KOKO

You sit with the uncles and fathers now. You are old enough and successful enough that they welcome you into their numbers; the graduates and the business owners. A few years ago you were a small boy in Etekamba’s house, sleeping on a mattress as thin as a slice of bread. As the party goes on into the night, you remember when you faked your School Leaving Examination result and had it sent to the house in Yaba from the post office. Etekamba beat you that night and you resolved to be smarter about your cheating.

“Koko, so you’ll not greet your uncles?” Koko is grown now, but you were there for it all; you were there when they brought him back from Saint Nicholas hospital, Lagos Island, swaddled in clothes, and crying all through the night. You look at him now, wearing a shirt made of the material chosen for your mother, his grandmother’s funeral. He greets everyone, apologising for his error.

“Eyen Etekamba a pon.” Etekamba’s son is grown oh. Koko smiles till his eyes meet yours.

“Koko, how are you?” You ask.

He carries her empty serving tray and hurries off. You feel a tinge of embarrassment, but no one else seems to notice. You’d have to get to the bottom of this. You stand up and follow him to the back of the family house. “Koko?” He freezes when he hears your voice.

“What do you want?” He asks. His voice has broken in now; it is deeper. He reaches into the blue drum filled with ice and drinks.

“It’s me oh. Why are you doing me like this?”

You reach for his hand and he flinches. You remember a time when it wasn’t like this; a time when he smiled at you and jumped into your embrace when you came back from UNILAG. He fishes out two bottles of Champion beer and drops them on the tray. You offer to help but he refuses. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Koko.”

“I said I’m fine.” His voice does not rise, but you feel the vitriol in his words. Koko carries the drinks and returns to the party. You do not understand why he hates you; what happened to your bond?

“You know what kills me?” He says. You stop walking away “It’s the fact that you think we had some sort of special bond.”

“Koko.”
“I was twelve,” he walks closer to you.
“Please stop.”
“Stop talking about what you did? How for years, you’d come into my room in the night and put a finger to your mouth before you touched me? Before you’d put your thing in me?”
You cannot look him in the eye.
“You said I couldn’t tell anyone, that it was to be our secret.” He says “I hate everyone out there because they didn’t stop this, but they didn’t know. How could they know?”
“Koko, please.” You worry he will cause a scene.
“I hate myself!” He does not take his eyes of you; they are filled with pain, mourning for the life he would never know; a life free of you.
“I’ll keep your secret,” he is in your face now. “Your wife and children will never know.” You want to exhale, to allow the relief flood your body, but you also feel disgust at your initial reaction.

He stops short of the door “Uncle Kufre, your secret is killing me.”