by Sefi Atta
Then this. No, wait. This was the most important part. There were dozens of newspapers and magazines in our department available for the staff, in addition to a few in the reception area for guests, and I had to ensure they were in tidy piles. I was getting ready to leave work the following Friday. The switch-board was closed, but most of the department was still around, pretending to work as usual. I slipped on my new jacket from Hobbs and was wrapping my M&S scarf around my neck when Penny passed by. She was holding a copy of the Mail, which, to me, carried trashy celebrity news, but for some reason it was considered posher than the Sun.
“Have you seen this?” she asked. The article was about a group of Nigerian graduates in London, children of high-ranking government officials.
They were living in a flat in Knightsbridge and had been arrested for dole fraud. Some nosy parker who lived next door to them had reported them. She’d noticed that they were receiving unemployment checks and coming home every day with Harrods shopping bags. After the story was a quote by a Nigerian lawyer in London: “It’s a legacy of the corruption in our governments. For years, government officials have enriched themselves unlawfully and they are never held accountable. The result is that Nigerians don’t consider it wrong to steal public funds, and internationally, we’re gaining a reputation for fraud...”
“Thought you might be interested,” Penny said.
Cow. My friend Remi, too, thought she did that to spite me. I called Remi from the switchboard before I left. I no longer cared about the personal-calls rule and Akin would be tired of hearing about Penny.
“Hey, hey, she’s trying to sabotage your career!” Remi said. “She’s marking her territory in that office!”
“She’s got it in for me,” I whispered. “I can’t kid myself anymore.”
“No, seriously,” Remi said. “Can’t you see? They can’t stand it. To see us. Over here. On par.”
She was nibbling on a carrot and I could just see her in her latest fluorescent number from Fenwick’s. Like me, she had a degree in economics from LSE, but the only trends she ever followed were in fashion. I was sticking to basic black that season, even if it showed up my dandruff.
“Cath’s all right, though,” I said.
“Caff’s naff,” she said. “And I mean seeing us like this. They want us back to colonial days, or so desperate that Sting can come and save us.”
“That’s Geldof,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, Sting is the rainforests.”
I fancied Sting, even though I suspected he was a big fat liar. He was quite fit for a forty-year-old.
“God, I hate that Bob Geldof,” Remi said.
We were not Nigeria’s brightest, but we were her most privileged. We had learned how to laugh at lower-class Brits and knew how to tick off the higher-ups. We loathed the liberal types who wanted to lay claim to saving our sorry African arses. Some of us, like Remi, had come over to England via cold audit trails. Her parents had a huge place in St. John’s Wood. With pillars. They were staying there and driving her crazy. No guys were allowed on the premises after certain hours. Her father was a lawyer for an oil company and he couldn’t go back to Nigeria for a while because he feared for his life. Akin’s was a former senator, and my mother always had this to say about him: “He’s a tricky fellow, that fellow.”
Listening to Remi go on about how the fraud story was embarrassing because normally, only Nigerians who lived in places like Neasden, Hackney and Balham were on the dole, it occurred to me that even though I was shallow—as shallow, as if I’d jumped into a pool of my concerns and found myself ankle deep in the deepest of them—I did not share her sense of entitlement.
“But don’t you feel one kind when you read a story like that?” I asked.
“For what?” she said.
“I feel one kind.”
“Why?”
“But why are Nigerians so corrupt?”
“Who is corrupt?” she said. “Are you corrupt?”
“No, listen. I feel one kind.”
“Which kind?” she asked, in the bullying manner she assumed whenever she was trying to be nice.
“I think Akin is smoking hemp,” I said, to change our conversation.
“Oh my gersch,” she said. “That is so Brixton of him.”
She didn’t understand, and not until I left work and got to Pimlico station and walked up the escalator, past posters of West End shows I would never see, and came out of the underground and caught a whiff of stale urine by the newsagent, did I find the word I was searching for: sullied. Where had I learned that it was all right to break laws? Probably from my father, going on about a work ethic, when he knew he could not have bought a flat in Pimlico on his miserable government salary. Yes, I thought, hobbling over the cobblestones dividing the underground station from the council flats on the other side of the street, I’d definitely learned that from my father, even though his flat wasn’t ooh.
That week was the week before Penny’s wedding. I’d totally forgotten, and details of the event permeated the office as if they were seeping through our heating ducts. They were making me nauseous, really: the sister who wasn’t taking her bridesmaid duties seriously, the guest with the broken ankle who had canceled at the last moment, the mother-in-law who wanted a proper church wedding, the seamstress who messed up Penny’s white chiffon. The beading on it. Whether or not anyone in our department cared to know, Penny was her own herald, crying out that her plans were in shambles, and she had a small entourage, whose mouths rang like bells whenever they saw her, “Here comes the bride,” including Cath, who organized a collection for a wedding gift.
“No pressure,” she said, with a tremor in her voice that made me panic. “Give what you want.”
I gave five pounds. She had also bought a card for Penny and everyone in the department signed it and passed it on. When the card reached my workstation, there was barely any space. I read what the others had to say: Best wishes, Graham. Hugs from Trish. Cheers, Ian. Congratulations, Rupert. PS: We’re both legal now, Raj. PPS: Weddings on Caribbean beaches are not legal, Moira. I squeezed in a narrow Good luck.
Cath had decided on a gold bikini for Penny’s wedding gift, one of those expensive ones, full of strings, and she thought Penny deserved it because she had worked hard on her diet. They both walked around the office and Penny thanked everyone, including me.
“You’re so evil,” she said. “How will I ever fit into something this tiny?”
“Enjoy,” I said.
“Taking if off an’ all,” Cath said, nudging her.
“Will you be here when I get back?” Penny asked.
“Where’s she going?” Cath squawked.
Penny smiled. “Don’t you know? She’s joining an accounting firm soon, this one. She’s going to be a chartered accountant.”
She said the word “chartered” as if it were to be knighted, and she might as well have shoved my head under a guillotine. I wished her extreme bad luck in her marriage.
“You’re leaving us?” Cath asked.
“Not yet, Cath. Hope you don’t mind. I was going to tell you. I know you were looking for a temp-to-perm”
She waved. “Of course I don’t. Just make sure you give us a couple of weeks’ notice and remember that if accounting doesn’t work out, you can always come back.”
“Catherine,” Penny yelled.
She laughed and tossed her hair: fiancé, fiancée. She’d never respected Cathy as far as I was concerned, but I, too, laughed because I was relieved. I cleared my throat.
“Thanks, Cath. That’s so nice of you. I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Really,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “I’ll miss you. I hate to lose a good receptionist.”
I had tears. I would have given her a hug if that were professional. From then on, no personal phone calls for me, no eating at my workstation. I separated her orchid stems, spaced them out so they were at equal distance, eased them down so that they were of equal height, filled
the crystal vase with water, refilled whenever necessary, stroked every petal, plucked every dry leaf.
MADNESS IN THE FAMILY
One Saturday afternoon your daughter Biola called from London to say she had changed her mind, she no longer wanted to go to university. It was the summer of 1982 and everyone in the family but Biola was in Lagos on vacation. At first you thought she was playing a prank. Stories were circulating about Nigerian students overseas who were going wild without their parents to monitor them. They were smoking marijuana, drinking and driving, crashing cars, getting pregnant and having abortions, but they always, always attended university.
Biola had taken her A levels at Cheltenham Ladies’ College in Gloucestershire. She had been accepted at King’s College London, to study law. She was meanwhile staying at your house on The Bishops Avenue, “running up bills” as your husband would say. He was a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, a Cambridge alumnus, and would have preferred that Biola sit the Oxbridge exams, but he had to admit that she had done well. She had passed with two As in history and economics and a B in English literature. So, whenever you complained that she was not calling home regularly, or worried that she was going to parties and nightclubs every weekend, he would say, “Remi, relax, let the girl enjoy herself.”
“What do you mean you don’t want to go to university?” you asked, realizing Biola was serious.
It was about four thirty in Lagos, the same time in London. You and your husband were in his study. There was a family photograph on the wall. In the photograph, your husband was wearing an agbada and you were in an iro and buba of the same white lace. The children, who were not yet teenagers then, were in their church clothes, which you had bought from Marks and Spencer.
Today, your husband was in a blue brocade agbada and you were in a matching boubou. You were out of breath and adjusting your neckline. The phone in the sitting room downstairs was not working and, though you had called the NITEL office several times, no one had yet come to repair it. Each time you heard the phone ring, you had to run upstairs to your husband’s study, as it was closer than your bedroom, which also had a phone. He had followed you there and was standing by the door. The study had fluorescent lights and gold-colored curtains that were permanently drawn.
The air conditioner trembled to a halt as Biola said, “I won’t be able to handle it. I just know I won’t.”
You laughed. This from your most academic child who had locked herself up in her bedroom to study, unlike her younger sister, Oyinda, who was smart, but lazy. Deji, your only son, needed help. He had to take tutorials during the Easter break to get through his O levels, which he had passed with Bs and Cs.
Next term, Oyinda would be in her fourth year at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Deji in the Lower Sixth at Cheltenham College. This afternoon they were both at Ikoyi Club, a few minutes away by car, meeting up with friends who were in Lagos on vacation, most of whom were students from boarding schools in England. They were either in the air-conditioned rotunda, eating suya and drinking Chapmans, or they were outside playing squash and tennis.
Your plan was that Oyinda and Deji would spend a month in Lagos, then you would all fly back to London, where you would join Biola and go on a family holiday to Sardinia before the school year began. Your husband would rent a villa there for a couple of weeks, through one of his clients, an Italian construction company that was building a dam in Sokoto, up North.
“My dear,” you said. “You’ve already got in. Your work is half done.”
“But I’ll never be able to handle it while I’m there. I’m not that clever, you know.”
“How can you not be clever? All you have to do is follow the curriculum.”
Biola sighed, as she did whenever you gave her advice about studying. You were not a university graduate. You trained as a nurse at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London while your husband was a student at Cambridge. You retired from nursing as soon as you returned to Nigeria and got married in 1961, a year after Nigerian independence.
“It’s easy to get in,” Biola said. “You learn the right things and write the right things. It’s all lies, Mummy. I know I won’t be able to handle it while I’m there. I just know I won’t.”
“Please, speak to your father,” you said.
You were tired that day, not just from running upstairs, but there had been power cuts throughout the vacation. You had to supervise your new housegirl, Patience, who burned meals while warming them on the kerosene cooker. You had shed most of your domestic staff now: the cook and the houseboy, who turned out to be thieves. They were stealing rice and beans from your storeroom. You kept the day and night watchmen, the washerman and gardener. You did not have a driver (your previous one upped and left) but your husband did.
You were sure he would be able to ease whatever anxieties Biola had about going to university and perhaps you didn’t quite believe what you were hearing from her, either. It was too absurd.
As you handed the phone to him, you remembered Biola had made the same statement earlier in the vacation. “It’s all lies,” she had said, after you were able to tell her what you had been hiding from her for years. It wasn’t that you thought it was an appropriate time, but it was convenient. Biola had left Cheltenham for good and you were both alone in the London house for a while before Oyinda and Deji joined you. Their father was in Lagos, unable to make it to their end-of-term activities, and it was just as well. He would have had to explain for himself why he had married another woman by customary law, a woman who had twins by him, sons who were now four years old.
“I will never, ever speak to him again,” Biola had said, almost in a whisper.
“You will,” you had said. “He is your father. He cares for you.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Biola had said. “It’s all lies.”
You couldn’t bear to see Biola that withdrawn. You told her he had confessed of his own volition and had begged your forgiveness. He would continue to live with your family and visit his other family.
He had been doing that without your knowledge. He had even bought the twins and their mother a house in Lagos and furnished it. You asked Biola not to say a word to Oyinda and Deji, whom you felt were not yet old enough to understand the arrangement. Biola decided she would not fly back to Lagos. You could have insisted, but it seemed like a fair trade-off and she had worked so hard for her exams. You agreed to let her stay in London. So did her father. Perhaps he was relieved he didn’t yet have to face her.
He had little tolerance for defiance at home and Biola could be stubborn. She got into arguments with him whenever he put a curfew on her or stopped her from going to parties. She was against his association with the Italian construction company, which you couldn’t understand. How could building a dam be a bad idea? Wasn’t everyone fed up with power cuts? Wasn’t Biola intelligent enough to know her father’s foreign clients paid for the houses in Lagos and London, her school fees, vacations, clothes and pocket money, not to mention the food she let go cold whenever she brought her adolescent grievances to the dining table?
Your husband would ignore Biola as she raised her voice and gesticulated, trying to justify her position, until she wore herself out, which had led you to give her the nickname “Mrs. Lawyer,” though your husband thought she might never make it as a lawyer if she didn’t learn how to control her emotions.
“Yes?”he said, putting the receiver to his ear. “Yes, my dear, I can hear you. Yes, I’m listening. I said, I’m listening. No, my dear. Slow down. I said, slow down.”
He sat on the swivel chair before his desk, facing the wall where the family photo hung. He raised his eyes to the fluorescent light on the ceiling, then frowned at his marble ashtray.
Of course, Biola had since spoken to him. She spoke to him when she called to tell them about her A-level results and again when she ran out of money. He transferred money from his Barclays account to hers. Normally, he would have told her off for spending excessively and ordered her to get on t
he next flight home. You were certain they had not talked about his other family and you were in some doubt as to whether you wanted them to. It depended on how you were feeling. Sometimes, you wished Biola would confront him, unlike you, who had this response: “There isn’t much we can do about it now.”
He had seemed so awkward kneeling before you and holding your hand when he confessed. It was uncharacteristically humble of him and you were ashamed for being so oblivious. Most of all, you did not want him to have the power of knowing how much he had hurt you.
Biola must have finished speaking because he said, “I can’t allow that.”
For a moment, he pulled the receiver away from his ear as if Biola were shouting.
“What is she saying, Frank?” you asked.
He raised his hand and resumed their conversation. “I’ve told you, I can’t allow that. You don’t have a choice in the matter. Now, is there anything else you would like to say to me or your mother?”
Biola must have slammed the phone down on him because he replaced the receiver and mumbled, “I don’t know what is wrong with the girl.”
“What did she say?” you asked.
“She wants to travel.”
“Where to?”
“Around Europe, for a year, and she will pay for her trip.”
“Since when?”
“Don’t mind her. She’s not serious.”
Summer in England was the rainy season in Nigeria. Your husband had decided to forgo his game of golf at the Club that day because the course would be wet. Later, you both sat on the veranda, which faced your garden of palm trees and tiger lilies. Your fence was covered with bougainvillea and golden trumpets. The veranda was shielded by green netting that kept mosquitoes sout, but allowed in a cool breeze and the smell of cut grass.
There was a table-tennis set in a corner of the veranda. You were a table-tennis champ as a girl. In your senior year of secondary school, you took part in matches with other schools. You nearly always won. Your children laughed whenever you bragged about that. You had never played against Biola, who had no interest in sport, but you had defeated Oyinda, who played lawn tennis. Oyinda gave a sorry excuse that table tennis required a different sort of wrist movement. You had also defeated Deji, who was a gifted athlete. You had even defeated your husband round after round, until he gave up trying to equalize.