by Chika Unigwe
SISI
SISI’S FIRST EPIPHANY CAME ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT WHILE SHE WAS waiting for clients. It was so clear that she could not have been blamed for believing that, finally, the secret of the Prophecy had been revealed to her. Diaphanous, it fluttered down and slipped over her face. What she saw dipped her in such black gloom that her first client, a man with a toupee that he insisted on hanging on to, told her he felt cheated. Her performance had been so poor, he said, that he was never coming back to her. “The girl who used to stay here, she knew her job. You just waste my money! Today I have no release. No release! I have to masturbate.”
This was it. The prediction meant nothing. Just the ramblings of a bungling, overindulged guest at a naming ceremony. She swore never to forgive the woman responsible. Stupid, stupid woman who had me in search of brightness. Stupid woman who brought me to this. To this!
Seven days after Chisom was born, at her naming ceremony, a gap-toothed soothsaying neighbor (whose reputation was solid, backed by a series of correct predictions) sucked the air between her teeth, raised the new baby up to the skies, looked deep into her future, and declared to the waiting parents, “This girl here has a bright future ahead of her ooo. You are very lucky parents oooo.”
Now Sisi knew what she had seen. The woman had seen her in the bright lights of Antwerp. That was her destination. Not, as she had stupidly imagined, a transit route to an infinite betterment of her world. Blue and red lights, like Christmas lights, decorating her window, and she in the middle of all those lights, on display, waiting for buyers to admire and buy. Temporarily. That was the bright future the soothsayer had seen through the bottle of beer she was gulping. (That woman must have drunk a carton of beer that day, so happy was she with your future! You remember, Papa Chisom? How impressed she was with Chisom’s life that she finished a carton of Star?) And they had not known that the bright future she had seen was literal. Not the sort of bright future that they had all thought it to be and of which her father had been certain that education was the key to and had pushed her to study. Study! Read! You’ll have all the time in the world to rest once you graduate! She had studied hard, not because of her father. Or even because of the vision the neighbor had seen. But for herself. A university education guaranteed a good job. She burned candles when there was a power failure and studied in their light, straining her eyes. What had all that been for? What had all that hard work and straining and worrying about exam results gotten for her? It turned out that it was not her math teacher—who told the class at the beginning of Chisom’s final year in secondary school that she was sure to be a successful career woman, “That girl has nothing but brains in that head of hers”—who had the key but Dele. Dele, the big man with an office on Randle Avenue. Dele had brought her to the brightness that was in her future. When he made the offer, she had found herself grasping it, the Prophecy assuming truth, her belief in it as unequivocal as her father’s had been. If Dele could get her a passage into Europe, he would bring the soothsayer’s prediction to fulfillment.
Her education had just been a waste of resources. A total waste of time and funds. And a step in the wrong direction. It had brought her nothing but misery, smoky dreams that rose and disappeared, thoughts of what might have been.
When she thought about her life now, the phrase that came to mind was Omnes Errant. She could not even remember where she had picked it up. Probably school. But it encapsulated her life. Her life was a series of mistakes. Always steps in the wrong direction. Those steps placed her on the Vingerlingstraat, a regular face with the black-lined eyes and lips painted in the brightest shade of red rat-tat-tatting on the window to help men make up their minds. And she wanted to howl forever.
On that Wednesday night, Sisi had been in Antwerp for exactly five and a half months. The revelation displaced her enthusiasm to make money. In its place came a stoicism she could never have imagined she possessed. She went to work and her smile stayed on. She greeted her clients and it did not falter. She thanked them when they tipped her. When they complimented her. When they said she was not like a lot of black prostitutes who tried to wrangle more money than was originally agreed upon. The smile stayed on. But an unhappiness permeated her skin and wound itself around her neck and forced her head down so that she walked as if something shamed her. While she had never been comfortable in her job, there was now a certain aversion added to the discomfort. She could no longer bear to look at herself, not even when she was alone. When she took a bath, she sponged her body without once looking at it. Regrets assailed her day in, day out. She smiled, but behind that smile her regret grew bigger and bigger, its shadow casting a pall over her. She began to wish she had never left home, ruing the day she met Dele. Why, oh why, had she gone to his office? Why had she been taken in by his promises of wealth and glamour and happiness that knew no bounds? When a customer asked her to lie spread-eagled, while he yelled “whore” at her and jerked off to that, she felt something akin to revulsion. Her walks into Antwerp increased in both frequency and length. She woke up early and walked along the Keyserlei and the Grote Markt. She made detours into alleyways, discovering old buildings that held no interest for her. She bought more and more stuff: bottle openers in the shape of beer bottles. Postcards of Antwerp by night. Dainty coasters of delicate lace. Tablecloths. Swelling her suitcase under the bed, so that it was difficult to close and she feared she would need to buy another one.
ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT
A CHILD SHRIEKS HAPPILY OUTSIDE. A SOUND THAT SEEMS ALMOST anomalous, slithering into the room.
“It is odd, isn’t it? Sisi is dead, and everything’s going on as normal,” Joyce says.
Ama smiles. “In my place, we have a saying: When a stranger’s corpse is being carried, it is as if it is mere firewood.”
“True talk,” Efe agrees. “I remember when my mama die, I dey even dey angry wit’ de sun wey dey shine. Like say de world suppose end.”
“But even inside this house, nothing’s changed. Sisi was not a stranger here!” Joyce sounds petulant.
“Not to us. But to them she probably was.” Ama points her chin in the direction of Madam’s and Segun’s rooms.
“Dat Segun sef na stranger to himself!” Efe scoffs.
“Probably fucks himself!”
“Ama! You and your dirty mouth. You suppose use soap wash am out!” But there is a twinkle in Efe’s eyes.
Segun is their favorite topic of mutual gossip. His clumsiness. His foolish look. How the only time he shines is with a hammer. Lower lip turned out, a hammer in his right hand, a nail in the other. Klop-klop-klopping. His hands steady, not making nervous movements like they do when he talks. Searching. Always searching for words, fists closing to hang on to the words about to slip through. “Ma … aa … d … am s-s-said your do … doo … dooor neee … eeds fix-fi … I mean … fixing!” Feet tapping. Hands moving. When Segun is working away with a hammer, hitting the nails, there is none of that. There is a fluidity to his hand rising and falling with precision that induces admiration, even. When he made a side table for Joyce at Madam’s request (as a birthday present), the women watched in wonder as he produced a table so well made that they had begged Madam to commission him to make tables for them, too.
“E dey be like say he dey listen to the voice of heaven. As if de voice dey command am. Hit. Stop. Hit. Stop,” Efe once said. For how could it be that this man who seems inadequate, inept, in every way, should be so flawless a workman.
Joyce’s mood is broody. “Sisi was no stranger,” she insists.
“Madam with her fucking nose in the air. You want her to come and sit with us here?”
“And Segun, then? You saw her in his car, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But Sisi almost bit my head off for mentioning it! So maybe it was a one-off thing, you know?”
“Even so. They—” Joyce grapples with the air for the right words. Finding none, she says nothing. Just a hiss.
The child outside is no longer shriekin
g in delight. She is crying now with the propensity of children of a certain age to evoke sympathy with their cries. “Poor kid. I wonder what’s wrong?” Joyce says, almost standing up.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Ama pulls her down. “You want to go and see what’s wrong with another woman’s child? Haven’t you learned anything here? You fucking mind your business. Look at Madam and Segun. Minding their business!”
Joyce wrings her hands. “Madam and Segun are not minding their business. They are being …” She draws out her rag.
“Being fucking what?”
“Dickheads!” The word falls like a surprise from Joyce.
“You don’ begin dey sound like Ama!”
The child is still crying. Joyce says, “I wonder how she died. If she cried for help.”
SISI
SISI HAD BARELY ANY MONEY LEFT FOR HERSELF AFTER PAYING OFF Dele. And paying her part of the rent on the Zwartezusterstraat. And paying rent on the Vingerlingstraat room she was subletting from Madam. All of Madam’s girls sublet from her. Five hundred and fifty euros a week they paid. She did not see how she could do this job long enough to save anything. It would take her another two months to decide that she could not. And it would not be just the thought of being unable to save that would make her quit.
From eight o’clock at night to eight o’clock the next day, she stood, like the other girls with porcelain smiles, inside her booth, hoping to hook a big fish. She learned to keep her smile from falling and shattering. The story was still being peddled of the Ghanaian prostitute on the Falconplein—not too far from the Vingerlingstraat—who had a client fall in love with her. He was not just any client, he was a rich client. A top footballer or something, Sisi could never be sure, as the profession of the rich client changed with each storyteller, but no matter who told the story, its essence remained the same: The Ghanaian girl did good. He paid off her pimp, married her, and installed her in his villa just outside Brussels. He did everything for her (he even adopted her two children from a previous relationship and brought them over from Accra). She had everything: fancy cars, a swimming pool, designer clothes, holidays to the South of France, weekend drives to the Ardennes, holiday homes in Morocco and Barcelona, the works. Some people said she did touch and follow on him, the sort of juju that good medicine men made, with pubic hair and toenails clipped at dawn, to help women catch men and hold on to them. How else could she have managed to hook such a big fish? To completely transform her infinitesimal life to one of infinite power? She with the body of a rodent and the face of a horse? Ha-ha-ha. Anita, the Zimbabwean who worked the window a few doors away from the Ghanaian, said it was definitely tokoloshi, like touch and follow but stronger: a root that grows to the height of a baby and all the owner has to do is to send it out for money. “It can get money from everywhere. Even from a man’s privates! I hear the man lets her handle all his accounts.”
Others said she had just plain good luck. It had nothing to do with the tortoise that someone said the Ghanaian woman always had under her bed when she was with that particular client, even though it was common knowledge that a tortoise was an unmissable ingredient in touch-and-follow juju. Together with the hair and nail clippings, of course. Sisi did not care how she did it. She did not even want love. She was not looking for marriage. Just customers who would tip her enough, pay enough, to get her out of the booth, which was giving her cabin fever. She needed lots of customers if she was going to build the house she wanted for her parents. And give her dreams substance. But the customers were not always there.
The Schipperskwartier lost its vivacity in the daytime. With sunlight splashing its rays on it, it had a deserted, windblown look. It looked almost ashamed, as if the light of day exposed it in a way it did not want to be seen: very much like a woman who is not yet comfortable with a new lover being caught on the toilet letting out loud farts. The houses looked sad, on the whole, giving the area a rather desolate, mournful look. The sort of place that made one think of death. Sisi avoided it in the day, preferring to explore other parts of Antwerp that throbbed in the glare of the sun, full of the energy of a healthy toddler. She took walks alone. Telling her housemates when they asked that she was just going for a breath of air. No, thank you, she would rather go alone.
She liked the Keyserlei, with its promise of glitter: the Keyserlei Hotel with its gold facade and the lines and lines of shops. Ici Paris. H&M. United Colours of Benetton. Fashion Outlet. So many choices. She liked the rush of people, the mixing of skin colors, the noise on the streets. The Jews with their Hasidic discs and their women pushing cherubic babies in strollers with big wheels. They all made her heart race, made her feel alive, a part of this throbbing, living city.
She did not mind the dirt that littered the roads, making her think of graffiti she saw once on the walls of the Central Station: ANTWERP IS CONSTIPATED. It is no longer constipated, she always thought when she walked down the Keyserlei and came face-to-face with the litter that overflowed from the huge dustbin outside the McDonald’s. It’s letting out its shit here. The dirt was part of what made it familiar to her. It was a constant. As were the touts, mainly young males who hung around the eateries along the street, hands inside their coats, saying, “I’ve got a gold chain. Worth four hundred euros. You can have it for a hundred. Okay, how much have you got? I just stole it. Very expensive, give me what you can afford. It’s a genuine article.” As were the beggars, mainly East European women with young children and colorful sweaters, sitting against the walls of the entrance to the metro stations, miming to passersby that they were hungry, that their babies were hungry, and had you nothing to give them? Nothing to drop in the plastic begging bowls before their outstretched legs? Sometimes she dropped fifty-cent coins in the bowls, especially if they had crying babies. At other times she hurried past them, as if on her way to somewhere urgent, the way everybody else rushed, ignoring traffic lights and passing cars. She liked the Pelikaanstraat, with gold and diamond jewelry calling from the display windows, beckoning to customers, Look at us, are we not pretty? Look at us, won’t you buy one? She liked the central square, with its horses and cobbled streets that made her feel like she was in one of those black-and-white films from so long ago. She liked the souvenir shops, with their laces and fancy chocolates and postcards. Sisi imagined she was a tourist, some rich woman who could afford to travel the world for leisure, taking in sights and trying the food. Sometimes she dressed for the role. A cap, sunglasses, a bum bag hanging from her waist, a camera dangling around her neck, and a Dutch phrase book in her hand. On such days she walked into shops and smiled at shopkeepers, who, eager to make a sale, smiled back, all sweetness and light. She was somebody else with a different life. She lived out her fantasies. She drooled over novelty chocolates in the shapes of penises and breasts, telling the shop assistant who sold them, “These are simply amazing. I’ve got to take some back.”
Once she bought a pair of lace booties, telling the woman who sold them that she was visiting from Lagos and had just found out she was pregnant after five years of trying for a baby. The booties would be for her unborn child’s christening. The woman had wrapped up the shoes in utter silence and reverence, stopping only to dab at her glistening eyes with a flower-embroidered handkerchief. Sisi mirrored the woman, delicately dabbing her eyes with a paper tissue, careful not to ruin her makeup.
Another time she bought two kilograms of pralines, gushing to the saleswoman about how excited she was to be in Antwerp. “Your ciddy is absolutely gorgeous, darling. I’m having such a wonderful time here that I am worried Paris will be a disappointment. That’s my next stop. Then London on the … the … the train, the Eurostar, that’s it. Doing Europe, you see. We Americans don’t travel half as much as we ought to.” She had giggled girlishly when the saleswoman replied that America was so big, Americans must have their hands full traveling around America, and said, “You Europeans are so smart. Your English is so good, darling. I wish I spoke another l
anguage! Anything. As long as it’s foreign.”
Sometimes she stopped in front of a statue—her favorite was the giant throwing a hand in the middle of the central square—and asked a passerby to take a picture of her. Phrase book open, she throttled out words, intentionally mispronouncing Dutch words and looking appropriately relieved when the passerby asked if she spoke English in impeccable English.
“Oh, yes, I do. Could you take a picture, please? Thank you.” She would smile at the phrase book at her feet and take a picture that she would never develop.
She listened in rapt attention as a man who said he was a through-and-through Antwerpenaar told her the story of the statue: About five hundred years ago or so an unruly giant terrorized the inhabitants of that area, severing the hand of every boatman who could not pay the exorbitant taxes he levied on them for passing by his castle. Then a brave young man came from who knew where and killed the giant and threw his hand into the river Schelde, which ran through the city. The overjoyed inhabitants watched him throw away the hand and named the city Handwerpen, “to throw a hand away,” but along the years, the name became corrupted and transformed itself to Antwerpen.
“Wow, amazing story!” She smiled, her palms on either side of her face, her eyes wide. “That’s so totally amazing. Belgium has so much history for such a tiny country. Thanks ever so much for telling me that story. I’m going to treasure it. How do you say ‘thank you’ in Belgian, darleen?”
She did the Pelikaanstraat, entered shops, and coquettishly tried on gold and diamond rings she found unbearably expensive.
“My fiancé has asked me to choose an engagement ring. He’s too busy to come and get one himself. Sometimes I wish he had less money and more time. It’s Mexico today, Singapore the next. Oh well, I guess a girl can’t have it all. Money or time, which would I rather?” She would laugh high and loud, and the shopkeepers would laugh with her, their laughter softer than hers, a thoughtful demureness that was mindful of the fact that she was the customer, a customer with lots of money who therefore should not be upstaged.