The Scale

The Scale

The last thing sold before the shop closed forever was the scale, the iron weighing scale that sat on our counter since the year Mum signed the lease with the landlord, and sold not on the same day to an outsider, but to Uche, my own business partner, on the very same day that the landlord’s demolition notice came through.

I’d been waiting for the notice for the past three weeks. All the tenants had been warned of the end of the month to vacate the row, and all of us in our line at Ogbete knew, that the whitewashed board, block letters, was to be found in the corner pillar and that the entire row was slated for a renovation to a new shopping complex. The notice was in print, and the deadline was boldly typed on it.

It was the last Saturday and there was really nothing else to pack. In the two weeks before we’d sold off the stock, rice, beans, garri, crayfish, everything at prices better than you could possibly imagine, and good sense wouldn’t enter into it (a bulldozer was already in the plans). All that was left was the counter, which was too heavy to handle; a pile of empty sacks; and the scale.

For the first time, Mum allowed me to put my hands on it when I was seven. I recall standing on an upturned crate just to peep over the edge of the counter, watching her drop stuffs on it to determine their price, and every time she would tell me, “A trader who cheats the scale cheats herself, you know, word gets around before money does, and a reputation, once tilted, never balances back.” She ran that business alone for 9 years and then Uche (a business partner) joined us and we ran the business together for the next 12 years. This was a span of 25 years of my life.

Two markets back was a new site in Artisan Uche helped us secure, albeit on a smaller scale, but a good market, and a roof that doesn’t leak. He insisted that I be with him, that I carry on the partnership as I always had. I said no. It wasn’t as if I didn’t love the trade, I did, the way I love something that would lift me up, but quietly, during the past year I began to admit to myself that I didn’t want to spend the next twenty-one years doing exactly what Mama did for the previous twenty-one. I wanted it to be my choice, but his notice got there first and I let it be my choice rather than his.

Uche was going by that Saturday afternoon to get his share of the remainder. He gazed at the scale for a long time, but didn’t say anything.

“This will be helpful to me,” he said. ” The new place doesn’t have one.”

I said to him, “Take it. It does belong to you anyway, half of everything here is yours.”

“Not like this na…” He then took out a fold of notes and placed it in my hands before I could protest, as he did in all other situations when he wished to end a thing without fighting. This was me buying my half back, properly, so no one would say I just walked off with what was ours.

I wanted to refuse it, the same way I’d wanted to refuse his offer to come with him, and failed at both for the same reason. Some decisions get made whether or not you agree to them, and all that’s left is choosing how to stand while they happen. I counted the notes because he’d have been offended if I hadn’t accepted it, then I helped him carry the scale to his brother’s pickup truck myself, my hands under the same iron edges Mum’s hands had held for years before mine ever touched it.

He drove off toward Artisan with our remaining trade riding in the back of that truck, and I stood in the empty stall a while longer than I needed to.

Mum still doesn’t know I said no to going with him earlier, but I later told her that day during dinner, and she asked me what I meant to do instead, and for the first time in a long time I didn’t have to lie and say I don’t know.
I just know it won’t involve a scale again.