The bus driver returned to us. He had a cassette player. He made a show of turning off the radio station, slotting in his own tape. The first song began with the distinct mumbling we all associated back then with Craig David.
When the chorus began, half the bus, as if on cue, sang along to lyrics about taking a girl for a drink on Tuesday.
The bus driver screamed at the entire bus like a principal to a restive group of schoolchildren.
“All of you settle down! Don’t make so much noise before the police stop us for no gotdamn reason.”
My mother was laughing gently. She paused as I turned to look at her.
“This song is at least ten years old, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
“How is it still so popular here?” Mother asked.
“Because it is not America, we don’t get the songs as soon as they are released,” I replied.
“I know what you mean,” Mother said in a low voice. “Prison is a terrible place, you miss so much of the outside world, music, news, fashion.”
After Craig David, we heard Shaggy and Sisqó and Des’ree. People all around us were smiling and humming along. There was a kind of peaceful silence happening inside me because the bus was noisy and hot. It was almost as if I could no longer sense what was going on amid the music, the arguing, people chewing food, the lady in the seat in front of me loosening her shoulder-length box braids with the cap of a Bic pen.
I was thinking about this woman, my mother, disappearing one day like smoke, gone for almost ten years, and then reappearing just like that, expecting everything to be okay.
There was nothing for me to do but watch her. What were her expectations? Love? Respect? Compassion? What did she suppose would happen after all this time? Whatever she expected, I was glad to disappoint her. As I listened to her talk, I was even more determined to make the fantasy she had built crumble before her.
She was so happy and satisfied with her life’s choices. That was what I found most surprising about it all. In my mind, I had imagined her always sad, tired, frail, barely alive without us. I imagined her showing up, falling at our knees, crying like actresses in Nollywood movies, begging to be reinstated in our lives, promising to never leave us again. Instead, Grandmother was treating her like a tourist, making the best meals, asking us to show her around the city as though it were no longer the same Lagos she had been born in.
I was thinking of the story Sister Bibike often told my brother and me when we were younger. The story of the woman who threw her hens away because it was too hard to take care of them. When she found that one of the hens had produced seven healthy chicks by itself in the forest, she wanted it back. She demanded the return of the hen and its chicks even after throwing it away without remorse. I remember that story because of the song we sang. I remember that story because I always thought the king who asked the hen to go free but to give the woman one of its chicks was a wicked king. Now I realize that the king, kinder, fairer than I could ever be, was also very wise. No matter what your mother does, this is Lagos. Society will never let you cast her away. Especially when she wants you back.
“Peter, look, when did they build that there?” my mother asked, pointing out the window at a new estate the state government had set up for civil servants.
“Who knows?” I answered. “We all just woke up one day and it was there.”
If Mother had a problem with my tone, she did not show it.
The bus stopped, and two people got out. One person, a tall man carrying a small loaf of bread, got on.
“We should come here tomorrow and go in, see what it looks like,” Mother said.
“If you want to, I am sure they will let us in. It’s definitely open for everyone, not just people who live there,” I said.
Mother said nothing to me after that. I was beginning to feel bad. It is difficult to fight with someone who will not fight you back. The bus arrived at the final stop, the railway tracks adjacent to Yaba market. At the entrance of the market, a group of teenagers, boys and girls around my age and younger, called out to my mother.
“Auntie, we do fine braids.”
“Auntie, come and make your nails.”
“Auntie, I will fix for you fine eyelashes.”
“Things are so different around here,” Mother exclaimed. “I cannot believe that in this same Lagos, boys are making hair in the market.”
We turned away from the group, walking through the wide gates to the first row of shops. There were two sets of traders in the market. The first were those with shops and goods inside them. These were the minority. Most of the traders were those with mobile stores. Some had their wares in large steel bowls balanced on their heads, others had wheelbarrows filled with stuff for sale. Traders selling the same type of stuff were grouped together in the market. In a Lagos market, there is no reason or means for individual distinction.
The first group of traders were mostly women selling stuff for newborns and babies. Mother stopped in front of a shop. She grabbed at a large yellow bath towel hanging on a nook above the store’s entrance. She shook it off the nook, then, squeezing and gripping, asked if it was made in Nigeria.
“And how much is this?” she asked, after the trader told her it was imported from Turkey.
“Three hundred naira,” the woman said.
“Three hundred naira? How much is that in dollars?” Mother asked. She had turned to me as she said this, but she was not really talking to me. She was talking to the trader. I said nothing. She continued making a show of inspecting the towel closely. When she found what she was searching for, a loose thread, she picked at it.
“Look at this. This looks like it is made in Nigeria, such poor quality,” she said.
“It is a great towel. How much do you want to pay, my sweet auntie?” the woman asked. The trader’s voice had a very determined joviality to it. I immediately envied it. I wanted to also be able to talk to the most infuriating people like I couldn’t see through their nonsense, and didn’t care.
“One hundred naira,” Mother said.
She paid two hundred and ninety naira for that bath towel. She seemed pleased with it even though we had just spent a fraction of an hour haggling for a mere ten naira in savings. I said nothing about that. I figured it was best to save my irritation with her for the big stuff. I think families who spend a lot of time arguing about the small stuff do it because they do not have the courage to talk about the big things.
I had learned from my sister Bibike to ask myself: Peter, what is the true source of your anger? Peter, what are you really afraid of? I am angry because I know she will never truly be sorry. I am afraid I will forgive her, trust her, and give her the opportunity to hurt me again. No, I am afraid that I would be unable to forgive her even if I wanted to. I am afraid I am the kind of boy who hates his mother.
After buying the yellow towel, we walked casually around the market, stopping in shops for Mother to try on several sandals and buy none. “I am sorry this is taking so long, Peter. I need to buy a few pairs of sandals to give the neighbors as gifts when I go back home,” she explained to me. “But these are not comfortable, no one will wear this.”
In a tiny shop at the end of the shoe section, we found a man sitting on a little stool. He rose up when he saw us come in. We could immediately tell that the man had only one good leg; the other one was limp from the knee down. It dragged behind him as he walked.
“In America,” Mother said to me, but loudly enough for the man to hear as well, “he would not have to work, the government would pay him over a thousand dollars a month just because of his condition.”
The man said nothing.
I said nothing.
“Do you not believe me?” Mother asked. “I know another African who got one hand cut off during the war in Liberia. He has his own house and car, everything from government money.”
“Which shoes will you like to take a look at?” the man asked instead.
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Mother pointed to a pink pair on the topmost part of the display shelves. The man picked up a long stick I hadn’t previously noticed. It had several bent nails attached to its head. With the stick, he hooked the ankle portion of the sandals, pulling them down in one deft move.
The sandals were replicas, one of the many made in Aba as designer dupes. Mother bought several of them from the store owner. She haggled a little more and paid much less than he had asked for. As we walked out, several owners of neighboring stores called out, telling us they had real African leather sandals, handmade. Mother ignored them all as she walked away. I followed. We went back the way we came.
Once we were outside the market gates, Mother asked where we could go get something to eat.
“There is a Mr. Biggs in a plaza close to this place,” I answered.
“Really? Do they have meat pies?” she asked.
“They better,” I said.
This time, she realized it was a joke and laughed with me. There was something sad and vulnerable in that brief laughter.
“We should go to Chinatown before you leave,” I said, feeling the need to say something.
“There’s a Chinatown? Here in Lagos?” she asked.
“Yes, there is,” I answered. “They have loads of great stuff for sale. Cheap, too.”
“I’d love to get some orange chicken and Szechuan dumplings,” she said.
“You will have to wait till you get back to America to eat that. There’s no restaurant there. Just shopping,” I said.
Mother looked down at her watch, then into the wide windows of a perfume shop. There was a sign announcing 50 percent discount on Perry Ellis perfumes.
“Do you think all those perfumes are real?” she asked me.
“Not sure. Probably not. At least expired and repackaged. You know how things are in Lagos,” I said.
We arrived at the Mr. Biggs. A security officer wearing a black-and-white shirt and black pants greeted us with exaggerated warmth.
“Madam the madam. Beautiful madam. Is this your brother or your son? You are too young to have such a big man o,” he said.
“You should see his older sisters then,” Mother said, laughing. This time, her laugh was relaxed, genuine. She reached out to him and dropped in his hand all the change she had received from the shoe seller.
“He must make a ton of money every day, lucky guy,” I said.
After we ordered our food, we sat in a booth and watched soccer replays on the big screen.
“Do you get to watch soccer in America?’ I asked.
“No. Not really,” she said. “American football is way more interesting,” she added quickly. “Basketball is really big there as well.”
What was this place, this America she now called home? Who were these people? I wanted there and then, in the market, to scream at her, to ask how she could go to prison just for the chance to live in another country? What kind of country demanded that people make such sacrifices?
I took a loud gulp of my Coca-Cola. Two girls in the booth next to us turned around and laughed loudly at me.
“Mom, I do not want to go to America with you,” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
“No reason. I just want to get into Unilag. Like Andrew. Maybe study medicine,” I said.
“Andrew is coming along. He is coming with us,” she said.
“Has he told you that?” I asked.
One of the girls in the close-by booth turned around and caught my eye. She shook her head slowly. This I interpreted to mean, You, crazy ungrateful boy. I said nothing more after that. Mother said nothing as well. We continued to chew and sip in quiet.
The television in the corner began playing church music. My mother pushed her uneaten coleslaw and chicken toward me. All the booths in the restaurant were filled. Another girl joined the girls at the table nearest to us. They were singing along with the songs on the television.
“Is there sugar in this?” Mother asked, pointing to her coleslaw. “I don’t like how it tastes.”
I shrugged and said nothing. I was looking at the girl who had just joined the next booth. She had brought a book with her and was trying to read while her friends talked to and over her. The book was open on the table, next to a glass of orange juice. She had placed her dark brown wallet on the thicker side of the book, to hold the pages in place. There was something so calming about watching her read peacefully in all that chaos, and for a moment I wished I was like one of those guys in American sitcoms who could walk up to a strange girl.
“I had no idea,” Mother said, her voice startling in its loudness now. “I had no idea your father would leave. I would have stayed if I knew he would do that. Do you believe me?”
I looked around. No one was watching or listening to our conversation. Outwardly, we were just like everyone else here, eating, enjoying our air-conditioned respite from the Lagos heat.
THE BOYS IN the neighborhood who called us abandoned bastards when we argued had been around when Mother arrived a few nights ago. They had helped with getting her boxes out of the taxi. They did not leave until she had handed out several packs of sneakers and Kit Kat bars as thank-you gifts.
“Are you listening to me?” Mother continued, her voice quieter this time. “Peter, I did not know I’d spend all that time in jail either. No one makes plans for suffering.”
Above the headboard in the room Grandmother slept in hung a framed picture of Mother and Father at their wedding. Once, when someone shut the front door so hard the walls shook, the frame fell to the floor. Grandmother picked up every shred of glass, patching it all together with clear tape. Two weeks later, I picked up that frame, ran all the way to two streets away, and threw it in a dumpster. For weeks after that, Grandmother shouted and ranted about that picture, but I said nothing. I still haven’t told anyone it was me.
“I was set up,” Mother said. “I worked as a nanny for a Nigerian doctor and his wife. They were to pay me after six months. I planned to come back within a year. But they called immigration on me instead of paying. You have no idea what I have been through.” She was whispering now. “Please just forgive me.”
The girl at the next table was still reading. Her neck had been bent, so I had not seen her face. One of her friends raised a piece of sausage on a fork to her lips, forcing her to eat it. As she did, I caught a small glimpse of her. She had been crying, her eyes a dull red, the skin around her nose as brown as a bad tomato. Was she crying about characters in a book?
“But you got your papers years ago. You only came back because Pastor David sent you money. You are here for the wedding,” I said.
Mother opened her mouth wide, but no sounds came out. Her mouth was like a fat letter O.
A bulb in one of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling flickered, blinking for few seconds. Then it turned off. Our booth and the one next to us went dark. The girl who was reading a book shut it, then placed it under her arm. She opened a case, taking out her glasses. They were tortoiseshell, cat-eye glasses, with a pink tint to the plastic frame. It occurred to me then that she hadn’t said anything the entire time she had been there but somehow, she seemed to me like the solid center in her group of friends.
“Pastor David just paid for the tickets,” my mother said. “I am here because I want to be.”
“We are happy you made it. We all are,” I said.
“We will be so happy in America. You’ll get a great education, become anything you want to be. You don’t even have to be a doctor to get rich,” she said.
“We are happy here. I’m not cut out to live in a strange country,” I said.
The girls were leaving. I watched the girl with the book finish her orange juice in one long gulp. The other girls reapplied lip gloss and dabbed saliva-stained fingers across one another’s eyebrows.
“Do you sometimes wonder what would have happened if you didn’t leave us?” I asked. My heart was filling with a strange sadness, watching that girl walk away.
“You made the wrong choice, and I want to make the right choice for my life,” I said.
“Things will be so much easier for you. You will have papers already, I did not, you will have someone to care for you, I did not,” she said.
“Can’t I just come visit? You know, for Christmas or something?” I asked.
Mother laughed. It was a hearty, sustained laugh. She wiped the corner of her eye when she was done.
“Yes, you can visit, but I promise you, you will not ever want to come back to Lagos as soon as you arrive. This is America we are talking about,” she said when she was done laughing.
A man in a green shirt pulled a stepladder into the middle of the room. Around us, church music rang from the television and speakers. If anyone but me minded Don Moen singing God is good, no one said anything. The man with the ladder stood on the second topmost rung and stretched to remove the blown bulb. The bulb cackled and came to life at that moment, stunning him.
The man on the ladder lost his balance and struggled with steadying himself. I got up immediately, as did another young man, from a booth behind me. We stood on opposite sides of the ladder, steadying it.
Once the bulb change was complete, I signaled to Mother that it was time to leave.
The streets were busier now. The sun had gone down, it was early evening. Many people getting off the buses that brought them from jobs on the island were stopping to buy stuff before getting on other buses to take them farther into the mainland.
“Do you think we can get a taxi this time?” Mother asked.
“This is rush hour, the prices will be astronomical,” I answered.
“Astronomical,” she repeated, laughing again. “Americans will love you. They love black men who use big words.”
“If you could do it all again, would you?” I asked.
“Do what?” my mother asked.
A young girl hawking a tray of sliced pineapples and pawpaws wrapped in clear shopping bags walked up to us. “Fine auntie, please buy my fruits so I can go home. My stepmother will beat me if I don’t sell them all. It’s night. Please, my auntie,” the girl was saying.
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