A Bit of Difference

by Sefi Atta

  The land is too damn African, stubbornly so. People can continue to develop it if they like, but it will find ways to expose any sign of urbanization as a façade.

  She tells the driver to take her to Ikoyi to see her mother. At this end of the bridge, there are caged puppies for sale by a botanical garden. At the other end of the bridge, children beg for money by the police barracks.

  She gets to her mother’s house and her mother is furious because she has not heard from the caterer.

  “That’s your sister for you,” she says. “She has to go and hire a caterer. I told her I didn’t want a caterer. ‘Just go to the market, find me four women and they will do what they need to do.’ Oh, no, she has to go and get a caterer. ‘Oh, Mummy, she is a professional. Oh, Mummy, she has an office. She has staff. She has a cell phone.’ Now, I can’t get the woman to return my calls.”

  It is not yet dusk. Her mother has taken her afternoon siesta and she is in the sitting room, dressed in a boubou. She is wearing burgundy lipstick. Deola can’t recall the exact color of her mother’s lips, but she remembers crystal glasses stained with that shade of lipstick. Her mother is drinking a gin and tonic. At night, she might have wine with her dinner.

  Deola calls Jaiye to ask why the caterer hasn’t been in touch. This feuding between Jaiye and her mother is unsettling.

  “Don’t mind Mummy,” Jaiye says. “She’s joking if she thinks I have time to start looking for any women in any market. She wants everything done now, now. She just has to be patient. The caterer will call her.”

  “She wants to know when,” Deola says.

  “Tell her to cancel the caterer!” her mother says.

  “Look,” Jaiye says. “She’d better not annoy me today. I have told her before that those market women are unhygienic. I have seen people end up dead from typhoid.”

  “Come on,” Deola says.

  The market women were the only option before caterers came along. Their hygiene standards are not perfect, but their food is tastier.

  “She’s driving me crazy,” Jaiye says. “You don’t know what I’ve been going through with her. Listen, I have to go.”

  “Wait.”

  “I can’t. I have a clinic.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  It is the stress of Lagos, Deola thinks, and the nature of her family. They are a volatile lot. Didn’t she once accuse Jaiye of betraying her as Judas did Christ? Didn’t Lanre once swear he would throttle her if she so much as opened her mouth? She called him a drunk because he was breathing beer on her. Yes, and she was always getting into one disagreement or another with her mother, after which they would end up glaring at each other until they looked like gargoyles.

  She hangs up and faces her mother. “She says the women are unhygienic.”

  “Don’t mind your sister,” her mother says. “The minute she has tension at home, she takes it out on everyone else. Are you staying for dinner?”

  She is suspicious about the casual way her mother throws this in, as if to catch her off guard. This is how her mother works. She used to encourage her mother to work on her father this way: feed him first and then slip in your request.

  She turns away from her mother’s gaze. “My driver has to leave at six.”

  “It’s rice and chicken stew,” her mother says.

  “Don’t worry, Mummy. I’ll eat at the hotel.”

  “I’ll get Comfort to fry some plantains.”

  “Mummy, the man says he has to go.”

  “Call your brother, then. Call him and tell him you need his driver.”

  “He might need his driver.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a weekday.”

  “So? Call him and find out.”

  “I don’t want to bother him.”

  “How do you know you’re bothering him if you don’t bother him?”

  “Mummy,” she says. “Don’t worry. I’ll eat at the hotel.”

  If she stays for dinner, she can guarantee her mother will start prying again.

  “I’ll drop you there,” her mother says.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “I’ll drop you…”

  “But armed robbers…”

  “What is this ‘armed robbers, armed robbers’ about? They’re part of our lives. You don’t stop doing what you have to do because of them.”

  “Mummy, the traffic is terrible and you can’t see at night.”

  Coming from abroad, she can never be right about Lagos. Everyone complains, but the moment she says things are bad, someone will say things are not so bad.

  “If only I didn’t have to sack my driver,” her mother says, giving up. “The fellow had body odor, such awful body odor. I gave him antiseptic soap to wash, but he never made use of it.”

  His name was Monday. Her mother also made him disinfect the steering wheel before she drove her car because he didn’t always wash his hands after using the toilet. Monday didn’t seem to mind. If her mother forgot, he reminded her, “Mummy, don’t forget the Dettol.”

  z

  Deola regrets leaving her mother drinking alone, but her mother has always done that, even when her father was alive. After her siesta, she would head straight for the cabinet, and pour herself “a little something.” By nighttime, when her father arrived and they drank wine with their dinner, her mother would be toasting in foreign languages, saying, “Salud,” “Santé,” “Salute,” even when dinner was stewed goat’s intestines.

  This evening, she sees Wale again, but not in the lounge. She is there for a while, watching Idols West Africa, but she can’t be fooled into laughing at the contestants. They are over the top. One of them sings, “I bereave I can fry,” and rather than suffer the procession of hopefuls, she goes to the bar and orders a bottle of Eva water.

  Wale shows up at the reception. He is dressed in an ankara tunic and trousers. He talks to the receptionist, then heads for the lounge.

  Should she or should she not? Deola thinks.

  “Mr. Adeniran,” she calls out.

  “Yes, sir,” he says.

  She laughs. “I was just saying good evening.”

  “Good evening.”

  “How come you’re a guest in your own hotel?”

  “I stay here whenever I am in Lagos.”

  “You don’t live in Lagos?”

  “I live in Abuja.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a politician.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather sit with an arms dealer.”

  He sits on the barstool next to hers. She tells him she will be in Abuja on Thursday. His company is based in Abuja. He supplies computer hardware and he comes to Lagos to see clients. She guesses his clients are either foreign multinationals or the government.

  “Sometimes I surprise them here,” he says, leaning forward. “I make a reservation and they don’t know it’s me until I show up.”

  She does not normally go for men with mustaches or beards, but they frame his mouth beautifully. His lips are darker than his skin. She likes his eyes most. They are sincere and his lashes are unusually straight. He could pass for a Hausa man.

  “That’s very sneaky of you.”

  “You know how it is. You have to stay on top of things, otherwise.”

  “Why didn’t you just rent it out?”

  “I thought about that, but there are businesses all over the island and not many reasonably priced places to stay. This way, the house works for me and I have somewhere to rest my head.”

  “How long have you been in Abuja?”

  “Six years. Six years now, but I have been going there for about sixteen. The first time I went there, all we had were the politicians and their entourage. Kingmakers, government contractors and prostitutes.”

  “Commercial sex workers.”

  “What?”

  She smiles. “Commercial sex workers. That’s the correct terminology.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. And now?”
r />   “Now?”

  “Now, in Abuja, I mean,” she says.

  “Now, we have traffic, armed robbers, the whole lot.”

  Her father bought land in Abuja in the late seventies. It was the new federal capital then, but the government ministries had not yet relocated from Lagos.

  “I’ve never been to Abuja.”

  “No character whatsoever.”

  “Seriously?”

  “None at all.”

  “Is corruption really as bad as people say it is over there?”

  “You know how bad people say it is? Multiply that by a hundred. What are you going there for, business or pleasure?”

  She tells him about her job at LINK, wondering if he thinks she belongs to an industry that thrives on an Africa that panders to the West. But computers don’t necessarily make for progress. Not in basic humane ways. Not in ways that matter. All they have done in Lagos is create work for Yahoo Yahoos.

  “I have to make sure our money will be in safe hands.”

  “It’s necessary,” he says. “I get around and I’m telling you, the nongovernmental sector is becoming a racket. Here, take my card. You should give me a call when you get in. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  She doesn’t read his card and she still hasn’t told him her name, but she is sure he knows who she is.

  “Do you prefer Abuja to Lagos?” she asks.

  “My work is there and my daughter is in school there.”

  “I see.”

  She has misread their conversation. He is married with children.

  “Do you have anyone there?” he asks. “Friends? Family?”

  Her tone is less casual as she tells him her family is in Lagos. As if to remind herself, she adds that her father’s memorial is on Sunday.

  “I’m lucky to be able to come home,” she says. “Imagine trying to explain to an English boss the significance of a five-year memorial.”

  “I know,” he says. “My old man died in ’86 and I was in the States.”

  “Which state?”

  “New York.”

  “That must have been nice.”

  “It was, but I was almost at the end of my course when my father died. I had job interviews lined up and everyone was telling me to come home. So, I came home. I’ve been hustling ever since. Nothing I learned abroad has been of any use to me. I have friends who still live there. Their parents die and they fly in for a couple of days. I think the English are more sympathetic than the Americans are about these things.”

  “Was your father ill or…?”

  “He had cancer.”

  She drinks her Eva water. Their parents were taken down by cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Respectable diseases. She assumes Wale inherited the house. With the reconstruction work, it must be worth about a million pounds.

  “So many fathers are dead,” she says.

  “Mothers, too.”

  “All I ever see are widows. Where are the widowers?”

  He pats his chest and she covers her mouth.

  “It’s all right,” he says. “It’s been a while now and my daughter and I are doing well.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Moyo. Or you mean my wife? Her name is… was Ronke. I’m never sure if it is ‘is’ or ‘was.’”

  His voice trails off and she can’t think of something suitable to say.

  “I should go.”

  “Make sure you call when you get to Abuja.”

  “I will,” she says.

  z

  On Wednesday evening, she meets her cousin, Ivie, at a hair salon on Victoria Island. The salon, converted from a shipping container, is on a rented plot. Indoors, the air conditioner is on. The white walls are chipped and the ceiling is peeling. Samba music is playing. A hairstylist sings along as another, a man, heats up curling tongs. The supervisor is behind a desk, collating receipts.

  Two stylists are braiding Ivie’s hair with extensions. Ivie is remarkably pretty and slim. She incurred wary looks from other patrons when she walked in, followed by a general slighting. Deola wondered if Ivie was aware. She has observed how Nigerian women use their fluency in silence to isolate women who, by their mere appearance, suggest they are not willing to obey the order, no matter how trivial, idiotic or catastrophically destructive the order is. Ivie looks like a woman who would have no qualms about breaking up a marriage.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Ivie says. “Wale Adeniran?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his wife died?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he hasn’t yet remarried?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  His marital status may not be a consideration for Ivie, who has been living with a married man, Omorege, for years. She was with him before he got married. Omorege is a senator and is separated from his wife, Patricia.

  “He sounds suspicious to me,” Ivie says.

  “Why?”

  “There are no men like that in Lagos.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is single, owns a hotel and no one has snapped him up yet? Do you know how many single women there are in this place? This is not a matter of scarcity. Men like that don’t exist. Or is he…”

  Deola winces. “Gay?”

  “He might be, especially if he is lives in Abuja. What? That is their home base. Everyone knows they go there to look for government contracts.”

  The stylists laugh as Deola shakes her head. She will never understand Nigerian attitudes toward gays: even the most decadent and perverted Nigerians vilify them, while those who are more open-minded worry about their proliferation as if they were an infestation of mosquitoes.

  “Nigerians,” she says. “Why are we like this?”

  Ivie glances at the male hairstylist and whispers, “Me, I have no problem with them. It’s when they marry that I have a problem. I don’t like confusion. It’s bad enough man to woman. You have to declare your stance, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “He’s not gay.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I can tell.”

  “How?”

  “I just can.”

  “Okay, how are you so sure his wife died, then?”

  “Why would anyone lie about that?”

  “He might have killed her. Seriously, there have been cases like that. They give their wives rat poison. Look, one man I know did it and he got hold of his wife’s inheritance. Why are you laughing? You have to be careful these days. You meet a single man in Lagos and it’s best you check with Interpol. The worst part is that they are not like our fathers. At least our fathers tried to take care of their families. These ones don’t care. As for women, they’ve gone nuclear. If you can’t provide, they will find someone on the side who can. It’s true! Alternative energy sources!”

  Deola laughs. “Please, don’t kill me.”

  Ivie’s Omorege was a victim of that. He met his wife, Patricia, when they were both students in university. They came from the same town in Bendel State. Patricia won a Miss Nigeria pageant. Her guardian was a family friend she called “Uncle.” Uncle was a retired brigadier. He became a governor after a military coup. He was ousted in a subsequent coup, but he made money while he was in office. He helped Patricia financially and bought her a car. He said he was taking an interest in her studies. He turned out to be her sugar daddy.

  Omorege found out after he got engaged to Patricia. He broke off their engagement, and at first Patricia said he must have known all along; then she got down on her knees and begged. Omorege refused to take her back. He met Ivie and started going out with her. Patricia tried to kill herself by swallowing aspirins. Omorege visited Patricia while she was hospitalized and she seduced him during her convalescence: she bought fertility drugs on the black market and pierced a hole in his condom. All this became public knowledge after she delivered triplets. Omorege married her because they were Catholic, but they have separate homes and he continues to live with Ivie, who has not
been able to have children.

  Marriages in government circles are like Nollywood scripts to Deola. Lagos is still captivated by the news of a minister who has been in every administration, military and civilian, since the Second Republic, doing nothing useful and getting richer. The newspaper reports accuse him of sleeping with his daughter-in-law. Deola doesn’t doubt he is capable of having an affair with his daughter-in-law, but she can’t believe the manner in which the reports relay the details, showing the same photograph of the woman in question, with a hair weave and deep cleavage, and referring to her as “the delectable thirty-four-year-old.”

  The supervisor changes the music to what initially sounds like another samba number, but turns out to be a catchy gospel song. A customer, who is eating a takeaway meal that resembles chicken piri piri, begins to sing along to the chorus, “The best, is yet, to come! The best, the best is yet to come!”

  Ivie reaches for her bottle of Coca-Cola and mumbles, “They’ve started.”

  Ivie attends a Pentecostal church, but she dislikes pious displays. She was previously with another church, “Church of Curses,” as she now calls it. She might have joined because of her infertility problems, but the pastor told her someone had put a demonic lock on her womb, so she left.

  The woman continues to sing, “Today is the first day of the best days of your life! Today is the first day of the best days of your life!”

  Nigerians are usually tone-deaf, but her voice is beautiful.

  She gets higher and higher, “You ain’t, seen nothing! You ain’t seen nothing yet! You ain’t, seen nothing! You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  Deola browses through a magazine, Metropolis, crammed with photographs of camera-ready people. “Celebrities on the Red Carpet,” the heading reads. They are TV personalities, Nollywood actors, musicians and singers, carrying on as if Lagos is Los Angeles.

  “So there are no normal couples here,” she says.

  The Coca-Cola deepens Ivie’s voice. “My dear, everyone is sleeping around.”