On Black Sisters Street (6 page)

When his words sank in, she expected to be furious. To ask him what type of girl he thought she was. To say, “Do you know I have a university degree? Do you know I am a graduate?”

She expected that her anger would give her the courage to slap his fat face. She expected to want to smash his mobile phones through his double-glazed windows. She waited for the hurricane of anger that would drive her to start breaking things and shout, “Stupid, useless man.
Oloshi!
Old man wey no get shame.” Instead, images flashed in front of her like pictures from a TV show: the living room with the pap-colored walls. A shared toilet with a cistern that never contained water; anyone wishing to use the latrine had to first of all fetch a bucket of water from the tap in the middle of the compound. A kitchen that did not belong to her family alone. Her father folded, trying to be invisible. Her mother’s vacant eyes interested in nothing. Finally, she saw Peter and the way he was easing into the lot life had thrown at him, floating on clammy handshakes with government officials who presented him with the Employee of the Year award. She knew that he would, like her father, never move beyond where he was. She did not want to be sucked into that life. She imagined her life, one year from now, if she stayed in Lagos. But could she really resort to
that
? She was not that sort of girl. She turned to go, but her feet stuck in the quicksand. They would not move.

Dele looked up at her. Smiled. “You fit sleep on it. No need to decide now. But I swear, with your melons, you go dey mint money anyhow!”

Rather than rant and rave, she took in his words with a calm that assured her she would do as he said. Staying on in Ogba was biding time until what? Until she married Peter and moved in with him and the rest of his family? That was worse than Dele’s proposition.
Certainly. But was she really capable of
this
? There had to be another way. Something else she could do.

She did not tell Peter or her family the details of her meeting with Dele. She told them that he was a benevolent uncle of one of her friends.
Ezinne. You remember Ezinne? The girl with buckteeth. You must remember her. We used to study together every Wednesday evening to prepare for our SSCEs
. No one seemed to recollect Ezinne, the girl with the buckteeth, but it did not matter. She went on with the story she had ready. Ezinne’s uncle had arranged for her to go abroad, and he would help her get work, and she would pay him monthly. She did not tell them that she had decided already to adopt a name that she would wear in her new life. Sisi. “Sister” in Shona. Roland, one of her classmates at the university, had told her that she reminded him of his sister back in Bulawayo. Roland, nostalgic for his home and missing his sister, had called Chisom Sisi throughout the four years they were classmates. She would rename herself. She would go through a baptism of fire and be reborn as Sisi: a stranger yet familiar. Chisom would be airbrushed out of existence, at least for a while, and in her place would be Sisi. She would earn her money by using her
punani
. And once she hit it big, she would reincarnate as Chisom. She would set up a business or two. She could go into the business of importing fairly used luxury cars into Nigeria.

That night her mother thanked God in a voice that brought in the neighbors from both sides. And the white-wearing churchgoing young couple did a dance around the room, clapping and calling on God by twenty-nine different names to let the blessings that had fallen on Chisom fall on them, too. When the woman said “fallen,” she made Chisom think of blessings as something heavy that could crush you, something that could kill. And even though her parents sat in the sitting room, welcoming their guests and shouting a fierce “Amen” at the end of each prayer and singing and dancing, Chisom caught them
looking at each other with defeated eyes, as if they had let down their only daughter. She sensed that they suspected her story was made up, but feared to know the truth, as if they feared the culpability that came with full knowledge. Chisom tried to nudge them into belief by reminding them of what the woman with the future in her eyes had seen. “This is it! How many people get opportunities like this? This is
it
!”

Her father nodded. “Yes. Yes. Indeed, this is
it!
”

Her mother nodded. “Yes. Yes. Very true. Very true.”

Vigorous nodding. Yes! Yes! And behind the ferocious yes-yes nods were thoughts and questions that swirled and eddied and threatened to drag them down.

Her mother rushed into the kitchen. “The mortar cannot wait until tomorrow to be washed. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never get around to it.”

Her father went to bed. “Long day tomorrow at the office.” And in the morning he left for work, his breakfast of yam porridge untouched on the table.

Peter came a lot more often in the coming weeks, shoes dusty from the walk, cheeks bulging with the same plea. “Don’t go. Please. Forget this uncle of your friend’s.” His voice growing fangs at “uncle.” “We shall somehow muddle through. I promise you. I will look after you. I will take you abroad. London. Holland. America. Spain. Whichever one you choose. You know, no condition is permanent. We will make it. I’ll marry you, give you children.”

Chisom said none of the things she wanted to say, like how would he make it, how much would his condition change if he stayed on working at the same school and looked after his five siblings? How would he begin to raise a family?

It was almost as if he were afraid that once she went, he would lose her forever. “I love you and I don’t want to lose you,” he tried.

Peter
, she thought but did not say for fear of hurting him,
right now you’re not the man for me
. She hoped he would not see the impatient
excitement in her eyes, the way they twitched with the thoughts of somewhere far from both him and Ogba.

THE DAY CHISOM LEFT, NO ONE SAW HER OFF AT THE AIRPORT. PETER
had simply stayed away, sending a nine-year-old neighbor of his with a letter that Chisom accepted but refused to read, stuffing it into her handbag. She did not want to have to deal with Peter’s declaration of love as well as the anxiety that was making her cling to her handbag tighter than she needed to. She had not realized that leaving would be this brutal. That she would want, almost harbor a wish, that a hand would stay her. Lagos was a wicked place to be at night, her father said. Especially in a taxi. And her mother concurred. So the taxi that Chisom chartered to take her to the Murtala Muhammed Airport had just her and her meticulously packed suitcase in it. The driver—a man with an Afro that was so high, Chisom feared it would tip him over—was very talkative. He complained of the difficulties of living with two wives and eight children, all of school age. He had inherited the second wife from his dead brother. “Practically
chassis
, almost a virgin. They had not even been married for a year when he died. And the girl is beautiful. Very beautiful. My brother had a sweeteye. But a beautiful woman is expensive to maintain, sista.”

He seemed to think that if Chisom was traveling abroad, she must have money to spare. “My boy is sharp,” he announced proudly. “Six years old, but you should hear the things he says! He is sharp, and I want him to go to school, but how? I can’t pay his school fees with my spittle.” His other children, all girls, went to the government school close to his house. “Cheap but rubbish. That school is not good enough for my son. At all!” He was breaking his back driving round the clock, because a son deserved the best. “You girls are lucky. All you need is a rich man to snap you up, and you are made. But boys? Their life is hard. God punishes us for the sins of Adam.” He gave a
self-mocking laugh and started to turn the knobs on the radio. There was a crackle and Fela’s “Teacher Teacher” came on, hardly audible over the pitter-patter of rain on the windshield. The driver hummed and swayed slightly in his seat, breaking his humming to shout insults at other drivers for almost hitting his car, for cutting in front of him, for driving too slow. “You steal your license?
Oloshi!
T’ief man. Madman. You dey craze?”

Chisom stayed quiet through the journey. She had too much going on in her head to engage in banal conversation with this stranger. Let him sort out whatever mess was going on in his life, what did she have to do with it? Besides, despite all her years of living in Lagos, her Yoruba had never been sure. She still stammered her way through the language. She brought out the letter from Peter and crumpled it up. She reached behind her and stuffed it into the wedge between the backrest and the seat. Let it stay there. She was heading into the lights of her future. She put her hand into the wedge and pushed the letter deeper in, at the same time feeling a release from Peter, so that while she sat there in the taxi, her hand digging deeper and deeper, she suddenly felt immortal. The energy she felt oozing from her, enough to defeat love, enough to repel even death. She was ready to set forth bravely into her future. And it was all thanks to Dele. She owed him her life.

ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT | EFE

EFE DISCOVERED SEX AT SIXTEEN BEHIND HER FATHER’S HOUSE. THAT
first experience was so painful in its ordinariness that she had spent days wanting to cry. She’d had no notion of what to expect, yet she had not thought it would be this lackluster, this painful nothing.

She felt somewhat cheated,
like pikin wey dem give coin wey no dey shine at all at all
. She remembered nothing but a wish that it would not last too long and that the pain between her legs would be very well compensated. The man who held her buttocks tight and swayed and moaned and was responsible for all that pain was forty-five. He was old. Experienced. But, most important, he had money that was rumored to be endless.
Money wey full everywhere like san’ san’
. He had promised Efe new clothes. New shoes. Heaven. Earth. And everything else she fancied between the two as long as she let him have his way. “Jus’ tell me wetin you wan’, I go give you. I swear! You don’ turn my head, dey make me like man wey don drink too much
kai kai
. I go do anytin’ for you. Anytin’!”

The moaning in the backyard was a culmination of two and a half weeks of laying the groundwork since setting eyes on Efe as she admired a tricolored handbag in a stall close to his Everything For Your Hair supermarket: waylaying the girl as she came back from the market loaded with foodstuffs for the week. Offering her a ride in his car.
Buying her a bottle of chilled Coca-Cola when they got stuck in traffic. Smuggling a crisp thousand-naira note into her shy fist as he dropped her off at her home. It was the last act that swayed her. It was not just the money, it was the crispness of it, the smell of the Central Bank still on it, the fact that he had drawn it out of a huge bundle of like notes, so that she believed all the stories she had heard of his enormous wealth. The smell was enough to make anyone giddy.

Efe shut her eyes and thought of the blue jeans she had seen the week before at the secondhand market: with a metallic V emblazoned like something glorious on the left back pocket. Maybe she should ask for a blouse as well. Titus had money, he could afford it. “De money wey I get no go finish for dis my life,” he frequently told her, encouraging her to ask for whatever she desired. His shop did very well. He had no competition when it came to good-quality hair extensions. He was known to have the best weaves. “Straight from India. Not the
yeye
horsehair you see all over this city. I get a hundred percent human hair!” he often boasted, eyes bulging with pride. He said women from all over Lagos stormed his shop for their hair. “Every gal wey you see wit beta weave on, na me.” He thumped his chest three times. “Na me, Titus wey supply am.”

Perhaps she ought to get a blue T-shirt, Efe thought. She had seen a light blue one that would go very well with the jeans. And the shoes to go with the jeans, of course, without saying. Maybe something high-heeled and sleek. Definitely something high-heeled and sleek. Something to make her look like a real Lagos chick, a veritable
sisi Eko
. She would have to get him to bring her some packets of hair extensions from his shop. How long should she make her hair? She imagined herself strutting down the road, going
koi koi koi
in her new shoes, her extensions stretching her hair all the way to her shoulders. She would be a senior chick, one of the big girls Lagos had in abundance: young women who had money enough to burn, theirs or somebody else’s. Maybe she could convince Titus to teach her to
drive and eventually buy her a car. Why not? She could be a car owner, too, a small car with a little teddy bear hanging behind the windshield like in Titus’s car. She saw herself driving the car,
voom voom voom
, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand on the gearshift, as she always saw Titus do. Her lips would be bright and beautiful and a shiny mauve. She loved mauve lipstick but had never owned it. Not yet. But things were about to change, were they not? Titus brought his face down to hers and breathed into her nose. She could smell the mint on his breath. It was not an unpleasant smell, even though at the edges of the breath was the smell of food that had been eaten long ago. Rice? Yam? Beans? Fufu? She tried not to think about the staleness of the breath and concentrated instead on the mintiness. He kissed her on the mouth and wriggled against her. He brought out his tongue and licked the side of her face. His saliva on her face was stale, but she tried not to mind, even thought she ought to enjoy it. Her back, bare on the brick wall, itched. His stomach pressed on hers, and she wished she could push it out of the way.
De man stomach dey like water pot
. There was nothing at all in this whole exercise that made her want a repeat performance. Why did women do it over and over again? Why did the girls at school giggle and glow when they talked about meeting boys behind the school’s pit latrines to do it? When it was finally over, she thought of Titus’s wife. She tried to ignore the pain between her legs, which burned with the sting of an open sore (with fresh ground pepper rubbed into it). Did Titus’s wife have to endure this night after night? Efe had heard that it hurt only the first time, but how could one be sure? Grown-ups did not always tell the truth. Adults were not to be entirely trusted. Look at her mother. Up until the moment she took her last breath, she had promised Efe that she would never leave them.