by Chika Unigwe
Back in her room, which had remained the same since she was a child, she had demanded that her mother tell her who her real father was, but her demand had been met with a lamentation that she was an ungrateful child. A wicked child whose sole aim in life was to ruin her mother’s life.
“I made a mistake. One mistake that could have destroyed me completely. Yet Brother Cyril took me in and married me. He saved me from a terrible life. How many men would marry a woman who was carrying a child for another man? Tell me, Ama, tell me. And you throw all that in his face. What have I done to deserve this? Tell me, Ama, what have I ever done to deserve this? He could have sent both of us out tonight. Many men would. You know that. Yet, out of the goodness of his heart, he didn’t.”
Ama tried to tell her mother about the year she was eight. On the tip of her tongue, she tasted the fear of the nights he came into her room and yearned to spit it out. She started, but her mother cut her short.
“Just shut up. Shut up, Ama, before I am thrown out of my husband’s house because of you. Mechie onu kita.” There was a strange hardness to her voice that silenced Ama. “Just pack your things. Pack your things. First thing tomorrow morning, ututu echi, you shall be on the bus to Lagos. I have called Mama Eko. She knows to expect you.” Her mother threw some crumpled naira notes on the bed. “That’s for your fare and for food on the road. You will not have time for breakfast in the morning.”
Ama did not pick up the money until her mother, shoulders drooped, backed out of her room with the incongruous dignity of a disgraced masquerade.
The next morning she let herself out of the house in which she had grown up. Neither Brother Cyril nor her mother had come out to see her off.
MAMA EKO WAS AMA’S MOTHER’S COUSIN. SHE RAN A BUKA IN IKEJA, VERY close to the Diamond Bank on Ezekiel Avenue. She had the sort of face that many people would describe as jolly: dimpled and full. Before coming to Lagos, Ama had seen her only once, when she came to Enugu on a two-day visit. Ama remembered that Mama Eko complained about Enugu. She said it was too small. Too dead. Too quiet. She said, “People here walk as if they are on their way to their graves.” Even Lagos at Christmas, when everybody went to their villages, was not as deserted, she said.
“Lagos is the place to be! Lagos bu ebe ano. The happening city.” This was at breakfast the next morning, her bangled wrists waving over the plates of fried eggs and toast, so that they produced a sound like the clang of a distant gong, prompting Brother Cyril to mutter loud enough for her to hear that perhaps those to whom Lagos was the beginning and the end of their world should not bother to leave it. Ama was not sure if it was that comment that made Mama Eko leave the next morning or if she had planned all along to spend only two days.
Mama Eko was one of the first faces Ama saw as soon as the bus drove into its depot in Lagos. Her dimpled smile when she spied Ama in the bus relieved the latter. It was an open smile that Ama knew was at once genuine and pleased. Ama half ran into her outstretched arms, gratefully letting herself into the space between for a hug. “Good afternoon, Mama Eko. Thank you for coming.”
To which the woman simply replied, “Your father is a difficult man to live with. Nno. Welcome to Lagos.”
Mama Eko’s house was smaller than Ama had imagined. Somehow she had thought that a woman as large and as flamboyant as Mama Eko would live in more opulent surroundings. Mama Eko lived in the ground-floor flat of a three-story building.
“This is my mansion.” She chuckled as she turned the key in the lock of a grimy leaf-green door that led directly to a living room choking on furniture. Mama Eko’s bulk filled the room. There was a huge beige sofa running down one side of the room’s mud-brown wall, behind it a dining table. A blue velvet love seat and two rattan dining chairs faced the sofa. And, in the middle, a wide, low table with a glass top and massive marble legs shaped like a man’s. On the table was a brown vase, the same shade as the walls, filled with yellow, purple, and red artificial flowers. The flowers were clean, as if they had been recently dusted and cleaned with a damp cloth. To the left of the table, on the side of the love seat, was a three-tiered oak-paneled TV stand with a twenty-one-inch Samsung color TV, and below it a stereo set, and under that a video player. Squeezed in between the TV stand and the glass-topped table was a narrow vitrine containing a large selection of CDs. The most Ama had ever seen in any one person’s collection. She scanned the names on the CD covers, muttering them to herself: Marvin Gaye. ABBA. Victor Uwaifo. Peter Tosh. Onyeka Onwenu. Dora Ifudu. Nina Simone. Barry White. She picked up one and turned it over and stared, entranced, at the titles of the tracks. “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” “Love’s Been Good to Me,” “I Loves You Porgy,” “Falling in Love Again,” “Alone Again.” All irreverent titles that stood out in luscious contrast to the pious titles of those by the Voices of the Cross. And when Mama Eko let out a swear word when she switched on the fan and the blades did not turn, Ama knew that she would make this place home. She smiled a long blissful smile. She could never use a swear word at home. She repeated the word Mama Eko had just let loose to herself and enjoyed its impiety on her tongue, relishing its very profanity, which tasted like nothing she had ever had. She felt treacherously happy. The happiest she had been in as long as she could remember. She had a feeling that her whole life before now had been spent waiting for this moment, that every other time she had felt she was happy was in preparation for today. “Nice collection,” she said to Mama Eko, who had just come out of a room, rubber slippers on her feet.
“Oh. Yes. Sorry, ndo, I didn’t even ask you to sit down. You’ve come a long way. Nodu ani. Sit. Biko, don’t mind me. Those shoes I was wearing always pinch my feet, but they go well with this boubou.” She wriggled her toes in the slippers. “Ahhh. My poor toes. What we do for fashion, eh?”
Mama Eko gathered the sides of her multicolored boubou between her legs, complained of the heat, and sank into a chair. She invited Ama to do the same. Ama chose one of the rattan chairs. It was surprisingly uncomfortable, propping her up as if it had anticipated a slump, as if it were her school principal scolding her: “Sit up, girl!” Its back was hard and hurt her. She eyed the sofa and wondered if she should change chairs. The sofa looked more welcoming than the rattan chair. She weighed it for a minute in her mind and decided against it.
Someone shouted “NEPA!” from across the street. There was a squeak. And then the blades of the fan began to turn. First, laboriously, the groom groom of a tired lawn mower on its way to retirement. And then it gathered speed and the groom groom became an almost noiseless whirr that transformed the fan into an efficient machine for cooling the skin and spreading enormous goodwill. “The power is back on,” Mama Eko announced, happy, smiling. “This heat was getting to me. NEPA doles out electricity like it is doling out charity. We have to be grateful for whatever little we get. We are at their mercy.” She hissed. Mama Eko did not look like she could endure being at the mercy of anyone. “Uju will soon be back, and then you can have something to eat. Should I play some music? There is nobody who can sing like Nina Simone. I had never heard of her until I bought one of her CDs from a hawker in a go slow. I liked the look of the woman. Ugly. Ojoka, but in a very attractive way. I started playing the CD in the car and there, in the traffic jam, I felt as if I had won the lottery. Eziokwu.”
She got up and inserted a CD in a player. Presently, the room was filled with a voice that stunned Ama with its tragic beauty. It felt to Ama like she was being delved into the depths of her darkness, but she was certain she would come out clutching something beautiful—the tail of a rainbow, perhaps. A lusty, heartbreaking crooning. Of sadness and joy. And of a father who was already a ghost.
• • •
UJU, A GIRL WHO LOOKED ABOUT TEN, CAME IN JUST AS THE MUSIC WAS winding down. She called Ama “Auntie” and said “Nno” to her, kneeling on one knee to show respect. “Should I get food now, Mama?” she asked Mama Eko. Mama Eko nodded, and Uju slunk away into a corridor that ran adjacent to the
living room.
“That girl is heaven-sent. She is the best house girl anyone could have ever wished for. She is small but mighty. That’s what I call her,” Mama Eko eulogized the little girl. “Small but mighty. Obele nsi naemebi ike. She is the small shit that causes a grown-up to strain and groan. Lagos is a hard place. I’m busy all day in my canteen, but Uju manages the house and does a good job of it. Girls twice her age would have been overwhelmed, but no, not Uju. And her food is excellent. O na-esi nni ofuma ofuma.”
As if on cue, Uju wafted into the room on the aroma of bitter-leaf soup. She set the tray of food on the dining table and went back into the kitchen for a bowl of water. She put the yellow plastic bowl in the middle of the table and disappeared as furtively as she had appeared. The women washed their hands and fell to. Ama licked soup off her fingers and declared that Mama Eko had not exaggerated the gastronomic qualities of her help.
“I have never had anyone make bitter-leaf soup this tasty before,” Ama said, grateful for the food, her first meal that day. She picked up a piece of stockfish and licked it clean of soup before popping it into her mouth. “Okproko aa amaka. Good stockfish. The food is just divine.”
Mama Eko rolled a ball of gari, dipped it in soup, and announced that the soup was not Uju’s best. “I tell you, the girl is a genius in the kitchen. The man who marries that girl will never stray. She is a diamond. A treasure. O site. She can make even palm fronds tasty. Eziokwu ka m na-agwa gi. I’m telling you the truth. Uju can cook first-class jollof rice with just palm oil and crayfish. I swear.” Soup dribbled down her chin, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand. She called to Uju and asked her to bring two bottles of Guinness from the fridge. Ama had never had Guinness. Alcohol was banned in Brother Cyril’s holy household. “You’ll have one, won’t you?” Mama Eko asked.
“Yes. Guinness is good,” Ama said. She eyed the bottle covered in mist. Mama Eko tilted a glass and expertly filled it for her, a layer of white foam on top, dark ruby liquid at the bottom. Ama took a sip. Tentative at first, then she swallowed. Another sip. She tried not to pull a face. It was bitter. It tasted like dogonyaro leaves, boiled and strained and then drunk to cure malaria. Her mother had to force it down her throat, telling her it was for her own good, did she want to stay in bed weeks on end, down with malaria? “Drink it up, nne, drink. Be a good girl.” She would shut her eyes, hold her nose, and let her mother pour it down her throat. But now she did not shut her eyes. She swirled the glass, looked into the drink, and saw flecks of light at the bottom. Ama gave the glass another swirl, brought it to her lips, and drank. It went down her throat and released something wondrous on the way. She looked at Mama Eko and was grateful for her; she wanted to hug this woman, who was warm and irreverent and cheery and full of promises. Everything that Enugu had failed to provide her.
Mama Eko had neither husband nor child. Ama wondered if that was why she had been sent here. Or had her mother known that Mama Eko would be the one to ask the least questions about the whys and wherefores of Ama’s being sent out of the house? Perhaps she already knew. Maybe she also knew that Brother Cyril was not her real father, Ama thought, and wondered how many people knew. Was she the only one in the dark? Did the rest of her parents’ family know who her biological father was? Most likely Mama Eko knew, but Ama dared not ask her. If she did not know, Ama did not want to risk having to be the one to expose a family secret. Yet it gnawed at her.
On the other hand, she was glad that Mama Eko did not mind her reticence. It was almost as if Mama Eko had no desire to know what had happened and was simply pleased with the company. “For a city that’s so full of people, Lagos can get very lonely once you are indoors.” She winked at Ama in the car as they drove to her house from the bus depot, making Ama wonder if her words masked something deeper.
Ama was sent off to her room after lunch to unpack and get some rest from her trip. She was tired but had protested that she was not. After all, she said, she did not walk all the way from Enugu. Mama Eko would have none of it. “Go and rest, my sister’s daughter. You have had a long trip. Ga zue ike.”
With some food in her stomach and a comfortable bed to lie in, Ama was glad of the opportunity to sleep. Lagos was an adventure she was eager to embark on, but it required energy. Lots of it. She could sense it in the air and in the noise that filtered into her room from the other flats close to theirs. She could not wait for the next day to start her journey of discoveries. She would go with Mama Eko to her canteen, where she would help in the kitchen, cooking and serving customers. That was all Mama Eko required of her in return for a home and peace of mind.
The buka was a small building, ambitiously named Mama Eko’s Cooking Empire. The billboard bearing its name also carried weighty promises inscribed in cursive gold: DELECTABLE FINGER-LICKING DISHES. AN ORGASMIC EXPERIENCE. ONE TRIAL WILL CONVINCE YOU! Beside the promises, the face of a man with his tongue hanging out lusted after a bowl of pounded yams. Lining the front of the Empire, cruel-looking cacti. Mama Eko said they brightened the building better than flowers, which needed watering and love, caring for like a child. “These don’t mind whether you remember them or not. They just keep growing!”
In the ten months Ama stayed in Lagos, her life followed a routine that began to bore her in its insistent constancy. Every morning from Monday to Friday, she would get up at half past five, have a quick shower, dress up, and take the molue to the Empire.
She would arrive just before seven. Jangling keys, she would open first the burglary-proof door, a blue construction of security grille, and then she would open the wooden door, draw the curtains, dust the chairs, and start slicing bread for the breakfast customers. Mama Eko would come about an hour later, and Uju would be there in time for the lunch rush. On Saturdays Ama went food shopping with Mama Eko and Uju. And on Sundays they rested. There was no frantic hurryuporwe’llbelateforchurch. Just a stretching out on the bed with the ease of a pampered cat, yawning at leisure and watching TV while Uju whipped up delectable dishes in the tiny kitchen, sending Mama Eko into realms of culinary pleasure where she haahed and ahhhed and said Uju could not but marry a good man. Any girl who cooked the way she did was sure to end up with a good man. That was how the world worked.
It was a better life than Ama had in Enugu, she could not contest that, but its predictability, its circular motion that took her from the small flat to the tiny Empire and back to the flat, nibbled at her soul, which still yearned to see the world.
During the week, the breakfast run was fairly easy; it was slow, and many people asked for buttered bread and tea. Ama could butter bread with her eyes closed, and mixing tea and milk was a child’s chore. The afternoons were hectic. The food got more complicated, and customers were more exacting, having spent the morning shut in their offices, chasing deadlines, listening to impatient bosses tell them what to do. They came to the canteen for a world far removed from their offices. They wanted their fufu to be the right consistency, the soup to be just right, and would complain if it was not.
“Ah, Mama Eko, this fufu dey like water oo.”
“Sister Ama, na so fufu dey dey for where you come? Dis one na for to drink?”
“Na small child cook dis food? I no go come here again if na like dis your food dey!”
“Dis food no sweet today at all at all. Na so so salt full am.”
“Dis na soup abi na water?”
“Wey de meat wey suppose dey dis soup? Na ant you give me make I chop?”
Ama and Mama Eko would apologize, promising better food; blaming inclement weather or the time of the month for the fall in standard of the food; offering an extra piece of meat, a bottle of something to drink. Any incentive to keep the customer happy.
Ama looked forward to the customers, for sometimes they came with bits of her dream. Reminding her of what she might otherwise have forgotten, keeping her on her toes, so that she could never be complacent: young women slinging expensive handbags, coming in from the bank on their lunch brea
k. Sometimes they came accompanied by eager young men in suits and ties. But mostly they came alone, bringing into the buka the sweet-smelling fragrances of perfume and freedom. And the elegance of perfectly groomed nails and expensive hair extensions. Ama spoke to them. She always spoke to them. They had a charm that pulled her, so that after she had taken their order, noting it in meticulous handwriting on a sheet of paper, she hovered around.
“Sister, your hair is very well done. Where did you have it fixed?”
“Oh, thank you. Headmaster’s. I always go to Headmaster’s.”
Ama could see the smugness in their eyes as they announced the salon, lifting hands with painted nails to the hair, touching it as if in reassurance that it was indeed well done. Ama could not afford the exorbitant rates charged by the hairdressers at Headmaster’s. She always got her extensions fixed at small salons, cubicles with one hairdresser or two, who charged her sixty naira for their labor. These young women made it sound so easy. Doling out thousands of naira for their hair. Ama knew for a fact that Headmaster’s charged about three thousand.