Wicked Neighbour Finally Meets Her Match

Your golden puff-puff is ready. Oh, come and buy your own. Oh. My daughter, this puff-puff is very sweet.

Oh. Really? Let me try. Mm, it’s delicious. Mama, don’t worry, I will destroy her.

Oh, my child, be careful. The smell that stopped the sermon. Awon ti n’du eran, owo ti e m’olu e.

Sweet food is made by clean hands. The smell came first. Before anyone in Ojo Village could see the smoke rising from Mama Toun’s atan stove, the smell of frying yeast and warm sugar had already crept past the guava tree at the corner of Akimola Street and curled itself into the half dreams of men still sleeping in their wrappers.

It was a smell that pulled. It pulled Okada riders off their bikes. It pulled small children out of bed before their mothers had finished pounding yam.

Once it pulled an entire deliverance service at the Cherubim and Seraphim Chapel to a standstill because the congregation kept opening their eyes during prayer to sniff the wind.

Pastor Adelani mid-shout finally lowered his microphone. “Brethren,” he said, “let us go and meet our anointing at the corner.”

That corner, where Akimola Street curled into Market Road like a sleeping snake, was where Mama Toun had been frying her puff-puffs for 30 years.

Ojo Village sat in the soft green country between Ibadan and Abeokuta on a road the government had been promising to tar since the time of General Babangida.

Three churches, two mosques, one ATM that’s had been loading since 2019, and Mama Toun’s puff-puff stall under the guava tree.

She had one daughter. Her name was Simisola, Simi for short, and the village did not yet know what was sleeping in that quiet girl’s hands.

But the pot knew. The pot had been waiting. The pot passes hands. If a child washes their hands well, they will dine with elders.

It started with a small cough. By Sunday, Mama Toun could not lift the iron pot from the stove.

Dr. Bamidile came down from Iwo on his old Suzuki, listened to her chest, and gave his verdict in the quiet voice country doctors use for difficult cough news.

3 months rest, ahia. Maybe more. The body does not lie. Mama Toun looked at him as if he had told her the sun would be canceled.

That evening, she called her daughter to sit beside her in the parlor beneath the framed photograph of Baba Toun and the plastic flowers that had been on the center table since 1996.

“My picking,” she said, “the pot must not sleep.” Simi was 23, the kind of quiet people sometimes mistook for slowness until they watched her count change three times faster than the boys at the petrol station.

She had finished her ND in catering at the Bodon Poly. She had stood behind her mother at the pot for a year.

Never in front of it. “Mama, your hand is your hand. My hand is not your hand.”

Mama Toun laughed, and the cough caught her. When it passed, she held her daughter’s wrist.

“Listen, Simi. The recipe is only paper. The pot remembers the hand. Cook from your heart, my daughter, and the pot will remember.”

At 4:00 the next morning, Simi was at the corner under the guava tree. She measured the flour with her mother’s tin cup.

She mixed the yeast with water from the iron kettle, never the plastic. She added the small pinch of nutmeg her mother grated only on days she believed would be good ones.

She covered the bowl with a green wrapper. She sat down on the wooden stool.

And she waited. Across the road, Mama Busy’s yellow umbrella was already open. Mama Busy was the other puff puff seller of Akinola Street, 12 years on the corner, never quite first.

Her daughter Vicky, 25, sharp-tongued and sharp-eyed, was already stirring oil. “Ann!” Mama Busy called sweetly across the road.

“Mama turn no come today.” “She is resting.” Simi said. Mama Busy smiled the smile women smile when they have just remembered a piece of land they once lost.

Under the yellow umbrella, Vicky was already counting, counting the customers who would now have no wares to go.

She was wrong. The door rose. Simi lit the fire. She poured the palm oil and waited for it to whisper, the way her mother had taught her.

“The oil will tell you when it is ready, my picking. It will whisper.” And when it whispered, she dipped her right hand, gathered a small soft ball of dough between her fingers, and dropped it into the gold.

The first puff puff floated. It turned itself. It bloomed. When she lifted it out, it was the color of late afternoon sun on a clay wall.

Iya Risika was the first customer that morning. She bought three. She put one in her mouth.

She stopped walking. She came back. “Auntie,” she said, looking at Simi as if she had stumbled into a small miracle.

“This one is not your mother. This one is yours.” “Aha! This one is like like a small cloud.

A golden cloud.” The name did not fall out of Iya Risika’s mouth on purpose.

It dropped the way a coin drops out of a torn pocket by accident but with weight.

By Wednesday, three women had used the phrase without knowing where they had heard it.

By Sunday, Pastor Adelani used it from the pulpit in a sermon about heaven that everyone agreed had been improved by the comparison.

Across the road, under the yellow umbrella, Vicky’s eyes did not blink jealousy at the yellow umbrella.

In Yoruba, “Ibi keo e fi gba iron.” Anger cannot be used to scoop pounded yam.

Jealousy is a small fire. It does not arrive like a stone. It arrives like a coal somebody dropped on a wrapper and forgot to brush off.

Use it. You laugh. You sleep. And one morning you wake up and the wrapper is gone and you cannot remember the moment it began to burn.

Vicky’s coal had been dropped years before Simi ever lit a fire. At 13, at a wedding in Iseyin, Simi had worn a blue lace dress and Vicky had worn a green one and everyone in the hall had walked past Vicky to compliment Simi.

At 18, Vicky had failed JAMB by four marks. Simi had passed by 40. At 22, Vicky had liked a boy called Tunji Akinola who used to come to her mother’s store every Saturday until he started going to Mama Toun’s instead.

He had been going there for the puff puff, not for Simi, but Vicky did not know the difference between a man’s stomach and a man’s heart because nobody had ever taught her.

Now there was a golden cloud across the road and the small coal in Vicky’s chest had become a small breathing flame.

The first week, Mama Busy’s stall lost three customers. The second week, seven. By the third week, the yellow umbrella had become a kind of waiting room, a place where people who could not get to Simi’s in time stopped side and bought the second best puff-puffs in Ojo.

The way a man who has missed the bus accepts the Okada because it is what is left.

“It is just a season.” Her mother said one evening, stirring rice. “Mama Tony will come back.”

“The girl’s hand will tire.” “Mama,” Vicky said, “her hand is not tiring.” “Then we will pray.”

“Oh,” Vicky said, putting down her plate, “we will help her hand to tire.” Mama Busy looked up sharply, but Vicky was already walking to her room.

She lay on her bed. She stared at the ceiling. She thought about the blue lace dress and the JAMB result and the senator’s driver from Abuja who had been sent to buy six dozen of Mama Tony’s, never her own mother’s.

She got up. She opened her drawer. She took out a small notebook in which she had been writing things for 3 months.

At the top of a fresh page she wrote, “Item one. Find out what spirit is helping her.”

She underlined it twice. Outside, in the warm Ojo night, a dog barked and the coal in her chest burned a little brighter and the small fire began to look for a wrapper.

Chapter three. The prophetess and the powder. Iro ke irin jina be ota irin ke ipe.

A lie does not travel far, even if it does, it does not last. The woman arrived on a Thursday.

She wore a white agbada that had been white in 2017. She wore three coral bead necklaces, two of which were plastic.

She introduced herself as prophetess Ayobami Alayo, called of God since the age of four, and she had been paid a thousand naira plus transport by a young woman whose name she had already forgotten.

She set up at the front of Mama Bisi’s yellow umbrella, raised both hands towards Simi’s guava tree across the road, and began to shake.

“I see. I see.” She cried. “Sisters, mothers, brothers of Oja, I see a pot.

A dark pot. The hand that stirs it is not a clean hand. There’s a spirit.

A water spirit from her grandmother’s side. Anene. Do not eat from that pot.” A small crowd gathered because in Oja a free show was a free show.

Ayarisi stood in front, arms folded across her chest like a customs officer. Mama Risi the gossip stood at the back, already composing the message she would send to her sister in Akure.

Pastor Adeloni came out of the chapel and stood at the corner with the patient expression of a man who has heard this song before.

Simi did not stop frying. She lifted a fresh golden cloud out of the oil, laid it on the brown paper, and continued.

It was Ayarisi who answered first. She walked across the road, picked one puff-puff of Simi’s tree, walked back, and held it under Prophetess Ayabo’s nose.

“Madam Prophet,” she said, “smell this thing. Does this smell like a water spirit to you?”

The prophetess sniffed. Her stomach answered before her mouth could. It growled. Not a small growl, but the long ancestral growl of a woman who had taken transport money instead of breakfast money.

The crowd heard it. A schoolboy laughed. Ayarisi raised one eyebrow. “Sister,” she said, “go home and eat.

And tell whoever sent you that the only spirit on this corner is yeast.” The prophetess gathered her agbada and went.

Across the road, Vicky’s face stayed very still, but inside her chest the coal turned over like something on a grill.

That night she walked to the back of Oja Market, past the meat sellers, past the dried fish woman, to the stall of a man called Boba Sanmi, who sold what he called powders for difficult situations.

She bought a small twist of brown paper labeled confusion powder in shaky barrel for 2,500 naira.

“Sprinkle small on her flour bowl when she is not looking,” Boba Sanmi whispered. “Her hand will forget the recipe.

Her dough will not rise. Customer go scatter.” At 4:30 the next morning, Vicky crept across the road in her wrapper.

Simi’s stall was still empty. The dough was rising under its clean cloth. Vicky lifted the cloth.

She sprinkled the powder. She replaced the cloth. She crept back. At 6:00, Simi uncovered the bowl.

The dough had risen perfectly. She lit her fire. She poured her oil. She waited for the whisper.

The first puff puff bloomed gold. What Boba Sanmi had sold Vicky was crushed cassava flour with a small pinch of nutmeg.

The dough had not been confused. If anything, the dough had been seasoned. Customers said the puff puffs that morning were the best Simi had ever made.

Vicky stood under her yellow umbrella, watching her 2,500 naira walk past her into Simi’s queue, and she understood for the first time that the war she was fighting was not against the girl.

It was against something the girl was standing inside of. But she did not yet have the humility to name it.

So she went home, and she opened her notebook, and she wrote one more line.

Item three. Make the puff puff itself smell bad. Chapter four. The socks that stank up the village.

I am not to be caught to I K on me you bossy Nuri. Whoever digs a pit of wickedness will fall into it.

The plan was simple. Vicky would wait until Simi closed her stall on Friday evening, climb the low fence of the back compound, and drop two of her cousin Femi’s footballing socks into the big clay jar of palm oil that Simi kept covered for the next morning.

The socks had been worn for a full week. Femi was a defender. Femi did not believe in soap.

She wrapped the socks in a piece of newspaper. She tied the newspaper with a black polythene bag.

She placed the polythene bag inside another polythene bag because even she could not bear to carry them.

She waited until 10:00 that night when Akimola Street was nothing but the home of generators and the back of one old dog.

She crossed the road. She climbed the fence. She landed badly and her wrapper caught on a nail, but she freed it.

She crept past the guava tree. She lifted the lid of the big clay jar.

And then, in the small moonlight, she made her one mistake. Vicky had brought two clay jars into the ward that night.

Not because she had planned to. She had simply, on her way out of her mother’s kitchen, picked up a second jar of palm oil, her mother’s jar, because she thought she would need an alibi, an extra jar to swap in in case anything went wrong.

She had set the second jar down on her own side of the road behind her own yellow umbrella while she climbed the fence.

And so, in the dark, with her hands shaking and her wrapper still trembling from the nail, Vicky reached into the big clay jar in front of her, dropped both socks in, and pressed the lid back down.

She climbed back over the fence. She crossed the road. She picked up the second jar of palm oil and carried it inside.

She went to bed feeling, for the first time in 3 weeks, a kind of relief, the relief of a woman who has finally done a thing she has only been thinking about.

She had dropped the socks into her own jar. Akinola Street had a small slope.

Simi’s compound was on the higher side. The jar Vicky had climbed the fence to find was not Simi’s.

It was Mama Busy’s second jar, which Mama Busy had carried to Simi’s back compound that very evening because Mama Tunde, too weak to come herself, had sent a message asking Mama Busy to lend her palm oil until market day, the way neighbors had lent each other oil for 40 years on Akinola Street, regardless of who was selling what across the road.

The kindness had crossed the road in the daylight, and the wickedness had crossed back in the dark, and the two had passed each other on the slope without knowing.

At 5:30 the next morning, Vicky lit her fire. She poured her oil. She waited for it to whisper.

It did not whisper. It screamed. By 6:00, the smell of Femi’s socks frying in palm oil had risen up out of Vicky’s pot, sailed past the guava tree, slipped under the corrugated roofs of Akinola Street, and reached the half dreams of every man and woman in Ojo Village in the exact way good smell had once reached them, only in reverse.

Babies woke up crying. A goat ran away from its tether. Pastor Odelani opened his window, opened it wider, closed it, opened it once more to make sure he had not imagined it, and then closed it and locked the latch.

By 6:30, 15 people were standing on Akinola Street trying to find the source. By 7:00, Mama Risky the gossip had arrived.

By 7:15, I had received the provisions woman had arrived. By 7:30, the smell had reached the chapel, the mosque, and the petrol station, and a small boy on a bicycle had ridden three streets over to fetch his grandmother, who was known across Ojo for being able to identify any smell that had ever been on earth.

The grandmother arrived. She sniffed. She closed her eyes. She sniffed again. “This,” she announced to the crowd, “is the smell of a young man’s sock.

A defender’s sock. Worn for not less than 5 days. Possibly six.” The crowd turned, slowly, towards the yellow umbrella.

Vicki stood frozen behind her pot, the wooden spoon shaking in her hand. Her mother came out of the house in her sleeping wrapper, took one look at the pot, and sat down on the ground.

Across the road, under the guava tree, Simi was uncovering her bowl. The green wrapper lifted.

The dough underneath had risen, high, soft, breathing, alive. She smelled it. She smelled the air.

She looked across the road at Vicki, whose eyes were already on her. Simi did not say anything.

She lit her fire. She poured her own oil from her own jar, which had been her own jar all along, and she waited for the whisper.

And the whisper came. The clean heart. Inu re aju ibo a je julo. A good heart is greater than excessive sacrifice.

By noon that day, the whole of Ojo knew. Mama Risky had done her work efficiently.

The story was on three WhatsApp groups by lunchtime, and had reached a cousin in Lagos by evening.

The version that came back from Lagos by Sunday had grown a python and two policemen, but the bones of it were correct.

Mama Busy did not leave the house for 2 days. On the third day she walked across the road in her oldest wrapper with Vicky behind her and stood in front of Simi’s stall.

The queue parted. Ayarisi, who had been first in line, took one careful step back because some moments belong to the people inside them.

“Simi,” Mama Busy said, and her voice was not the voice of a woman who had ever called sweetly across the road.

“Simi, my daughter has wronged you. She has wronged your mother. She has wronged me, too, although she does not yet know it.

I have come to say what she cannot say.” Vicky did not lift her eyes.

She stood behind her mother like a girl half her age. Simi wiped her hands on her apron.

She looked at Mama Busy. She looked at Vicky. The whole street was holding its breath because in Ojo, when a grown woman is publicly shamed, the next move belongs to the one she has wronged, and everyone wanted to see what shape Simi’s next move would take.

Simi did not raise her voice. She did not smile a triumphant smile. She did not look at the crowd because she had no message for the crowd.

“Mama Busy,” she said, “my mother sent palm oil across to you 40 years before I was born.

You sent palm oil to her two nights ago. Akinola Street is not two stalls.

It is one street.” She reached into her tray. She took out three fresh golden clouds, still warm, and she folded them into a square of brown paper.

She held them out, not to Mama Busy, but to Vicky. “Take,” she said. “Eat.

And tomorrow morning, if you want, come and learn how the oil whispers. I will show you.

Vicki looked up. There were tears on her face that she did not bother to wipe.

She took the paper. She did not say thank you. She could not. But she nodded once, very small, and Simi nodded back, and that was enough.

Mama Busy began to cry quietly. Iya Risi handed her a handkerchief. The queue, after a moment, began to move again because life on Akimola Street had to keep moving, and the puff-puffs were still warm.

That night, in her room, Vicki took the small notebook out of her drawer. She did not tear out the pages.

She closed the book gently, the way you close the door on a room you do not intend to enter again, and she pushed it to the back of the drawer behind her old jump papers.

Then she lay down on her bed, and for the first time in 3 weeks, she slept without dreaming of the the golden cloud.

Okan to Emo, owo to dara, ibukun ni ati ilo won. A clean heart and good hands, blessing follows them.

Six months later, Mama Toun was well enough to walk down to the corner herself.

She moved slowly. She held her daughter’s arm. When she reached the guava tree, she did not sit down at first.

She stood, and she looked because the corner was not what it had been 6 months ago.

There were now two stalls under the guava tree, sharing one long table painted a soft cream.

The sign above them read, in careful gold lettering on a deep crimson board, The Golden Cloud, Simi and Vicki.

The yellow umbrella was gone. Mama Busy had folded it up and given it to her sister in Akure, who used it now for a small fabric stall.

Across the road, where Mama Busy stall had been, there was a new small wooden sign that read the Golden Cloud Learning Corner, where three afternoons a week, Simi and Vicky together taught the young girls of Ojo how to read the whisper of the oil.

The pot Mama Toun had stirred for 30 years sat on a small shelf above the table, polished and retired.

Beside it sat a smaller pot, Vicky’s mother’s pot, also retired, also polished, also honored.

Below them both, on the cooking fire, was a new pot, bigger than either, which the two young women shared.

Mama Toun watched her daughter lift the puff-puff out of the oil and pass it across the table to Vicky, who laid it on the brown paper.

Two hands, one pot. She closed her eyes and smelled the air. The smell that had once stopped the sermon now also stopped grudges.

The village had noticed. The village always noticed. That evening, when the stall closed and the small girls had gone home with flour on their fingers, Simi walked her mother back up Akinola Street.

Mama Toun stopped at the gate. She looked at her daughter for a long time.

“The pot remembered the hand,” she said softly. “But the hand had to remember something, too.”

“What, Mama?” “That the corner is not yours alone, my picking.” “The corner belongs to the street.”

“And the street belongs to the village.” “And the village belongs to the one who lit the fire.”

Simi smiled. She helped her mother through the gate. Behind her, on the corner under the guava tree, the embers of the day’s fire was still glowing, soft and good, the way a small cloud might glow in the very last light.