New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  Rupununi affair

  I had made up my mind to marry Catherine, a local Wapishana girl. I imagined a simple ceremony before I took her to England and arranged a more elaborate reception. My mother would naturally object, as much to her kind as her age. You see, Catherine had recently finished high school and I had long passed the season of enviable attraction for any English girl whom my mother would prefer I chose for a wife. My means were moderate despite the company, whose affairs it was my job to oversee in this godforsaken part of the world, expeditiously making good on their investment. I believed Catherine would be sensible about it, the opportunity being what it was.

  The heat had become intolerable, as it always did after a few months. At such times I returned for the coolness of the English air before I could again face the ferocious sun and the locals, who were not all so repugnant. Of all the places I’d seen of this ghastly region, the Rupununi was the loveliest; I particularly loved their women. As for the Negro coquettes and wily East Indian women in the city, their hard, pleading smiles, canoodling atop foul obscenities and lewdness wore me out. They begged for everything without remorse or shame as though they were owed the entire earth.

  We had arranged to meet at the usual place, a small creek a little out of view from the thatched mud houses and somewhat shaded from the wretched sun. One of the biggest houses belonged to her father, the Toshao. I found it curious that he had electricity whilst the other houses didn’t. At night many relied on the stars and the moon when it was full for light outside—not everyone carried torches, I suppose by choice or lack of means. Indoors, kerosene lamps glimmered, imposing a kind of antiquated tranquility I grew to appreciate.

  Catherine’s skin had a golden sheen and was gloriously soft. Her face was majestically framed by thick, dark hair that flowed to her waist. Like the other Wapishana women and girls her calves were magnificently sturdy—though I confess I wished she had less than her share of muscles, perhaps with the delicateness, if not the fairness English ladies were blessed with. It’s true she differed in passion and sensuality, which I found lacking in the girls back home. As for her lovemaking, this was beyond compare—I couldn’t complain.

  At last Catherine arrived at the creek. She wasted no time removing her clothes and slipping into the cool dark water, which was barely deep enough for her to stand fully without revealing her breasts. From our first encounter, she had given herself to me with a sort of calm grace. I sometimes took her sharply, however, my hand vigorously cupping her mouth as though I feared she might scream. She never screamed, but responded to my fierce gestures and jabs by sucking my fingers as though she was gorging on a mango. Our lovemaking lasted a few minutes but it was always remarkable.

  We had spread our clothes to make blankets on the edge of the creek, our bodies being dried by the sun.

  “How do you stand it?” I posed after a while, instead of asking the intended question of marriage.

  “Stand what?”

  “Not you, I suppose. Your father. Your people? How do they stand being, you know, ruled by the others?” My eyes were closed. She didn’t say anything, so I continued.

  “Those on the coast—the Negroes. The other Indians.”

  “Oh,” was all she said.

  “Don’t you . . . I mean . . . you know, think it strange? It’s your country, after all, and you don’t govern. You don’t have power?”

  “Oh. Is been that way a long time,” she said slowly, with an air of finality.

  “Catherine, darling . . . Catherine . . . I . . .” I had worked out the proposal very well in my head but suddenly became unnerved and couldn’t understand why. I firmed up my resolve somehow and went on.

  “Catherine, I’d like us to be married.”

  I peeped at her to check her face. Her eyes were closed, her hair splayed like seaweed on the ground. I became a little impatient because she didn’t immediately respond.

  “Come now, darling. What do you say?” She opened one eye, which reminded me of an old horse we had when I was a boy. It had fallen brutally one day, stabbing one of its eyes against a stray piece of wire and was blinded. My parents kept a patch on the eye to stop me having nightmares.

  “How long we been sexing?” she asked suddenly, a finger slowly circling her breasts. She knew I hated it when she used that word, but I had become less infuriated by it after I decided we’d be married. I felt she would outgrow those awful habits. I wondered why they bothered inventing words when there were already adequate ones in the English language they could use. I knew I was needlessly working myself up, the question was illegitimate.

  “Catherine, don’t you know how long we’ve been . . . how long it’s been?”

  “Less than a year, nuh?”

  “What of it?”

  “You think sexing for not even one year is love?” She was a child, I reminded myself. She was playing games, the way all natives played games to mask their deviant motives. I had believed Catherine wasn’t like that, so why?

  “Oh, Catherine! Don’t you want to marry me?” I hated the awful pleading in my voice but couldn’t help it. I hoped she wasn’t wise to it. She had again closed her eyes, one hand angled across her forehead.

  “I don’t know, English.” I had long given up expecting her to call me by my name but regretted how impersonal it was for her to call me “English” as everyone addressed me this way. I knew it was not out of fondness, but acrimony.

  “Don’t you love me?” I leaned up to face her fully.

  “Love ain’ have nothing to do with sexing, English.” Her tone was nasty, some part of me wanted to strike her for being unusually presumptuous.

  “Is it only sex for you then?” I asked sternly. It would soon be dark and I had little time to convince her to marry me. All those arrangements to be made, and she was playing the fool.

  “I ain’ know,” she said, with that annoying lilt in her voice. I resigned myself to drop the proposition for another day, maybe away from her village, if we could get away without discovery.

  “You are so beautiful—I suppose you have your share of suitors,” I said, hoping she couldn’t detect how unsettling this all was for me. She giggled and rolled towards me, her breasts cushioning against my arm. She stroked the rim round my nipples, rousing me again. I closed my eyes; my head tilted a little further back, my body arched in grand expectation. We made love again and I released after a good deal of strain compared to her rapid, excitable and frequent bursts of pleasure. I was certain I wanted her for my wife.

  “Catherine, I love you very much. You do know that, don’t you? I want to take you to England. I leave in a few weeks.” She said nothing. “A small service—you know—formalities and all that can be arranged here. We’ll do something bigger when we get home.” I resolved that her silence needn’t mean resistance, it might instead be fear.

  “I have a small fortune to boast of. Of course, I’ll square things with your father. My family are a good sort too. From Dorset. Ah, Dorset! When you see Dorset . . . England is so big, though, we can live wherever you like.” I felt her turning away. I must have been right, she was afraid. I touched her shoulder, tugging it towards me as gently as my patience allowed.

  “What’s the matter, darling? There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She rolled towards me. She opened her eyes widely as if startled by her own exalted rumination. She shivered, too. The sun had by now started to go down, but it was still hot. She began to smile again but looked somehow far away, as though being compelled by some profound memory. Her face took on a strange look. It made me feel awkward and suddenly embarrassed by my nakedness. She stood up and prised her dress from beneath me.

  “England is big?” she asked in a flat tone.

  “Yes. Remarkably so!”

  “And Guyana is what?”

  “What about Guyana—is that what you mean?” She was standing over me, her dress now covering her naked body. She tucked her hair up tightly, clasping an elastic band over it.

  �
��Guyana ain’ big? Rupununi, Aishalton big.” It struck me that she perceived Aishalton to be comparable to Dorset, perhaps England. I began to imagine her bewilderment when she saw the grand coasts and beautiful beaches in Dorset, let alone England, our rivers and lakes much less meagre than the pitiful overrated creeks she was used to. I gave a little chuckle in anticipation of that revelation.

  “Why you laugh, English?” At this interjection I noticed the sun sinking more deeply and a frightful shadow appeared on her face.

  “Well, Catherine, Aishalton is a lovely, quaint place, with a few juts of mountains, large trees overbearing with the sweetest fruits I’ve ever tasted, large open plains and so forth, but how little it compares to some of the places you’ll see in England.” She became silent. I became nervous, though I couldn’t say why.

  “Darling, what’s the matter? I thought you wanted us to be married?”

  “You tink cause we been sexing I love you? I know wha England is, English. It have a ugly Queen wha’ rule da world but living on a small island.” She stopped, but I could tell she was not through. With a long gulp of air that seemed to come from some place deep within her, she snapped—“Yoh forget to say Guyana gah plenty gold too, English.”

  I hopped to my feet, not before I had observed how the sun’s changed position now made her face appear rough-looking and ugly.

  “Catherine, I apologise if I’ve hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to.” I didn’t want to say anything else; the apology didn’t seem proper but rather like the bleakest burden ever forced upon me.

  “You know nutting about my feelings. I nat going wid you to Englan’. I ever tell you I wan’ go Englan’? Guyana is where I baarn an’ grow.”

  I could not think of what to say momentarily. I managed to lick my lips and wiped a trace of perspiration from my forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Catherine. You’re right. Guyana is all those things but it’s not . . . well, this is about us, you and me.”

  “You nat going see me again, English. Don’t ever come back here. Go back to Dorset an’ leave me alone. A big man like you must know sexing is nah love.” She released a peculiar shriek before stomping away.

  I watched her as she ran towards her home, certain I heard laughter trailing behind her. The evening had closed in on me. I was still naked, flies intermittently brushed across my face. I wondered if I should chase her and slap sense into her. My legs felt subdued, however, and I stood there awhile feeling like a forlorn statue. I could remotely hear parts of a song she was singing.

  “. . . I love the Rupununi . . . land of natural beauty . . . where the Kanaku mountains . . .” I turned, my heart feeling heavy and constricted. I dreaded the long, dark drive to Lethem where I had my room. I could still hear baleful echoes of her song. I vowed then that when I returned to this wretched place, as I was bitterly fated to do, it would be strictly for business. This propitiation I declared before those ominous mounds they called the Kanaku.

  Sefi Atta

  Born in Lagos, Nigeria, she currently divides her time between Nigeria, England and the United States. She is the author of the novels Everything Good Will Come (2005), Swallow (2010), A Bit of Difference (2014) and The Bead Collector (2019); the short story collection, News from Home (2010); the children’s book Drama Queen (2018); and the play collection Sefi Atta: Selected Plays (2019). She was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and is a judge for the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. She has received several literary awards, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. In 2015, a critical study of her novels and short stories, Writing Contemporary Nigeria: How Sefi Atta Illuminates African Culture and Tradition, was published by Cambria Press.

  The Cocktail Party

  Ashake and Debayo Dada had a cocktail party at their Ikoyi house the other night. It was supposedly to celebrate their eighteenth wedding anniversary, though I suspected their real reason was to show off their new swimming pool. Ashake had ordered her invitations from my greeting-card shop, and dictated the exact wording she wanted: “Chief and Mrs. Adebayo Dada request the pleasure of your company”, and so on. She’d also added a recently invented family crest, which should have stated: “Est. 1976”. My shop manager had delivered the cards to her weeks ago, and I was still waiting for her to pay me.

  Ashake was my daughter’s godmother and we’d known each other for years, so we weren’t about to fall out over money. When we were girls, she was called Sumbo. Ashake, her praise name, meant “the pampered one”. Her mother was a union leader of the women who attended my father’s church and had several informal titles conferred by them. She was most popularly known as Iya, which translated to “Mother” in Yoruba. Ashake and I must have been about ten years old when she walked up to me after church, as my mother was greeting hers, and said, “You’re lucky to have a mother who is as gentle as a white woman.” I, being equally naïve, considered that a compliment.

  I later recruited Ashake as a food thief. Yes, we were in a gang with other Saint John’s girls. We would sneak into Ikoyi Cemetery to steal cashews from the trees. We would hoist Ashake up because she had long arms. Her underwear was never clean and she had an odour of stale urine about her, which we ignored for the sake of solidarity. One day, a caterpillar fell on top of her head. She screamed, we dropped her and scampered off. She limped back home, where Iya beat her for disgracing her family.

  Without an education, Iya managed to see her children through secondary school and they all became successful businessmen and women. They were proud of her reputation, including Ashake, who nonetheless claimed that the Oba of Lagos had bestowed Iya’s titles on her.

  Ashake often lied about her background and I had some idea why. As the eldest daughter in her family, she had been sent to a boarding house in Lagos run by a woman who taught girls etiquette after they’d finished secondary school. If their parents didn’t have the means to further their educations, she prepared them for work and marriage. She had no children of her own, so her students became her adopted daughters. Her mission was to turn them into refined young ladies. Ashake must have taken the experience to heart because shortly after she left the boarding house, she dropped her name Sumbo and started lying. She said her father was a pharmacist. He was a herbalist. She said she took a Pitman’s course in London to train as a secretary. She never did. She said her husband, Debayo, graduated from Harvard with a degree in engineering. I’d only ever heard that he had attended a university in Ohio, and assumed it was one of those that issued honorary diplomas in return for a donation. Debayo was a well-known businessman, who had somehow managed to wangle directorships with several foreign companies. His business adversaries accused him of buggering his way to the top. Ashake herself was said to practise juju, which wouldn’t have surprised me. Iya may have been a member of Saint John’s, but she was also a regular at the local babalawo.

  I did occasionally wonder if some of the rumours about the Dadas were embellished. People either worshipped or despised them. Tunde was fascinated with them. He hailed them “the lord and lady of the manor”, to their delight. Whenever they invited us to a function at their house, he would hurry me up. He couldn’t be bothered with the gossip about them, but observing their excesses firsthand gave him much pleasure.

  We got to their house that night, and he asked their gateman if he could park in their driveway. The gateman said guests were not allowed in.

  “What about those cars?” Tunde asked, pointing at five Benzes stationed on their gravelled driveway, all black.

  The gateman said they belonged to Master and Madam.

  “Wonders will never cease,” Tunde said, smiling.

  I begged him not to embarrass me.

  The Dadas’ house was huge, with Greek-style columns. A steward in a white uniform showed us into their sitting room, which had a beige marble floor, beige damask curtains, gilt-edged mirrors and crystal chandeliers. The whole place was
beige, sparkly and full of Nigerians in colourful traditional attire. There were a few expatriates around. Ashake had insisted her invitations state the dress code was cocktail wear. Tunde and I were in traditional attire. So was Debayo, who wore a white lace agbada with a red-and-gold cap. Ashake herself was in a full-length red satin gown that contradicted her own dress code. She was heavily made-up, but I could tell her face had lightened a shade. I’d heard that she got chemical baths in London to bleach her skin. She had voluntarily denied that to me, swearing her complexion was natural, though I remembered a time when she was darker than me.

  “My very good friend,” she said in Yoruba.

  I hugged her, genuinely pleased to see her again. As Tunde went off with Debayo, she took my arm and led me around her sitting room, introducing me to people, some of whom I already knew. She flashed the ruby-and-diamond ring Debayo had bought her.

  “The rubies are from India,” she said.

  I said they were beautiful.

  She tilted her head, admiring the stones. “I’m not sure where the diamonds are from.”

  I said it didn’t matter. She should just enjoy her ring.

  She had new furniture as well, faux Louis Quinze sofa sets, also in beige. She pointed at a blown-up photo of her family in a gilt frame on the wall.

  “We took that at Christmas,” she said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Jackie Phillips.”

  Jackie Phillips was a celebrity boxer turned photographer. His studio photos were superb, but they didn’t come cheap.