A Bit of Difference

by Sefi Atta

  Deola was vaguely aware that his mother and hers were politely alienated from each other, as she was of the fact that her mother was an obstacle to any sibling bond she could have with him. Brother Dotun once tried to give Lanre brotherly advice and made the mistake of calling Lanre spoiled rotten. Lanre told her mother and her mother went straight to her father. Brother Dotun was careful about what he said from then on.

  “How’s your family?” Deola asks.

  Brother Dotun’s wife, Efua, is from Ghana. She is there with their children for the summer holiday.

  “I miss them,” he says.

  “You carry them on your head.”

  “They’re all I’ve got.”

  “What’s happening in Ghana?”

  “Ghana?” he says. “It’s not perfect. We all have our problems, but I tell you what, Accra is clean, clean and organized, not like this Lagos.”

  “What are we going to do about this place, Brother Dots?”

  He points at the church. “It’s only God that can save us. Actually, I take that back because things could be a lot worse. God has already saved Nigeria.”

  Deola can’t confirm that what she observes in Nigeria is the result of answered or unanswered prayers.

  Ivie and Omorege walk past. Ivie looks like a first lady in her lace up-and-down and gold choker. Deola exchanges a wave with her. Omorege wears an agbada and cap. His cap is tilted as is his grin. He shakes hands as if he is on a campaign trail.

  “Deola, na you be dis?” he asks playfully, and moves on to the next person without waiting for an answer.

  “Isn’t that the senator?” Brother Dotun asks.

  “Yes,” Deola says.

  “I hear he’s calling himself Omorege these days. I knew him as George.”

  “George?”

  “Yes. George. His finance house went bankrupt, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the one. We started calling him Georgie Porgie when he ran away to London. He’s a case, that man. I’m sure he hasn’t done a thing for his state.”

  Aunty Bisi taps his shoulder. “Dots, Dots, kini nkan?”

  “Bis, Bis,” he says, slapping hands with her, “ba wo ni?”

  Aunty Bisi’s lace is sheer and her black bra is showing. Aunty Bisi will not be seen in a short skirt or tight trousers, but she walks around practically naked. She only wears lace iro and buba. Her lace is either sheer or full of holes. Her head tie adds another foot to her height. Her son Hakeem is with her.

  “Hakeem the Dream,” Deola says. “How are you?”

  “Not bad,” he says.

  Hakeem’s voice is so deep it scares Deola. She carried him when he was a baby and rocked him to sleep. He works for his father’s stockbroking firm. His father ought to be here, as an in-law, but the man is too old to get up this early for anyone.

  “Jaiye is looking for you,” Aunty Bisi says to her.

  “Why?”

  “She wants to get back to the caterer.”

  “I’d better go and find her,” Deola says.

  Colorful hats, head ties and caps block her vision. Some women are bareheaded, and a few are wearing trousers. Trousers in church would have been unthinkable when she lived in Lagos, and for once Deola welcomes the American influence. For too long, Nigerians have held on to social rules that the English have long abandoned.

  She sees someone she grew up with, who is in an ankara up-and-down. She can’t remember her name. Is it Alero? Yes, it is Alero. She was at International School Ibadan, then she went to Cheltenham Ladies’ in England. Didn’t she end up in a university outside England? Edinburgh or something? Once in a while, she showed up at LSE Afro-Carib events with a head full of braids, which she tucked behind her ears. To say hello, she had to make sure you were “PLU,” people like us.

  Alero was the only girl in Lagos to have a coming out party—coming out to which society, no one knew, but they were there, toasting her and saying, “Hear, hear.” She had a boyfriend who qualified as PLU, presumably because his mother was Norwegian. But he drank a lot and the more he drank, the more boorish he became. Whenever Alero asked him to keep his voice down, he would look at her affectionately and say, “Oh, shut up with your horse teeth.”

  Alero’s family was the sort that gave Ikoyi a bad name. They were oyinbo to the core. Ikoyi people were not that oyinbo. It was too much work. They did not believe oyinbos were worth emulating anyway; they only put on oyinbo airs to make other Nigerians feel inferior, shifting loyalties to cultures as easily as they changed clothes, unlike Alero’s family, who took things too seriously. Even her father did, which was unusual because no matter how oyinbo an Ikoyi family was, their father would let them down by saying, “feesh and cheeps,” whipping out a cane to beat someone, or doing something else that would shatter the illusion and remind them where they were coming from.

  “Hiya,” Alero says.

  “How now?” Deola says.

  “It’s been so long.”

  “Yes, long time no see.”

  “So nice to see you again.”

  “You too.”

  Alero speaks phonetics, almost as if she is encouraging Deola, who cannot be bothered.

  “Are you still in England?” she asks.

  “Eh.”

  “I couldn’t live in England,” she says.

  “Eh?”

  “No, I couldn’t live there anymore.”

  “Na wa.”

  Deola is sure Alero is still single. Unfortunately, there were not enough of her PLU men to go around. They married women who were younger, prettier and not necessarily PLU. Alero’s father wasn’t different from others either. In public, he was a salad eater; in private, he had a woman on the side who cooked his cocoyams.

  They say goodbye. At the church gates Deola catches sight of Funsho. He is in a black suit and his sunshades are so dark she can’t see his eyes. Why is he crouching? she wonders. But he is not crouching. He just has a crouching manner about him.

  “Ah, ah?” he says. “When did you get in?”

  “Last Sunday.”

  “Ah, ah? When are you leaving?”

  “Today.”

  “Ah, ah? Why so soon?”

  He already knows. His heavy brows jump. Deola struggles over what to say to him and is about to ask where Jaiye is when Jaiye approaches with Lulu and Prof.

  “Can you take the kids to my mother’s house?” Jaiye asks him.

  Lulu and Prof look traumatized by the church service. Lulu is tearful and Prof’s glasses are askew. Jaiye brought them to the church. Funsho arrived separately in his car.

  He feigns a stutter. “W-why?”

  “Just take them, please,” Jaiye says.

  “W-what is your car for?”

  Jaiye wags her finger. “Stop going on about that car, my friend. It’s not the only car I’ve had and I don’t need you to buy me one.”

  “W-what is your problem?”

  “You’ll soon know, when I kick you out. Maybe you can take the car with you, so you can have somewhere to sleep.”

  “W-what is your point?”

  Deola resists looking heavenward. Could Jaiye be more clear?

  “Oh, don’t be so thick,” Jaiye says.

  Funsho turns to Deola. “You see? This is exactly what your sister does. Then when I say I’m moving out, she’ll be begging me to stay and I’ve told her before, ‘One thing about me, I give people three chances only.’”

  How can that be a thing about anyone? Deola thinks. Why three chances anyway? Why not two or five? Funsho does have a tendency to sound thick. “Life,” he once said. “You can’t live with it, you can’t live without it.”

  Funsho often brags about money and possessions, his and other people’s. For as long as Deola has known him, he has gone on about the property that is due to him. His family is in the business of manufacturing plastic cups and bowls, but there is an injunction on his father’s estate following much fighting—not between his mother and the o
ther wives, but between his elder brothers. One allegedly paid an area boy a few thousand naira to “obliterate,” as Funsho put it, the other.

  Deola was raised to believe that it was wrong to talk about money. She thought that was a foreign affectation until her father explained it was necessary in Nigeria. “If you open your mouth in the wrong place, someone might juju you,” he warned.

  Deola bends and says to Lulu, “Wassup.”

  Lulu shakes her head. She doesn’t want to say “Wassup.” Deola smoothes Lulu’s fingers, thinking how easily it would be to break them. The thought repels her.

  “Please,” Jaiye says to Funsho, “just take them to my mother’s house when you finish here. Oya, you two, follow your father. I have things to do.”

  z

  Deola leaves with Jaiye. The sun is out this afternoon and there are a few clouds, but she has seen rain pour down from a Lagos sky this blue and clear. A group of beggars are gathered outside the church gates. One sits on the ground with his atrophied legs crossed. Another holds up a fingerless hand. She puts money into their aluminum bowls and they pray that Allah will bless her.

  Jaiye’s car is parked by a street gutter and sandwiched between two cars. Their drivers sit on a bench, fanning their faces with pieces of cardboard. They stand up to direct Jaiye. When she is safely on the street, she slips on her sunshades and turns on her CD player. Deola recognizes the beat, which seems to rearrange her heart rhythm. It’s Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. Is this appropriate coming from church, coming from her father’s memorial?

  Deola fears Jaiye will never outgrow hip-hop. She imagines Jaiye as a ninety-year-old granny dancing to hip-hop. Jaiye was barely in her teens when hip-hop arrived in Nigeria. Hip-hop was milder then, with raps like “Don’t stop a-rocking to the bang bang boogie.” The angriest it got was “Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge.”

  Jaiye raps, “Don’t even respect your ass, that’s why it’s time for the doctor to check your ass…”

  “You shouldn’t yab Funsho like that in front of your kids,” Deola says.

  Jaiye hisses. “He’s a fool. He’d better not piss me off today.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He has a girlfriend in South Africa.”

  Deola has a surge of outrage as she did when other children bullied Jaiye, but she remembers Jaiye can take care of herself. Her threat to throw Funsho out would have perforated his heart.

  Jaiye drives past Tinubu Square. Street hawkers are carrying dishcloths and cutlery sets. A boy of primary-school age holds up The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He scowls when Jaiye shoos him away.

  “You still shouldn’t yab him in front of your kids,” Deola insists.

  “Everyone fights in front of their kids,” Jaiye says.

  Her parents didn’t. The most her mother would say was, “As you wish.” And her father might come up with, “Let me relax.”

  “It’s not Funsho I’m concerned about,” Deola says.

  “My children will get over it,” Jaiye says. “They will just have to. I’m sick and tired of keeping quiet while their father continues to put my life in danger. I’ve told him, ‘Chase whomever you want to, swing from chandeliers if you want. Just don’t give me any diseases.’”

  Deola’s heart rate increases as she recalls her night with Wale. Jaiye is less restrained than she is about medical matters. Jaiye talks openly about her breast cysts and the consistency of her stool whenever she gets constipated on her South Beach Diet.

  “You’re all right, sha?” she asks.

  “I’m all right,” Jaiye says.

  As she has in the past, Deola plays a gambling game. She tells herself she will be all right if the car ahead takes the next right turn, which it does. Goosebumps rise on her arms and the sun warms her face. As usual, the air conditioner is too cold for her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Your husband is so… ”

  Jaiye taps her cheek. “I can’t even let him kiss here. I don’t know where that dirty mouth of his has been. He disgusts me. Nigerian men disgust me.”

  Now she might cry because of the bitterness in Jaiye’s voice.

  “Nigerian women are not exactly…” blameless, she is about to say.

  “They disgust me too,” Jaiye says. “Especially the foolish ones like my mother-in-law, who can’t raise a normal human being. His whole family disgusts me. They are typical Yoruba. It’s all hierarchy, hierarchy with them. Look, their whole lives revolve around that woman and Funsho can’t open his mouth when she’s around. Can you believe he thinks our family is oyinbo?”

  “Us? Why?”

  “Because we don’t crawl on our hands and knees to greet Mummy.”

  Deola has images of herself, Lanre and Jaiye as children yelling, “My bottom is scratching me!” How could anyone think her family is oyinbo? She is never sure what takes precedence in the way Nigerians constantly rank each other according to wealth, education and Westernization, with ambiguous results: this one is bush, that one is oyinbo. This one is local, that one is colonized.

  “Is this how you will both be in that house?” she asks.

  “Yes, until I kick him out. The house is in my name. At least Daddy made sure of that.”

  z

  They get home and the Sunday service in the church next door is over. As they supervise the catering staff and rearrange the seating plans, the guests begin to arrive, led by her mother. Soon there is barely any space on the road for cars to get past. Horns go off. People step out of their cars, shake out their trouser legs and dust their clothes down self-importantly. There are about a hundred of them, family and friends.

  They ignore the seating plans. Her mother’s close friends are the most difficult to manage. They want to sit together and ask that two tables be moved to form one, which becomes the longest table under the canopies.

  “Where is the wine?” Aunty Fadeke asks. “Bring the wine. Make sure the table is steady first. We don’t want the wine to topple over.”

  Deola has always liked her because she looks as if she is smiling even when she is not. She squeezes into her chair while the others laugh at her.

  “Fadeke, girl!”

  “What?” she says. “Remi? Where is Remi? Deola, where is your mother?”

  “She is in the kitchen,” Deola says.

  “Get her over here. Tell her we have reserved the head of the table for her. She sits at the head today.”

  “Yes, Aunty.”

  None of them is a blood relation. They ask for more crabs and shrimp, and more wine. She can’t pass their table without someone calling out, “Psst, darling. More wine. Yes, more wine. Preferably red.”

  Her mother sits at the head of the table, having taken off her head tie and replaced her shoes with slippers. They congratulate her on the catering.

  “Rem, Rem, wonderful job.”

  “It took a lot of planning,” her mother says. “And I didn’t have a driver at my disposal.”

  “The crab is tasty. Very tasty.”

  “And the shrimp.”

  “Fluffy rice.”

  “Hm.”

  Their empty crab and shrimp shells pile up on their plates. Their napkins are stained with lipstick and stew.

  “Remi,” Aunty Fadeke says. “You are disappointing me. How can you forget your namesake on a day like this?”

  “What namesake?” Deola’s mother asks.

  “Rémy Martin, of course! Who else?”

  “It’s true,” Deola’s mother says. “Where is the brandy? There ought to be brandy floating around somewhere.”

  She is deliberately hoarding her spirits. She knows her friends drink like military men.

  Deola strays to the next table. Aunty Bisi is taking care of the real relatives and the in-laws like Eno’s mother, who are seated there. As usual, Eno’s mother is overlooked. Aunty Bisi gave her special treatment by fixing her a tidier plate and saying a token, “Hope it’s not too peppery for you.”

  People
on the table don’t speak to Eno’s mother unless she speaks to them. Her presence may well hinder their conversation because they are not speaking to one another either. She sits there and finishes her food nonetheless. Normally, she would be on the expatriate table with family friends who have now left Nigeria and returned to London, Milan and Hong Kong to spend their retirement years. No more of their mince pies, panettone and steamed dumplings for Christmas. Their wives were honorary aunts: Aunty Jean, Aunty Sophia, Aunty Mrs. Wong (Deola didn’t know her name). Their husbands were either with multinational companies or working independently as entrepreneurs.

  The catering staff is coping well with the guests’ demands, but Aunty Bisi insists on waiting tables.

  “You have to chaperone your mother’s table,” she says to Deola. “You have to chaperone them. You’re not chaperoning them enough. Where is Jaiye?”

  Jaiye is in the house with her children. Prof spilled apple juice on Lulu’s dress and Lulu threw a fit. Deola heads back to her mother’s table to find out what else they need. They seem happy enough, which may be due to the wine they have consumed.

  Aunty Simi, who wears Chanel sunshades that cover half her face, asks, “So, Deola, my dear, any plans to come home?”

  “No plans yet, Aunty,” Deola says, skirting the table.

  “Why not?” Aunty Yinka asks. “You’re not getting any younger. You have to start thinking about it soon.”

  Aunty Yinka wears an emerald and diamond ring as big as her knuckle. Her friends call her “Mappin and Webb.”

  “Why should she come home?” Aunty Fadeke asks, knowing Deola is partial to her. “She is getting along fine where she is. Why should she suffer like the rest of us? Do you have a job waiting for her here?”

  Aunty Fadeke studied nursing with Deola’s mother and she worked until she retired. Her pension barely covers her phone bills. She lost her youngest daughter a few years ago to breast cancer and her friends raised money for her plane tickets to London while her daughter was receiving treatment there.

  “She has Trust Bank,” Aunty Simi says.