A Small Silence

by Jumoke Verissimo

  ‘See, if you put the kuluso on the nipple to bite you, your breast will be big well-well. If you want even original, correct breast, just sing: Kuluso! Kuluso abiamo feyin so, seven times, after it bite you finish. O-girl, you will have correct breast.’

  ‘Why do I have to sing the song?’

  ‘Han-han, don’t you know the meaning of the song is the prayer for yourself? So as you are praising the kuluso for acting as good mother that carry baby, you too will born and carry baby when you have correct breast.’

  ‘I don’t want to have a baby now.’

  ‘Ha! You will have baby for future now. And your breast will call man. Big breast, correct man-o.’

  Desire wasn’t worried about her flat chest. She was curious about the efficacy of the insect to grow breasts, so she tried it. She went around looking for sunken areas in dry sands, so she could find a kuluso that would bite her nipple. She eventually found one and scooped it up by the conic area into a milk tin.

  She placed the antlion on her chest every night before she slept, singing in a low tone ‘Kuluso! Kuluso abiyamo feyin,’ and after two weeks of no results, she threw the can away with the insect.

  ‘How’s your mother?’ Desire said, observing how on a closer look, Basira was turning into her mother—the woman who handed them puff-puff, with a smile in her eyes, as they returned from school.

  ‘She has die-o. Last two years. She die in her sleep after coming from mosque. To die inside sleep is very good death.’ Desire nodded and Basira released her hold on her, laughing gaily while the other hawkers watched between smiles and awe. Basira’s smile was like a half-moon, as she talked, making sure her voice became louder each time she explained, ‘Those days we are—were young children playing in the sand until we old to born baby, then we go different part,’ so that the pure water girl and the other hawkers could hear. But they were only interested in dragging customers from the throng of students coming out of the campus.

  ‘Selling has closed, today,’ Basira said, huddling the oranges into a raffia basket, before lifting it onto her head. Once it was steadied, she held it with her left hand and dragged Desire with the right. In a few seconds, they were on the other side of the road, away from the hawkers lined by the school gate. Desire watched Basira’s eyes as they scanned her and rested on Funso Aiyejina’s A Letter to Lynda, and Other Poems and Odia Ofeimun’s The Poet Lied.

  ‘You still carry books. I am no surprised at all to see you here. You like book since we are a child. You like to read in that err—pubic library,’ Basira said, patting Desire’s face again and again, like she needed to assure herself she was not hallucinating.

  ‘Public library,’ Desire said with a smile. ‘Pubic means obo.’

  ‘Ha! I didn’t mean that one-o,’ Basira laughed. ‘How’s your mummy? How’s her body now?’ she asked, avoiding Desire’s eyes.

  Desire nodded, staring into the stretch of road before she said, ‘She’s dead too,’ with a note of finality which Basira didn’t prod. Everyone in their neighbourhood had known her mother had mental issues, but never publicly discussed it. The interlude of noise from the traffic, blaring music, and background babble of the confluence of voices around them doused what could have been awkwardness.

  ‘God give her Al Jannah,’ Basira said, before she went on to explain that she was now a mother of three, living in the Idi-Oro area in Mushin. ‘The place is a very okay place,’ her eyes fluttered as she spoke. ‘The landlord didn’t have any wahala. The place is room-and-parlour self-contained house. My husband is a Benz mechanic. Everybody knows him in Mushin for car repairing,’ she said with pride. And with a smile still lingering on her face she added, ‘I have no surprised to see you inside LASU. You’re always used to be a book person.’ She laughed, ‘See now, you are even now speaking in English like the NTA people.’

  ‘How about Kemi, Sikira, Funmi and Chioma, how are they?’

  ‘Everybody waka. But Sikira die now—remember? She die before we begin to waka? That time you have start working inside market?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I remember. May her soul rest in peace,’ she said, although she didn’t remember.

  Desire had been the smallest in the group, but she was the one they consulted as they laughed over boyfriends and their parents’ dated advice on how to handle sex and boys. She owed her love for reading to Prof—the same Prof she now visited every night, except for the last three. The Prof, who she knew would not remember the little girl he carried at a spontaneous rally.

  She had kept Prof in her imagination as the father she wanted to have, after she dreamt of him telling her he would take care of her and never let her suffer. She owned the dream. She loved the kindness in his voice and how it calmed her. It became the voice that calmed her fears and anxieties. So, each day, she walked to the library, imagining one dream after another. One night, she dreamt she was walking on the beach alone at night. The whole seashore was littered with books of every kind but whenever she reached for a book, it disappeared and she was soon rushing about in a frenzy trying to grasp and hold on to one—any book. When all the books were gone, she fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. After a while, she heard a voice, like it was calling unto her from the night sky—it was Prof’s! But this time, it wasn’t kind and calming, but angry and loud. She wanted to ask him, ‘Where have all the books gone?’ But before she could speak, Prof began to chide her for keeping late nights, hanging out with strange boys and not reading to change her future. And the longer he spoke, the angrier and louder he became. Angrier. Louder. Angrier. Louder… then, she woke up in a sweaty fright.

  There were times she wondered if she did not first receive the words “Books would make a difference,” from the morning assembly mantra spoken by her headmaster whose beard was so bushy the pupils called him Father Christmas, who repeated the sentence ten times every morning at the assembly ground, or from Prof in that dream.

  The following afternoon, after her strange dream, she walked around the garbage dumps in her area, picking up books and any printed materials to read—torn Physics textbook, newspaper cut-outs, family planning manuals, ledgers and invoices which became notebooks and many other bits and pieces. Later, when she discovered the library at Isale Eko, she learned to read fiction and history books. Each day, after school at 1pm, she walked from the beach where she lived with her mother to the USIS library on Broad Street on foot. She returned at night, to explain the ideas she read in the book to him, while imagining that her mother’s dysregulated speech was his response. There were times her mother would awaken to catch her replying to her imagined Prof, and Desire would offer the explanation of revising her school work. The Local Government Library was her refuge. She read all sorts of books there; from philosophy to religion to fiction to biology—where her special interest was reproduction, when her friends began to ask her to find out what the books said about preventing pregnancy. She left the five of them: Kemi, Sikira, Funmi, Chioma and Basira in different spheres of life, gaining unread experience – as a sex worker, a ghost, a thug, a traveller, and a young mother.

  ‘So, you are going to be a doctor, or lawyer, or engineer?’ Basira asked, intruding on her thoughts.

  ‘No. I’m studying Political Science,’ Desire said in Yoruba, too.

  ‘You want to do politician? Maybe even president…’ Basira switched to English.

  ‘I want—’ Desire started in Yoruba, and seeing the disappointment in her friend’s eyes, started to speak in English, ‘My sister, make God help us jare.’

  They alighted from the bus as it stopped at Mushin Olosha and walked into the street, passing women who sold peppers arranged in layered boulders on plastic plates by the roadside, and moved into a street with shops displaying provisions for sale; between them were those selling eat-as-you-go foods like akara, buns, apples, dodo, fried yam and so forth. Basira mentioned how she was planning to own a stall in the market, which, like the rest of Lagos’ open markets, transformed into hope for traders, w
ho waited for night dreamers; with their tin oil lamps and aso-ofi tightly wrapped to protect themselves from the chill that came in the evenings, while their young children, also covered, like small bundles on pieces of cardboard by their feet as the teenaged ones helped out.

  ‘I for don start, but I just dey recover from miscarry.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Basira.’ Desire was going to commiserate further when Basira stopped walking.

  ‘This is the house,’ Basira said. They crossed a wooden bridge placed over the gutter, greeting an old woman shelling melon seeds in front of a bungalow bullied into physical irrelevance by the two multi-storeys on its sides. The walls of the house, with its flaked off paint, carried a roof which was lowered to cover the main door. Anyone taller than five foot eight would have to bend to enter, before straightening up to behold the stretch of wood that supported a dotted hip roof which covered a number of face-to-face rooms. In front of every room was a bench with a kerosene stove on it.

  Basira’s room was a square box that accommodated a standard double bed and a cupboard as its major furniture. There were extras like a 14-inch television and a video recorder that were placed on a sideboard. Focusing on the map-like water mark on the near-white ceiling, Desire listened to Basira as she pointed to three children smiling in a photograph, two of them open-mouthed, with their two incisors missing, to the camera: ‘Jadesola, Jenrola, Jokotola.’ They were on a sofa with a brown pattern, the same as everything else in the room. ‘This is the three children I have born now. They are in school; one girl, one boy, one girl. God is good.’

  She looked up to see Desire’s face, and she smiled, ‘I hav’ tell ma’guy from the beginning, say we go do family planning, and he agree.’ She raised her eyebrow, ‘You remember him? He is the same boy that im-pregnant me that time.’

  ‘Oh! You’re still together?’ Desire asked, sincerely glad for her friend, but unable to resist goading Basira. ‘You didn’t forget all those my talks about having children one can cater for, abi?’

  ‘Yes-o! Na only me and my husband get children in private school for this compound. We have cut our coat inside the size?’

  ‘Cut your coat according to your size,’ Desire said shaking her head and laughing. ‘Wo, don’t break my head with this your English-o, speak Yoruba,’ she added with a long ring of laughter that sounded like a duplicate of a childhood with Basira.

  She thought of their years together. Those years they left for school from the shelter of rusted corrugated sheets and tarpaulin banners, dressed in school uniform with holes akin to polka-dotted fabrics and no sandals on their feet. She was in touch with Basira who dropped out of school for a while, until she left the area to start work as a porter in Isale Eko.

  ‘Oshisko, Professor and Dr Madam, I will talk the English I can talk-o,’ Basira sneered.

  ‘You seem happy,’ she said.

  Basira shrugged, avoiding Desire’s gaze and said, ‘Happiness is from God. He gives you a good man that allows you to stay, abi?’

  Desire took a deep breath, stood up and hugged Basira, who held her close and squeezed her shoulder.

  ‘I need to go,’ she said.

  ‘I no even offer you anything,’ Basira said releasing her grasp on Desire.

  ‘Ma binu, time has gone. I will come back to visit,’ she said, turning to see that there was now a strain of tears on Basira’s eyelids.

  ‘Desire. Please, come back. I no get original true friend again.’

  20

  Kayo didn’t stop knocking on his door begging to be let in. He never forced his way through. Kayo spoke of the times they shared and how they needed to talk yet he never elaborated on what the talk was about. He went on about his family and how it would be nice for Prof to meet them. He described how he told his wife of their escapades as children.

  ‘You know, she won’t believe that I once used to dress like a woman when I was a teenager. I told her I dressed and danced at the market to raise money for our Friday hang-outs.’ His laughter trailed off when Prof did not join in.

  ‘I have to leave now. I have to pick up my wife from her friend’s place where she is making her hair. I’ll come again, okay?’

  Prof did not respond. It took a while before he heard the sound of his feet fade from the corridor. It was the way Kayo was; hopeful that things could change, playful and receptive of life’s inadequacies. Yet, even he could see that something was different about his friend. He spoke between philosophies. He spoke with a deliberateness which made it seem like he was weighing each thought before it was spoken.

  Kayo looked out for him. Kayo never told him, but he sometimes wondered if his friend became a cult member. He had this feeling of being watched over all through his days in the university as a prominent student union member, and then a student union president, before he was ousted by a group the government bribed. He never encountered problems with the cult groups. The student union president before him was hacked down in front of the university gate by cultists, and another one became a cult member and ensured calm in the school. Kayo protected him in a way he never understood. He only remembered that whenever Kayo came to his university, he always used the excuse of seeing his friends in the evenings, tucking a blue beret he never wore elsewhere into his pocket. Even now when he spoke, he would slip into that carefree way of his younger days, ‘Once you can settle people’s needs—there is always one need—you’ll be fine. Everyone, everything, wants something. If it is money, give it to them.’

  Kayo always knew what was going on. He was the one who rushed into his house one day, before he went to prison, to warn against granting an interview to Tell Magazine and Tempo Newspaper.

  ‘You can’t. We all know that Abacha is looking for a simple mistake from you.’

  ‘I will do what I want. I have to let the people know they can fight.’

  ‘Fight who?’

  ‘See, I have already spoken to others at the NADECO meeting, and Baba Fawehinmi…’ And Prof thought over what he was going to say, changed his mind and said instead, ‘I can’t say what your exact fears are, but with over twenty of our people in exile and a similar number held under detention, everyone says I’m lucky and should be more careful.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘But Kayo, when you have a cause, a cause that grips your heart morning and night, you don’t become careful. You jump in and do all that needs to be done.’ He smiled and looked at his friend, ‘The CLO is organising a march today, will you join us?’

  ‘Just remember your mother. You’re not even thirty!’

  Prof leaned against the door as his mind filtered in the days before prison. He shook his head and wondered how he might have introduced Desire to Kayo if things were different. He wondered how Kayo would have reacted, perhaps a little bashful remark on how he needed to “corner” the girl before she left him. Then he might have asked, ‘Abi, you’re still on that priest level? Are you still abstaining?’

  But this Kayo was different. He chose his words. Sometimes too carefully.

  When it was evening, Desire didn’t visit. Day two, she didn’t either. On day three of her absence, he began to feel his body split, like the hairs on his skin were ready to search for hers. He thought of the times she visited. His hairs stood erect when she swept past him towards her seat in the darkness. He started to inquire and argue with himself over whether he should not have opened the door to her when she first came knocking. He replayed her breathing, her sighs and the way her legs shook when she sat on the chair, the little laughs and small silences. Prof realised that just like the way a shattered mirror reflects our many parts, a broken individual captures how we are—he felt like Desire was himself. He relived his past and tried to think of what life was before her visit. And then, he thought of that first day when she didn’t visit. That inconsistency discomfited him.

  Before prison, Prof’s hair was cropped low and the strands curled into themselves like worn wool on an old towel, which gave the impressi
on of him balding. His thin eyes sliced into the edges of his face with webs at the corner indicating a perpetual laugh in his eyes. It gave him the look of an excited schoolboy, so that when he was actually agitated or excited, he looked like a baby who was about to cry. This boyish look was the reason he left the whisker-like hair on his chin and attempted to grow a beard in secondary school, yet it only made people tell his mother he would end up a heartbreaker. Girls hung around him like flies around an open sore. In the early days, his mother took the time to warn him about how he might drop out of school to have to fend for his child and its mother if he impregnated anyone. So, from his secondary school days through university, he tried to keep his relationships with girls as mere trifles—once his friendship with a girl became dependent, he broke it off. This earned him the nickname, oniranu. They saw him as a lover boy and player—which was contrary to what he intended.

  There was however an exception to his constant girl-dumping relationships. Victoria was the first girl Prof almost broke the rule for. He was 16. He couldn’t remember how old she had been, perhaps a few years older. He could never forget the days of lying in wait for her to return from her mother’s stall and the demure return of his advances. Kayo found a way to convince her on his behalf but her first visit to his house was not a successful rendezvous. Just as he was becoming comfortable with his guest, his mother walked into the house. He could still remember how he avoided saying anything about Victoria, whose hands were tucked between her thighs, waiting patiently for him to introduce her to his mother, who flopped onto the sofa, shaking her legs while her eyes remained fixated on the door. As Victoria stood before her, trying to find the best way to appear respectful and in love and shy and scared at the same time, Prof felt his mother’s words springing out—although they were unspoken—to haunt him: ‘Don’t impregnate anybody-o. At least, wait until we can eat well.’