The music boomed from the ground floor of Deacon Samson’s storey building. The house was meant for tenants, and it had become a routine for the one-week long tenant to wake the entire occupants of the only storey building along Alagbayun Street with her loud songs.
Femi stretched on his flat mattress. He rolled sideways and back before finally getting up. The flower-patterned bedspread was already squeezed to one corner of the mattress, so he took the bedspread and made his bed while thinking about his mother. She had purposefully chosen the flowery pattern despite his protests that he wanted one that didn’t look so girlish. Now, a thousand miles far away from home, he missed his doting mother.
Femi yawned before putting the toothbrush in his mouth. The five-hour vigil he had had still told on him.
“Femi Femo!” Mummy Bridget hailed him before entering the general kitchen meant for the left-wing of the first floor; she and her family occupied the entire left wing. Femi spat out the content of his mouth to reply to her. He was about to put the toothbrush back into his mouth when he remembered that Mummy Bridget had brought him a can of Maltina just before he headed out for the vigil.
“Thanks for yesterday’s Maltina ma,” he hurriedly thanked her. Mummy Bridget did not reply, so he had to repeat the greeting in a louder voice. Only then did she reply. Femi shook his head. It wasn’t only his mother that thought he acted like a girl; he indeed looked and talked like a girl, and thinking about the talk he would have with Bimbo about those songs today didn’t make things easier. Femi wondered what he would sound like. He wished now for the miracle of a baritone voice.
His mouth clean, his bed laid and the door closed shut, he sat down to study the Bible, but Bimbo’s loud songs still found a way into his room. Femi yawned again while struggling to focus on his study. Bimbo’s selfishness was already causing him a headache. He needed at least two more hours of sleep to clear his head; however, delaying his Bible Study was not something he subscribed to. He was already awake and wouldn’t go back to his Saturday sleep before talking to God. A new convert like him understood what it meant to not have a divine power backing him up.
After a laborious thirty minutes study, Femi gave up. He was going to have this dialogue once and for all. He put on a shirt hurriedly and checked his reflection in the mirror. The bags under his eyes were enough proof that Bimbo needed urgent reproof.
As he dashed downstairs, he considered taking his Bible along with him, but he shrugged it off. He was just going to talk about the loud songs, nothing more.
As he got downstairs, he saw a group of persons, obviously the ground floor tenants, already clustered at the door of the newly occupied room. The room stood out from the other rooms as Bimbo had had fresh paint put on the existing one before packing in.
One of the women clustered at the door retied her faded Ankara wrapper and knocked again. The only sound coming from her room was muffled sobs. The women looked at one another in confusion.
The quick-to-give-a-piece-of-their-mind women had not expected such a situation. Though annoyed by the loud songs, the ground floor occupants hadn’t had the time to come either individually or together to ask Bimbo to stop playing her songs so loudly—until now.
Femi watched from the staircase how the small group of people dispersed one by one. Everybody had personal issues to deal with. The song still blared like a soundtrack to the scene he had just watched. Femi sighed and was about to leave when he heard a door open.
“So, she was the Bimbo that Mummy Bridget had fumed about,” he thought. Bimbo walked out of the room with eye bags as big as Femi’s. The only difference between both parties was her matted hair. She wiped off the residue of tears with the back of her palm and smiled sadly after looking around; those banging at her door were gone. One thing she knew was that she wouldn’t stop playing her songs so loudly. In that only, she found solace.
“At least, I’m free for today,” she said and returned to her room.
Femi watched the drama patiently before returning to his room upstairs. As he lay on his bed to have his two-hour sleep, he thought about all he had seen and heard. It was obvious that Bimbo was not fine. He was convinced that if she continued living that way, she was going to run insane in a few months, and if he was right in his assumption, instead of using a pillow, she had been muffling her sobs with the loud songs she played every day.
Soon enough, he fell asleep.
