by Jennifer Juo
One night, when Lila was three months old, her crying suddenly drove Sylvia to the edge of what felt like madness. Sylvia got out of bed, picked up Lila’s wicker bassinet, and walked quickly down the hallway. She placed the bassinet on the floor of the car and started the ignition. She found the repetitive hum and vibration of the car was the only way to calm her baby.
Fenced in from the real Africa, she circled around the identical houses and smooth lawns of the expatriate compound built to mimic an American suburb with its own swimming pool, clubhouse, and golf course. She never left the confines of the compound except to buy food and supplies at the local market. But tonight, as she drove the smooth concrete streets, doing her usual loop to lull Lila to sleep, she could only think of fleeing. She heard the music coming from the town, a muted rhythm and voice over the static of an old amplifier. She had to leave this place and take her baby somewhere safe. At the fork in the road, instead of turning to go home, she swerved up the hill lined with royal palms, toward the gatehouse.
The night watchman stopped her car at the tall, white gates flanked by a cement wall lined with shards of broken glass, separating them from the town outside.
“Madam, where are you going at dis time of night?” The night watchmen were Hausa, a northern warrior tribe known for their black, carved arc-shaped swords. They were hired because they held a natural suspicion and disdain for the local Yoruba tribe, making them immune to bribes from the local population.
“I have to leave this place,” Sylvia said with determination, even though she had no idea where she was going.
The night watchman looked Sylvia over. She was dressed only in a white silk robe and slippers.
He said, shaking his head, “Sorry madam, but I cannot let you out of dese gates. It is not safe dis time of night, you hear?”
Bands of robbers prowled the deserted road at night, ready to pounce on imported Peugeots or Mercedes—cars of affluent Nigerians and expatriates. Sylvia knew this, but she didn’t care about the dangers of night driving. Suddenly, she craved the chaos, stench, and teeming crowds of the town beyond the compound walls. It reminded her more of home than the quiet, clean American suburban feel of the compound. She had never lived in an American suburb; she didn’t know what kind of life they were trying to recreate in the middle of Africa.
“But I have to go. I have to leave,” she said. Sand flies feasted on her exposed arms, but in her state, she did not notice.
On the other side of the gate, a Peugeot pulled up, entering the compound. The security guard went over and murmured something to the car’s driver. Sylvia noticed it was the young doctor, Ayo Ogunlesi, coming back from his clinic in town. It was one o’clock in the morning. The doctor parked his car and strode over to her. Suddenly, Sylvia felt embarrassed. She knew there was no logic to her impulsive plan. How would she explain this to the young doctor? She wanted to turn around and speed home, but her hands seemed stuck to the wheel, and she couldn’t move.
She had seen Ayo a couple of times at the clubhouse and pool on the compound. It was hard not to notice him. He was of African-English descent; his mother was English and his father Nigerian, a taboo marriage against all odds during colonial times. His unique looks—skin, the color of terra cotta, hazel-tinted eyes, a face where cultures collided. It was a sort of talent, these extraordinary good looks, these far-flung genes that had produced this novelty.
“It’s Sylvia, right?” he said, coming up to her car window. “It’s a bit late for you to be driving around outside. But you know that, I presume.” As he spoke, he dug his hands into his pockets.
When she didn’t respond, he said, “Right, let me take you home.”
Sylvia let him help her out of the car. He put his arm around her and coaxed her into the passenger seat. Then he got into her car and drove her back to her house. She felt him glance over at her bare legs. She tried to pull her short silk robe toward her knees. She felt even more agitated, her nerves complicated now by this man sitting next to her. Her long black hair fell over her face, and she kept brushing it back nervously. She felt his attractiveness, and it put her on guard. She kept her face averted, staring out the window, turned away from him. The night air rushed in through the open windows—a faint scent of the thorny bougainvillea blossoms and the smoke of slowly dying cooking fires and burning garbage.
He parked the car in her garage, but she didn’t move. He reached across her to open the door, his arm lightly brushing her body. That sent her scrambling out of the car, her heart pounding from the adrenalin of fleeing and the closeness of this man. He carried the bassinet into her house with Lila screaming. She needed to nurse her to calm her down. She leaned down to pick up her baby, inadvertently revealing her full breasts. He looked away, saying, “I’ll get your housegirl.”
He went to the servants’ quarters built behind each house, the one architectural feature on the compound that was unique to colonial Africa. When he came back with Patience, Sylvia was sitting on the sofa, half-naked, nursing her baby in her silk white robe. She felt dazed and not quite herself. She only thought of calming Lila. With his eyes averted, Ayo took his leave.
Her eyes followed the outline of his broad shoulders as he walked out the door. In the distance, she could hear the harmony of voices and electric guitar matched by a rhythm of talking drums. It was nothing like the music of her culture—the dissonant falsetto voice of Chinese opera or the melancholy wail of the Chinese violin. She thought the music of Africa was filled with joy.
***
A few days later at Patience’s insistence, Sylvia ventured out to the compound wives’ coffee hosted by her neighbor, an Indian woman named Meghal. As she walked out of the house without her baby, Sylvia felt empty-handed, as if she were missing an appendage. She wanted to return home, but she instead she kept walking. A part of her was trying to please her husband, just as she worked to please her father. She was trying to do the right thing, even though inside, it felt all wrong.
She thought of Baba, a Latin-handsome playboy from Shanghai, an accomplished swimmer and businessman. Every year her father swam the Hong Kong Harbor race, gulping the grimy water and sweeping the trophies. After the race, he would throw a huge party at their Hong Kong penthouse overlooking the harbor, serving delicacies like sea cucumber, illegally harvested from the sea. Her father always smelled of cigarettes and chlorine from swimming pools. He had a foul temper and often slapped Sylvia for something as trivial as dropping bits of sticky rice on the floor as they ate dinner. As a child, she had walked on eggshells in his company. She worked hard to please him, to do as he said, or risk the wrath of his erratic temper. Sometimes at night he would fall asleep, sitting up in his bed with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. She feared one day he would burn them all to death. She was glad Winston didn’t chain smoke.
Sylvia knocked on her neighbor’s door, and the maid let her in. Meghal’s house was identical to Sylvia’s with the same standard-issue Danish furniture, except it was adorned with objects from Meghal’s homeland—Indian silk woven carpets, a tiger’s skin, and paintings of the blue god, Shiva. In contrast, Sylvia had noticed the Europeans filled their houses with souvenirs from their travels throughout Africa—Kenyan soapstone sculptures, Nigerian thorn carvings, and Fulani tapestries.
Richard’s wife, Elizabeth, waved to Sylvia. Elizabeth was a tall, robust, blonde Englishwoman, raised in Kenya. To her, Africa was home.
“Do join us, dear,” she said cheerfully, although Sylvia felt it was forced. Elizabeth was simply being kind because their husbands were colleagues.
Sylvia sat down with the mostly British crowd that surrounded the glass coffee table full of dainty Indian desserts. Not knowing what else to do, she reached out and tried a creamy white square. It was full of cardamom and pistachio nuts, and she liked its vaguely perfumed taste.
The English women continued to chat.
“You really should work on your backhand dear,” Elizabeth said.
“You know
who could teach you,” another English woman said.
“Oh him, he’s too busy being a doctor, saving the poor brown children. I doubt he even notices me,” a young, redhead said.
“It was just a suggestion. You know, to pass the time.”
They all giggled like schoolgirls. Sylvia immediately felt left out of the conversation, and no one made any attempt to include her. It reminded her of her British school in Hong Kong. Sylvia had been one of the few Chinese girls at the school, constantly left out of the English girls’ games and chatter. Dressed in the same green uniform as the blonde girls, her black hair stood out. She had hated that school, but her father insisted that all his children should be educated in English, and he refused to send them to the local Chinese school. She knew he had been thinking about their future. She and her siblings went to the UK for university, presumably to a better life. But when she thought about her life so far, she wasn’t sure if that school had been worth it.
Sylvia glanced over at the small group of Indian women, they were speaking Hindi. Meghal, her host, noticed Sylvia was uncomfortable, and she came over to sit by her.
“Did you like the sweets?” Meghal said. She was a pretty woman with long, thick eyelashes and a gorgeous blue sari. “Please, take more.”
Sylvia helped herself to a cake-like ball covered in syrup.
“My favorite,” Meghal said. “It’s called Gulab Janeem.”
But then another Indian woman spoke in Hindi, and Meghal went to talk to her.
The wives on the compound were polite enough, but finding themselves trapped in a backwater West African town, they naturally gravitated to the company of their own kind. Sylvia felt they kept her, the only Chinese wife, at arm’s length.
***
The next morning, Sylvia skipped the wives’ coffee. Her driver, Ige, took her to the town market instead. Sylvia preferred the town to the compound, and she used shopping as an excuse to escape.
Outside her car window, a man lay down his colorful, woven plastic mat beside the road and knelt toward Mecca. Suya kebabs stuck out of a circular mound of mud, roasted by the flames in the center. Half-dressed children with protruding bellies crammed Made in China combs, Bic razors, and synthetic shirts through the open window of her car. Yellow, blue, and pink cement or mud houses with tin roofs lined the road. The skeleton of an unfinished tall building lay abandoned. The builder had run out of money. They travelled on a paved tarmac road, but in parts, the rain had already drilled deep holes, letting the road revert back to its original orange dirt identity. The charred remains of an oil tanker that had crashed into a mud hut and palm tree lay strewn on the side of the road.
A mustard-brown mammy wagon stopped in front of her car at the wave of a hand by the roadside. Faces, arms, baskets, and chicken feathers stuck out of the wooden bars that sufficed as windows. On the back of the bus, someone had painted the words: Are you Ready? Jesus is Coming.
When they reached the market next to the University of Ibadan, Ige parked the car under a large, shady acacia tree in the dirt lot. Sylvia wandered around the market by herself, browsing the stalls made of scraps of wood, cardboard, corrugated iron and rusty nails. Tins of Nido powdered milk, Elephant Power washing powder, mangos, and pineapples crammed the tiny stalls. Sellers squatted behind mats lined with neat piles of red chili peppers and tomatoes while other vendors, toting large baskets of eggs and fruit on their heads, wove their way through the vibrant crowd. A little boy pushed a deflated bicycle tire with a stick. Chickens and goats wandered through the decrepit stalls, colorful fruit, rotting meat, flies, and throngs of people. She found comfort in the cacophony. It reminded her of home, of the crowded night markets in Hong Kong full of fresh fish, headless frogs, and caged dogs.
She stopped at one stall to buy some stiff, deep blue, adiera batik cloth that she used as tablecloths. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the African-English doctor. When she looked again, Ayo was buying fruit at a stall across the market. He was busy bargaining with the vendor and didn’t notice her.
She continued to shop, wondering if he would see her. She was not hard to spot, the only Chinese woman in the market.
“How much?” Sylvia asked.
“Twenty naira, madam, good price for you,” the vendor said, a plump woman dressed in a yellow and green wrap with an alligator print.
“This cloth is no good,” Sylvia said, shaking her head. “You try to charge me too much! Ten naira.”
“Eh, you try to rob me? Fifteen, dat is my last price.”
She started to walk off. The vendor called after her sulkily, “Okay, ten naira. Take it.”
Suddenly, Ayo was standing next to her.
“Not bad, really. Looks like you’ve got yourself a real bargain,” Ayo said, smiling. “You’re more of an expert at this than I am.”
“Um…thank you.” She felt wary and embarrassed, remembering her last encounter and her state of mind. He must think she was a wreck. She looked up at him and noticed, in the bright African sunshine, his brown curly hair had hints of blond.
“It’s bloody hot, isn’t it? How about we go inside get a drink?” Ayo said.
She couldn’t help feeling drawn to him—his towering height and athletic physique, the jaunty, masculine way he moved, the deep brown of his skin. She followed him even though she knew she shouldn’t.
They walked into the cool, air-conditioned supermarket across the street. Its large sign, Kingsway, seemed to boast of its superiority. The one Western supermarket chain in town, owned by a Lebanese family, it flaunted an interior lined with chrome shelves, metal carts, and German-made freezers. Perched on those pedestals were imports from the UK—jars of marmite, bottles of blackcurrant Ribena juice, cans of Spam, butter cookies as well as chocolate and champagne. In 1973, the shelves were stocked full of imported items. Nigeria, drunk on its newly discovered oil, embarked on a shopping spree. Still, Sylvia rarely found anything to buy at the supermarket. It was mostly coveted Western food, nothing she found appetizing. She rarely came into the supermarket, preferring the far more “superior” market outside.
They walked up to the lunch bar located at the back of the store. Sylvia sat down on one of the torn plastic yellow stools at the Formica bar. She felt uncomfortable, wondering what she was doing here with this man. She unfolded a sandalwood fan that she kept in her purse and fanned herself nervously.
“Two cokes and some chin-chin, eh? Bring it fast fast de lady is hot and thirsty,” Ayo said to the barman in the local pidgin English. Born in two different worlds, he could easily switch between the local pidgin to perfect BBC English.
“Most of the other wives are bloody frightened of coming out of the compound,” he said with a laugh. “That lot can’t handle the dirt, bits of rotting garbage, throngs of people. But you, you don’t seem to mind.”
“It’s not that different from where I’m from. We’ve got markets just like this in Hong Kong.”
The barman brought their drinks and chin-chin. She wiped the top of the coke bottle with a napkin from her purse and took a long sip.
“So I take it, you’re surviving here then?” Ayo ate the crunchy sweet squares known as chin-chin, a popular local snack made from fried dough.
“I suppose…,” she paused.
“Suppose it must be hard for you with your husband gone all the time,” he said.
She pushed stray strands of hair away from her face, embarrassed that she was such an open book to him.
“Look, is everything alright?” Ayo asked. “Pardon my prying, but I’m a doctor, and I must ask.”
“Oh no, I mean yes. My husband’s a good man.” She realized as a doctor, Ayo probably had protocols for dealing with wives running away in the middle of the night.
“Right, I’m glad to hear that. But honestly, if you need anything, anything at all, even just someone to chat with, please do call.” He took out a worn business card from his wallet and handed it to her.
“You don’t need
to worry about me. You probably have other lives to save.”
He suddenly looked as if he were in pain. “I might save one or two, but the rest I fail,” he muttered, looking down, the muscles in his arm clenching the sides of his chair. “It’s the novice doctor in me I suppose, still unused to the inevitable deaths on my watch.” She guessed he was probably in his late twenties, and this was his first assignment out of medical school.
“I always wanted to be a nurse,” Sylvia said, her voice resigned as if the dream was in the past and would stay that way.
“You should come to the clinic some time and volunteer. We’re always short-handed and could use an extra pair of hands.” He looked straight into her eyes.
“I don’t know…I can’t…I can’t leave my baby just yet,” she said, but he had stirred something in her long forgotten.
“Of course. Whenever you’re ready, we’re always here.”
“I have to go, but I wanted to thank you…for everything.” She suddenly got up from her stool. She held his business card tightly in her hand, the paper getting damp from her sweat.
“No need.” He touched her bare arm.
Hours later, as she bathed, she would remember the brief touch of his hand, the spicy aromatic scent of the sandalwood soap reminiscent of her fan, and the promise of something.
WINSTON
Chapter 5
Winston drove down a nameless dirt road through the jungle, the vines and branches striking the sides of his Landrover. He glanced into the forest, the shapeless trees covered in thick vine seemed dark and claustrophobic to him. As he made his way deeper into the forest, the foliage closed in on him, an invisible army camouflaged in leaves. He felt a nagging sense of fear that the road was leading him to a dead-end, a trap from which he would never escape. He pushed this thought from his mind.
