Yes, very very worried, not because I am very dizzy, or because I feel like vomiting, but I feel that this problem, the one growing inside my stomach, should be Rosco’s problem too — I mean, he planted it there, with his late-night diggings. I shouldn’t be the only one to bear the burden of the seed germinating in there. And it is growing on my mind every day, weighing me down.

To remove it from my mind, I returned my eyes to that woman who was beginning to go mad. She was fumbling with the clasp of her shine-shine bra now, and more men were stopping to watch, waiting. The women just shook their heads, turned their lips down and walked on. I sat there, watching her, her round breasts hanging firmly like decorative gourds from her chest; but unlike the men, my eyes were not shining. The dark worries had returned to cloud my thoughts. Then this idea suddenly began to trickle into my head, until it filled my mind and I couldn’t get it out.

Rosco, a father? How could he possibly accept to be a father! Rosco of hasty thrusts and jumbo-size igbo. Rosco with his bushy beard and hair and bloodshot eyes. How would I even tell him? When can I tell him? When he is inside me, in a hurry to release his frustrations into me? Or after he has squeezed his big thing inside his pants and is squeezing the N100 into my palm?

There was a sudden commotion as some agberos, on the pretext of trying to tie the madwoman up, were grabbing her breasts roughly while she struggled with them. I was now very sure that I was not mad; because no other man had ever grabbed my breasts like this before. Except Rosco.

Should I tell him tonight? Will he even call me into his danfo tonight? I hope he does. Not only because of this my problem, or the N100; but watching these rough men touch that woman like that had me warm and moist inside and between my thighs. I needed Rosco to touch me like that tonight. It was a very different feeling from when I used to touch myself. Sweeter.

I am jerked back to earth by a harsh screech of tyres as a danfo swerves sharply to avoid one of those flying okadas and crashes into the aboki’s stall.

I join the crowd as they quickly abandon the naked madwoman and move towards the scene of the accident, where blood and the aboki’s tea are already flowing into each other.

Rosco is wearing the same worn khaki pants he wears every day, where he keeps his big thing. I want to tear it open and cut the thing off, so that I can keep it, forever. I can’t believe I am never going to see it again. Not tonight.

I turned around, and went mad, into the street.