I was nineteen years and three months old when my GCE result came out.
The date was February 8th, 2005, and for my 19th birthday my uncle had bought me a phone. It was a cute purple colored Motorola phone.
Once I picked up my result from the centre, I sent him a text.
“I got 3 As and 5 credits, uncle. God bless you.” His reply came in almost immediately.
“Daniel, I knew you would make it. Congratulations. I am just finishing a meeting. Where are you?”
“Obalande?”
“Have you eaten?”
“No, sir?”
“Head to my office, I will take you to lunch. Let’s celebrate.”
I took a bike from Obalande instead of a bus. I needed to see Sam and Idiat and Olam before I saw my uncle.
The moment I showed Idiat the result she burst into tears.
“Omo Ibo te mi, you see God,” she said, wiping her eyes with the ear of her wrapper.
When Iya Amala heard, she prayed and thanked God in Yoruba then offered me free food but I lied that I had just eaten, promising to come back another day.
Sam met me at Olam’s.
“My guy with the hottest brain in Africa,” he screamed as we hugged.
Olams was happy but sad that I got an A3 in Literature.
“That should have been an A1, young man” he kept saying.
Promising to come back for a proper celebration, I left Sam at Olam’s and headed to my uncle’s place.
“Aburo oga, ba wo?” the fat and dark mobile police man at the gate asked me as I said good afternoon.
“Mo wa pa!” I answered.
“Oga Jenkins no dey o. E don comot?” The second one, slim and light skinned, said.
“I know. I already sent him a text. My GCE results came out today,” I told them.
“I hope say you pass well-well?” the fat dark one asked. I was always forgetting their names.
“Yes, 3As and 5 Credits,” I told him.
The second one, whistled, moved his Ak47 from his right to his left shoulder and stretched out his right hand.
“Chop knuckle, you do well.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said as we bumped fists.
“Na university be dat,” the slim one said. “Your uncle go happy ba je!”
Upstairs, I sat and waited in the reception and when Uncle Jenkins stepped in, he enfolded me in a bear hug.
“I am so proud of you, Dan,” he said beaming. “So, so proud of you.”
In his office, he stuffed his laptop and his note pad into his bag, turned off the television set and said, “Sharp boy, let’s go.”
I have relived what happened in the very next moments over and over again. I have gone over the moments like someone stuck in a time loop but where I have wished for a different outcome, every iteration ends up the same.
We get in the lift.
We ride three floors down.
Supo, Uncle Jenkins driver sees us and springs to his feet.
He takes Uncle Jenkins bag and by the time we walk out of the lobby, the SUV is waiting, engine running.
The mobile policemen are holding both rear doors open for us.
As I shut my door, I hear them asking Uncle Jenkins for money.
“Oga, something for the boys?” The first one says.
“Happy weekend, sir,” the other chimes in.
“We hear say Aburo pass GCE well-well,” the slim one says.
“Yes, he did,” Uncle Jenkins tells him, beaming.
It is a ritual.
Every evening, the policemen would ask for something for the boys.
Uncle Jenkins reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a wad of notes and reaches out through the open window where the slim one is standing.
To accept the money, he switches his Ak47 from his right to his left but just as he reaches for the cash, we hear a shot and I am covered in blood.
Supo is screaming as he drives against traffic.
His screaming is heartbreaking and insistent and I can still hear it in my ears.
Oga mi, oga mi, oga mi!.”
The second policeman is in front and yelling at passengers to get out of the way.
I am holding Uncle Jenkins’ left hand and praying the coldness I feel is not the coldness of death.
Somehow, we make it to St Nicholas but by the time they cut Uncle Jenkins from his seatbelt and put him in a gurney, Supo and the policeman are bawling like children and the hospital staff are shaking their heads.
I am not sure who called Aunt Anne but she was there about two hours later to identify her husband’s body and sign the necessary forms.
The hospital would have refused him since he was DOA but his office has a retainer with them.
The hospital reception is swarming with his colleagues and friends.
I sit in the corner, still bathed in his blood because no one has remembered to get me out of my bloody clothes.
We finally made it home at about mid-night.
Auntie Anne’s sister has come to stay with her, so I go to my room and finally get out of my dirty clothes. I get in the shower, turn it on and slide to the floor.
I want to scream and cry but I cannot. I just sit there, trembling and wondering why the thread tethering me to my joy is always so thin.
The policeman is arrested a week later. The police report will mention something about “poor muzzle control.”
“As the first son, he has to be buried at home,” Auntie Anne tells me one evening, about two weeks after his death.
She has called me into their room, and we are going through photos for the funeral brochure.
Our relationship has never been smooth, but our shared grief seems to have pulled us close.
We pick up the photos and then it is time to pick what she thinks he should wear.
“He bought this suit last month. He hadn’t even worn it.”
It is a deep blue suit with faint lines.
“That will be fine,” I say and then for the first time since my uncle was killed, I burst into tears and I cry as if I am about to die, the tears gushing, the snot streaming.