by Safiya Salau

You know the scary thing about getting lost? It is who would find you.

Deep breaths.

The inside of roses craved to be as soft as K.J’s heart. She walked like she was floating; effortlessly trampling on negative energy and pushing reality out of her flowery bubble. You could tell where K.J had been as traces of her presence spilled behind like drops of warm, but refreshing liquid. Soft hearted, smile making K.J had popped her bubble and was ready to see if the world was really as harsh as Papa said it was.

“Everything you want that I can provide, I will!”

“But Papa you won’t be here forever and I’m 18, it’s time to start earning a living for myself”

“The world is harsh princess, you would regret this”

“You know how I always do the opposite of what you tell me, to prove a point?”

The next day was K.J’s first day living the ‘I can be a hard-core independent Lagos hustler’ life, she was ready for it. More ready for her first pay slip than the commuting struggle. She found what people called a face me, I face you. With the disappointing discovery that the only thing you face are fungi covered walls and maggot infested toilets, she opted for a bed and breakfast. It was more expensive but considering the hospital bills she will escape, check and balance.

Her first bus ride had her smiling at rude drivers and them being confused.

“Sey eleyi ti ya were ni? Madame you well?”

Speeding on the third mainland bridge was her favourite part of ‘traveling’ to work. The damp gush of wind that would vigorously thrust through all the openings on her face. It filled her up when she felt empty and slowly emitted during the course of the day, deflating her spirit gradually before she got a refill. She loved the one time the wind threw her wig off.  It landed on the preachers face; the man behind her who was loudly preaching about the end of days (You always have those mobile pastors in buses). Everyone laughed, her laughter being the loudest.

K.J found beauty in the Lagos hustle. There was still a thin trace of flowery bubble lingering around her; wrapping itself around her as if it needed her. As if she defined it more than it defined her. She kept it alive. With days that passed she realized that strangers thought you had something to sell or needed a favour when you smiled at them. She smiled anyways. Only K.J could interpret hustle as the ‘beauty of survival’.

People called her a fool because she wasn’t really hustling. They said she was making a mockery of the poor and was using their lives as examples for her ‘experiment’.

“This one dey play with life, iz not a jolking stuvs, if anytin apoon now, she get house to run to.”

So what was reality then? Her hustle life or her old life? Why was reality so important anyways?

K.J was discovering. Her full name was Ikeja Maureen Benson. She lived in the place she was named after, a place that was her. She was Ikeja. She was the begging child, the stingy puff-puff seller, the naked mad man; she was them all. Each with a choking story combined to form what looked like a colourful collage from the surface. She was the collage; the assorted art which was never zoomed into, that hid the smallest portholes and broken windows in Ikeja. Ikeja! Ikeja was beautiful. Its putrid gutters, desperate youth and her angry landlord. She felt one with them all. Especially Landlord Gutumera, when he forced his way through sacred walls that collapsed and bled in pain, when he betrayed his marriage vows to Mama Serokoto and stripped her of her purity vows, when he said, “No worry, I don collect this month rent be that”. She was him. She was desperation and blindness to pain and commitments and truth and reality and beauty. And. And… K.J Smiled. Not because she was happy that she was resilient enough to stop herself from running back home, but because she was the collage. The picture everyone saw that gave them hope and made them panic less. She was beauty in struggle. She was the lie.

After she secretly stabbed Landlord Gutumera 18 times in the chest, she was the one who got Mama Serokoto through her mourning sorrow. She blinded the widow from reality and darkness, and she always made Mama laugh with hopeful joy. K.J was still the sweet darkness surrounded by bright blinding light; her thin layer of flowery bubble.

Deep breaths.

It’s what you see on the surface that loses you, leaves you confused to what reality is or what it should be. Lost in what is real and what could be. Find yourself before the need to ‘be the art’ finds you. That’s the responsibility that blinds you. Blinds them. Smile.

 

Lots of love,

K.J Benson.

PS: Papa was right. The world is harsh J