Chapter Four

The pink Kia pulled up in front of the Laundromat. The occupants were fifteen minutes late. Two customers who were yet unaware of the habitualness of the attendant’s lateness had been waiting. They were murmuring among themselves. They had learnt not to blame the attendant but that woman who drove him to work each morning.

She opened the car door and climbed out. “Silly little woman,” one of the customers uttered inaudibly. She stood a few inches above five feet. The locals referred to her as a Chinese but she was only a Korean. She had the reputation of being tough, the kind of toughness that wasn’t from within. She belonged to those who believed that one had to be tough to survive in a black neighborhood.

The attendant remained in the car while she walked to the door. She greeted the two customers standing by the door, formally. She had no time for little talks. Neither did she have any apology. She had been warned by her husband who managed the whole Sigh Sun chain of businesses never to display softness. Everyone had to wait until she had decoded the alarm system and switched on the open sign. After that had been done, the attendant would then enter and take control. It had been the procedure for the past six months when the black man first took over as the attendant.

Some locals believed the black man was employed to buy off their sentiment and make them feel that the business had the interest of black people at heart. To the Korean management, it appeared to be working. Since the black man took over, reports of theft, attempted robbery and outright vandalism had dropped. In some ways, locals had started feeling at home in the Laundromat, something unimaginable when the attendants were Koreans.

One good example of these changes which the locals truly appreciated was the music they listened to while doing their laundry. They no longer had to contain themselves with whatever music Z104 radio station decided to play. In fact, they hated being hunted by white men in any form, be it on the radio or television. Now the black guy mostly played black music even though he sometimes interrupted the flow with some strange music from some distant lands. Black lands, of course.

While the locals had their idea of the reason why the black man was employed, only the black himself knew why. His journey to Norfolk started in Nigeria. It first took him to Liberia where he dodged bullets in Monrovia. Then he found his way to Mexico. He was in Cancun when the Mexican stock exchange collapsed. He wasn’t one of the traders. He was only looking for a way to the United States.

After two unsuccessful attempts, he finally made it into the United States on July 4th 1995. Once inside the United States, he was to taste freedom. But what he got was this daily attendant job from some Korean on Park Street in Norfolk. He was not ready yet to tell anybody the whole story. Just yesterday, after being pestered by some students of Norfolk State University, he told them what could pass as the first part of this story.

As he waited in the car for the Korean woman to switch on the open sign, he recalled the story exactly the way he told it yesterday. It started with his grandfather and ended with his Dad. It went like this:
***
Only a few elders of his hometown, Nnobi, could remember his real name. Everyone else called him the man who crushed a lion with his feet while carrying an elephant on his head, or Ogbuenyi, for short.

Ogbuenyi was young when he wrestled for Nnobi. His strength and skill earned him fame and fortune. Legend had it that elders of the seven towns of Idemili persuaded Ogbuenyi to retire as a way of saving wrestling. As it was, there were no competent challengers to make wrestling entertaining.

Ogbuenyi made it worst by never addressing a gathering of men in any village without reminding them that they were all women and that no man with a penis lived among them. He knew he was a historical individual and always started his speeches with the phrase, “Once upon a time....”

His words came out like thunder and every step he took quake the ground around him. He fought for his town until there was no town left to fight. It was believed that as long as he lived, none would dare challenge Nnobi.

At the height of his glory, he could marry virtually any woman he wanted. He, however, chose four out of the hundreds that wanted him. Another two he chose from the group of women who packed their things and moved into his house. In all, he married six women and none of them ever complained about his ability to satisfy them. He ate once a day, a mountain of food that would be sufficient to feed a village.

All this was before the white man came to Nnobi. These were the days when all his shrine could boast of were an “Ikenga” (a symbol of his personal god) and the skulls of twenty men he had killed in past wars. One day, a white man carrying a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other entered Nnobi. That same day, Ogbuenyi added another skull to his collection.

The trouble started ten years later, when he decided to drink palm wine at the annual New Yam festival from the skull of the white man who carried a Bible and gun.

Of all Ogbuenyi’s twenty-six living children, only one resembled him. That was the one the Chief Priest had called an “ogbanje” (a spirit child who dies young and comes back to life again and again). Ogbuenyi named him Ozoemena (May it not occur again) because he was still the only male child and Ogbuenyi’s wives were finding it hard to conceive.

The New Yam festival had always been made for people like Ogbuenyi, titled men who were next to the gods in receiving reverence. It had always provided such men an opportunity to bathe in the glory of their accomplishments. But more importantly, it was a perfect chance to introduce their heir apparent to their kinsmen. In the case of Ogbuenyi, his heir was his only son, Ozoemena, whom the gods had made an “ogbanje”.

What none could understand until today was why he had decided to drink palm wine from the skull of the white man he had killed. Some said his eyes had failed him. Others said his non-conforming son who was carrying his goatskin bag intentionally planted the skull in Ogbuenyi’s bag. Of course, neither Ogbuenyi nor Ozoemena was there to disprove any of these theories. All that everyone agreed on was that what followed only confirmed the saying the elders had been repeating all through the ages, “When death wants to kill a little dog, it won’t let it perceive the odor of the feces.”

Once Ogbuenyi had told his kinsmen that an emergency situation surpasses the brave, but that emergency is the test of bravery. Sixty years after, as the men and women of Nnobi prepared to honor him, the debate had changed from why he had drunk palm wine from the white man’s skull that carried the Bible and the gun. Now everyone wanted his or her recollection of Ogbuenyi to be the epitaph engraved on the stone on which his statue now stands.

It was a big day. Bigger than his burial which all the towns of Idemili attended. Nnobi was far from what it was in the days of Ogbuenyi. Colonialism had ended. Those whose fathers died fighting the white men had started returning after years of studies in the white man’s countries. None worried any more about Ozoemena, who had not been seen since the tragic New Yam festival.

So the whole town lined up, waiting patiently for a chance to record what they had seen or heard about Ogbuenyi. Ten different cameras were filming what everyone had to say. In one week of filming, stories of Ogbuenyi’s extra-marital affairs had been uncovered. So were people who claimed to be his illegitimate children.

Yet on the final day of recording, no hint of the whereabouts of Ozoemena had been revealed. Everyone had come to believe that the spirits lured him into the evil forest and let him stray till he starved to death. That was the widely believed story until a black Lexus car pulled up in the town square. The driver climbed down and opened the two black doors. Two men in their seventies climbed out, one black, the other white.

Both men fixed their eyes on the life-size statue of Ogbuenyi. The artist had emphasized his strong muscles and oblong face. His dreadlocks had been made a little thicker. That was the first thing the old black man pointed out to the white man. Instantly a cameraman focused his lens on the two strangers. The project director pointed at the statue and asked the old black man. “Sir, do you know that man?”

Instead of answering straight away, the old black man said, “Once upon a time...”
Instantly, the project director stopped him. With one single motion the director beckoned the remaining camera crew.

“Sir, can you please introduce yourself and your white friend before you start your story.”
There was a silence as everyone waited. There were more gray hairs than black on his head. He talked slowly but loud enough to be heard. If he was from Nnobi, the director thought, he did make a good chief.

“Here is Bob Livingstone Jr., the son of the white man”.

The director who was also playing the role of interviewer cut in.

“Which white man?”

The old black man ignored the interruption, cleared his throat, and continued.

“And I am Ozoemena, the son of Ogbuenyi”.

The silence turned mysterious. Then someone gave the two men chairs to sit down. When they were seated the black man started all over again,

“Once upon a time...”
***

The attendant could still remember why he stopped the tale at that point. Someone that looked like Nikki had opened the door and peeped in. He rushed to the door to check if it was her but it wasn’t. By the time he returned the students had dispersed.

The attendant noticed that it had taken the Korean woman a longer time than was necessary to open the Laundromat. He climbed out of the car and stepped towards the door. Once at the door, one of the customers asked, “Man, what’s ‘appening?”. The attendant replied that he did not know. Getting closer to the entrance door he peeped in. What came out of his mouth was “Oh, God!”

The inside of the Laundromat he left less than twelve hours ago was like a spot where a tornado had landed. Pieces of ceiling boards were all over the floor. The game machines had all been torn apart. The television set was missing from the spot where it was mounted. There were soap powders on the floor which seemed to be intentionally poured. The walls of the Laundromat were defaced. Written on them were expressions like “Bloodsucker!”, “Greedy Motherfuckers!,” “Leave our neighborhood alone.” He looked at the Korean woman, who was at one end of the building talking on the phone, and felt sorry that he was black.

He listened but could not understand what she was saying for she was speaking Korean. There were tears in her eyes and her hands were trembling as she held the phone. There was an attempt to cut open the coin box on washing machines but none was successful. The extent of the damage was so much.

He looked at the shelf where the detergents were all lined up and saw that many boxes were missing. Also gone were bottles of Clorox bleach. The glass showcase where candies were displayed was smashed and every piece of the candies gone. Reese’s, Sunkist, M&M’s, Kit Kat’s, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Skittles, Tangy Taffy, Zero, Swizzles, Payday’s, blow pops, whatchamacallit’s, Almond Joy’s, Mars bars, Baby Ruth’s, Mr. Goodbar’s, Butterfinger’s, Twix, Starburst, bubble gum, Milky Way’s, just everything. What remained were empty boxes. He looked at the desk where he kept his cassettes and CD’s, they were scattered all over the desk. He tried to pick them up and count but the Korean woman shouted from the other end,
“No touch anythings. The policemen is coming. Fingerprint taken.”

The attendant quickly backed away. He was lucky he had taken his two hundred dollar CD player home last night because he had to do some recording at home. He looked at the clock on the wall, it was close to 8:30AM. The policemen had not yet come. He was sure he would miss “Regis and Kathie Lee Live”. And that would be his first time of missing the TV talk show in four months of viewing.