The Bill

Photo: Prince Akachi

Inspired By True Events

Coming out of the hospital, you walk towards the road. You curse the government, the president, and everyone connected to the economic downturn. You curse the electricity providers the most. You blame them for your pain. You blame them for being behind the fire outbreak that burned down a quarter of the market and all the goods in your store. Something you were not compensated for. 

But cursing doesn't ease the tears that wells up in your eyes. You bite your tongue and tilt your head upwards to control it. People are beginning to stare. Maybe because they are used to seeing people come out of the hospital crying. Desperate for some spectacle to give life to their otherwise dead day. 

You start to cross the road to run from probing eyes, but you are hurled into the air by an oncoming vehicle. In that split second, you see your three bunnies running around the house, and you hear Mma's voice: “Daddy, are you okay?” You feel your body shatter to pieces as you hit the tarred road, and your skull bangs with a thud that sends you blank. The vehicle climbs over you and speeds away.

*** 

It is one of those mornings when you wake up with your troubles staring you in the eye. You stare out the window and notice how green and lush the neem tree looks as it towers above your flat on the second floor. You prepare the last of your rice, folding up the sack and putting it in the brown cupboard where your wife stores used bags. You think about the current price of 50kg of rice, seventy-eight thousand naira, twice the amount four months ago. With a faint smile, you whisper to yourself, “Ogadisimma. It will be fine.”

As you dish out your not-as-sweet-as-mummy’s-but-digestible jollof rice for your princesses, you hear some noise outside on the street. You go to your living room and slightly part the curtains to watch the chaos outside. A woman is being flogged, and people are watching. “Okwa agu, hunger!” she yells as the whip lands on her face, skull, back, legs, everywhere. Yet everyone just watches, brandishing their hands in the air and wearing masks of pity. You overhear some people say she stole a few cups of rice and sachets of tomatoes. The loud woman in your street, who sells second-hand clothes, narrates how the woman tried to run away with the goods when the seller was not looking, without paying for them. She starts afresh each time a new person joins the crowd. “Papa Chinonso and honourable dem, na dem catch am,” you hear her say as she retells the story. 

Papa Chinonso and honourable dem, the most un-honourable of men. Men who spend their mornings consuming ogogoro and lamenting about how much better the nation would have been if “their brother” had won the election. The same brother they “voted” for only with their beer parlour talks. The same brother whom they sabotaged by accepting peanuts and looking the other way when ballot box snatchers disrupted the election. The brother whom they didn't support but hoped would win. It is these pot-bellied men who caught the woman when she ran. 

Underneath your breath, you cuss everyone standing and watching. Your princesses run to the curtains to see what is going on, but you gently lead them away. “Breakfast time, bunnies.” 

 “Daddy, what’s happening outside?” Your three-year-old daughter, Mma, asks. Your youngest daughter, Som, giggling as the eldest tickles her, runs towards the kitchen. Ada, your eldest daughter, runs after her. 

“Nothing, Mma,” you reply, not in the mood for her endless questions. 

“No, Daddy, they were flogging someone,” she protested. “Why?” 

“She stole,” you say, with a bland expression that doesn't betray your disgust for those who whipped her like they were unaware of the Nigerian situation, every lash a channel to expend their frustration. 

“That's bad,” she exclaimed, her eyes white and bright like a fully charged LED lamp. “Only lazy people steal. That's what my teacher said.” The word teacher brings your conversation with your daughters’ headmistress to your mind. 

“Your teacher is correct, Mma,” you say, not wanting any more questions. “Now I need you bunnies to finish up your food quickly. The first person to finish gets three kisses from Daddy.”

“I will be the first,” they chant almost in unison, ready for the competition. You watch them and let the headmistress’s words stream through your mind. “Mr. Ijemba, you need to pay the fees. I know the economy is hard, but we can't help it. That's why we provided the instalment payment option. I am sorry, we can't let them attend classes next week if you don’t pay.”  

As you bathe your princesses, you laugh at how Som finds everything ticklish—the water, soap, sponge. It’s like she is always looking for an excuse to laugh. Ada brings everyone’s towels and chooses clothes for herself and others. You always thought she was just like her mother. Mma does the talking, asking you why soap foamed so much and where the water going down the pipes went. 

You tell your princesses to remain in the living room till you return from the hospital with their mother and new baby. You lock up the doors: first to the kitchen so that they don’t play with the gas and cause a fire, second to the bedrooms to prevent them messing things up, and third to the balcony because you find it unsafe for them to stay there. With this, you restrict their movement to only the living room and bathroom. 

“I can't wait to see our new baby and Mommy,” Ada says. 

“But I wanted a brother. I think God didn't hear clearly. I said a boy,” Mma says. 

“Mma, get the remote,” you say to her in an attempt to not talk or think about what she just said. 

Your mother once said her problem with overly fertile women was that “one touch, they are pregnant, but their wombs abhor male children”. Your wife has just given birth to your fourth child in barely four years of marriage. Even though you two had agreed to enjoy each other for a year, you had not even gone one month when she took in your first daughter. It’s not that you think your mother is right, but you were against keeping the fourth pregnancy after you found out it was a girl. You had told your wife that having three children was a lot of responsibility. But she disagreed, and you felt despicable for even coming up with the idea.

“As you bathe your princesses, you laugh at how Som finds everything ticklish—the water, soap, sponge. It’s like she is always looking for an excuse to laugh.”

You leave the girls watching Barbie and padlock every access in and out of the house, paranoid about kidnappers and thieves. You flag down a keke. You haggle. “Three hundred naira.” But the tricycle driver insists that five hundred naira is “the last price”. You shake your head at the unending inflation. It was two hundred naira when your youngest daughter was born, barely two years ago, and one hundred when your first daughter was born. “Dollars dey increase every day. As of now, wey me and you dey talk na one-eight, you come dey price three hundred,” the driver says. You laugh because that's what everyone says. The dollar is to blame. You also use that line in the market yourself. Two days ago, going to the hospital cost you four hundred and fifty naira, and this new price is a reminder that nothing in Nigeria remains stable. 

You walk into the hospital, to the maternity ward, to your wife and daughter, who are ready to be discharged. Your wife is happy to see you. You see the joy of a mother when she stares at her child, but you don’t miss that hint of dismay and disappointment hiding in her pupils. When you both found out the sex of the baby, the first thing she said was, “The Lord, who changed water to wine, can change the sex of my baby.” It’s not that you don't believe in God or miracles, but you know bs when you hear it. Seeing your baby wearing an overall with “Mummy’s Boy” weaved on it with soft wool is hilarious. Oh, her faith is so pure. It is one of the many things that made you marry her—the purity of her heart and her doggedness. “I will make the Forbes list with just the bride price of two, talk more of four,” you say, trying to lighten any guilt she might be carrying. “Billionaires better be ready. See how beautiful she looks, just like you.” And when she smiles and gently pushes you away, you say, “Thank you for giving me a fourth bunny,” and kiss her forehead.

“I will go back to teaching. It will help,” she says. Initially, it was your idea for your wife to stay home and look after the girls. As a real man, it felt wrong for your wife to work under another man, so you told her to stay home and take care of the kids. But the economy doesn't support your real-man mindset anymore. “We will be fine. Ogadisimma,” you reply, planting a subtle kiss on her forehead and going on to play with your newest princess.

You saunter to the accounts unit to pay the bills. The burdens of your money worries swooping down on you, so heavy that they push you towards Earth. You cannot help but remember the very obvious pay-me-my-rent undertone to your landlord’s rant this morning. When you greeted him, he asked you what was good about the morning and about Nigeria. You are still wondering what to tell your salesgirl, who has been complaining about how the price of everything has skyrocketed and is asking for a raise in her salary, when the nurse gave you a piece of paper with your bill on it. Your temperature flares up, your limbs turn weak, and your head spins. Softly you ask, to be sure, “Is this our bill?” 

You try begging on your knees like you did when the owner of your store in Main Market, Onitsha, increased your rent from four hundred thousand naira to one point two million naira. Then, the begging was fruitful since he slashed it to eight hundred thousand naira, due in five months. Here, the kind nurse supports you up, and the doctor says there is nothing she can do and walks away. The kind nurse offers a solution: your wife and baby can move to the old hospital building and wait for donations from charities. He explains that a good samaritan could decide to foot the bills when a charity organisation visits. He tells you of the many patients whose bills were paid off just the previous week and encourages you to be strong and have faith. 

“Charity?” you ask yourself. The same one you did last year when you fed beggars on the streets and went to orphanage homes with gifts on your birthday? In one year, you went from being the good samaritan to becoming the beggar. You chuckle as tears gather in your eyes because you couldn't miss the humour in your change of identity. “Charity. Charity,” you mumble. 

You promise your wife you will figure something out as she carries the baby to the room allocated to them in the old hospital building. “Awaiting Payment,” the sign on the door reads. The dust in the room makes your baby cough, and your wife tells you to wait outside. You watch the torn window net with disbelief and imagine your newborn with red mosquito bites in the morning. The bed looks okay, but your wife says it needs cleaning with Dettol. The wobbling ceiling fan welcomes you all with its music, and you visualise it falling before day breaks. 

“I will find a way around this. You two cannot spend the night here; it's just two hundred and fifty thousand remaining,” you assure her. Your wife gave birth through a caesarean section and has been in the hospital for the past week. You can see the tiredness that wanes her. But you have no words to express how your heart feels heavy as the thought of everything makes your blood congeal. So you let yourself find warmth in her embrace. The money you have with you was meant to settle their bills, pay some of the fees, and get a few foodstuffs, but now it can't even handle the bills.

A nurse comes in to help them clean and settle in. You hold your new princess in your arms; her beauty and innocence enrapture you. Your heart aches, knowing she doesn't deserve the suffering she has been born into. You kiss them goodbye and leave.

On your way out, you see a girl of about sixteen with her mother. You hear she is recovering from stomach cancer, and they hope a charity will help pay the outstanding eight hundred thousand. In the next room is a man in his early thirties who had brain surgery; he needs help with over one million. And you wonder which good samaritan will overlook stories like these to pay your bills. 

***

People gather and rush you to the hospital. They wheel you to the emergency unit, where the doctor pronounces you dead and checks the time—2:47 p.m. Your face is smashed beyond recognition, and your body is bathed in bruises and blood.

***

I move out of the confines of my body. Life feels so light—too light. I watch the doctor's blank expression as he instructs the nurse on what to do, but I catch him biting his lower lip and fisting his hand to hold the tear on his left eye, unseen behind his glasses. Is he crying for me? As the nurse searches my pockets for a means of identification, I stand beside her, screaming my name, telling her not to tell my wife yet but to call my youngest brother in Lagos. But she is lost in the hustle and bustle that comes with the heaviness and the activity of being caged in a body. 

I walk around the hospital in search of someone who can hear or see me, but it feels different; it is like moving through a void. I can see everyone who has died, but they are not friendly. They exude this strange feeling of nonchalance and freedom from pain. I see a little girl just sitting and watching her mother cry over her. She did nothing but watch; it was like she pitied her mother for still being stuck in the world of the living. I continue my journey and find a lot like me, just moving around and watching people. 

 I see my wife sobbing in the room over the bill. 

The clear eyes of my newborn angel pierce through me. She smiles at me. I believe she can see me, and I yearn for her to remember me somehow. I stroke her cheeks but can't hold or feel it. I relish the warm memories of moments ago when I could hold her in my arms and stroke her soft cheeks.

I rush to the house; my bunnies are asleep, each resting their head on the other. I long to invade their dreams and tell them how much I love them, but I can’t. I hear Mma whisper, “Daddy,” but her eyes are still closed. “Come back soon,” she says, and then I learn I don't need my body to weep.

Money is everywhere—in the banks, on the streets, in the news. I watch people erect structures, throw parties, and buy cars, and my salesgirl takes some from the drawer and puts it in her bag. Money is everywhere, but not with me, not when I need it.

***

It takes them four days to identify you. Four days of your body living in the mortuary. Four days of your wife crying in the old hospital building. Four days of other patients telling her you had left her—all men are the same. Four days of your princesses waiting in the living room. Four days of them crying and hungry. Four days of no one knowing as the house was locked. Four days of the nurse searching for where she dropped your SIM card. Four days of your wife calling your family and salesgirl.

Your wife wails, tears her wrapper, and throws herself to the floor as the nurses and other patients hold her. Your baby cries, maybe out of fear of growing up without a father or maybe out of the weight of grief she feels from her mother. 

“Uke ooo,” your wife cries; destruction has met her. The landlord calls her phone continuously, and one of the nurses takes the call. He says an awful smell is oozing out of your apartment, and the TV has been on.

About the Author

Chisom Nsiegbunam is a tea-loving writer and student at NAU. Her works have appeared in Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Aayo Magazine, Writers Space Africa and elsewhere. She was a fellow at the Inaugural Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop in 2024 and the SprinNG Writing Fellowship in 2023.

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