“What do you keep from Elizabeth?” he asked.
“I don’t tell her about you and Osita.”
The corner of Vivek’s mouth tugged up in amusement. “Why not?”
“It’s none of her business, and you know how she is about you.” It had taken Elizabeth a long time to forgive Vivek for what happened in the boys’ quarters with Osita years ago. Juju had to explain the fugues over and over, explain that Vivek hadn’t known what was happening, that he couldn’t even remember it. “And you know how she is about Osita. I just—I don’t trust her to not be somehow about the two of you being . . .”
“Lovers.”
“Yeah.”
Vivek watched her face for a moment. “But she’s your girlfriend,” he said. “Shouldn’t you trust her?”
Juju rolled on her back, turning away from him. “Let’s talk about something else,” she said. She and Elizabeth didn’t talk much about their relationship. They were girlfriends, yes, but who could they even go and say that to? And if you didn’t tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves? Sometimes Juju found it easier to think of them the way other people did, as close friends. So the question for her became, did she have to tell her close friend about that morning with Vivek? It was just a kiss, it didn’t count as anything, so Juju kept quiet.
“Okay,” Vivek said. She could feel his gaze on her cheek. “What are you not telling me?”
Juju stared at the ceiling until her vision blurred with tears. “My dad’s having an affair.”
“What?” He shifted closer to her and put his hand on her braids. “How do you know?”
“They’ve been fighting and shouting. And I saw him today in the market with his . . . his other family, Vivek. With this woman and a little boy.” The tears slipped out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her face, spilling into her ears. Vivek wiped some of them away.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Come here.”
Juju wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder. “I feel like a mistake,” she said, her voice muffled and thick. “He always wanted a boy. Maybe if I’d been a boy he wouldn’t hit Mama so much.”
“Shh, don’t say that. It’s not true.”
Juju tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. “He hates us,” she sobbed. “He went and replaced us and he won’t let Mama go home and her teeth are falling out and he keeps beating her and I can’t do anything, Vivek, I can’t do anything.” Her voice choked on itself, knots of pain clogging up her throat, and Vivek just held her tighter, whispering to her, locking her body against his. Juju wept in his arms for hours, as the afternoon crawled into evening and the light outside dimmed and the sun set and Vivek held her the whole time.
Sixteen
Ebenezer was good at his job.
He’d been a vulcanizer for fifteen years, fixing tires at the same junction the whole time. He was quick with his hands and reliable. Even customers who could have gone to a vulcanizer closer to them would come all the way to Chief Michael Road just to do business with him. All the okada boys in the area preferred him over the other vulcanizers because he never tried to overcharge them; sometimes, if business had been bad for them, he would do repairs on credit. They called him Dede, and when his competitors tried to make trouble for him, the okada boys intervened and there was no more trouble.
Okada drivers were a pack, as anyone who knocked one of them down on the road soon discovered. The boys would surround the car and prevent the driver from escaping, smashing windows and denting doors if they saw fit. Ebenezer liked them, though. They were loud and rough, but they were boys and they reminded him of his junior brothers.
His wife, Chisom, was a trader at the market just down the road, selling fabric and sewing goods. They had been married for six years, but they had no children, which in the past year or two had become a problem. Ebenezer’s family blamed Chisom, saying that she was barren or cursed, that something she’d done had blocked her womb. They never liked her because she had managed for herself before she married Ebenezer.
“Be careful of women like that,” one of Ebenezer’s brothers had told him. “They start feeling like they’re men, and before you know it they’re trying to run the household themselves, as if you’re their houseboy.”
Ebenezer had ignored them. He wanted a woman with some business sense, not someone who would be sitting in the house every day waiting for him to provide everything. Besides, she didn’t mind the scar on this face, didn’t think he was ugly. Someone like Chisom would concentrate on her business, he knew, because that’s what she’d always done. Even if—no, when—they had a baby, Ebenezer already knew Chisom would tie it to her back, like the other women at the market, and just continue. He saw himself building a family of hard workers, pulling themselves up in the world, but the absence of a child was obstructing this vision. Everywhere the walls were decked with posters and advertisements about family planning, trying to convince people to slow down on having children, and here they were struggling to have even one. It was humiliating.
Once, after they’d quarreled about it, Chisom had thrown her hands up.
“Every time it’s me going to a doctor. Ah-ahn! I don tire. You sef, why don’t you go and see if the problem is with you?”
Ebenezer had recoiled in shock. Before he could even reply, she turned over in their bed and pulled her wrapper to cover her, pretending to fall asleep. He sat there for a few minutes, and by the time he thought of something to say, it seemed childish to wake her up, so he went to sleep, too. When he mentioned the conversation to one of his brothers a few days later, his brother laughed.
“Shey I told you?” he said. “Na so she dey blame you because say her womb dey dry. You see wetin you don start?” He went and told the rest of the family, and from there everyone got involved in condemning Chisom and telling Ebenezer what a useless wife he had.
Chisom stopped speaking to her husband because of it, and they started to move around each other like strangers. Ebenezer missed her, but he didn’t feel he should apologize for talking to his own family members about his marital problems. Chisom thought that, if he already knew how they felt about her, why would he tell them and give them more ammunition against her? So a silence grew up between them, and Ebenezer was too proud to break it.
He started to look more at other women—not with intent, just a lazy wondering, about what kind of wives they would have been, what it would be like if he’d married one of them and had some children. There was an Abiriba woman who ran a small food stall across the junction from where he worked. Everyone called her Mama Ben and she made the best beans Ebenezer had ever tasted. She had maybe four or five children, he wasn’t sure, and she was still pretty: very clear skin, a nice smile, and she dressed well. Ebenezer wondered what it would be like if he was her husband, with all these children and his wife with a business of her own, just like he always wanted.
He started going to Mama Ben’s food stall more and more, sitting at the round plastic table with cardboard folded under one leg to balance it. She always welcomed him with a smile, like she did with every customer, and while it was tempting to believe that the smile she gave him was different, special, Ebenezer knew it wasn’t. Still, it was nice to sit there, drink Pepsi, and talk with her other customers. Mama Ben looked at him as if he didn’t have that scar on his face, and the only other woman who had done that was Chisom. Ebenezer would stay at the food stall until it was late, keeping an eye out across the road in case a customer stopped by, and then he would wander home filled with goodwill and contentment. He ignored his wife’s silence and went to sleep with the memory of Mama Ben’s smile in his head.
One evening, when her other customers were gone, he offered to help her out with something in the kitchen, which gave him an excuse to get her alone. There, in a back corner, he plied her with sweet nonsense words and she gi
ggled and he kissed the side of her sweaty neck. She tasted like salt. That night, he reached out in the dark of his bed and tugged at Chisom’s hip and she gave in to him, but he wasn’t thinking of her, not for any of the time. In fact, it was only with effort that he managed to say her name at one point, and then only because he didn’t know Mama Ben’s given name, and what else could you call out when you were in bed, really?
Chisom still slept as far away from him on the mattress as she could get, even after they’d had sex. The next morning she didn’t speak to him, and this time Ebenezer didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about Mama Ben. No, the woman on his mind now was this orange-seller he’d seen last week, with a sweet voice and a nyash that rolled seductively under her wrapper. She had shown up in his dreams, and he considered this to be a sign. Her hips looked like those of someone who could have children easily. Ebenezer had woken from the dream with an erection, and he thought of the woman as he had a quick breakfast of bread and tea. He looked for her on his way to work, and as he handled his first customer of the day, but he didn’t see her. The customer was a banker from Emerald Bank around the corner, sweating in his buttoned shirt and making small talk with a colleague he was giving a lift to, a short woman with fat braids cornrowed onto her head and a sharply ironed polyester skirt.
“I know the manager is afraid I will take his job,” the banker was saying. “And why not? The man is lazy! I could be doing the same work that he’s doing, if only I was provided the opportunity. You know, that is the key to success.” He looked down at his colleague, his face arranged with the seriousness of someone imparting great life advice. “Mark my words. Opportunity is what will land you success in life. When you see the door opening, you must step in! I’m sure your husband has experienced this. Ask him. He will know.”
The woman shot him a nasty look but the man completely missed it, his attention diverted by yet another woman, this one walking past Mama Ben’s canteen across the street. She was tall with long mammy-water hair in two plaits down her back, wearing a flowered dress that cut off at her calves. Her sandals were plain and brown but her toes had been painted a bright red. She walked like a model and looked like one, thin arms and sharp cheekbones. The banker ogled her, then made kissing noises at her, puckering his lips. When she didn’t turn her head, he shouted, “Tall babe! Come make I climb you small!” then burst into uproarious laughter, as if he’d said the wittiest thing. “Is that your hair?” he continued.
“What kind of nonsense question is that?” interrupted his colleague. “Does it look like her hair?”
The banker gave her a contemptuous glance. “Just because your own hair resembles broken broomstick, can somebody not grow their own?”
She ignored the insult. “As long as that? Abeg, it’s weave-on. Use common sense.”
“It’s a lie, I’ve seen plenty babes with long hair before.”
“Biko, all of them are weave-on! Are you stupid?”
“What about those Northern babes, nko? Their own hair grows well.”
“Those ones are always plaiting it. Besides, where are you seeing them like that?” She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him.
The banker was thinking hard. “I know I’ve seen somebody with long long hair like this before. Not this weave-on nonsense you’re talking about.” He snapped his fingers on alternating hands as if it would call forth the memory. “Somewhere, somewhere.”
His colleague took pity on him. “It’s okay. After all, it’s not as if we can expect you men to even tell the difference when it comes to hair. My brother till today can’t tell the difference between extensions and someone’s real hair.” She laughed at the male ignorance of it all. “He thought that when you relax it, it gets longer and then you can braid it.”
“It was at the bank!” her colleague exclaimed, having not listened to anything she’d been saying. “Eh hehn! There were these two girls who came in, and they had this long long fine hair! Kai! I think they were sisters. They were there with their father, but I’m sure their mother was a foreigner.”
“Oh,” said the woman, sucking her teeth. “If you’re talking about half-castes, then that one is different.”
“I know those girls,” said Ebenezer, tightening the tire he’d just replaced on the man’s car. Both bankers looked down at him in surprise, crouched and greasy with worn slippers and dusty feet.
“Ehn, you know them?” The man was smirking as he asked. “How do you know them?”
“Their father is a customer. They look like twins except that one of them is taller, abi?”
The banker nodded grudgingly. “It’s true,” he said. “That’s what I thought also, that maybe they were twins.”
The woman was getting impatient with the conversation. “And so? I’m saying that tall woman was wearing weave-on. End of story.” They all turned to look at the woman and her hair again, but she was too far down the road.
The bankers paid Ebenezer and left, and he went back to wondering if the orange-seller would walk by that day or not.
In the weeks that followed, he saw the tall girl a few times. Once she was returning from the market with polythene bags filled with vegetables; another time she was going to the Mr. Biggs at the junction. Once she just seemed to be going for a walk, listening to a Discman in her handbag. Ebenezer decided she must live in the area because she was always walking, never on an okada or in a taxi. She looked like the kind of girl who just liked to walk everywhere. That’s probably why she’s so slim, he thought.
She usually wore sunglasses, and after that first day her hair was always tied up at the back of her head. Ebenezer could never figure out if it was weave-on or not. He even thought of asking Chisom, but by now she wouldn’t even let him touch her at night. “How are we supposed to have a child if you won’t even try?” he complained, but she ignored him. Ebenezer knew she wanted him to get checked out at the hospital, but the shame of it was too much, so they just continued like that. Chisom would have known if it was weave-on or not, sha. Her immediate junior sister was a hairdresser.
One afternoon, when there weren’t many customers around, he asked Mama Ben instead.
“Ah-ahn. How long have you been watching this girl?” She seemed a little disapproving, so he rushed to reassure her.
“Mba, it was one of the customers who was saying it. Me, I don’t even look at small girls like that. Resembling stockfish. I like proper women.” He gestured fullness with his hands and winked at her. She laughed, placated.
“Maybe the girl is from Niger,” she suggested. “One of those refugees who are always in the market.”
One of Mama Ben’s friends chimed in: “Haba now, those ones are beggars. I’ve seen the girl he’s talking about. She looks like she comes from a good family. And besides, she’s not fair enough to be one of them. It’s probably weave-on. Under it, I’m sure her hair must be like this.” She grabbed a tuft of her afro and tugged at it, laughing. Ebenezer laughed as well, his eyes meeting Mama Ben’s.
In recent weeks, Mama Ben had told him her name: Florence. He had also found out that she was a widow and had three children, not the four or five he’d previously thought. Her unmarried sister now lived with her, helping to take care of the children. He had even been to her house once, telling Chisom he was doing a house call for a customer in the evening. He hadn’t gone inside, had only escorted Mama Ben home and chatted for a bit. She knew her neighbors would talk, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t as if they knew he was married.
Ebenezer felt he was getting somewhere with her—he wasn’t sure where exactly, but he looked forward to it. He was eating rice and stew at her canteen on the day the market burned, savoring the goat meat when the first noises started coming from down the road. As Mama Ben and her customers stood in front of her canteen, peering down the street, sounds filtered toward them slowly, first shouts and then a few alarming screams. Some of the custom
ers hurriedly finished their food and left, heading in the opposite direction from the commotion.
Mama Ben looked worried. “It sounds like one of those riots is starting,” she said. “Should I close?”
“Don’t you live in that direction?” Ebenezer asked.
“Yes, but I don’t want to be in the middle of it. You never know what will happen.”
“Wait here,” he said. He ran across the road and threw a tarpaulin over his work things, then came back to her. “Pack everything,” he said, as he stacked the plastic chairs and took them inside. Mama Ben tilted the tables on their sides and pushed them against the walls. They worked quickly, conscious of the noise growing louder. Ebenezer shoved empty bottles into their crates and dragged them to the back. The last thing he wanted was for convenient glass to be lying around like that. He’d once seen a man struck in the head by a broken bottle, separating scalp neatly from skull before blood filled the gap. It was the worst thing in his memory.
They both pulled down the metal protector, closed the inside doors, and sat there in the cramped space near the shelves of sweets and biscuits. Mama Ben looked scared but calm. There had been so many riots recently that it wasn’t much of a surprise to be caught in one.
The Death of Vivek Oji Page 12