“Which boyfriend? I never said I had a boyfriend.”
“There’s someone in your life, you said. You don’t have to tell me who he is.” He was frowning as he said this. “He should be taking care of you. You shouldn’t be here begging for your job if he is doing his job well.” He took a long gulp from my half-filled bottle of water, then set it down before me.
“Well, I have nobody to help me. I’m all my brothers have right now,” I said.
“You are so wrong. You have God and you have me,” he said. Water dripped down the side of his mouth and, without thinking, I reached out to wipe his face.
“Amen. Daddy, I believe. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
His phone rang at that moment and he reached to the top of the coffee table to pick it up. He did not leave the sitting area. Instinctively, realizing it was what he expected, I got up off the floor next to him and walked toward the door, giving him space for his call. I considered leaving at that point; it was obvious already that my job was gone and Pastor had other plans. I imagined the look on my brothers’ faces when I told them. Andrew had been so excited to begin studying at the University of Lagos, he had taken entrance exams and practice O levels before getting to his final year of secondary school. We were beyond surprised when he was admitted to study public administration. Finally, it seemed, good things were happening to us. We were lifting off, ascending, and we were doing it together as a team.
PASTOR DAVID’S CALL lasted longer than I expected. I stood quiet as a statue for at least thirty minutes, then I walked briskly past him and into the bathroom. I was just seeking a place to be quiet for myself. Every time Pastor David laughed during that call, it felt like he was laughing at me. I sat fully dressed inside the bathtub and began to think up a plan.
In the bathroom was a second door connected to the suite’s bedroom. Opening the door as quietly as I could, I went into Pastor David’s bedroom. I spent time looking at his briefcase, his computer, his international passport. I picked up the phone and, in my most businesslike voice, ordered room service.
When the meal arrived, he was still on the phone. As the bellboy opened the door, I realized that two assistants stood outside. They were the ones I had seen at the start of the service, but not the two who had driven the pastor back here. His life was organized and opulent in ways beyond my imagining.
I ate most of the dinner and was beginning to contemplate taking a shower and changing into a bathrobe just to scandalize him into ending the call when he in fact ended the call and came into the bedroom.
“Did you order the catfish pepper soup? It is usually really good,” he said, opening up the covered plates on the cart.
“I haven’t had any food all day,” I replied, embarrassed that every plate was empty.
He laughed. “That is okay,” he said.
Pastor David turned on the TV in the bedroom as he sat on the bed. If he thought the moment with both of us in this hotel bedroom was awkward, weird, or un-Christian, he did not show it.
“You can come work for me,” he said suddenly. The TV was on some news station, but he was not looking at it. He was taking off his shoes, then his socks. He rolled both socks into one ball then picked up both shoes and socks, placing them in a shoebox in the corner of the room.
“What kind of job do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Our director of programs will be able to find something for you at New Hearts TV.”
“That would be wonderful, Pastor,” I said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “It probably will pay a lot less than you are used to. But the reward is the Kingdom.”
“Hallelujah,” I said.
“Can you call the desk and ask why we do not have TBN or CBN? Also, ask the assistants at the door to go get me my dinner,” he said.
As I made the phone call in the living room, I heard the shower turn on in the bathroom. I was surprised to hear him call me some minutes later.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
He was inside the wide tub with the curtain drawn all the way around, but I still could see the clear, full outline of him.
“Taiwo, did you call reception?” he asked.
“Yes, Pastor,” I answered.
“What did they say?” he asked.
“They described how to set up TBN or Daystar here on this TV. They have a second network that is programmable,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “Let me know when the food comes.”
“I have to leave now,” I said. “It’s getting too late.”
“What? Don’t leave.” He flung the shower curtain to the side, water droplets splashing around. Pastor David stood in the shower, naked and wet, his penis erect and as long as a schoolboy’s wood ruler. “Please don’t leave yet.”
I stayed until morning that day, like he asked. I stayed because I was hoping to negotiate a better life for myself. I stayed not because I was still the girl who had had fan girl crushes on this man as a teenager but because something had happened to me in all these years. I did not believe in love, in marital love, in righteous men or justice.
I did want to plant myself like a parasite at the side of Pastor David for as long as I could. I wanted the penthouse, the designer suits, the poorly paid people making my life easier, I admit it. I knew what he was doing by asking the girl he used to know to stay over. I knew he was trusting her—me—to be quiet and discreet.
I was falling asleep on the living room sofa when the assistants returned with Pastor David’s dinner. They did not acknowledge my presence. The food tray was rolled in on the branded hotel cart even though it was obvious the meal had come from outside. There were gold-rimmed tureens of fish, gizdodo, and brown rice. A small serving of coleslaw and eggs.
One after the other, both assistants served portions onto gorgeous china, then took full spoons out of the tureens’ remnants, making a show of chewing and swallowing and drinking the water.
I walked into the bathroom. It was misty from Pastor David’s bath. I looked at my reflection again, wondering if it was not too late to leave. Surely there was something else I could do. I had some money saved, I could start a business. I got in the shower instead and washed all of my crevices with hotel soap.
When I was done, the food-serving assistants were gone and Pastor was on another conference call. I went into the bedroom, still naked under the bathrobe, and willed myself to sleep. It must have been almost morning when Pastor David made it to bed. I looked up and he was kneeling between my legs. My legs were spread apart and raised, my heels balanced on both of his shoulders.
“It is okay, you can go back to sleep,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m wearing a condom.”
I did not go back to sleep, even though I pretended to be asleep. Instinctively, I realized that my nonparticipation was important to him. I realized he had come prepared and had waited it out. It hurt more than I expected. Everything hurt. He dug his fingernails in my ankle flesh, digging and pinching, harder and harder with each thrust. The first time I thought he was done, he had only paused to reach for the television remote, making TBN louder in the background. The second time he paused, he pulled out a soft penis, smacking hard at my vagina and inner thighs over and over until he was hard again. He was, all this time, singing along to the worship music filling the room.
It was a small surprise to me that I could make my body so still that nothing moved as he shook me—not my hips, not my breasts, not my hair.
“I’m sorry for shushing you,” he said after he was done. He was lying next to me and whispering again in my ear. “I did not want to make any sounds my assistants could hear.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I am going to find your mother and father,” he said, still whispering. “I am going to ask their permission to make you my wife.”
Good luck to you and good luck to me, I thought to myself.
STACY’S BOYS
ANDREW
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2011
ON THE DAY she came back for us, I ran away. I ran as fast as I could down the street, away from their scent. I noticed him first, he had a sweet, sharp scent cutting through the stale air of Grandmother’s house. It was his hair I smelled, some loud citrus-based baby shampoo, announcing their arrival, announcing their strangeness, overpowering the smell of Grandmother’s garden egg soup boiling on the stove.
Not even the stench of my brother Peter’s soccer cleats, fresh from the field and sitting at the entrance to our room, or the rotting garlic cloves Sister Bibike had hung over all the house, on the doorposts and pinned to pillars to drive away bad spirits, could muddy his scent.
I saw him first, the back of him. His hair was brown, thick and curly. An alphabet onesie with a hood attached covered half his face. He looked less like a baby, more like a short, fat wrestler eager to jump into the ring. He was making those loud baby noises, saying gu gu gu ga ga over and over. As soon as he saw me, he turned so fast he slid halfway down to the floor of our grandmother’s living room before his mother, my mother, caught him in her arms.
My mother saw me in the same moment I saw her. She said nothing at first. She just looked at me, from the top of my head to the shoes on my feet, and smiled a small smile.
It was Grandmother who spoke to me, disintegrating the peace.
“Andrew, leave your shoes outside,” she said in Yoruba. I looked at her, surprised to find that her eyes were teary, even though she sounded joyful, even energized.
My mother cradled her baby in one hand. With the other, she searched around in a large handbag shaped like a boat. She found it, a little yellow pacifier. She unscrewed the cover and put it in his mouth. The baby went gu gu gu ga ga ga again then slumped in the nook of her arm like a half-filled bag of rice.
“His name is Zion,” she said to me. “His father is an American soldier.” She was still smiling that smile, wiping drool off her new baby’s face.
“Where are your sisters?” she asked. Talking to me like it was nothing, like she had a right to be here, like everything was normal and fine.
“Did they go out? Grandma said they don’t work on Saturdays,” she asked.
Before I found the words to answer, Grandmother rescued me again.
“Andrew, there is rice in the pot. Go have some, take some garden egg soup with it,” she said.
It was a short distance to the kitchen. Twelve steps end to end. I made it to the pot in six.
“THE RICE MUST be cold. Let me turn on the stove to heat it up,” I said.
I took the pot from its position on the wooden kitchen shelf and was about to place it on the stove. Instead, I put it down, back onto the kitchen shelf, and I just ran. I ran out of the kitchen, through the back door, into the street.
Grandmother did not try to call me back. If she had, it is unlikely that I would have listened. My feet were swift and sweaty. The insides of my shoes felt like I had been wading around in a flood. As I ran, I caught glimpses of my reflection in car windows and the glass doors of storefronts. I was running like a thief being chased by an angry mob.
When I turned into the street with the many potholes, I realized where I was running to. I could see various men, some with faces stained with engine oil and car grime, washing their shirtless bodies at the sides of the street. A couple of men were washing their motorcycles with water collected from puddles. I walked the row of small houses, shacks really, on the corner, houses built with reclaimed wood from the old civil defense corps training ground. The house I was looking for was painted blue. The paint was the wrong kind for wood, so the color was faded, cracked, and peeling. There was mildew growing in the spaces between the boards. I stopped a few feet away from her door, trying to convince myself to turn back home. She came out of her house right at that moment, startling me. She was wearing a short white dress, and in her right hand was a small transparent bucket filled with black-eyed beans and sliced pepper, tomatoes, and onions.
Just as I was getting ready to leave, she saw me.
“Andy dudu. Were you about to pass through my street without visiting me? What is this type of life you’re living?” Her voice was louder than necessary. Some of the car mechanics turned to look at us, then, immediately dismissing us, they continued washing their bodies and motorcycles.
“Good evening, Stacy. I don’t want to disturb you. I can see you are busy.” I was walking toward her as I spoke.
“Come over here. I have been looking for you,” she said.
When I got to where she stood, she hugged me. Her body was both soft and firm, like a good-quality mattress. She handed over her bucket and continued walking. I walked beside her. Her pace was slow and leisurely. It was hard at first for me not to run ahead.
“Where were you going?” she asked.
“Nowhere. I was just taking a walk. What are you making, moimoi or akara?” I replied.
“Moimoi,” she said.
Stacy and her mother had come to the neighborhood around the same time we moved in with Grandmother. She was only a little older than me but she was never really a girl, even back then. My friends and I used to play soccer on this street. We dug large stones from the ground, marking out our goalposts. Stacy was always quiet, not trying to join in like the other girls. She just stood there, watching us. I always played midfield. Peter was always goalkeeper, even after he nearly died from tetanus infection. Stacy watched us every day, saying nothing until the day her mother left and didn’t return and she walked to Tamuno, the oldest of us, and asked him to give her fifty naira for a chance to look at her breasts.
For most of us boys in the area, Stacy’s was the first adult female body we saw naked. We did not think much of it. We played football and went to Stacy’s house and took turns watching her bathe.
When any boy tried to touch her, and there always was one foolish enough, the rest of us beat him up and dared him to tell his parents what happened. I think we liked to believe we were taking care of Stacy. We helped her eat, go to school, buy clothes. In return, she taught us what no one else would teach us about girls.
“If I go with you all the way to grind these beans, does that mean I get to eat some?” I asked.
“Of course, even if you didn’t help, you are always welcome,” she said.
“Are you going to work later tonight?” I asked.
“No, I am not, my boyfriend is coming to visit tonight,” she said.
Stacy worked as a dancer/bartender in one of the adult clubs on Victoria Island. Her boyfriend, an older man in his thirties, was someone she’d met at her workplace. Whenever he visited, driving his white Toyota Camry through the puddles and mud, Stacy always paid boys in the neighborhood money for the “protection” of her boyfriend and his car. Of course, if any damage happened to the car, it wouldn’t have been by any outsider. Stacy was just cunning in that way.
As we got closer to the mill, Stacy sang gently under her breath. It was one of those Igbo hymns, but she made it sound like something Mariah Carey would sing. I wondered then if anything ever stunned or disappointed her. She still had the same peace from when we were kids, when she’d run up all the way to the goalposts just to stand in silence for two hours.
“Do you think he loves you?” I asked.
“Who?” she answered.
“Your boyfriend,” I said.
“I think so, but I do not really think about things like that,” she said.
“What do you think about?” I asked.
“The important stuff. How to get money, how to be happy,” she said.
It was Stacy who explained to me what a period was. Once, while I was watching her get dressed, she pulled out a face towel, folding it into four parts and tucking it into her underwear. After she explained everything about periods, I began stealing Always pads from my sisters and bringing them to her.
“So? Does Andy dudu have a girlfriend?” Stacy asked just as we arrived at the mill.
“Why do you keep calling me A
ndy dudu? I am not even that dark skinned,” I said.
Stacy took the bucket from me, handing it over to the girl manning the mill. The mill girl had one of those faces whose age you could not really guess. She was either a young-looking sixteen-year-old or an older-looking twelve-year-old. The mill was old and loud, but we stood right next to it. Stacy watched the girl’s every movement even as she talked to me.
“Andy, are you angry with me? Don’t be angry with me. We just call you Andy dudu because everyone else in your house, your sisters, Peter, even your grandma, is yellow like pawpaw,” Stacy said. “But truth be told, eh, you are the most good-looking one. Auntie, isn’t he good-looking?” She nudged the milling girl as she spoke, screaming all the sentences without pausing.
“Yes, he is. Tall, dark, handsome, like Desmond Elliot,” the milling lady replied.
The first time I saw Stacy naked, I remember thinking she looked quite ordinary, like a little baby, spotless skin all fresh and shiny. I did not understand the excitement all the other boys had from the experience. It was a strangely painful feeling, like scoring a goal and having it unfairly disqualified by the referee. Then, one day, I saw her walking home and she was wearing a pair of those low-ride jeans and pulling them up every time they rode down to her hips and revealed her butt crack. When she turned around once and saw that I was watching her, she smiled a wide, bright white smile that was almost a laugh. And just like that, I understood what it was all about. After that, whenever it was my turn to watch her, I always tried to make her laugh or at least smile.
“I look like my mother. She has the dark skin. It’s my father who is, how did you say it again? Yellow like pawpaw, even though everyone knows pawpaws are orange, not yellow,” I said.
“Hold still.” Stacy placed the bowl of pureed beans in my hand and shut the lid. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said. “It is just a funny nickname. You’re funny, you always make me laugh. I thought you liked it.”
I stopped for a moment, allowing her to walk ahead of me. A car was passing by and there was no room for us to walk side by side anymore.
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