“You will.”
“Thank you for doing that Nigel.”
“Please don’t thank me.” He ran his hand down his face, and she remembered the gesture from back in the day. “It was the least I could do,” he said. “She was, well I don’t have to tell you, she was Ella, you know?”
She nodded. She did know.
“What no one could’ve known is what a damn good journalist she was.”
“So I heard.” She hated that she’d missed out completely on Ella’s brief, brilliant life’s work, except for a newspaper clipping or two. It was a cruel fact.
Nigel leaned over, touched her face gingerly. “What happened?”
His finger felt cool, comforting, and she closed her eyes, put her own hand over his. “Minor accident,” she said.
“I’m sorry for your accident,” he said, “But I’m glad it was minor.”
They walked the short distance to his campus flat, Nigel carrying her heavy bag as a light drizzle fell. His building was a modern wonder, not unlike a waffle, with its weave of tan columns crossing against white ledges. They climbed three flights and when he swung open his door, she liked what greeted her. It was small and cozy, a cross between a college dorm room and an expat’s home. A two-room flat with a small kitchenette, the space had two posters on the wall—one of W.E.B. Du Bois, another an iconic image of Stokely Carmichael. A hand-woven prayer blanket lay across the back of a wooden rocking chair, and two big, colorful wicker baskets sat in the corner. The back wall had one large window that framed a lovely view of the Lagos Lagoon.
“Nice!” She went to the window, looked past the raindrops to a small park below, tucked behind the administrative building, just where the campus ended.
“University sits on the edge of the lagoon,” explained Nigel, coming up behind her. “They call that area the lagoon front. Best thing about UNILAG.”
She stumbled as she made her way to the sofa, plopped down.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Tired. It’s been quite a journey to get here.”
“Did you come here straight from Chris and Brenda’s?”
She shook her head. “I was staying with this woman, Funke, who—”
“The Funke Ella stayed with? In Surulere?”
“Yes.”
From his expression, she couldn’t tell whether he felt sorry for her or freaked out by her itinerary.
“Rest,” he said finally. “In this place, you learn to do one big thing a day. I can tell you’ve done yours.”
“And then some.”
“Well, you’re here now. You can chill.” He moved toward the door. “I’ve got to get back to the office, handle a few things, and then we’ll go have some lunch, OK? Make yourself at home.” He turned back. “It’s so good to see you, Angie.”
After he’d left, she took a long shower, dabbing at her leg and arm wounds. She couldn’t believe her luck. She’d found Nigel. Now, everything she’d been through—her back-to-back ordeals—felt worth it. Right away, a bone-deep exhaustion took over, as if finally able to exert itself now that she didn’t have to fend for herself every second. Now she could collapse. And when she lay across Nigel’s bed, she fell with abandon into a hard sleep.
She awoke to darkness. She had that eerily familiar feeling of not knowing where she was. Snippets came back to her; she wondered how much had been a dream, how much was real. She got up, opened the bedroom door. Nigel was sitting at the little table, smoking. It hadn’t been a dream. Thank God.
“Hello Sleeping Beauty,” he said, grinning.
She smiled, ecstatic.
“I see Lagos has worn out your ass.” He chuckled. “Welcome to Eko!”
She laughed, happier than she’d been since she’d arrived in Lagos. Since before that, even. She couldn’t even remember when.
As they took the short ride from Yaba to Ebute-Metta, she could feel him stealing glances at her in the backseat of the taxi. She could’ve caught him with her eyes, but didn’t. She sensed him conjuring fragments of a past that included her and she didn’t want to break the spell.
Stepping into the Mainland Hotel lobby was like entering a sanctuary—with its hushed sound of feet against shiny tiled floors and cool, air-conditioned interior. No sun, no bugs, no humidity.
Apart from the waitstaff and some Nigerian businessmen huddled at the bar, Nigel and she were the only blacks in the room. Men glanced their way. The waiters wore white shirts with white towels draped across their arms as they carried around pitchers of water, refilling glasses. It reminded Angie of an upscale restaurant in midtown Atlanta that Denise once told her about. The Mansion was an actual former plantation house, and Denise said you felt odd the whole time you ate there, watching black servants tend to white customers. And you.
Nigel ordered fish stew with boiled yams and greens for both of them. And lager. When the drinks arrived, Nigel raised his glass. “To the wonders of coincidence!”
“Maybe it’s our karma,” she said, giddy with gratitude. She took a big gulp of the lager. It was bitter; she frowned from the taste.
“Uh-oh, too strong?”
“Just different,” said Angie. “I’ll get used to it.”
His face broke into a wide smile. “This is exactly how I remember you. So game, so willing to hang.”
“Yeah?” Angie loved hearing that. Their food arrived and with it a cosmopolitan feeling that had escaped her throughout this trip. I am here with Nigel, she told herself. Having yams and fish stew in a nice restaurant in Lagos.
“Seriously. I have such vivid memories of you at those basement parties,” continued Nigel. “You were so young, how old? Like eleven? Twelve? You could’ve been a tattletale, you know? Or whiny. Or scared. But you weren’t. You were such a little trooper. And you saw a lot.” He cut into his fish. “Too much maybe.”
“I don’t think of it that way,” she said. “I’m glad I had that time with you guys. With her.”
He touched her hand. “I’m sorry I said that. It’s just, well—”
“It’s OK.” She thought of the last time she’d seen Ella, of her waving goodbye from the boarding gate. How healthy and assured she looked. And how nervous Angie was, praying silently for a safe flight. Her relief when she got Ella’s first letter.
They ate in silence. The yams were delicious and the lager was improving. She sipped from her beer. It gave her courage. More silence as they ate. Suddenly, she put down her fork. “Nigel, tell me about that night.”
“That night?”
“You know. When It happened.”
Pain moved across his face, the look Angie had seen when their eyes met at the funeral, before he disappeared. He took a huge gulp of his lager. “I was away when it happened. In Guinea, interviewing Kwame Ture.”
“You mean Stokely Carmichael?” The name conjured images of Ella back in the day, listening to his recorded speeches as she rolled her hair with twisted pieces of a brown-paper bag, attempting to get the right amount of Afro curl.
He seemed grateful for the interruption. “Yeah. Cool, right? I knew he was living in exile there, and since I was the cross-cultural correspondent of The Voice, I decided to do this profile of him. He’d married a Guinean, had a new son, so I thought it would make for a great piece.” He took more swigs, grimaced as though the beer gave him heartburn. “As soon as I got back to Lagos, I heard she’d been hit by a car.” He paused, avoided Angie’s eyes. “I called your mother, took care of things.”
“When did you get back?” asked Angie.
He drained his beer mug, put it down with a thud, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was sweating. “The day after. January second.”
“What I don’t understand, what I’ve always wondered, is why didn’t you spend New Year’s Eve with her?”
Angie had spent that very night hearing jazz at Baker’s Keyboard Lou
nge with her new boyfriend Romare. He was from Grand Rapids, and she was a woman in love. He knew everything about jazz, kept reminding her that Baker’s was the oldest jazz club in the world. He knew all the major acts that had performed there. The club was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and its house pianist, Claude Black, was phenomenal. That night, as free champagne flowed, she decided with an eighteen-year-old’s devotion that she’d become a jazz lover too. She saw their lives together, in clubs, at festivals, on plush sofas with faded LPs spread out at their feet. After they got the news, she called Romare, told him; he was kind in that formal way people are when a loved one dies. Said, “Wow, I’m sorry for your loss.” But he didn’t come to the funeral, and when next they spoke he said, “I hope you’re not going to become really needy now that your sister is dead.” After that, she avoided his calls. Soon enough, he stopped calling. She abandoned jazz too, because it reminded her too much of frivolity, as if the intricate music itself had distracted her, caused her to lose focus, be off guard, let the unthinkable happen.
“I wanted to be with her on New Year’s Eve, but it was complicated,” said Nigel.
Angie studied his face closely. She took a final sip of lager. “Did you have a fight?”
“What made you ask that?”
“In one of her letters, she said you two were cooling it, doing your own thing. That’s how she put it.”
“That was true.”
“And then Chris told me that you two broke up all the time.”
“Oh yeah? What the fuck does he know?” Nigel pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took a hard pull, exhaled. It came back to her now, the memory of how he pursed his lips as smoke passed through. “That Nigerian nigger don’t know shit.”
She wanted to tell him what Chris had done to her, but something stopped her.
She pushed the wilted greens around on her plate. “So that’s not true?” she pressed. “You and Ella didn’t split up a lot?”
“No. Like I said, we were planning to spend New Year’s together. It just didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the coup.”
“The coup?”
He stopped mid-puff. “You do know there was a coup that New Year’s Eve?”
“Chris did mention that.” Details she’d suppressed came back. “And I remember my mother saying it got in the way of her handling arrangements when she came. But I didn’t think Ella was affected by it. Not as an American. And it was bloodless, right? Doesn’t that mean basically a change of government?”
“For one, it wasn’t completely bloodless,” said Nigel. “And we were all affected. The military imposed a curfew for a few days. You couldn’t move around freely.”
“So you two couldn’t get to each other?”
“It was hard.” He sucked on his cigarette as though it gave him strength. “Everything was hard.”
Angie could tell she was exhausting him, but she couldn’t stop. “Why didn’t you say anything to me at the funeral? Why’d you just leave?”
“I apologize for that. It’s just . . . I don’t know, the look your mother gave me . . . I couldn’t bear to face you guys afterward. I just had to get out of there.”
“And you never called, to check on us or anything.”
“I called once.”
“You did? I never knew that.”
He nodded. “Your mom thanked me for helping her out when she came here to . . . to get Ella. But I could tell she didn’t want to hear from me any more after all that. And that was just as well.” He paused. “I really went through a rough time.”
She dropped her fork and it clanked against the plate. “You went through a rough time? How do you think we were doing?”
He tapped cigarette ashes into his plate of half-eaten food. “I can’t imagine.”
It was days and then weeks and then months of loneliness. That’s what she remembered most, being lonely. And assaulted by memories. She couldn’t go anywhere without a reminder. In a desperate move to escape, she’d returned to the University of Michigan against her mother’s wishes, determined to finish college there. But that first day back, she’d gone to visit Ella’s Afro-American studies professor, Dr. Jordan, and he’d said, “I’ve taken care of everything; your transcripts have been sent to Wayne State. Of course you’d want to be close to home right now.” She’d felt a deep dread as she made her way back to the city that very night, a failed fugitive from grief.
“Why are you really here?” asked Nigel.
She pushed away her plate. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“I guess because coming to Nigeria just seems like a painful, almost cruel thing to do to yourself.”
“I’m here because I feel cheated.” As soon as she said it, she realized it was true. “I nursed her back to health for a whole year and then when she was doing better, she left me.” Angie looked up at Nigel. “Came here with you. I never got to be with her at her best, never got to be with the new and improved Ella.” She realized for the first time that she was angry at Ella. And Nigel. “That wasn’t fair. I want to know what I missed.”
Nigel touched the top of her hand. To steady it? She was shaking slightly. “Know this. She thrived working for The Voice. The paper gave her a purpose in life, and she thrived.”
Angie felt herself sliding quickly from anger into an alcohol-induced sadness, unconvinced by Nigel’s claim. “Yeah, but was she happy?”
“Believe that she was, Angie.” He put out his cigarette, squashing it so hard that pieces of loose tobacco fell onto his plate. “That’s what I tell myself.”
She stared at Nigel and he met her gaze. A connective thread pulled taut between them.
Later, just as they pulled up to Nigel’s waffle-style flat, the sky opened and a torrential rain came down. He gave her his jacket and she threw it over her head as they ran into the building, the raindrops like salve against her tender limbs.
THIRTEEN
They made their way with relative ease through the Saturday morning traffic. Nigel had decided Angie should see some of the city’s attractions, tourist-style. “Not that there’s any such thing as a damn tourist in Lagos,” he noted.
Angie felt good—rested and content. Nigel had given her his bed and he’d slept on the futon in the living room. She’d had the best sleep of her entire trip. Now she was wearing her favorite crinkly Indian skirt, and the wind from the open window whipped through her new braids. The desperate, lonely traveler of the past twelve days, the young woman who got herself into dangerous situations, was gone. Today she felt experienced, more self-assured. She’d gotten what she came for without even knowing what she was looking for: she’d found Nigel.
She studied his profile openly now. She’d been afraid before, as if staring at him too closely would make him disappear. He was as handsome as she remembered, with his strong chin and long, little-boy lashes. But she could see halos of darkness beneath his light eyes, and hard parentheses at the corners of his mouth that hadn’t been there before.
They crossed the bridge and rode alongside the Lagos Lagoon. Victoria Island’s skyline of sculptured high-rises greeted them. Lush greenery framed gray buildings and twin fountains sprayed water into an overcast sky. A large puzzle piece of a park sat in the center. The taxi cruised along the coastline; Angie inhaled the husky aromas of the Atlantic Ocean as palm trees swayed along its wide avenue, huge sign announcing its name, “Ahmadu Bello Way.” Mansions stood facing the water.
“It’s almost like we’re not in Lagos anymore,” she said. “It’s so pretty.”
“This is where all the ogas, all the big men, live,” explained Nigel. “They rob the country’s coffers, then build mansions on the water. But the coastline is eroding and one day, these houses are all gonna fall into the ocean.” He looked out at the line of massive homes. “And it serves those motherfuckers
right.”
Angie turned from the window to look at him. “That’s harsh.”
“When you’ve seen as much poverty and disease and starvation as I have, you get like this,” he said. “The corruption, the goddamn greed, drives me nuts.”
She could imagine Ella’s outrage matching his, could see them both appalled, bound by their sense of injustice.
He pointed to a formidable building, the US Embassy. Its American flag whipped around in the breezes coming off the water and Angie was comforted by it, which surprised her because she never put her hand over her heart when she said the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Ella had taught her that tiny protest. She suddenly remembered that Denise had insisted she register her presence here. She didn’t need to now.
Near the embassy stood sleek, tall apartment buildings. “Most foreigners—your diplomats and UN workers and journalists—stay out here,” said Nigel. “Of course Vic Island has the finest restaurants and hotels and clubs. There’s a whole expat scene, just waiting for you.”
It did seem inviting. She fantasized about staying in Nigeria for a while, maybe even a year. What was waiting for her back at home? She hadn’t applied to graduate school, hadn’t interviewed for any jobs, hadn’t figured out what she wanted to do. As graduation day approached, it had gnawed at her, that lack of knowing, the lack of any real passion. She realized she’d hoped that coming here would somehow define that passion for her. Detroit itself, her old life, seemed like a remote place from a former existence. If she stayed here, she could work at the UN. Or the embassy. Or teach, like Brenda once did. Or yes, report for a Western newspaper, like Nigel. She could do this. Live on Vic Island, be an expat.
She turned to say these things to Nigel, found him staring at her, brazen. “What?”
“Did you know she had her hair braided like that?”
Angie nodded. “Do you like it?” She instantly regretted the question.
“It’s nice.” He turned from her and looked out his window.
The driver dropped them along an embankment and they crossed a walkway to Bar Beach. The sun hid behind clouds and yet the ocean still sparkled. The beach was nearly deserted, except for small clusters of foreign beachgoers. They hovered on their blankets, these white men and women, skin sunburned bright red. Their body language had none of the matter-of-fact entitlement Angie was used to. It was quite the opposite, as if they didn’t want to occupy too much space. In contrast, Nigerian men strolled confidently along the sand, their arms filled with wares—baskets and ivory and batiks. Raffia huts sat back, away from the beach’s edge.
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