Her journey that day begins in a brown purse whose edges are full of crease and wrinkle. She lies sideways, in between a ₦100 and ₦200 note. She knows she’s the only one in there. If there was another like her, they would be lying side by side. Her owner pulls her out and looks at her. It is a woman, perhaps in her mid 20s. She is wearing a rumpled chiffon shirt tucked into a pair of black jeans. She stands by the door, her hand scratching her cornrows as she stares at the ₦1000 note in her hands. The ₦1000 note knows that stare, she knows that scratch. It is one her owners usually give when contemplating spending her or letting her stay in their purse, unused. Her owner ruffles through the other notes in the purse for a short while and lets out a low sigh before folding her into two halves and sticking her in her back pocket. As she hangs in the pocket she shares with a moist handkerchief, a fabric away from a person’s buttocks, she remembers a time when her owners spent her with ease.
The ₦1000 note does not leave the pocket till about twenty minutes later. Her owner pulls her out just before sitting on the wooden bench in a Danfo bus. She considers herself lucky. Once, one of her owners had sat on the bench in the bus with her in his back pocket, without knowing someone had spilled Ewa Agoyin on the seat and that was how she got the red patches around her. A lanky man hangs by the door of the bus, wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, both of which have grease, dirt, and food stains on them. He stretches his hands towards her owner. The ₦1000 note watches as her owner hands her to him and he gives her owner a ₦200 note. As he stuffs her into the bundle of some wrinkled and food-stained cash in his right hand, she remembers a time when she could cover transportation from Igbo Efon to CMS and her owner would receive nothing less than a ₦700 change. She wonders if her future owners will even receive any change.
She does not leave the conductor’s grip till an hour later when they are stuck in a gridlock that runs from Lekki phase 1 to Ozumba Mbadiwe. The conductor hands her to a young girl, no older than sixteen, who stands beside the bus in the middle of the road. The young girl has a transparent plastic container that rests on a folded piece of clothing on her head. It is filled with ice blocks and soft drinks. The ₦1000 note watches as the young girl brings out two plastic bottles of Coke and hands them to the conductor in exchange for her. The young girl squeezes her and shoves her into the black threadbare pouch that hangs loosely around her waist. Inside the pouch are other rumpled up notes. She recognises three fellow ₦1000 notes but they do not look her way. They almost seemed annoyed that they lie crumpled in the waist pouch of a street hawker in Lagos. The hawker pulls out two ₦200 notes from the pouch and hands them to the conductor. As she watches the bus drive away, she remembers a time when she could be used to buy drinks for everybody on the bus. It was not that long ago. She wonders if that time will ever come again or if her value will continue to fall as her new owner zips the waist pouch.
She does not see the light of day till a few hours later when the hawker unzips her pouch to bring out a ₦100 and ₦200 change for a young man in a 2017 Toyota Corolla. He is wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with a bottle of Fanta. Just as he collects his change, a uniformed man approaches the car. The hawker walks away hurriedly and through the loose thread around the pouch, the ₦1000 note sees the uniformed man lean into the car window, saying something to the young man whose relieved smile after receiving a bottle of soft drink has turned into a frown with this uniformed man’s presence. The man brings out another ₦1000 note and offers it to the uniformed man who hisses and asks the man to bring out his phone and open his bank app. The hawker makes a turn and the ₦1000 note remembers a time when she was enough for the uniformed man.
She does not leave the hawker’s pouch till later than night, around 8pm that night. She is spread on a thin mattress on the floor, whose yellow foam sticks out from its edges. She lies half squeezed, half crumpled, amidst every other Naira denomination except the ₦5 and ₦10 notes. A drop of water lands right where Dr. Clement Isong sits. It comes from the rusty ceiling above with a damp spot which looks like it could cave in and drop on them at any moment. The hawker squats above, separating them by denomination. The ₦1000 note watches as the hawker places her alongside only one other ₦1000 note who is in near-mint condition. It reminds her of how she first looked two years ago, when she arrived at the vault, before a young man withdrew her from an ATM in Magodo and threw her into the chaotic streets of Lagos.
Suddenly, she hears people screaming and running. The hawker seems to know exactly what is to come because without any hesitation, she grabs a handful of cash, including the ₦1000 note and rushes to the rust-infested window. But, as the hawker jumps from the window, the wind blows her away from the hawker’s loose grip and she falls back onto the mattress, watching her owner flee into the darkness without her. Someone barges into the room. It is a man, about 6 feet tall, wearing a face mask with a pistol in his right hand and a backpack slug against his left hand. His eyes dart around the room and he grabs the blue speaker by the bedside, the jewellery in the trolley, and some packs of noodles from the carton that sits in the corner of the room and puts them in his bag. He spots her, lying crumpled at the edge of the window sill, along with a ₦200 note, both dancing in the breeze. He grabs them both and puts them in his bag.
The bag is full of everything: from an Ipad whose lockscreen has the picture of a smiling woman and a child, to pieces of stewed chicken whose lack of protective covering makes it seem like they were taken in a haste from a pot of stew. She also finds a few smartphones, pieces of jewellery, wallets, a plastic container full of Egusi soup, and lots of Naira notes. As she lays in the bag underneath a half-smoked cigarette, she feels proud that somebody deemed her worthy enough to steal. But, as her new owner steps out of the house, he is met with a loud thud. From a tear beside the zip of the bag, she sees five hefty men pounce on her new owner. They immediately take his gun away and start throwing punches at him. One of the men suggests they call the police to “deal with” her new owner, but the other men say that would not help. They say they need to “teach him a lesson.” One of them grabs the bag amidst the beatings and spills its content on the floor. The ₦1000 note lies on a muddy floor, her face staring at the full moon as she listens to who was supposed to be her new owner cry for help. She remembers a time when she did not know what mud felt like.
A few people gather, some claiming their items from the bag, while others, mere spectators. The ₦1000 note watches them, waiting for the hawker to return for her, but the hawker never does. The woman whose picture was on the Ipad appears with her child, both wearing their nightgowns. The woman grabs the Ipad while shouting that they should “deal with that thief mercilessly.” She says the thief ruined a pot of stew that cost her ₦40,000 to make. The child, a young girl no older than 10, stands beside her mother, her eyes fixed on the ₦1000 note. The young girl uses the tip of her blue and white slippers to drag her closer. She quickly bends and picks her up and crumples her into a ball. As the ₦1000 lies in the darkness of a child’s fist, she remembers her first home in a bank, and hopes her journey tomorrow will take her back there.
Biography Uduak-Abasi Ekong’s stories have appeared on Brittle Paper, Ekonke, and Iko Africa. They enjoy reading the works of Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, and Buchi Emeta. They are currently taking a fiction writing course at Faber Academy.
