Bebe.

Alhaja is holding the waist of my Sokoto the way my mother handles pure water sachets. In my twenty years of living, no sachet has survived her long, calloused palms.

To Alhaja’s side stand two of her girls, arms folded, judgement glossed across their faces. The shorter one is gloating; only yesterday my mouth spilled unpleasant things into her ears. She smirks, flicking her tongue at me at intervals, while the acrid smell of iru dances through all our noses.

I pay her no mind, then decide to channel my inner Nkiru Sylvanus, but Alhaja sees through me like the simis I wear to bed nightly.

“Shey, I should ask them to bring the basia for you? Ehnn, foolish girl! So you can fill it with your rubbish tears,” Alhaja barks.

“Please, just let me go and look for Brother Yusuf,” I wail, letting my feigned tears spill.

But we both know letting me go would mean her day’s earnings would be short one thousand five hundred naira - the cost of the meal I just ate at her bukka, Sokoto unbuttoned. I even had the mind to request a large Coke to step it down.

Truth be told, I had no business being in Alhaja’s bukka this evening. I was only on my way home after my usual gbegberun with friends when I spotted Brother Yusuf through the bukka’s glass, poised to demolish a heap of Eko.

“Bebe,” he mouthed, signaling for me to join him.

Surprised by my sheer luck, I hurried into the bukka, the pah pah of my Dunlop slippers echoing after me. I had just opened my eyes after shutting them tight so the pepper from the shaki I was wrestling wouldn’t get in, when I realized Brother Yusuf was no longer in my line of sight.

Confused, I morphed into an agama lizard, scanning for him, but all I saw were the protruding bellies of Alhaja’s customers. The bellies suddenly were no longer comical; they only deepened the suffocation I felt as I scrambled for my next move.

But just as I was about to launch into the fifty-meter dash I once mastered at my school inter-house sports, my name thundered through the dim, round bukka; Alhaja’s broad frame looming behind me.

And so here I am, my Sokoto still firmly in Alhaja’s grip.

Did Brother Yusuf do this to me on purpose? Or had I just assumed he would pay for my meal? I couldn’t say. Every day I manage to live up to the nickname my mother always calls me.

“Bebelube! One day, ó máa tẹ́” she would scold.