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AUTHOR = IHEOMA NWACHUKWU

                                                    

Now Uchechi woke up, reached for her phone under the pillow and screamed. The time was ten minutes past seven and her modelling interview was for seven thirty. Normally it took her close to half an hour to bathe but she was in and out in less than five minutes followed closely by dripping foam peeking from under both armpits.She shrugged into a fitted dress and proceeded to her make up table where her hands became a blur of activity. Moments later she was turning the lock outside her ‘self contained’ apartment and two minutes of brisk walking deposited her at the bus stop. 

Uchechi Nwampi was five foot seven and three quarter inches if she stood without her shoes. She insisted on the three quarters and when a Yoruba girl in her platoon during her NYSC service year had hissed ‘Which one is three quarters again? These ibo girls and their village sense…’ Uchechi had quickly replied ‘Abi o’ and slapped her hard across the face. 

She was very dark skinned and beautiful if protruding forehead were your thing. She put her phone on vibrate and slipped it in her bag. It was a Nokia 3310.’Pure water’, if you were the sneering type. Although her friends kept teasing her to ‘upgrade’ she vowed not to change her phone. Losing a Samsung D500 in her final year in the University two years ago had decided her. 

Ketu bus stop was bustling with a viscous crowd as usual this morning and twice when she had made to board a bus calling her destination, she had felt hands on her breasts and promptly withdrawn. Now another bus pulled up and glancing fearfully at her watch and seeing the minute hand creep ever closer to the half hour mark. She made a frantic dash for it, shoving a middle aged man in the chest who cursed ‘Oloriburuku’. 

She plonked down in a seat near the window in the middle row and another young woman who looked eighteen but could have been younger broke through the writhing phalanx across the door and lurched past Uchechi to a seat behind. The bus was full. 

‘Carry go!’ Commanded the conductor hanging from the door like a brachiating ape and banging his fist hard on the roof.Uchechi quickly looked around at the other passengers. A pregnant looking woman sat on her row dozing, oblivious to the bumps that shook the bus. The man sitting next to her was preaching in a voice that would drown a loudspeaker. A Moslem imam sat in the front row threading prayer beads through thick fingers. An old woman was picking her teeth in the last row. She grinned in a toothless smile when Uchechi met her gaze. 

The bus belched down the road to Oshodi. Uchechi’s stop was Anthony village. They had gone some way past Maryland bridge when a rusty wheel spanner was thrustunder her chin followed by a menacing grunt. She had been staring at her watch. 

 

 

 

‘Ehn’ she said, looking up.‘Gimmeyuhfone’ repeated the conductor with a baleful glare.‘Gini?’ She stared incomprehensibly.‘Nye ya phone gi’ said the evangelist helpfully in Igbo.  

The girl behind Uchechi squealed and made herself smaller behind her back. Uchechi turned hopefully at the other passengers seeking strength in collective misery. Her eyes found the old woman again. She smiled. The old woman didn’t.For a moment Uchechi and the girl regarded each other in silence as they absorbed the truth of their impending misfortune. It was obvious the others were pretend passengers. She and the girl were the only ones genuine. They were unfortunate to board a snare bus. The -‘one chance’. So named because in the early days of the crime in Lagos- before it spread like a weed across the border into neighbouring states- only one seat was reserved for would be victims. Climbing the crest of the engine’s bass, the conductor’s voice could be heard bellowing in an improvised baritone ‘One chance!’  

The girl handed over her phone, a Motorola L6.Uchechi was about to do the same when a police checkpoint loomed into view. The driver crumpled a twenty naira note andswung his arm outside the window. Uchechi held on to her phone thinking of a plan. The conductor threatened to shoot her with the wheel spanner if she tried to latch on to any sudden brainwave.‘No o ’she promised and threw her phone at the nearest policeman.‘Armed robbers!’ Howled the policeman and he clutched his face and fell. 

The driver dropped the bribe and flattened the accelerator in panic. He didn’t get far. A volley of shots and the two back tyres were shaggy threads.The bus fishtailed angrily and a deep ditch in the road ahead rushed out to calm it. The conductor tried to bail out but a warning shot fanned his eyelashes and he staggered back and fell on his back. 

‘ONE CHANCE!’ Cried Uchechi and the girl as the policemen approached.‘I no be one chance come down, I be one chance stay there’ bawled one of the men.Uchechi grabbed the girl and stepping over the prostrate form of the conductor buried her heel between his thighs. He pressed his lips together in an inaudible groan.‘Make we shoot this armed robbers, no need to go station’ said another policeman winking at the one the phone hit.A funereal wail rose from the bus.