My Champion.

Art by urANNivity on Pinterest.

He seldom stood on the porch gazing into the blank distance, but every time he camped there, Papa and Mama must have found reasons to punch each other out.

He used to hang there and watch, especially the type of birds that descended like a sweeping plane over the lake, and took off in that same breath, without any need for gravity but with prey in their talons.

He was fascinated by it — the majestic glide by.

His hands were drawn to the act of taking what was exposed and insecure.

And it carved the character of his soul, but maybe it wasn’t then he formed this attitude.

Maybe it was when Sparrow, his white-haired cat, started choking on his hairball in the grey-carpeted hallway, where the floor seemed like aluminium, where he lay crying, holding poor Sparrow on his knees, unable to fight back the tears he had not cried since after Papa and Mama’s divorce.

Or maybe it was when he caught Mama, two months before, straddled with another man, joined like bread and butter on the wide matrimonial bed.

Maybe it was then, I don’t know. But one thing I can say is he grew a stone-cold heart.

He first evolved into a daredevil and took great risks when poverty appeared and shook our lives.

He held me by the arm and saddled me on his back as we trekked through the market square with bare feet.

I was placed at a street corner; told to act like I knew him not.

I stood there, a damsel at peace, whose clear brown eyes, were shut from seeing him escape with two loaves of bread under his armpits as the market women chased him.

Later that evening, we swallowed morsels in silent corners, the heaviness of our life now breathing on our necks, our father dead, and we estranged, with no earthly roof to call home.

I, as a girl, was weak and frail; could not bear the struggle, but my brother sacrificed his heart for my sake.

He travelled up the ranks to pick-pocketing, waiting behind muddled Lagos bus junctions, pushing against bodies that struggled to enter destinations unknown to him, robbing them of accessories, of money which man cannot do without.

My eyes leapt forward the first time I saw him steal. His hands morphed into blades that vanished restrictions, intercepting a tied phone, freeing a buttoned pocket, and one time, he stole from a sock.

On nights holding flowers and daring the moon sky, I permitted myself to ask how he learnt new tricks.

On another day parallel to a new day, it was evident he towered over all the area boys, standing miles above them, as to his chair, they all brought respect.

One time, I watched him beat up a robber swiping from a woman so old her back was bent stiff.

His hands snuffed the thief and tightened in circles around his neck, but I curved a hand into his elbow, and he unchained the frightened rogue, who dropped flat on the floor and begged for mercy.

It was then I saw how much power he had gained, as the whole Eko raised hands every time he passed.

Not long after, he became a drug lord, and our lives fared for the better.

I was happy. He seemed happy. He was a blank sheet over our kingdom. He protected those he thought innocent and started to become one whom many ran to solve disputes.

But everything changed when he fell in love.

I was there the day he met her.

We had left home for the market to get some food. He was in his twenties already, and I was just nearing my late teens.

She was tall; dark, with a jaw so smooth it seemed pristine.

She was arguing with a bike man, who now revved up by manly rage, came down from his bike and threw a slap which she dodged. In the same continuing action, she retaliated with a strike that bloodied his nose. He fell on his back, and she continued kicking him while he was down till a crowd held her back from his stiff body.

I turned to my brother to laugh at the situation, but he seemed caught in a trance like one peering at something glowing that no one else could see.

Days after that, he introduced me to her in the house he had bought from our new fair life.

She had a soft and sweet voice, but there was something about it I did not like. It seemed aware, capable, and sure of every action to the extent that she sounded almost conniving.

I had a bad feeling in my throat that day. It was not that I was jealous of my brother having someone else take my place, but I never trusted the way she spoke. There was something about her arrangement of syllables that made it seem like she had been there before, in that situation, in that experience, like one knowing of all things.

And anyone too knowing, I believe, has five times the skeletons to hide.

One day, I stumbled on her in a quiet restaurant with a man she introduced as her brother, but I had seen them through the glass from outdoors, holding hands and pecking cheeks.

Another day, it was an older man who took her out shopping.

She said he was her Uncle, but the way he looked at her was tapered with something so lulled like one being pushed along to the will of the seductress.

I did not understand how to tell my brother these things, but I trusted him. Nothing ever seemed to pass his gaze.

One thing I forgot about love was the way it shrouded the eyes. It’s the same way I can never see my brother’s fault, even though I know he did some wrong.

The day he found out about her betrayal, I saw him again — the boy, I mean, the young child who had held Sparrow’s corpse.

I wanted to be his rock this time. I held him when I could.

I would give him my hand to lean on, and hold his face to my breast. I would sing all the songs I learnt to give me strength.

My brother was not weak, I knew. But this love had made him something so soft. It was now in my power to grant him energy, but the worst had not yet shown its head.

The illness came like a shock.

He had fainted three times before we knew it was bad.

I was filled with a type of rage. I wanted to kill her, to make her go through all the pain my brother was suffering. But for him to be this way meant that, eventually, she would face her own pain.

Nowadays, my brother asks me if he is and was a good person. He asks me, “Am I a bad brother?”

I tell him he has never been bad to me. He gave me a home when no one else did. He sent me to school, fed me, clothed me, even through all the days he had to sacrifice his innocence.

I tell him that, all the time I watched him, he was willing to change; that’s why he saved those in trouble and protected all he called family.

And anyone willing to repent, in my book, can never be a terrible person.

A lot of the time, I point out others worse than him, but it is starting to look like the coming months may be our last period shared together.

I don’t even care if he is going to heaven or hell. I just want him to be fine.

He is my brother, my only hero, the only place I call home.