Can you Keep a Secret

The cars that parked in front of Roland’s mother's restaurant always caused traffic along Sako-road. There’s nobody that didn’t know Mama Maggi; her food had no equal.

She never brought home food from her restaurant. Her family members never ate in her restaurant.

At first when Roland knew the secret, he stopped eating at home. To think of it alone would make someone as dirty as a pig to puke.

Her mother had cried the first few times he came visiting and refusing to eat. "So you believe me your mother can poison you. ah… you are calling me a witch.”

After a while, she stopped to care.

That afternoon, Roland happened to be passing his mother’s shop with Abigail, his girlfriend.

Before Abigail, he was a person that had beaten a girl for saying his mother had spoilt his father with charm, that is why he is like a woman. The mother of the girl, the brother, the sisters, their father and everybody that came to dissolve the fight got atleast a headbutt from Roland.

He had slept in the police cell that night. He was out in the morning but had already collected heavy slaps from old cellmates that were angered by so trivial a reason to get locked-up as fighting a girl; he was deaf throughout the night.

When he met Abigail, she had showed him a way to Jesus Christ. She was godsent. She could be annoying sometimes but she is never boring.

She stood up to him when she had to, and call it to his attention when he is out of line. And call his attention to it when he is on line. 

Sometimes, Roland thought she would get tired of him one day and pack to move away. And this in some way made him mader.

After telling all he’s angry about to God, before bed, he would whisper some secrets to Abigail and sleep. He woke up slighter, like it's therapy. 

But never that secret.

He had mention his mother once. “Why didn’t you say Mama Maggi was your mother?” 

He had quickly confirmed that she had never eaten there, before his mind could rest.

She dragged him across the road to the compound of the restaurant. “You will meet her when she gets home. she would be busy now.”

“We won’t disturb her, it is just to say hie and leave.”

At the front of the building, men were sitting in their cars eating in awkward positions, but eating all the same.

They could see grown-ups washing the plates that they would sell food on for them. It's not like they will go home with the plates. But they can't wait.

Some had stained their white shirt with the egusi soup and licked all five finger while swallowing fat balls of pounded-yam. They say someone had eaten themselves to death here.

Abigail was amazed, she wanted to meet the author of all of it.

A man sitting on the veranda was licking his emptied plate with tongue and a waitress was shouting at him; he was wearing a gold watch and he was on a singlet. He didn’t seem to hear what the waitress was saying.

As Abigail was entering inside the building, she thought she saw a lady picking up Jollof rice from the ground's sands and put them in her mouth.

There were as much attendants as customers inside. The place was crowded. Abigail wondered where this woman learnt how to cook. 

The oldest of the attendants recognized Roland and they made way for him to come through. They told him his mother was at the back.

Roland asked Abigail to wait for him; no stranger, nobody, was allowed to enter the kitchen. "Don't eat anything, we leave now." He walked toward the kitchen.

Mama Maggi and her childhood friend, Vero, would be the only persons cooking food for thousands of people.

“Good afternoon ma,” Roland greeted Vero.

“Ay… Roland Roland. Come my child." She cleaned her hand on her apron and got up. She looked just like Roland’s mother; dark, short but full and slightly gallant on the ground. She hugged him.

“Where’s my mother?” 

“She go backyadt go make call, you know, the water we use for cooking finished, She's calling them to bring many more. You see, we have too many of customers today. Hope all is well, Roland?” Roland affirmed, so she sat back down on the stool she was sitting before.

Roland walked towards the backyard. He rememberd that this place was once built of just four woods holding a zinc roof.

They had been so poor, and his mother was in debt after trying every trade and failing. She poured hot oil on herself once, trying to dodge a creditor. 

But one day, his mother had cooked rice and went to sell it to the construction workers in the incomplete building behind their house. She had come back with a yellow, twenty-five litres gallon of water, she asked them not to touch. Since then, things have changed for good. But what is good, is it good even why achieve with bad?

And they had become wealthy after that. He remembered how his father's people would come to their house to fight his mother, that she is a witch, holding to the evidence that she pressed them down at night. 

That if the evidence were not enough, look at their brother that was once a man but now neither man nor woman.

“Roland my dear, your mother say you go back to school to collect the doctor certificate?”

“Yes ma.” It is not doctor certificate but a Doctorate degree. He was tired of explaining.

“Doctor doctor. You are doing well. May God continue to bless you.” Vero smiled, Roland had to return it.

As Roland took a corner when he was at the backyard, he locked eyes with his mother washing... washing... her vargina on a big bowl.

“Jesus!” He didn’t think it, he turned back instinctively. And he started for the kitchen.

Before daybreak, there were men that brought galloons of water to his mother; she had been using to cook the food served the Restaurant.

This was not too odd, until Roland saw the same set of men in a mortuary with thesame yellow twenty-five litre gallons; when they went to retrieve his friend’s father’s corpse. 

Now this. Roland concluded in his mind never to see her again. He passed Vero without even seeing her. 

Inside the restaurant, a waitress went to give some diced beef to Abigail to eat; Abigail figured it was because she came with Roland, and couldn't refuse such respect. 

She couldn’t wait to taste it, she put one inside her mouth. It was delicious; as though the meat was cooked in the kind of stew that God eats and then fried in heaven’s oil. 

She saw the face Roland in coming out of the kitchen’s door; she cleaned her finger with the napkin and drank water.

She hurried to him. “What happened?” she left the way for him to pass, she knew not to stand in his way when he was like that.

“Let’s go,” he said. She started running after him.

When they got home, after praying, and about to sleep, he said, “can you keep a secret?”

XbestoX