On Black Sisters Street (29 page)

Segun is their favorite topic of mutual gossip. His clumsiness. His foolish look. How the only time he shines is with a hammer. Lower lip turned out, a hammer in his right hand, a nail in the other.
Klop-klop-klopping
. His hands steady, not making nervous movements like
they do when he talks. Searching. Always searching for words, fists closing to hang on to the words about to slip through. “Ma … aa … d … am s-s-said your do … doo … dooor neee … eeds fix-fi … I mean … fixing!” Feet tapping. Hands moving. When Segun is working away with a hammer, hitting the nails, there is none of that. There is a fluidity to his hand rising and falling with precision that induces admiration, even. When he made a side table for Joyce at Madam’s request (as a birthday present), the women watched in wonder as he produced a table so well made that they had begged Madam to commission him to make tables for them, too.

“E dey be like say he dey listen to the voice of heaven. As if de voice dey command am. Hit. Stop. Hit. Stop,” Efe once said. For how could it be that this man who seems inadequate, inept, in every way, should be so flawless a workman.

Joyce’s mood is broody. “Sisi was no stranger,” she insists.

“Madam with her fucking nose in the air. You want her to come and sit with us here?”

“And Segun, then? You saw her in his car, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But Sisi almost bit my head off for mentioning it! So maybe it was a one-off thing, you know?”

“Even so. They—” Joyce grapples with the air for the right words. Finding none, she says nothing. Just a hiss.

The child outside is no longer shrieking in delight. She is crying now with the propensity of children of a certain age to evoke sympathy with their cries. “Poor kid. I wonder what’s wrong?” Joyce says, almost standing up.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Ama pulls her down. “You want to go and see what’s wrong with another woman’s child? Haven’t you learned anything here? You fucking mind your business. Look at Madam and Segun. Minding their business!”

Joyce wrings her hands. “Madam and Segun are not minding their business. They are being …” She draws out her rag.

“Being fucking what?”

“Dickheads!” The word falls like a surprise from Joyce.

“You don’ begin dey sound like Ama!”

The child is still crying. Joyce says, “I wonder how she died. If she cried for help.”

SISI

SISI HAD BARELY ANY MONEY LEFT FOR HERSELF AFTER PAYING OFF
Dele. And paying her part of the rent on the Zwartezusterstraat. And paying rent on the Vingerlingstraat room she was subletting from Madam. All of Madam’s girls sublet from her. Five hundred and fifty euros a week they paid. She did not see how she could do this job long enough to save anything. It would take her another two months to decide that she could not. And it would not be just the thought of being unable to save that would make her quit.

From eight o’clock at night to eight o’clock the next day, she stood, like the other girls with porcelain smiles, inside her booth, hoping to hook a big fish. She learned to keep her smile from falling and shattering. The story was still being peddled of the Ghanaian prostitute on the Falconplein—not too far from the Vingerlingstraat—who had a client fall in love with her. He was not just any client, he was a rich client. A top footballer or something, Sisi could never be sure, as the profession of the rich client changed with each storyteller, but no matter who told the story, its essence remained the same: The Ghanaian girl did good. He paid off her pimp, married her, and installed her in his villa just outside Brussels. He did everything for her (he even adopted her two children from a previous relationship and brought them over from Accra). She had everything: fancy cars, a
swimming pool, designer clothes, holidays to the South of France, weekend drives to the Ardennes, holiday homes in Morocco and Barcelona, the works. Some people said she did
touch and follow
on him, the sort of juju that good medicine men made, with pubic hair and toenails clipped at dawn, to help women catch men and hold on to them. How else could she have managed to hook such a big fish? To completely transform her infinitesimal life to one of infinite power? She with the body of a rodent and the face of a horse?
Ha-ha-ha
. Anita, the Zimbabwean who worked the window a few doors away from the Ghanaian, said it was definitely
tokoloshi
, like touch and follow but stronger: a root that grows to the height of a baby and all the owner has to do is to send it out for money. “It can get money from everywhere. Even from a man’s privates! I hear the man lets her handle all his accounts.”

Others said she had just plain good luck. It had nothing to do with the tortoise that someone said the Ghanaian woman always had under her bed when she was with that particular client, even though it was common knowledge that a tortoise was an unmissable ingredient in touch-and-follow juju. Together with the hair and nail clippings, of course. Sisi did not care how she did it. She did not even want love. She was not looking for marriage. Just customers who would tip her enough, pay enough, to get her out of the booth, which was giving her cabin fever. She needed lots of customers if she was going to build the house she wanted for her parents. And give her dreams substance. But the customers were not always there.

The Schipperskwartier lost its vivacity in the daytime. With sunlight splashing its rays on it, it had a deserted, windblown look. It looked almost ashamed, as if the light of day exposed it in a way it did not want to be seen: very much like a woman who is not yet comfortable with a new lover being caught on the toilet letting out loud farts. The houses looked sad, on the whole, giving the area a rather desolate, mournful look. The sort of place that made one think of death. Sisi
avoided it in the day, preferring to explore other parts of Antwerp that throbbed in the glare of the sun, full of the energy of a healthy toddler. She took walks alone. Telling her housemates when they asked that she was just going for a breath of air. No, thank you, she would rather go alone.

She liked the Keyserlei, with its promise of glitter: the Keyserlei Hotel with its gold facade and the lines and lines of shops. Ici Paris. H&M. United Colours of Benetton. Fashion Outlet. So many choices. She liked the rush of people, the mixing of skin colors, the noise on the streets. The Jews with their Hasidic discs and their women pushing cherubic babies in strollers with big wheels. They all made her heart race, made her feel alive, a part of this throbbing, living city.

She did not mind the dirt that littered the roads, making her think of graffiti she saw once on the walls of the Central Station:
ANTWERP IS CONSTIPATED
.
It is no longer constipated
, she always thought when she walked down the Keyserlei and came face-to-face with the litter that overflowed from the huge dustbin outside the McDonald’s. It’s
letting out its shit here
. The dirt was part of what made it familiar to her. It was a constant. As were the touts, mainly young males who hung around the eateries along the street, hands inside their coats, saying, “I’ve got a gold chain. Worth four hundred euros. You can have it for a hundred. Okay, how much have you got? I just stole it. Very expensive, give me what you can afford. It’s a genuine article.” As were the beggars, mainly East European women with young children and colorful sweaters, sitting against the walls of the entrance to the metro stations, miming to passersby that they were hungry, that their babies were hungry, and had you nothing to give them? Nothing to drop in the plastic begging bowls before their outstretched legs? Sometimes she dropped fifty-cent coins in the bowls, especially if they had crying babies. At other times she hurried past them, as if on her way to somewhere urgent, the way everybody else rushed, ignoring traffic lights and passing cars. She liked the Pelikaanstraat,
with gold and diamond jewelry calling from the display windows, beckoning to customers,
Look at us, are we not pretty? Look at us, won’t you buy one?
She liked the central square, with its horses and cobbled streets that made her feel like she was in one of those black-and-white films from so long ago. She liked the souvenir shops, with their laces and fancy chocolates and postcards. Sisi imagined she was a tourist, some rich woman who could afford to travel the world for leisure, taking in sights and trying the food. Sometimes she dressed for the role. A cap, sunglasses, a bum bag hanging from her waist, a camera dangling around her neck, and a Dutch phrase book in her hand. On such days she walked into shops and smiled at shopkeepers, who, eager to make a sale, smiled back, all sweetness and light. She was somebody else with a different life. She lived out her fantasies. She drooled over novelty chocolates in the shapes of penises and breasts, telling the shop assistant who sold them, “These are simply amazing. I’ve got to take some back.”

Once she bought a pair of lace booties, telling the woman who sold them that she was visiting from Lagos and had just found out she was pregnant after five years of trying for a baby. The booties would be for her unborn child’s christening. The woman had wrapped up the shoes in utter silence and reverence, stopping only to dab at her glistening eyes with a flower-embroidered handkerchief. Sisi mirrored the woman, delicately dabbing her eyes with a paper tissue, careful not to ruin her makeup.

Another time she bought two kilograms of pralines, gushing to the saleswoman about how excited she was to be in Antwerp. “Your
ciddy
is absolutely gorgeous, darling. I’m having such a wonderful time here that I am worried Paris will be a disappointment. That’s my next stop. Then London on the … the … the train, the Eurostar, that’s it. Doing Europe, you see. We Americans don’t travel half as much as we ought to.” She had giggled girlishly when the saleswoman replied that America was so big, Americans must have their hands full traveling
around America, and said, “You Europeans are so smart. Your English is so good, darling. I wish I spoke another language! Anything. As long as it’s foreign.”

Sometimes she stopped in front of a statue—her favorite was the giant throwing a hand in the middle of the central square—and asked a passerby to take a picture of her. Phrase book open, she throttled out words, intentionally mispronouncing Dutch words and looking appropriately relieved when the passerby asked if she spoke English in impeccable English.

“Oh, yes, I do. Could you take a picture, please? Thank you.” She would smile at the phrase book at her feet and take a picture that she would never develop.

She listened in rapt attention as a man who said he was a through-and-through Antwerpenaar told her the story of the statue: About five hundred years ago or so an unruly giant terrorized the inhabitants of that area, severing the hand of every boatman who could not pay the exorbitant taxes he levied on them for passing by his castle. Then a brave young man came from who knew where and killed the giant and threw his hand into the river Schelde, which ran through the city. The overjoyed inhabitants watched him throw away the hand and named the city Handwerpen, “to throw a hand away,” but along the years, the name became corrupted and transformed itself to Antwerpen.

“Wow, amazing story!” She smiled, her palms on either side of her face, her eyes wide. “That’s so totally amazing. Belgium has so much history for such a tiny country. Thanks ever so much for telling me that story. I’m going to treasure it. How do you say ‘thank you’ in Belgian,
darleen
?”

She did the Pelikaanstraat, entered shops, and coquettishly tried on gold and diamond rings she found unbearably expensive.

“My fiancé has asked me to choose an engagement ring. He’s too busy to come and get one himself. Sometimes I wish he had less
money and more time. It’s Mexico today, Singapore the next. Oh well, I guess a girl can’t have it all. Money or time, which would I rather?” She would laugh high and loud, and the shopkeepers would laugh with her, their laughter softer than hers, a thoughtful demureness that was mindful of the fact that she was the customer, a customer with lots of money who therefore should not be upstaged.

Often she would dangle a smile, bait, in front of the seller, twirling the ring on her finger, raising the finger up to the light, watching the light bounce off it in incredible sparkles of color, miniature miracles of pink and white, saying how much she liked it, turning it this way and that so that it caught the light, before declaring that maybe the stone was a bit too big. Or a tad too small. Or simply that it looked all wrong. She would watch the seller fight to maintain a smile in the face of an almost-sale that fell through, watch the clip-on smile slip, before walking out of the shop, hips and handbag swaying, imagining she was on TV.

She liked the cathedral that was so huge it made her feel small, the size of a grain of rice. She went inside and aimed her camera at paintings she found uninteresting and vulgar—really, all those huge breasts spilling out of clothes were in extremely poor taste—and pretended to take pictures. She traded conspiratorial smiles with tourists who thronged the cathedral, all solemn and wide-eyed, and whispered, “Isn’t it beautiful? Rubens was a brilliant artist!”