Jigi – Nnamdi Vin-Anuonye

Jigi nearly killed that boy, I swear. Nearly.

He walked in right when the ingrate puffed his dry chest, staring at me, daring me to slap him again.

“Meezy. Ina apu ala? What did you just say to him?” Jigi asked, dropping the thick paper bag with a braided rope handle he was carrying. Bottles broke, and brownish liquid spread across the floor, the smell of cognac rising. He grabbed Meezy by the neck and landed three hot slaps, back to back: tawai, tawai, tawai. Then he dragged him by the collar of his polo into the middle of the sitting room, eerily silent except for the low hum of the AC.

Meezy started shouting.

“I be pikin? Why una dey slap me?”

“You’re still talking. See this bastard!” Jigi barked in Igbo, landing more slaps and punches. 

The rest of our boys stood at attention until Ike walked into the kitchen and returned with a mop to clean the floor.

*

I was about to take a nap when I heard clamour downstairs and found Meezy fighting Ike, who was at least two years older than him. He was accusing Ike of stealing his leftover plate of jollof rice. Just imagine. Neither of them had provided the food they were fighting over, and how could grown men be fighting over food? As in, food?

“That’s enough!” I said, stepping between them, trying to stop the fight. 

“I said that’s enough, Meezy.”

But the stubborn he-goat just kept going, so I slapped him hard across the face, which promptly shut him up. 

“Are you deaf? I asked you to shut up!”

Then he stared at me with red eyes and said he would slap me back if I tried that again. I laughed. He must’ve been high, as usual. So I did it again. Twice more, for emphasis. 

And just then, Jigi walked in.

I had never seen Jigi react like this before. Not with Meezy standing there with a bloodied face, looking around as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. As if none of this was his doing.

Surely, this Meezy boy was a mistake, and I’ve known it for a while now. I disliked his passive aggression toward me: the way he watched me from the corner of his eye when I was walking, the delay before he answered me whenever I called. Even toward the other boys too. But I didn’t want him dead. At least not under this roof.

Yet Jigi kept punching him until I lost count, until blood smeared his gold rings and stained his white Gucci shirt red. There was something about Jigi’s blind outrage that felt a little self-righteous, a little too much.

I turned away quietly and walked upstairs to our bedroom. Relieved, because Jigi had come back just in time to handle this mess. Joyful that he was fighting for me, even in the awkward awfulness of this charade. But there was something else too. Surprise. No. Suspicion.

Something was wrong.

Jigi was never brash. In fact, he was almost complacent, which was why I called the shots around here. Meezy was the only one who had ever defied me. He clearly didn’t understand how things worked here — or maybe he did and just refused to comply. The worst part was that he was of no value here. Months had passed, and he hadn’t even made a single dollar. Apart from sneaking off to smoke in the unfinished building outside the gate and raiding the freezer afterward, he only pretended to work when Jigi was around.

The other day, I complained to Jigi about him. Let the poor boy eat good food first, he said, chuckling. He’ll make money when he puts his head in the game. So I treated Meezy like air, like he was invisible. Until today.

Later, Ike told me that Meezy believed I must have used juju to tie Jigi — that whatever this thing between us was, it worked like a charm, making his boss obey me like a robot following its remote. 

What a fool, that one.

Juju? That’s nonsense. And I really don’t care. Not today, not ever. I knew the boys low-key wondered the same thing anyway, today’s drama sharpening their suspicions.

And I get it. I mean, I can take it back six years to Owerri, when I met Jigi. Then, this boss they all revered was all head and no flesh, studying Igbo linguistics at Imo State University. That day, I was hurrying back to the hostel because I’d forgotten a project paperwork my supervisor had asked for. He approached me with surprising confidence. Said he had been seeing me around and wanted my number. He was in his final year. I scanned him from head to toe. Hmm. Not tall, but dark-skinned, hairy, muscular. I gave him my number and hurried away. He didn’t call until a week later, and even then said little. He was quiet, measured, and had an air about him I found both mysterious and attractive.

As for Meezy, this same boy who had nearly kissed our toes the day he intercepted us near the estate gate. The one who said he had been watching us go to the gym most evenings, the different cars we swapped like toys. The one who told us he’d wanted to approach us sooner but feared our reaction, until desperation finally took over.

Only then did I drop my phone and look. His face bore scars like a cat’s whiskers. I could tell he was Igbo—only that explained the nerve he had to stop us, demanding we change his life as if we knew him.

He said he was hungry. Jigi glanced at me, and I nodded, before he called out his phone number and said, Call me. Then he peeled off a few fresh notes from the bunch he used to bribe policemen when they moved funny and handed them to the boy who smiled, exposing brownish, incomplete teeth. Then he jumped and stamped his right foot in salutation as we drove away.

Now, that same boy spoke back to me. Accused me of doing juju. Ate all the food in my house. Disobeyed house rules. Drank most of the alcohol in the fridge. A living liability. I could have seen this coming. I could have stopped it. But he already looked me in the face and said he would slap me. 

*

The office where I learned this job was owned by my cousin Adimchi, a street lord who, by any estimation, made nearly half a million dollars a year. I know.

I had just finished uni with a degree in philosophy, full of big dreams. I was sure I’d become something, maybe a scholar, like Socrates or Plato. A year and a half after graduation, nothing prepared me for the struggle to land a decent job. The lecturers told us a philosophy degree would get us anywhere. I’m sorry, but that’s crap. Because really, where was anywhere?

I had a passion for vast, wide thinking. But I wasn’t the type to sit around waiting for Jesus to descend and butter my bread. Passion is good, but no be passion person go chop. Passion is not food; it does not pay the bills. So one day, my cousin Adimchi posted a tall stack of hundred-dollar bills on Instagram, captioned: Get rich or die trying.

Then, I still lived in my parents’ house with its peeling paint, broke, my mother waiting year after year for her pension as a retired schoolteacher that never came, drowning in debt, raising me alone since my father died when I was fifteen. I sometimes wondered if she secretly wished for another child, another son whose masculinity was intact, solid—one who did manly things, who loved women, who would procreate.

I messaged Adimchi, against my mother’s sanctimonious voice ringing somewhere in my head. Well, let’s just say that message changed my whole life.

Look at me now, thriving in ways she couldn’t have imagined. Last last, no be by who get muscle pass. 

My mother does not know how much the sleek Highlander parked in the garage costs. Nor the price of petroleum. Ask her the last time anyone helping around the house didn’t show up because they hadn’t been paid. Ask her. Of course, she can’t tell you, because it’s never happened.

My Jesus-baby mother. Even though she knows exactly where my money comes from, I like how quiet she’s been about it all. Just as she was when I told her I was leaving Owerri for Lagos. I was twenty-three at the time, eager because Adimchi had agreed he would show me the way. All I had to do was show up.

“Mummy, I want to move to Lagos,” I said. Our neighbor’s chicken crowed in the backyard, annoying me. She was doing her morning devotion, so she looked up from her Bible, squinting. The antique clock on the wall gawked at me.

 “Lagos? What are you going to look for there?”

“I found a job.”

“Glory be to God. Which job?”

“A computer networking job, mummy.”

“Computer networking job?” She looked suspicious. “Computer kwa?”

“Yes, mummy. Computer. At Adim’s place.”

I expected her to say something dramatic. 419. Yahoo-yahoo. But she said nothing, adjusted her glasses, returned to reading her Bible, and waved me away.

I knew it was done once my mother went quiet, because she never went quiet. 

It was the first time I’d be apart from her for so long. Sometimes I still wonder why she agreed. And what if she hadn’t?

The next morning, my mother bade me farewell at the park. It was early, past six. She waited until the bus roared to life a little after seven, then took a keke straight to church, because even the old Hyundai Sonata had been sold a few months ago to make ends meet. And that end was two parallel lines that never met.

That day, I tricked the witches and wizards from my village. Played them, six–zero. I swear they hadn’t seen this coming. Me, a whole graduate, going under the roof of a semi-educated cousin to spend hours on Facebook and Telegram: bombing. Which really meant sliding into the DMs of a bunch of women, telling them I was Eric Taylor, a U.S. Navy officer and multimillionaire looking for the right woman to complete me.

When I got to Lagos, I recognised its smell: putrid gutters, industrial waste, sweaty bodies, and sex. I had heard of it from Aunty Rose, Adim’s mother, who always came back with stories. I had read about it too, in articles on environmental protection and waste management. At Adimchi’s house, a duplex tucked at the end of a quiet street in Isolo, the first thing I did was take a deep breath and exhale. I was in Lagos. Me, Sochimaechi Anyanwu. And Lagos must bow to me. 

In no time, I got up to speed, texting and texting. Rehearsing tall tales. Telling them. Praying. Hoping. Yet nothing, until the day I made my first hit: a paltry hundred dollars. With it, I reimbursed my mother for the savings she had emptied for my transport fare. By my second hit, a whopping five thousand, I knew I had to introduce Jigi to Adimchi. By then we spoke daily, though a tension between us remained unspoken. I told Adimchi that Jigi was my good friend. Technically, he was. That he was broke and jobless, that I feared he was depressed. I knew Adimchi wouldn’t mind. More boys meant more money. 

The next day, a Saturday, Jigi took a night bus from Owerri to Lagos. He dived into the job head-on. He was so focused that we barely talked about anything else, except work. Money. I liked his discipline, his ability to exist without needing to be liked, his quiet demeanor. Unlike the other guys in the house, Jigi didn’t sneer when I walked past. My waist still swayed like the tongue of a bell, my wrists still hung limp. I liked him. Still, I knew better than to act on anything I was feeling. 

Then Jigi spent his free time on the phone with some girl named Nneka. Each time I overheard their conversation, I just walked past, head high. Secretly, I hated that he called her baby girl. I hated even more that he seemed to need her for petty things like data subscriptions.

Weeks passed, and Adimchi seemed to like him too.

“Look at Jigi, he already has four serious clients. I’m telling you, the guy get mad grace.”

I was in the kitchen then, making jollof rice with fresh peppers and tomatoes and some of the smoked catfish Adim’s mother had sent from the village. Since I arrived, Adimchi hadn’t let anyone else cook his meals, partly because I was the best cook in the house, and partly because I was the only one he trusted. Otherwise, he just ordered overpriced meals from upscale restaurants on the island.

“I’m telling you, that your man will make me too much money. I can feel it, Sochi. Bastard money!”

I chuckled and made vague sounds of agreement. He had referred to Jigi as my man, and although I understood the context, I liked the sound of it. It suggested exclusion. Just me and Jigi, together, a pair.

My man.

*

One day, I offered Jigi a plate of food I’d cooked for Adimchi but secretly scooped a portion from. He looked surprised, then smiled as he took the plate and said, “Thank you.”

Now, is the stomach truly the way to a man’s heart? I swear it is. 

Later, I sat with him, and he told me about his mother, who was diabetic and battling a sore that refused to heal after a motor accident. 

“Once I make enough money, I’ll bring her to the best hospital here in Lagos,” he said. “I want to show my mother that the problem is money. It was never enemies or evil arrows. It has always been money.”

I watched him. His eyes were so sad I wished I could heal his mother, give him all the money in the world. I wondered if his mother knew the kind of son she had raised, a son who would cross an ocean for her. A good son.

It was the most I’d ever heard him speak. Everything seemed to align for that conversation to happen, because even the other boys were all out of sight, and for long too. Him being vulnerable with me brought an ache to my chest. I realised I wanted to take his pain away, to make him happy. And yet I was also happy, because when a guy begins to let you in on his feelings, perhaps you might mean more to him than you know.

That night, the house was quiet after everyone had gone to sleep, set to rise again by midnight when we would sit wide-eyed, focused and hopeful, typing away on different laptops. I was lying beside him on the fluffy rug he spread out on the living room floor, where he slept every night to avoid sharing the bed with three other guys. I could have gone to my room. I could have stopped inching closer, pretending to be asleep, until my body touched his in the dark. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might knock. This was risky. There were a thousand ways it could go wrong.

Outside, rain had started. It brought a brief chill to the senseless heat, which I loved. It was pattering down the roof like a hail of pebbles when I felt it. No, I wasn’t mistaken. And yes, it was Jigi’s penis, nudging against my bum in reckless desire.

God. There was nothing I wanted more in that moment than to grab him and pull him close, skin to skin. But first, I turned and faced him, my heart hammering. Then he pulled me closer, possessive, and he kissed me. Currents ran from my tongue to my head, then through the rest of my body. The intensity of it was like nothing I’ve ever felt. I took him into the warmth and wetness of my mouth, swallowing every inch as he  shuddered, biting down on his lips to muffle his cries as he finished. The sound he made was like an exhale, like dropping a heavy weight.

Afterwards, we went about our business like nothing had happened. Even though I had swallowed what he left in my mouth. Even though he was all I could think about. And the risk of it all. What if someone had walked in on us?

In the coming months, it happened once or twice more, and each time the intensity multiplied. Suddenly, I began to wish everybody in that house could grow wings and fly far away. I wanted to be with him. Alone. So, in my head, I began to plot our exit that night. After all, we both had made a few millions, and we were already many months in. 

The icing on the cake was Adimchi’s approval. He often sang Jigi’s praises while sipping a glass of Martell and smoking Loud, dressed in so many brands—Gucci, Prada, Dior—that he looked like an advertisement board.

Sometimes, I imagined telling him the truth and watching his face contort into shit. Oh, the satisfaction it would bring. But because I didn’t want to do anything to expose Jigi, I made it my mission to protect his cocoon by saying nothing.

One night, when we were alone, because the rest were out clubbing, Jigi suddenly said to me, “I’m into you.”

I wasn’t looking at him, so I thought he was voice-texting a client.

“Sochi, did you hear me?” he asked, tapping me lightly on the lap. “I said I’m into you.”

“But I have this girl, her name is Nneka. I can’t leave her because she’s like a sister to me.”

I was quiet for a moment, processing. Before finally saying, Jigi, I’m into you too.

*

Jigi was kind in a way that reminded me of a dog’s loyalty to its owner. His was a doing kind of kindness. He would wind down the window to toss naira notes at beggars by the roadside, and pay strangers’ hospital bills, buy apples, Gala, cashew nuts and whatnot from hawkers in traffic just to patronize them. Which was why his reaction earlier today was unexpected. Which was why now, behind the closed door of our bedroom, I was going to ask him. But first, I lit a blunt and watched him walk to the minibar at the end of the room to pour himself a glass of whiskey.

“Asa, I asked Meezy to pack and leave,” he said, “And he better be gone by the time I go downstairs.”

He liked to call me my beauty. Asa m. But today he called me just asa, and his eyes did not meet mine as they often would. My suspicions were correct. Something was wrong. And it had little to do with that boy downstairs.

“Baby,” I said, “forget Meezy. What’s wrong?”

He looked away, silent.

I walked toward him, but he moved away to the long window by the bedside and stood there, his head resting against the glass, hands shoved deep into his pockets, perhaps to steady himself.

Jigi was sturdy now. His dark skin shone, his head full of jet-black hair, face chubby, moustache so full it touched his lip when he smiled. Even the studs in his ears were real gold. And his gait was one confident, springy bounce after the other. Look. The immense power of money.

“You were so angry downstairs,” I said, hating that it came out sounding like an accusation. “Please talk to me.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, downed some more whiskey and poured another glass.

“Ahhg!” he screamed, startling me.

Then he punched the wall, thrice.

I gasped.

“Baby, stop!” I said, rushing to him. 

His knuckles had begun to bleed, the blood seeping out fast, as if happy to be free.

This was not the first time I had seen Jigi’s knuckles bleed. It happened during our first real fight, six months after we began to live together, just a few months after we started this office back in Ikeja, before this house in Palmview. It was about that girl, Nneka. I found flirtatious messages between them, and when I confronted him, he said it was nothing, that he was getting over her, but that she wouldn’t let him go. 

“These days,” he said, trying to make me feel better, “all she cares about is money, money, money anyway. And I give her, hoping she will finally leave me alone. But no.”

You’re giving someone so much money and you expect them to leave you alone? I told him to go be with her and forget about me. That I was not going to be anyone’s side piece. 

And I meant it. At least I thought I did. I didn’t talk to him for days. Then he came back one evening reeking of alcohol and weed, and the next thing I saw was him punching the walls until his knuckles bled. Later, he told me he didn’t know how to cry, no matter how hard he tried. And he wanted to. To show me how sorry he was. How he could do anything for me.

Now, I walked to the glass cabinet where my perfumes and jewellery were and picked the first-aid box. There was no need to probe any further. I knew he would tell me what was bothering him. I know this because I know him, even more than I know myself.

I cleaned the gash on his knuckle with methylated spirit and cotton wool, wincing when he did, saying, sorry, baby. I bandaged it. Placed ice. Led him into the bathroom where he bent over and retched up watery greens and yellows, because by then he was so drunk he could barely stand. I thumped his back, rubbed his shoulders, then led him into the bathtub and bathed him like a baby. My baby.

“I messed up,” he kept muttering. I really messed up. 

I kissed his lips and helped him onto our king-size bed. I propped a pillow behind his head. And then, finally, he said,  “Nneka is pregnant for me.”

I froze.

“She told me today, asa m.”

Suddenly, he was back to calling me asa m.

I stared.

“How? What do you mean Nneka is pregnant for you, Jigi? This is not you leaving bath foam on the bathroom wall for me to wash off. This is your child. Growing inside someone else. A whole baby.”

He remained silent. 

I am not sure how much time passed.

Outside the window, the masquerade trees lining the compound swerved in elegant sweeps, as if in celebration, in mockery. 

“Jigi, how? Please, say something,” I said. But he said nothing else.

I steadied myself, opened the door, and stepped out onto the airy balcony, where everything was in its usual place and shape. I thought to call our house agent to start looking for a new house. Fuck this house. Fuck this day. The boys would stay here. With cameras and everything in place, we could still supervise them. That was the plan all along, until Jigi changed his mind, saying being present would motivate them.

When I returned to the bedroom, he was off the bed, now sitting on the floor. I suddenly hated the smell of his Initio Oud for Greatness filling the room. I recoiled when he reached for me, drunk. Suddenly, I hated him. 

I wondered when they had sex. Perhaps that time he travelled to Owerri for a relative’s funeral. Perhaps no relatives died. Perhaps there was no funeral at all. He had gone all the way just to visit her. Just imagine that.

*

They say everything blows away, except the things you hold on to. I wished I could open my palm and let this go, allow it to blow away. But his voice kept singing in my head. 

Nneka is pregnant for me. Nneka is pregnant for me. Nneka is pregnant for me.

The same Nneka he said was like a sister to him? Didn’t he promise she was gone? He did. Yet here we were. And this time she had brought along something I could never give Jigi. If life were fair, I’d carry Jigi’s child. For him. Just for him.

“Baby,” he said, kneeling, “please, biko. We can sort this out. Biko”

I looked at him there on the floor. He  seemed smaller, almost like a big, hairy dog with really sorry eyes.

I wanted to laugh, or cry, or both.

“I swear, it was a mistake,” he said.

A mistake? 

I wanted to slap him. Bite him. Even Punch him. Just something, anything to match the stab of his words in my heart. Yet, as I looked at him kneeling, begging for my forgiveness, my heart broke. I wanted to hold him, inhale his musk, stroke his hair, tell him that we were in this together, that I would walk through hell with him. But there was a knot in my chest. It held tight and refused to loosen, especially as I thought of him with her, inside her. 

The more I thought about it, the madder I became.

“Fuck you, Jigi!” I said, picking up the car keys from the rack. 

“Where are you going?”

I ignored him.

“Please don’t leave. Let’s talk, Asa,” he said, grabbing my leg again, tightly, like a sinner clinging to Jesus.

“Okay, okay. Promise me you’ll come back home, so we can talk about this. Don’t leave me now. Sochi, please.” His voice broke with desperation.

“Jigidechukwu,” I said — thinking how I never called him by his first name, so beautiful its meaning: keep holding onto God—while kicking him away, “leave me alone before I do something stupid.”

*

The first major hit I made was from a Vietnamese woman who had already dropped about five thousand dollars and was ready to take a loan of twenty thousand to help Mr Kurt Brown, an orphaned, unmarried navy officer trapped on a warship, in urgent need of money to survive his failing heart.

“Let her take the loan,” Adimchi said, dragging on his smoke.

“But—”

“But gini?” he cut in, catching my hesitation. “Are you a goat? Let her take the loan. What, you’re feeling pity for an oyibo? Seriously? Bro, be a man and make real money,”

And real money it was when it arrived, thousands of dollars cooling in my account. What was more, Wifey, as we called her, eventually found out that Mr Kurt Brown was neither a US citizen nor a navy officer. In fact, he didn’t exist. But she said she understood that Africa was full of corruption and poverty, and people like me had no real choice. All she really wanted now was a companion. A friend.

That first bulk money from Wifey changed everything. But even before then, I’d been sending money home monthly, daring my mother to ask questions she never did. Perhaps, like Wifey, my mother understood. Perhaps, like Wifey, I too should understand.

It was because of that money that we — Jigi and I — made the boldest decision of our lives at the time, which was leaving Adimchi’s place and starting this “office” of our own, as we called it. Sometimes I still wonder why he didn’t insist we stay our term. Instead, he gave us his blessing, even bought us necessary social media accounts and apps to kickstart the new office. Jigi thinks it was because Adimchi cornered a whooping ten thousand dollars from Jigi’s Spanish client around the same time and never gave him his percentage. I think it was because Adimchi knew, even though I just couldn’t prove it.

Now, six years later, we had five younger boys we scouted from Owerri, working for us. Five boys whose destinies were on our heads. And all was well until today, when that boy looked me in the face and said he’d slap me back. And now, Jigi..

In just one day, everything changed.

*

My hands were shaking as I drove. The road to my favourite bistro in Ikoyi was empty. Midway through, I changed my mind. Reversed. Stepped on the gas. My phone kept ringing. Jigi. I slowed down. Didn’t pick. Just kept driving, with no destination in mind. Phyno’s Never played through the speakers.

On my phone screen was a picture of us: him in that white T&M hoodie I got him last Christmas, flexing his muscles, grinning; me behind him, smiling, my hands wrapped around his waist. I started counting backwards, searching for the moment things changed, the moment Jigi chose Nneka. 

My phone rang again. I picked it up. Swiped. Airplane mode. Silence.

Earlier, he had held on to me tightly as I struggled free, saying, Baby, please don’t leave. Baby, please don’t leave me. I was silent when he grabbed my phone, the car keys, my packed suitcase, just trying to stop me. And then one of the boys knocked on our bedroom door and said, Boss, abeg send aza. Italian mama wan drop money. 

And finally, he let me go.

Now, I’m parked by the roadside in Ikoyi. In front of me is a 24/7 restaurant, Jollof City; on my right, a nightclub called SODOM. 

Phyno sings his final line. Anything wey go break us, never, ever. 

I know Jigi will come looking for me. He knows all the places to find me. And he won’t care that he’s shit-drunk, that he’s not supposed to drive like that. He will come to me. 

For me. Choosing me.

Me. Like he always has. Me. Like he always will. 

 My man, my man, my man.

Nnamdi Vin-Anuonye is a Nigerian writer and lawyer. He is a 2026 fellow of the Oxbelly Fiction Writers Program, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Speculative Fiction, a McCormack Writing Center Scholar, and a 2026 CANEX Creative Writing Workshop participant. He is also an alumnus of the Nairobi Writing Academy’s Short Story Editing Workshop. His work has won the Wilson Okereke Prize for Short Fiction, been longlisted for The Masters Review Summer Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. His fiction has appeared in Isele Magazine and The Muse Journal, with work forthcoming elsewhere.

*Image by Rajan Alwan on Unsplash