News from Home

by Sefi Atta

  After a week, she was not getting better, so, regardless of my fatherly feelings, I told Toyosi, “You have to take her to a doctor.”

  We were in my sister’s room. Toyosi smoothed the mattress with such diligence I knew she was scared. The child kicked weakly. I’d never seen a baby with cheekbones before.

  “I can’t afford to,”Toyosi said.

  “A pharmacist then,” I said.

  “I can’t afford that either.”

  “This child will dehydrate. You want her to? Abi, is that it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Toyosi,” I said.

  “What?” she said, wagging her forefinger at me. “You can nag somebody like an old woman. Leave me alone.”

  “At least get her a proper diagnosis.”

  “How?”

  “You know what I mean. Go home. Apologize to your people if necessary. Lagos without family? You’re not that rugged. It’s over now. This is our reality not yours. You can’t romanticize slumming.”

  She hissed. “Who is romanticizing? You think living in a dilapidated mansion is slumming?”

  “Go home.”

  “No. I’m not going back. They suffered me. ‘Toyosi, don’t say such things. Toyosi, Uncle would never do that to you.’”

  “Who is Uncle?”

  “My mother’s I-don’t-know-what.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “This is his daughter. Is that not enough?”

  Her own story was as byzantine as our national politics, the stuff of Lagos suburban life, as debauched as it was hidden. I understood that her mother, having divorced her philandering father, was now the outside woman in a polygamous union with this Uncle, and this Uncle thought he’d help himself to Toyosi.

  “He denied it. My mother tells everyone I slept with the houseboy. My father says I’m unnatural for sleeping with a houseboy, worse than unnatural. I’m dead to him. Now, I’m kicked out of home. That’s fine, but nobody should tell me about violation of rights, or censorship, or persecution in this country. These things have been going on in homes for years and I don’t see anyone fighting for freedom in that realm.”

  “But what can we actually do for you here?” I asked, hoping she would find practical ways for us to support her. So we were both without families, slightly unbalanced, and far removed from the struggle for democracy, but I was going back to university. She couldn’t stay in the house forever.

  “Steal,” she said.

  I thought she was joking.

  “We’re not thieves,” I said. The last time I stole was from Duro Ladipo’s Oba Koso and I didn’t even do that properly.

  “You’ve played gods,” she said. “Can’t you play thieves for a night?”

  I stood up. “You’re the one playing here.”

  She carried her daughter. “I know someone. Someone with money. Someone you can get money from. Easily.”

  “Didn’t I just tell you what armed robbers did to my family?”

  “What will I do? My child is sick. You’re running out of money. We’re your family. Me, you, her and the village idiots downstairs. You’re lord of the mansion. You want to be with me? Save us, instead of sniffing around me like a dog in heat.”

  She beckoned with one hand, as if she was looking for a fight rather than love. I was done for, I thought, and warped. How could I still be attracted to her?

  “Who is this someone?”

  Yes, that was the moment I loved Toyosi.

  “My sister. She’s a banker. She won’t speak to me now I’ve been disowned. Just because she is my father’s favorite. Just because she doesn’t want to fall out of favor. She goes around calling me a liar, the selfish, spoiled...”

  “Toyosi, the men in your life have some responsibility to bear.”

  “I trusted the women.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “Speak to your friends,” she said. “I beg you.”

  “What if she’s setting us up?” Professor asked. “I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  He was hugging himself and rocking. The rest had said yes. I was waiting for one more voice.

  “Shango?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips. “Well... at least it’s a real gig.”

  “She lives on Victoria Island. She works for a merchant bank there. She makes stupid money doing foreign exchange deals.”

  “Which kin’?” Crazehead asked.

  “It’s too complex to explain.”

  “Fraud?” Professor asked.

  “Probably,” I said.

  “I don’t pity her, then,” Fineboy said. “Let’s do it. I’m in.”

  “All right?” I asked.

  The rest nodded; they were in. We’d taken greater risks in life anyway: pursuing careers in theater arts for a start, condoms we should have used for another.

  We set off at night in my mother’s Volkswagen Beetle, because the gear stick of my father’s Peugeot got stuck. I was driving, Shango was by my side, Crazehead and Fineboy were behind with the Professor between them. We backed out of the gates and Crazehead said, “’Alt!”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Let us pray,” he said.

  I pleaded with my palms pressed together. “I know your head is not normally correct, but please, let it be correct tonight, OK?” We’d bathed, shaved, washed and pressed our clothes. Crazehead was carrying two blunt daggers.

  The road to Victoria Island was an expressway that ran through market towns and fishing villages. We passed hamlets, which had red flags to show the incumbents were cherubim and seraphim worshippers, Lekki and Eleko beaches, oil-palm clusters and bushes. There was a plot for Lagos Business School, a satellite center for the University of Calabar,Victoria Court Cemetery where I’d buried my family. The sky was indigo and the air smelled of dust and salt. Billboards advertised the usual cigarettes, beer, medicine, born-again churches and toothpaste. Towards the island were villas with terra-cotta roofs and balconies. Victoria Island was meant to be a residential district; it was a commercial one now, bright with the neon lights of banks and finance houses. It was also a red-light district; prostitutes flagged us down near the diplomatic section, at the junction of a street named after Louis Farrakhan, to spite the Americans.

  The block of flats Toyosi’s sister lived in was one of those built to capitalize on the commercial growth on the island. It was converted from someone’s knocked-down home, had no uniformed security guards, mirrors for windows and a cemented yard. Expatriates wouldn’t rent a flat here. The gateman, a Fulani man in a black tunic and embroidered skullcap, let us in. He took a bribe, as Toyosi said he would, holding his prayer beads in his other hand. Fineboy, Crazehead and I got out of the Beetle. Shango and Professor waited as our lookout and backup.

  I knocked on the door; no bell, no peephole.

  “Ye-es?” I heard her say.

  I breathed in. “Daddy says you should come downstairs.”

  She hesitated. “My father?”

  “Yes. Daddy is downstairs and he says you should come down right now.”

  She muttered, “Again? For goodness’ sake.”

  My heart scrambled around my chest. I glanced at Fineboy who was bowing his head, preparing himself to waylay her. Crazehead was behind me. We heard footsteps then clicks in her keyhole. Security was generally tight in Lagos. How did robberies happen? Because, sometimes, robbers had inside information.

  Toyosi’s father had forbidden her sister to leave home and move into a flat of her own. She was an unmarried woman and it was not done in society, but she was also making enough money to disobey him. It was Toyosi’s mother, feeling bitter about the divorce, who had given her daughter permission to leave home, and her father paid unexpected visits, on his way from Island Club, or from his girlfriend’s, to check that his own daughter wasn’t entertaining men. He was a lawyer for an oil company, too fat and important to get out of his car. His chauffeurs called him Daddy. Everyone who worked for him called him Daddy.


  Toyosi’s sister opened her door with a wig on her head and one brow raised.

  “So how many of you does it take to drive my father’s Merc?” she asked.

  Fineboy ushered her back into her flat.

  “Inside,” he said. “And don’t make a sound.”

  “Yeah,” Crazehead said, “or else we’ll fug you hup.”

  I raised my eyes. Was this what we had agreed on? No one forced me, though. I walked in with my own two legs.

  Her eyes puffed up from crying. She was sweating in her black skirt suit. Her wig was askew and her mouth was shaped as though a chicken bone was wedged in sideways. Her flat was done up in matching purple tie-and-dye sofas and chairs with ruffles. Toyosi had said a well-known Lagos interior decorator was responsible for the mess. Her sister was a smoker, stank of tobacco and perfume, and in her living room was a crystal ashtray of lipstick-stained cigarette butts. Crazehead and I searched the wardrobe in her bedroom where she said her money would be. Bruno Magli and Ferragamo were the shoes she favored. Her bags were Louis Vuitton and Fendi.

  The money was in a mesh bag of dirty underwear. I handed it to Crazehead, who dug his hand inside and pulled out a bra.

  “La Perla,”he said. “Dis one be African Jackie Onassis. Are Ferragamo and Fendi your mother and father?”

  He rolled the bra into a ball and sniffed it, then cast it on the floor and pulled out a thong.

  I winced.

  He sniffed that, too.

  “The money,” I said, feeling nauseous, yet strangely intrigued.

  Toyosi’s sister was crying again. Crazehead found the wad of dollars.

  “Is this all?” he asked.

  She nodded. Mucus trailed from her nostrils into her mouth.

  “Let’s fade,” I said, overwhelmed with shame.

  “No,” Fineboy said. “Let her do one more thing for us.”

  I frowned. “Like what?”

  “Call Daddy,” he said.

  The woman herself looked bemused. She had to know we were fakes now. No armed robbers could be this stupid.

  “Call Daddy for what?” I asked.

  “Let her call him and you’ll see,” he said.

  “Now!” Crazehead barked so loudly I jumped.

  I promised myself that I would one day have to think about why my friends were such morons. Toyosi’s sister dropped her mobile phone three times, she was trembling so much as she called her father.

  “H-hello? D-daddy?”

  “Tell him you like sex,” Fineboy whispered. “Don’t start crying wah-wah.”

  She clutched the phone. “It’s me, Daddy. I like... sex.”

  “Tell him,” Fineboy said, “you have a boyfriend who is not from a good family.”

  She shut her eyes. “Daddy, my boyfriend is not from a good family.”

  “But,” Fineboy said, “he gives it to you hard.”

  She shook her head. Crazehead was giggling. He raised his dagger and bit the edge. “Real ‘ard,” he whispered.

  Toyosi’s sister placed her hand on her chest. She was gasping for air. Her skin was fair, probably from chemical bleaching.

  “Daddy,” she said, “my boyfriend... gives it to me... hard.”

  As soon as my shoes touched the ground outside, I smacked Fineboy’s big chest.

  “You’re a bastard,” I said.

  “Yei,” he said and ducked.

  “And you,” I said, pointing at Crazehead. “Your head is not correct. Why did you do that to her? Was that our plan?”

  They were raising their fists. Shango and Professor were leaning on the bonnet of the Beetle. I tossed the mobile phone on the driver’s seat, unable to bear what had passed between father and daughter. Wasn’t our population over a hundred million when last I checked, give or take ten million for census fudging? And fewer than ten people in Nigeria, I was sure, would admit to their parents that they’d had sex, let alone enjoyed it. We didn’t even have to lock her up in her bedroom; she collapsed on the floor after her phone call to Daddy.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “What happened?” Shango asked.

  I pointed at Crazehead and Fineboy. “Ask them.”

  Crazehead was calling the gateman. “Tss, Mallam, you get kola nut?”

  The gateman was standing at attention by the cement column of the gates with his wife by his side. She was a street hawker. They were nomadic people, sort of permanently stuck in the city. They’d come from the North, with robes as colorful as petals and feet as filthy as roots. The woman had a pink chiffon scarf covering her head. Her husband shoved her and she immediately squatted over her tray of Bicycle cigarettes, Trebor mints and Bazooka Joe chewing gum.

  Professor hissed. “Why did he push her like that?”

  “Blame Crazehead,” I said. “Is it now he’s asking for kola nuts?”

  I yanked the door of the Beetle open. Shango went round to the other side. Fineboy was coming towards us. I noticed Professor waddling over to the gateman.

  “Prof,” I called. “What happuns? I said, we’re leaving.”

  Professor placed his hand on his crooked back like someone’s grandmother and began to berate the gateman: “Why did you push her? Did you have to push her? Isn’t she your wife? Couldn’t you say common please?”

  The gateman backed away, gabbling in his language.

  “Ignorant Northerners,” Professor said. “All of you are the same.”

  I shook my head. He was being a tribalist at this late hour?

  “Misogynist,” he said. “You have no respect for women.”

  No, he was being a feminist. I knocked my head against the Beetle.

  “Prof,” I whispered. “Why?”

  He waved his arms like a traffic warden: “Alla Wakuba. That’s all you know. Alla Wakuba.”

  The gateman, who couldn’t understand a word of English, understood Professor’s attempt at Arabic. He was gobbling like a turkey now. I was sure he was calling Professor an infidel. He snatched Professor’s arm and twisted so hard that Professor was off balance and flat on the gravel in one second. His glasses went flying, followed by his confidence.

  “Chineke, hellep me, oh,” he yelped.

  The gateman reached into his robe and pulled out a scabbard longer than Crazehead’s puny daggers placed together.

  “Shango,” I said. “Save the bobo.”

  Shango ran across the gravel. He grabbed the gateman’s shoulders, lifted him, and threw him against the cement column. The gateman slumped at the foot. His wife screamed, “Barawo! Barawo!” Thieves.

  I sped out of the gates. My mother’s Beetle protested with a screech. I tried to straighten the wheel, but my hands were shaking too much.

  “D-did we kill him?” Professor was asking. He was squinting. We’d left his glasses on the gravel when we fled.

  “We injured ‘im,” Crazehead said. “There was blood everywhere.”

  His voice was loaded with an accusation. Shango stared out of the window. Fineboy leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder. “Steady on, o-boy. At least let’s get home. Drive safely and all that, eh?”

  “I’m trying,” I said. I was so ashamed: I had a hard-on.

  When we reached the mansion, I snatched the wad of dollars from Crazehead and delivered it to the real lord— Toyosi.

  “Here,” I said. “Are you satisfied?”

  She glanced at the notes in her usual manner, as if they were inevitable circumstances in her life, but she wouldn’t move, so I threw the notes on my sister’s bed where her daughter was sleeping. I didn’t even care if she hated me. I was fed up with her lack of gratitude.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  “We almost killed a man for this.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been so kind to me.”

  “Make sure you get her to a doctor and buy her the right medicines.”

  She reached for me and I pushed her away. What if Shango had killed the gateman?

  “Did you hurt my sister?” she
asked.

  I rolled my fist against my mouth. “I can’t say.”

  “Ogun, answer me.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Ogun, tell me. Did you hurt my sister?”

  Ogun had several translations depending on how it was pronounced. It could mean sweat, poison, medicine, inheritance, an army, a battle, the number twenty, or the god of iron and war. With Toyosi’s appalling Yoruba intonation, Ogun was a basket for catching shrimps, but she gripped my wrist and her eyes watered, so I told her about Fineboy’s inferiority complex, Shango’s hidden rage, Professor’s over-identification with women and my desperation to avenge my family. I also told her about her sister’s forced confession, and she smirked.

  “Serves her right.”

  “We were not acting. We were just being ourselves and yet...”

  Was that redemption I felt? That rush of potency and sense of possibility? I leaned against Toyosi. Who was I to think theater could save us? Who was I to think art could save anyone in Lagos?

  She stroked my forehead. “See? See why I had to give up? There’s enough drama in our lives. We must be supernatural to survive here. Why bother with any myth about gods?”

  We heard a giggle as heartening as rainbow-colored bubbles popping. It was her daughter. She’d woken up and found the dollar bills.

  “Hrscht,” she said. “Hrsch-tup”

  Her first words. Shut up, she was trying to say, and she was absolutely justified. There was no need for her mother to pontificate, not at that stage.

  At first we were a little shy of one another in that house. We were not sure how to regard each other, as actors or armed robbers. Then, the haze of harmattan lifted and it became clear that we were brothers.

  The Abacha regime announced they were reopening our university. We knew we would not be returning to graduate. We heard from the British Council and I asked them to save their patronage for a more deserving theater group.

  One surprise: as we prepared for our next night as the Lawless, it was Crazehead who became the most solemn in our group, Crazehead who made us promise to stick to our plans and vow never to spill blood again.