Blackass

Blackass Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Blackass Read Online Free PDF
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Tags: Fiction, Literary
radiators. A riot of honking assailed the ears: short warning honks, long angry honks, continuous harrying honks: a language as universal as a scream. But in Lagos, overused. The clamour was deafening.
    ‘ Oyibo! ’ a female voice yelled from across the roadway, and Furo, startled out of his fascination with the automotive babel, glanced over. Vivid in her Fanta-bright shirt and white gloves, a traffic warden sat on a tyre under the shade of a neem tree. She was eating a peeled orange that was gripped in her right hand, and when she saw she had Furo’s attention, she grinned and gave him a left-handed wave. Furo moved his gaze along. Beside the neem tree, outside the shadows cast by its leaves, stood a three-legged easel blackboard. Scrawled on its surface in pink chalk were the words FOOD IS READY. Furo reached his decision before he realised he’d reached it, and stepping on to the asphalt, he dodged between trapped bumpers and strode across to the buka, a wood-and-zinc shed backed against a concrete fence and hung on the front and sides with grimy, once-white lace curtains. As he parted the front curtain, he heard the traffic warden exclaim, ‘Where this oyibo man dey go?’ and from the corner of his eye he saw her jump to her feet and fling away her suck-shrivelled orange. He ducked into the buka.
    A middle-aged woman with a red hairpiece styled in a bob sat on a bar stool behind a table laden with aluminium pots. Four benches were arranged in front of the table. A man dressed like a construction labourer – blue denim shirt faded grey on the shoulders, mud-spattered jeans scissored off at the knees, and yellow rubber boots – sat astride one of the benches, and in front of him was a sweating bottle of Pepsi, a steaming bowl of okra soup, and three wraps of cold fufu, one opened. The fermented whiff of cassava meal mixed with the aroma of boiled okra and smoked panla fish made Furo lightheaded, and he sat down quickly. After placing his folder on the same bench he straddled, he looked up to catch the food seller staring at him, as was the labourer, his hand stilled in his soup-smeared fufu.
    ‘Do you have egusi soup?’ Furo said to the food seller, but she stared on in silence. He raised his voice. ‘Madam – do you have egusi soup?’
    The labourer recovered first. ‘Answer am, e dey ask you question!’ he said to the food seller in a biting tone. He seemed angered by the reflection he saw in her face.
    ‘Yes,’ the woman said. She rose from the bar stool and made a clattering show of opening pot lids to check the contents. Then, as if unable to stop herself, she looked up at Furo and said in a rush: ‘Abeg, no vex, but you be albino?’
    ‘Open your eye, woman,’ the labourer said. ‘No be albino.’
    The woman ignored the labourer, she kept her questioning gaze on Furo, and so he shook his head no. ‘I’m not an albino,’ he confirmed.
    ‘ Ewoo! ’ the woman exclaimed. ‘You be oyibo true-true.’
    The woman fell silent, but her thoughts played across her features, changed her expression from wonder one moment to glee the next. The labourer resumed eating, his face soured with scorn. Seeing as the woman made no move to serve him, Furo asked with a touch of asperity, ‘Do you have eba?’ The woman caught the note in his voice, and she beamed a smile at him as if to say, What can you do, you white man, you barking puppy , but she said nothing, she nodded yes. ‘Give me three wraps of eba with egusi soup,’ Furo said.
    The woman placed the eba on a steel plate, and then picked up a soup bowl and her serving ladle. ‘How many meat?’ she asked, and Furo held up one finger. But when she set the food and a bowlful of water before him, he saw two chunks of meat mixed with the shredded vegetable of his soup. He glanced up in surprise to meet the woman’s wide smile. ‘I give you extra meat,’ she said, her voice lowered, conspiratorial, but still overheard by the labourer. At his loud sniff of
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