Johnny presented some ‘wine’ to formally initiate me into his intentions. I received the two bottles of Rémy Martin cognac and placed them on the stool beside me. Since I was not particularly desperate for my sister to leave the house, I was not going to ask for a wineglass and sip from the drink immediately.
‘I’m delighted to finally meet you,’ he said. ‘Charity holds you in such high regard. Very soon, you’ll meet my family as well. They’ve all met Charity and they’re also looking forward to meeting you.’
The man greatly amused me. He was tall, thin, slow, hairy, with heavy linear eyebrows that looked as if they had been cut out of a thick rug and pasted onto his face with cheap glue. Each time he shifted his head, I half-expected the eyebrows to drop onto the floor. His look was stiff and sluggish, like all his mannerisms. When he began a five-word sentence, I could have walked up the flight of stairs, gone to the bathroom in my bedroom, turned on the tap, washed my hands, turned off the tap, descended the stairs, sat down, and he would still not have finished speaking.
But there is some good in everybody: beneath his burdensome eyebrows, Johnny was quite handsome.
‘I hear you’re a banker,’ I said.
‘Yes, I am,’ he replied as if each word had a phobia of the next one coming after it. ‘I’m head of operations at the Standard Trust Bank in Okigwe.’
For a second, I relished the many advantages of having an in-law who worked in a bank. In our line of business, it always helped to have a banker on your side.
He went on to say that he had a degree in Business Administration from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He was Roman Catholic, his parents were civil servants, and he was desperately in love with my sister of course. Plus, he was thirty-four years old!
At that moment, Charity walked in with a tray of refreshments. The corners of the man’s mouth expanded to his ears in a smile. He stopped speaking while she adjusted the centre table and deposited her offering in front of him. He fixed gleaming and delighted eyes on my sister from the moment she entered the room, while she was opening the bottle of soft drink, till she twisted her tiny behind and left. There was a strong possibility that his eyeballs would have popped out of their sockets if she had not left when she did.
I felt like bruising his handsome jaw with my fist.
‘If everything goes according to plan,’ he continued, ‘we would be married by August.’
He was a British citizen, you see, and had enrolled at the London School of Economics. The postgraduate course would be starting in September. He wanted Charity to come along with him as his wife.
I listened to him broadcasting his well-calculated plans and thought to myself, what a fool.
He kept talking. His voice started sounding as annoying as a toddler crying on the plane during an all-night flight. I stopped listening and started wondering. Finally, I reached a conclusion. There could only be one reason why my young, intelligent, beautiful, naive, unassuming, impressionable sister would want to marry this cradle-snatching slug. He had a British passport. This Anglo-Nigerian was her ticket to a better world - a marriage proposal attached to a magic carpet.
The whirring noise in my ears suddenly ceased. The man had finished his ditty. Out of curiosity - strictly out of curiosity - I asked him one last question.
‘What about her education? What will happen if she gets married now and has to leave the country?’
Of course he had that all planned out, too.
‘That’s not a problem. She can transfer to some schools in London. Or she can just start right from the beginning. It all depends how long we’ll remain in the UK.’
I nodded. The man was not such a fool, after all.
‘I plan to go and see your mother in Umuahia by next week,’ he said.
Because I was opara - and in my father’s absence, the head of the family - he had come to see me first.
When he was ready to leave, Charity accompanied me in seeing him off. As his brand new Honda slid out of my gates, she took my hand in hers and looked up shyly. She was anxious to know what I thought of her beau.
‘He’s OK,’ I replied as we walked back into the house. ‘He’s quite OK.’
‘Do you know that he’s a British citizen?’ she asked, her eyeballs swollen with visions of a magnificent future in El Dorado.
‘Yes. He told me.’
We sat in the living room, pretended that we had both forgotten about Johnny, and watched a Nollywood movie about a girl who was engaged to a boy that she did not know was the child her mother had abandoned by the riverside twenty-three years ago. Just as Charity was slotting in Part 4, I invited her into my bedroom. We sat side by side on the bed.
‘Charity,’ I began, ‘how did you say you met Johnny?’
‘I met him through a friend at school,’ she began excitedly, almost out of breath. ‘In fact you even know her. Thelma.’
Who on earth was Thelma?
‘She was one of those who came with us on my matriculation day. The one that sat next to you at the restaurant.’
Ah! The girl whose breasts were as big as if she were nine months pregnant with twins, who had kept digging her foot into my calf. And winking each time I looked up, oblivious to Godfrey slobbering across the table. The only reason why I did not follow up was because she was not my type and I did not want to just fool around with my little sister’s friend.
‘Oh, yes. I remember her,’ I said.
‘She’s known Johnny’s people for a very long time and she says they’re from a good family.’
In other words, his family were neither osu nor ohu. None of their ancestors had been dedicated as slaves to the pagan gods of any shrine, none of their ancestors had been slaves to other families. And so we nwadiala, freeborn, were not forbidden from marrying amongst them. The first thing my father’s sisters had wanted to know when I told them about Ola was whether or not she was osu. But with Johnny, I had other concerns.
‘How long have you known him?’ I asked.
‘We’ve known each other for four months,’ Charity replied. ‘He’s reeeeally nice.’
She placed an emphasis on the ‘really’, as if to distinguish between his own and the other types of niceness that exist. I nodded to show that I understood.
‘Do you like him?’
‘I love him,’ she answered swiftly and confidently.
I nodded again. Something caught my eyes. Her matriculation photograph in a silver picture frame on the dresser beside my bed. She was wearing the mauve gown and cap that she had hired from the university. She was smiling in a juvenile way that showed her dazzling white teeth like a crescent moon in the sky. Charity had eventually misplaced the cap and I had had to pay a ridiculous amount to the school for its replacement. She told me that my unrestrained expense at the fancy restaurant had been the talk of her friends at school for days.
‘Why do you want to get married now?’ I continued.
She frowned.
‘Because . . . because I’ve met someone I love,’ she answered stupidly.
‘You’re not even up to twenty.’ I did not wait for her to answer. ‘Charity, there’s no need to make any rash decisions that you may later regret. Look at you. You’re bright, beautiful, and you have your whole future ahead of you. Even if you say you love him, it doesn’t matter. You’ll definitely find another person that you can also fall in love with. Life goes on and you won’t die.’
The attentiveness on her face did not alter. Neither did she look like she was going to cry. I decided it was safe for me to push ahead.
‘Charity, remember that you don’t have to be as desperate as so many other girls are. There’s nothing for you to escape from.’ I paused. ‘Charity, look at me.’
She lifted her gaze and stared into my eyes.
‘Charity, you know I have money. OK? Plenty of it. Just focus on your studies and forget about a husband for now. OK?’
She nodded.
‘I have nothing against Johnny,’ I lied. ‘But no matter how far you want to go . . . if it’s Harvard or Cambridge . . . there’s no problem. My money can take you there . . . and you’ll be able to make better choices. Do you hear me?’
Charity sat frozen, so I took her in my arms and squeezed her tight. She placed her head against my chest and folded her arms into my embrace.
Right there and then, I realised that Ola was wrong. My sacrifice was worth it.
‘OK?’
Her head moved up and down against my chest. We were silent for a while.
‘Charity, do you want to go to London next summer?’
She looked up at me with awestruck eyes.
‘I’ll arrange a visa for you. We can travel together.’
She stretched her arms around my torso and hugged me.
Suddenly, I noticed that the matriculation photograph in the silver frame on the dresser was starting to swim in front of me. Then a drop of water tapped my cheek. I had not realised I was crying.
By two o’clock in the morning, I was still awake. I got out of bed, went quickly to my dressing table, and flipped open my wallet. I wavered. After a long glance, I removed the photograph. That Kingsley whose arms were once wrapped around Ola at the Mr Bigg’s eatery on Valentine’s Day had been standing guard in my heart for too long and preventing a successor from taking his place. It was now time for him to give way. Henceforth, he did not exist.
Before climbing back into bed, I tore the photograph into shreds.
Thirty-eight
I had tried to keep track of their names. After Camille, there was Jackie. Then Imabong, then Chichi, Precious, Amaka . . . These days, I no longer bothered to ask. Today’s girl was getting up to go to the bathroom when I noticed that her right foot had a big toe that was much, much smaller than all her other toes.
The one thing these strange girls had in common was that they were all undergraduates of the neighbouring universities and poly-technics. They were forced to exchange their bodies for cash in order to bear the burdens of survival in school. Interestingly, of the girls that Camille sent, the ones drenched from head to toe in Fendi and Gucci and Chanel, were usually the ones who carted off all the soap and shampoo and body lotion from my bathroom, and the Cokes and bottled water from my fridge, on their way home. One particular girl had even stolen the pack of toothpicks, and the roll of tissue paper from the holder on the wall.
My cellular rang. It was Aunty Dimma.
‘Kingsley Ibe! What kind of child are you?’
Her voice singed my ears.
‘Aunty, what do you mean?’
‘What do you mean by what do I mean? I find it difficult to believe that you, of all people, have turned out like this. Men! You people are all the same.’
‘Turned out like how?’
‘So you think your lifestyle is normal? You actually think your lifestyle is normal? That’s the problem with money. It’s an evil spirit. Kingsley Ibe, I don’t like the person you’ve become!’
What made her think I liked the person she had become? She used to be less opinionated and less aggressive. If Aunty Dimma so badly wanted to be a man, she could at least try being a gentleman.
‘Aunty, why are you shouting at me?’
‘Kingsley, when last did you visit your mother?’
Her question threw me off balance.
‘Errrr . . . I’ve . . . She . . .’
‘Kingsley, I’m asking you. When last did you visit your mother?’
‘Aunty, I’ve been very bu—’
She detonated.
‘Busy doing what?! What is so busy about your life that you can’t travel down to Umuahia and see your mother regularly? Is that too much to ask of a first son?’
I was defeated.
‘OK, Aunty, I’ll go and see her this weekend.’
‘You can’t wait until weekend. Go today! Your mother hasn’t been feeling well.’
I swung my feet to the floor. The girl came out of the bathroom wearing nothing. My heart slammed against my chest. It had nothing to do with the temptation in front of me.
‘Not feeling well? What’s wrong with her?’
‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Aunty, please.’
‘You should have been the first person to know. You should have been the one calling to tell me. But you’re too busy. Busy making money for that criminal.’ She paused to suck in a breath. ‘She’s been having eye trouble. I’m just coming from Umuahia. I spent the past two days with her.’
She ranted some more. I apologised. She terminated the call halfway through my apology. I sprang up from the bed.
‘Is everything OK?’ the naked girl asked.
I had actually forgotten that she was there.
‘Get dressed,’ I replied. ‘I need to go out now.’
‘Would you like me to wait for you?’
Never. Apart from the Cokes and toilet paper, it had taken a pair of Prada slippers, 100mls of Issey Miyake perfume, a pack of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and $3,500 cash for me to learn. These strange girls were never to be left alone.
‘Get dressed,’ I said.
I jangled my car keys and waited for her to gather her clothes. When she was through, I removed five $100 bills from my wallet and pushed them into her palm. She stuffed the money into her Ferragamo handbag and walked out ahead of me.
My mother was lying flat on her back. I held her hand and stroked her face. Her eyes were red and swollen.
‘Kings, how was your trip?’
My trip to America had gone very well. It was my neuroscientist mugu’s turn to visit Nigeria next. America was all that Cash Daddy had said it would be and more, but I was glad when my stay eventually came to an end. With the mighty portions of food they served in American restaurants, it would only have been a matter of time before my bathroom scale started reading to-be-continued when I stepped on it. No wonder many shrivelled Nigerians who visited yonder returned massive overnight.
‘Mummy, how are you? How are you feeling?’