THE THING ABOUT THE BOX

I’m cleaning out the attic when I see it. Something shiny lodged in between notebooks, trinkets from my college days, and other forgotten things. I fish it out from the bin. It seems so long ago now since my childhood friend, Ude, found this box.

I remember it clearly. It was a sunny afternoon in March, and the Lagos heat was so hot it burned. He was wandering home from work sucking on a cigarette when he spotted something shiny beneath one of the kola trees. It was a heavy little black box, dirty, only barely the size of his palm, and smooth to the touch. It had a lock on one side and a shiny smooth metal plate that shimmered under the bright sun on the other. He took it with him; I don’t know why, there was nothing remarkable about the box, but I can imagine him dragging himself home that day with the box in tow, fiddling with it absently as he went.

“What if it’s juju1?” Asa asked, when Ude told us about it later that afternoon. “It’s not juju,” Ude replied with a smirk.

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t turned into a goat yet,” He laughed, but his little brother didn’t think it was funny, and I understood why. There was a Babalawo2 that lived just a few streets over; we always saw him walking around half-naked and chanting incantations to himself like a mad man, throwing cowrie beads into the sand and ringing a handbell as he walked. He passed through at least once a week, and children and adults alike avoided him when he did. My mother always said God would protect us, but none of us were stupid enough to actually go looking for trouble.

Asa hadn’t always been afraid of the Babalawo though. When we were all younger, we would go peek into his shrine when the man wasn’t there. The shrine was a scary place, all smoke, torn red fabric curtains, and mask figurines, and we would take bets on who could stay there longer, always standing outside because even as children we were not bold enough to enter. But only a few months before

1 Juju – dark magic usually used for evil / nefarious purposes

2 Babalawo / jujuman – A dark magic practitioner in West African cultures then, when Asa and Ude’s father had gone to prison, their mother had told anyone who would listen that their uncles, envious of their father’s successful trading season, had “done juju for him.” She’d told us they’d probably taken his photo to a Babalawo somewhere and cursed him so the police would mistake him for someone else. Their mother had called the pastor all the way from the next town over to come and pray for their father every day for weeks, and when by the end of it, Ude’s father was still in prison, we all knew the truth. If we were all being honest we didn’t even need the “failed” prayers to tell us otherwise. The whole neighborhood knew Ude’s father had made his money swindling lonely old women and selling things he did not have, buildings, cars…

“ ole3! old man like you, stealing like all these small-small street boys.” One of the policemen had said when they’d found him, the Yoruba word for thief coated with malice as they said it, like his crime directly affected them, like it was personal. We’d all watched that day as they’d dragged Ude’s father by his nice button up shirt into the back of the police car and driven him away to the run-down jail a few towns over.

But Asa had always been gullible, he was only two years younger than we were, but he was always so easy to fool. I’m sure even now he still thinks his father was cursed by a jujuman, just as his mother had said.

“What about you, Ada? Do you also think it’s a juju box?” Ude asked me later that night as we lay in his bed, our bodies slick with sweat from movement and heat. He did that often, talked around the elephant in the room, avoided asking the questions he most wanted the answers to, and usually I allowed him because I didn’t want to ask them either. But that night I couldn’t. I didn’t want to talk about the dirty box in the corner.

“Dad bought my ticket today. I leave next week.” I said instead.

“So you’re really going then.”

“I am.”

And that was the end of the conversation. Usually after our trysts, I would linger, would spend risky minutes tracing fingers up and down his skin, like everything would be alright if I was just touching him. But that night he only just shifted away from me, right to the edge of that tiny mattress of his, and then turned around. He fell asleep almost immediately, and so I got up and gathered my things. When I snuck out from his room that night, making the quick walk across the street back to my own home, I thought that would be the end of it.

It was not.

The next time Ude brought up the black box was only a few days later. His older brother Markus was back home again; his college was on strike for the third time that year and the professors refused to teach until the government met their demands.

“That’s the problem with Nigerian public universities,” my father always said. “Teachers think they can get whatever they want if they just go on strike.” I can imagine him sitting for breakfast at our dining table back then. The way he laughed when he read the morning paper. “It’s not possible Ada,” he would say to me. “The government might be corrupt, but these so-called professors are corrupt too. We’re all corrupt here.”

So, Markus came unexpectedly as the corrupt government and corrupt school and corrupt teachers played tug of war with his education. He was a computer science major, a course that should have taken him four years to complete, but he had already been at it for five, and it would be six before he graduated.

“I can take it outside and pound it until it breaks,” Asa offered.

“No, fool. What if there’s something inside? You’ll break it if you pound on it like some uncivilized brat,” was Markus’s reply. The word “uncivilized” was his favorite to use those days, particularly for his brothers. He was watching a lot of the history channel and was a bit obsessed with western culture and the idea of civilization, knew a bunch of useless facts too.

“Do you know that “barbarian” was a word the Greeks used for people who weren’t Greek?” he’d told me once all those years ago. It was the day my father had told me I would be going to study in America, only months before Ude and I had even graduated high school, before their father had gone to prison. God, it all feels so long ago now. I’d rushed across the street to tell Ude and Asa the good news but had met Markus outside instead, leaning against a wall as he smoked a cigarette. Now that I think of it, he’d probably been sent home that time because of the strike too. I was so excited about the news that I’d told him before anyone else, but he’d only taken one good look at me and shaken his head.

“Don’t you think we’re all so uncivilized in Nigeria? So barbaric? You’re so lucky you’re getting out; I wish I could go too.”

I remember the way Markus looked at the box when Ude showed it to him, the way he examined it with keen eyes.

“Leave it with me; I’ll take it to the locksmith.” He offered when Ude asked him what to do with it.

“No, that’s fine, I can take it myself.”

“What? Are you scared I’ll steal your fortune?”

“You? absolutely.”

They both acted like it was a joke, something to scoff at and forget, but I remember the flash of pain in Markus’s eyes when Ude agreed. Maybe a bit of anger there too. I didn’t know why, then, and I didn’t think much of it because Markus was always angry, but I think I do now. I think maybe Markus felt at that moment like he was starting to seem like his father, and there was nothing the three brothers feared more than becoming their father.

“I don’t think I can come to the airport.” Ude said later when we’d mended things.

“Why not?”

“I have to go to the locksmith, see if I can get the thing open.”

“Take it another day.”

“This locksmith is very good; he’s only in town once a month.” “Then go another month.”

“Of course you don’t understand; I can’t just take a three hour trip anytime, Ada. Markus is heading back to school, so I’ll hitch a ride with him.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“You mean daddy will pay for it? No, thank you.”

That was another thing between us now, money. My family wasn’t rich but we were still much better off. It hadn’t been a problem before, but after their father had gone to prison it started to seem like something Ude held over me anytime he could. Markus too.

“Fucking rich girl,” Markus had called me once when I had run into him as I snuck out of Ude’s room.

“We just fell asleep…” I’d begun searching for a believable lie, but he’d stopped me.

“Please, you think I don’t know you’ve been fucking my brother when everyone goes to sleep?” I remember the way he laughed when he said it, like he felt sorry for me.

“Nice rich girl, slumming it with us until you leave us behind. You might have Ude fooled, but I know who you really are; I know you don’t give a fuck about him. Just using him.” He’d staggered as he spoke, his words reeking of weed and alcohol, and the next day when he’d grunted hello to me as I walked with Asa, I knew he didn’t even remember.

Those words stayed with me though, they ate at me through my first year at college because as much as I loved Ude then, I knew it was the truth. I think even then I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life obsessing over whatever shiny new rubbish Ude obsessed over.

“I’ll see you before I head to the locksmith,” Ude said.

“Fine.” I replied. But he didn’t come to see me at all.

I knew he wouldn’t. I saw the determination in his eyes when he said he could not. When I called him screaming and crying from the airport, he told me it was all because of the box. He left early; he was still with the locksmith. “It’s welded shut Ada,” he said. “It’s not easy to open.”

At that moment I knew he was lying; everything he said was bullshit.

When I’d left his room the night before, I’d taken the box with me, so unless he had traveled three hours away for another juju box, I knew he didn’t have it and didn’t come anyway.

“Did you know I took your picture to the shrine of the Babalawo that lived in our neighborhood?” Ude told me over a phone call when we reconnected years later, laughing as he said it. “I told him to do anything so you would stay.”

“Really?”

“Yes, he poured kerosene all over the photo and said some incantations as he lit it on fire; God, I was so stupid back then.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, I would have done anything so you wouldn’t go, or maybe so I wouldn’t stay.”

“Even juju?”

“Even juju.”

I broke the box as soon as I arrived in New Jersey. I didn’t even wait to get home before I pulled it out and smashed it against the concrete outside the airport. It took a few tries, but eventually the metal plate gave out. It cracked open, and I pulled it apart from there. It was just as I’d thought; there was nothing inside. But it was still so disappointing. I think I hoped Ude was right; maybe if there was something inside it would be easier to swallow that he never came to say goodbye.

But inside the box was only air.

“That dirty thing?” He said when I asked him about it later. “I lost it after you left.”

“So you never found out what was inside?”

“Nope.”

“That’s disappointing.” “Indeed.”

I never did tell him I stole the box all those years ago. I wonder as I look at it. Now, when I tug its rust covered skin, it pulls apart easily, all broken wood and metal.

I should throw it away, along with all the other old things I’m throwing away in this attic, but instead I put the box back in the bin and cover it. I think I’ll forget it again. It’s all so strange now anyway, so blurry.