Echo of Ash

The sun had already begun its assault on the tin roof of the market when I found the boy sitting on my stool.

Not a boy, exactly. Old enough to know better, young enough not to care. He had his feet propped on the wooden crate I used for a table, and he was eating my groundnuts from the paper cone I'd twisted shut not twenty minutes before.

"Those are for selling," I said.

He looked up. Chewed. Swallowed. His jaw moved slow, like he had all the time in the world and planned to spend it right there.

"I know," he said. "I'm buying them."

"You're eating them."

"Same thing."

I dropped my basket of tomatoes on the ground and stood over him. He didn't move. Most people move when I stand over them. I'm not a small woman. My mother used to say I came out of her womb already tall enough to reach the good mangoes. But this one just tilted his head back and squinted up at me like I was the one who owed him something.

"That's my stool," I said.

"I know."

"You're sitting on my stool."

"I know that too."

The market was waking up around us. Mama Adisa was arranging her peppers two stalls down, her hands moving quick and sure over the red and green. She was pretending not to watch, the way she always did. Behind me, the fish sellers were hauling their coolers from the back of a pickup, ice water sloshing onto the concrete. The smell would come later. For now it was just diesel and morning air and the faint sweetness of overripe fruit.

I grabbed the edge of my stool and yanked. He came with it, stumbling forward, catching himself on the crate before he went down. Groundnuts scattered across the ground. A few rolled toward the gutter.

"That's a waste," he said, looking at them.

"You wasted them."

"I was going to pay."

"You were going to pay after you finished eating. That's not buying. That's stealing with extra steps."

He laughed. It was a short sound, more breath than anything, but it caught me off guard. I hadn't expected him to laugh. He stood up and brushed dust from his shorts, and I saw how thin he was. Not sick thin. Just a body that hadn't been fed enough to fill it out. His collarbones sat sharp under his shirt, and his wrists were all bone and tendon, like a bird's legs.

"Fine," he said. "How much for the ones I ate?"

"Twenty naira."

"For six groundnuts?"

"Twenty naira for the six you ate and the peace of mind you stole from my morning."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled note. He smoothed it against his thigh and handed it to me. I took it. I didn't thank him. I tucked it into the cloth tied around my waist and sat down on my stool, which was still warm from his body.

"You sell tomatoes," he said.

"You're observant."

"My mother sells tomatoes."

"Then why are you here eating my groundnuts instead of helping her?"

He looked away. Not embarrassed. Something else. His eyes went to the row of stalls, the women calling out prices, the men pushing carts of yams and onions through the narrow aisles. He looked at all of it like it was a language he'd forgotten how to speak.

"She died," he said.

The word landed flat between us. I didn't say sorry. I hate sorry. It's a word people use to fill the space where they don't know what else to put. My own mother died when I was fourteen, and by the time the burial was over I'd heard sorry so many times it stopped meaning anything. Sorry was just noise.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Emeka."

"Emeka what?"

"Just Emeka."

I nodded. Some people come to the market with nothing but a name and a plan to keep it short. I understood that.

"Well, Just Emeka. If you're going to loiter at my stall, at least make yourself useful. Carry that basket of tomatoes to the front. People can't buy what they can't see."

He did it. Didn't argue, didn't sigh, just picked up the basket and set it where I pointed. Then he stood there, hands in his pockets, watching me arrange the tomatoes in rows. Red on the bottom, slightly green on top. The way my mother taught me. The way her mother taught her.

"You're not going to ask me to leave," he said.

"Should I?"

"Most people would."

"Most people aren't trying to sell tomatoes in this heat. I don't have the energy to chase you off. You want to stand there, stand there. But if you eat anything else, I'm charging you double."

He smiled. It was a real smile, not the half-thing he'd given me before. It changed his whole face. Made him look younger. Made him look like he might have been somebody's son once, before the somebody was gone.

The morning moved the way market mornings do. Slow and fast at the same time. Customers came in waves. A woman with a baby strapped to her back bought four tomatoes and argued about the price for ten minutes. A man in a faded suit bought two and didn't argue at all. I watched Emeka out of the corner of my eye. He didn't steal anything else. He didn't beg. He just stood at the edge of my stall like he'd been assigned there, and when a woman dropped her bag of onions, he picked it up before I could move.

"Thank you," she said, surprised.

He nodded. Didn't say anything. Just went back to his spot.

By noon the heat had settled into everything. The air was thick with it. My blouse stuck to my back, and I could feel sweat running down my spine in a slow line. I pulled out the small stool I kept behind the crate and sat down, fanning myself with a piece of cardboard.

Emeka was still there.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" I asked.

"No."

"Nowhere?"

"Nowhere that wants me."

I looked at him. He was staring at the ground, at the dust and the crushed groundnut shells and the small river of dirty water that ran along the edge of the market when it rained too hard. He had that look. The one I'd seen in the mirror a long time ago. The look of a person who'd been left behind and didn't know how to catch up.

"You can come back tomorrow," I said. "If you want. I could use help carrying the baskets. I'll pay you. Small money. But something."

He looked up. His eyes were dark and steady, and for a second I felt like he could see right through me. Through the stall, through the tomatoes, through the years of standing in this same spot selling the same things.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I know what it's like to have nowhere to be."

He didn't say thank you. He just nodded, once, and then he turned and walked away into the crowd. I watched him go until he disappeared between the fabric sellers and the men pushing wheelbarrows of dried fish. Then I looked down at my hands. They were stained red from the tomatoes. Always red. No matter how many times I washed them.

Mama Adisa appeared at my elbow. I hadn't heard her coming. She had a way of moving that made you think she'd been standing there the whole time.

"That boy," she said.

"What about him?"

"He's been sleeping behind the church. Three nights now. Father Okafor told me."

I didn't say anything. I started packing up the unsold tomatoes, stacking them back in the basket.

"You're not your mother, Kumanyoko," she said. "You can't save everybody."

"I'm not trying to save anybody."

"Mm." She made that sound women her age make when they know more than they're saying. Then she walked back to her peppers, and I was alone with the tomatoes and the heat and the thought of a boy sleeping behind a church.

I finished packing. I tied the cloth tighter around my waist. And I walked home the long way, past the church, past the place where the ground was worn flat from too many feet. I didn't look for him. I didn't call his name. But I slowed down. Just a little. Just enough to listen.

Nothing. Just the sound of my own footsteps and the distant hum of generators and the first crickets starting up as the sun began to think about setting.

I kept walking. But I carried his face with me. The thin wrists. The sharp collarbones. The way he'd said she died like it was a fact he'd learned to live inside.

Tomorrow, I told myself. If he comes back tomorrow, I'll ask him where he sleeps.

That was the first lie I told myself about Emeka. It wouldn't be the last.