Farmer’s Boy

Photo by Tanjir Ahmed Chowdhury

The stupid thing about meeting Chika was that she knew, before he said a word, that she would fuck him. It left her flustered, made her wary of his gestures when he walked over to her group and introduced himself as an exchange student from the University of Ibadan.

Unlike Lara who was effusive as he talked, punctuating Chika’s observations with smiles, or Amina who would comment later that Chika had the delicate fingers of a masseur, Toyin kept a distant silence, fiddling pages of a novel. She nodded when Lara made a point that needed seconding, she stopped when the group stopped at Senate Junction to hail a cab, and she gave a slight wave when Chika started to walk away.

She resumed her reading as they rode home, leaning her face against the cab’s window. The book bored her; the author, somewhat convinced he could spin a thriller, was weaving a plot that could be deciphered from the second page. Toyin despised bland plots. There were many reasons for this, but it was mostly because her life was predictable, and she hated books that mirrored the same.

She closed the book and listened to her friends banter. Amina spoke with the urgency of a messenger. But it was Lara’s enthusiasm that made Toyin wonder if the encounter with Chika was a first-time for Lara.

By the time the cab parked, Toyin had lived through what could be a miniseries on the life and times of Chika Surname-less. She was reminded, again, that Chika was the finest exchange student they’d had since the program’s inception, that Chika was born in Enugu, but he’d teenaged in Ibadan and had lived there since.

At the lodge she shared with Lara, her roommate immersed the afternoon in Chika’s goodness, Chika’s handsomeness, Chika’s keen interest to learn, Chika’s way of engaging lecturers—Toyin thought he was questioning, not engaging. They looked good together, Lara said. She joked about carrying his babies, “fine, fine species”, tracing, with her fingers, an imaginary protrusion on her stomach. She hit Toyin with her elbow when Toyin did not engage her, teasing Toyin for being unabashedly jealous.

When Lara left for rehearsals, Toyin lay face-up on the bed. The silence wrapped her like a shroud. She fiddled with her ball pen and wondered what to write about Lara’s demeanour. She thought her friend had the fugacious nature of gasoline fire. She could, at one moment, be consumed by a situation, and in a twinkle, forget the situation existed.

And so, as Toyin recalled and punched into her phone the eleven digits Chika had called out when Lara requested his phone number, she felt no twinge of betrayal. She set the phone on loudspeaker and placed it before her. Beads of sweat pooled at her nape. She felt a slight headache. She felt nervous too when, after a long pause, a robotic voice informed her the line was not reachable. She tried again, mumbling each digit as she clicked, but the response was the same.

She walked to her window and pulled up the curtains. Perhaps she had misheard Chika. Perhaps her photographic memory was beginning to wane. Perhaps, as her mother often warned, God was displeased with her for trusting so much in her abilities and had facilitated a malfunction.

“There is nothing God cannot do,” her mother would say. “Nothing is too hard for God to do. Daughter, you must remember that we are the circumcision in the spirit, and we have no confidence in the flesh. You can’t be running your mouth that your diligence gave you the edge to emerge the winner in a quiz contest, you hear? When you do that, what you’re invariably saying is that your competitors were not diligent enough to win, and you give God a reason to take away this good success from you.”

Toyin had wanted to correct her mother that there was no “diligent enough”. You were diligent or not. She remembered that afternoon like it was a silhouette stalking her privacy. She remembered the midday heat, the rustic blades of the living room’s ceiling fan creaking with every wave of air. Outside, the gardener pruned flowers, the shears creating a chirp-chirp rhythm that unapologetically intruded into her thoughts.

She remembered her mother’s stare-down when she didn’t acknowledge the chastisement or apologise for being bigmouthed. She was tired of the game, of the cat-mouse cycle that ended with her apology and her mother’s “that’s my girl”. Sometimes, she wished her father would appear from his office and input his opinion. She wished he would take a break from preparing sermons or reviewing building expansion plans or scheduling board meetings with the church’s board.

She wondered, now, what her mother would think about her salient obsession with Chika. Would she be proud her daughter had restrained herself from voicing her desire to sleep with him? Would she be shocked her daughter knew what it meant to fuck a boy?

A memory blossomed in her mind. A few months back, at one of the youth meetings often organised around Christmas, the youth pastor had invited a specialist to facilitate a session on sex (within the context of marriage). The church rarely welcomed such discussions, but in the wake of unprecedented levels of pregnancies among the youths—all results of sexual activities around Christmas the previous year—the pastor had asked for an exemption.

In his defence, the excesses of the youths needed to be curtailed. But first, they needed an orientation.

The specialist, a woman who had teenage daughters, was everything the youths did not expect. There was a casualness about her, as though talking about fertility, penetration, virginity, making out, and other sexual things was not a sin. She talked about oral sex, ignoring the pastor’s grimace, and asked if the youths knew what a blowjob was.

No one responded in the affirmative, and the pastor smiled widely.

Toyin mocked his cheap trusting of the youths. She imagined how he would recoil if she told the facilitator she’d given blowjobs. The church would scatter, undoubtedly. The headlines would bleed: Daughter of Founding Pastor Admits to Performing Multiple Oral Sex, Many Others . . .

Toyin knew, then, that she could survive the backlash from the elders, the church, the community, but she could never survive her mother’s disappointment.

It was why, after Chika’s line failed to connect a second time, she opened her bible to Galatians and read some verses from her mother’s favourite book, willing herself to forget about Chika. It was why, as the week went by, she attended classes and turned in her assignments and called her mother at exactly 7.01 pm each day and teased Lara for overworking herself because of a drama ministration at her fellowship. It was why she finished the thriller novel and left a three-star review on Amazon, deleting her caustic comment because, as a believer, she was not to be caustic.

It was why, when four days later a new number called her cell after classes, she did not think of Chika.

She found a quiet spot behind her faculty building, picked with one hand, and with the other free hand rummaged in her handbag for her earpiece.

“Hello.”

Male voice. She stopped searching. She switched the phone from the left ear to the right.

“Hi.”

“I missed your calls a couple of days back.”

It came to her like a revelation. Chika. She swallowed. She thought, suddenly, about the validity of her desire to bed him. She imagined his head thrown back in shocking awe, his palms sweaty, if he knew what she’d thought that afternoon at Senate Junction.

She started to introduce herself, to apologise for calling him without informing him earlier, but then he stopped her.

“I know,” he said when she said her name.

He knew? He knew she would call? He knew, even though they had not exchanged a word? What did he mean? Toyin’s mind was a beehive of thoughts. She did not know how to proceed. She’d thought to sway him with the element of surprise, but he’d deflated her with two words. She staggered to a bench and sat. She could hear his cyclic breathing, could hear low cuckoos in the background.

Was he on a farm?

“You weren’t in class today,” she said.

“I wasn’t,” he said.

She asked where he was. Somewhere important. After a few seconds, he said he was at his uncle’s. A small town in Ife. Why had he left school? It was something he did on Fridays. His uncle’s place was half an hour away from the campus, and since he started the exchange program, he’d been spending the weekend at his uncle’s, helping with a few things.

There were more details, but he couldn’t talk about them over a phone call. Chika sighed. He asked about the two classes he’d skipped. One of the lecturers did not show up. The other dismissed the class twenty minutes early, claiming weekend fatigue. He’d written on the board a research assignment to be turned in the following Monday, eight in the morning.

She was sorry she didn’t say a word to him that day. Her friends could be really effusive, she said, and she was cautious with first impressions.

“It’s fine,” Chika said. “You aired me.”

“Pardon?”

“I said you aired me.”

“Yeah, I heard. What does it mean, aired?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Oh, it means, to air someone. Like air. You know, like when you have dirty clothes, and after you launder them you squeeze out the water, then find a line where you spread them so the sun can lap up the water residues. That’s airing.”

There was an awkward pause, and she realised he’d pulled one on her when he started giggling. She swore at him. He laughed. Did she not really know the meaning of aired? What else was she clueless about?

He poked her with questions. Did she know what it meant to be green? If someone wanted to come over to Netflix and chill, what was the person saying?

Then he said, “Have you ever nutted?”

She could lie that she had, that she knew what nutting was. She could fess up, admit that she had no clue, and so wouldn’t confess to something she didn’t know.

“Huh . . . maybe, maybe not.”

“Hmm. The guy was a dick, wasn’t he?”

“Actually, yes,” she said.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I could make up for that, you know? I could make you nut in five minutes.”

She ended the call. The phone felt hot in her hand. She shivered. She was troubled by his crude remarks, his unabashed sexual innuendos. She went to her browser and, though she knew what results to expect, typed in the search bar: “What does it mean to nut?”

“The specialist, a woman who had teenage daughters, was everything the youths did not expect. There was a casualness about her, as though talking about fertility, penetration, virginity, making out, and other sexual things was not a sin. ”

She stepped away from the bench. A group of students strolled down the pathway that led to the extended Science Building. She remembered the room on the second floor of that building, where she’d given her first stimulation. It was a dare. One of the guys, after a tutorial session, had made jokes about SU sisters and their naivety. She’d wanted desperately to prove them wrong, and so she made a bet to do something that’d have him shut up. She left before everyone, then returned to the room later to make good on her bet. She saw how, the next day, all the boys looked at her like she was a goddess.

The urge returned to her now. The urge to prove Chika wrong overwhelmed her and, for a minute, distracted her from thinking. She loved that her thighs had come aflame when he talked about nutting. She loved that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She loved that she felt alive, again.

The facilitator’s words came to her. We are sexual beings. God put it in us, yes? You know, we think sex is a sin. But sex is not the sin. Do you know what the sin is?

Sex was not the sin. Perhaps she’d been too religious about her body, about her desires, about sweet little things God put in her for good use. Perhaps she should call Chika and push the conversation.

He picked before she heard it ring.

“Hi.”

“Toyin, I’m so sorry. For making you uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have been . . . crude.”

“No, you didn’t. I mean, you were crude, but it didn’t make me uncomfortable. I actually called back because of that.” She exhaled. “That offer, is it still on the table?”

*

The town drifting past her in trees, bushes, and thatched roofs told her the bus was indeed moving. She was doing this. It wasn’t an excerpt from her imagination. She sat by a window, a book parted on her thighs, and she smiled, knowing that soon her thighs would part too. Her backpack sat between her legs. Sunrays burned her lower leg.

She reminded the driver of her destination, and the man, in his singsong voice, said he had not forgotten. Earlier, as she boarded, he’d asked if she was visiting family. She’d deflected the question with a smile, which he interpreted as an affirmative response.

How could she have said, “I wan go fuck man?” How could she make it make sense to the man that she didn’t understand, fully, what she was doing?

It reminded her of the morning she first drank wine with Joseph, in a room adjoining her father’s office. Her father was away at a meeting, one Joseph’s father was attending as well. Her mother had gone away on a business trip. Joseph found the wine in a sack at the bottom corner of a cupboard. There were a dozen and one bottles, and when he told her it was alcoholic, she’d argued with him. Their parents were pastors; what would they do with alcoholic drinks?

When Joseph uncapped one and turned the content into a cup, she did not stop him. She did not when he parted her lips and poured the wine down her throat. She did not when he pulled his trousers and planted himself in her mouth. Although she ran to the bathroom later and brushed her tongue till it burned.

The bus stopped and the driver nodded at a park a few meters away. She would find a bike at the park, he said. She thanked the man and, when the bus drove off, called Chika.

Earlier, when she told Chika she was coming over, he’d been quiet. The quiet of one considering an unplanned development. That was her opportunity to rescind her decision. Instead, she convinced him to allow her “come over”, or she would be restless all weekend, waiting for his arrival on Monday. His uncle had a spare room where she would pass the night and was often away on Fridays, visiting friends. His uncle’s wife would not mind a friend spending the night.

“How does an Igbo boy have a Yoruba uncle?”

“I’m mixed,” he said. “My middle name is Oluwatobi. It’s a long story. I’ll tell it when you come if you wouldn’t find it boring.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said.

“Okay.”

He paused, and she knew he was contemplating how to end the conversation. This was the point where a lover would affirm his love. But she did not love him. He did not love her either. They were two random people who’d decided that of all the risks they could have taken, the risk of meeting to fuck was the most appealing. For the moment.

Now, she listened to his phone ring endlessly. And as she gave up on a response, his voice came on.

“Hey, sorry. Was away from the phone.”

He was panting. Had he been running?

“Hi. I, huh, I wanted to let you know I alighted from the bus a few minutes ago. I’m taking a bike now.”

“Okay. It’s only a hundred naira o. Don’t overpay them o. Tell them to drop you at the primary school I described in the text. I’ll come pick you.”

“How could she have said, “I wan go fuck man?””

The derelict school stood at the far end of the road, bordered by an ailing fence. A decrepit roof spilt out over the front of the structure. At least half the wooden windows were missing. She paid the biker and dialled Chika’s number again. The phone rang behind her. She turned to see him staring at her, his cheeks forming a smile. She realised, funnily, that she felt butterflies in her stomach. It wasn’t exactly love. It wasn’t exactly likeness either. It was knowing that if her mother called, she would lie without a blink, and she would not wear the guilt of her sin like makeup.

The street leading to his uncle’s was quiet. A few of the shops were open, and it was mostly the sustained murmurings of traders, the rhetorical horning of vehicles, and Chika’s infrequent observations that kept Toyin company.

“It’s because it’s Friday today,” Chika said, of the scanty markets. “Most people here don’t come to shops on Fridays. Plus Thursday is market day, so the traders try to rest from the hustle of buying and selling and prepare for the onslaught of Saturday.”

There was a sureness about his gait—as if he nursed no fear, no panic—that eased her fears of being kidnapped or raped or, worse still, used as a human sacrifice in a ritual.

A white—with blue and red stripes—interstate travel bus sat in the compound, gathering dust. To the right was a wooden pen, but there were no goats in sight. She made a note to ask him later. He pulled the door open and waited for her to step in before shutting it behind him. The living room boasted two two-seater couches. A wooden table in the centre held a flower vase and a stack of CDs. He sat on one end of the couch and watched her. She set her backpack on the other and swallowed. She thought her hair bristled.

He started talking. His mother was Yoruba. His father met his mother on campus and promised to marry her even though they were from different tribes. His uncle had thrown in his full support, and his father had taken him as a brother ever since. His uncle was a tuber farmer, and so it’d become routine for him to come around every weekend to help with the farm work.

He was called farmer’s boy within the household, he said, because of what his fingers could do on a piece of farmland.

“I wonder what else they can do,” she said, aloud.

He turned his face away. She coughed. He turned back to her.

“Sorry, I should have offered you some water at least.”

“Thanks.”

She stood up and went to him. He was visibly nervous. She looked through the jitters and saw that he was filled with desire for her. She kissed him, not hurriedly, so she could savour his taste. He warmed up to her, tracing lines on her cheeks. He cupped her face and held her eyes. He started to say something about love, but she coughed.

He insisted on getting her water. She watched him turn towards the kitchen and her heartbeat doubled. A part of her felt this was a mistake. Was she betraying her mother’s trust? She realised, at that moment, that she was giving herself away. Every single inch of her. She would no longer be pure, chaste, her mother’s perfect bride. She hadn’t really thought this through.

She wasn’t sure she’d thought about it at all.

Chika had paused at the entrance to the kitchen so when she looked up, he was watching her. Could he perceive her hesitation? As though reading her thoughts, he grinned. When he disappeared into the kitchen, she reached for her bag on the couch. This, this hookup, was a wrong decision, a mistake. She was betraying her mother.

She was halfway across the room when she heard him.

“Hey.”

She froze. Run, Toyin. She didn’t.

He caught up with her. “What’s the matter? Are you leaving already?”

She looked away from his gaze. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m sorry, it’s just—”

He nodded. His gaze softened. “It’s okay. I can understand.” She blinked. Was he serious? He didn’t mind that she had travelled one and a half hours only to turn back at the last second? He really didn’t mind? “But you should have some water before you go,” he said, offering the glass.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I really am.”

“I know, but I insist. It’s the minimum you could allow me do.”

She took the glass from him. What if he overpowered her as she drank? She took two gulps without taking her eyes off him. He made no attempts to jump her. She handed him the glass and headed for the door. He stopped her.

“I insist on escorting you. Just allow me return this to the kitchen.”

He disappeared into the kitchen again. She could feel her body heat up as though the fires of hell were about to descend on her. She called his name, but her voice was weak. She tried again, and this time he came out.

He was working the buttons of his shirt, one hole at a time. He smiled at her, and she felt lost for a moment. Why was he undressing? Had he not—?

The first spasm hit her then, and she staggered. He caught her, steadied her, and led her towards the couch. He tilted her face and kissed her full lips. He slipped a palm under her blouse to find her bra. A spasm hit her when he cupped her breast and pinched her areola. He asked if she was alright. She wasn’t. Her head throbbed, and she couldn’t feel her arms.

Chika stepped back and uncinched his belt. Later, at the hospital, she would recall this, his belt looping out of his trousers, as her last conscious memory. She would not recall trying to stand and collapsing into him. She would not recall slipping in and out of consciousness for hours as Chika ravished her. She would not recall waking at a roadside late into the night, the sky pitch black. She would not recall her first night at the hospital, her mother’s broken sobs filling the vacuum of silence around her after the doctor said she’d been drugged. She would not recall thinking about the swirling water. She would not recall telling her mother she’d been kidnapped at the campus gate on her way to her hostel. She would not recall the earliest nightmares, the echoes of Chika’s brutish guffaw tormenting her dreams.

She would recall the morning the doctor disconnected the tubes from her face, said she was healing, and how ironical the words sounded, her disfigured soul tucked in a healing body.

Presently, she felt him lift her off the couch and march into the house.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Emmanuel is an Associate Editor at Praxis Mag and a publishing Editor at Itanile. He is a previous winner of the Shuzia Creative Writing Contest (2020) and the Quramo Writers Prize (2018). He was a finalist for the Awele Creative Trust Prize 2020 and the Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Contest. His works have appeared in Kalahari Review, The African Writers Review, Jalada Mag, perhappened mag, and other places. He is on Twitter @mikey_emmanuel.

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