The conductor would not let the woman off without her full change, and for that I almost missed everything.
We were packed into the danfo at Ojota, knee to knee, the afternoon heat pressing through the windows like a hand. The woman beside me was old, her wrapper faded to the colour of weak tea, a nylon bag of ugu leaves on her lap. She wanted to alight. The conductor owed her twenty naira and pretended he did not hear her, the way they do, hoping she would tire and leave it.
She did not tire. My money, she said. Just that. Again and again, not loud, not begging. My money.
A young man near the door hissed. Aunty, na twenty naira. Abeg, we dey go. The whole bus wanted her to sit down and be small.
I reached into my pocket to give her the twenty myself, to end it. She caught my wrist. Her grip was dry and strong. No, she said, only to me. If I take yours, he keeps mine. Then next woman, he does the same. Twenty naira is not twenty naira. It is whether he can look at an old woman and decide she is nothing.
The conductor, cornered by her stillness more than her words, flung the coins at her. She gathered each one from the dirty floor without hurry, counted them in her palm, and only then let the door swallow her into the market crowd.
I have thought about her many times since, in rooms where I was the old woman with the tea-coloured wrapper, being told my twenty naira was too small to fight for.
My money, I say now. Just that. And I count every coin before I go.