Traffic stalled. As cars inched along the road, she saw that it was not the normal go-slow causing the logjam: it looked like a bundle fallen from a rickety lorry but as the driver got closer, Angie realized what it was: a body splayed out, lying in the slow lane of traffic. Cars were swerving around it. It was a woman, a foot still holding its thong sandal, head in a grotesque twist. Angie screamed, “Stop!”
The driver turned around. “What is it, please?”
She pointed to the woman’s body, struggling for words. “Right there. Her.”
“Ah. Yes, it is an unfortunate part of Nigerian life.” He maneuvered around the corpse, behind other cars. “I am afraid you get used to it.”
Suddenly, Angie pushed the driver in his back. “You have to help her!” She pushed him again, so hard his chin hit the steering wheel. “Do something!”
He turned to face her. “Ah, ah! You bee-tch! What is your fucking problem!?”
“You have to do something,” she repeated.
The driver drove on in angry silence. She turned around, eyeing the dead woman through the rear window. “Please do something,” she begged, heart racing.
He ignored her, drove past the logjam, and once the traffic opened up, he pulled over to the edge of the road and hit the brakes. “Get out,” he said. “Come down,” he ordered her. “Get out of my fucking taxi!”
“What?” Angie felt confused.
He pushed her against the back door. “I am telling you! Come down!”
“I didn’t mean to—”
The driver got out, grabbed Angie’s arm. She screamed as he pulled her from the back, throwing her bag behind. Grabbing her duffel, she stumbled onto the narrow shoulder as he got back in the taxi, slammed his door and screeched away. Cars whizzed by. Four lanes of traffic stood between her and the exit on the opposite side. Desperate, she waved her hands in hopes that someone would stop. But the cars were flying too fast, as if grateful to be past the inconvenient roadkill, speeding to make up for lost time.
Angie stood on the highway’s edge. Gravel flew up, hitting her legs and arms. She could be stuck here for hours. Forever. Her chest throbbed with panic as she began walking along the shoulder. The sun pricked her skin. Was this what happened to Ella? Was she caught on a road like this, desperate? She thought of Denise’s admonition. Do not let anything happen to you over there. I cannot bear the thought of delivering more bad news to Mama. Please God, Angie thought. Please. I do not want to die like Ella.
Against the sun’s glare, she thought she saw tiny figures making their way toward her. She stopped, stood still. The figures grew larger and as they got closer she could see that yes, it was a man, a woman, and a boy. They walked in single file along the edge, closer and closer, approaching.
“Please!” she yelled against the traffic’s steady roar. “How do you get off this highway?”
“There is no flyover,” yelled the man. “You must cross.” He nodded toward the traffic. “We will cross with you.”
“But there must be an exit on this side!” she yelled back.
“Miles away. This is best, to just cross here.” All three of them were without shoes. The man gently nudged the boy’s back. “Go,” he said; the boy, who couldn’t have been older than ten, looked up at Angie with saucer eyes, then ran onto the highway. Angie gasped as the boy deftly dodged oncoming cars. When he made it across, he waved at them.
“My God,” she said. “I can’t do that.”
The man turned to Angie. His narrow face was all hard angles but his eyes were sympathetic.
“You must make your mind blank and just go,” he offered. “I will show you.” He created a rhythmic momentum with his shoulder blades, like a girl entering a double dutch jump rope game, then darted into the fray. Aghast, Angie watched as he wove between zooming cars before making it to the other side. He waved wildly at her, or perhaps at the other woman, who stood beside her, staring straight ahead. Cars flew by. The boy and the man both waved. The man cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled something that got lost to the wind. Cars passed and the boy and man disappeared, reappeared. The man gestured for them to come, come. Cars flew by. Come, come.
The woman, uttering no words, dashed across the highway. Her wrapper flapped in the breeze as a van barely missed her; she moved adroitly between oncoming traffic and leaped gracefully onto the embankment, like a modern dancer. Once across, the woman too beckoned for Angie to come. The sun was like a laser aimed at Angie’s face. The man, woman, and child appeared and reappeared between the whoosh of traffic and the relentless heat mingled with her terror, making her light-headed. Angie could no longer be sure: Was it Ella prodding her on? Was her sister telling her to come? Did she want Angie to join her? More cars flew by. Come, come. She looked straight ahead at the disappearing, reappearing woman. White dots floated across her vision. Yes, it was Ella! If she made it across, there her sister would be. The Buddhist chant Ella had taught her came to her. Nam myoho renge kyo. Angie threw her bags to the side of the road. She moved her shoulders in rhythm with nam myoho renge kyo, nam myoho renge kyo. Staring ahead, focused on Ella’s face, she yelled: “I’m coming! I’m coming!” She counted: one, two, three . . .
Suddenly, a car swerved at her, so close spewing gravel hit her face with force. She jumped back. More cars passed at breakneck speed. She tried again, moving her shoulders in rhythm, but the chant in her head disappeared. The moment had died. She couldn’t do it.
She waved to the others. They beckoned from across the highway, all three of them. She shook her head no, hoped they could see her gesture, knew they couldn’t. She waved goodbye again. Exhausted from the effort, her legs untrustworthy, she sat on the highway’s edge. Her face hurt. She hugged her knees. Soon enough the man and woman and boy moved on, shrinking figures making their way up the exit ramp. She thought the boy waved at her one last time.
She regretted her own fear. Yet the terror sat with her, an unmovable force as the sun loomed overhead. Parched, she longed for water. How long could she sit here before someone stopped to help? Even though it was barely midday, the thought of darkness forced her to rise. She grabbed her bags and ran along the road as traffic whipped past, and flying debris attacked her limbs. When she tired, she walked for several minutes, gravel crunching underfoot, duffel heavy. She ran again. And then she walked for an hour, more, another hour, resting briefly at intervals. The sun was a penetrating heat lamp. Her throat felt glued shut. She didn’t know how much farther she could go. She looked out onto the oncoming traffic but terror kept her on the highway’s edge, one foot in front of the other. Her hands dripped with sweat and the handle of her duffel kept sliding from her grip. Walk, rest. Walk, rest. Walk, rest.
Mercifully, she glimpsed a sign for the next exit. She hurried on, feeling blood drip down her legs and a welt forming on her face. Minutes later she was making her way clumsily up the exit ramp, its incline a small mountain under the weight of her bags.
She trudged to the first building she saw, a post office. She walked inside, the interior’s dark coolness a relief. She headed straight for a nearby bench and collapsed. She closed her eyes and waited for her heartbeats to slow. In time she opened her eyes and searched until she spotted it; she stood and dragged her bag across the floor.
“I want to call the United States,” she said to a young woman perched behind a desk. The woman had drawn-in, dramatic eyebrows. She handed Angie a scrap of paper and instructed her to write down the number she wanted to call. She pointed to a row of phone booths without doors and told Angie to enter number four. Inside was a large, gray telephone with no dials. Angie sat on the little wooden seat jutting out from the wall and watched as the woman attempted to make the connection from her main switchboard. Moments passed. The little booth was hot, stuffy. Finally, the woman arched her exaggerated eyebrows, nodded her head and said, “You can pick up now.”
She picked u
p the receiver. “Hello, Mama?”
She could hear her words echoing back. There was a delay in the transmission, a beat before she heard her mother say, in a formal voice, “You have reached the Mackenzie residence. No one is in to take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
When had her mother gotten an answering machine? A gift from Denise, no doubt. Beeeeep! The sound felt like an affront, jarring and discordant. Feeling the pressure, Angie opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
She hung up.
YABA
TWELVE
Angie walked through the main entrance of the University of Lagos, reporter’s bag slung across her body, luggage heavy in her hand. Now she realized how little she’d known when she left home. Travelers to foreign lands carry backpacks, not American Tourister duffel bags. Large puddles were everywhere and it was hard to avoid them with her cumbersome load. She stood, surveyed the campus, grateful to be in a place with protective gates around it. She checked for the third time to make sure she had the piece of scrap paper on which Solo had written his uncle’s name. She’d kept it tucked inside her journal. Yes, she still had it. “Dr. Aliko Diallo.”
After her aborted call home, she’d sat inside the Ikeja post office for some time before this idea occurred to her. As she’d wiped away the blood from her legs and arms and nursed the face welt caused by flying gravel, she knew she lacked the energy to get herself back home. Traveling that far right now felt too overwhelming, like walking another three miles to an exit. Besides, she worried that her mother would be gone, literally moved on, and she’d find herself alone in an empty house. But she’d run out of places to follow Ella’s path, and that hadn’t worked out so well anyway. This was her last option, a place to just be, to rest before returning to Detroit.
She watched a plethora of African students strolling the walkways. This must be what it’s like on a black college campus, she thought. Not just relegated to one table in the cafeteria, or the corridors of a Harambee House. Two tall young men passed by, clad in jeans, holding books.
“Excuse me!” She called out to them. “Can you tell me where the mass communications building is?”
“That is the building, sistah,” said one of the young men, pointing to a wide structure yards away. “You are a new student?” he asked.
“Not quite,” she said, rising slowly, gathering her bags, feeling the ache in her limbs.
“I am waiting for your admission, O!”
She smiled and made her way along a cobblestone path, hoping for the kindness of another stranger as she climbed the front steps of the building.
“Excuse me,” she said to a young woman sitting at a front desk. “I’m looking for Professor Diallo.”
“He’s not here,” said the young woman.
Disappointed, she dropped her heavy bag. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He is on holiday.”
“Holiday?” Angie’s voice rose slightly. “You mean he’s on vacation?”
The young woman looked at Angie’s bruised cheek, wild hair. “Who are you, please?”
“I’m a friend of his nephew’s, from America.”
“So you will come back.”
“When?”
“In two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Every part of her body hurt. “I can’t wait until then.”
The young woman, clearly seeing her desperation, said, “There is an American mass communications professor in his office. Maybe he can help you reach Dr. Diallo.”
Angie blinked. “Yes, please.”
The secretary nodded her head toward a long hall. “The second door on the left,” she said. “Knock first.”
As Angie approached the door, she wiped her face, tried to smooth her wayward hair. She knocked.
“Enter!” said a male voice.
She opened the door. He sat behind a spacious, cluttered desk, head bent over something he was writing. “Be with you in a second,” he said, not looking up.
She put her bag down and waited, could see the top of the man’s head. The office was sparse, with a few papers push-pinned to a corkboard and little else.
After several seconds he looked up. Their eyes locked. He rose so quickly his chair fell over. He picked it up without taking his eyes off her. “Angie?”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said.
As soon as she spoke, Nigel moved out from behind his desk, toward her. They hugged. His strong arms felt as they had back when she was a little girl, and he’d scooped her up. Strong and reassuring.
He held her at arm’s length. “Wow. Talk about a surprise.”
He looked the same—those soft gray eyes and widow’s peak. His hair was shorter now, but nothing else about him had changed in four years.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said again.
He closed the door and gestured for her to sit. He sat on his desk, hands clasped between his legs. Now that he was so close she could feel him staring at the welt on her face. She braced herself but he didn’t ask about that. Instead he asked, “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Here?” She repeated. She had the sensation of watching herself from outside her body and it made her mind go blank.
“Here! Nigeria!”
“Oh. I just wanted to come,” she said. She fell back in the chair. “I graduated from college in May, so I thought, you know, I’d do this for myself.”
He leaned back. “Riiiight! You would be coming out of college about now. U of M too, yes?”
“No. I transferred to Wayne State.”
He nodded quickly. She didn’t need to say why. “So how did you make your way to UNILAG?” he asked.
“I ran into this guy back in Detroit, Solo? Remember him?”
“Ah, yeah, of course. How is brother Solo?”
“He’s fine. He told me to look up his uncle when I got here, so—”
“And you didn’t even know I was teaching here?”
“Not until Brenda told me.”
“You’ve met Brenda?”
“I stayed with her and Chris for a few days; I met Lola too.”
He shook his head. “Wow, so you’ve met the old gang. OK.”
“Brenda told me your semester was over and you were gone already, so I didn’t expect—”
“Yeah, I’m headed back to Kenya soon.”
“You look the same,” she said.
“You’ve grown up,” he said, grinning. “Little Angie!”
“You think?” She felt acutely aware of how she looked, wished she’d ducked into a restroom before.
“Tell me, how’s your mom?” he asked.
“She’s OK. Thinking of moving to Atlanta, actually.”
“Really? Wow, that’s a big change.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Well, change is good.”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
He folded his arms. “So does she still hate me?”
Angie frowned. “Is that what you think?”
“If she does, I don’t blame her.”
She felt odd, as though she needed to defend her mother, and at the same time, reassure Nigel. “She never mentions you, actually.”
He nodded, as if to say, That’s fitting. “And Denise? How’s she doing?”
“She already lives in Atlanta,” said Angie. “She sells pharmaceuticals. Seems to love it.”
“I can totally see that! She was always a go-getter.” He paused. “So yeah, that makes sense your mom would wanna move there. And you? You joining them?”
“Never.” She shivered from the thought. “I don’t like the South.”
He leaned back as if the velocity of her response had struck him. “I hear you.”
“So tell me about you,” she
said. She swept her arm across the air. “How’d you end up doing this?”
He told her that after The Voice folded—she noticed he was careful not to mention Ella’s name—he became a freelance reporter for the International Herald Tribune, filing stories from different African countries. “I did that nonstop for nearly three years,” he said. “And then this job offer came and I figured it might be nice to sit still for a minute, do the academic thing. And to, uh, do something a little more lasting.”
That word lasting stung. When they’d heard he was “traveling around the world as a foreign correspondent” she assumed that he was off living a carefree, jet-setting life. Of course that would include women. Still, it was hard to hear it from him directly, the obvious fact that he’d moved on. “So you’re married?” she blurted out. “With kids?”
“No, no, no,” he said. “Not that.”
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt’s breast pocket. Benson & Hedges. He offered her one. She shook her head. “Good,” he said. “Don’t start.”
She waited.
He lit his cigarette, pulled on it, exhaled. “I’ve started a fellowship in Ella’s name.”
Angie leaned back in her chair. The ache she felt just from hearing him say her name was astonishing. “A fellowship?”
He nodded. “Yeah. ‘The Ella Mackenzie Fellowship for Black American Female Journalists.’ It’s funded by the university, and allows a black woman to come here from the States, work for Nigerian media, cover women’s issues. All expenses paid.”
Hearing Ella’s name in the title of an award felt long lasting, yet so finite. She didn’t know whether to feel pride or sadness. “How come you didn’t tell us about it?”
“I was going to, believe me. I was. I thought I should tell you guys in person, you know? We just awarded our first fellow this year. I’d planned to come home for Christmas, figured I’d tell you guys then.”
“Can I meet her? The fellow?”
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