She woke to the morning call to prayer from a nearby mosque. The voice, amplified on a loudspeaker, cracked as though it hung from the window of their room. She didn’t have problems with the noise levels of mosques. Her street in Kano had three of them close to their home. The calls were always distant, and over time became the neighbourhood’s alarm clock, because it was when Mama Nkechi, their neighbour, began preparations for the food she sold at the kiosk opposite their gate; when small children washed the plates and pots used the night before, and older children swept the rooms and rinsed the mats they slept on; when they all hurried with their tasks, in time for school at the break of dawn. But the call was louder this time, screeching and stretched out, without ceasing.
‘The noise from the mosque is so loud,’ she said to Ifeoma, who was at her reading table, notebooks splayed out before her.
‘We are used to it. Don’t worry, in one week, you won’t even think about it.’ Ifeoma did not lift her head from her books, but her voice was no longer brittle with the irritation of the day before, the one which showed how upset she was about Ogadinma’s arrival.
Ogadinma returned to bed and pulled the sheet over her body. But she woke again when Aunty Ngozi’s angry voice pierced the air. She was scolding Nnanna, who had stayed up all night to watch TV.
Ifeoma hissed and said, ‘She is awake and we will not hear word.’ Ogadinma was startled by her tone, how anyone could speak of their parents that way. She thought to berate Ifeoma, but she feared that would tear down their silent truce.
Aunty Ngozi entered their room. Ifeoma mumbled, ‘Good morning, Mummy.’
‘Ehen, morning,’ Aunty Ifeoma said. ‘Are you not late for school already, ka ọ bụ na school agụrọ gị agụụ taa?’
‘Mummy, I am going to take my bath now,’ Ifeoma said. She packed up her books and left, her face scrunched up in irritation, her feet shuffling angrily down the passage.
Aunty Ngozi came and sat on the bed and Ogadinma blinked to make sure she was not dreaming. Why was Aunty Ngozi ignoring Ifeoma’s rudeness? Why did she always allow Ifeoma to talk to her elders in such a manner? The women in their compound in Kano would smack the snot off their daughters’ noses if the girls dared to talk back at them that way. Ogadinma quietly pulled the sheets off her body, smiled and asked Aunty Ngozi if she slept well.
‘Nne, I didn’t. This back is beginning to give me problems. My doctor has recommended an orthopaedic mattress. I think I should check that out today.’ Aunty Ngozi sighed. ‘You know what? Tobe will soon be here to pick up Ifeoma. Do you mind joining them? He will drop Ifeoma off at school and then go shopping for the things he needs in his new house. I will tell him to also check out an orthopaedic mattress for me.’
Ogadinma said, ‘Okay, Aunty. I will join them,’ but her heart had begun to thud frantically. She got off the bed, feeling a sudden weakness in her knees. What was she expected to do, since Tobe was the one doing the shopping? The memories of the night before played across her mind. Tobe smiling, looking her straight in the eyes. Their bodies touching. She had felt light in the head when they sat together, and long after he left, the back of her arm still tingled from the touch. Now, she was going to shop with him. She felt a mix of emotions, worry and excitement swirling inside of her until her stomach gurgled.
Sponging her body in the bathroom, she wondered what she was going to wear. She liked to coordinate her outfit before an event – the right shoes or sandals, how best to wear her hair. But this outing was not planned. Back in the room, she changed and discarded dresses, and her clothes lay in a pile at her feet when Ifeoma peeped in moments later. She quickly snatched up a wrapper and threw it over her body, to hide her welts.
‘We have to leave quickly or we will get stuck in traffic and I will be punished if I get to school late,’ Ifeoma said, and left.
Ogadinma settled for the dress from the night before, applied deodorant generously under her arms and bunched her braids in a bun on top of her head. She pulled open her makeup bag, picked up a lipstick, but dropped it when footsteps approached. She grabbed her sandals and hurried out of the room.
Tobe was in his car, a black Peugeot 504 that sat glinting in the morning sun as if it had been wiped down with groundnut oil. Ifeoma was seated in front and reached over to open the back door.
Ogadinma got inside and greeted Tobe.
‘Nne, kedụ? I hope you slept well,’ he said, staring at her from the rear-view mirror. She muttered in the affirmative and looked away. Locking eyes with him made her feel heady, caused her hands to shake and her mouth to go dry. She stared at her hands, and she was grateful when he started a long talk about his night: he did not sleep well because he sweated all through the night. NEPA had yet to restore power. Nigeria was hellfire. No Nigerian should go to hell after death because that would be unfair.
Ifeoma laughed all through the talk and sometimes chided him. Ogadinma fixed her eyes on the bird shit smearing his windscreen, and wanted to tell him that complaining about power outages was a waste of time because it was the way things were. To have electricity for a few hours was a luxury everyone looked forward to. Everyone knew this, the workers at the power company knew this, even babies knew this. It was why everyone chanted ‘Up NEPA!’ in gratitude to the power company, when they restored power. But she didn’t tell him, though; her mouth could not form the words.
They rolled to a stop in front of Ifeoma’s school in Yaba, where cars disgorged girls at the gate, causing a bottleneck. Tobe complained about the drivers who parked their cars in a haphazard manner. He called them ‘bush men’ and stuck his head out of the window to shout when the traffic wouldn’t give.
‘That is the problem in this country, everyone is acting like an animal! Simply queue up in a straight line, this they cannot learn. They are always rushing and rushing and doing nothing but being an absolute nuisance everywhere.’ He pounded his horn, stuck his head out of the window again to cuss the driver in front. ‘Bịa this idiot, if you scratch my car with this gwụla gwụla, I will wipe the floor with your butt!’ He turned back to her, sweating, mopping his brow. ‘That is the problem. Simple orderliness, they do not know. When you get on a plane filled with Nigerians, you will hate your life. This same thing they do here, is how they rush inside planes like bush people from the village.’ He stuck his head out of the window again, shouted, fought for space. There was a sweat patch under his arm, the light fabric tinged a wet brown. His theatricals were excessive and exhausting, even unsettling. She wished he would stop shouting; he was clean-cut, with his obvious grooming, and so should not lower himself to the level of street touts. She held his gaze and smiled nervously. But he did not smile back. She turned away and looked out of the window.
Every driver was doing the same as him, struggling and cussing. Just then, an army van pulled up in front of the school and soldiers clutching long guns and horsewhips jumped off from the back of the vehicle, their booted feet landing with thuds on the ground. Passers-by scuttled for safety. The soldiers went after the reckless drivers with their horsewhips. Zipping sounds slashed through the air as the whips landed on bodies. The men thrashed out. The women held tightly to the ends of their wrappers. Passers-by hung at the edge of the road to watch the spectacle. Ogadinma saw a soldier butting the head of his gun against the cars’ headlamps, smashing them to pieces, before ordering the owners to move their vehicles.
In minutes, Tobe drove out seamlessly.
‘You know, if there were a warden at that junction, there wouldn’t have been a jam and people wouldn’t need to break the law,’ Ogadinma said.
Tobe looked at her. Something softened in his eyes. He was no longer sweating. ‘Well, that’s true,’ he said. ‘And it’s good to hear you speak. You are always quiet, always watching. It’s good to hear you speak.’
She looked at him and a smile began to stretch her cheeks, her lips. He was smiling too. For a moment, she remembered riding in Barrister Chima’s car a long time ago, how uncomfortable it had been. This one felt different. He did not barrage her with unnerving questions, did not make her feel like she was so insignificant, so tiny, something to be used and discarded.
They rode in silence past traffic jams, past cars stuck in potholes, past small children hawking oranges and mangoes, past mothers setting up vegetable and fish stalls at the edge of the road, past girls lugging gallons of water with their babies strapped to their backs. And when they joined the expressway, Tobe turned to her, as though only just then realizing that she had been sitting behind him: ‘You should be sitting in the front with me. I am not your driver.’ He laughed and rolled the car to a stop at the side of the road. ‘Come to the front.’
She joined him in the front.
‘We are close to Alaba Market. I will have to look for a good place to park my car,’ he said as he worked the stereo blindly, fumbling with the knobs. All the channels were broadcasting news items. He brought out a pack of cassettes from the pigeonhole and dumped them on her lap. ‘Check for Osadebe,’ he said, half-watching as she inspected the writing on the cassettes. ‘I am moving to my new house. The only items of furniture I have there are my bed and a stove. You are going to help me select what to put in that empty house, ị nụgo?’
‘Okay.’ She was not frightened to be alone with him, not in the least. Aunty Ngozi had planned for them to spend the day together. She did not know their intent, and now did not care to know. For a long time, her mind had been knotted by worry, so it felt good to sweep her mind clean and chase all anxious thoughts away.
The traffic on the expressway was impenetrable. She looked at him. He no longer seemed upset. Perhaps it was because he sang along as Osadebe crooned from the radio. Perhaps, too, it was because of how closely they sat. Outside her window, hawkers, mostly older boys in stained clothes. Some tapped the glass, pointing out their wares in case she missed them.
‘You know you can sit in a Lagos hold-up and cook a pot of soup?’ she said. ‘Everything you need is sold here, from a cooking stove to pots and even the ingredients for soup.’
He began to laugh, a rumbling sound that made his stomach quiver. He touched her shoulder, his hand resting softly on her body.
‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘The only thing missing in a Lagos traffic jam are the mobile bathroom hawkers offering you space to take your bath.’
He laughed again. She chuckled too. Then she leaned back in her seat, her gaze on the window, and as they drove to Alaba Market she listened to the melancholic voice of Osadebe. She liked that she made him laugh.
The hustlers outside the Alaba Market rushed forward when they saw Ogadinma and Tobe approach. They clustered around, all of them speaking at the same time, pulling Tobe and Ogadinma towards their shops.
‘We have original Austrian and Italian laces. I go sell am for cheap price!’
‘We have London baby clothes, original ones. We just import am!’
‘Come, na me you dey look for. We have Italian shoes. For husband and wife!’
Tobe held her hand, shoved past the hustlers who trailed behind them, pleading and plodding along before giving up the chase when Tobe wouldn’t budge. They walked into the first shop, a cramped small room with electronics stacked from floor to ceiling. The space left inside was so narrow Tobe would have to walk sideways if he were to go inside. A fair woman who was so tall she stood hunched at the shoulders offered them seats by the door and bottles of Maltina. She didn’t have the brand of Thermocool refrigerator Tobe asked for but sent one of her boys to get it from her second shop down the road. When she went inside to get the other items Tobe requested, Ogadinma took a sip of her Maltina, but choked on the drink; Tobe was watching her keenly, his gaze following the lift of the bottle, how the drink poured into her mouth. She coughed, her face suddenly warm with embarrassment. ‘It is very cold,’ she said.
Tobe moved his seat closer. ‘Shagari’s government was kind to us,’ he said. ‘My company did so many jobs for the government. Ị makwa, some of the roads in Lagos were not motorable and residents had to park their cars on the outer streets because the potholes were large enough to sink a vehicle. But we repaired them. Now the military is back again. I hope they will treat us better than they did the last time they were here.’
Ogadinma nodded with some enthusiasm, even though all she remembered of Shagari’s regime was how expensive foodstuffs became, and how she and her father hid in his shop as Hausa Muslim boys wreaked havoc on properties belonging to the Christians in Sabon Gari.
Two small boys lugged the refrigerator on a long wheelbarrow. They kept it by the door, kicked off their slippers and wiped their feet on the doormat before going inside to get the woman. She emerged, smiling. ‘You can see it is the original Thermocool,’ she told Tobe, then glanced at Ogadinma. ‘I am sure madam will like this colour. It is pure white.’
Ogadinma looked at Tobe and then at the woman. Tobe was grinning. He should not, because she was not his madam. The very word unsettled her, made her tongue thick and speech difficult. Tobe was nodding and saying, ‘Yes, madam really likes it,’ and looking at her, and she was unsure of how to react. It was a joke, she thought, because his eyes seemed to twinkle with mischief. But when the woman brought out other kitchen appliances and held them out for her approval, she looked at Tobe and saw that he was watching her, that he was serious about playing this strange game. She said ‘okay’ to the woman or ‘this is fine’, before he agreed to take things she brought.
After what happened with Barrister Chima, she should be wary of men. But it was hard to feel that way now, with him looking her in the eyes. She felt calm instead and it pleased her that she made him happy.
After they had gotten everything he wanted, they went to other shops to buy Aunty Ngozi’s mattress and a new transistor radio for Uncle Ugonna. The shop owners all addressed her as ‘madam’, and as before, Tobe did not object or correct them, but leaned back and waited until she had declared she liked an item before he accepted them.
But a thought soon crept up her mind that this bonding with Tobe, which she had no name for, was moving too fast. At the last shop, where they bought kitchen utensils, she drank slowly from her glass of water and stood behind Tobe so that she would not have to speak, so that Tobe would not have to rely on her to make his choice, and the sellers would not call her ‘madam’ and ask for her opinion. Tobe hired a truck and the men loaded the items onto it. Ogadinma went to his car and leaned on it. Alaba Market reminded her of the Sabon Gari Market in Kano – the rowdiness, the hustlers and the barrow-pushers lugging goods for visitors, the roadside sellers who stacked their goods by the edge of the road and constantly moved their tables and kiosks so that goods-laden vehicles could go in or out. She missed Kano, the comforting silence of their yard when all the children had gone to school, and the chaos in the afternoon when they came back, the evenings she spent watching soaps with her father and the meals they shared. She was still leaning on the car, looking around at nothing, when Tobe returned.
His white shirt was now creased at the hem and stained with splotches of brown. He hugged her briefly. Surprised by the sudden embrace, she looked down at her feet, which were now covered with a film of dust.
‘The men are taking the things to my house. We have to follow behind in case the soldiers ask them for the receipts.’
They got in the car and he looked at her for a moment before turning the key in the engine. ‘After we get these things home, we are going somewhere nice to eat. I am so hungry. Ọ kwa agụụ na-agụ gị, you are hungry too?’ he asked, before he revved the engine and wound down the windows to let out the heat that had accumulated.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said. She stared at the bird shit still staining one side of the windscreen. She did not want to go to his house because she feared what would happen when they got there, when they were alone with no one to watch them. And yet, she wanted to go with him, to spend all evening listening to his gentle voice, or to drive around town, just the two of them and the small space between them. She wondered what he would think if she moved her hand closer so that their hands would touch each time he changed the gears. Alarmed by her wild thoughts, she clasped her hands and left them on her lap.
The woman from the first shop came to Ogadinma’s side of the window to bid them bye. ‘Daalụ nụ o, thank you o! You have done well, madam.’
The woman’s face had reddened and was beaded with sweat, and her makeup had melted and dripped down the sides of her face, staining the collar of her blouse a dirty brown. Ogadinma waved, and then wondered if this was how the woman hustled every day, lugging large electronics; her blouse was soaked with sweat, so much so that her bra was visible under the now-transparent fabric.
‘She works very hard,’ Ogadinma said. ‘She needs to install an air-conditioner in her shop.’
‘That is true, but what electricity will she use to power it? I hear they have not had electricity in this market in four months.’ He eased the car onto the road. Ogadinma looked at the side mirror and saw that the woman was still waving at her, a fat smile stretching her lips from cheek to cheek. She waved back.
‘I am so hungry,’ Tobe said. ‘I could finish a pot of food right now.’
But Ogadinma was not hungry, not even after the long trip to his home in Falomo, where hired hands moved the items into the large compound. She was so dizzy with nervousness that she could hardly pay attention as he gave her a small tour. He showed her the parlour that was twice the size of Uncle Ugonna’s, the marbled floors of the rooms that gleamed like mirrors, the beds that stretched from wall to wall, the kitchen with generous white and matching grey shelves; it was the biggest house she had ever seen. They went to the outer balcony, a space that could easily fit two cars.
‘I will put some chairs and a table here, so that when it gets too hot, we can sit out here and enjoy the fresh breeze,’ he said.
She was dazed by the pronoun ‘we’. She thought about it when they trekked to the restaurant very close to his home for a late lunch, and even when he placed the order for their food and drinks. She should ask why he was talking about them as though they were a couple, but her mouth could not form the words. When their food arrived, she picked at it, moulded her fufu into small balls and dipped it into her soup. She kept her eye on her plate, and when he reached over to wipe soup from the side of her mouth, the ball of fufu surged down her throat. She grabbed a glass of water, drank it in one gulp, and began to cough. Tobe held her hand and said, ‘Ndụ gị, ndụ gị.’ He held her hand until she stopped coughing. Then he brought out his handkerchief and wiped the tears that had leaked out of her eyes. She had never felt this nervous around a man before. And this was not the discomfort she experienced with Barrister Chima. This one flooded her with warmth that encircled her stomach before travelling down the bridge of her legs, staining her underwear with an embarrassing wetness.
They returned to Uncle Ugonna’s home at past six in the evening, when the tangerine sun had grown weary and darkness crept over the sky. Aunty Ngozi emerged from the door, a wrapper knotted around her chest. She hugged Ogadinma and then she hugged Tobe.
‘You must both be tired. Come inside, I cooked jollof rice and fish.’
He joined Aunty Ngozi in the parlour and Ogadinma fled into the room to stretch out beside Ifeoma who was fast asleep. She tried to remember how the day had gone, what she had said and how Tobe had felt about it, but she could not remember it all.
Tobe knocked on the door later, looked in and said she should escort him to his car. Outside, they lounged by the door. He asked if she would like to join him the following day for another round of shopping.
‘It will keep you busy, you know. Rather than sit at home when no one is around.’
Nnanna was always around, she began to say, and there were also the stacks of books in Ifeoma’s room which should keep her busy, but he was looking her in the eyes and she knew that she could not refuse his request. She did not want to refuse his request.
‘Yes, I would like to join you.’
He enfolded her for a brief hug and she did not melt against him or rest her head against his shoulder, because she was afraid she would wrap her arms around his waist and refuse to let go. After he broke the hug and got in his car, she stood outside, in the dimly lit night, long after his car had turned at a corner.
It became a routine. Tobe would come every morning and take her with him to the market, or they drove around town and he showed her landmarks and his old neighbourhood in Yaba. One evening, after he dropped her off and she walked into the room, she found Ifeoma reading in bed.
‘Ifeoma, kedụ?’ she said casually, kicking off her shoes.
Ifeoma looked up from the book. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘So are you two going out together?’
Ogadinma did not respond immediately. Tobe had not formally asked to date her, had yet to define their relationship. Once, she had a feeling that he was only being kind to her because Aunty Ngozi wanted him to do so. Aunty Ngozi was not the conventional kind of mother, the type who punished their daughters for talking to boys; she even ignored it when Ifeoma talked down to her, something many mothers would never tolerate. She stared at the wall and tried to remember how Tobe always looked into her eyes, the way his arms encircled her in brief hugs at the end of each evening. She searched her memories for signs that Tobe really liked her, but that could not clear the confusion clouding her mind.
‘I don’t know what we are doing,’ she said.
‘You don’t know!’ Ifeoma shrieked and began to laugh. Ogadinma was stunned by the laughter, because it sounded genuine. ‘You should see the girls killing themselves to be Uncle Tobe’s girlfriends. Big Lagos girls who are ready to use juju on any rich man they set their eyes on.’
Ogadinma laughed nervously. ‘I haven’t seen any girl around him.’
‘That’s because he chased them away! Mum doesn’t like those girls. She thinks they are too wild. Uncle Tobe likes you very much.’
Ogadinma felt a new, numbing rush of hope. ‘I think your mum just wants him to keep me from getting bored,’ she said, though in her heart, she wanted what Ifeoma said to be true.
And Ifeoma knew this too, because she yelled, ‘Story for the gods! He likes you jor.’
Tobe turned on the radio and Osadebe’s soothing voice filled the car. She knew the song, it was her father’s favourite. A memory of her father ironing and singing came back to her. She had yet to speak with her father since she came to Lagos. Whenever he called, which was rarely, it was to relay a message through Uncle Ugonna. He was still angry with her. Sometimes she longed to speak with him, to cry and beg for his forgiveness, so that they could return to being as they used to be. But Tobe had since swept up her attention, and now she realized she no longer felt that intense pang.
Tobe’s quavering voice broke into her thoughts, so she lifted her voice, singing along, until their voices melded as one.
They rolled to a stop in front of a faded office complex in Ilupeju. ‘My father used to work here,’ he said. The guards sitting by the gate looked tired. They did not approach Tobe even though his car was parked right in front of the entrance.
‘The week after my father was promoted to the post of regional director, he fell ill with a strange disease that made his tongue fall to his chest and his legs swell to the size of three yam tubers. I think they used ogwu to kill him. They couldn’t stand having an Igbo man as their boss. My father died two weeks later – his ailment had no cure. He worsened when he was given Western medication,’ Tobe said.
Did he really believe in ogwu? She remembered how her father tipped his head back and laughed when her grandmother dug up a rusty padlock on their farmland. Her grandmother had said that enemies were after their lives, that they used the ogwu to jinx her father’s destiny. But her father never believed in that, just as he never believed in preachers. She doubted if her father believed in anything, because he went to church perfunctorily, showing up only when neighbours invited him for special services like child dedications, weddings and harvests. The only time he took her to church was on Christmas and New Year eves, when he brought her firecrackers. After the services, he would sit outside with the neighbours, and watch the children light the cigarette-shaped crackers and toss them in the distance. She knew her father would have scoffed at Tobe’s story.
They returned to the car and drove for a long time; his brow was creased in worry. ‘I hear they no longer pay staff salaries. The place has been run down by tribalistic cowards who wanted to keep the job for their people. That’s what kills this country: tribalism. You should have seen this place when it was working. It was one of the best beverage companies in the whole of Nigeria, but tribalism killed it.’
Ogadinma agreed with him; she had seen first-hand how tribalism and religion could turn bloody, but she did not tell him her story. She did not want her gory memories to ruin their day.
He changed stations and King Sunny Ade’s sonorous voice swam into the car. Sometimes, they rode in silence, watching people. Other times, they stood in front of old buildings and he shared the stories behind them, how he had played at the field with his mates and rushed home to bury his nose in his books before his father came home. How they trekked to school and saved their transport fare, only to use the money later to hire bicycles for a ride around their neighbourhood.
‘What of your mother?’ she asked.
‘She was a housewife,’ he said.
‘She didn’t run a business?’
‘Why should she? Is it not the job of a woman to care for the family and for the man to provide? Is that not why we call our women “Oriakụ”, the ones who enjoy the wealth? Am I mistaken?’
A drop of rain plopped on her arm, and then her face. A light drizzle started. She believed that a woman should run a business and earn her own money. But Tobe believed otherwise and she did not want to worry so much about this, because she did not want him to appear smudged before her eyes. And also, thinking about his ideals would mean she was imagining herself in his life and how those ideals would affect her. And she was not sure she wanted to think about that.
In the car, he left his hand lazily on her shoulder and steered the wheel with the other. Then the rains came, heavy and urgent. The windscreen misted over, and he turned on the air-conditioner. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said. ‘You haven’t really said anything about yourself.’
Cool air gushed out of the vents. There was a slight dusty smell before the air began to chill.
‘There isn’t really anything to say,’ she said.
‘Then say anything. I am tired of talking.’
Outside their window, a man got out of his car, stomped over to the car in front of him and pounded on the window, his hands drawn into fists. He made to pound the car again, but the driver rushed out and lunged at him. They wrestled. Cars honked, warning signs to the fighters who stumbled and tussled, falling against sitting cars. The traffic gave way at that moment. Tobe slammed on the accelerator and raced to escape. Other drivers curved past the wrestling men who were still swinging and sizing each other up.
‘I don’t swim,’ she finally said.
He looked at her. ‘Why?’
‘Each time I stand by a pool, I get this feeling of falling. I fear I will drown if I ever go into a pool.’
He laughed. ‘So, you drowned in a previous life?’
‘My friend Ifedi drowned in a well when I was twelve. Since then, I never go close to wells or pools.’
‘Then it is my job to cure you of that fear. We will go swimming tomorrow.’
‘No!’
‘I’ll bring you a suit on my way tomorrow.’
‘No, I will not go with you.’ She had spoken so loudly, her words came out as a yell. She clamped a palm over her mouth, but he only looked amused.
‘You are such a child. How old are you?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Seventeen! You are a small pikin o. Nekwa, you are so young.’ He looked at her curiously, as though seeing her with new eyes. ‘Guess how old I am.’
A pause. ‘Thirty.’
He threw his head back and laughed. A car honked from behind and he gripped the steering wheel tighter. ‘That is the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me. I am not thirty, nne. I just turned thirty-five.’
Aunty Ngozi was at home when they returned. ‘Your father called an hour ago,’ she said.
Ogadinma’s knees buckled. She had been in Lagos for a month, but it felt like a year had passed. ‘Did he ask to speak with me?’
‘Yes, and I told him that you are doing fine.’
‘Can I speak with him?’
The telephone on the bedside table was covered with a light film of dust and handprints. Aunty Ngozi sat at the edge of the bed and began to dial the number. Ogadinma felt nauseous, with an urge to run out and lock herself up inside Ifeoma’s room, and when Aunty Ngozi began to speak into the phone, her voice awkwardly high, Ogadinma felt a need to pee. She held the phone against her ear after Aunty Ngozi handed it to her, and she could not hear a thing from the other end for many seconds.
‘Papa,’ she said into the phone. ‘Papa, good evening, sir.’
Her father drew a tense breath. ‘Kedụ? How are you?’
‘I am doing fine, Papa. How are you too?’ she asked. Outside, Aunty Ngozi was speaking with Tobe, both of them standing closely, their faces set with tense lines. ‘I am fine, Papa,’ Ogadinma said into the phone again.
The conversation was short. Her heart pounded furiously, and there was a whirling sound in her ears. Everything was floating away into a wave that howled and howled. She sat forward on the bed so that her elbows rested on her knees, because she feared that if she didn’t, her knees would give way under her and she would slide to the floor and the line would cut and she wouldn’t be able to reach her father again. Her hands shook. She should tell him about Tobe, about Aunty Ngozi’s matchmaking, how Uncle Ugonna seemed to have approved of it. She should ask if he knew about it, if that was why he sent her to Lagos. But so much had changed between them. Now he talked in a clipped voice, his words punctuated with long, impenetrable silences. She had never heard him speak like this before, no longer knew how to talk to him, and could barely hear herself above the din in her ears and the heavy pounding in her temples. The call ended. After she put down the phone, she stood up, wishing she had said more and had asked what he ate, if he cooked his own meals. Her throat choked up and her eyes burned with tears.
She returned to her room and sat on the bed, staring into nothing. Aunty Ngozi walked in later.
‘How is he?’ Aunty Ngozi asked.
‘He is doing fine.’ She tried to smile.
‘Nne.’ Aunty Ngozi came to sit beside her. ‘Tobe was invited to a wedding and he wants you to go with him.’ She draped her hands over Ogadinma’s shoulder. ‘He has promised to buy you a dress and all the things you need for the occasion. Will you go with him?’
She stared at Aunty Ngozi. Something warm began to bubble in her chest, gradually chasing the previous sad feeling away. She did not ask why Tobe would want her to go with him to a wedding because she already knew why. And she wanted to tell Aunty Ngozi that there was no need to beg or cajole her into going with him because she wanted to. With Tobe, she was always happy, and she felt she was where she was meant to be. But she simply said, ‘Yes, Aunty. I will go with him.’
The wedding party was rowdy. The hall, a makeshift tarpaulin dome set in the middle of a large field, was decorated with a sea of plastic red and white roses. The chairs were clothed in creamy satin and red bows, the tables packed with drinks and plates of small chops. It was a big-man wedding.
Tobe knew almost everyone. He swarmed from table to table, shaking hands, hugging friends, patting shoulders. He introduced Ogadinma as ‘Nkem’, ‘his own’, and his friends hailed him as one would a hunter who brought home the best bush meat. ‘Tobe, my man! You picked the ripest udala. You have good eyes,’ the men said. The women, dressed in overly embroidered stiff brocades and dresses, passed cursory stares at her dress, a silky red thing that flowed all the way to the floor, dragging extra length as a train, with a cut-out that left her back exposed all the way to her waist. One of them – the one wearing rows of jewellery that lay thick on her fat, sweaty neck – pursed her lips and said, ‘Nne, your gown is so fine! Is it London or Turkey?’
‘It is London,’ Ogadinma said.
Tobe held her hand and did not let go. He led her to their table, where two other couples sat, and he pulled her chair close, keeping his hand slung permanently over her shoulder. He smiled at her and whispered something. She did not hear him above the cacophony around them, but she thought about the workings of his mouth, how his eyes brightened and his lips peeled back when he smiled at her.
The women talked about their trips to America and London and how they would be travelling abroad to have their next children. Tobe talked with the men, and he turned often to ask if she was having fun.
They did not waste time at the wedding. When it was time for the money-spraying dance, he spoke in an exaggerated voice, carrying his shoulders higher as he walked, a big-man swagger in his gait. ‘Let’s go and spray them with some money and leave this place,’ he said.
At the stage where the new couple danced, Tobe tore the wrappers off stacks of naira notes and flung them high above the couple. Money rained on the dancing floor. The crowd cheered. Some guests stood to watch the spectacle. Ogadinma was giddy as she sprayed the couple from the stack Tobe gave her. The couple, unashamedly ecstatic, hugged them and, though she did not know who they were, she told them, ‘Congratulations.’
As they left the hall, the women watched them, their gazes flickering from her head to the train of her dress. She had never been to such a lavish ceremony, never walked beside a man like Tobe, never had other women look at her with so much envy in their eyes. She clung tighter to Tobe’s arm as they left the hall, and for a moment, she wished he would slow his footsteps so they would take longer to make this grand exit. She had never felt this lucky in her entire life.
Back in the car, Tobe’s eyes shone. ‘I am so happy you came with me. You saw how everyone was looking at me as if I had brought Princess Diana with me? I am so happy.’
He sang to Osadebe and when Onyeka Onwenu came on the radio, Ogadinma sang at the top of her voice. They drove, singing to song after song.
The track was cut off abruptly and the news came on. Tobe turned up the volume of the radio. The newscaster, a woman with a thick Hausa accent, said that the federal government had launched a campaign called War Against Indiscipline to crack down on corruption, and would begin to arrest people who diverted public money during the previous government.
Tobe clucked his tongue and shook his head. ‘Chief Adebiyi will not escape this. You remember him? He is the fat man at the wedding that was groping your hand when I introduced you.’
Ogadinma did not remember the man, or that anyone groped her. She was fleetingly disconcerted by the idea of Tobe watching every move she made, who she talked to.
‘He was awarded the contract to repair the roads in Badagry but he totally diverted the money, filled up the potholes with red mud and plastered it with a film of tar,’ Tobe continued. ‘He must be pissing his pants now.’
Ogadinma stared ahead. She became aware of how close they had grown as the weeks passed, how he shared details about his life with her, and this excited and confused her.
‘You are not here with me,’ Tobe said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘You are tired?’
‘No, no. I just remembered how the women looked at my dress.’
He laughed. ‘When I said you looked like Princess Diana, you thought I was joking? Let’s go to the beach.’
It was early evening and the beach was still packed. He kicked off his shoes and she did the same and bunched the hem of her dress in her hands. The waves swept past the bank piled with sandbags and licked at the edges of the wooden stalls several feet away, then dragged dirt into the sea. Young boys on horseback rode past. Little children dashed to the mouth of the water, scooped wet sand before the waves returned.
‘Before I left Nigeria, this water you see here swelled and swallowed all of this space, flooded the expressway and swept into houses on the other side. It even entered the Police Barracks,’ Tobe said.
‘Up to where Uncle Ugonna and Aunty Ngozi live?’
‘Not up to their front door. But it flooded the front of the barracks. The government of that time dredged up sand from the sea and sent the water back. They filled these bags you are looking at, to keep the water away. But that’s not enough. This place will be flooded once the rains fully return.’
He looked back; they had come quite a distance, away from the beach noise. ‘I have always said to myself, whenever I am ready to marry, I would bring my woman here and ask her to marry me,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you. What do you think?’
The waves swept water around her feet, washing off the sand that clung to her toes. Something began to bubble inside of her, rising and swirling, filling her mouth with a sweet taste. She wanted to jump up and down and chant ‘Yes! Yes!’ But she feared that a wanton display of joy would come out as undignified, very unlike Princess Diana. So, she blinked and tried to pace her breathing, and when she spoke, her words came out as a near whisper. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ she said again, unsure he heard her the first time.
He wrapped his arms around her, swayed. ‘We will tell your uncle and my sister once we get back,’ he said. When he began to break the hug, she held him. For a long time, she held him. She had no name for it, this feeling that made her want to slide into his body and become one with him. She pressed her lips against his neck. Then he pressed his lips against hers.
It was only after he had dropped her off and left and she was sitting between Uncle Ugonna and Aunty Ngozi that she realized the seriousness of all that was happening. Uncle Ugonna was staring at her, his eyes clouded with worry.
‘Did it come from your heart?’ he asked. ‘No one should force you into doing what you don’t want. So, I ask again: did it come from your heart?’
Aunty Ngozi held her hand, rubbed it, smiled.
‘Yes, Uncle. It came from my heart,’ she said.
She sat, slouched. How would her father feel about this?
‘Go and rest. Sleep on it,’ Uncle Ugonna said. ‘We will talk again by morning.’
But she did not sleep well that night. She gazed at the ceiling until morning came; she was too giddy, too wired to close her eyes. And when Uncle Ugonna called her into the parlour again and asked if she willingly accepted to be Tobe’s wife, she still didn’t feel any different, and so she nodded.
‘Yes, Uncle,’ she said. ‘It came from my heart.’
‘Then I will send a message to your father to inform him. Tobe will go with you to Kano to meet your father.’