I’VE BEEN LIVING AT THE MANSION FOR SIX WEEKS when, one afternoon, Mummy summons us out to the lawn, sits on a lounge chair in her nightdress, crosses her legs, and orders us to take off our clothes and fight only in our boxers. Confused, my eyes linger from Mummy to Ejiro, who is already tearing off his clothes.
“I asked you to strip and fight in your underwear,” she snaps, her voice hostile, cruelty kindling like fire in her eyes.
Again I glance from her to Ejiro, who is almost down to his boxers already. Surely she couldn’t mean what she has said. I remember the boxers on TV, and the rapture in her eyes.
Ejiro has finished undressing. He has a wiry, intimidating body. He takes a combat stance in his checkered green boxers, hands balled into fists, legs planted astride, face set.
“Stop staring.” Mummy’s voice startles me. “Go on. Take off your clothes and fight him.”
I don’t make a move; I only continue to stare in disbelief. Ejiro moves in suddenly and throws a punch, catching me on the jaw. His punch stings like hot wax. A pillar of darkness appears then vanishes. Mummy emerges from a galaxy of stars and dissolves again into the dark nothing of the lawn. Ejiro delivers another punch that explodes in my face, birthing millions of fireflies chasing one another.
“You better take off your stupid clothes and fight me or I am going to kill you.” Ejiro’s voice sounds faint and distant.
I cross my hands to stop the punches from falling on my face.
“Ohu ma!” He throws more punches.
The name hits me like a sledgehammer, but it is enough to set me off. I have never won a wrestling bout at Ote Nkwo festival back home. I enjoyed watching Eke, who would fight anyone he considered a fair match. He has won more matches than he has lost, whereas I have wrestled a few times and lost each one. So it surprises me how I react to Ejiro now as he rains his punches down. Spurred by the intense rage his insult provokes, more than the shock of hearing it from him, I suddenly dive low in between his legs and sweep him up like a crane that lifts weights up tall houses. Eke would do this to his opponents, and then he would throw them down, not too fiercely, but in such a way that their backs would touch the ground; that way he would win the matches. But now I want to smash Ejiro’s back on the grassy lawn. I want to hurt him for calling me that name. But he is clever. He moves like a trained fighter, looping his left arm around my neck. We come down together, landing on the carpet of grass, his back down and my neck in the loop of his arm. Now that he has me, he tries to pin my legs to lock me in. If he succeeds, I could pass out, but I prove myself stronger than Ejiro could ever have thought. My unlikely new strength from working out every day and my capacity to endure pain from fights with Machebe keep both of us glued together in that jerking knot that (as I will find out later) fills Mummy with immeasurable pleasure. Her face, a glint in my fast-fading vision, is wreathed in a baleful smile, her cruel brown eyes glistening with sinister happiness.
I lie quietly in bed and mourn my defeat to Ejiro, his calling me “ohu ma,” brooding over it and hating myself. I must have passed out. Mummy was still sitting in the lounge chair, all wrung out, when I regained myself and staggered to my feet. Dazed, I stared at her with bewildered eyes, my chin where I took Ejiro’s uppercuts still burning as I retreated to my room. How is it possible, Ejiro knowing that phrase and everything about me within just a few weeks of my arrival?
Police sirens are screaming into the night, and Ogidan is barking. My mind is a complete blur. My body aches. My spirit craves a rematch. Ejiro enters suddenly without knocking. My breathing quickens at the sight of him, my hands balling into fists under the blanket. He walks in slowly and throws a wrap of crisp banknotes at me.
“Gift from Mummy. I got extra for winning, and for fighting in my boxers,” he says curtly, and walks slowly out.
I stare at the money for a long time, and then I pick up the wrap and leaf through it, inhaling its brand-new scent. Confusion knots my face as I try to puzzle it out: the fight, and now the money, a lot of money. I have never in my whole life held such an amount of money. Gift from Mummy, Ejiro had said.
What is going on?
It is later spelt out to me in clear letters by Ejiro. When Mummy gets bored with watching boxing bouts on TV, she turns to her houseboys, forcing them to fight in her presence until they have no energy left in their bodies. “Mummy enjoys watching us,” he says in his snotty manner. “I have stayed for the money. There is really nothing too hard about it. She pays well. I have a target, and I am fighting my way to it to take my family out of poverty. My parents are fishers in some polluted Niger Delta creek, so wretched we can hardly feed because our land and water are poisoned by government-backed oil companies. You are worse off, the way I see you. I heard your aunt Beatrice telling Mummy about the wicked things the people in your village put your family through. It is up to you to decide whether to stay or be a coward and flee back to hunger and shame. Mummy will always find another boy.”
Ejiro shocks me with his disclosure. Is that why he avoids me, hates me? I want to know more about what he overheard. What exactly did Beatrice tell Mummy? What does she know about “ohu ma” that I do not know? But Ejiro has once again retreated into his shell. His audacity rankles in my mind. I would not have stayed. I would have left. I would have resigned at once and gone far away from this fight-house. This evil house. But now I will do no such thing. I must have my revenge on Ejiro. I am not leaving until the scores are even again, until I have saved enough money to bring home. I don’t want to return to my village as poor as I left it. If I have earned so much from just one fight, surely I will be able to save a capital. And then I will resign, return to my town, build Okike’s tomb, and start a business. Maybe I’ll sell coffins on Aku Road or even football boots in Ogige market.
In the meantime, I begin to plot my revenge. I hope that Mummy will ask us to fight again soon. But if she doesn’t, I resolve to provoke Ejiro into another fight. He seems to be enjoying his victory. Since the fight, he has relaxed his hostility towards me a little. He is not exactly friendly, but he smiles at me, tightly, and we even manage to have a chat; he tells me about some things I didn’t know, like the beautiful cherry trees outside.
“They are ornamental trees,” he says sarcastically, his gaze meeting and locking with mine briefly. “They don’t grow in a bush village.”
Before the fight I had sought his eyes, his friendship, but the best I had got was his unfocused stare passing over me without interest.
“You knew about the fighting before you came?”
He laughs, dryly, skin taut against a square, bony face with a cleft chin. “I only knew about a rich woman who needed a houseboy.”
I give him an open-mouthed stare.
“What is your fascination with graves? I’ve seen how you romance that tomb as if the man inside is your papa,” he says, his voice like the laughing calls of the bush baby inhabiting my village backwoods.
“I am going to use the money I am paid here to build a tomb for my aunt,” I say. “Please, Ejiro, when you heard Beatrice and Mummy talk about ‘ohu ma,’ what exactly . . .”
He doesn’t wait for me to finish; he just walks out laughing, his laughter growing hysterical, like a demon.