I had the time of four people ahead of me to decide if I was ready to part with my money by giving them the correct PIN.
But what if they hurt us if they found out we lied?
Then there were three people between me and a decision.
I tried to peep behind the officer and bouncers to see if there was anyone with a gun. I hadn’t seen any yet, and I didn’t know whether to be pacified or terrified of the unknown.
She was staring at me, the officer.
I turned away from her eyes. They were dark slits above swells of fair round cheeks. Then there was one person.
She was still staring at me.
I am not a manly looking man, as you can see. My shoulders aren’t wide enough, my mustache won’t grow past these sketchy strands, and I’m only five-seven. Is that why the choir girls preferred Segun to me? Who knows? The officer was staring at me as if I was more than this skinny person who was doing everything to avoid her gaze.
Then I was standing before the trio. The first man gently took my bag from me. I still didn’t look up. I studied the black tennis shoes of Thug A and the peeling leather of Thug B’s boots.
“What’s your name?” I didn’t answer immediately. The officer’s voice was raspy but soft, like something was pressing down her throat. Maybe fat.
“You no hear Officer?”
I stuttered, said my name. I still didn’t look up.
I moved on to the next man, who collected my bank cards; I wrote down the correct PIN.
The space was bare terrazzo floors and peeling paint on brown walls that opened to glassless windows. Wooden benches sat in rows and we filled them one by one after being stripped of our belongings. The silent roof yawned above us, with its exposed beams and creaking iron sheets. Five fluorescent tubes stuck to the beams lit up the space; a sixth one blinked loudly, causing my eyes to twitch.
To an outsider we would have looked like people waiting for their driver’s licenses at a government office. Except for the occasional moan, whimper, or burst of prayer, we would have passed. I was back beside the still woman. She stared straight ahead with her arms around her chest. I hoped she was all right.
And then we waited. We heard two bikes rev and leave the compound, to the ATMs, I assumed. They left behind a cricket-filled silence that bore down on us from the darkness outside. My pulse played a wild beat in my neck. I kept my gaze level with the sweat-stained brown collar of the man in front of me.
And then the officer called out my name. I froze before I twisted to the back. The still woman finally turned to stare at me in confusion. I’m not one of them, I wanted so badly to clarify to her gentle brown eyes. She just asked for my name! Instead I turned my head slowly toward the exit.
“Me?”
“You.”
I held my lighter bag in my hand as I bumped against the knees of my fellow abductees to get out to the aisle.
“What is that in your bag?”
My heartbeat doubled, if that was possible. I started to worry that I had somehow managed to hide something from them.
My neck went hot. “Wh-what?”
Her hand pointed to the bag. Her wrist and fingers were so tiny, out of proportion with the rest of her. Like someone had tied a rubber band there to prevent the fat from seeping into her hands. I looked from the bag to her hand.
“Ma?”
Yes, so I was a timid man, still am depending on the situation. Have you ever been stared down by a huge policewoman with one tiny hand in her trouser pockets and the other pointing at your bag?
I opened the bag and peered inside. She reached over herself and pulled out my music sheets. “This.”
“Oh,” I sighed, “it’s just music.”
“Music?”
“Yes, ma.” Sweat slid down my neck to glide down my spine. My T-shirt stuck to it.
“You’re a musician?” She leaned back against the doorless frame.
“No, ma, I’m a chorister.”
“For church?”
“Yes, ma.”
She gestured for me to follow her outside the building. I trailed her around to the side with no windows. I missed the light.
“So you sing in church?” She was leaning against the wall. I could no longer see her clearly, just a dark outline of a sinister mass.
“Yes, ma.”
“Choir?”
“Yes, ma.”
“Shey, your God will forgive us for this one we don do tonight?”
Who was I to preach repentance to a woman who held my safety in her tiny hands? I nodded, mute.
“Oya, sing for me.” The request was whispered. I pretended not to hear. I took a tiny step backward.
“Oya. Sing for me.” It was louder this time. No longer a request. A demand.
“I... I can’t sing, ma.”
I didn’t think there was space but she reached behind her to pull a small gun from her waistband. This was my first time seeing a gun up close. It glinted dully in the little light it could catch. Then I felt it against my skin, smack in the middle of my forehead.
“Oya, choir boy, I said sing for me.”
My mouth opened and closed. I swallowed air, coughed it out. Then: “In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song...”
I stared down at my leather slippers, at the dust, at a new wound on the little toe of my right foot.
The officer moved her gun to tip my chin back up. I was forced to look at her, to survey her forehead, gleaming with sweat; her nose, wide and oily; her tiny eyes, beady things squinting at me; her big lips, painted in flaky brown, curled up to one side.
“This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm...” My voice was small, my notes halting as they left my mouth. Don’t think of church, don’t think of the altar, I told myself. “What heights of love, what depths of peace...”
And then her other hand rose to my waist. It raised my T-shirt up, her hand grazing my jutting pelvic bone. She moved the gun back to my forehead and then she tucked a hand into a belt loop and pulled me forward. I closed my eyes. She did not prompt me to open them.
“When fears are stilled, when strivings cease...”
She unbuckled my belt with one hand. Then she yanked my penis into her grip. I was limp all over. I swallowed air; I couldn’t sing anymore. Her hands were sweaty against me. I swallowed air again. I swallowed nothing. I pinched my eyes shut tighter.
Her gun tapped my chin again. “Finish your song.”
“My comforter, my all in all... Here in the love of Christ I stand.”
She stood there with her eyes closed, working on my thing slowly with her lips turned up in that way. I wanted to bash her skull into the wall behind; watch it splatter. But there was that gun and there was me — the skinny timid man whose shoulder the choir girls cry on after fucking Segun.
Is it still worship if the ears that hear it belong to a criminal? If the eyes that drift shut at its sound belong to this woman with her hands down my trousers?
She let go of me suddenly, as if disgusted by my lack of response. She tucked her gun back into her waistband and stalked away. Her gait was a horizontal sway, one heavy tread after the other. I tidied myself and started to walk back, hesitantly, to join the others. I wondered if they’d heard me singing. I realized I had tears on my cheeks when I saw the stooped driver cocking his head at me. The policewoman didn’t look at me again.
They let us go eventually. The people who gave the correct PINs were put into the bus and dropped off at Berger. I don’t know what happened to the other people; my still neighbor was one of them. The traffic had cleared by then, and I went straight to church where I sat in the back and cried all through the program. Everyone thought it was the Holy Ghost.