by Chika Unigwe
So when the seeds of his trysts sprouted and were collected by their mothers who came knocking at his door, he let his wife handle them. She had earned that right. And if sometimes his mind wandered to those children he would never get to know, he showed no signs of it.
EFE FELT SHE OUGHT TO HATE HER BABY; AFTER ALL, SHE’D NEVER asked for him. He kept her at home and was a visible sign that she was damaged goods. Now there was very little hope of marriage to a rich man rescuing her from the pit she lived in. Which kin’ man go marry woman wey don get pikin already? If the man who got you pregnant did not want you, there was no chance of any other person doing so. Her mother would be disappointed. Her mother, who always said she would make a good wife. “You were born a wife,” she told this daughter of hers who did not think anything of getting up early to help her mother with breakfast. “Some women, they enter marriages half-formed. They need to be honed. But you are perfect. You will enter marriage already finished.” There was no way that would happen now. She would never be the perfect wife her mother had hoped for her. She could not be revirgined. Could never be unpregnant. She was chipped.
At the beginning, Efe had good days and bad days. On the bad days, she woke to a dreary blankness that did not clear no matter how bright the sun shone. On those days, her baby wailed constantly and she wished she had never met Titus. Her head screamed at her to hate their baby. On the good days, her baby gurgled and smiled and the world was right. As the weeks wore on, the good days became more and the bad days receded. It was not long before she realized that, try as she might, she could not hate her baby. She forgot the pain of delivering him. Forgot that she had not planned to have him. Forgot the humiliation at Titus’s house. She forged new memories with the baby that had nothing to do with before he was born. When he cried, she rushed to soothe him, cooing to him, “Don’t cry, my child, don’t cry, your mommy is here,” until he stopped. She let him drool all over her and waited with excitement for the first tooth to cut through at five months. When he got ill from cutting the tooth, she held his hands and talked to him until she ran out of what to say, and then she fell quiet and prayed for his fever to break. She cried when her milk thinned and she could no longer breast-feed him at six months. She loved him, astounding herself with the force of her love. She thought she now knew why women went on to have more and more children. It was easy to forget the pain associated with the delivery. She delighted in the solidity of this child whom she had brought into the world and often would pick him up just to convince herself that he was there, that he had not gone up in smoke. Jus’ to be sure him never disappear like money-doubler trick.
Efe was still determined to provide her son with the kind of life she had dreamed for him when she thought she would be able to get Titus’s help. Every morning before she went to her cleaning job at an office in GRA, she whispered in her son’s ear so that only he could hear, “I promise you, I shall get you out of here. I don’t care how I do it.” She had never been more serious about anything else in her entire life.
Everybody called the baby L.I., the initials of his name, because his grandfather, in one of his clearer moments, had come out of his drunken stupor to announce that was what he was to be known as. “All this business of two names will only lead to trouble. Giving a child a mouthful of a name is incurring the wrath of the gods. It is a big name that kills a dog.”
And although neither Efe nor Rita understood his speech, they never referred to the baby as Lucky Ikponwosa again.
Renaming the baby was about the only time Efe’s father showed an interest in the plump baby who was always crying at night. The only other time had been the day Efe came back from the hospital with him. Her father had slurred that had their mother been alive, she never would have let Efe bring a bastard child into their home and that not a penny of his was to go toward the boy. “I cannot be raising my children and be raising another man’s child, too, you hear that? There is only so much trial a man can bear in this world.”
L.I. grew and his mother worked to provide for him, cleaning first one office and then a second. She left early, before her son woke up, and by the time she came back he had worn himself out from playing and was winding down, ready to end his day. Left in the care of her sister, Efe did not see enough of him, and it pained her, so she took to praying. She prayed for longer hours in a day. And then she prayed for more work so she could save enough, soon enough, to take a break. It was only the second prayer that got answered.
She was going home at the end of a working day, seated at the back of an okada, weaving through Lagos traffic, her arms around the cyclist, when she spotted an advertisement for a cleaning woman for an office on Randle Avenue. Randle Avenue was close to the location of her second job, and she was sure she could juggle all three. Three jobs meant more money, more bonuses, which equaled a better life for L.I. A better life for L.I. totaled a happier life for her.
She begged the cyclist to take her to Randle Avenue instead. If he hurried, she might still be able to make it to Dele and Sons Limited: Import-Export Specialists before the closing time of 6:30 P.M. The bearded cyclist with the bandanna said she had to pay more money.
“No problem,” she answered. “Just get me there as quick as you can.”
He asked her to hold him lower around his waist, as getting to Randle Avenue before 6:30 required his “James Bond moves.” She moved her hands to the area around his belly button, but he asked her to move lower and to hold him tighter to ensure she did not fall off the bike. Efe did not argue, willing him on to her third job. She held him tight, hid her face from the wind by placing her head in the small of his back, and tried to stay on while he swerved and revved, meandering through traffic, avoiding potholes and almost knocking down a bread hawker.
She was glad to make it to Randle Avenue in one piece, though slightly shaken. The man’s James Bond moves had involved riding at top speed and with total disregard for other road users, especially pedestrians. Many times during the ride, Efe was sure she was going to be thrown off the back of the bike or that they would ride under a moving truck and that would be the end of her, a mass of bones and flesh flattened under the wheels of a truck carrying crates of soft drink. She could not decide which was the worse prospect of the two. Which would mean a more merciful death? At some point she had begged, “Softly, softly, oga. Don’t go too fast, please.” But either her words had gotten lost in the medley of honking and hawkers calling and people raining abuse from open windows, or the cyclist had chosen to ignore her. In any case, he rode just as hard until he had deposited her in front of her destination.
“Shall I wait for you?” he asked Efe, his engine still running. He had one leg resting on the ground, the other foot on the pedal, but she’d had enough of him. Besides, she had no idea how long she would be there for, and okada fare mounted if a cyclist had to wait. So she dismissed him and said a quick prayer before walking into the building.
The office was still open, and Efe was interviewed on the spot by a man three times the size of Titus, who would become her new employer, and who, despite the “and Sons” attached to the name of his company, seemed to be the only one working there.
“Do you know how to use a vacuum cleaner?” the man wheezed, to which Efe said, “Yes, sir.”
It was the default answer she gave to all his other wheezed questions. “Can you be here every Thursday?” “Can you get here before seven A.M.?” “Do you live close by?” “Are you a hard worker?” Had he asked her if she could fly, she would have replied just as enthusiastically as she did to the other questions, “Yes, sir! Of course I can fly.”
Dele would also turn out to be the most generous of her three bosses, giving her huge bonuses at holidays.
He often complimented her, noticing when she had her hair done, when she looked worn out, or when she had a new outfit on. When she mentioned that she had a nine-month-old son, he exclaimed that she did not look like a mother, telling her she must be one of the lucky women whose stoma
chs were like rubber bands: No matter how hard they were stretched, they snapped back into shape. He inquired cautiously if she had a husband. Or a boyfriend. Anybody waiting for her at home?
“No. The papa of my son no wan’ sabi him. We no sabi him, too.” She dismissed Titus and any claims he might lay on the boy later, had he been interested. “I no get anyone,” she added, head bent, eyes down. She hoped she had given enough hints that she was available but not loose, the sort of girl he could have an affair with but treat with respect at the same time. And, if she played her cards right, even marry. She did not have anything left over from what she’d saved while she was with Titus. And the money she made working just about paid for L.I.’s necessities. She did not want to be reduced to the sort of girl who went around with just any man for money. The sort of girl, like so many she knew, who went with carpenters and car mechanics for a bit of cash. She might have had a baby outside wedlock, but it did not mean she was cheap. She could still pick, and Dele seemed the type of guy to give his girlfriend a munificent allowance. The type to give L.I. everything she hoped for him and more. The sort of man to see that she got a break from the scrimping and the cleaning and the tiredness that were taking over her life.
But try as she might, Dele never asked her out, and it was not until seven months later, when she started to complain about finding a good nursery school for L.I. so that Rita could go back to school, that Dele asked if she would like to go abroad. “Belgium. A country wey dey Europe. Next door to London.”
He made it sound as if you could walk from Belgium to London. From one door to the next.
Had he not started talking seriously about payment, an installment plan to repay the debt, of her sharing a house with other “Nigerian women” being looked after by a friend of his, she would not have believed that he had not asked her the question in jest, that he had not dangled the idea in front of her like a wicked adult might dangle food in front of a hungry child, keeping it always out of reach but close enough to be seen and smelled.
“If I wan’ go abroad, Oga Dele? Anybody dey ask pikin if de pikin wan’ sweet?”
Who did not want to go abroad? People were born with the ambition, and people died trying to fulfill that ambition. Was it not just the week before that the cyclist whose okada she had boarded told her of the Nigerian man who died at the airport in some abroad country he could not pronounce because the bags of cocaine he swallowed had burst in his stomach? “Sister, dem say the man face come swell like dis and he jus’ fall dead!” the cyclist said, demonstrating with his hands how the head had swelled, so that Efe had to ask him to please keep his hands on the bike, she still had a long life ahead of her. “If you are tired of life, take only yourself out of it. Leave innocent people alone, abeg,” she pleaded.
People knew the risks and people took them, because the destination was worth it. What was it the song said? Nigeria jaga jaga. Everytin’ scatter scatter. Nobody wanted to stay back unless they had pots of money to survive the country. People like Titus and Dele.
She had agreed to Dele’s terms before she asked what she was expected to do abroad. “Clean?” To which Dele laughed and said, “No. Sales.” It was the way he sized her up, his eyes going from her face to her breasts to her calves under her knee-length skirt, that told her what sort of sales she was going to be involved in. She would be Dele and Sons Limited’s export. L.I. would get a better life. Go to good schools, become a big shot, and look after her when she was old and tired. L.I. was a worthy enough investment to encourage her to accept Dele’s offer. And even though leaving him would be the hardest thing she would ever do, she would endure it for his sake.
When she got home that night, Rita was already in bed but not yet asleep. Efe called her into the kitchen. “I have something to tell you,” she said as she went ahead of her sister and drew a kitchen stool to sit on. Her dinner was still in the pot on the table from under which the stool came. She ignored it. There would be time enough for food. Cleaning three offices always tired her legs. She sat gratefully, with her back to the gas cooker, and Rita stood in front of her, blocking the door.
“Rita,” she began, her voice already acquiring a tone that was at once distant but warm, the way it would sound on the telephone when she would call home to ask about L.I., “I am leaving Lagos.” She stopped and started again, as if searching for lost words, mindful of not saying the wrong thing. “I am going abroad.” The word “abroad” brought a smile that stretched her lips from one end to the other and a sweet taste to her tongue, a taste not unlike that of very ripe plantain. “I’m going to Europe. Belgium.”
Before Rita had a chance to ask her how and where, Efe preempted her and said, “Close to London. Next door to London.” She repeated Dele’s phrase, seeing in her mind’s eye two big doors one beside the other, with BELGIUM marked on one and LONDON marked on the other. Belgium’s proximity to London suggested that it was like London. Everybody knew London. Had sung London in rhymes while playing in dust-covered front yards, clapping to its tune:
London Bridge is falling down
Falling down
Falling down
London Bridge is falling down
My fair laaaaaaaadddyyyyyyyy
Pussycat, Pussycat
Where have you been?
I have been to London to see the queen.
“A man has promised me a job in Belgium.”
The sound of it thrilled her. Belgium. Bell. Jyom. Something that tinkled and ushered in dawn, clear as glass.
“My boss. Oga Dele. The kind one. You remember him, abi? The one who gave me extra five hundred naira at Christmas. He’ll get me a job. In Belgium.” Her voice fell. “He says a woman can earn easy money there. They like black women there.” A pause. She did not look at Rita. “He says before I know it, before one year even, I’ll be rich. I’ll buy a Mercedes-Benz!”
Dele had not exactly told her that, but sitting on the bike on her way home, Efe had dreamed up the riches she would amass and had calculated that she would be able to afford a Mercedes by the time she had spent a year working. As for liking black women, Dele had told her they were in great demand by white men tired of their women and wanting a bit of color and spice. She would not tell her other siblings; they were too young to deal with the truth. They were still at the age when the world was either black or white. They would be told that Efe was going abroad to live with a rich family and work as kitchen help. She would make lots of money and send them to school. And for a very long time, they believed it and told anybody who cared to listen that they had a sister living in London—for nobody had heard of Belgium—cleaning homes and making pots of money for them.
To her father, she would say simply that she was going abroad to live for a few years. It would have been impossible to tell him the truth, even if he had been a different sort of father, even if he had been the sort of father to insist on knowing how his teenage daughter was getting the money to travel abroad and, once there, how she was going to live. Rita, practically a woman herself and blossoming in more ways than one, would understand. She would not judge Efe. And if there was one human being into whose care she could entrust L.I., it was Rita, who had always been there for him, from the very beginning. She knew she was right when Rita’s response was a hug and a whispered, “Get me a Mercedes, too.”
In fact, in the thirteen years Efe would be abroad, Rita would become such a mother to L.I. that whatever memories he had of Efe would be replaced by those of the rounder Rita. Rita would let him sit beside her as she cooked. She would take him along with her when she went to the market. When he got taunted by the neighborhood children who called him a bastard, it was Rita who comforted him and told him he was no bastard, he was a child whose father was dead. When he asked what sort of man his father had been, Rita would tell him that he was a rich, strong man, better than the fathers of the boys who laughed at him and called him the bastard son of an unmarried woman. It was Rita who explained to him that sometimes his grandfather
came back loud and angry because he had been given a cross huger than he was able to carry, and he, L.I., was not to pay any attention to the man. And when L.I. started school and his teachers asked for his mother, Rita would be the one to go, asking how he was doing at school, was he well behaved? If there was any scolding to be done, Rita would be the one to dish it out, telling him, “Your mother is working hard to pay your fees, and this is how you repay her?”
L.I. would call Rita Mommy. And the first time he would see his real mother again, in a crowded Lagos airport, he would look to Rita for confirmation that indeed Efe, and not she, was the woman who had brought him into this world. It would be Rita who would nudge him forward, a boy on the cusp of manhood with a headful of dark oiled hair, and whisper in his ear that his mother would appreciate a smile, a hug, some recognition.
Efe was the last to leave the plane. She had flown Iberia through Barcelona. Dele told her that before, she could have taken Sabena straight to Brussels, direct, but Sabena had gone out of business. Iberia was the one everyone used these days, he said, because it was cheaper and gave more luggage allowance. Air France was the one to avoid, he advised, as if Efe were thinking of going home the very next day and the information was pertinent. Air France was very strict with its luggage allowance. “Dem no go let you carry even one kilo extra,” Dele said. KLM, apparently, was the one you wanted if you did not get Iberia. “You fit beg for excess luggage.” It did not make any difference to Efe. All the worldly belongings that she was interested in taking along could be contained in a plastic bag, leaving just enough room for the sadness she felt at having to leave L.I. behind. But the baggage allowance mattered to Dele, obviously, because on the day Efe was to leave, he brought two big suitcases packed full of food he said Efe had to deliver to the woman who would be looking after her: smoked fish and peanuts and palm oil sealed in a tin to avoid detection. “Dem no dey like make we dey bring palm oil, but you no go get good palm oil from there. She dey miss Nigerian food. Very soon you go begin miss am, too.” Efe was certain she would not.
