On Black Sisters Street (24 page)

The man behind the bar said something to Madam, who cupped her ear. “I can’t hear you,” she said.

“Just one moment. I be with you. One moment,” he shouted above the music, raising his index finger to indicate one. He smiled at Madam.

“Okay.” Madam smiled back and, leaning into the bar, said something to him in Dutch. The barman laughed. While Sisi waited, she scanned the room. In the stomach of the café were eight square tables. Each table had about four or so men. Each man had at least one female companion hanging around his neck, sitting on his lap, or simply standing behind him. Toward the back of the café was a jukebox. A young woman in tight trousers and a tank top sat on a stool beside the jukebox, tapping her feet to the music
boom-booming
into the room.

The woman had a small toylike black mobile phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her hair extensions came down to way past her shoulders. Sisi wondered why she was alone. Was she also a madam? Was she patrolling her girls? Making sure they behaved? Keeping an eye on her investment? She looked young. Too young to have her own girls. But rich enough to be no one’s girl.

It struck Sisi that the café was a study in opposites. Men/women. White/black. Old/young. Apart from five men, the rest of them did not look a day younger than forty. Sisi would learn later that the older men made better customers. Ama would tell her later, “Young men want lovers. Who wants to be a lover for nothing? Old men just come
to be fulfilled. They are not looking for love. They pay to get what they want. Some of them are widowers. Some have wives who no longer want to give action. They come here, and we are the Viagra they need to face the world again. Young men, ah, they have energy, they have dreams. All they want is love. And love is not what we give in this job. It’s not part of the job description.” Ama would slap her thighs and laugh. Her laughter would ring with the hollowness of an empty shell and move Sisi close to tears.

Madam tapped Sisi on her shoulder. Lightly, like the flutter of a butterfly, but with urgency and authority. The man behind the bar had extricated himself and, to Sisi’s surprise, was not as portly as he had looked while behind the counter. He was almost as slim as Segun, and Sisi realized that what had made him seem bigger was his stomach. He had a beer belly the size of an advanced pregnancy, but the rest of him was quite slender. He walked ahead of them to an office at the back of the café: a door beside the toilet that Sisi had not noticed. In the glare of the office fluorescent light, Sisi saw that crumbs of something brown were stuck on his mustache. She wondered what he had been eating. Bread, maybe? He smiled at the two women, his teeth gleaming at them. He nodded, raked his fingers through straight black hair, brought out his hand, and traced Sisi’s figure.

“Very good, Madam, very good. She knows the drill?
Ja
? Here, the
klanten
 … how you say
klanten
?” He turned to Madam, and she provided the lost word. “Customers.” “Yes, customers. Thank you. The customers, they come first, ja? Make them drink. Make them buy lots of drinks. Much much drinks. Expensive drinks. You give me business, I give you business, no?” He winked at Madam and, with an arm around Sisi, led the two women back into the café. Sisi, unused to high heels, staggered on the silver stiletto sandals that sparkled as she walked, moving her buttocks in the way that she had seen models do on TV, feeling more self-conscious than she had thought she
would be. “Smile,” Madam whispered furiously to her, and Sisi took a deep breath, tucked in her stomach, and donned the smile that would become her trademark in her profession.

A man in a striped shirt smiled back. He was leaning against the wall, a bottle of beer in his hand. His smile was urgent, and Madam half pushed Sisi to his table and then barreled out of the café, vanishing into the night. She had some other business to see to, she said, and Sisi was to behave herself. Sisi pulled on her skirt in a vain attempt to stretch it farther down her thighs, but the skirt stayed put, and Sisi lost her smile.

“Hello, beautiful.” The man in the striped shirt grinned at her, gesturing her to an empty chair beside him. “What’s your name?”

“Eh?”

“Name? Your name?” He spoke into her ear.

“Sisi.”

Sisi sat down and tried to regain her smile. She stretched her lips and parted them. Like a weak flame, the smile came, faltered, and died out. She was a woman sinking. How could she smile while she sank? What on earth was she doing here? Smiling at this stranger for whom she felt nothing but who would probably have her tonight. She had slept with only two people in her entire life. Kunle, her boyfriend before Peter, when she was eighteen and experimenting, and Peter. What would Peter think if he saw her now? Tears found their way to her eyes. She was not doing this because she liked it, she reminded herself. But she was here now, and there was no going back. She clenched her teeth and tried again to smile. Her lips, as if made out of straw, cracked, and the smile splintered. “See See? Beautiful name.” The man chuckled. “Beautiful name for beautiful lady. You want a drink? See See?” He said the name as though it were something scrumptious he had on his tongue and was unwilling to let go of. Sisi nodded. “Yes, a drink would be good. Something cold. Thank you.”

It was hot inside the café, although on the streets you could tell it was already September: The weather was cool without being really cold. “Wait until October,” Ama had warned Sisi earlier in the day. “That’s when the cold sets in, and it doesn’t let off until the next summer. You’ll be talking, and smoke will be coming out of your mouth, as if you’ve eaten fire. And by the time it gets to December, I tell you, no amount of fire will keep you warm.” Sisi had wanted to ask then about the snow, whether it came in December, and was it as beautiful as it looked on TV? All soft and edible, like soursop. But she had not asked. After all, she would be in Antwerp to see it whenever it came. It would be her story to tell someone else. She would be here. She would see snow and winter and meet her destiny. She had the willpower. When this man came back, she would pick up the splinters of her smile and make them whole again.

She watched him walk up to the bar. Now that he had his back turned, Sisi thought that his buttocks looked as if he had diapers on. She chuckled, the vision of the man in diapers momentarily relieving her of unease at the thought of how the night would develop further. Even if she had not had Peter, she told herself, this was not the type of man she would have slept with. She did not find him attractive at all. His face was too wide, his eyes too far apart. What sort of man would go to a prostitute, anyway? Could he not find a woman? At least she was doing it for the money. She had no other choice. What had pushed this man to seeking pleasure between the thighs of a woman he most likely would not recognize outside the café? Laziness? Too ugly to find a woman? What?

A man in a dark brown shirt open over a black singlet passed by on his way to the toilet. His female companion danced behind him, sticking her pelvis in the face of a bespectacled man sitting at one of the tables. He smiled at her. She laughed and licked her lips. “I will wait for you here,” Sisi heard her shout to her companion. Twisting at the waist, she went down until her knees were on the floor. Someone
applauded her. Overcome by the music, she shut her eyes, thrust her chest out, and jounced her breasts. A whistle greeted this. Her companion turned back and grinned at her before disappearing into the toilet. He had a few front teeth missing. From the back, the grayness of his ponytailed hair melted into his shirt. He could hardly walk straight, and Sisi wondered if his posture was from age or from drink.

The man with the striped shirt returned with two bottles of Stella Artois. “Come, we sit at a table.”

Sisi did not usually drink beer. Apart from the fact that it had been too expensive a habit for her to cultivate back in Lagos, she did not appreciate its salty bitterness. It did not lift her to any heights. She had often wondered why people drank bottle after bottle of the stuff. Now she wondered if she would start drinking bottle after bottle to forget. But forget what? There were worse things to become, she reminded herself. She was not a robber, not a cheat, not a 419er sending deceitful e-mails to gullible Westerners. She would make her money honestly. Every cent of it would be earned by her sweat. She did not need to enjoy her job, but she would do it well. She said thank you for the drink as the man poured out some beer for her in a glass. She drank it in one gulp and hoped it would numb her senses or at least make the man before her look attractive. He smiled at her and refilled the glass, emptying the bottle. “My name is Dieter,” he said as he picked up his glass and took a sip. Foam gave him a mustache on his upper lip for an instant. He did not look desirable. Sisi lifted the glass, tilted her head, and once more drained the glass in one go. Its coldness masked some of the bitterness. He still did not look desirable. Dieter got up, went to the bar, and came back with another bottle. “You don’t talk much, do you, See See?” he asked, refilling her glass a third time.

“No.” Sisi shook her head. She struggled to smile, but the splinters rejected her attempts to make them whole, to bring them back to
life. They disintegrated like baby ghosts floating about the room and finally disappearing into the gloom.

“Your voice is beautiful. Like you,” Dieter told her, reaching across the table to touch her right cheek, his palm clammy. Sisi’s natural instinct was to shake it off, but in her new life common sense ruled over instinct, so she left it there. She tried to force herself to imagine that it was Peter’s palm, that she and Peter were married and had simply gone out for a drink. It did not work. Dieter’s hand slipped and moved to her neck. He ran his fingers down the outside of her neck, all the time muttering, “Beautiful. Beautiful.” His eyes bulged out, and shifting on his chair, he moved his hand to her breast, cupping each one in turn.
I can’t do this
, Sisi thought. She sat still, her glass of beer untouched before her, her heart heavy with a sadness that felt like rage. She imagined she was in a dream. But she would never let this man into her dreams. She could no longer make out which music was playing, as her ears were filled with the rush of a waterfall.

This is not me. I am not here. I am at home, sleeping in my bed. This is not me. This is not me. This is somebody else. Another body. Not mine. This is not me. This is somebody else. Another body
. Dieter got up and motioned for her to follow him.
This is not me. This is not me. This is a dream. But I need the money. I can’t do this. The money. Return to Lagos? Can’t. Won’t?
She tottered behind him, averting her eyes from his buttocks, her sadness abysmal.

This is not me. I am not here. I am at home, sleeping in my bed. This is not me. This is not me
. A Lexus sparkled in her head.
Think of the money
. Then a candlewick with a human body.
God help me!

In a men’s toilet with lavender toilet paper littering the floor, soggy (with urine?), and a shiny black toilet seat, Dieter pulled his trousers down to his ankles. A flash of white boxers. A penis thundering against them. A massive pink knob. Sisi gawked. Everything she had heard about the white man’s flaccidity, his penis as small as a
nose (so that the greatest insult she could heap on an annoying schoolmate was that he had the penis of a white man), was smashed. He heaved and moaned; one hand tore at his boxers and the other at Sisi’s skirt. His breath warm against her neck, his hands pawing every bit of her; he licked her neck. Sisi shut her eyes. Raising his head, he stuck his tongue into her ear. In. Out. In. Out. Eyes shut still, she tried to wriggle out of his embrace. She did not want to do this anymore. “I don’t need this. Stop!” she said. He held her close. Pushed her against the wall, his hands cupping her buttocks, and buried his head in her breasts. “Stop,” she shouted again. Eyes open, she saw his face, his mouth open and his jaws distended by an inner hunger. “Stop!” His moans swallowed her voice. His penis searched for a gap between her legs. Finding a warmth, he sighed, spluttered sperm that trickled down her legs like mucus, inaugurating Sisi into her new profession. She baptized herself into it with tears, hot and livid, down her cheeks, salty in her mouth, feeling intense pain wherever he touched, as if he were searing her with a razor blade that had just come out of a fire. Her nose filled with the stench of the room, and the stench filled her body and turned her stomach, and she did not care whether or not she threw up. But she did not. The revulsion stayed inside and expanded, and she felt a pain, a tingling, start in her toes. The pain that could not be contained began to spread out around her and rise, taking over everything else. Even the sound of her heartbeat.

ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT | JOYCE

THE DAY THEY GOT INTO LAGOS, POLYCARP ASKED ALEK WHAT SHE
thought of it.

She thought this: Too many people. Too many houses. An excess of everything. Nothing was organized. It reminded her of a drawing by an enthusiastic child with very little talent. Houses juggled for space, standing on one another’s toes, so close that Alek feared you could hear your next-door neighbor breathing. The building that housed their flat was long and small, so that even on the balcony she felt claustrophobic. Yet she knew they could have had worse. She went to Isale Eko in her first week and saw houses standing lopsided next to one another like wobbly tables knocked together by an amateur carpenter, and naked children running around with knobbly belly buttons. Polycarp had told her then that some of the houses had no bathrooms. “And this is Lagos in the twenty-first century! Lagos in 2004!” He had sniggered. “All our government is good for is stuffing their pockets. They don’t care what happens to the people they are supposed to be ruling.” If she had told Sisi this, she would have said that Polycarp sounded like her father.