On Black Sisters Street

by Chika Unigwe

  Efe was not really short. At least not much shorter than Sisi, who described her height as average. “Average” translated in her passport to five feet seven. But of all four women, Efe was the shortest, and this gave her a complex.

  “You’re not short, Efe. You just like your heels high!”

  High-heeled shoes and wigs were Efe’s trademark. Ama called her the Imelda Marcos of wigs. Today she wore a bobbed black wig, so it looked as if she were wearing a beret. It was not a wig her housemates had seen, so it must be new. Bought for the occasion. It was not as voluminous as the wigs she normally wore, and the effect was that her features looked exaggerated: her nose, her lips, her eyes looked blown up, as if they were under a magnifying glass.

  Ama tapped her feet impatiently to the music.

  “These your bowlegs dey always itch to dance,” Efe teased her.

  “Where’s the fucking booze?” Feet still tapping to the music.

  Before Efe could answer, Ama was already off. She found her way to the beer and grabbed a bottle of her favorite blond beer. Swigging the beer, she danced alone in the middle of the floor, bumping into other dancers, shouting out at intervals that life was good. GOOD! A black man in short, angry dreads swayed effeminately toward her, and Ama moved back. He tried to grasp her hand, and she snatched it away and gave him an evil eye.

  “What’s wrong with ya, sister?” he said, in what she could only guess was meant to be an American accent.

  “I’m not your sister,” and she twirled and danced away.

  The man shrugged and went in search of a more willing dance partner, grumbling “Bloody Africans” under his breath. He found his way to Efe, who was sipping a glass of apple juice, and dragged her to the dance floor. Efe was a lot more obliging. She downed her juice and glided onto the dance floor, which was fast filling up. “Wema, you’re an awright sister! You Africans can really pardy!”

  “Where’re you from?” Efe asked, amused.

  “Seth Africa. The real deal. You Ghanaian, too?”

  “Nigerian.”

  “Oh, Nigerian? We got a lotta those makwerekweres in Jo’burg. Lots of Nigerians. They in the news all the time back home in Seth Africa.”

  Efe said she had to get back to her drink. What was it with the South Africans she met claiming another continent for their country? Especially the black South Africans. She saw Joyce, her black hair extensions moving furiously as she danced with a light-skinned man in a kente shirt. Efe smiled and mouthed “jerk” to Joyce and pointed at the South African, who was now talking to a woman with braids down to her shoulders. Sisi danced behind Joyce, a bottle of beer in one hand and the other waving wildly in the air, two gold rings catching and dispelling light like magic.

  Sisi moved close to Joyce and whispered that Ama seemed to be in a much better mood. “That Ama. She can be tiresome sometimes. What does she want us to do? Walk on tiptoe in our own house?” Sisi and Joyce had joined the women only two months before.

  Joyce shrugged. She was out to have a good time, not worry about Ama. Of all the women in the house, Sisi was the only one she was remotely close to. Sisi was the most beautiful of the other three, she thought. Her beauty was all the more striking for being unexpected; she had thin legs, a low waist, and a short neck. When you saw her from behind—which was how Joyce saw her the first time—you did not expect to see a beautiful face, flawless skin. She also seemed genuinely nice. Ama was a basket case given to bellicosity; everything set her off. Efe, she was not sure about. Perhaps, given time, she would like her. Efe was definitely more likable than Ama, although she had her own issues. Yesterday Joyce had called her Mother because she had tried to mediate between Sisi and Ama, who were having a quarrel over what TV program to watch. Everybody could tell it was a joke—even Ama (even Ama!) laughed—but Efe had not been amused. “I’m nobody’s mother,” she had said, her voice wan, as if in disappointment at a betrayal. Still, she was more affable than Ama.

  “I need to pee,” Sisi said, and went off in search of a bathroom.

  Ama saw her pushing her way through the people on the dance floor and went up to her. “Not off, are you?” Ama asked with a wink.

  Sisi’s lips pursed. “I’m just looking for the toilet. Not like it’s any of your business.”

  “What’s your fucking problem? Geez!” Ama hissed. She had a bottle of beer in one hand.

  “My problem is you,” Sisi responded.

  “Oh, get over it! Are you still upset about Segun?” Ama quaffed some beer. “If it’s a lie, why are you so bloody worked up?”

  “Shut up, Ama!” Sisi’s voice was raised. Ever since the incident with Segun, Ama had been frustratingly smug. Winking and making silly comments. Screeching songs around the house about Segun and Sisi.

  “You think you know it all.”

  “So why don’t you tell me, then?” Ama bridged the gap between them so that their shoulders touched. Sisi was the taller, bigger woman, but if it came to blows, she would bet on Ama. The regularity with which she picked fights suggested brawn of such superiority as to instill dread. Sisi took a step back. Ama took one step forward. Efe appeared at their side. “I hope you girls dey enjoy my party?” Chance. Luck. Whatever it was that had brought Efe, Sisi grabbed it and walked away.

  When Sisi got back from the bathroom, Joyce was still on the dance floor. Sisi went over to her and tapped her on the shoulder. “What time do we leave?” Joyce asked, turning away from the man in kente. They had to be in their booths by eight.

  “Around seven. I’d still like to clean up a bit before work tonight.”

  “I’ve eaten so much at this party that I worry I’ll just snooze at work,” Joyce said, and laughed, a bit of tongue showing through the gap in her front teeth, white teeth that contrasted so sharply with her dark lips.

  “Sleep ke? Me, my eyes are on the money, baby! I’ve got no time to sleep, and neither do you!” Sisi mock-scolded. “I want a gold ring on each finger.”

  She danced away to the racks for a piece of chicken leg fried an incandescent brown, hoping she did not run into Ama again. She picked out a leg, bit into it, and thought, I’m very lucky to be here, living my dream. If I’d stayed back in Lagos, God knows where I’d have ended up.

  She banished the thought. Lagos was not a memory she liked to dredge up. Not the house in Ogba and not Peter. She tried to think instead of hurtling toward a prophecy that would rinse her life in a Technicolor glow of the most amazing beauty.

  But memories are obstinate.

  SISI

  ON THE WALLS OF THE OGBA FLAT, THREE FRAMED PICTURES HUNG. The first was the wedding photograph of Chisom’s parents: the bride, beautiful in a short, curly wig (the rage at the time) and a shy smile. The groom, hair parted in the middle and daring eyes that looked into the camera. One hand proprietarily placed on his seated bride’s shoulder, the other in the pocket of his trousers: a pose that said quite clearly, “I own the world.” A happy couple drenched in fashionable sepia that gave the picture an ethereal look. The second picture, the one in the middle, was of Chisom in a graduation gown that touched the ground, flanked by her parents. Her father’s head was slightly bent, but a smile was visible. Her mother’s smile was more obvious, a show of teeth. Chisom’s was the widest. This was the beginning. In her new shoes, bought especially for the occasion, she knew that her life was starting to change. The third picture was the largest, its frame an elaborate marquetry of seashells and beads commissioned by her father specifically for this photo: “The very best! The very best! Today money is no issue.” Taken on the day of Chisom’s graduation, it showed all three with bigger smiles. With wider eyes than in the previous picture. After the photographer had arranged them for the shot, Papa Chisom said he wished the woman who had spoken for the gods when Chisom was born were around. “It’d have been nice to have her in the picture. Her words gave us hope.”

  Chisom’s mother said, “Yes, indeed. It’s a pity that she’s moved. If only we had kept in touch.”
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  Chisom said, “I’m just glad I’ve graduated.” She was looking forward to a realization of everything dreamed. To a going-to-bed and a waking-up in the dreams she had carried with her since she was old enough to want a life different from her parents’. She did not need a clairvoyant to predict her own future; not when she had a degree from a good university. She would get a house for herself. Rent somewhere big for her parents. Living with three people in two rooms, she wanted a massive house where she had the space to romp and throw Saturday-night parties.

  The Prophecy haloed their heads and shone with a luminescence that shimmered the glass. By the time Chisom visited her parents from Antwerp, she would have acquired the wisdom to see beyond the luminescence, a certain wrinkling of the photograph, a subtle foreshadowing of a calamity that would leave them all spent.

  Chisom dreamed of leaving Lagos. This place has no future. She tried to imagine another year in this flat her father rented in Ogba. Walls stained yellow over time—the color of pap—that she could no longer stand, their yellowness wrapping their hands around her neck, their hold on her life tenacious. She tried not to breathe, because doing so would be inhaling the stench of mildewed dreams. And so, in the house, she held her breath. A swimmer under water. Breathing in would kill her.

  “The only way to a better life is education. Akwukwo. Face your books, and the sky will be your limit. It’s in your hands.” Her father’s eternal words. The first time Sisi would return to the flat after she had left, she would go up to her father and whisper in his ear, “You were wrong about that, Papa,” she would say. He would not hear her.

  Her father had not studied beyond secondary school and often blamed that for his stagnant career. Destiny had not lent him an extra hand, either, by providing him with a peep into a sure future.

  “I am giving you the opportunity I never had; use it wisely.” As if opportunity were a gift, something precious, wrapped up carefully in bubble to keep it from breaking, and all Chisom had to do was unwrap it and it would hurtle her to dizzying heights of glory.

  His parents had needed him to get a job and help out with his brothers and sisters, school fees to be paid. Clothes to be bought. Mouths to be fed. We have trained you, now it’s your turn to train the rest. Take your nine siblings off our hands. Train them well, and in two years the twins will have a school leaving certificate and get jobs, too. Why have children if they cannot look after you in old age? It’s time for us to reap the benefits of having a grown-up son! But he had not felt very grown up at nineteen. Had hoped to go on to university at Ife. To wear the ties and smart shirts of a scholar. Not work as an administrative clerk for a company he did not care much for, being a “yes sir, no sir” subordinate to men who were not much smarter than he was. “I had the head for it. I had bookhead, isi akwukwo. I could have been a doctor. Or an engineer. I could have been a big man.”

  He would often look around him in disdain, at the walls, at the three mismatched chairs with worn cushion slips, at the stereo that no longer worked (symbol of a time when he had believed that he could become prosperous: a raise that taunted him with the promise of prosperity), and he would sigh as if those were the stumbling blocks to his progress, as though all he needed to do was get rid of them and whoosh! His life would take a different path.

  Chisom studied hard at school, mindful of her father’s hopes for her: a good job once she graduated from the University of Lagos. She had envisioned her four years of studying finance and business administration culminating, quite logically, in a job at a bank, one of those new banks dotting Lagos like a colony of palm trees. She might even be given a company car, with a company driver to boot, her father said. Her mother said, “I shall sit in the back of your car with you. You in the owner’s corner. Me beside you. And your driver shall drive us fia fia fia around Lagos.” All three laughed at the happy image of the car. (A Ford? A Daewoo? A Peugeot? “I hope it’s a Peugeot; that brand has served this country loyally since the beginning of time. When I worked for UTC …”) The mother’s mock plea that Papa Chisom should save them from another trip down memory lane would gently hush Chisom’s father, and then Chisom herself would say, “I don’t really care what brand of car I get as long as it gets me to work and back!”

  “Wise. Wise. Our wise daughter has spoken,” the father would say casually, but his voice would betray the weight of his pride, the depth of his hopes for her, his respect for her wisdom, all that wisdom she was acquiring at university; their one-way ticket out of the cramped two-room flat to more elegant surroundings. In addition to the car, Chisom was expected to have a house with room enough for her parents. A bedroom for them. A bedroom for herself. A sitting room with a large color TV. A kitchen with an electric cooker. And cupboards for all the pots and pans and plates that they would need. No more storing pots under the bed! A kitchen painted lavender or beige, a soft, subtle color that would make them forget this Ogba kitchen that was black with the smoke of many kerosene fires. A generator. No more at the mercy of NEPA. A gateman. A steward. A high gate with heavy locks. A high fence with jagged pieces of bottle sticking out of it to deter even the most hardened thieves. A garden with flowers. No. Not flowers. A garden with vegetables. Why have a garden with nothing you can eat? But flowers are beautiful. Spinach is beautiful, too. Tomatoes are beautiful. Okay. A garden with flowers and food. Okay. Good. They laughed and dreamed, spurred on by Chisom’s good grades, which, while not excellent, were good enough to encourage dreams.

  The days after graduation were filled with easy laughter and application letters, plans, and a list of things to do (the last always preceded by “Once Chisom gets a job,” “As soon as Chisom gets a job,” “Once I get a job”). As her father would say, there were only two certainties in their lives: death and Chisom’s good job. Death was a given (many, many years from now, by God’s grace, amen!), and with her university degree, nothing should stand in the way of the good job (very soon—only a matter of time—university graduates are in high demand! high demand!). His belief in a university education was so intrinsically tied to his belief in his daughter’s destined future as to be irrevocable.

  Yet two years after leaving school, Chisom was still mainly unemployed (she had done a three-month stint teaching economics at a holiday school: the principles of scarcity and want, law of demand and supply), and had spent the better part of the two years scripting meticulous application letters and mailing them along with her résumé to the many different banks in Lagos.

  Dear Mr. Uloko:

  With reference to the advertisement placed in the Daily Times

  of June 12, I am writing to—

  Dear Alhaji Musa Gani:

  With reference to the advertisement placed in The Guardian

  of July 28, I am writing to apply—

  But she was never even invited to an interview. Diamond Bank. First Bank. Standard Bank. Then the smaller ones. And then the ones that many people seemed never to have heard of. Lokpanta National Bank. Is that a bank? Here in Lagos? Is it a new one? Where? Since when?

  Even in their obscurity, they had no place for her. No envelopes came addressed to her, offering her a job in a bank considerably humbler than the banks she had eyed while at school, and in which less intelligent classmates with better connections worked. It was as if her résumés were being swallowed up by the many potholes on Lagos roads. Sometimes she imagined that the postmen never even mailed them, that maybe they sold them to roadside food sellers to use in wrapping food for their customers. Maybe, she thought sometimes, her résumé had wrapped ten naira worth of peanuts for a civil servant on his way home from work. Or five naira worth of fried yam for a hungry pupil on the way to school. She sought to find humor in the thought, to laugh off the fear of an ineluctable destiny that she had contracted from her parents. The Prophecy by now meant nothing to her. Of course.

  There was no longer talk of a company car. Or a company driver. No arguments about a garden with food or flowers. And as the years rolled on,
no more letters of application.

  “Why bother?” Chisom asked her father when he tried to egg her on. “Unless you have found out that one of your friends is the director of any of the banks, because that is how things work, you know?”

  She did not tell her father that she had also tried applying for other jobs, sometimes jobs she was hardly qualified for, but as she reasoned, she stood as good a chance with those as she stood with a job at the bank. A flight attendant with Triax Airlines (must be an excellent swimmer; Chisom had never learned to swim); an administrative assistant with Air France (excellent French required; Chisom knew as much French as she did Yoruba, which was not much, if at all: words she had learned by rote from a zealous French tutor—Comment tu t’appelle? Je m’appelle Chisom, et vous? Comme ci, comme ça. Voilà Monsieur Mayaki. Monsieur Mayaki est fort”). And she was right. No requests for interviews came from those quarters, either. Still, she scanned the newspapers, sending off arbitrary applications for jobs announced, finding satisfaction in the recklessness of the arbitration, watching with anger as life laughed at the grandiosity of her dreams.

  So, when she got the offer that she did, she was determined to get her own back on life, to grab life by the ankles and scoff in its face. There was no way she was going to turn it down. Not even for Peter.

  ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT

  BEFORE EFE CAME TO BELGIUM, SHE IMAGINED CASTLES AND CLEAN streets and snow as white as salt. But now, when she thinks of it, when she talks of where she lives in Antwerp, she describes it as a botched dream. She talks about it in much the same way as she talks about Joyce in her absence: created for elegance but never quite accomplishing it. In her part of Antwerp, huge offices stand alongside grotty warehouses and desolate fruit stalls run by effusive Turks and Moroccans. On dark streets carved with tram lines, houses with narrow doors and high windows nestle against one another. The house the women share has an antiquated brass knocker and a cat flap taped over with brown heavy-duty sticky tape.