The Lost Duty: Episode Four

Sooner than he had expected, the stormy tides of life caught up with Mr Badmus. It started with the anticipated call about the change in management of African Petroleum Plc, which was bought over by the business tycoon Femi Otedola and subsequently changed the name from the initial to Forte Oil Plc. It proliferated when his tenure in office came to end and no allowance for re-election into office. He had to live by the two trucks he managed which brought him the daily needs of him and his family. Some things had to change for his source of income had been affected, and the effect of that was utmost on Jamal. 

The beautiful evening that was about to get spoilt has Its calmness at its peak, the one that couldn't seem to look gloomy afterwards, and whose breeze sang melodious song to the ears. Jamal was seated at the dinning room devouring the meal his mother had prepared, which only happened once in every millennium. Did this instigate that the evening would become sour afterwards? He couldn't tell. Momentarily, the spoiler of his evening set in, fiddling with the toothpick to remove the remains of meat stucked between his canine and premolar.   

       'Jamal' he began with a tone so suspenseful that it left the last morsel of pounded yam wanting in the egusi soup. He drooled as he salivated for his oesophagus craved for the morsel but the call of his name had delayed devouring it and kept him anticipated as many thoughts ran across Jamal's mind - "has he lost his trucks? Or they develop a fault? Or what ill-fate strucks him again?" Jamal thought as he awaited the next words of his father.    

      'you know your fees at The Vale College are exorbitant Jamal, so I think, no, you will quit boarding school' he sounded incorrigible and affirmative when he concluded, this afterward had caused his muscles to cramp, and the bolus in his oesophagus perform anti-peristalsis. Jamal rushed to the washroom to vomit the chyme coming up his gullet, and to restore his body system to default. "Probably his father is on his ruse day, but that is too much a joke" he thought. 

Reality dawned on Jamal the day before resumption, he had expected his father to hasten him up and give him the usual gibberish advice on being a good student and a laudable ambassador of the Badmus that would enervate him, and he remembered the anxiety of resumption had always always kept him listening to him even amid the short nap he took when his father talked. But this sunday, it seemed nothing of such will happen, not the advice, or the hustle and bustle resumption would cause. Everyone everywhere was just quiet, and his home became a place that housed the ghosts - a cemetery. 

He was restless with the unusual quietness that consumed the whole house. He motioned towards his mother's room, with hope of finding answers, to what question? Probably to why the house was so quiet or perhaps his mother would assure him whether his father's claim was a bluff or not. He entered, the door opened clunking, and the countenance on his mother's face displaced the thought on his mind.    

      'mother, you look depressed, what is wrong?' Jamal asked but his mother replied not, she was in deep thought, and couldn't seem to reckon with the present world again. Jamal took his time before resuscitating his mother back to reality. Earlier on, he had looked at the portrait on the wall and cross-examined it with his seated mother on the bed. There was a wide difference, even a blind could see it. His once young attractive mother, whose beauty had captivated his father's heart was now the old grown woman with the wrinkled face. "Someone in her 40s, how could she have grown so weary over a short time! Was it love she lacked? I'll show her bounty of it to rejuvenate her" Jamal thought, this time his mother was back from her oblivion.   

       "my son, how do you do?" it had been long Jamal had been addressed like this by his mother, 'There is something I need to tell you' she said pulling him to have a seat beside her.   

      "lately, I've been visiting an oncologist, you know..."   

     "that's a cancer specialist" Jamal interrupted    

        "an ovarian one per say" Sofia added. 

There was silence in the room, mother, son and daughter gaped at one another. Mrs Badmus was surprised her kids could easily comprehend that, she had wanted to toy with their cerebra, telling them paradoxically until they could finally understand what she was saying, but she was caught up just in the middle of it.    

        "Henceforth Jamal, I need you to look after your siblings" Mrs Badmus concluded but Jamal seemed not hear her, though closest to them but he seemed faraway, somewhere it echoed in his ears      

       "she has ovarian cancer"