Bewaji's Ankara Adventures: A Novella (The Aso-Ebi Chronicles, Part 1)

by Sharon Abimbola Salu

  Chapter 4

  As soon as Bewaji collected the money and converted it from dollars to naira, she went back home to save the money in the small wooden box with a narrow slit on the top, under her bed. Picking up the nylon bag that housed the ankara material for Arin's upcoming nuptials, she counted a few naira notes from her latest stash, and headed to the only tailor she could trust with her clothes: Mr. Rasaq. Everyone called him "Baba Mufu" because his eldest son was called Mufutau.

  His shop was located somewhere in Bariga, and that was where Bewaji was headed that Saturday afternoon. Seun had promised to text and e-mail her more details of Olu Ade before the weekend was over, as soon as he got them from Connie. The details included: Olu Ade's address (the one Connie always included on the Western Union form when she sent him money), his cell phone numbers (he had three of those), and of course, his pictures.

  As at the time Bewaji was leaving the house, she had not yet received any text or e-mail from Seun. It was not until she was almost at the tailor's shop that she realized that she had forgotten both of her cell phones at home. Of course, at that point, she could not turn around to go back and get them. She would have to complete her errands without her phones. She felt naked. It took her forgetting her phones at home, to realize just how much she depended on them. She had no idea what the time was, etc, but figured that she could survive without her phones for one day. It was in this state that she arrived at Baba Mufu's shop.

  Baba Mufu's shop was really a bottom flat that had been converted to a tailor's shop. He had a few apprentices working for him: two girls and a boy. All three of them looked like they would rather be elsewhere than the tailor's shop that afternoon. And it was not just the typical boredom you find with teenagers. You could sense their discontentment. This was probably because Baba Mufu was notorious for under-paying his apprentices. And they cursed him for his unabashed stinginess.

  The first thing a person would notice as he or she walked into Baba Mufu's shop was the color of the wall. The walls were painted a sickly pink color that reminded one of two things: one, the color male students prayed would never be used for their school uniforms; and two, the color of the inside of the whale's belly as Jonah must have beheld it after that fish swallowed him. In fact, if one ever wondered how Jonah felt in the belly of the whale, he just needed to go and stand in Baba Mufu's shop for two minutes. Just two minutes. That was the full experience without the attendant motion sickness.

  As at the time Bewaji walked into the spacious shop, there were at least ten other customers waiting to see the tailor. Clearly, his business was doing well. It was doing so well that Bewaji had to stand and wait for a customer to vacate one of the plastic blue chairs in the make-shift reception area, before she could rest her tired legs.

  With both manual and automatic sewing machines scattered all over the shop, posters of fashion models - who looked nothing like Baba Mufu's customers - visibly glued to the wall with cello tape, and with bits and scraps of different fabrics hanging from tables and scattered across the floor, it was a miracle that the tailor and his assistants were able to pull out beautifully crafted outfits from the assorted mess in his shop.

  Unsurprisingly, all the customers were women - older women who had either brought new fabrics to the tailor to work his magic or else they had come with completed outfits, peeking out from nylon bags of different colors. Clearly, the customers with the completed outfits had come back with some sort of complaint for the tailor and were not enjoying the 'wait' period. The customers with untouched fabrics seemed to have accepted their fate and were more patient.

  One of the women, the youngest looking one in the group, and the one with the least amount of eye-offending makeup, was chewing gum and intermittently stomping her feet as if the combination would hurry the tailor and his workers along faster. It was not working, and the feet stomping continued. As Bewaji stared at the woman, something odd happened: the woman got up, walked up to her and said to Bewaji: "I know you." It sounded a lot like that cheesy, pick-up line that restless teenage boys typically used to approach girls they were interested in: "Excuse me, have we met before? You look like someone I know." Yes, that line. But, this "I know you" was from a woman in a tailor's shop.

  Bewaji was shocked. Who was this person and how did she know her? She certainly did not look familiar to her at all.

  "I'm sorry, ma. I don’t think we've met before."

  The woman laughed, exposing a chipped tooth in the top row. That was when it hit her. She took another look at the woman again, and confirmed that she was the one. But the woman had beat her to the introduction stage, and decided to refresh her memory.

  "You're calling me 'Ma' as if I'm an old woman. It's me, Senior Rita. Rita Bassey from FGC Ogbomoso," the woman said in a crisp, clear voice.

  She was right. Bewaji could not believe her eyes. How had she failed to recognize her the first time? This was Senior Rita, the single person who had made life in secondary school a living hell for Bewaji, when she had just transferred to Ogbomoso from another school in Auchi. The junior girls called her "Senior Rita" but her own classmates decided to Europeanize her name. They called her 'Senorita.' Looking at her now, it was hard to believe that Rita had wielded so much power over Bewaji at one point. Without Bewaji's consent, she had decided to become her school mother, but instead of protecting and guiding the junior student, Bewaji, like other school mothers did for their school daughters, Senorita had decided to turn her into a school house girl instead.

  Beyond the regular chores that junior girls were expected to do, Senorita would find countless other assignments for Bewaji to do. She made it her duty, in fact, to go and ask other senior students for useless tasks such as folding socks and arranging them in neat piles for each day of the week. Then, she would pass on the assignment to Bewaji who had to comply. But as God would have it, Senorita left the school prematurely when her father got transferred to Sokoto. The day she left was the day Bewaji began to actually enjoy her life in secondary school. It was the same person who now stood before her in a tailor's shop in Bariga. What a small world!

  Naturally, after recollecting the hell Rita had put Bewaji through, there were no hugs or tears of joy at this unexpected reunion. In fact, if Bewaji had known she would be there, she would have avoided coming to see the tailor that day or else she would have come with a cane specially marked to flog the wicked senior. Unfortunately, Bewaji did not come prepared to execute the latter course of action. She would have to be civil.

  "Oh, it's you. Ah, I did not recognize you o. How have you been? What do I call you now?" Bewaji said, glancing at the gold, wedding band on her finger.

  "I'm now Mrs. Adekunle. You can call me that."

  Rita was about the same height as Bewaji, but she was fair-skinned. Back in school, she had been very skinny, but a combination of childbirth and 'good living' had transformed her body to a plus-sized one. From where Bewaji stood, she could not see a waist line. But then, it was hard to see anything under a boubou.

  "I brought this lace to the tailor to help me sew iro and buba," Rita said, pulling out an expensive pink lace fabric with silver rhinestones, from a plastic bag in her hand. "A friend of mine is celebrating her 40th birthday. That’s what this is for."

  "Oh, I see," Bewaji said in an uninterested voice. She did not want to listen to the rest of Rita's banter. She knew it was just a matter of time before she started asking her about her career, family, marriage, and all the other things she was not willing to discuss at that time. She had to think of a way to excuse herself quickly …

  Just then Rita's phone rang. Instead of leaving the tailor's shop to answer her call, she just turned her face away from Bewaji, she slowly pulled out a silver Nokia phone, the model that had just been released a month before, and began to talk in a very loud voice. She beckoned to Bewaji to hold on while she answered the call. Bewaji saw this as a sign from
heaven and promptly moved away from Rita. The tailor and his apprentices did not seem to be in a hurry as the line of people in front of her remained the same. No one else had entered the shop since she arrived.

  Bewaji approached one of the female apprentices and asked her for the restroom. Actually, the word Bewaji used was 'toilet.' Same thing. The apprentice gave her directions and Bewaji set out to find it. There was probably a restroom located in the same building where the shop was located, but Baba Mufu had insisted that only he could use that particular one. Everyone else, including the customers had to use the other restroom located in a detached building behind the house. Bewaji had expected to find a barely functional toilet but was pleasantly surprised to find that the restroom was clean with a strong smell of industrial-grade disinfectant. Since the toilet did not flush by itself, there was a drum of water and a small plastic bucket nearby for help.

  As soon as Bewaji was done easing herself, she began to fill the bucket with water to flush the toilet. Just then, she heard the sound of a man's voice. It was coming from the direction of the open window of the toilet, with an old mosquito net covering. The man was on the phone, and he sounded like he was arguing with someone.

  Something told Bewaji to go and look for the person on the phone.

  "But why? What's my business with a man talking on the phone?" she asked herself. But, the urge was strong, so she decided to obey. She would neither lose nor gain anything by looking. Besides, technically, she was not eavesdropping. Anyone speaking on the phone in a voice that loud, and in public for that matter, did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But there was a problem. She knew that if she left the restroom to go and see this person, he might have left before she arrived there. So, she put down the black lid of the toilet seat, and climbed on top of it. The window was now at eye-level. She carefully put aside the stick of Drummer air freshener that sat right under her nose on the window sill. Then, she looked outside the window.

  The mosquito net was old and dusty, but she could still clearly make out the silhouette of a man. Apparently, the small building where the toilet was located was very close to the fence surrounding the entire house. Jagged green and white pieces of broken glass lined the fence from edge to edge. It was to deter thieves from scaling the fence. Just beyond the fence lay another group of flats with a spacious compound. The man on the phone was standing in that other yard, very close to the fence. He wore a red cotton t-shirt and had a bald head. That was all Bewaji could make out from where she stood. The man was still talking on the phone and must have been really agitated because he kept gesticulating wildly with his free hand as if the person on the phone was in front of him and only he could see him or her.

  "I said I need that money NOW! Why are you people like this?! I know I have never asked you for this amount of money before, but it is not too much. Two thousand dollars is a mere chicken change to you for goodness sakes! Didn’t you say you loved me, ehn, Connie?"

  Say what?! Did Bewaji just hear that? Just to be sure, she held her breath and listened again. Sure enough she heard this stranger repeat the same name at least five more times in a string of angry outbursts. Connie. How many Nigerians were named Connie? Bewaji could not believe it. In all likelihood, this was the person she had been hired to find: Olu Ade. And he was on the phone with Connie. Or could it be someone else? There was only one way to find out. She had to follow him and find out where he lived, if possible.

  Alarm bells were going off in Bewaji's head at this point. What if this guy was armed with a gun? What if he found out who she was? And the 'what ifs' kept piling up.

  "Look, this sort of thing does not happen every day. I have been coming to this tailor's shop for years, but never used his toilet. On the very day I used it for the first time I got to hear a stranger on the phone calling the name of the one person involved in an alleged romance scam. What are the odds? I am definitely going to go through with this." And with her mind made up, she quickly got down from her perch on the toilet seat, narrowly missed falling into the drum of water, and quickly flushed the toilet. She washed her hands and rushed out of the restroom.

  As soon as she got outside, she ran as fast as she could out of the tailor's compound and into the next compound. The rate at which she rushed into this other compound so startled a woman selling food items there, that the latter screamed in fright.

  "Aunty! Na wetin dey pursue you? You see armed robber?!" the woman shouted in a voice mixed with terror and anger.

  Bewaji did not see this woman when she had spied on the stranger from the restroom. She did not know that the front of one of the bottom flats, the one facing the gate, had been converted to a neighborhood convenience shop.

  "Madam, abeg make you no vex. I dey find one man like that …"

  And she proceeded to describe the bare details of the stranger that she knew. As she was describing the man, she kept looking over to the spot near the fence where she had seen him standing. There was no one there. The woman confirmed what she suspected. The man on the phone had left just minutes before Bewaji arrived. He had come to buy a bottle of Coke, and had just finished it when his phone rang.

  Bewaji did not even hide her disappointment, which prompted the woman to ask her why she was asking for this man. Bewaji cooked up a story about how he was the friend of a friend, who she had not seen in a long time. The woman looked like she did not believe a word of Bewaji's story, but still nodded her head in agreement. Just then, a young girl came to buy a tin of milk and the woman abandoned Bewaji to attend to her customer. Bewaji took that as her cue to leave and turned to exit the compound. As she turned to go, the woman called after her:

  "Number 38 for this street," the woman said, pointing at a house down the road. "Na him house be dat. Na my customer."

  "Thank you, Madam," Bewaji replied gratefully.

  At this point, she knew that she needed to confirm the proper address for Olu Ade from Seun before taking any more steps. Since her phone was at home, that would have to wait. As Bewaji made her way back to Baba Mufu's shop, she accosted Rita, who was on her way out. She must have concluded her business with the tailor as the plastic bag with the lace fabric was no longer in her hand.

  "Make sure you don’t go and sew one of those strapless gowns that all these young girls are wearing nowadays. That style won't suit you," Rita said coyly as she walked past Bewaji. It was obvious she still thought she was the junior girl she used to bully in school. Bewaji just ignored her unwarranted advice and smiled. That was the exact style she had in mind for the ankara fabric in her bag. And by telling her not to go with that style, Senorita had confirmed that that would be the most flattering style for her body. She marched to Baba Mufu. She was ready.

  "Dem go take!" she muttered to herself as he took her measurements.