A Bit of Difference

by Sefi Atta

  She pulls the curtain, shutting him out. He is already speaking as if it is over. How dare he speak as if it is over?

  “You’ll be okay,” he says.

  “What if I’m not?”

  Her face itches. There is too much steam behind the curtain. The water covers her feet. This could have happened even if she waited, even if they were in love, even if they were married.

  “Where is the pharmacy?”

  “Not far from here.”

  “Can you help me with this shower?”

  He draws the curtain back. “Sure.”

  “Turn the hot water down, please.”

  He takes a shower after she does. When he comes out, she is dressed in her pajama top and lying on the bedsheets. Yes, he has been truthful; otherwise he would be gone by now. Finish. End of story. But he has to make sure she is not getting pregnant by him or worse. She eyes him as he dresses. He straightens his shoulders and buttons his shirt. Yesterday, she would have wanted any reason to know him for more than one night.

  “Are you staying here till morning?” she asks.

  “If you’d like me to.”

  “Do you mind if I leave the light on?”

  “No.”

  “What is the A in your name for?”

  “Akinyemi.”

  “Which university did you go to in New York?”

  “Columbia.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Ibadan.”

  “What year?”

  “’62.”

  “When last were you with someone?”

  “A few weeks ago. Why?”

  “I want to know. Are you still with her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t think I cared enough.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not enough for her.”

  “What happened to your wife?”

  She doesn’t expect an answer. He sits in the chair.

  “She died. When my daughter was born.”

  “Labor complications?”

  “Yes.”

  “It messed you up, didn’t it?”

  She wants to say she is still miserable about her father, but is that comparable?

  He pats the arm of the chair, so she makes a show of smoothing his head indentation out of the pillow, telling herself she will take the pill tomorrow, she will get tested when she returns to London and she will be all right.

  “Will you be able to sleep over there?” she asks, getting into bed.

  “I doubt it,” he says.

  But he does. In the purgatory hour while she is still awake. She has given up on praying and is willing the sun to rise. There isn’t a sound outside. She hears him breathing and looks over to the chair. He is lying back and shielding his eyes.

  z

  The progestin pills are supposed to make her feel nauseous, but what initially sickens her is her interaction with Wale the next morning.

  She gets up at dawn, drags the curtains apart and unzips her suitcase. He watches as she grabs her clothes. He stands up and goes to the bathroom. She hears the toilet flush. He comes out, pats his pocket and says, “I’ll see you downstairs, then.”

  She says, “Okay,” without looking.

  She finds him in the restaurant drinking coffee. She orders tea.

  “You look tired,” he says.

  “I am,” she says.

  From then on, they don’t speak, and breakfast is silent but for the clinking of their cups against their saucers.

  He drives her to the pharmacy in some sort of jeep—silvery. At junctions, they look in separate directions like a couple that has been together for too long. They get to the pharmacy and he offers to go in with her. She says she prefers to go in alone. She badgers the pharmacist, who assures her he doesn’t sell fake drugs.

  After she buys the pill, Wale drives her back to the hotel without saying a word. He drives too fast, which makes her get out of his jeep quickly.

  “Don’t forget,” he says.

  “I won’t,” she says and shuts the door.

  Her flight arrives in Lagos late in the afternoon. Lanre’s driver picks her up and takes her home. Her nausea doesn’t begin until the evening. She has pressure behind her eyes, her throat tightens and her stomach turns. This is why she stopped taking contraceptive pills, and the effects of the progestin pills are more severe. She takes her second dose and her lips begin to tingle and the back of her tongue tastes bitter. She gets dizzy and tells her mother she will skip dinner tonight. She has to go to bed early because she is not feeling well.

  “I hope you haven’t caught something,” her mother says.

  “I doubt it,” she says.

  She vomits that night, within the safe period of taking the pill, but she still worries about getting pregnant. She develops a headache, takes a couple of Panadols and wills her father to make his presence felt, but he doesn’t, as if he has decided she needs her privacy. Then she has that moment—meaningless, she has always thought—when people stand in front of their bathroom mirrors, look at their reflections and they ought to change, but they just go back to doing whatever they were doing beforehand. Hers happens after she has washed her face, brushed her teeth and noticed the white tiles on the wall have been changed to a sky blue. Stupid girl, she tells herself, then she smoothes on her night cream with vitamin C and ginseng.

  z

  In the morning, she is lying in bed when she hears the workers who are putting up the canopies in the garden. They hammer and shout, “Oya, oya, oya! Keep it s’raight! Keep it s’raight!”

  Her mother’s voice is strident: “Be careful with my plants!”

  “E ma worry, ma.”

  “E pele, Mummy.”

  “Oya, oya, oya! Hol’ it! Hol’ it!”

  She takes a bath, changes and comes downstairs with Pride and Prejudice and returns it to the bookshelf, the story now irrelevant to her. Austen women did not have one-night stands. Austen women did not take the morning-after pill. Austen women took to their beds when they were heartbroken or down with colds.

  Jaiye is in the backyard watching the workers. There are four of them, their faces and arms darkened from sun exposure. They have finished with one canopy and are raising another. Both canopies are orange and white with their company name and telephone number printed in black.

  “You’re awake?” Jaiye says.

  “Yes,” Deola says.

  Jaiye is dressed in jeans and high-heeled sandals. She has a ponytail attached to her hair. She is naturally shapely, but she is determined to be thin. She goes to the gym three times a week and is on the South Beach Diet, which perhaps is why she is so irritable, apart from the running around she has been doing for the memorial.

  “Mummy said you were sick last night,” she says.

  “I was a bit. I’m better now. Where is she?”

  “My driver took her to the nail salon.”

  “Did the gardener show up?” Deola asks.

  “Yes,” Jaiye says.

  “What about the caterer?”

  “I’ve sorted that out. She is coming here first thing tomorrow.”

  “You’ve tried.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes,” Deola says. “I’ve done nothing.”

  She has to pull herself together. Her nausea has subsided a little, but her breasts ache. She can’t dwell on that or on her one-night fall, as she now regards her night with Wale.

  “Is Funsho back from Johannesburg?” she asks.

  Jaiye hisses. “Forget that one.”

  “Why?”

  “Just forget him.”

  Jaiye is part of an Ikeja clique of married women. The popular girls of their day, they terrify Deola with their resourcefulness. Their clothes are always well pressed. They can run in six-inch heels, spot a fake designer bag at a distance, disarm an enemy with a “God bless,” cordon off their hearts from straying husbands if necessary, and they keep marching on: faith, family, friendship,
fashion; faith, family, friendship, fashion.

  Deola stays with Jaiye to monitor the workers. Her mother comes back from the salon about an hour later with maroon nails. Lanre shows up in time for lunch with a bootload of South African wine, then he takes off afterward without saying where he is going. Jaiye and her mother grumble about his wife, Eno, who has been scarce.

  “I’m not asking anyone to slave for me,” her mother says. “I don’t expect her to come here every day, but she can at least show her face.”

  “Leave her alone,” Deola says, instinctively.

  “What?” Jaiye says. “She knows you’re here. Why can’t she bring the boys over?”

  Deola shrugs. “Lanre could have brought them over.”

  “She won’t let him,” Jaiye says. “They’re always at her mother’s house and he loves it that way, so he can go on his little excursions.”

  “Lulu and Prof are always here,” Deola says.

  “Don’t interfere,” her mother says. “We know what we’re talking about.”

  They will all wear white lace iro and buba for the memorial tomorrow with navy head ties to show solidarity, but Jaiye and her mother are united against Eno.

  When Eno stayed at home after Banwo and Timi were born, they criticized her: “Why can’t she just get a job? She is such a lazy girl, that girl.” Deola’s mother would complain that Eno was making Lanre work too hard. Deola would argue that not all women wanted careers, without pointing out that her mother didn’t have one. Jaiye would say Eno’s lack of ambition was abnormal for a Nigerian woman and had to come from her oyinbo side.

  Women, Deola thinks.

  z

  Eno studied fine art at Ahmadu Bello University. She painted children’s portraits before she worked for her mother’s nursery, but she treated her work as a hobby. For years she would wake up, ask her nannies to get the boys ready, then the driver would take them to school. From then on until they returned, she would waft around the house with a serene air, lifting her chin as if to say, “I married well.”

  For Eno and Lanre’s wedding, Eno’s mother organized a church ceremony for about a hundred and fifty guests, including a couple of relatives who flew in from England. For Jaiye and Funsho’s wedding, a thousand guests were invited to the same church, half of whom were relatives and most of whom couldn’t get in the church. They sat on benches outside and listened to the service on a loudspeaker.

  The Bello family was furious about Eno and Lanre’s wedding. “What is this?” they said. “No letter-writing, no engagement ceremony, no night party? Deola’s mother, who spent her entire life playing the African European, who, when she met Eno’s relatives from Putney, spoke her crispest phonetics ever (“Lovely to meet you,” “Yes, it is rather humid, isn’t it?”), who didn’t even get along with the Bellos (she called them hinterland people), turned around and said, “Well, this is what happens when you go and marry someone from somewhere.”

  Deola’s father got along fine with Eno, even when Eno was just one of Lanre’s girlfriends. He called her by her full name, Eno Obong. He would ask after her parents and talk about when he visited Calabar, where Eno’s father was from. Lanre’s other girlfriends didn’t get more than a “How are you?” from him. After Eno and Lanre got married, he would tease Eno, “When are you going to make edikang ikong for me?” Eno would answer, “I don’t make edikang ikong, Dad.” She called him Dad. “Why not?” he would ask. “Isn’t that your specialty in Calabar?” “My specialty is fish and chips,” she would say. “Feesh and cheeps?” he would ask, frowning.

  Eno humored him. On his birthday, her driver delivered a pot of edikang ikong, which her cook had probably made. He danced around the dining table singing, “Calabar woman, na so so powder, better go follow them, for God’s power.” Deola’s mother tried only a teaspoon of the stew and asked, “Don’t they eat dogs in Calabar?”

  Suddenly, she was suspicious of unidentifiable meats. She, who wouldn’t hesitate to cook an endangered species of animal.

  Deola finds her mother and sister’s hypocrisy amusing. Jaiye won’t go to her mother-in-law’s house unless the woman says she is dying. The woman is dying every year, especially around Christmas, when she expects Jaiye to come to her house and help if she is having a family function. Every Christmas, Jaiye pretends to be down with malaria.

  Funsho’s mother is a proper traditional woman who believes Yoruba culture is superior to all others. Her husband was a chief and she was his senior wife. At home, her sons address her as “Mama mi,” none of that “Mummy” nonsense or standing to greet her. They must stoop, avert their eyes, and she doesn’t care to speak English in her house.

  When Jaiye met her, Jaiye knelt to greet her, but she made the mistake of saying, “Good afternoon,” in English and Funsho’s mother asked in Yoruba, “Who is this? What is she saying?” as if she couldn’t understand a word. Jaiye refused to kneel after that. “I don’t kneel to greet my own mother,” she said.

  The other wives in Funsho’s family kneel and they consider Jaiye rude because she refuses to. They shun her in that well-brought-up-Yoruba-woman way. Jaiye says they are backward women who can’t face up to their husbands. Funsho’s mother, meanwhile, is not impressed that Jaiye is a doctor if Jaiye won’t cook for family functions, and she considers Funsho’s infidelity a petty matter that Jaiye ought to be mature enough to ignore.

  But Deola’s mother can’t see beyond the roles Eno is meant to perform either. Deola once asked her mother how Eno’s art was coming along and her mother said, “I suppose she’s still drawing.” Deola later spoke to Eno and found out she had an exhibition in Lagos, but no one bought her work, so she lost confidence and gave up.

  She and Eno have talked about what it was like to grow up with an English mother in Nigeria. “You’re in a different tribe here,” Eno said, plainly. “It doesn’t matter where your mother or father is from, so long as one of them is oyinbo.”

  Eno’s father’s family seemed to accept her mother until her father died. Then his relatives came to their house and grabbed whatever they could, including his suits, while her mother was sedated. One of her uncles announced that if her mother thought the house would automatically pass to her, she was joking. He would drive her back to England before that ever happened. Eno’s mother stayed in the house regardless. She’d lived there for fifteen years. Her nursery was there. She’d planted some of the trees in the garden, and she gave up her British passport because Nigeria prohibited dual citizenship when she applied for a Nigerian passport.

  She got herself a Doberman. Dog eaters or not, her husband’s family stayed away from then on. Her nursery business expanded when English roses became all the rage for society weddings in Lagos. She would give her clients the impression her roses came from London, but she flew them in from a botanical garden in Plateau State.

  z

  On Sunday, Eno is at church and so are the boys. They have grown: Banwo almost reaches Deola’s shoulders and Timi is fast catching up. Now, they have a mixture of their parents’ eyes. How does that happen? Deola thinks. They resist her hugs, but they are polite enough to smile and say, “Hello Aunty.”

  “Look at you,” she says, “you little heartbreakers in the making.”

  Banwo laughs nervously and Timi mouths, “What?”

  Lanre describes Timi as his “Attention Deficit Disorder son.” They both keep close to him, wearing matching light blue agbada, and swagger as he does. Eno still has a serene air. She wears her white iro and buba, without a head tie. She has gained weight, but she is still a pretty woman. Her mother is in an adire dress and flat sandals and smiles at everyone, whether or not they acknowledge her.

  The service is a regular one and the hymns are a mixture of American and the Church of England. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” almost brings Deola to tears. She stops singing and listens as the congregation stretches and vibrates each line as they did with “Abide With Me” at her father’s funeral.

  She never saw h
er father’s body. Her family was with him at Lagoon Hospital on the day he died. “You should have seen Daddy,” Jaiye said later. “He looked so peaceful, like a boy.” Deola prefers to remember him as he was alive, as he appears in the obituary section of The Guardian today, wearing an agbada and cap.

  After the service, there is a gathering of women in the frontcourt of the church, by a frangipani tree. Most of them are her mother’s friends and they look as bright as petals. Deola walks through them and they leave traces of their powder, lipstick and perfume on her. She stops now and then to answer questions: “Is this you?” “When did you arrive?” “How are you, my dear?” “How is work in England?” There are the reviews to agree with: “It was a good service.” “Beautiful.” “Lovely, just lovely.”

  She backs into Brother Dotun, who flew in from Port Harcourt with Ivie’s mother. In his agbada and cap, he looks more like his mother, who is absent.

  “Brother Dots.”

  “Adeola-sco.”

  They shake hands. “What’s going on?”

  “Work is stressing me out.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Work is stressing me out. Can’t you see?”

  Deola jokes that he has a potbelly, which shows his wife is taking care of him, then she sings, “Many rivers to cross, but I can’t seem to find my way over.” He laughs exactly like her father, his laugh getting higher and higher, as if he is cranking himself up.

  She often wonders if Brother Dotun resents her father. Brother Dotun was not left out of her father’s will, but he was terribly deprived of paternal attention. His mother did not want to live in England while her father was training as an accountant, so she came back to Nigeria with Brother Dotun and started a bakery business. In those days, people traveled to and fro by ship, from Liverpool Docks to Lagos Marina. Her father didn’t see Brother Dotun for years and when her own mother came into the picture, he divorced Brother Dotun’s mother.

  Her mother was the one who enjoyed her father’s success. Her mother studied nursing in England and was working at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London when she met her father. She gave up nursing when they returned to Nigeria, while Brother Dotun’s mother carried on with her bakery business, struggling each time a military regime banned imported flour.