The Woman at the Gate

The day Funke’s father died, the family had ₦4,700 left in the house.

She counted it twice. Then a third time. As if the notes would multiply if she stared hard enough. They didn’t.

Her mother was in the bedroom crying the kind of cry that had no sound, just shoulders shaking and hands covering a face that had forgotten how to hold itself together. Her younger brother Tunde, seventeen and trying hard to look strong, stood by the window pretending to watch the street.

Funke was the one who had to think.

The burial alone would cost more than they had. The hospital bill her father left behind was a number she couldn’t say out loud without her chest tightening. And rent, three months unpaid, was a conversation their landlord had stopped being polite about.

She needed money. Not next week. Now.

She stepped outside their compound in Mushin just to breathe. The street was loud the way Lagos is always loud — generators, hawkers, someone’s Afrobeats bleeding through a thin wall. Normal noise. But Funke felt like she was standing inside glass, watching life happen around her without touching her.

That’s when she saw the woman.

Old. Wrapped in plain white, the kind that had been washed too many times. She was standing just outside the compound gate, not moving, not selling anything. Just… looking at Funke.

“You are carrying something heavy,” the woman said.

Funke almost walked back inside. She was not in the mood for prophecy sellers or church hustlers. Lagos had too many of them.

“I’m fine,” Funke said.

The woman smiled like she knew something. “Your father. He passed this morning.”

Funke stopped.

Nobody on this street knew her father. They had only moved here eight months ago. She hadn’t told anyone — not even their next-door neighbour who always wanted to know everybody’s business.

“How did you—”

“Sit with me small,” the woman said, already moving toward the uncompleted building beside their fence where a concrete block served as a bench.

Funke’s legs moved before her sense did.

They sat. The woman smelled like camphor and something else — something Funke couldn’t name but that reminded her of her grandmother’s room back in the village.

“You are thinking of money,” the woman said. “You are thinking if you had just a little — not plenty — just enough to breathe, everything would be fine.”

Funke’s throat tightened. “What do you want?”

“To give you something.”

“I don’t have money to buy anything—”

“I’m not selling.” The woman looked at her, and for just a second, Funke felt like the woman’s eyes were looking through her, past her face, past her skull, at something behind her. “I’m giving. There is a difference.”

She reached into the folds of her wrapper and brought out something small. A ring. Plain, dull silver, with a tiny engraving on the inside Funke couldn’t read.

“Wear this tonight before you sleep. Tomorrow morning, you will wake up and you will know something. Something that hasn’t happened yet. Use that knowledge well and your problem will ease.”

Funke stared at the ring. “What’s the catch?”

The woman stood up slowly, her knees cracking. “Every gift has a weight. You will learn yours.”

“That’s not an answer.”

But the woman was already walking away, moving with a steadiness that didn’t match her age, disappearing into the noise of the street until Funke couldn’t see her anymore.

Funke looked down at the ring in her palm.

She should throw it away. She knew that. Any sensible Lagos girl knew better than to collect things from strangers who appeared from nowhere, knew your business, and disappeared like smoke.

Funke was sensible.

But she was also looking at ₦4,700 and a mountain that needed moving.

She closed her fist around the ring and went back inside.

That night, she wore it.

She didn’t expect to dream. She never remembered her dreams.

But what came that night wasn’t a dream.

It was a Wednesday afternoon — she could feel it, not just see it — and she was standing in front of a sports betting shop on Awolowo Road. She watched her own hands place a slip. Watched the numbers. Saw the screen flash green.

₦340,000.

She woke up gasping, her heart slamming, the ring warm on her finger like it had been sitting in sunlight.

It was 5:43 AM.

She lay there staring at the ceiling for a long time.

Then she got up, found her mother’s emergency ₦2,000, and started getting ready.

She had never placed a bet in her life.

To be continued…