Welcome to Lagos

by Chibundu Onuzo

  What did Chike want, the Chief had asked. Nothing. Everything. He was tired of running the question through his mind. His shirt was off when Oma walked into the parlor. “Kedu?” she said, pointing her torch in his direction, the beam striking him in the chest and moving away until it rested neutrally at his feet. “Is that the man from last night?” She was whispering. He answered her normally.

  “Yes. When everyone is awake, we’ll decide what to do with him.”

  “Na wa. I’ll start making breakfast. It may be a bit cold by the time the others are up, but since I’m awake I thought, let me just do it.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  At first, he watched as she chopped onions into white chips that stung his eyes. Beyond dishwashing, he had never thought to join her in the kitchen. Hot food appeared and he ate with the others, like Oma was their mother or their slave. “You don’t always have to do the cooking,” he said. “Or the cleaning, for that matter. We should share things more.”

  “I’m OK. Housework was my life in Yenagoa. I was good at it. Matching hand towels, scented candles, soap dishes in every toilet, complete china set with gold-rimmed teacups and pink flowers on the saucers. From when I was young, if anything is out of place, my mum will say, ‘Is this how you will keep your husband’s house?’”

  “Well, I am not your husband and this is not his house. Please let me help you. Even if it’s just today.”

  She gave him a knife and a tuber the length of his arm. “Peel all of it. You know how much Fineboy eats and now we have an extra person.”

  As he skinned the yam of its bark, he watched her. She was wearing a wrapper and nothing under, her arms free and exposed, her chest bare to her neck. He wanted to stroke her collarbone that rose in a smooth ridge from her shoulders. She had lost weight, not unattractively. Her buttocks still swelled under her wrapper but the bones in her face had become more pronounced. As she sang softly, changing the shape of her mouth, her profile tautened and relaxed. She came to stand next to him. He was aware of the thin cotton of her wrapper.

  “Let me help you finish off.”

  He had been working slowly on purpose. They had not spoken so intimately since that first night on the bus to Lagos. She began slicing the yam into sticks and he saw the thick gold band on her left finger.

  “You still wear your ring?”

  “Oh. I wear it whenever I go out. People respect you more.”

  She took it off and put it on the counter.

  “I miss my house. I spent so long choosing the curtains. Dark green brocade. Very heavy material. Curtains for an invalid. Once you closed them, even in the afternoon, it was like night.”

  “What else do you miss?”

  “Being somebody’s wife. Don’t look so shocked. The difference between the way my relatives treated me before and after I married I.K. I used to live with my brother when I was single. Every day his wife will send their daughter to sing that children’s song for me: ‘When will you marry?’ You know it?”

  “No.”

  “You skip and at the same time you sing: ‘When will you marry, this year or next year? January, February, March,’ and so on. And then from the moment I got engaged to I.K., this rich man that worked in an oil company, my status completely changed. Well, there’s only so much you can take from a man, whether he has money or not.”

  She raised her hand to her cheek and wiped it, the knife still in her grip.

  “You’re very special, with or without I.K.”

  “Everybody is special. No two human beings alike.”

  Deflection was the outer defense of the insecure, the brusque putting aside of approval. Except he did not think Oma was insecure. Just married, the ring on the counter, a circular metal warning. Outside he heard Sandayọ coughing.

  “Let me go and check on him.”

  He shone his torch at the Chief and saw that his eyes were open, focused on the ceiling.

  “A man with a wife should consider my offer from last night. Surely you want the best for her.”

  It was an attractive dream. A wife, older than him and riper for the years. A wife who would bear children who would carry the Ameobi name, a name he had often thought would die with him in the Niger Delta.

  Fineboy walked into the room.

  “Is he still here?”

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “Sorry, Brother Chike. Morning.”

  “Is that the young man that attacked me yesterday? If so, tell him that he’s young to be making enemies.”

  “You’re in no position to threaten anyone. Fineboy, please open the top door.”

  The room was transformed from black to grey, a half-light in which features were partly visible. One by one the others came in, looking at Chike and then the shape of the newcomer.

  “Let us eat first. Then we will discuss.”

  The Chief would not take the food or even the water Oma offered him. He watched them instead, his eyes lingering on every face.

  “This is Chief Sandayọ, whom many of you may have heard breaking in last night.”

  “Breaking in? To my own house?”

  “He was also the minister of education. Fineboy, if you’ll tell us about that.”

  “Yeah. He basically stole ten million dollars. His pictures were all over the papers a few weeks ago and the government is looking for him. We could be rich if we turned him in. Even if we didn’t turn him in, we could still be rich.”

  “If this wannabe Americanah wants to steal my money, let him come out and say so, but as for taking me to the police, who is going to give a bunch of squatters credit for finding me? They’ll say I was captured on the border, dressed as a woman, or some other likely story. And please warn that boy not to make allegations he cannot back up.”

  “Oma, what do you think?”

  “It’s dangerous to have a politician here.”

  “I’m not a politician. I’m a minister. You understand the difference?”

  “Don’t teach me the Constitution,” Oma said. “I studied political science and I know the difference between an appointed thief and an elected one. You should all be in jail. But if we take him to the police, there’s a high chance the money will disappear. Maybe they will even arrest us, too, so nobody will know about it.”

  “At least one of you is sensible,” the Chief said.

  “Is the money still here?”

  It was Isoken asking, the least mercenary of the group.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “If it’s for education, then somebody should use it for education.”

  “Somebody like who?” Chike asked.

  “Like me. Like you. I don’t know.”

  “Use your own money to do charity,” Chief Sandayọ said.

  “What about you, Brother Chike?” Fineboy asked. “What do you think we should do?”

  There was a time when Chike’s answer would have been out before the question was fully asked, when even to hesitate would have brought him shame. Yẹmi granted him a reprieve.

  “All this talk-talk, we go late for work,” the private said.

  “You’re right. The Chief will come with us and you, too, Fineboy.”

  “If I’m going, the women are going too. Nobody is staying alone with that money.”

  “It is in your family that there are thieves,” Oma said.

  “You don’t know shit about my family,” said Fineboy.

  “Isi ewu.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Ha pu ya biko,” Chike said to Oma, before turning to face Fineboy. “I’ve asked you to come because we’ll need help guarding the Chief while we’re working.”

  “Excuse me. I’m not going outside. I might be recognized.”

  “Once we give you a different set of clothes, you will look just like anyone else.”

  “I’ll wear my own clothes.”

  “They’ll give you away.”

  “Then I won’t go.”

  “That’s not an
option. Don’t make us use force.”

  When the Chief stood in a pair of Chike’s trousers, rolled up because they were too long, and some secondhand sandals Chike had bought at a stall, Sandayọ looked like any old man. His potbelly, once a sign of wealth, was now proof of a cheap, starchy diet.

  “Poverty no get face,” Yẹmi said.

  26

  Despite the fiery youth calling for the dissolution of our polity, it would be the chiefest of all follies to break up Nigeria today. Where once, sundering our country was a matter of dividing friends and acquaintances, with every passing year it becomes a matter of separating mothers from daughters, fathers from sons, husbands from wives.

  —Professor Okeke in “The Elder’s Corner,” Nigerian Journal

  “NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT,” Chike read off a truck that drove past him, its side panels preaching the Lagos dream of sudden changes in fortune, the wheel always turning, none secure, top wobbling, bottom grasping, middle squeezed. Chief Sandayọ’s money was the quicksilver hand of fate. Grasp it or watch this chance evaporate.

  He waved a green Toyota Camry past before ordering the line to stop. The driver with her windows down, wilting from heat and exhaust fumes, did not acknowledge his kindness.

  Who in this place would turn down such an offer? Lagos chewed you to the gristle, ground you to the grist, passed you through a sieve, and then threw the chaff-like substance of your life to the winds. No one would admire him for his honesty here. They would think him a fool not to take the money. And perhaps they would be right.

  He stepped out of the way of an okada rider who showed no sign of pressing his hand brakes. He glimpsed the man’s face, approaching middle age, tribal marks on each cheek, gouged like permanent tears. What would a life spent as a rider in Lagos look like? What privations and indignities and embarrassments? The answers would be worse for a traffic warden living on half wages.

  Ten years from now, twenty years from now, he would still be plodding away at a job like this, worries of food and shelter plaguing his mind. He did not know what he would do with Sandayọ’s money if they split it—perhaps start an auto business or open a nightclub—but he knew what he would become with a fifth of ten million dollars to his name, a person of substance and dignity, someone worthy of respect.

  Even Oma, most opposed to the Chief, did not think much would come from handing him in. Isoken, young and romantic, felt they should fix some schools. He could not guess Yẹmi’s opinion. Sometimes his friend’s mind seemed a shallow pond filled with small fish and microscopic impressions. Other times his pronouncements were as deep as an oracle’s.

  Fineboy he understood. The boy was a Lagosian before he set foot in Lagos, filled with that acidic zest for life that corroded everything in its way. Fineboy would disappear with the cash, no questions asked. And he, Chike, what would he do?

  If he took the money, then in a few months the city had turned him into an automaton, powerless to choose anything but grasping survival. And if he didn’t take this chance, he had lost the glittering world of possibility that opened when Sandayọ stumbled into their flat holding a bag of new beginnings.

  CHIEF SANDAYỌ SAT IN the traffic wardens’ hexagonal rest hut, painted the canary yellow of the telecoms sponsor that built it and placed it in the center of the crossroads, a few feet from where the wardens directed traffic. It was a shoddy job. The plank floor was rotting and the wooden bench that ran around the walls might as well have been made of iron.

  He was hemmed in between Chike and Fineboy, sweating like a Christmas goat. It was hot in the hut. Hot outside. Hot everywhere. He had drunk four sachets of Pure Water already, biting with distaste into the plastic bags handed to him by the dirty hands of a hawker.

  Chike had paid. He was the kindest of the three men but Sandayọ sensed he was also the most inflexible, a rigid morality underlying his mildness. Fineboy he could not work with. Apart from the fact that the boy had assaulted him, he was too eager to run off with the money. Yẹmi was the only unknown entity. The man had given no opinion on his presence.

  Sandayọ watched Yẹmi now, dancing as he controlled traffic, naira notes fluttering out of cars when the drivers were entertained. Yẹmi’s routine was repetitive but effective.

  He slid across the road like a clunkier Michael Jackson or he spun like a coin when he beckoned for a lane to move forward. Sandayọ had met many men like Yẹmi in his YPC days. Joyful, unlettered creatures, possessing village shrewdness but lacking natural intelligence. They had always been easily swayed.

  “Kúu,” Sandayọ said when Yẹmi returned from his shift, breathing heavily with his earnings crumpled in his fist.

  “Ẹ é.”

  Sandayọ let some time pass before he spoke to him again.

  “This work you’re doing is not easy. And on top you’re dancing and directing traffic. Who taught you?”

  “Nah me teach myself. I dey learn some new moves I go soon display.”

  “Chike doesn’t seem to dance,” Sandayọ said.

  “No o. You dey look him face think he’s a small boy but inside nah old man.”

  “It’s like he didn’t really like the dancing.”

  “Nah so he talk? He no sabi better thing.”

  “Of course. The two of you won’t be able to see eye to eye. Irú r wo l’ọmọ Yorùbá ne pèlú ọmọ Íbò?”

  Sandayọ’s question could not be posed in English. It would be robbed of the solidarity he was trying to build.

  “Yẹmi,” he said, after the pause had extended beyond hope of reply. “é o gb Yorùbá?”

  “Yes, I speak my mother tongue, but in the army, they have teach us for national unity, everybody must be speaking English.”

  Fineboy laughed. “You think he’s fucking stupid? What? Are you going to try and speak Ijaw to me next? I don’t need your permission to take that money. I’ll kill you and take it if I want.”

  “Who is killing who?”

  It was Chike returned from his shift. Yẹmi got up and went back to the crossroads, leaving Chike to slot himself into the small space next to Sandayọ. He was numb from the wooden bench and he needed to piss. He had seen men ignoring the DO NOT URINATE HERE signs painted on walls but he was not an animal to relieve himself in the open.

  “That girl over there.” Chike pointed. “Can you see her? In the blue skirt, running beside that danfo with Pure Water.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s only five.”

  “Are you some sort of moron? Am I her mother that sent her to hawk when primary education in the southwest is free since the time of the great Awolowo?” Chief Sandayọ snapped his fingers at a newspaper vendor. “Give me This Day.”

  “Oga e don finish.”

  “Wetin remain?”

  “E get this one dey call Nigerian Journal.”

  Sandayọ had heard vaguely of this Nigerian Journal, liberal but small.

  “How much?” he asked the vendor.

  “One-fifty naira.”

  “Bring it.”

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew his hand.

  “As you’ve taken my money, be so kind as to pay.”

  Sandayọ found news of himself on page twenty. People he knew were denouncing him in the piece: his permanent secretary, his special adviser, even his friend Senator Danladi. His friendship with Danladi was a known fact and to save himself, Danladi must denounce him strongly. Yet the words were uncomfortable to read. He was not an opportunist.

  “Shit, man. That’s an ugly picture of you.”

  “Says the baboon whose mother called him Fineboy.”

  “At least I’m not a thief.”

  “Ask the young man if he’s ever been to Abuja before. Tell him that over there, I have witnessed firsthand the theft that has destroyed his homeland. He should not look to me for his troubles.”

  “I’m not your go-between,” Chike said. “Lunchtime. Fineboy, watch him until I return. If he gives trouble, use t
he stick.”

  Sandayọ knew how to create a mob in seconds. “Olé!” was the hypnotic command. The corn seller fanning her cobs, the itinerant tailor with his clacking machine, the hawkers carrying supermarket aisles in their arms: all would be transformed into a violent horde ready to destroy the thieves. Petrol would be fetched along with tires to ring the necks of his captors. A match would be struck, its slim flame thrown in their faces, instant combustion, human bonfires that blazed and dwindled into charred bones and teeth. He would slip away in the chaos, get his money, and cross the border. And if he was recognized? If that young bread seller with her narrow hips and large eyes said, “Aren’t you Chief Sandayọ?”

  27

  Thank you for your article on the conditions of Government Secondary Schools in Nigeria. I’m a reader abroad and I’ve been contemplating sending my son to my alma mater Government College Ibarapo. My brother told me the standards are still relatively high but thanks to your exposé, I now see that his “relative” and mine are not the same. I won’t be putting my son through that torture. If he ever goes to school in Nigeria, he’s going private.

  —“Ajala the Traveler,” letters page, Nigerian Journal

  THEY SAT IN THE basement arranged in a horseshoe with Chike at the bottom of the curve. Chief Sandayọ’s paintings bore witness from the walls. The light was half-current, dimmed yellow bulbs casting secrecy on their gathering. The fan was working anemically, its blades moving at quarter speed, warm streams of air reaching them in turn. Sandayọ was locked in the men’s room with a liter of water and a covered plate of food, an incarceration he had protested loudly against.

  “We will use the money to renovate schools,” Chike said, opening their second meeting on the Chief.

  “Just like that? You’ve decided?” Fineboy said.

  “What do you propose?”