Adjustment of Status

Adjustment of Status Samuel Kolawole (bio) Folahan slouched on the shady bench of the roadside paraga bar five minutes away from the apartment he shared with a bus driver who was never home. He checked his pocket for his phone after hearing a ping and discovered that it was from his wife. He sighed and put it back without even glancing at her message. He was exhausted from walking in the scorching sun and needed to get his mind off his problems. Mama Nkechi, the owner, poured him a plastic cup without asking. He took the cup with a smile and drank as he watched vehicles and passersby. His head filled with warmth. His eyes watered. Alerted by another ding, he dug into his pocket for his phone and saw that message from his wife again, and again he returned it to his pocket unread. A wispy fellow waved as he walked past the canopied bench and called out to him: "Londoner!" Folahan had never been to London. He could not quite recall when he acquired that nickname—it must have been during one of his drunken roadside rants about America. He must have informed his drinking companions in his gonna-wanna accent that in his two years of living in America, he had never experienced a power outage. He must have told them about Tyler Perry Studios, Coca-Cola, and the place where Martin Luther King Jr. once lived. He must have told them about massage parlors where "anything goes"—nondescript buildings in neighborhood strip malls—and even sounded a little emotional about it. He must have tried to explain who Martin Luther King Jr. was, even though one or two of them must have wanted to tell him they already knew. He must have peppered his speeches with fuck and shit. One of them probably called him a Londoner as an insult: "Because you are a Londoner, you think you are better than us, abi?" Maybe the person who first called him Londoner didn't care where he'd traveled as long as it was overseas. The nickname apparently stuck, but Folahan didn't care what they called him as long as he didn't have to offer his real name. Yes, he frequented the joint and had conversations with them over shots of cheap, locally brewed rum, till the church bells nearby rang for the umpteenth time, but that didn't mean he should tell his business to strangers. Folahan was well aware that they regarded him as a "been-to," someone who had traveled abroad and was now living large at home. Only he had been back in Nigeria for three months without informing his wife [End Page 172] or children. Only he had lost his dignity and returned home almost penniless. Folahan waved back at the fellow and wiped the sweat from his brow. He was sober now. Not for long. Earlier that day, he had heard about the explosion in Lagos but was too preoccupied to care. He had seen an okada man shuffle over to a young girl sitting in a kiosk with a transistor radio pressed close to her ear. The fellow had pinched her cheeks playfully, and while the girl with a serious-looking face tried to fend him off, the announcement had spilled in from the radio. The girl screamed with shock before repeating the news aloud: "A bomb blast in Lagos." "Bomb blast? Where? How did it happen? Was it a gas explosion?" the fellow demanded with urgency in his voice. "Shhh. I am trying to hear the rest …" the girl said. Other people brought out their portable radios. A nearby store owner switched on his TV. There was a flurry of words from the newscasters. Folahan moved from shock to disbelief to empathy to helpless acceptance in seconds. This was how people constantly dealt with the waves of misfortune in this country. They gasped with shock, sorry for the victims for a few moments, and then forged ahead, hoping the next calamity wouldn't come near them or their loved ones. His family lived far away from Ikeja, the site of the blast. He wondered if his wife...