by Chika Unigwe
She ran her tongue across her teeth and dislodged a strand of ham stuck between two front teeth. It brought back to her the memories of a breakfast so scrumptious, she wished she could parcel it and send it to her mother to eat. White sandwiches so soft they melted in your mouth, jam, ham, two boiled eggs, and tea with milk that was not rationed.
The line moved at a languid pace, and she watched as people disappeared into the mouth of the ministry. Finally, it was her turn. With a smile, the guard directed her to a room with glass sliding doors and wooden benches that reminded her of the church pews at St. Agnes in Lagos. She wondered if the smile was ridiculing her. Mocking her story. She entered the room. There were about twenty people waiting, most with tired faces. She tried to smile at a young white couple as she sidled in next to them. The woman had on her knees a little boy in a checked sweater and black denim trousers. He had a runny nose and was whimpering. The mother said something to the boy, kissed him quickly on the head, and dug in her handbag for a pack of cookies, which she gave him. The toddler smiled and proceeded to hastily tear open the pack. The man whom Sisi presumed was his father stared straight ahead as if in a world of his own, detached from what was going on around him. Sisi wondered what was in his mind, what weight he carried around his neck that stiffened it so that he could not turn and smile at his son when the little boy tugged at the collar of his maroon jacket. Sisi watched the boy stuff his mouth one cookie at a time, dropping little bits onto his mother’s thighs. She did not brush off the crumbs but instead left them, as if they were badges of honor, to gather on her gray skirt: specks of cream on a gray polyester cloud.
Sisi let her thoughts be consumed by the boy and his antics, so there was no space in her head to think of her family. Or of Peter. She had thought that leaving him would be easy—after all, they had no future together—but she was starting to realize that she could not have been more wrong. She saw him whenever her eyes were closed. And even in this room, right now, she could swear she smelled him, that she could smell the mentholated powder he always rubbed on his back for pimples and for the heat. She missed their moments of intimacy, and when she let her thoughts stray she wondered if she was wrong to have given him up. She stole a glance at her watch. The leather band was worn and stained in places. She would have to buy herself a new wristwatch as soon as she could afford it. Maybe one with a slim gold band. She was in Europe now, and everything was possible, she told herself. She might even buy an extra one and send it to her mother. She imagined her mother’s joy at owning a gold wristwatch.
She would never buy a gold wristwatch. Not for herself. And not for her mother, either. She would enter shops and ask to be shown this gold watch. That other one. She would try them on and put them down, saying they did not suit her. Her wrist looked chunky in that. Too thin in the other. She would wave aside the smiling salesclerk’s assurance that the watches fit. But right now she was unaware of this.
Sisi shut her eyes and replayed the events of the past two days in her head. She had to make this work, she told herself. There was no turning back now, no room for regrets. It seemed that the misgivings she had dumped with her pumpkin in Lagos had managed to find their way back to her. She ignored them. She heard her number called and got up. She was directed to a small room. She had to walk through a high door manned by a policeman with steely eyes. He had thick curly hair that came down to his eyes, and he had to flick the hair out of his eyes before he could run a long security stick down her body. His face was impassive, bored. Satisfied, he waved her on.
“Good afternoon, madam.”
“Good afternoon.”
The man she was standing in front of flashed her a wide smile, as if pleased to see her. “First we have to take a picture of you,” he explained as he stood her in front of a camera and took pictures. The front. The side. Then he held her right hand and took fingerprints, each finger, until he had all five fingers smeared with ink like some sort of a welcome ritual. Then he had her stamp her inked fingers on a sheet of paper.
Another man with black hair took her into another office and listened as she poured out her Liberian story. She made sure she did not forget any detail. Yes. She was sure her name was Mary Feather-will. Yes. She was Mandingo. Yes. Her family had been killed and there was a price on her head. Could she have a tissue, please? She was sorry for crying. Yes. Her life was in danger. No. She did not think she would survive a day in Liberia. No. She had no other family alive. No. She knew no one in Belgium. The man bent over his computer and typed as she spoke, stopping occasionally to ask her to verify a fact, a piece of information. His voice was patient. Once their eyes met, and she saw something in his eyes that convinced her he knew she was lying. Yet she did not stop. She stuck to her story. Yes. Yes. She was born in Monrovia. No. She did not have a passport because she had left the house in a hurry and was really scared for her life. No. She did not have any form of identification. No. No driver’s license; she did not know how to drive. No. She had no birth certificate. She had taken nothing from the house. She was running for her life. No. No family pictures. She had not thought of taking anything from the house but herself. Her security was the only thing she had thought about. No. No dates. She could not be sure of the exact dates the killings occurred.
At last he looked up from the computer. Ran his fingers through his hair. Printed out the statement, asked her to sign it, and gave her a number. “Wait in the waiting room,” he instructed.
ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT
AMA IS STILL TALKING.
“I am in Europe. I am earning my own money. I’m even managing to put aside some. That should make me happy. I didn’t leave any sort of life behind to come here. Mama Eko is the only person I really miss. One day, when I make it, I’ll go back and build her a mansion! I don’t have a child like you, Efe. Nobody I love without reservations. Or somebody who loved me like that. Mama Eko is the only one who comes close.” She tugs at the crucifix again. There is a tenderness to her tugging.
“And I haven’t got anyone at all. If I make it here, it’s for me,” Joyce says.
“We’ll make it oo. There is no ‘iffing’ about it. How can we come to Europe and go back empty-handed? God forbid bad thing!” Efe says. She thinks again of Sisi. “Poor Sisi. She no even stay long enough.” The thought subdues them. Nine months is not long enough to realize any of the dreams that have brought them to Europe. Even if they were not privy to Sisi’s dreams, they know that they are all bound by the same ambition, the same drive. What grandiose plans did Sisi have that would never be completed?
Madam has not said anything, but the women know that they are not expected to work today.
None of them will go to the Vingerlingstraat today to stand in front of the glass showcase, strutting in sexy lingerie, lacy bras, and racy thongs to attract customers. It is a demanding job, their job, and not one that can be combined with grief. Sisi’s death has sapped them of energy and left them floppy, like rag dolls.
They often talk about it: the strutting and waiting to be noticed by the men strolling by, wondering which ones are likely to tip well and which are not. From their glass windows, they often watch the lives outside, especially the men’s. It is easy to tell those who have stumbled on the Schipperskwartier by mistake. Tourists with their cameras slung around their necks, mostly Japanese tourists who do not know Antwerp, seduced by the antiquity of the city and deceived by the huge cathedral, they wander off and then suddenly come face-to-face with a lineup of half-dressed women, different colors and different shades of those colors. They look and, disbelieving, take another look. Quickly. And then they walk away with embarrassed steps. Not wishing to be tainted by the lives behind the windows.
Those who know where they are and why they are there walk with an arrogant swagger and a critical twinkle in their eyes. They move from one window to another and, having made up their minds, go in to close a sale. The street starts filling up at around nine o’clock. Young men in their thirties with chins as soft as a
baby’s buttocks and pictures of their pretty wives in their leather wallets, looking for adventure between the thighs of een afrikaanse. Young boys in a frazzled eagerness to grow up, looking for a woman to rid them of their virginity. Bachelors between relationships, seeking a woman’s warmth without commitment. Old men with mottled skin and flabby cheeks, looking for something young to help them forget the flaccidity time has heaped on them. Vingerlingstraat bears witness to all kinds of men.
The women often discuss their customers, dissecting the men and heaping them into one of two categories. The good ones. The miserly ones. They lack the patience, or perhaps the inclination or inventiveness, to find any in-between men. The ones who are neither good nor miserly. Etienne is one such good customer. Etienne with the garlic-scented smile and hair slicked back, wet with gel, so that they constantly speculate on the jars and jars of gel he must go through.
Etienne is a generous tipper, but you would not tell just by looking at him. He is proof that looks do not always tell the real story about people. Etienne is small and always wears trousers that are too tight for him. Trousers that look like he has owned them since he was fourteen and which make the women joke about the state of his genitals. Not what you would expect from a man who doles out money left, right, and center as if he is scattering rice grains to his pet chickens. He is one of Joyce’s regulars. He calls her “Etienne’s Nubian Princess.” Joyce cannot stand him, the way he calls her “Mama!” when he comes, digging into her waist with his nails, his breath smelling of garlic. She cannot stand the way his gel leaves stains on her pillowcase so that she always has to wash it once he has been. But she smiles whenever she sees him, a reminder that her life has changed, that her affection is for sale. Etienne is, more than any other customer, the motivation for her to leave the Vingerlingstraat. He makes her fear that she has forgotten the person she used to be and that, if left for too long, she may never find that person again.
Joyce does not like to think about her past, preferring to concentrate on the future, on what her life will be once she leaves Madam’s establishment. But the past is never far away. She has discovered that it never leaves us completely, no matter how hard we try. The past is like the juice from a cashew. It sticks. And whatever it stains, it stains for good. It is always breathing over our shoulders, and all it needs is an incident, an event, to make it rear its head. And so it is that today, with Sisi’s death still recent and unreal and the other women opening up the lives they always kept under wraps, telling the truth, Joyce finds her mind taking her back to life before Joyce was born. She brings out the rag tucked in the waist of her trousers and starts walking around the room, wiping the walls with a furious agitation. “I was not named Joyce, you know. It’s not my real name. And … and I am not even Nigerian.” She has her back to Efe and Ama. Her rag moving in violent circles. This time Efe does not try to stop her. Like Ama, she just watches her.
“I always thought you did not look very Nigerian,” Ama says finally.
Efe laughs and says, “Today na de day for confessions. What are you, Joyce? Who are you? Where are you from? Really?”
Joyce turns away from the wall. She stoops, facing the women, and begins to work on the center table. When she starts talking, her voice does not have the hard edge that her housemates have become used to. Instead, it is a child’s voice.
“My real name’s Alek.”
Alek: It sounds like a homecoming. Like the origin of life.
SISI
“SO, HOW DID IT GO? WHAT DID THEY SAY? DID THEY GIVE YOU ANYTHING?” The questions rolled off, chasing one another heel to heel as soon as Sisi entered the sitting room where Madam sat, cigarette in hand, waiting for her. Madam was a huge yellow sun with green combat boots under flared yellow trousers. Her yellowness clashed with the redness of the walls, and Sisi thought the whole effect was rather obscene.
Sisi was tired. Her eyes hurt. She could not tell if they ached from the bright yellows of the woman in front of her or if they ached simply because she was tired. Sleep had never been so desired. She longed for the bed in the room that had been her world since she arrived. I really don’t want to do this now, she thought of telling Madam. She wanted the freedom to allow sleep to woo her, to caress her with its softness, until she succumbed. She tried to avoid the yellows and kept her eyes on Madam’s face. It was passive, the face of a woman who was not in a hurry to hear her answer but who nevertheless was not used to being disobeyed. Sisi let her eyes follow the patterns made by the smoke from Madam’s cigarette. The smoke made faces that mocked her. First her mother’s. Then Peter’s.
“They said no. No asylum for me.” She fished in her handbag for the paper they had given her and gave that to Madam as she repeated herself. “They said no.”
The officer behind the table had told her: “We are not satisfied with your story. This paper here says that you have three days to leave the country.” A stamped document had been slid over to her. She gave it to Madam. She wanted to ask why she had gone to the ministry if the paper meant that she had to return to Lagos in three days’ time.
The gold bangles on Madam’s right wrist jangled and flashed as she took the paper. Without even reading it, she folded it and slid it into her handbag. She looked up at Sisi and, as if she had read Sisi’s mind, said, “This paper is no concern of yours. All you need to know is that you’re a persona non grata in this country. And you do not exist. Not here.” Madam puffed on her cigarette, lifted her face upward, and blew smoke into the room. It sailed up to the ceiling and disappeared.
Sisi would always wonder why Madam went through the process of sending new girls to the castle. Did she really expect them to be granted asylum? And if they were, then what?
Madam half closed her eyes, took another long drag on her cigarette, released flimsy smoke into the room, and slowly opened her eyes. She let them run over Sisi, slowly, thoughtfully. As if she were trying to size her up—a commodity for sale, a piece of choice meat, a slab of meat at the local abattoir. “Now you belong to me. It cost us a lot of money to organize all this for you.” She spread her left hand, palm downward, as she spoke, sweeping at the sofas in the room as if to say that “all this” referred to the sofa. Her cigarette lay snuggled between the middle and index fingers on her right hand. “Until you have paid up every single kobo”—she pointed the cigarette at Sisi—“every single cent of what you owe us, you shall not have your passport back. Every month we expect five hundred euros from you. That should be easy to do if you are dedicated. But I understand that sometimes you may not be able to, so we have set a minimum repayment of one hundred euros. Every month you go to the Western Union and transfer the money to Dele. Any month you do not pay up …” She let the threat hang, unspoken yet menacing, her left hand plucking at a tuft of hair under her chin. Suddenly, she reached behind her and, from somewhere at the back of the chair she was sitting on, drew out a black rucksack. She threw the bag at Sisi. “Here. Your work clothes. Tonight you start.” With a flick of her right hand, Sisi was duly dismissed.
In her room, Sisi dropped the bag on the floor and sagged into her bed. There would be time enough to discover what her work clothes were. Right now tiredness curbed her capacity for curiosity. She hoped she could sleep, but it was always difficult for her to sleep when she wanted to. She tried to command her body to relax.
Rest, legs, she ordered her legs. They twitched.
Rest, hands. Her hands folded themselves under her head.
Rest, eyes. She shut her eyes.
Rest, mind. The amount she was supposed to pay every month echoed in her head. Five hundred. Five hundred. Five hundred. Five hundred. She tossed and turned. She lay on her side, her hands between her thighs, her eyes still shut. Five hundred. Five hundred. Five hundred. Five hundred.
Five hundred euros was a lot of money. If she converted that to naira, it amounted to more money than she had ever dreamed of making in any single month, even working in her bank of first choice. That was five time
s her father’s salary. Surely, if she was expected to pay back that much, it meant that she was expected to earn a lot more. How much more? She could not get her head around it. Her dreams were within reach of coming true. The gold jewelry, the house for her parents, the posh car. If dedication was all it took, then she had it. Months from now she would discover that dedication was not always enough, that there was a resilience required that she did not have. And she would think that maybe that was what the dream that first night had been about.
ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT | ALEK
SHE WAS NAMED FOR HER GRANDMOTHER. TALL. REGAL. A BLACKNESS that shone as if polished. She did not know the woman whose name she bore, the old woman having died of a rabid dog bite before Alek was born. But her memory lived in the pictures of her around the house. In the stories that were told of her (every man wanted her for a wife; her beauty was unrivaled; she could have been a queen: the way she carried herself was simply regal). In the name that her granddaughter had been given. And in the family’s fear of and utter hatred of dogs.
Alek had inherited the shiny blackness. The legendary beauty. The height. The darkened lips. But she was not imperial. Her grandmother’s regality had completely passed her by, leaving her with a tomboyishness that both disappointed and worried her mother. Do not play football, Alek. It’s not ladylike. Do not play ’awet, it’s for men only. Do not sit with your legs spread like that, Alek, it’s not ladylike. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Sometimes the do nots were screamed at her in frustration. At other times they were whispered to her, fervent pleas of a despairing mother who tried to get her interested in other things. Taking her along to milk cows. Finding chores for her in the kitchen. But Alek had her eyes elsewhere. The udders of the cows distressed her. The kitchen was unbearable.