Eli, the driver with the red handkerchief around his neck, kept telling mom to be careful because mom kept unzipping the contraption at the window that was made for in-transit transactions. On the side of the road and in between traffic there was a real smorgasbord of stuff for sale. Fake Rolexes, giant clocks, socks, old shoes, new shoes, shoe strings, fruit, meat, you name it. And, Egusi. The Egusi was what mom kept opening the zipper to buy, as the car moved slow as a snail through that quagmire of metal. Eli would call out to her from the front: "You like that Egusi too much." And when she ignored him: "Be careful," he'd repeat, the Egusi vendor nearing the window by now. "In the old days," Eli would say, "they used to chop off your hand just for your mobile. You should take off your watch." Mom would nod her head and stick her naked, spindly hand out of the car with whatever amount of naira it was those things cost back then. And then she'd zip up the window inside the window and she'd open the plastic bag ravenously and bite into the rock-hard, fried melon seeds, oily and dripping. "These things'll crack my teeth before we get back," she'd tell me, imagining, I'm sure, a series of painful dental visits, wondering why she succumbed to the fried melon seeds over and over again. Dental visits that never happened. Never happened because when we got back to the States we were too busy mourning what could-have-been; deciphering the actuality of what-was.
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