by Chika Unigwe
He turned her face to his and kissed her on the lips.
‘Love nwanti nti,’ Agu said again and laughed. ‘Love in To-Ki-yo!’ He broke into 2face Idibia’s African Queen. Godwin joined him. Then they high-fived each other like teenage boys and started laughing again.
Tine rolled the poundo expertly and, if Prosperous had not been observing her, she would not have noticed that Tine’s nose ran from the pepper in the egusi soup, even as she denied that the food was too hot. ‘No, no, it’s not pikant. I like it,’ she said each time Prosperous asked solicitously if she would not have preferred something milder.
Prosperous had to fight the urge to tell her, ‘No need to impress this man. He’s the one who’s too scared to lose you.’ She could say it in Flemish, practise her growing vocabulary on this woman. Never having taken Dutch lessons, Agu’s Flemish was less than rudimentary. She did not believe that Godwin spoke any at all. They would not understand her. Instead, she said ‘lovely earrings’ when Tine caught her staring.
‘Thanks. Godwin bought them for me.’ Her voice had the choked tone of a throat burning with pepper. She stoically struggled on, stopping only to sip some water when her plate was empty.
‘But what wasted stoicism,’ Prosperous said to Agu, plumping her pillow.
‘The girl is happy. Godwin is happy. Why is it wasted?’ This Agu who accepted that relationships were a means to an end, who played a part in Godwin’s game (but she did too, did she not?), who could not, even now they were alone, condemn his friend, she could not stand.
She reached above her head to switch off the light, plunging the room into darkness.
How could Tine have missed it all? The laughter that was too loud, the waist holding that was too tight? She had control. She, not he. Oh, how Prosperous had wished, several times during the day, that she could shake her, tell her, ‘He needs you. Do you need him?’ And how could Agu stand it?
She asked him, eventually. ‘How can you just sit there and watch your friend use a human being like that?’
‘What was he supposed to do?’ he asked. Godwin wasn’t the only one who married for papers. ‘He’s not the first and he won’t be the last. Besides, he isn’t such a bad catch. He treats Tine well.’
A few months later, with flowers in her short boyish hair and a red flowing dress, Tine married Godwin. Agu, Prosperous and several of their friends represented. Tine danced and danced, the dress flowing around her hips like waves. In a corner, her parents sat smiling tightly, clearly intimidated by the too-loud music and the toowild dancing and the conversations in a language they did not understand, surrounded by a sparse gathering of white, middle-aged couples with identical tight smiles on their faces. ‘Watching the natives perform,’ Oge whispered to Prosperous, jutting her chin at the white group, shaking her buttocks theatrically to the music.
‘My family,’ Tine had introduced them earlier. ‘They do not understand a Nigerian wedding,’ she told Prosperous. ‘But I wanted this. I said to Godwin, “You must give me a Nigerian wedding. A Big Fat Nigerian wedding!”’ She spread her arms to show how big.
Godwin had a gold stud in his left ear. ‘You look like a Hollywood star today-o,’ Agu told him.
‘I feel like a Hollywood star today! I can float,’ he replied as though it was this wedding, this union with Tine, that made him feel like that. But then he grumbled about how much the wedding had set him back, complaining, ‘I thought white women were all for equality. That they like to pay their way too. I paid for everything. Even her clothes. Tine did not contribute shi shi.’
‘It’s all investment,’ Agu reminded him. ‘You’ve got to put something in to get something out.’
Prosperous hated this Agu for whom everything, even relationships, was transactional. In all the ways this place had changed him, this was the worst, she thought. Later that night, when they got home, she asked him, ‘Must everything boil down to money? It’s disgusting.’
‘Not to money. To survival. But money is part of survival too, isn’t it?’ She said nothing and turned her back to him.
At the wedding, Prosperous avoided Tine’s eyes, afraid of what the girl might read in them. When she went to say goodbye at the end of the party, she did not say any of the things people said at weddings. Instead she said, ‘See you around.’ She regretted coming. There was a certain complicity, she felt now, in pretending that this was a normal wedding. It shamed her to be part of it, to have enjoyed it, dancing and eating and chatting. She should have stayed home but all her friends were going, and not just out of solidarity for their Nigerian brother. They all enjoyed a good party.
She could not stand the late nights, Tine said to Prosperous a couple of weeks later. ‘He goes out a lot at night. Every night, unless I ask him not to. I wish he’d stay home without me having to say anything. I wish he’d choose to stay home for me.’
Prosperous began to say something, checked herself and stopped. If she were Tine, she would want to know the truth about her husband and she would hope that the woman who called her “sister” sometimes would tell her. But she could not hurt Tine. She said, ‘It’s a Naija thing.’ She hated Godwin for forcing her into complicity.
‘He should want to go out together, no? To do things together as a… a… koppel, no?’
‘Well, you married a Nigerian man. They need to do a lot of things alone.’ She hoped the bitterness that coated her tongue did not escape.
‘He never takes me anywhere unless I ask!’
Prosperous wanted to take this woman in her arms and knead her, knead her the way she did chin chin dough, stretching it out on the kitchen counter and flattening it out, making it porous enough to let in light. She tried not to think of Tine with flowers in her hair dancing at her wedding two weeks ago. Beautiful, radiant Tine.
‘Do you not go out sometimes with Ah-gu?’
‘Agu has no time to go out. And neither do I.’ This time, she did not have to lie.
‘So what do you do together?’
This was something Prosperous could never understand. These people—oyibo people—asked lots of questions. They were never satisfied with subtle answers. They demanded precise, direct responses. Everything had to be measured and set out correctly. If they asked your age, you could not get away with saying you were in your thirties. They wanted to know how old exactly. The system of age grade, where one was not a particular age but belonged to an age group, would never work here.
Prosperous sighed. ‘When we are together, we talk. We watch TV.’
‘But always inside? You do not go out for dinner?’
‘No. No. We do not go out for dinner. Whatever we want to eat, we make at home.’ The thought of either of them suggesting a dinner date was almost laughable. Every penny had to be counted and preserved. Back home in Nigeria, they had gone out a few times a month to a fancy Chinese place where they ordered the same dependable dish each time: fried rice with sweet and sour chicken. But here, going out was a frivolity they could not afford. And besides they had become other people. Living here and surviving here and waking up every single day to go to a job neither of them liked had changed them. She was starting to accept that there was nothing left of their marriage to salvage. Yet she could not leave.
‘All the time?’ Tine asked Prosperous. ‘You eat at home every day?’ She sounded like she did not believe Prosperous. In the heat of the small kitchen, her cheeks had gone the red of the plastic apples Prosperous kept in a bowl on top of the fridge to brighten the space, although she did not think they brightened it up at all. Tine’s forehead was beaded in sweat. She had insisted on helping Prosperous cook. ‘I want to learn his food,’ she said, as if every Igbo dish Prosperous made was specifically for Godwin.
‘All the time.’
Tine came every other weekend for cooking lessons with Prosperous. She was a keen learner and Prosperous began to grow fond of the girl. She defended her size when anyone mentioned it. ‘The girl is healthy,’ she’d say. ‘She’s not chewing-
stick thin like all those models on TV with not a single ounce of fat on their bodies.’ Or she said, ‘It’s all baby fat. How old is she? Twenty-two? She’s a child. She’s young. She’ll lose all that fat once she gets older!’
And when Godwin said one thing in Igbo and translated something else when Tine asked, Prosperous called him onuku to his face. Fool. She hissed at him in Igbo, ‘You don’t deserve her.’
How she wished Tine would see through him and scupper his plans for a shortcut to permanent residence. Let him apply for asylum and be rejected. She imagined that somewhere a guide for beating the system existed for people like Godwin: Marry a Belgian. Follow an integration course for a few days a week. Get your papers in order. Ride it out a few years. Divorce. Then go back home and pick a proper spouse. Everybody knew the deal but the victims themselves. In five years’ time Godwin would have Belgian citizenship. He would carry that red passport, be able to get in and get out. Travel to America even, if he chose. That passport was the Holy Grail. The key to free and easy passage through the world.
‘Tine shines more and more with every passing day,’ Prosperous told Agu one night. Even though Tine kept up her litany of complaints and questions, her skin looked more and more lustrous every time Prosperous saw her, and shone with a brightness that only the truly happy could have.
She said, ‘Godwin speaks Igbo all the time so I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ but her eyes glittered like stars. And when she told of Godwin’s cousin visiting and spending so much time with Godwin that she, his wife, hardly saw him at all, her lips were stretched into a smile. ‘They stay up all night talking,’ she said. ‘And all day when Godwin is home, they talk too, Godwin and this cousin. I wonder what they talk about? What do they talk about that never finishes? She follows him around like a shadow. When I ask, he tells me it’s nothing. Nothing, darling. I just haven’t seen her in years, darling, and she’ll be gone soon. Then he sits with me. He only spends time with me to keep me from being upset. But I can tell that all the while, he’s itching to go back to his cousin.’
Prosperous thought, Can’t she see that this cousin is no relative but most likely a girlfriend, waiting in the wings for the marriage to run its useful course so that she can move in properly? She felt the anger that should have been Tine’s settle on her and she sliced the yam with which she was making pottage with ferocity.
Prosperous wished—as she always did—that she could tell her the truth. But she could not bear to break the heart of this woman who glowed in her marriage. She liked her too much and sometimes imagined that Tine was her own younger sister. What could she say? Godwin is taking you for a ride. He doesn’t really love you. He’s using you. He’s just with you for his papers. And then it would be her word against his. Any idiot could see how besotted Tine was with Godwin.
One day, Tine arrived looking like she had been dipped in oil from head to toe, that was how lustrous her skin had become. Her dark-brown hair shone. Her green dress stopped at the knee and her arms spilled out luxuriously from the short sleeves. She wore silver sandals even though it was gone October and the days had become colder.
‘Don’t you feel the cold?’ Prosperous asked, showing her how to wash beans for akara.
‘No,’ she shook her head, sending her curls flying. ‘I never feel cold. Besides I just had a pedicure done. I must show off my painted nails. Mooi, no?’
‘Beautiful,’ Prosperous said. Lucky for some. She had not had a professional manicure since moving to Belgium. Another extravagance she had given up. In Jos, she had had her nails and toes done every fortnight by Tinuke, the skinny, talkative girl who ran a mobile beauty service.
Tine’s dangling gold earrings caught the light of the fluorescent bulb and sparkled. ‘You like my earrings? They are presents from Godwin. They are mooi, no?’
‘Yes. They are very beautiful.’ Prosperous passed her a second bowl of beans soaking in warm water. It’s a very difficult thing to do, getting all the skin off, she had warned Tine. ‘Akara is easy to make but its preparation is hell. It takes a while to get the hang of it, so if it’s too difficult for you, don’t worry about it.’
Tine dipped her hands in the warm water with the beans and followed Prosperous’s lead, her fingers like pink sausages, rubbing the beans against each other with a quiet rhythmic determination, her arms touching Prosperous’s. ‘Nothing is ever too difficult for me,’ she said, not breaking the rhythm of her washing. Her voice was like a knife slicing into the kitchen. It sent shivers up Prosperous arms.
That voice was a stranger’s voice and Prosperous had no idea what it meant. She had always been afraid of the unknown. She moved one step away from Tine so that their arms no longer touched.
‘Prosperous?’ Tine said the name like a question. ‘Prosperous?’ She kept up the washing, not even raising her head.
‘Yes?’
‘I know what you think of me. I know.’
‘Wha—’
‘I know what you think. All of you. John. Oh-geh. Ahguh. Godwin. Añuli. All of you. I know… I know that you maybe want to protect me so when I ask you things you do not tell me the truth.’
‘What are—’
‘No. Please. Let me finish.’ She lifted a hand out of the water and held up a palm to signal to Prosperous to stop. Water trickled between her fingers like tears. ‘You’re my friend, my sister, Prosperous, so I’ll tell you this. I’ll tell you because I don’t want you to pity me.’
‘I don’t—’
‘You know you do.’ She smiled at Prosperous, a flashing of teeth that was over almost as soon as it began as if she had not meant to smile. ‘The day I met Godwin, I thought, What a handsome man! I fell for him. When he said he loved me, I believed him.’ She took a deep breath.
Prosperous started to stutter something. Tine cut in. ‘It took time, but I know he never did. He… uses me. It hurts but, you see, I loved him. When he asked me to marry him, I did it for myself. Myself. I wanted him. And Prosperous?’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s good in bed. The best!’ She paused but Prosperous did not try to fill the silence this time. Tine continued, ‘Arm candy to parade around, a man too afraid to displease me!’ She let out a chuckle. ‘You see,’ she put her hand back in the water and continued to wash the beans, ‘I said to myself, if he can’t love you back, don’t let him get away with it, get a big party out of it. I know, I know what you are thinking, but a wedding!’ She waved her hands wildly and dipped them back into the bowl. ‘I wanted a wedding. Ever since I was little. And I got my dream. I got him to spend a lot of money! Call me petty…’ She looked up and held Prosperous’s gaze, her eyes twinkling, her voice breaking into a giggle. ‘All those euros on a wedding, and one day when I get tired, when I stop liking him even a little… because I will one day…’ She stopped, the twinkle in her eyes dimmed, the giggling gone. Her voice dropped. ‘I will because my heart can only take so much, no? When that day comes, I’ll tell him it’s over.’ She cleared her throat, shut her eyes and when she opened them, stars were dancing in them again. ‘When the time comes, whether he has his papers or not, I’ll tell him it’s over. But right now, he’ll do. It’s fair, no?’ She smiled again. ‘And Prosperous?’ She held Prosperous’s gaze. ‘I have a feeling that that day is soon. Very, very soon. There won’t be time for him to have those papers!’
The air shifted in the kitchen and brought with it a sweet, pungent scent like the lingering smell of dry earth after a rain, the blood of gods.
Cleared for Takeoff
When I grow up, I’m going to be a teacher, Papa,’ Bola told me as I walked her to school. ‘But first, I have to be white, right?’ The world stopped. She sounded so proud of herself that it broke my heart.
‘Sweetie, you don’t have to be white to be anything,’ I said. Where was this coming from?
She put her arms on her waist and said earnestly, ‘Of course you have to be white, Papa. Have you ever seen a black teacher?”
I
came to Belgium to play football with a first division team. A knee injury two and a half years in ended that career and landed me in a small city in Flanders called Turnhout. With no university degree and not qualified for much else, and reluctant to return to Lagos, the manager of my club got me a job for life working in a furniture manufacturing factory owned by one of the football club’s sponsors (and a route to be able to apply for Belgian citizenship for Ego and me). All the international players, once they were too injured or too old to play, were guaranteed a job for life there, unless they’d made enough money to never have to work again. I enjoyed working with my hands, the physical nature of my job meant that I did not have to worry about keeping fit, and the job was secure but that day, all I could hear as I heaved and assembled furniture was Bola’s voice in my head saying she had to be white to be a teacher. The poverty of her imagination, more painful than the reality of it. There was not a single black teacher in her school, it was true. Or in any of the other schools around us in the city. I was haunted by all the other professions my daughter most likely thought precluded her for being black. She could not be a doctor (there were no black doctors in Turnhout). No black bankers (I took her sometimes to the bank with me). No black pharmacists (she had asked me once who the men and women in white coats were). I could not concentrate and once or twice, I let a tool slip. I needed to talk to Ego.
I was already playing professional football in Lagos when I met Ego. She was studying Chemical Engineering at the university then. When I got the chance to play for Anderlecht just after she graduated, and we had been married less than a year, she agreed to come with me. One of only three females in her entire graduating year, and the best graduating student, Ego was sure of a job with one of the top oil companies in Nigeria. ‘I can get an engineering job anywhere but you can’t play the level of football you want to here,’ she told me when I wondered if it was fair of me to ask her to make such a big sacrifice. ‘You, us, our marriage is my priority. What sort of wife would I be if I didn’t support you? Or left you for the Belgium women?’