Mr and Mrs Okoro fitted each other to the teeth. You wouldn't be mistaken also to say that they were each other's punishment for their atrocities committed in their single lives and having each other still in each's lives, was punishment for atrocities they were yet to commit.
Mrs Okoro was as large as a wooden trunk, with eyes so big that you would have thought on first impression that she wore goggles. Her nose was an eyesore to her face - pointy and very small. She hissed so much that her lips were permanently sucking on her incisors. Her ears were perpetually hidden in her hideously worn wigs. Mr Okoro on the other hand was as skinny as a decaying twig. His face was so long he constantly wore a depressed expression, giving picture to the definition 'long face.’
Their features were as diversifying as their behaviours was similar.
Everyone knew this, except from they themselves.
The neighbors referred to them as the Kindred cohorts and they were avoided as plagues, although this did not stop the Okoros’ from capitalizing on their baleful notoriety.
And try as much as the neighbors did to avoid them. They couldn't.
Mrs Okoro was a pessimist who couldn't for the love of creation reply to a simple greeting without accompanying her reply with a thousand complaints. “Good morning? It's morning already? Chei, I couldn't tell from these rubbish weather. I hardly even slept last night, the mosquitoes haunted me and threatened to drain every drop of blood from my body- that’s why I keep telling that stupid Mama Tope to stop spilling stinking nappy waters in the gutter and that ignorant thing that calls itself a graduate to stop washing and spreading cloths at night.”
You think all that could simply be avoided by ignoring her completely? Think again. There were the landlords.
They lived in their four-storied building which contained 16 block of flats and housed over 100 hundred tenants, some of each were nuclear families, youth corpers, and in Temilade's case mature single ladies.
Everyone disliked Mrs Okoro and Mrs Okoro hated everyone but Temilades’ as usual was different. Mrs Okoro detested her.
The feeling was however mutual for Temilade.
No one knew why, no one wondered why either. If it had anything to do with Mrs Okoro…it wasn't surprising.
It wasn't out of the norm to hear her cussing and hurling insult at the neighborhood children, it wasn't out of the norm to see her give the sack to a family from their apartment, simply because the smell of their burning food had upset her stomach.
Maybe if they weren't so busy trying to stay out of Mrs Okoro’s way by minding their own business they would have noticed a faint resemblance between Mr Okoro and Temilade.
Or then again, maybe they did, but the difference between boths’ tribe was enough to put out any flame of suspicion.
Mr Okoro’s thirty-seven years marriage with Mrs Okoro was not with an offspring (probably nature's way of safe guarding it's own). If Mrs Okoro felt bad of not being able to bear children, she didn't show it. It was rumored that she was a witch who ate up her children as soon as they got into her womb, and when the story got to Mrs Okoro, she smiled.
That was all. Just smiled.
That instilled a new kind or abhorrence and fear for the living trunk, and that seemed to fit her really well.
The day before the unthinkable happened (this is the name the neighbors came to know the day as), everything seemed normal. The chicken cackled at the breaking of the day, Oga Taiwo’s door was battered down to warn him of probable arson if he didn't check the smoke seeping out of his kitchen window. Mr Okoro was under the yard’s udala tree completing the rest his better half had obviously denied him of.
Mrs Ibere was wringing clothes she has gotten up really early to wash.
A normal scene in the compound of the Okoros’.
Then the wailing started. It gruff and loud, not to mention ear-drum wrenching. It was as though the sound was being emitted from a speaker buried in a hollow grave.
One by one, the neighbors trickled out, piqued by the strange sounds, and soon enough they had all assembled downstairs. Mr Okoro still slept, amidst all the noise, like in drunken stupor.
“Wetin they happen?” They wondered amongst themselves, asking questions in hushed voices, and whispers. It was obvious the awful noise was coming from the Okoro’s flat, but none dared entered to find out what was happening to the crier. Seeing Mr Okoro sprawled on the wooden chair made them all the more wary of getting in.
The it stopped, quite as suddenly as it started and in a few seconds, fewer than any of them could take down to figure out what had just happened.
Her looming figure came into view.
The children were fast enough to scurry out of sight, two year old limy was even seen trying to wriggle out of his Mother's bosom. But not so the rest of them, who sooner were caught under the bulgy-eyed scrutiny of Mrs Okoro.
She looked hideous. Her eyes were red, and her white woollen wig hurriedly thrown on, lay askew on her head, giving her the faint appearance of a mountain goat. She was decked in her normal costume- no one could refer to what she wore as clothes.
“What are you all doing in front of my house?” She barked, taking in a drag of phlegmy snort. Her voice was unchanged, her puffy face, the only proof that she had been crying.
“We heard a great noise- are we wondered-” Mr Dele dubbed charge-and-bail lawyer started. He who spoke words purportedly omitted from the dictionary. He who wore stiffly faded suits and went out each day in search of fights and altercations to settle. If he couldn't find, he made one up. Inciting a neighbor against the next, so that they had a problem and he had a job.
“Mr mouth piece, speak for yourself.” She hissed.
“The noise madam. I was alarmed by the galactic lamentation, and I was curious to observe it's presumptive precedence.”
Mrs Okoro stared at him like he had just told her to go eat shit.
“If you weren't owing me six months rent. I would have had you thrown out of my house. Now get out of my sight, all if you!”
They didn't need be told twice.
Whispering as they dispersed, they wondered what could possibly have made her cry.
If they thought they had seen it all, that day was only the beginning- the unthinkable was still yet to happen and quite sooner.
