawares then Mrs. Dikibo, his class teacher who once called him toilet-tissue-brain, was wrong. A mistake, just a little slip-up from his reflection in the mirror, would suffice as proof for him that his reflection in the mirror was not him. This was all Tonworio wanted.
She stood before the sea and sobbed. She wished the sea would bring her relief, would reassure her that her fear was only an aberration.
The sea wave was coming to her, she waited for it. Her thought was on her only eye; she feared he would be a failure, would eventually drop out of school and never journey beyond this sea to learn the ways that make a man rich and powerful like the extravagant politician on the island. The gentle wave descended from its height and fell at her naked feet, gripping and licking her feet clean, the foam crawling up her ankle. She shut her eyes for divine answers; she shut her eyes so that this very sea that heard her cry would fill her with peace, then the sea breeze slapped her face playfully. In that long second she felt nothing.
The cold tongue of the sea did not bring her the soothing relief she sought. With the back of her forearm, she wiped the tears from her eyes, and the sea shrank back like a timid child, afraid it had done more harm than good. But the sea left smoothened white sand behind for her, so she would have footprints.
She turned, lumbering back to the batcha. She looked ghostly in her fluttering white nightie. Behind her, the moon was broken by half on the sea, and it gave her a gaunt shadow. She folded her arms to her breast and thought her shadow was a reflection of her troubled soul. She got into the batcha and pulled the blanket over her son. The big politician’s face on the blanket grinned at her as she covered her son, reminding her of the future she wanted for her son. She blew out the kerosene lamp and climbed into bed.
Like other nights, she would not sleep. She would just hold her only child close, while he slept as calm as the moon. She would pray, she would never stop praying, believing that tomorrow would give birth to a solution, a solution that would make her son the smartest boy on the island. That was all she wanted.
The mirror was inches taller than he. He stood grim before it, unmoving, his head upright, his chest out, his eyes wide open, his hands glued to his sides. He blinked his eyes, his reflection blinked as well. He forced a grin on his face, his reflection grinned back at him. He shut his eyes, and for a second wondered if his reflection did the same. He could not tell if it did, he wished there was a way he could tell, with his eyes shut. Without thinking about it first, he quickly opened his eyes, and his reflection did just that. He became frustrated that his fresh efforts were not yielding results. And even the irritation he wore on his face because of his failures showed in the mirror. He stubbornly thought it had to work; he had to find a way for it to work. He was certain if he kept at it, exploring different approaches, he would rout the he on the other side of the mirror.
He moved inches away from the mirror to the side where his reflection could not see him. Without forethought, he shoved his head speedily from the side into the mirror, and, as in prior attempts, the mirror returned his action and his reflection to him. In exasperation, he bawled, “Thunder fire you!” He formed a fist to punch his reflection in the groin but held back: his mother had told him how many buckets of garri the mirror cost her.
He had secretly been at this ever since his mother brought the mirror home. His mother bought the life-size mirror so she could see herself fully and clearly while she wore her makeup. She thought the small hand-mirror did not give her a full view of her face and her still youthful physique. She wanted to improve on her look. She thought her poor makeup contributed to her low market value.
He sat on the naked cement floor, his neck gushing sweat, his shirt soaked. His reflection in the mirror was also perspiring. He would not accept that his reflection could be this clever to capture even his involuntary actions. He told himself again and again that the reflection was not him, that the reflection was no different from a drawing or a photograph. And he loved to draw things secretly: their batcha house, their bed-and-table room, the stray fowls and goats on the island, the pipe-smoking old men in the tavern, the smoked-fish women on their frontages, the rusty jetty, the waterfront, the sea and her wave behind their batcha.
These were drawings to him, and because he made them he knew they could not move. He knew drawings did not have the mind of the artist, and photographs were just better camera images. He thought photographs only followed his eyes because he met their eyes when he stared. His baby photograph did this to him every time he looked into his baby eyes.
Through Ol’Soja’s window, he and other children on the island had watched Ol’Soja’s color-screen TV, where Ol’Soja once played back the actions of strangers and cartoons in the TV, and made them run horribly into a future action. He thought that his reflection was not even like the strangers on the TV, that his reflection in the mirror was different, with a mind of its own to mimic him. Even if he tried to bring anything with him before the mirror, which he had tried several times, his reflection would bring the same. The mystery of the mirror bolted him to the floor, lost in thought. The mystery tormented Tonworio’s mind.
Honourable was her boyfriend. He was senior political thug to the politician whose face was on her blanket. They had just finished, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a stick of cigarette. She was naked under the blanket. She lay on her side, her head propped up on her arm. She could see the scars on his back; they were numerous, like the lines and shades on the map of the country. She knew he was just as scarred in his mind. She did not want her son to be like this thug, she wanted her son to be like the big politician who employed this thug. She wanted that because politicians were the richest and most powerful on the island, she wanted that because politicians were the ones grabbing and grabbing everything. She wanted to be the mother of a powerful son.
Her nakedness disgusted her, his nakedness disgusted her, but she did not wear the disgust on her face. Nothing of their bi-weekly meeting was pleasurable to her, except the money he left behind. She quelled her revulsion with the logic that the left hand has to wash the right hand just as the right hand washed the left.
He puffed and asked, “Is Tonworio doing any better now?” The underlying sarcasm in the question was not lost on her. “He’ll be fine. He’s going to be a big politician one day.” He turned to her, wearing a smirk. “You think to be a politician is as simple as cooking beans. To be a politician requires a lot of brain. I mean, at his age and in his class, he can’t even spell anything correctly. He still behaves foolishly.” She dropped her arm and lay on her back. Rage formed bile in her throat; a frown came upon her face. She wished she could bash his head with the ladle lying a foot away from the bed. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “Tonworio is just as dumb as his father, otherwise what sensible man would abandon a beautiful woman like you.”
She knew he was patronizing her. She knew he thought her narcissistic not to see the slur beneath his compliment. She did not utter her aversion to this; she did not fight back with defensive words on behalf of her son or her son’s father. She counted her teeth with her tongue: this thug had given her the capital with which she started her garri business, and the money he left behind solved some problems. She breathed her rage in. “We don’t have to talk about my son—”
“I’m just saying. Anyway I’ll be going to see my chairman in the capital—”
She was no longer listening to the lies that followed, it had become a routine. She knew he was married; he did not have to fabricate trips as excuses for his long absences. She needed his money, not the lies; she told herself she does not eat through her nose not to recognise her duty in their liaison. He got into his clothes, dumped naira notes on the bed, and left.
Later that night she had Tonworio in her arms as he slept. Moonlight seeped into their batcha through the termite-eaten edges of the door. The moonlight trickled in like blood seeping through wounds. She hated Honourable for reminding her of her fears, for saying that about her son. But she did not blame Tonworio’s father for leaving her, she only blamed him for drowning in the sea. Tonworio heard his mother whimper and raised his sleepy head to her. “Mother, are you crying?” She wiped her tears with the back of her left arm. “No, I’m not,” she lied, “Go back to sleep, my beloved.” Tonworio believed her and dropped his head on her right arm and slept. In her heart, again, she prayed.
Tonworio fidgeted up and down the room and stopped before the bed. He concluded that the mirror was trying to fool him into conceding defeat. He lifted his right leg and planted his foot on the edge of the bed, his arms folded on his thigh. His eyes roved around the room. He needed to find something, anything, that could help him beat the mirror. Finding nothing, his head drooped and his gaze fell on the politician’s head printed on the blanket. The blanket had been shared as a campaign gift during the last election. The politician wore an infectious smile, but Tonworio did not catch the infection. Tonworio did not see his smile as encouragement; he did not even see it as the smile of a man begging for votes. He saw it as the smile of a man who had won already, even before the votes were counted. “Are you any different from the mirror,” Tonworio said to him, “with your fishy smile?”
Tonworio had heard Ol’Soja say something about politicians. Ol’Soja had said it to the Old Lady of the island who, it was said, smoked bigger jumbo-size weed than all the weed-breeds of the island put together. “If these politicians tell you to walk, my dear, run-o! If they tell you to run, my dear, walk-o! As you see them with smiles and robust cheeks, they don’t have truth in their mouth. Dem go tell you the thing you wan hear make dem for get the thing dem want.” “Na true,” Tonworio continued with the politician, “is what Ol’Soja says about you true? If it’s true you’re not winning … I’ll beat the mirror.” The politician’s grin remained, Tonworio was huffed. He took his eyes off the politician, his foot off the bed, and returned his attention to the mirror.
He heaved a sigh. He looked drained but not defeated. He wished he had a confidant to explain the mystery of the mirror to him. He did not have anyone: his mother kept him away from the different men who had shared her bed; his mother seemed lost in herself lately; his classmates at school kept away from him as though he came to school with a bevy of bees all over him. And even if he had someone to explain the mystery to him, he figured he would be seen as witless for asking questions about a thing as simple as a reflection in the mirror. And he hated to appear dumb to anyone, it killed him more than the private knowledge of his witlessness. He concluded it was his mystery to demystify and he would, one way or another. He lumbered to the mirror and stood before it, determined.
She dropped out of secondary school, not because love had become wool-web clothing her brain. But because her brain, she concluded, was not molded to understand complex problems. She thought her head was built to appreciate the simple things of life, like colors, flowers, and affection. So when love rained on her, she had a hard time shaking off the cold.
They met the day the military government decided to give the civilians a chance to rule themselves. It was at the gathering of youths on the island, in celebration of the epoch- making day, that they met. She was sixteen, he was seven years older. But midway sixteen, her love for him had grown taller than both of them standing on each other. And she had Tonworio in her womb to prove it. His love for her was not as tall as hers for him because it had a broken leg. But he saw that she was dead serious when she insisted she would not take out the seed he had planted. He succumbed, believing that along the way the deformity in his love would miraculously heal.
He moved out of his father’s house and rented a small place. She moved in with him, but he did not perform any marriage rite with her. He took up jobs and provided for his young family. But no sooner did Tonworio arrive than he realized he was making too much sacrifice. He thought his lofty dream of being educated into an environmentalist could not by any means fit with his new responsibility as a father. He began to find faults in her, and when that did not bring any solution, he took to drinking.
He started coming home late with a handful of white sand in his pockets. And even when he came home with money, it was way below the usual amount he’d brought home for their upkeep. It was this shortage of money that got her suspecting there was another lady outside, another lady taking a chunk of what he made daily. She confronted him.
“Of course there’s another lover I keep outside,” he said. “My new lover. She’s sweaty and cold and makes me feel good inside.”
She was furious, almost to the point of bathing him with a bucket of her urine.
“That’s not all. She’s attractive too. And gets me high all the time. You’ll have to contend with her … She’s a keg of burukutu. You can’t smell her on my breath?” He laughed raucously.
She was torn between fury and being forlorn. She did not know which of the two to yield to completely. She thought this was not the Tonye she knew, the Tonye that was gentle on her, the one that went out upright and did not return slouching, the one that went fishing and never returned without a good catch.
He eventually left her. And the next time she heard about him, it was that he had drowned. His body was found ashore, but she never went to see him. She did not want to live with a haunting memory of him lifeless ashore, lying half-naked with his tummy bloated.
In the market, the sun was on her face. She sat before her basin of garri. Unlike other women on the same row calling customers to their garri, she had her chin cupped in her palms. The market was loud, but her thought was above the market howls: How many years has it been now and no serious man has come to ask me if I am selling, not to talk of buying. All they do is come and taste my ware and go their way, hmm. They don’t want me for keeps because I’m after-one. Tonworio, you’re >my only eye into the future … I can’t afford to go blind. What do I do? You’re not dumb. You’re not dumb. You can’t be dumb even if you can’t spell anything after how many years in that school. It is the teachers in that school; they don’t know what they’re doing in that school, calling themselves teachers, yet you come last in your class. Where do I get the money to put you in a private school, Tonworio. Garri brings in little profit and Honourable doesn’t even give me as much as he does before. Tonworio, you’re the reason I’m alive, you’re >my only hope for a smile at old age. You must become a big politician, ah, you must. Who do I run to, where do I run to? The old seer has gone blind, yet he charges too much. I would have taken you there to understand the root cause of this. You can’t be coming home last in your class every term. Do I cut your head open and throw books inside? I can’t teach you to read and write, I can barely spell my own name. What do I do? Ah, Tonworio, you must take first position in your class, so that—
“My pikin, I wan buy garri!” It was the second time the customer had called for her attention. She was a buxom woman and she blocked the sun from her face.
“Eey, sorry ma.” Tonworio’s mother jostled out of her cogitation and gathered herself. She could not make out the customer’s face, but her frame looked no different from her late mother’s.
“You dey alrait, my pikin?”
“Yes, ma.” She adjusted on her seat to prove it and thought the woman’s voice sounded familiar.
“But you’re crying.”
Tonworio’s mother had not realized the strips of tears down her cheek. She quickly gathered the hem of her wrapper and wiped her tears. “How much garri you wan buy, ma?” She grabbed her measurement cups and was about reeling out the different prices.
“Small small, my pikin,” said the woman, compassion in her voice. She took a seat beside her and took Tonworio’s mother’s palm into hers tenderly. “You’re troubled. Your heart dey heavy, I fit see-am. But no come inside market dey cry make your enemies come dey laugh. Be strong, you hia? Trai-ehn.”
She shut her eyes and dropped her head and nodded in agreement. For a long time no one had spoken to her like this. When she finally gathered herself, feeling better, she opened her eyes, but she could not tell if she had imagined the large woman, for the large woman that sounded like her mother was no longer beside her. And everything else in the market remained the same.
Behind their batcha, she stirred the garri left-right, right-left. She examined it and saw it had not burnt. She needed Tonworio to sift the dried grounded cassava for her next batch of frying. The smoke from the firewood was getting into her eyes and burning her there. She wiped her eyes with the hem of her faded wrapper and called, “Tonworio! Tonworio!” But there was no response from him. She knew he could hear her. “This is becoming a habit, Tonworio! You hear me and keep me quiet. You’ll smell your anus with your nose if you make me get up from here.” There was still not a sound from him. “Tonworio, I know you can hear me. I’m not talking to myself, am I? Tonworio, you’re pushing my hand!” Still nothing from him. She examined the garri again, satisfied it was ready; she took out the firewood on all sides of the stone grate and lifted the frying pan off the fire. When she was finished scooping the garri onto a wide tray to cool off, she marched into the batcha determined to smack Tonworio’s head.
He heard his mother call him, but his quest was just as important as her call. He stood before the mirror, his hands to his sides. He kept his eyes fixed on his eyes in the mirror and wagged his right forefinger. He hoped his reflection would be distracted by his glare and not see his forefinger move. But when he looked beneath his eyes, he could see that his reflection did just the same as he did with his finger. At this, a new awareness washed over him. He noticed something, something he thought he had failed to pay attention to in the past. He wagged his forefinger a few more times to be sure, and then raised his left hand and waved at his reflection in the mirror. “You’re not getting it right,” he said to his reflection. He brought the left hand down and raised his right hand and waved as well. There it was, he thought, and smiled. This was it. He was convinced he had found something hitherto unknown to man, he thought he had found that the mirror lied.
His mother barged into the room. She had meant to pull him by the collar out of the room when she saw how intently he stared into the mirror. Anxiety overshadowed her rage, and she halted behind him. Tonworio was scowling into the mirror, his words not directed at his image but the mirror frame: “You’re not after all truthful. You’re not perfect. Fool!” She feared her son had lost his mind completely. “Tonworio!” She dashed behind him and pulled him into her bosom, “Oh my God, nothing is wrong with you. You’re fine.”
“Yes, I’m fine, Mother.” He wriggled out of her grasp.
She thought he was being sarcastic. “I mean it, my son, you’re. You’re handsome.”
“Mother, it’s not about me. It’s the mirror.”
“What about the mirror?”
He pointed into the mirror. “He’s not me.”
“He’s you.”
“No, he’s not really me.”
“He is. Look, that’s your eyes, your nose, your handsome face, just like your father. But you’re not him; you’re not going to be him. You’re going to be better.”
Tonworio was unmoved; her words meant nothing he wanted. He needed her to understand him, to understand his discovery. He stared hard into the mirror and fumed.
“Tonworio, we have to get to the garri now.”
He folded his arms across his chest, unmoving. Other mothers on the island had little patience for their children’s whining, and where their words did not get across to the children, their hands did, violently. But she wanted to be different. She wanted to be careful how she handled her son for she was afraid of losing him in any way.
“I’m not ugly—”
She exhaled loudly. “Yes, you’re not. You see, that’s you—”
“But he’s not me. You don’t understand, Mother. Yes, he’s me, but not exactly me.”
She was by now losing her patience: her garri needed tending to. She was not going to spend the whole afternoon arguing and trying to convince her son of his reflection in the mirror.
“Mother, the mirror shows my left as right and my right as left. Look.”
“Tonworio, this is not the time for games. Do you see the ridge of my teeth, I’m not laughing. We have to—”
“It’s not a game, I’m not joking, Mother. Look. This is my right hand.” He stretched his hand to demonstrate, but thought otherwise, and asked his mother to stand beside him. She reluctantly did. “Stretch out your right hand.” She did. They were both before the mirror.
“Is that your right hand in the mirror, Mother?”
“Of course it is.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Tonworio, stop this nonsense. We have garri to fry. Do you want us to starve—”
“Mother, please understand me. Look, that’s not your right hand in the mirror.”
“What’s it then?”
He beat his brain for answers, but none came. He now seemed unsure of his discovery, for if he could not explain his discovery then he had not found anything new. For a long second he thought, and there an idea came upon him. He ran beside the mirror and stood. “Mother, give me your right hand.” She hesitated, feeling sorry for her son’s perplexity. “Mother, please.” He insisted and she reluctantly did. He held out his right hand and shook his mother. “Do you see my right hand now, Mother? That’s not how my right hand comes in the mirror.”
It made sense to his mother. She saw that her right hand held her son’s right hand from a different direction as he faced her, but the mirror did not give it this way when she faced herself in the mirror. Even though his demonstration seemed clear to her, she could not accept nor refute that the mirror showed anything other than her real self.
“Mother, you see what I’m saying. The mirror is supposed to shake me the way I just shook your hand. So it gives me back my right hand instead of my left hand.”
“That’s because you’re standing in front of me, not me standing in front of myself. The mirror doesn’t stand in front as you’re standing now.” She said this even though she was not convinced she was feeding her son the right explanation. She thought this was too complex for her, she just did not want to appear thoughtless to her son. But he was not giving up yet.
“But Mother, that can’t be the explanation.”
“What can be then?”
“The mirror shows my left as right and my right as left.”
Whether her son was right or wrong, whether she was right or wrong, it did not matter to her anymore. She found herself confused by it all, she did not understand what a mirror produced, and she could not explain her poor understanding to her son. She surmised that she had used a mirror for as long as she could remember but never had she given thought to the complexity of her own reflection she stared into everyday. That her son at his age had observed something she had been ignorant of all her life meant something profound to her.
She was filled with renewed hope; the hope was in the amount of the slim moonlight that seeped in through the edge of the door at night. Even though it was not much, she knew, it was light still; at least she could see her feet with it. “You’re right! Oh my God, you’re smart, Tonworio. My son is smart.” He beamed at his mother. “Mother, do you understand me now?” She pulled him to herself and held him to her bosom and patted his head. “I do, I do, my son,” she lied. She had tears down her cheeks. In his mother’s warm arms, his eyes caught the eyes of the politician in the blanket. The politician still grinned at him; Tonworio sneered at him and muttered, “Liar! I’m never going to be like you.”
“What are you saying?” She raised his chin with her finger so his eyes would meet hers, afraid her son knew she was lying.
He took his gaze behind her, she followed. And he pointed to the politician. “Mother, take out the blanket and burn it.”
“Why?”
“I hate the ugly politician. They’re liars! I’m never going to be a politician.”
Michael Agugom was born in Nigeria. He served as TV Presenter/Reporter with the largest TV network in Africa. His fiction has been published in Capra Review, Referential Magazine, Courtship of Wind, Hypertext Magazine, and Queer Africa 2: New Stories (Ma Thoko’s Books) and forthcoming in the Cantabrigian Magazine. He is a recipient of the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award.
