by Sefi Atta
Oyinbo people were a mystery, though. Why all that lying in the sun?Were they trying to be as dark as us or what? They lived in their little communities, sometimes with their own special schools for their children—American International, the French School, or the British School—and I’d heard that they restricted Nigerians. There were also Chinese, Lebanese and Indians around. They were not exactly oyinbo, but white South Africans were.
Popsi once told me a story about an oyinbo bobo who was constantly being stopped at Awolowo Road checkpoint back in the eighties. He called him an English chap. This chap would be on his way back from Lagos Motor Boat Club. The policemen at the checkpoint would bank on him being drunk, even though his driver was always at the wheel. They would stop his car for speeding and demand a Christmas gift. All year round. The English chap would laugh and tell them he’d had one too many and hand them a few naira notes. This continued until the policemen got greedy one night and arrested him for not having his particulars in order. Popsi was on duty at the station when they brought him in. “I’m pissed as a fart,” the chap said, raising his hands in surrender. His face was red. Popsi set him free because there were no grounds for his arrest and the chap was so grateful he taught Popsi a song before he left: “Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness.”
At the swimming pool, a blonde woman was lying face up with her bikini straps loose. I observed her to see if her bobbies would flop out. The Nigerian man who was pretending to swim came out of the pool looking a little gray and the chlorine fumes began to sting my eyes. I got tired of waiting.
When I returned, Glory was ready to leave. She hugged me again.
“You’re so cute,” she said, with regret.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You must come and see me again. I’ll give you a non-alcoholic cocktail.”
I noticed those pimples on her forehead again and her black lipstick. Did she emit an odor? That had to be her secret. She was also attracting the attention of a few Hausa traders in the bazaar, one with tribal marks on his cheeks. He polished a beaded necklace with a rag as he watched her.
“What about mine?” Augustine asked, stepping forward.
“Be patient,” she said, wriggling her fingers.
I almost vomited. Her hands looked like crabs. He hugged her and the top of his head barely reached her neck. He wouldn’t leave until she’d walked back up the ramp. Her hair weave was like a horse’s tail and her heels were shredded.
“Come,” he said, turning towards me. “Are you trying to chase my girlfriend or what?”
“Me?” I asked, smacking my chest.
Of all questions!
He pushed me. “Is it because she said you were cute? Is that it? Oh boy, do you know how old she is? Do you think she is your rank? Are you mad? Who told you she likes you? Look, take time, oh! Relax yourself well, well! You’d better have been expecting a non-alcoholic cocktail from her. If you were expecting more than that, you must be very stupid.”
Their roles were reversed. He was meant to be the deceitful one, not her. What was going on? It was like an invasion of extraterrestrial creatures, when they took over your mind and controlled your inner thoughts.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “Because I brought you here to see her? Where would you have been allowed to enter a hotel like this without me? Your head is not correct. You think you can take my girlfriend from me?”
“She’s not my type,” I said.
“What?” he asked, squinting.
“She’s not my type, jo. Anyway, I have a girlfriend.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying! What is her name?”
“Fausa.”
He smiled. “Is she fine? Is she fine?”
“Very.”
“But Glory is fine, too, eh?”
I nodded. We couldn’t help our attractions. I couldn’t explain mine to Auntie Florence. Glory’s father was a famous footballer, he said. The bobo had suffered an injury early in his career and, instead of retiring, he carried on playing until he was eventually crippled. Now, she had to fend for the family. You had to praise her for that.
Fausa was a girl in my class. I fell in love with her the year before, even though I’d heard a rumor that she had slept with a teacher. To be honest, I couldn’t hold that against her. She was too fine. I just had to forgive, and she wasn’t one of those who laughed at me behind my back because of my height. She used deodorant and smelled sweet. I didn’t even blame the teacher in question. I wouldn’t have minded a chance to discombobulate her for one night.
Actually, “exquisite” was the correct word for her. She was that perfect—in the mornings when she came to class and her face was a little dry from scrubbing, and in the afternoons when her face was less dry and had a glow. I noticed all that about her. She didn’t smile much and she was strict. Yes. You couldn’t crack a joke about her. I’d tried. I asked her, “So Fausa, my dear, when is our honeymoon?”
Any other girl in my class would have said, “Ee-yack!You? God forbid. See your head like coconut. Get away from me, short man devil,” and all that.
Fausa just gave me a dignified stare, so I watched her more closely. She came to school on time, listened in class, didn’t get into arguments and didn’t associate with louts. She hardly even spoke to the likes of me. The girl was too proud.
Her parents were illiterate. They couldn’t even understand simple “come” and “go.” I’d seen them before at our school gates, dressed up in green lace. They might have been off to an owambe party. They waved at me and I’d never met them before. At least they were cheerful people. I asked, “Are you looking for Fausa?” I was trying to impress them. They immediately lowered their arms and didn’t budge until I’d addressed them in Yoruba.
It was obvious that Fausa grew up speaking only Yoruba. Her voice was unusually soft. You had to listen carefully to hear what she was saying, and perhaps that was why I began to love her even more.
It had to be hard to come from a family of illiterates. Illiterates were the butt end of our insults and jokes in school. If someone took a little while to answer a question, they were illiterate. If someone got a question wrong, they were illiterate. Dolamumu was a bloody illiterate and I almost (almost) racked with one bobo because he called me a stupid one. “Me? Me?” I said, smacking my chest. I didn’t mind the stupid part. And some senior even got suspended because he said another senior’s father was an illiterate from the village, and there was Fausa, with not one, but two parents like that.
The first time I toasted her she’d scored the highest in an English test. I passed by her desk and said, “Congrats.”
“Thanks,” she said. “So what did you get?”
Her eyes were white as blank paper. My heartbeat increased because I remembered the dirty thoughts I’d had about her.
“Ninety-five,” I said.
She got ninety-nine percent. She was an effico.
Soon we were alone in class. We could hear our classmates chatting and laughing in the corridor and schoolyard. It was my chance. “Aren’t you going for break?” I asked.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I can’t let anyone come and insult me.”
She had twisted braids. Were they fake? I could never tell with braids, and some girls had those fat ones that looked like the ropes cattle herders used. I remembered the gist about her sleeping with a teacher. Who would spread such a rumor about her?
“Don’t mind them,” I said. “They’re just jealous.”
There were two camps: one was a minority of classmates she no longer spoke to (they said she did it), while the other camp said of course she wouldn’t do it. She wasn’t always in the top five, but she was taking extra lessons from her neighbor, a Mr. Mensah.
“It’s Molara who started it, you know,” she said.
“Opolo?”
Frog. That was Molara’s nickname. Her
eyes bulged. I mimicked her and Fausa laughed. They used to be best friends.
“You’re funny,” she said.
“Really?”
“You look like a hyena.”
“When have you ever seen a hyena?”
“In a cartoon.”
“Which cartoon?”
“The Lion King.”
I smiled. “Was the hyena cool?”
“Not really.”
She, too, smiled. Oh, the girl was so delectable and incorrigible. I was sitting on the edge of her desk. It poked my yansh and I had to change positions.
Fausa, unfortunately, had a body that old men appreciated: sturdy in front and behind. Only she could make the brown skirts and beige blouses with butterfly collars that girls had to wear look sexy. She was taller than most of our class, including me, and older. She probably mistook me for an innocent bobo. I genuinely wanted to encourage her to go outside. The rainy season was round the corner. There were not many dry days left to spend in the schoolyard at break-time. Exams were also round the corner, which meant that we would soon begin to study in class during break.
Girls were so sensitive. How could she let someone like Opolo upset her? I made frog noises, but she didn’t laugh this time.
“Come,” I said. “Let’s go and yab the hell out of her.”
“No.”
“I will yab her for you then. Free of charge.”
She shook her head. “No. I leave it to God. God will judge her.”
Those eyes again, as white as heaven. God? But why? With all the worries He had in the world, was it Opolo that God would be concerned with? But Fausa seemed so sure of herself. She sat there and insisted she was going nowhere.
“What if He forgets?” I asked before I left.
“He won’t,” she said. “He never does. He only forgives.”
Fausa was a Muslim, so was Popsi. Momsi was born into a Muslim family, but her mother was a Christian and raised her as one. She raised us as Christians with both a Muslim and a traditional twist, which meant that we were scared of divine punishments and juju.
As for Opolo, she was sucking the pulp out of an orange and spitting out seeds when I got to the schoolyard.
“Opolo!” I called out. “Stop spreading cholera around!”
“Eh?” she said and spread her crooked fingers. “Your head is not correct!”
I laughed. Opolo was unfortunate. All she wanted was to be popular. There was no need to bother with the likes of her.
The next break-time I stayed in class, as Fausa did, while our classmates were going out. She turned around after the usual shuffling of feet and squeaking of desks, to see who else was around.
“Aren’t you going outside?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She had cornrows and her head was perfectly round. I’d never thought the rumor about her was a big deal. I’d never even judged her—OK, I did, but I didn’t mind bad girls. I asked her about her lessons and she told me about Mr. Mensah.
“He was a teacher in Ghana. He can teach you how to study.”
“I don’t need lessons.”
“You don’t know Mr. Mensah. He can work wonders. He is fantastic—”
“I don’t need lessons. I’m too sharp for them.”
She hissed. “It’s not your fault.”
She lifted a packet of plantain crisps out of her schoolbag. Her crunching was annoying at first, then the noise got ridiculous.
“What do you want to be?” I asked.
“A lawyer,” she said.
Typical. She ought to be a judge, a chief one. Chief Justice of the Federation.
“Your jaws are strong, oh,” I said.
She smiled.“You’re not well.”
I hoped she wasn’t a bad girl. I was concerned about the rumors, as a parent would be. I wanted her pure, pure.
I convinced Popsi that I needed to go to Mr. Mensah’s Junior Certificate lessons so I could be with her. What a butterscotch she was. What a botanical bouquet and Brussels sprout. Because of her, I couldn’t concentrate. Her father was a mechanic. He vulcanized. Her mother was a Mama Put by trade. Her jollof rice was excellent.
Mr. Mensah also tutored students who attended private schools. They were taking O levels, SATs and the Baccalaureate. He came to Nigeria during a difficult time in Ghana, when food and soap were scarce. He stayed during the “Ghana Must Go” campaign, when illegal Ghanaians were driven out. He never went back, even after the situation in Ghana improved and Ghanaians became better off than Nigerians, and Nigerians who could afford to began to escape to Ghana for Easter and Christmas.
Ghanaians had good personal hygiene; I discovered that with Mr. Mensah. He always smelled of soap and he was fair to me, even though I couldn’t help imitating his accent, the way he said “all of the abeve.”
I almost got thrown out of his class, with Fausa, for causing trouble and I was afraid of what her mother would do to me if she found out. Not that the woman was strict, but she treated Fausa like an egg. I would hear her calling out after lessons: “Fausa, come and eat! Fausa, come and sweep!”She praised Fausa for doing her chores and laughed whenever she saw me. Mothers were usually nice when they spotted a short guy like me hovering around their daughters. Not because they trusted me, but they just didn’t believe their daughters would ever be interested in me.
Fausa loved me because I was short. She was proper. She had class, but we eventually broke up because I was getting in the way of her studies with my silly pranks.
“You’re lazy,” she said. “Too lazy and you’re disgracing your parents who suffered for you. Stop disgracing your parents who suffered for you.”
How I begged her, “Please, please, please,” and I held on to her ankles. I tried to explain that I was a genius and needed no extra tutorials until she finally fell on top of me and kicked me.
Mr. Mensah wanted to quench me, in the meantime. He made me work until I almost died in his lessons. He also taught me study techniques like using mnemonics. Mine were so filthy I couldn’t share them with anyone, but they helped me to get through my Junior Certificate exams.
Would God judge Augustine, I wondered, outside the hotel gates, as he bought a newspaper from a vendor who was tooting a bicycle horn. The headline story was about the police inspector general. The man was in the newspapers nearly every day. He had stolen millions from the police pension fund, and Popsi had a few years to go before his retirement. He was furious about that.
Augustine rolled the newspaper into a baton as we walked past a street construction site. The laborers were stepping on cobblestones. They were shirtless and their torsos were covered in sand. I couldn’t wait for the rainy season to begin. It was too hot. During the rainy season, the streets on Victoria Island sometimes flooded like rivers, but at least we had some respite, in the form of a breeze. Victoria Island was another commercial hub, crammed with billboards advertising products I didn’t want, like bleaching creams, or products I couldn’t afford, like Kia cars. I didn’t mind the Maggi woman with her plate of jollof rice, but I couldn’t stand the Ribena boy. I imagined knocking him off his bike.
We walked to Bar Beach. I remembered Brother saying that Bar Beach was a happening joint in his day. He and his friends would go there to chill. Perhaps he meant to smoke Indian hemp. He didn’t mention that, but he did say there was once a public beach there with thatched tents and chairs that you could rent.
Now, there was a dirty marketplace where street hawkers had set up provisions stalls. They occupied the thatched tents—they and the drug peddlers. There were also crooked-looking wheel contraptions that if your child sat on, he or she would surely fall off. The beach had receded and resembled a cliff. Every so often, a wave leaped out of the sea and landed on the street that ran parallel to the beach, and washed up so much sand that cars could only drive on one side.
That was the case today and Augustine thought it was a spectacle worth seeing. The street had been reduced to a one-way. He and
I walked on the less sandy side, by the government guesthouses for out-of-state officials. Cars, lorries and danfo buses waited in line for their turn to pass. A few of them had braved the sandy section, only to find themselves stuck and their wheels spinning, as helpers from the beach, probably the drug peddlers, offered their services.
We watched a group of them lift a Peugeot. They were shouting, “Oya, oya, oya!” The owner was at the wheel, stepping on his accelerator. His Peugeot was wobbling. One of the helpers banged his bonnet and said, “It done do! It done do!”
“That car is going nowhere,” Augustine said.
It needed to be towed. The bobos were wasting the driver’s time. I was frustrated just watching them. The street would be cleared within a day, and by the end of the week another enthusiastic wave would leap over the beach and land flat on the street, spilling its guts. What was the use?
When I was much younger, a dead whale was beached right there. Lagos State didn’t know how to handle the situation. The whale was all over the newspapers. Momsi went to see it. People were hacking away at its meat. They hacked until they unearthed the rotten fish in the whale’s belly. The smell reached Falomo. The police were dispatched to control the crowd. Popsi was one of them. He said that every year the beach receded and eventually the whole island would become smaller until it disappeared. Banks, finance houses and mobile-phone centers had taken over most of the residential streets and those who couldn’t bear the traffic were packing up and moving further into the mainland.
My school sandals were beginning to fill up with wet sand.
“Let me shake them out,” I said to Augustine.
We walked to the pavement in front of a state governor’s lodge and I kneeled down, removed them and began to bang them on the pavement. I was super hot now, sweating in my uniform, and had to ask him more questions. He was standing over me, his Nike trainers inches away. They were fairly clean, yet he ran on the spot to get rid of the sand that was stuck in his soles.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked, without looking up.
I banged my sandal so hard it bounced out of my hand and somersaulted.