“Not for pee, O! You just swat on the floor and it’s done.”
Groggy, Angie apologized, willed her tummy to calm down, and tried to fall back asleep.
Later that morning, Funke suggested a chemist on Lagos Island. “No little boy this time!” she warned before leaving for work.
Angie spent the next two hours in a taxi trapped in traffic as it crept along Apapa Road, passing by the National Stadium, which looked to her like a giant hole opening up from the ground. Finally they crossed Eko Bridge onto the island. Nigeria’s tallest building—the forty-story Nigerian External Communications headquarters—loomed over other skyscrapers, and a billboard proclaiming “New York Before Breakfast” with an image of a Nigeria Airways plane taking off made her instantly homesick. She fixated on the image as the taxi sped by.
The congested streets of downtown Lagos were teeming with a frenzy of bodies and vehicles, all trying to share the same finite space. Gleaming skyscrapers towered above as the stench of close living wafted toward her open window.
Once she got out of the taxi, she navigated crowded, narrow pathways, almost colliding with a man rolling an overstuffed wheelbarrow through the street, its pile of bricks nearly falling out. She spotted a chemist’s shack nestled between two tall buildings, its sign more professional than the one in Surulere. A woman in an indigo head-wrap sat behind the counter. Angie decided the dark blue gele was a good sign.
After Angie explained her ailment, the woman said, “I am a trained pharmacist. Listen. You are not doing the right thing to get rid of this situation. You must do what I say: do not drink the water unless it is boiled, stay away from soda drinks—too much acid—and do not eat anything with pep-pay. Do not, in fact, eat anything that looks strange to you.”
The woman grabbed off the shelf a small bottle filled with white liquid, handed it to Angie. “Drink this.”
Angie downed the liquid, thinking of Alice in Wonderland. It tasted like chalky licorice. Would she shrink? She thanked the woman, paid her, and left. Back on the road, sticky heat rushed at her. She was famished. But afraid to eat. Clouds hung heavy in the clingy air. She hailed a taxi. As they lumbered through the center of Lagos, the elongated island appeared as one massive collection of junk sculptures punctuated by palm trees. Abandoned tires dotted the landscape, piled high in pyramid-like mounds and bordering cesspools of dirty water. Dead and deserted cars, their collapsed metal like grotesque figurines, stretched for miles. Glints of saturated color peeked out from the discarded debris, lone jewels half-buried in the endless rubbish. A road sign demanded without irony, “Keep Lagos Clean.”
Finally back over the bridge and onto the causeway, they crept past a giant billboard boasting “Phillips Black & White TVs—The Only Ones That Think Like Color” and passed the National Arts Theatre, its windowed, jaunty exterior shaped like a sombrero. The juxtaposition of sophisticated modern architecture and unbelievable disorder shocked her anew. She marveled at how Ella had been part of this crude, modern lifestyle; had she made the daily commute to her newspaper job, perhaps in a danfo or on foot even, rushing there in bare-legged high heels, along roadways with no sidewalks? Angie tried to picture her sister this way, but she couldn’t.
Given the traffic’s usual snarl, it took hours for Angie to make it back to Funke’s house. The lights were out and she banged with the side of her fist. Mosquitoes swarmed in an orbit around her, floating drunkenly in the moist air. Still no answer. She scratched at a bite on her arm, another on her neck, and plopped down on Funke’s small porch, swatting away the bugs. Candlelight flickered in a few shanties across the street, glowing through cut-out windows. She watched as one by one, the lights went out, and fire embers smoldered. Most people went to bed early here, to rest for the next day’s struggles. She felt her own fatigue, and by the time Funke returned waddling up the unlit street, Angie had dozed off, head on chest.
“Why are you sitting here?” asked Funke, waking her. Ope was asleep on his mother’s back.
“I can’t get in,” said Angie, her own back aching from sleeping hunched over.
“But where is Andrew?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“Ah-ah! This one will kill me, O!” Funke’s eyes widened. “What is the use of a man if he is never doing a man’ s job? All he cares about is smoking his Indian hemp and lazing about and acting like a big man!” She sucked her teeth. “He’s nothing but a useless chewing stick!”
She unlocked the front door as Angie followed her into the dark house; Funke made her way to the kerosene lamp, and lit it.
“I spit on NEPA!” Her face in silhouette, she set the lamp on the table, its shadow crawling up the wall and across the ceiling. She went to the back bedroom, lay Ope on his raffia mat, returned.
“Have you eaten?” she asked Angie.
“I can’t eat.”
“Still you have the running stomach?”
“It’s better, but—”
“You are afraid of food now. That is expected.” Funke sat down wearily. Angie sat beside her. Maybe now they could talk.
“Could you tell me about Ella, about her time with you?”
“Later,” said Funke. “I am very tired.” She took another lamp from a shelf, and lit it. This one brightened the room. “I have been at our construction site since I left my kiosk,” she explained. “It is not going well.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Angie.
“Ah-ah! What is always the trouble with Nigeria?” said Funke. “Thieves everywhere! The contractor is saying we must pay more, must give drop drop to port inspectors to get building materials through customs. Do they think that I am a bank? My husband will blame me, O.” She rubbed her belly in a vicious circle. “And nothing done for two weeks, it turns out. No work. Two weeks! And now, gypsies have moved into my house. I am just fearing that they will not leave. Once these people drag their dirty possessions inside and put up a curtain, you can never get them out. And my husband is not even here to take care of it, to be the man.”
She put her face in her hands. Angie sensed that Funke’s life had been somehow easier before, when Ella was here. Or perhaps Ella had been a bigger help. She reached out, touched her back. Funke flinched.
“You are thinking this is too much for me, eh?” said Funke. “You are thinking I should just settle for this little life, forget this whole business of a new house. That is what you are thinking.”
“I was thinking maybe this stress you’re under is not good for the baby,” said Angie.
“Wha?” Funke looked incredulous. “I am doing this for him, you silly girl. This baby understands. He is Yele. He is grateful.”
In that moment, Funke reminded Angie of her own mother, certain that her girls would appreciate how hard she and their father worked to give them a better life, a good education. And so hurt when one didn’t take full advantage of that.
Angie feared Funke would never talk to her about Ella. Did she even remember her? Was this even the right woman? “Please, tell me about my sister,” said Angie. “Anything. Anything at all. I don’t care how small it is.”
Funke pressed her thumb and forefinger against her tear ducts. “Tomorrow.” She rose. “Please, abeg, blow out the lamps before you go to bed.”
Funke trudged out of the room. Angie surveyed the place, with its chaotic clutter, its layers of dust, its unplugged new appliances sitting idle. These two days with Funke had forced her to see life stripped down to bodily function and sustenance, the fragile dance between the two. She was light-headed from lack of food, from dehydration. She felt literally emptied out, transparent, like a ghost. She sat still for some time. Then she blew out the lamp, throwing herself into darkness, disappearing.
That night, as a rainstorm raged outside, she dreamed that the bins of grain piled on the other bed in her room spilled over and she barely managed to escape the avalanche, fleeing for h
ome; there she found no one, only running water everywhere—coming out of faucets, pouring into tall, shapely glasses of ice, swirling like mini tornadoes down flushed toilets, sloshing inside her mother’s washing machine.
Angie stayed in bed the next day, listening to rain march on the corrugated roof as she read One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ella’s paperback copy that she’d carried around in her purse as a teen. Its pages were coming loose from the binding. She read it hungrily, relieved to hide out from Funke and be among the Buendia family and their South American city of mirrors.
The following day, she got up and watched a bit of television with Andrew, waiting as he fiddled with the small TV’s rabbit-eared antennae. At first they watched a pretty young woman with a short, curly Afro and heavy makeup read the news. She spoke about a mandate passed by the newly formed National Committee on Ethical Revolution. “The committee strongly suggests that businessmen, messengers, and traffic men alike refrain from demanding kickbacks for all transactions,” she read from the paper before her, looking up intermittently to gaze wide eyed at the camera. Andrew laughed. “Nigerians and their stupid committees!”
After the news, the theme song for Good Times began, the screen filling with the familiar oil painting of a long-limbed black family. Keeping your head above water, making a wave when you can. Temporary layoffs . . . It fascinated Angie to see a show airing in Nigeria that had been off the air for years in the States. Andrew sang along, and when J.J. appeared in all his lanky, big-nosed glory, Andrew jumped up and imitated his “dy-no-mite” routine. “That cat is cool!” he said. “No jive!”
When she was growing up, Angie seldom watched Good Times. Her mother forbade it once J.J.’s character became more buffoonish. Besides, it came on opposite The Waltons and she’d felt more affinity for the Depression-era white family in rural Virginia, longed to be in a household where everyone was safe and in bed as darkness fell, calling goodnight to one another. But now she felt endeared to J.J. and his family, as if they were fellow travelers, recognizable faces in an off-kilter world.
Later that evening, she watched as Funke shook Omo detergent into a bucket of water and dropped in several garments, squatted, knees spread, and began scrubbing.
“How can I help?” asked Angie. She hoped Funke would talk to her now, share stories of Ella while they washed clothes together. But Funke observed Angie’s feeble attempts at scrubbing a blouse and ordered her to “have some tea and bread and go back to bed, thank you.” Angie was actually relieved and did just that, hungrily devouring the rest of Marquez’s novel.
Her last morning in Surulere, she awoke to a rooster’s crow and lay there unmoving, waiting. Lightning crackled. The chalky medicine had finally worked. She rose and dressed. The house was quiet. On a bold whim, she boiled a pot of water on the little burner, mixed it with cold water and used that to take a warm bucket shower. Afterward, she made a cup of tea with sugar and pet milk and sat at the kitchen table. She could hear Funke getting out of bed. Rain poured down in sheets. Out of nowhere, the fan in the main room came on and the mini refrigerator hummed—a magical burst of electrical current running through the house. That gave her resolve. When Funke walked into the room, Angie said, “Tell me what you know about Ella.”
Funke rubbed her eyes. “Later,” she said, yawning.
“No. Now.”
Funke looked at her. “Do you want the truth?”
“Yes.” Angie cupped her tea, bracing.
Funke moved around in the kitchen, making Ope’s breakfast as she spoke. “This sister of yours came to my kiosk and started looking at all of the jars and bottles. Reading them closely, telling me this one has an old date on it and so does that one and you should not sell this to anyone. Telling me not to sell my Venus de Milo cream—my skin brightener—to women. My best seller! That is what I remember about your sister. Telling me what not to do. Like a preacher on Sunday.”
“What else did she tell you?” asked Angie. “I’m sure you two talked about lots of things.”
“Talk, talk, talk. That is what she made me do. And then she was putting words in my mouth and into that radical newspaper. Why did she do that, eh? It made my husband very angry when he read my name next to those words.”
“I’m sure she was trying to help,” said Angie. “You know, improve women’s conditions.”
Funke set Ope’s food on the table, ignoring her.
Angie pressed. “Please, tell me something I can take with me.”
“I have told you something,” said Funke. “Now. You tell me something: Do you have a gift for me?”
“A gift?”
“From America. A gift.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said.
Funke sucked her teeth and headed for the washroom.
Angie drank her tea and waited. She’d just keep asking, wear Funke down if need be. She wanted stories.
Funke returned with fists balled. “You have used all the water!” she yelled.
“I just made myself tea and—”
“Just filling many buckets like we have our own river!” She thrust out her hands and shook them. “What if the well is dry and we must go through this day with no water?!” She slapped her hands against one another, rubbed them back and forth. “Not a drop.”
“I only used one bucket of water,” Angie insisted. “For a shower. That’s it.”
“But you did not replace it.” Funke threw her hands up. “You must replace water when you use it! You must never, never leave a bucket empty. I am telling you this over and over!”
Angie stood. “I really am sorry.”
Ope stumbled out of the bedroom, grabbed onto Angie’s leg.
“I cannot use your sorry to give my son drinking water, to bathe him, to cook for him, can I?”
“The well will fill up again soon, won’t it?” She tried to gently shake off Ope.
“What is soon? Who can be without water even one day? And you are talking this foolishness about soon? You and your American thinking.”
“Well, I am American,” said Angie, defensive.
Funke bucked her eyes. “Are you sure? I have had many Americans stay with me and I have seen these Americans on telly and in movies. You are not like them a-tall! You come to my country with your clothes from some bend-down boutique, bearing no gifts for your hostess in those bags of yours. What type of American are you?”
Angie picked up Ope and handed him to Funke, as if he were a piece of luggage she’d borrowed. “Apparently not the type you were expecting.”
“Look at you with that nose and that skin. Those braids in your hair. You are Fulani! But do you know how to wash a baby or cook a dinner or fill a bucket? Eh-eh! You are an African woman but you don’t know how to act like one. Not like your sister, O. She was a real African woman.”
Angie stepped backward, as if pushed. Funke turned and moved into the kitchen. Angie watched her back for several seconds, before retreating to the bedroom. She sat on the hard bed. It’s true, she thought. I’m no good at this. This is all wrong. On impulse, she quickly packed her bag, exited the room.
She stood before Funke. “I’m leaving.”
Funke didn’t look up from the stove, where she was stirring something in a saucepan, Ope at her feet.
“I appreciate your letting me stay here,” continued Angie. “But it’s obviously not working out.”
“Silly girl, do whatever,” said Funke. “I don’t know what you mean by this ‘working out.’ Is it like that American actress Jane Fonda and her exercise videos, this working out?”
Furious at being mocked, Angie turned with such force her gold pen flew out of the front pocket of her reporter’s bag and hit the floor.
Funke quickly moved to pick it up, examined it. “I will keep this,” she announced.
“No! Ella gave me that pen.”
Funke wrap
ped her hand around it. “It is mine now. My gift from America.”
“Give that to me!” screamed Angie, lunging for the pen.
Funke wouldn’t let go, holding her arm with the pen above her head. Ope cried, “Mum! Mum!”
“It is mine now!” Funke laughed, mouth wide open.
Angie tried again, reaching up to grab the pen, but to no avail. She gave up. She couldn’t wrestle with a pregnant woman. The unfairness of it overwhelmed her and suddenly Angie was sobbing. Harsh, messy tears. Funke’s eyes flashed with concern. She gently pulled out a chair for Angie.
“Sit,” she ordered.
Angie did, hiccuping through her sobs. She cried until her head ached. Funke waited until she stopped. When all was quiet save her sniffles, Funke made florid, wide gestures in the air with Angie’s gold pen. “I will use it to write you from my new home,” she announced.
“I just want my pen back,” whimpered Angie. She felt like a child taunted on a playground.
“You are American. You can have many pens such as this,” said Funke.
Recognizing defeat, Angie stood, picked up her duffel bag, headed for the door.
“Wait!”
Angie whipped around, held her hand out, ready to receive the pen.
But Funke was grabbing one of the pieces of paper piled high in the corner. She thrust it at Angie. “Give me your address.”
“No.” She never wanted to hear from this woman again.
Funke thrust the paper at her again. “I will write to you about your sister.”
Angie eyed Funke for several seconds before dropping her bags and scrawling her Michigan address; she handed back the paper and Ope reached his arms up to Angie. She ignored the boy as she turned, slowly walked out of Funke’s house.
She made her way up the road to the taxi park, where the sun now shone on lingering puddles from the morning’s heavy rain. She climbed in the back of a waiting car and directed the driver to take her to the airport. What else was there to do? Angie felt deflated, as though she’d failed a test, blown a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She didn’t want to be here anymore, a lone woman chasing after a ghost in a harsh, lonely place.
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