The Call That Never Came

I began my day just like any other, but that morning, I did not have an ordinary heart. It was striking quickly, as though a person was in a hurry in order to get somewhere. I recall how the sun was entering the small room with thin curtains of my small room in Akure.

There was a humming of the fan over my head. A rooster was crawling outside, and somewhere in the right, a neighbor was playing old gospel songs in a low tone.

But within me there was no other sound, but waiting.

I had a phone call to make the same day.

I had been checking my email in the morning and in the evening every three weeks. My application was in a large engineering firm in Lagos. It was the type of place that all people desired to work. In case I got the application, I envisioned the walk of a glass door, a blue shirt, a brown laptop bag, nod on the security, and like I am home.

Even my friend Kola had remarked, "Guy, dem no know good thing, if dem no pick you."

I believed him.

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In the morning, I was sitting on my bed, and my phone was in my palm. The network was full. The battery was 96%. Everything was perfect. I had even managed to put on a clean shirt, despite having nowhere to get to.

My mother knocked on the door.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Not yet, Mama. I’m waiting for a call first.”

She smiled, the sort of smile that makes you know that she knows that you are lying to yourself but she can never tell you.
“Okay. Wait not on a full stomach but go," said she and turned away.

By 10 a.m., no call.
By 12, still nothing.

The buzz slowly had transformed to quietness.

My phone sounded at 2 p.m. and I nearly jumped out of my heart. It was not the company. It was Kola.

"Have you hear anything?" he said.

“Nothing yet,” I replied.

“Relax. Perhaps they hold meeting dem go soon call you," he tried to sound like it.

I got on my feet and paced the little room. I looked out of the door to the window to the wall the way I was searching for hope in concrete. It was not until 5 p. m. when the sun was setting low in the sky that I checked my email again.

That was when I saw it.

“Thank you for your interest… Which he thought better than at first... We will not be moving forward…”

I read it more than five times. I could not even comprehend the plain English it was composed of. At a gradual pace I sat on the floor with my back on the bed. I was not crying like people do in movies. I simply felt empty, as though someone had taken off the light in me.

My small sister entered the room in the evening.

"Were they calling you, brother," she said.

I just shook my head and looked at her.
“No. They didn’t.”

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She sat beside me.
“It’s okay. Some other one will come, perhaps, said she in her childish voice."

In the evening, NEPA got light and the entire street became dark. I walked out and sat on the bench before our house. The air was cool. The moon was bright. People were laughing, chatting and leading a normal life with their neighbors. And there I was, without what I intended happening to me.

Then I heard a voice behind me.

“Good evening, young man.”

It was Mr. Ade, our neighbor. He was a silent person who possessed a small electronic shop. I greeted him respectfully.

He sat beside me. Your mother told me something today. You were seeking some big company labor.

“Yes sir.”

“And they did not select you?”

“No sir.”

He nodded slowly. The same thing happened to me, when I was your age, I wrote a letter which I never received, he said. “But I didn’t stop working. I began obtaining repairs done on radios in the shop of my father. This is the way my entire life began."

I looked at him, surprised.

He smiled. "You can come to the workshop tomorrow, if you want. Just to look. No pressure.”

Something within me moved again that was the first thing that day.

“Thank you, sir,” I said quietly.

The next morning, I went. There was a smell of wires, dust and metal in the workshop. He taught me how to clean up equipment, how to hold the minute screws, how to tune in a radio as though it were a living organism.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. I acquired more than I could have ever imagined.

And one afternoon, when I was repairing a broken speaker, my phone rang once again.

This time it was a different company.

“Hello, is this [my name]?”

“Yes.”

The recent application that we obtained led us to the desire to schedule an interview with you.

I did not jump or shout, as I looked round the workshop, at the tools, at the open radio, at Mr. Ade watching me, with curious eyes.

Yes, I smiled and said, "Yes,... I am available.”

And the first time the future of my head was not glass and imagination any more.

It was real.