A NIGHT LIKE OTHER NIGHTS

Chapter 10: Welcome to Agba

A huge man in a white t-shirt and black trousers stepped out of the car. Jacy glared at him. He looked familiar. His eyes locked on Harry, who sat with his head bowed in defeat. Jacy touched her husband’s arm and whispered.

“Harry, look!”

Harry raised his head and froze. Standing before them was Etiosa, a dark-skinned man of medium height with a sharp moustache that gave him the air of a kungfu master from the old movies. He walked with a slow, commanding stride toward their car.

Etiosa had been Harry’s friend since school days. Both hailed from the same state, and though Harry had once mentioned him to Jacy, she had never met him in person. The two men had long planned a business trip to Delta State to explore petroleum opportunities the very trip they were supposed to embark on that day.

Harry rolled down the glass, pushed open the door, and stepped out.

“Etiosa,” he called curiously. “Don’t tell me you’ve been the one following us since? Vbèè óye hé?”

“I should be asking you that Harry,” Etiosa replied. He moved closer and demanded, “Where are you going with your wife?”

Jacy’s eyes darted between them, unsettled. Harry threw her a warning glare, then pulled Etiosa aside. They spoke in hushed tones. Jacy strained her ears, desperate to catch even a word, but heard nothing. She only noticed Etiosa glance at her once, his eyes unreadable, before striding back to his car. Moments later, he sped away, leaving only dust in his wake.

Harry returned. Jacy was overwhelmed, her voice rising in confusion.

“Who is he? And what does he want? Why was he following us?”

Harry reminded her sharply that this was the Etiosa he had once told her about the man with whom he had a business arrangement the previous Friday an agreement Harry had failed to keep.

Jacy stared, still unsatisfied.

“And so what? We nearly died trying to escape from him! Is he mad? Couldn’t he have just give a phone call? And you why didn’t you give him a piece of your mind? Jesus!”

Harry suddenly burst into laughter. Jacy’s face stiffened. She waited for an explanation, but all he said was:

“We were only running from our own shadows.”

He expected her to laugh too, but she didn’t. Instead, she muttered curses under her breath against “that Etiosa of a man” as Harry started the engine.

“When we get back, he’ll hear from me. How can someone be so stupid…” she fumed.

Harry avoided the route where the fake police had been tailing them, turning instead toward the Agba road. Jacy tapped his arm nervously.

“Be careful.”

He pressed the accelerator. The car surged forward at top speed. Jacy leaned toward the window and froze. At the edge of the roadside lay a corpse, a gunshot wound gaping across its back.

She screamed, her voice slicing the tense air. Harry’s expression didn’t change. He kept driving, fast and steady, until they reached the bold signboard:

WELCOME TO AGBA, Home of the Prosperous Ones

Only then did he slow. The road was strangely empty, unusually so, and both Jacy and Harry exchanged wary glances. Still, they passed Agba without incident and finally crossed into Anambra West.

Jacy whispered a prayer of thanks for journey mercies. Though the road ahead remained uncertain, at least they had passed the worst of it.

Minutes later, they arrived in Mmiata Anam, at the home of the late Onyibo Johnson, Jacy’s maternal grandfather. Her grandmother sat outside, on the bare earth beneath a shade made to keep off the sun.

The structure was simple yet ingenious: four bamboo poles for pillars, crossed sticks laid square across them, and elephant grass layered like roofing zinc. Under it was shadow, Grandma sat peeling cassava roots stacked in a heap before her. She wore a yellow George wrapper decorated with tiny blue stars, paired with a faded brown blouse.

When she noticed the car approaching, her eyes narrowed in curiosity. Could it be them?

Jacy didn’t wait. She leapt out from the passenger seat, ran to her grandmother, and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Harry drove the car behind the house to park.

The house itself stood like a relic of another time, a mud building of two rooms and a parlor, its walls supported by log of mahogany tree as pillars and split bamboo that held the mud, its roof glinting with brand new sumo zinc that shone like sunlight from a distance.

“Nwam ooo, welcome,” Grandma exclaimed, embracing Jacy tightly. “Aru amaka gi! Where’s Harry? Ebe ka ojebelu?”

Harry approached, smiling respectfully. She turned to him, her eyes lighting up.

“Agu! Odogwu nwoke!” she hailed, pulling him into her arms.

Nearby, a little girl sat peeling cassava beside Grandma. She looked up shyly and greeted Jacy.

“How are you?” Jacy replied, studying the child. She couldn’t have been more than ten, fair-skinned, dressed in a pink blouse, her hair tied in neat pigtail braids. A broad face framed her delicate features, a pointed nose, soft lips, a quiet beauty.

Grandma noticed Jacy’s prolonged gaze. “Oh, that’s Rita’s last born, obu ezigbo nwa,” she explained proudly.

“Awwn. Rita did well to give you this little damsel,” Jacy said with a faint smile, settling onto a chair. “At least you won’t be lonely.”

She picked up a cassava root and tried to peel it, but the effort proved clumsy. She wasn’t used to such work. Defeated, she dropped it back. Grandma laughed and hurried inside to fetch food for them, ignoring Harry’s polite protests. He joined Jacy on a wooden stool.

But Jacy’s eyes kept drifting back to the girl. Something about her face stirred old memories memories she had buried deep. The child looked so much like Anita.

Anita. The girl who had lured Jacy into ruin.

Back then, Jacy had been innocent a church girl with an angel’s voice. Her only mistake had been making Anita her friend.

It was during exams. Both girls had been chased out of the hall for owing school fees. Jacy begged Anita to accompany her to find a phone to call her father. Anita agreed, but first insisted they stop by her home to collect her own fees. Jacy had hesitated, but gave in.

They wandered deeper into Ota town until they reached a house crowded with rough looking boys in ragged clothes and hard hairstyles. Jacy froze. Anita knocked at the door.

“come in na,” she urged when Jacy suggested waiting outside.

That was the beginning of betrayal.

Inside sat a boy who had been pursuing Jacy and to whom she had finally agreed to be his girlfriend. For two months, they had been together. Now she found him entangled with another girl.

Jacy’s heart shattered. She turned to leave, but the boy blocked her way.

That day marked the end of her innocence. She had fallen pregnant. Her father, furious, disowned her. For three long years she lived in misery, her life reduced to wreckage, until God softened her father’s heart. He took her back, sponsored her WAEC, and later sent her to the university.

But she had never forgotten those days of shame and suffering.

Her gaze returned to the little girl before her. Their eyes met. Jacy blinked rapidly and shifted, her chest tightening. Did anyone else see what she had just seen?