Sicko

 It was eerily arresting when I first set eyes on that skinny boy as he walked through the door with the woman that brought her to us. I had given them both and my mum space to discuss their things. She was the one that needed a helper. After about thirty minutes when his escort had gone leaving him with my mum, I approached him again and once again, the face looked so eerily familiar. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked him "Have we met before?" I got nothing as an answer but a shy smile and a negative shake of the head.

   Two years later, he lay on the bed covering himself from leg to waist. He was not sleeping or looking moron or forlorn as most sick people often do. He was in my calculation acting out, trying to look sick, too sick but failing in the act. Jim was for sure putting on a kind of show. Not as if I am doubting that something's wrong with him, but whatever it's, isn't serious.

  That young boy Jim staying with us is certainly funny as he is dangerous. A boy that can do anything to lay hand on money without caring whose gut is gored must be something else. Well, his gut had been tampered with by whatever force and he lay suffering from what I am sure is more psychological than physical. He wants to smash the hands that feed him for reward hanging on a tree for all no one knows if it exists in reality or in illusion, imaginary rewards no one ever sees let alone touch. What is wrong with him and the fear that engulfed him, you will think will teach him lessons on sensibility, empathy, common sense and loyalty. But not this kid living with us. Not this Jim.

  Imagined how he eyed me when I told him to get up and take herbal medicine. He had been showing the signs that the western tablet he is into isn't having effect on what is wrong with him. I decided that herbal medicine will do far better. I was thinking two things at the same time about that boy and his sickness. Considering the manner it always attacks him, morning and evening, it must be typhoid at work or he was tampered with by the group he was dealing with to know how the family will react. Cult groups are running the city for foreign governments, for money. 

    Keeping personal hygiene and even collective one is not one of his strong strengths. He needed to be breathed on to remove the plate he ate with, wash his clothes, or even sweep where he stays. Personal hygiene isn't a trait he considered important.

It was time to fetch water in the evening, knowing that he isn't well I had told to call some of his friends to do the work as usual for pay of course till he gets better but he prefers to play sick by laying down. I can tell the Agama lizard from the chameleon when I pay closer attention. That period, he was playing chameleon more than he was playing Agama. But I was thinking about something else. 

This boy, 13, had now been living with us for close to two years and I am not the type that likes to scrutinize people closely to the extent of attaching undivided attention. I believe at a certain age, everyone should know when it's time to turn left or right. But this time around, judging from so much noise coming from outside, I decided it's time to focus on the object generating such outside noise. I needed to focus on this Jimmy boy for a few days. I started seeing what I had not been seeing. I believe that kind of nature is referred to as double live or double living, something that sounds like that.

He is around 13, fatter and healthier than the smirking skinny boy that entered this family a year plus earlier. I still believe in the back of my mind I have seen him somewhere around 2018. He was all along presenting the side of him he wanted us to see and we had been seeing that while part of him, the real him is what he shows outside. Real him is what I have been seeing for three days now.

He had been communicating with some group outside plotting on how to lay hands on the reward. Those that hang it on the tree are behaving without any prompting as if they are the ones behind what they claim to be investigating. The reward to me appears as rechanneling interest move. Ploy to redirect attention away from the main thing to another. Infact, from what i had been witnessing for three days i focused on Jimmy, he is not here. He had been outside all these months. It's his supposed public persona that has been living with us while the real him is frolicking with enemies outside for a year plus. 

   Imagine a boy you just spent more than a hundred thousand on to put in a new school only to start from the school to show you he is not happy you coupled the money together. Do he and his gang believe that school training is a right or privilege? Even by your parents, is school training right or privileged? I guess the boy believed like his sponsors outside that being poor or rich is a function of right or privilege once you are alive. How come the whole kids are not in school around us here? Humans I know don't reason this way, only murderers, caged ones do. Ungrateful rats do things like that.

He eyes me and I eye him reading him more even though he isn't opening his mouth after drinking the herbal i gave him. He is the type that once reward is involved can do anything, side with any group he believes will lead him to the money. The kind that will stop at nothing to play any assigned role given him. He is having a little taste of his handiwork he wishes on others.

  The trend that continues to show itself vividly is the mouth intruding into family matters in the name of a cult for the boy. Something is wrong with his presence inside here. Their bubble seems not to be holding on well. The plot to pin the crime on the family was the reason he was sent to us and thank heaven, they handled it wrongly. I heard that no plan will survive once in contact with the enemy. Why would theirs be different? 

That is how I have seen their plot so far. Even damage control they are into seems not to be working. All I am seeing now is an attempt by the plotters to smear as much as they can of this family but are failing in that assignment too. It's a well known move of a drowning man. 

Today, the weather had not been friendly. The sick boy i am no longer doubting the sort, or the source of his sickness, the camp behind it or reasons he was tampered with or even who their real target is. Got up from the bed, refused the morning meal, refused to take the medication that cost almost five thousand naira bought for him yesterday evening he was playing sicko, carried his school locker full of books and faced the school direction to start his first day in secondary school level.

    Those rejections are another part of him I am witnessing for the first time. First time he is projecting his public persona inside the house in two years. Maybe, this snake is about to shed its skins, maybe, the chameleon is about to change yet into another color to blend.