By Olufunmilola Oludare
Once upon the demise of the old alarm clock in South Side Chicago, sounds: weird, funky, eccentric, and almost deafening assumed position. Now that the clock is dead, silence is ever more, and time would pause to mourn a fallen keeper. Soni would have sworn she would purchase a new alarm clock, but a flunkey had no such disposable cash, and Tekiro would never even commit such a fortune into her hands.
But Soni contrived her little rebellion year in and out. With the old, wood-plaited metal table, a surface scarred by decades of use, she could rouse the entire household for work and day. With a strange life to it, the table clanked at dawn, as though possessed by the ghost of the dead clock, resounding faint beats that disturbed the building’s ambience. Undeterred, Soni did these for years, the morning turbulence caused by that clanky metal; bypassing Tekiro’s everyday haughtiness, getting little Shaudi out of bed before 8 a.m., and doing some other thing we know nothing about.
Shaudi, now a shawzi, an eligible 18-year-old and young adult, mysterious, withdrawn, and disconnected, killed a human. Shaudi at 14 would kill to be called a shawzi, but he didn’t kill at 14; he killed at 18. He dispatched Soni, the maid. The police had shown up to retrieve Soni’s body from her room, but the autopsy results had not been finalised. Shaudi did kill her because he confessed to it, but nobody knew how.
Uncle Waza’s POV
“My brother and I, Teki daddy comes from a hood in Uganda, he workin’ and one day, he got lotta money and got a woman, Teki mama. Soni has been workin’ for Teki as long as anybody could remember. Got the job the same year Teki belly started swellin’ with her own daddy sin. Folks don’t talk much, but they all know. Teki mama, she swept that shame clean under gold rugs, patched the family well. Soni was seventeen, young, quiet and Teki, just thirteen”
Uncle Waza was the bystander in the story, did nothing, moved no inch, but observed from a distance every evil that ever was. He could not but be a party to the silence over the years; his brother was the culprit, but he told the cops of how life turned her bitter, grumpy and full of tight silences.
“Car crash cleared her parents, she didn’t cry long, she said God just did some space for her to breathe again. Got the house, the cash, the pieces, but she doesn’t ever smile at that”
“The three of them driftin’ through them walls: Teki, Soni, and Shaudi, the boy born from her daddy. Teki don’t hate him, nah. Hate too soft for what lives in her. She just doesn’t look at him, doesn’t speak his name, doesn’t wanna remember him. So Soni stay close to that boy like spirit. Cookin’, cleanin’, hummin’ old songs”
The cops buckled with each answer Uncle Waza provided to their questions, but the dots were gathering.
Serani’s POV
“Shaudi, my friend, he says he envies me, says that all the time. He says Serani is a shawzi in his home.”
“That is Shaudi, always talking, always letting the pain slip through his words when he thinks nobody is really listening” His rants to Soni were the same old cries, half-truths, mostly about wanting to be a shawzi.
At fifteen, something changed in that boy. One morning, he just stopped wanting to be called anything at all. “He doesn’t want to grow, doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to look nobody in the eye.” Serani retorted.
He stepped out of the hood, out of reality, like the world itself had turned its back first. Serani used to hear him talk to himself late at night, whispering,
“Ain’t no light left in me, just noise, just this act..” Sometimes he thought he heard him laughing after, soft and empty, like he was answering somebody he couldn’t see.
“Tekiro see it too, but she doesn’t care much for it, says it is puberty storm, says wild wind every child gotta walk through, says she doesn’t see Shaudi”
But there was something else in Shaudi’s eyes, something that didn’t belong to any boy his age.
Tekiro’s POV
Undoubtedly, Tekiro had a rough start in life. A 13-year-old pregnant by her father was nothing a child could bear; it broke her, but no, it did not leave her that way, it remoulded her, slowly, cruelly, into a woman of silence, of bitterness, of cold resolve. A mother, yes, but of an unwanted one. She moved through the years with the stealth of someone who had stopped expecting mercy. It never surprised her that Shaudi might not think of her as “mother.” After all, Soni was always a call away. The cops were careful, rehearsed, and tiptoed through Teki’s graveyarded soul. They looked at Teki with that pity; the only one reserved for the broken.
“The child came, and Soni came too. She was the one who nursed it, not me. We both were young, she seventeen, I just thirteen, two girls tryna make sense of somethin’ hard. She looked strong, like nothin’ finna touch her. Me? I ain’t want no child, no family, no reminders.
“But I’ve seen things. Shaudi, he goes creepin’ down the hallway some nights, real quiet, feet on the floor. Always endin’ up by Soni’s door. I ain’t know why, and I ain’t care. Tekiro thought this to be sheer closeness. Besides, she wasn’t bothered about whatever they did behind her back.
“But, somethin’ go off. The air around ‘em got tense, heavy, like a storm comin’ but never breakin’. Soni starts movin’ different, eyes low, voice soft, spirit gone somewhere. And Shaudi, he goes round with a lost look. I ain’t ask no questions”
“That night, I hear ‘em talkin’. He said he is hooked now, said he can’t do without her no more. Soni is tired, she says she gon’ leave if he doesn’t quit botherin’ her. He begged her for “one last time,” he said it was just like the first time when he, a 15-year-old, lay with her. She says she’s still gon’ leave. I ain’t stay to watch. I run up, I done somethin’ that night. Fixed her food different and secretly every day, slowly, the kind that works quiet”
“I do that thing, not the boy. Me feel no love for that child, but me hate the act, hate what he reminds me of. Somethin’ in Soni’s face that night like my daddy, same eyes, same sin. I ain’t gonna stand it. So I don’t want her to live anymore”
Shaudi’s POV
The autopsy results arrived at the time the cops began to interrogate Shaudi, and it stated that Soni suffered a head injury as a result of assault. The autopsy results were irreconcilable with Tekiro’s confession but were slightly in tandem with Shaudi’s admission. Although the autopsy also stated that Soni suffered a seizure as a result of the poison, shortly before the injury to her head.
“ I was jus’ fifteen, I always be tellin’ Soni me wanna be a shawzi, a real big man, me wanna lift things, make mama smile, talk wit’ power in my voice. Soni, she says she gon’ help me be that man, say she gon’ teach me how to stand on my own, talk bold. But nah, she did somethin’ else. Soni start invitin’ me to her room, touchin’ me all soft, all sweet in a way that ain’t feel right… But it feels nice.”
“She says that the only way imma turn big, be a real man. So I go ‘head with da touching. It feels off, but time keeps rollin’ an’ I start sinkin’ in it. What she does to me starts feelin’ normal. Lil by lil, it be the only thing that makes me feel somethin’. Soon, me begin to go to bed with Soni, we start to roll and be touchin’ at night”
Soni had grown tired and wanted to call it quits, so she warned Shaudi off, but Shaudi could barely now get by without being in Soni’s bed. The only time he smiled was with Soni and in her bed.
“Soni wanna run and let me go but I don’t let her, night when she start trippin’, me no know what wrong with her but she struggle with me tryin’ to scream so, I push her head to the edge of the bed and she don’t breathe anymore”
With Shaudi’s explanation, Soni suffered a seizure while she tried to get away from Shaudi. However, he took the chance to subdue her and eventually pushed her to her death. The dots were completely gathered. Soni assaulted Shaudi as a 15-year-old boy; he lived the same fate as his mother. Shaudi and Tekiro both had a hand in her death, but Soni did not die until Shaudi pushed her to the edge of the bed. The cops proceeded to clear the crime scene while they matched our mother and son to forever behind bars.
