by Sefi Atta
“Ah thanks,” Peter Mukoro said. “Brother Sunny, you must ask for a hefty dowry for your daughter. Look at her, good hostess, lawyer, and all that.”
“I would be glad,” my father said, “if someone would take her off my hands for free.”
They laughed hyuh-hyuh-hyuh, as only men with too much money should. I ignored them and returned to the veranda.
“Something wrong?” Mike asked.
“Peter Mukoro,” I said. “Every single time he opens his mouth.”
Mike smiled. “He’s a man’s man. Your father seems to like him.”
We looked toward the dining room. Sheri had come out of the kitchen and was leaning over my father.
“He seems to like Sheri, too,” he said. “Unlike me.”
“Close your mouth,” I said.
By the end of the evening, my head was full of wine. I saw Mike off and he kissed me so hard he pulled me through his car window. We spoke against each other’s teeth.
“Come back with me.”
“My father will kill me.”
“You’re not a child.”
“I am, to him.”
“Nonsense.”
“Hmm. Where are your sisters?”
“Locked up at home, where they belong.”
The road was empty, except for a few parked cars. Before he drove off, I did a strip-tease. I flashed a breast, turned to wriggle, only to find Peter Mukoro standing by the gates. “Ah- ah?” he said. “Are we invited? Or is this a private reception?”
He laughed as I hurried past.
I smoothed the creases from my dress before I walked into the house and kept my face as straight as a newscaster’s. Sheri and my father were in the living room. My father was writing a check.
“That young man,” he said. “What did you say his name was?”
“Mike.”
Count one against him: his name wasn’t Nigerian. This could mean his family didn’t have enough class to uphold our traditions.
“Obi,” I said.
I expected his next question to be which Obi.
“An artist, you say?” he asked.
“Yes.” Count two.
“And he’s given up architecture?”
Count three. I hesitated. “Not really.”
My father peered over his glasses. “That’s no good.”
“Why?” I asked.
He turned to Sheri. “Tell her. Please. If I say anything to her, she thinks I’m old-fashioned.”
Sheri laughed. “You have to admit, Enitan. An artist in Lagos?”
My father handed the check to her.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”
I saw her to the door.
“Well done,” I whispered. “Now I won’t rest in this house. Why did you have to say that?”
“Aburo, the artist has jujued you?”
“I think I’ve outgrown that name by now.”
She raised her hand. “I won’t use it if you don’t like it.” “Thanks.”
“Bye yourself,” she said, cheerfully.
I shut the door gently and faced my father. He removed his glasses, which usually meant he was about to give a lecture. I braced myself.
“You know,” he said. “I may not know much about youngsters today, but I know a few things and I don’t think you should be making yourself so available to a man you’ve just met.”
I crossed my arms. “In what way?”
“Your demeanor. A woman should have more... comportment. And you can stop following him outside unchaperoned, for a start.”
“Unchaperoned?”
“Yes,” he said. “He might think you’re easy. Cheap. I’m telling you for your own good.”
I walked away. Unchaperoned indeed. Look at him. Just look at him, and that Sheri, calling herself my sister. “This is modern Lagos,” I said over my shoulder. “Not Victorian London.”
“This is my house,” I heard him say. “Don’t be rude.”
During national service, I received a monthly stipend of 200 naira from the government. This, I spent usually within a week. In return for my stipend, every Monday, I took a day off work for community service. For community service, I met with other national service participants who lived in my district to complete half-day chores. Sometimes we picked litter off the streets; other times we cut grass in local parks with machetes. Most days we begged our team leader, a man who reminded me of Baba, to let us go. He stood over us, gloating as we pleaded. The machetes were heavier than I expected and the grass left my legs itchy. The experience gave me respect for the work Baba did in our garden every week.
Now that he had decided not to work for his uncle, Mike was teaching art classes at a free education school near his home. One morning, after community service, I visited him there. The free education schools in Lagos were the legacy of a former governor of Lagos state. Several years later, and still under-funded, they were teeming with children and lacking teachers. Most of the classrooms were unpainted and some were without windows and doors. I passed a classroom and heard children reciting alphabets; passed another, and heard them chanting multiplication tables. Through the door, I saw a teacher standing by a blackboard with a whip in his hand.
The next room was the teachers’ mess. Inside, a woman sat on a chair. She was eating an orange. Her skin was bleached and her hair was sectioned into plaits. In the corner, a man placed both his feet on the table. He flexed his whip at a school girl of about fifteen years who knelt facing the corner with her arms raised. The girl’s armpits were stained brown and her bare soles were dusty. There were welts across the back of her legs.
“Good afternoon,” I said.
“Afa-noon,” the man said.
The woman eyed my jeans.
“Is Mr. Obi around?” I asked.
The student turned to look at me. Her face was wet from tears.
“Turn your ugly face to the wall,” the man shouted. “Look at you. Tiffing mango from the tree when you have been warned consecu... ” He whipped her legs.
“Consecu... ” he whipped her legs again.
“Consecutively.” He sucked his teeth. “Tiff.”
“Is Mr. Obi here?” I asked.
He picked his teeth. “Obi?”
“Yes, Mr. Obi, the art teacher. Please, do you know where he is?”
I spoke with an English accent to offend him. He would immediately think I was trying to be superior.
“In class,” he said.
“What class?”
He pointed. “Outside. Fork right, then right again.”
“So kind of you,” I said.
He reached over and flicked the girl’s shoulder with his whip. She straightened up.
Mike’s class was the last on the adjacent corridor and smelled like a puppy’s pen. There were about twenty-five children in a room, intended for half that number. Their desks were pushed to the walls and they were gathered around five large wash bowls. They squished the contents with their tiny fists. Mike was walking around them.
“Behave yourselves,” he said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“They’re making papier-maché,” he said.
There was gray mush in the bowls. One of his students, a skinny boy with dusty knees scrambled over.
“Mr. Obi?”
“Yes, Diran,” Mike said.
“Pitan fell me down.”
“Pitan!” Mike yelled.
Pitan’s large head popped up. “Yes, Mr. Obi.”
“No more pushing,” Mike said. “This is the last time I’m warning you. If one more person gets pushed, you will all run round this school, you hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. Obi,” they chanted.
Mike turned to me. “They’re getting on my nerves.”
I smiled. “I thought you wanted to teach children.”
“I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.”
“I thought you never had regrets. And what kind of teachers are you in th
is school? I was in your teachers’ room and one man there was beating a girl for stealing fruit. You should have seen.”
“That’s Mr. Salako, our agriculture teacher.”
“He’s horrible.”
“Her mother probably beats her more. Most of them in here, they leave this place and go home to spend the rest of the day selling something. They think I’m a fool because I don’t whip them. Everyone else does.”
The children’s heads bobbed like a sea of life buoys. Their parents beat out of love, it was said, with love, so that they wouldn’t grow up misbehaving anyhow-all-over-the-place- willy-nilly-shilly-shally. Teachers beat, neighbors beat. By the time a child turned ten, the adults they knew would have beaten out any cockiness that could develop into wit; any dreaminess that could give birth to creation; any bossiness that could lead to leadership. Only the strong would survive; the rest would spend their lives searching for initiative. This was what it took to raise an African child, a village of beaters, and yet if someone put their hands around a child’s neck, and applied the slightest pressure, someone else would accuse them of wickedness, because strangulation had nothing to do with discipline.
Diran sidled up to Mike again. He scratched his head.
“Mr. Obi.”
“What is it?” Mike asked. “Why are you scratching your head? Do you have lice?” The children laughed.
“Pitan banged my head,” Diran whined. “Now my head is broked.”
Mike clapped. “All right. No more.”
There was murmuring around the class. Mike walked to the center of the room.
“I can see you’re all begging for punishment today.”
Pitan raised his hand. “Mr. Obi?”
“Shush!” Mike hissed. “I mustn’t hear my name on anyone’s lips again. No more. Now push your bowls to the side, return to your desks and line up to run around the school.”
The children giggled as they dragged their bowls to the corner. We heard the school bell ring.
“God saved all of you,” Mike announced. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said to me.
We drove back to his place and ripped our clothes off. Mike had a collection of Bob Marley albums, and we joined in the wailing. We made love on the mattress and then on the floor. He began to talk the way he talked about football. Could I feel it? It was a fusion of time and space. We were the reggae and soul generation. Our parents were the jazz generation. The next would be hip-hop.
“Stop talking,” I said.
He wouldn’t stop. I wrapped my legs around him.
“Enough,” I said. “You like sex too much.”
He grabbed my foot and began to tickle it. His landlord, the whole neighborhood, the whole world even, was about to know how much sex he liked.
“They’ll think I’m a slut!” I said. “Please! They’ll think I’m... shit.”
I was hoarse from screaming. I went to his bathroom to wash myself when I heard a knock on the door.
“Would you like a beer?” Mike asked. “I’m going round the corner.”
“No,” I said.
I knocked the bucket of water over. Mike walked in.
“Are you all right?”
I stood up.
“What is it?” he asked.
I wanted to tell him, but the story was never mine to tell. I was hurt only by association.
“What?” he asked.
I began anyway. The faster I spoke, the easier it became:
the picnic, the rain, the lagoon, the van. The boys.
I sounded fake to my own ears. In my mind’s eye, I was standing there, that day, thankful to be safe, glad to be untarnished.
“Come here,” Mike said when I finished.
He wrapped his arms round me so tight I thought my fear might drip out. He took the bucket from me, filled it with water and brought it to the shower. He lowered me and began to wash me. I shut my eyes expecting some pain, some probing, something.
The last person who washed me was Bisi, our house girl. I was nine. “Spread your lecks,” she would say, and I would spread them hating her sawing motions. But Mike washed me with the gentlest motions, like a mother washing her baby. I felt sure my fear was like any other fear; like the fear of a dog bite, or of fire, or of falling from heights, or death. I was certain I would never be ashamed again.
We didn’t drink beer. We drank the palm wine from his refrigerator instead and ate the remnants of a peppery stew with yams. The stew had mellowed nicely, and after about two glasses, the wine made my eyes slip.
“Who taught you to cook?” I asked.
“My mother,” he said.
“You’ll make a good wife,” I said.
I reached for my glass. Of course he was right for me. Even Obatala seemed to be winking at us.
The Bakares started their catering business. As I predicted, it wasn’t a difficult transition for them. Their house in Victoria Island was spacious and part of their back yard was conveniently cemented. Their hands were many. Sheri’s stepmothers took charge of the cooking, while she handled the money. Her brothers and sisters took on smaller tasks. The back yard was used for cooking, and they converted their chalet into a cafeteria with locally carpentered benches and tables. Most of their customers were office workers from surrounding banks who came in for their meal of the day. I visited once, only because I hadn’t entirely forgiven Sheri for siding with my father, and also because the drive to Victoria Island was too long for my one-hour lunch-break.
Nearing lunch time in the office one afternoon, Mrs. Kazeem looked out the window. “Our friend is here,” she said.
“Who?” Peace asked.
“Miss Nigeria,” Mrs. Kazeem said.
We looked out of the window to see Sheri.
Sheri was one of those women. Other women didn’t like her, and I’d often wondered if she noticed. She rarely came to our office, but whenever she did, the women behaved as if she’d come in for a fight. The men, meanwhile, found excuses to come to my desk. Today, the men were out and only the women remained. Mrs. Kazeem crossed her arms over her belly, Peace clicked her gum. Sheri opened the door.
“Enitan,” she said. “Will you come out for a moment?”
I got up, aware that the others were watching me. Not greeting was considered rude. Outside, the sun warmed my head. We crossed over to Sheri’s car, parked by an orange seller who sat with an infant strapped to her back. She was peeling an orange with a rusty pen-knife.
“Why didn’t you greet the others?” I asked.
“Those jealous women,” Sheri said.
“No one is jealous of you.”
“Who cares? I’ve lived with this too long, and I didn’t come here to see them anyway.”
“What did you come for?”
“Are we fighting?”
“No,” I said.
“Why haven’t you contacted me?”
“I’ve been busy. My father keeps me busy. All morning I’ve been drafting letters.”
“Don’t you go to court at all?”
“He tries to keep me here,” I said.
“I’m surprised.”
“You don’t know him. He runs this place like an army.”
We heard a cry from the road.
“Pupa! Yellow!”
A taxi driver was leaning out of his window. He was holding the window lever he would pass to passengers who needed to “wine down.” One of his front teeth seemed longer than the rest.
“Yes, you with the big yansh,” he shouted.
Sheri spread her fingers at him. “Nothing good will come to you!”
“Whore,” he jeered. “Wait till I get down on you.”
“Don’t let me curse your mother,” she said. “You’d better use that long tooth of yours to push down your windows. It might straighten it out, and your passengers might not suffocate from your stinking armpits.”
I lowered my head.
“And you, Dudu,” the taxi driver said.
Startled, I look
ed up.
“Yes you with the black face. Where is your own yansh hiding?”
I glared at him. “Nothing good will come to you.”
He laughed with his tongue hanging out. “What, you’re turning up your nose at me? You’re not that pretty, either of you. Sharrap. Oh, sharrap both of you. You should feel happy that a man noticed you. If you’re not careful, I’ll sex you both.”
Sheri and I turned our backs on him.
“Fool,” I said.
“Penis like Bic biro,” she said.
We huddled together laughing.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Ibrahim wants me to stop my business,” she said.
“Because?”
“He doesn’t want me going out.”
“Is he willing to give you the money?”
“No.”
“Then, why are we wasting time talking about this?”
“I wanted your opinion,” she said.
“Since when?”
“Please,” she said.
“Drop him,” I said. “You don’t need him.”
She raised her hand. “What will happen to me when my rent is due? Where will I live? I can’t go back to my father’s house. Have you seen the place?”
The day I went, it was teeming with customers and friends. I wondered if they ever had private moments.
“Bide time,” I said. “Until your next rent is paid. After that, find more clients. There are weddings, burials, christenings, every weekend in this place. Next year you’ll be paying your own rent. But this, this, I have to tell you, is rubbish. You’re bright, you’re young, and this man is treating you like his house girl.”
“It’s easy for you to say.”
“You asked my opinion.”
“You’ve never had to worry.”
“If ever I do, please talk sense to me.”
She turned away.
“Sheri,” I said.
“What?” she snapped.
“It’s for your own good,” I said.
“How? I’m not even sure we can continue the business. My uncle comes to the house, complaining that we are misusing his property. He wants to take the house from us, I’m sure.”