Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Seven

A week later, Phoenix overhead the couple arguing in their room about him in the middle of the night. He'd been sleeping when he heard the sound of raised voices, so he'd crept out of bed and tiptoed silently to the door of their room to know what the problem was.

Ezekiel was speaking, his voice low but intense and furious. 'That boy is your own nephew. He's your blood, yet you treat him no better than a slave you have in the house and you look for ways to degrade him as if he was nothing. All he's ever done was to try and show you some love, but all you do is to hate him. I wonder why you went down to Onitsha to get him.'

'I was doing my stupid sister a favor,' Agatha snapped, he voice like a whiplash. 'She wants me to finance the education of her son whereas she could have just sent him off to someone as an apprentice to a businessman so he can learn a trade. Instead, she wants to send him to school.'

'And is something wrong with that?' Ezekiel demanded.

'Of course not, but the point here is that I do not want to spend my money on that woman or any of her offspring. She always thought that she was better off than any of us, that she's got better kids than any of her other sisters. Now, she's foisting her brat son on me and I am not happy about that.'

'Are you jealous of your sister?' Ezekiel asked in a voice so soft that Phoenix had to strain to hear him well.

'We're not discussing that woman here, so let it rest. Just know it that I don't intend to send him to school with my money. He can stay here and rot for all I care.'

Phoenix had heard enough. He stumbled back to his room, tears filling his vision, rage and sorrow welling within him. Every day, he slaved for this woman, ran her errands, served her and worked for her till it felt as if his fingers were about to fall off. She had treated him cruelly, doled out the worst punishments for him, and he had done all she ever asked for. But now, she'd said it plainly, that she would rather die than help him see his dreams up to fulfillment. Now, she was treating him very badly, and all to spite her elder sister whom she hated and was jealous of, and that elicited a bout of laughter from him because he knew that, of all her kids, he was the least loved by his mother. The silly woman had chosen the wrong candidate for her wicked acts; she should have chosen his elder brother. That way, she would get her revenge against his mother.

He had no prospects of being anything other than a house servant in this house if he continued to stay there, so he knew that he had to escape from here and find his way. He'd spent seven months here with them, and he hoped they would take him with them when they were going back for the Christmas holiday. Then he'd wave goodbye to them and go his own way. But Agatha later announced to him during the start of December that he was going to stay back in Calabar and start reading his books so as to get ready to take the JAMB exams for his admission into the university the following year. But he knew that she was lying to him; he'd heard her conversation with her husband and he knew what she had planned for him.

How could he escape from that house?

Then, out of the blue, like the flash of white lightening on a dark night, the answer came to him. He remembered that during the third month of his stay there, he'd gone to the market, and on his way back home, he had run into a man as he'd just turned into their street. The man seemed to be having a very difficult time changing the flat tire of his car because his left arm was in a sling and he had to work only with the right one. There was something obviously foreign about him; he was enviably slim, with jet-black hair that must have received a fortune in expensive treatments; there was this boyish handsomeness in his face and a delicacy of his features that captivated the senses, and he looked perfectly groomed. Phoenix had stopped and then had fixed the tire for the man because he knew how to do it; Agatha had forced him to learn the mechanics of a car so he could be changing her car oil and fixing tires whenever the need for it arose.

The man offered him money, but Phoenix had coolly waved the money away. 'Sorry, I don't accept money from people when I help them. I helped you because you'd needed my help.'

'Thank you,' the man had replied, surprised. Without hesitation, he whipped out a leather wallet from his pocket, extracted a blue card from it and headed it over to Phoenix. 'You're a very good guy, and if you need anything, call the number on this card. Ask to speak to Lawrence if someone else answers the call. Remember, anything at all.' And with that he'd entered his car and had driven off.

Phoenix had dumped the card into his battered suitcase and had forgotten all about it. Now, his heart racing in his chest, he ran for the case, looked for the card, and when he found it, he flew straight to the telephone in the living room. He knew that he'd struck gold when Lawrence himself answered the call. That soft voice with the carefully modulated tones was unmistakable, that even after the passage of some months here, he could still remember the sound with perfect clarity.

The man listened patiently, and when Phoenix had finished explaining his plight to him, he said, 'Oh, that's too bad. You know I cannot pay your fees－ it seems too inappropriate. However, I have another suggestion. I want you to come to Lagos. Come there, and then I will help do something for yourself and then you'll be able to send yourself to school and do what you want. Can you do that?'

Of course he could do that! With a silent prayer to the gods for his protection, Phoenix flew around the house on butterfly wings, packed up every single thing that belonged to him in that expensive apartment, and then he was off to Lagos with the last cash he had in his pocket. He wished that there was something bad he could use to repay his aunt for her cruelty to him, but then he felt in his heart that his future success would be enough punishment for her when he had made something out of his life.

*****

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K. A. Banks.