On Black Sisters Street (16 page)

She wanted to go to London. She had seen pictures of London Bridge on TV. Her other choices were Las Vegas. Or Monaco. She heard the names once in a song playing from the music store across the road:

So I must leave, I’ll have to go

To Las Vegas or Monaco

The names sounded elegant, like places where people walked around all day well dressed and doing nothing more strenuous than carrying a handbag. She imagined telling people she lived in Las Vegas. She imagined Las Vegas air blowing her hair across her face and tickling her nose. She imagined being in Monaco, all rich and
grown up, without the huge menacing presence of her father, drinking and smoking in defiance of her father’s rules, shaking and twisting to the devil’s music.

When Ama did leave home, thirteen years later, it was neither to Las Vegas nor to Monaco. It was to Lagos. Bigger and wider than Enugu. It was a good place to start from.

The events that led to her leaving home had nothing to do with her long-harbored wish to escape. She’d had no hand in the events that set the wheels of her freedom in motion. At least not intentionally.

AMA WAS TIRED AND HOPED TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP ON THE BUS. SHE HAD
to be at the Ekene Dili Chukwu bus stop at five in the morning in order to catch the earliest bus to Lagos. At that time of the morning even Enugu was chilly, temperatures dipping almost as low as sixty-two degrees. Ama buttoned up her cardigan, raising the collar up to her ears, where the cold bit her the worst. Her stomach let out angry grumbles from being empty. There had been no time for breakfast, even if she had been offered one. She had managed to take a bath only because she had stayed awake all night, rushing into the bathroom at the first hint of dawn, daring the cold water, which gave her goose pimples as huge as chicken pox bumps.

She tried to steer her mind away from the hunger that was starting to make her feel a bit weak. She could pretend she was fasting, one of the numerous mortifications her father often imposed on the family to purge them of their sins.
My father
, she thought.
But he’s not my father. He’s just the useless man my mother married. I’m well rid of him. I’m well rid of both of them
. This was what she had always wanted. So why did she not feel as elated as she had always imagined she would be? She could not be sorry to be leaving her mother.
What has she ever done for me? She let that man rule her, let him ruin my
life. She did nothing. Nothing to help me. What sort of a mother is that?
Yet when she thought of her mother, she felt miserable and cold. She kept her eyes away from the many hawkers filling the depot. A little girl carrying on her head a wide tray piled with loaves of bread wrapped in see-through plastic walked up to her. “Sister,
gote
bread.” Ama waved the barefoot hawker away, watching almost sadly as the girl went up to another waiting passenger. “Sweet sweet bread, sah. Buy my bread.” She watched as the man helped the girl—she could not be more than eight years old—off-load the tray from her head, watched as the man chose a loaf, and turned her head resolutely away from him as he began to tear into it. Ama was hungry but did not dare to buy food, as she did not want to start spending the little money she had. Eight hours was a long time to be on the road, and she wanted to be sure she had money in case there was nobody to meet her at the bus depot in Lagos. After everything she had heard about the city, it would be unwise to enter it completely penniless. Lagos was not a place to rely completely on the kindness of strangers. All the songs about Lagos said so:

Lagos na no man’s land, Lagos na waya
.

For Lagos, man pikin no get sista or broda
.

For Lagos, na orphan I be. Lagos na waya aaa
.

She was relieved when the bus doors yawned open and the call was made for passengers bound for Lagos to enter. The driver, chewing gum in mouth, seemed eager to leave. Ama was pleased. She wanted to be as far away from Enugu as possible. The conductor, a thickset man who looked better suited to work on a farm than on a luxury bus, shepherded the passengers in, turning back a man who had a he-goat tethered around his wrist.
Mba
. “No goats allowed on the bus,” the conductor shouted, halting the man’s progress onto the bus with a palm on his chest. The would-be passenger’s red cap faltered
on his head and he held it in place with his free hand, extending his hand upward to ensure that the feather stuck in it was still in place. The goat bleated as if in anger. The man croaked, “I’m a chief. How dare you lay your hands on me? Even if you have no respect for age, show some respect for royalty. See my eagle feather?”

“Royalty, my foot,” the conductor spat out, pushing the man firmly out of the way so that Ama, who was behind him, could enter. “You are the chief of your shitty buttocks.
Eze ike nsi
. That feather on your cap is a vulture’s!” He guffawed as the man complained that he had paid for a seat, the conductor had no right to turn him back. “This is not one of those nonsense buses where you can come in with your goats and your rams. Bushman. This is
eggzecutive
bus.
Eggzecutive
. We don’t want goats and rams shitting all over the place. Does this look like a
gwongworo
? This is
eggzecutive
. We’ll give you your money back. Bushman.” There was scattered laughter, and someone made a joke about chieftaincy titles being for sale; even a dog could have one as long as it had an owner willing to pay. Ama felt sorry for the chief, but what could she do? She got in and sat down on the first free seat she saw, grateful to be out of the cold. The conductor stood at the door and shouted that there was still room on the bus. “Lagos. One more
nyash
! Lagos, one more
nyash
!” He waited for a minute or two to see if there were any takers. There weren’t. He shut the door and hit the side of the bus, and the driver started to ease out slowly onto the road. Hawkers had milled around the bus as it filled, and when it started to move they chased it, urging customers to buy their wares.
Sweetbread. Moi-moi. Special moi-moi. Banana. Buy banana. Peanut. Orange. Honey orange
. Most of them were young girls. One or two were women about Ama’s mother’s age. The woman beside Ama stretched her hand out of the open window to take possession of a wrap of
akara
she had just bought. Her bangles rattled. She smelled of clothes that had stayed too long in a box. It was a mixture
of staleness and camphor. The smell irritated Ama, and she began to wish she had a window seat. The bus gained speed, and the depot in Uwani and the hawkers and the people who had come to see friends and relatives off disappeared from view as it rounded a bend and joined the long, slow traffic out of Enugu. Outside the cathedral, the beggars were already up. A woman with a scarf that was going awry on her head held a melancholic baby on her hip with one hand and with the other extended a metal begging bowl toward the bus. “
Nyenu m ego
. Give me money, please. God go bless you.
Chukwu gozie gi.
” The conductor screamed at her to get away from the
eggzecutive
bus. “Ga, go and tell the man that got you pregnant to look after you.
Anu ofia
. Wild animal. If you spread easily like butter, you get what you deserve.”

The woman beside Ama shouted at the conductor that did he not know it was men like him, men with jobs and homes, who got such women pregnant and left them to their lot? Some dissenting voices rose, and a loud one said that everybody knew men could not control themselves, it was not in their nature. “
Umu nwoke bu nkita
. Dogs! That’s what men are!” It was up to women to make sure they did not put themselves in a position where they would be used. A woman with a broad face and a huge pimple on her chin, across the aisle from Ama, told of her neighbor’s daughter who was raped. “When they said she was raped, me, I was not surprised. ‘Why would she not be raped?’ I asked the mother. The things she allowed the girl to wear.
Tufia!
Dresses that showed her thighs. Blouses that stuck to her, hugging her everywhere so you could see her breasts standing at attention, saluting everything that passed by. Why would she not be raped?
Biko
, let me hear word.”

Voices rose in support. The woman beside Ama tried to shout above the din. Sensing that she was losing ground, she turned desperately to Ama for support. “
Oro eziokwu?
Is what I’m saying not
true? Men cannot keep those things between their legs still. And it is men from homes who do this. You think it’s their fellow beggars who are busy trying to survive that sleep with them?
Mbanu
. No.”

Ama made some noncommittal murmurs that she hoped would satisfy the woman and at the same time stop her from trying to engage Ama in conversation. She had no inclination to be drawn into the argument. She did not want to think of men. Or of rape. Or of her father who was not really her father. As if to signal her withdrawal from the discussion that had taken over the bus, the woman unwrapped her parcel of
akara
, spreading out the crumpled newspaper wrapping on her lap, smoothing it so that the six bean-cake balls lay displayed, balls of molded gold. Its aroma hit Ama straightaway, intensifying her hunger.
“Welu ofu.”
The woman offered her a ball. Ama smiled politely and said no, thank you. The woman urged her: “It’s too much for me.
O rika. Welu.
” Ama kept her smile while protesting that she had no hunger, she’d had a heavy meal before leaving her house. “Rice. You know how rice sits in the stomach for hours.”

“True,” the woman agreed. She prodded the balls with a finger, chose one, and raised it to her mouth. She bit into it, exposing a creamy white inside. “Hmm.
O soka
. Delicious,” she announced through a mouthful. Ama’s stomach rumbled and she closed her eyes, anticipating sleep to overwhelm the hunger now that the bus had become still again. Sleep did not come, but she resolutely kept her eyes closed. It was a shame that she could not pinch her nostrils shut, too. She heard the woman wrap up her food, and then she asked Ama, “Are you sleeping?” Ama nodded, determinedly keeping her eyes shut still. “You are lucky. I can’t sleep in a moving car. I wish I could. I haven’t slept all night.”

That makes two of us
, Ama thought, willing the woman to let her be. She figured that if she kept quiet the woman would stop talking and allow her to sleep in peace.

“I’m going to America. I mean, I’m going to the embassy for my visa interview,” the woman announced.

Ama said nothing, hoping she would catch the hint. The woman did not, for she continued, “But I’ll get the visa. My son says this is just a formality. He knows these things. He knows the Americans. He has been living in America for eighteen years. Eighteen years. He is American now. Even when he talks to us on the phone, I can hardly understand him.
Supri supri
, that’s how he talks now. Wanna. Gonna. Momma.” She laughed and continued. “Next month I leave for America.”

Her voice rose at “America,” and the passenger in front of her turned back to give her a quick look. America was coveted. It was the promised land that many heard of but only the chosen few got to see. Ama gave up and opened her eyes. She realized that there was no hope of getting any sleep unless the woman fell asleep herself, but the way she was going there was very little hope of that happening. She was one of those who would carry on a monologue with the dead.

As the bus entered Awka and joined the highway to Onitsha, the woman began to talk about her family: her children in America and her husband in the village. She was afraid of going to America. Of the flight. Of going to a foreign country. Of having to stay with her only son and his white wife. What would she eat? What would they talk about? Why had he married a woman whose background they knew nothing about? Whose background they could not check? Nobody knew her parents, what sort of people they were. What if they had been criminals? Lepers?
Osu
, outcasts, even? Her husband had been heartbroken when the son sent them news of his impending marriage three years ago, enclosing a picture of a woman with hollow eyes who was so skinny that it was impossible to imagine her ever being able to carry a pregnancy. What had attracted their son to this woman when he could have had any woman he wanted? How could those skinny hips keep a baby? But she had, much to the woman’s amazement,
carried pregnancies full-term and delivered healthy babies. She had given her son children. As an only son, he had the duty to perpetuate the family line, to live up to his name, Afamefuna:
May my name never be lost
. It was his obligation to enrich the lineage with children, but not children from a white woman. In any case, she was looking forward to meeting her grandchildren. It had been difficult for her to accept, but
nwa bu nwa
. A child is a child. She was going to see all her grandchildren. Her son’s two, Harry and Jimmy. What sort of names were those for boys who would grow into men? And the other eight scattered all over the States. Her three daughters had done well, marrying men from their town, men whose families they knew. If only the son had done the same, she and her husband would have had nothing to worry about. “It’s bad advice,” she said. “Someone advised my son wrongly, and I curse that person, whoever he is. May his eyes never see good. May his stomach bloat until it bursts. May he shit fat worms until he enters the grave.” Her son had always been sensible, right from a very young age, she said, and could not have made such a wrong choice if not for the wrong sort of people around him. “The road is far,
uzo eteka,
” she added wearily, “or I would have seen to it that the wedding never took place.” Her breath hit Ama in the nose, filling her nostrils with the smell of
akara
. She could not decide which of the two was worse: the smell of
akara
or of stale clothes.

The woman was still talking two and a half hours later when the bus stopped in Onitsha to pick up some more passengers. Ama wondered where the three women who had entered would sit, as all the seats seemed occupied. She watched as the conductor hauled three squat stools from somewhere under the bus and set them at the back in the aisle. She had not thought that Ekene Dili Chukwu did
attach
, too: Passengers paid a fraction of the full fare for the privilege of sitting on those stools, earning the driver and the conductor some extra money. Ama wondered if the stools were not uncomfortable. As if in
response to Ama’s unasked question, one of the three attach passengers stretched her legs out in front of her and was scolded by the conductor, who told her that she was not in her kitchen or in her bedroom. “This is
eggzecutive
bus!”