“Hiya, you all right? You made it!” she said, after they attempted a hug that was awkward but settled all right in the end.
“Yeah, sorry about last night.”
Aiden waved away the apology. “No worries, you’re here now. And you met Timi.” She stood on the tips of her toes to drape her arm over Timi’s shoulder and plant a kiss on his smooth cheek.
“We met,” Timi said, smiling derisively.
“Oh, Timz, be nice!” Aiden smacked his arm and laughed.
“I am nice!” Timi retorted, rolling his neck again. “Fine. Madame King Emperor Taiye, would you like anything to drink? We have juice, water, and tea.”
“I’ll have some juice,” Taiye replied. “I heard there’d be a juicer, so I bought some fruit.”
“Oh, lovely.” Aiden took the bag from Taiye and led her into the tiny excuse for a kitchen. She emptied the fruit into a deep sink and rinsed them in cold water that trickled out of the limescale-stained tap.
While they cut the fruit, pushed it through the feeding cylinder of the juicer, and watched through the clear plastic body as the grinder pummelled chunks of melon and grapefruit, Avani’s cello began to sing something mournful and assuaging.
In the living room, Taiye joined the rest of Aiden’s guests sitting in a semicircle around Avani and Timi. Avani plucked a rhythmic melody to accompany Timi’s drumming on a small brown dundun slung over his ample shoulders. Toward the end of their song, Avani’s cello simmered to a gentle chant, Timi silenced his talking drum, and his voice rose in a high and glorious soprano: “Gbe mi mì ninu omi tutu, sweet water, sweet water, swallow me.”
Aiden passed around a tray of chocolate truffles after the applause, half the plate labelled 5 MG THC, the other half, .75 G PSILOCYBIN.
When the dish came her way Taiye declined. She turned to Timi and said, “I thought this was a sober party.”
“Yeah, but only alcohol sober.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Aiden just doesn’t like drunk people in her place.”
“Oh, okay, fair enough.” Taiye nodded. “I think I’m good to keep it sober tonight, though.”
“How about a joint?” Timi asked.
Taiye laughed. “I could fuck with a joint.”
Timi led the way across the loose maze of bodies, through the tiny kitchen, and onto a narrow ledge of a balcony. The wrought-iron railing seemed far too flimsy to be leaned upon; they were only three floors up, but Taiye didn’t feel up to testing its integrity. She sat cross-legged on the floor, and Timi mirrored her.
“You’re Yoruba?” Timi asked, as he ground the potent buds in a gold-plated grinder.
“Yes, on my father’s side. My mother’s side is Igbo.”
“You always lived here?”
“No, came for uni, like eight, nine years ago. You?”
“Born and raised. Are you out to, like, your family?”
“I mean, I’m not really in. I don’t have a lot of family here so … like, I don’t really have anyone to explain anything to.”
He gutted a cigarette and mixed its contents with the weed before rolling it up tight and narrow in hemp paper. Handing the joint to Taiye, he said, “Do the honours?”
Taiye obliged. On her exhale, she asked, “How about you?” and passed it back.
“My mother is a pastor at Unchained Ministries—what do you think?”
“That’s intense.”
Timi threw his gorgeous head back and roared in laughter. It was infectious.
“Intense is fucking right, innit?” Timi sucked the smoke deep and held it for a long time. He coughed with the same force as his laughter when he finally released the cloud.
They sat in silence until the music from Avani’s cello floated through the kitchen, out onto the balcony, and met with the night. Timi closed his eyes and swayed slightly. “I play the keyboard at church, but I would love to learn the cello or the violin.”
“You have a gorgeous voice. Do you sing at church?”
He shook his head.
“Are you a believer?” Taiye asked.
“In Unchained? No, not at all. There is zero percent room for someone like me to be out in Nigerian Pentecostalism. I am a believer in God, though, like in a divine goodness that loves us and wants us to love each other, blah blah.” He laughed, this time with a calm sincerity.
“I think that God is definitely femme, though. I mean, look at flowers! Anyway, are you?” he asked Taiye.
“What?”
He rolled his eyes, and Taiye saw Our Lady in a quick flash. An uncanny feeling settled in her stomach. She shook her head and pursed her lips before saying, “I mean, I think I’m similar to you, maybe. I believe in a much bigger light than I can see. I have to believe there’s something looking after me.” She looked down at her wide palms; her hands felt cold. Our Lady’s suggestion to dress warmly was proving to be worthwhile. “And I like going to church. I like the smell of incense at Mass. Does that make sense?”
“I hear you. You’re Catholic?”
“I go to Catholic Mass,” she corrected him.
AGAIN, TAIYE SPENT THE NIGHT WITH AIDEN. It was a much less frenzied affair, with considerably more space for Taiye to unfurl herself, and that frightened her.
The following morning, they ate crepes with salted brown butter and blackcurrant compote. They drank hot Ribena from misshapen mugs that Aiden had made in a beginners’ ceramics course. Afterward, they lay with swollen bellies on her bed and shared a joint of sticky sativa buds and lavender.
“Would it be totally weird for you if I wanted to be friends with one of your friends?” Taiye asked, her head resting on Aiden’s soft belly.
“Timi? He said to give you his number. You two are too cute.” She swiped open her phone screen and sent Timi’s phone number to Taiye.
“Thank you.”
“Hey, so we just met, and I’m moving to Barcelona in a few weeks.”
“Oh damn, what for?”
“To study. There’s this incredible refugee and migrant-worker art scene. I got an Erasmus grant to check it out.”
“What will you do there?”
“I wrote some shit about documenting the most prominent artists of the movement, and art as its own sanctuary, and learning frameworks, blah blah. All rubbish. I just want to witness it, you know.”
“Nice. Good for you. Are you excited or … nervous?”
“All of the above. Super premature, but I’d love it if you would visit. Maybe you and Timz could take a romantic trip down one weekend?”
Aiden looked at her hands when she said that, picked at her nails, and didn’t look up until Taiye asked, “Why are you interested in that—I mean, it obviously sounds incredible, but I’m just curious why that’s your thing in particular.”
“Oh man, yeah, like my mum’s a refugee. I mean, she came here from Eritrea as an asylum seeker when she was quite young, much much younger than I am now, and she married this, like, working-class Welshman from Swansea, and they moved to Cardiff and had me. And like,” she gnawed at a hangnail on her left thumb, “I can’t go to Eritrea, yeah, and I can’t afford to go anywhere in Africa, at least not yet, so this way—like with this project—I’m a bit closer to the, like, handiwork of people with a similar experience to my mum. I think.” She laughed after a brief moment of silence. “You know, I could’ve just written that for the Erasmus grant.”
“Yeah,” Taiye said, nodding, “that’s a lot more fucking real than anything with the term ‘frameworks.’”
Aiden laughed. “You done much travelling?”
“A little bit, not really,” Taiye said. “Most recently I spent some time in Montpellier. That was few years ago. And I went home to Lagos to see my mum like two years ago, I think.”
“Oh, Montpellier is right close to Barcelona! Why were you there?”
“There was this Catalan culinary program … I also really wanted to improve my French.” Taiye shrugged, feeling sheepish.
“You learned to cook Catala
n food?!” Aiden sat up, her face broken open with enthusiasm. “That is random and fucking cool!”
“Yeah, random, I suppose.” Taiye laughed.
“Tell me what you learned!” Aiden exclaimed.
“I’ll cook for you sometime.”
“SOMETIME” WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE Aiden was scheduled to board a train to Paris, and then another to Barcelona. It was a dinner party she’d dubbed Glitter Goodbyes, where she hosted a handful of close friends and required that they dust themselves with gold glitter from a compact case glued below the peephole on her front door before entering the flat. Taiye promised Catalan food, but at the last moment, she enlisted Timi’s help, and they made food from home. “From home” meant different things to each of them, but the food was mollifying, the aromas and flavours familiar.
In the cramped space of the kitchen, they danced around each other casually, with unexpected ease. They worked smoothly in soothed silence; Taiye offered gentle orders to purée, grind, pour, chop— “Careful careful, don’t touch the pepper seeds with naked fingers!” Timi responded by doing. He knew his way, had done so many times, with his mother and sisters, and the occasional lover.
They soaked, rinsed off the chaff, and ground beans for moi moi: They mixed the mealy ground beans with pale red onion and tomato purée, sharp slivers of Scotch bonnet, chicken bouillon cubes, palm oil, and crayfish powder. They poured the thick batter in oiled ramekins—turquoise, white, black and gold, yellow. Because Aiden didn’t have a large enough pot, they baked the moi moi in a bain-marie, with a broad sheet of foil cinched around the tray to keep the steam inside to cook the savoury bean cakes.
Taiye and Timi peeled, sliced, and fried overripe plantains in fragrant coconut oil, squealing and jumping away when scalding oil spat from the pan. They oven-roasted skewers of marinated beef covered in homemade yaji—a valiant attempt at suya. They laughed at this, at their diasporic angst, as they dipped yeasty balls of puff-puff in glossy melted dark chocolate.
When they served their offerings, Taiye glowed, proud to be feeding Aiden and her guests a meal that conjured memories of her twin and their mother. Of a time in which the hollowing echo of loneliness didn’t ring so loud in her steps, her voice, and her body. None of her indulgences had yet silenced the shrill call of such a vast empty; still, she latched, she let go, she consumed, unhinged the jaw of her soul to drink whatever was given. And, still, nothing satiated.
Aiden changed the music from the relentlessly cool poetics of Digable Planets to Sérgio Mendes’s sultry bossa nova. Beside the billowing lace curtains, Our Lady swayed her ethereal body in rhythm with the percussion. Taiye smiled at her. Timi caught her smile and saw only lace curtains fluttering in protest of the cold breeze that poured through the open window. He raised his flawlessly arched eyebrows at Taiye and smirked. Taiye’s smile grew bigger at Timi. They ate in the comfortable din of conversation.
WEEKS LATER, Taiye went to Unchained Ministries in South Norwood to watch Timi sing in the church choir for the first time. This Timi was a watered-down version of the one she’d met at Aiden’s party, the one with whom she had spent many of her evenings since Aiden’s Glitter Goodbyes. They’d made a tradition of meeting on Wednesdays after work to cook together or watch Yoruba films online or traipse around galleries, giggling at contemporary art. In Aiden’s absence, they developed a fast friendship. The kind of kinship established due to a common sadness, shared loneliness that becomes bearable through laughter and food and the good company of one who understands.
At church that Sunday, Timi’s voice rose past the din of Taiye’s anxieties. When he sang a solo rendition of the chorus and a couple verses of the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul,” she closed her eyes and prayed the lyrics in earnest.
Only moments after the service ended, they snuck out of the church and spilled onto the damp road ahead of the crowd of worshippers that were sure to corner Timi and, unwarranted, share their thoughts on his singing. On their walk to Eko Mama Takeaway, Taye hugged Timi, saying over and over, “You were amazing.”
Timi looked like an entirely different person in his blue button-down and dark-wash jeans, but once they’d crossed the road and were farther away from the church he allowed some of his femmeness to resurface. He rolled his neck and exclaimed, “I was, innit!”
By the time they ordered rice and goat stew to be eaten with plastic forks on the first park bench they found, bodies huddled together, sharing warmth and good meat, Timi’s body had relaxed, and his smirk returned.
“I love singing,” he said between mouthfuls. “I want to do that all the time, even if it’s at that place.”
“You looked so happy.”
“I was … I am.” He laughed his laugh, with his head thrown back, and Taiye felt happy along with him. Then she saw a familiar orange Afro floating across the street, attached to the lovely head of a fat, freckled woman.
Zora.
And Taiye, prone to sinking in the face of beauty, lost her thoughts at the sight of her. Timi’s voice faded as Zora came closer into view. Her arms were full of grocery bags, close to tumbling out of her grasp. She teetered in black high-heeled pumps and smiled when she caught Taiye’s eye.
And Taiye, she sank.
THE TROUBLE WAS THAT ZORA WANTED MORE than Taiye could give. She was hungry for a full meal, but Taiye offered only appetizers, delectable hors d’oeuvres, mouth-watering desserts, fine sweets, and rich wine. Zora wanted nourishment, so although their few months together were torrid, they were also tumultuous and exhausting for both women. Once Zora clocked that there would be no real lasting relationship with Taiye, she left, and that was that.
By the time Taiye emerged from that most recent collapse into lust, or a self-delusion of potential love, she couldn’t find Timi.
She called often. She left apologetic voice messages that stayed unreturned:
“Hey, love, I’m sorry I’ve been M.I.A. How are you doing? Let’s catch up.”
“Timmy Timz, miss you, lovey. Let me know what you’ve been up to.”
“Heya, Timmy, I’m so sorry I’ve been a rubbish friend. I’m sorry.”
Then text messages:
Baby boy, we NEEEEEED to hang out.
Bruhhh! I miss you, bruh. Let’s sneak wine into the cinema and watch white people release ancient curses from Egyptian tombs.
Timi, I’m sorry that I disappeared for a bit there. I’d like to see you, please let me know.
Then she took to leaving heart eyes and sweet comments on his social media posts.
The weeks crawled by in Timi’s absence. Taiye was outrageously stoned, splayed on the floor of her shoebox flat, nibbling on cold spring rolls, ignoring the apparition that had become her only companion, basking in the stink of her self-loathing, wondering how she managed to take so many lovers yet failed to keep one friend.
She was mulling over all the specific ways she was, in fact, a mistake, when she heard her phone beep.
A message from Aiden:
Heya, sorry for the out of the blue text, wasn’t sure who else to ask. Have you heard from Timi? I’m a bit worried. He hasn’t responded to my messages or any of our mates’. And hasn’t posted anything in a bit. I think something happened. I’m scared he’s gone and done something daft. Please let me know if you know anything.
Taiye bolted upright so quickly her head became a helium balloon, and she had to pause to keep from falling back.
Call him again, Our Lady directed.
Taiye called, over and over. She fell asleep cotton-mouthed and light-headed, to a ringtone. She woke up the next morning and called in sick to work. She spent the day calling. She took the tube to Norwood junction and walked to Unchained Ministries, calling Timi’s number the whole while. The church was closed, so she sat on the front steps for the duration of fifty-nine unanswered calls.
Our Lady placed a holy hand on Taiye’s shoulder, and she shivered. She asked, “Is he okay?”
But Our Lady only pursed her lips and sigh
ed.
Taiye carried on walking.
Forty-five minutes to Croydon, Aiden’s neighbourhood, her fingers insistent on the redial button, and still no answer from Timi. Taiye felt frustration build tension in her right shoulder. She fought the impulse to throw her phone into the glass windows of a Chinese herb store. With her phone still against her ear, she entered Wandle Park. She perched on a cold low stone fence across from a placid pond. There she peeled the hot phone from her face, and instead of redialling Timi, she called her mother.
After four rings, the phone went to voice mail, and the coincidence of her mother being unavailable at the same time as Timi arrested Taiye’s breath in her throat. She called her mother again, and when it went to voice mail again, she cried into the phone, “Mami, I’m alone.”
Across from her, Our Lady shook her head.
Taiye said, “I make things bad with people, I don’t know … I’m just alone …”
The phone beeped. She dropped her face into her hands and let her body heave with sobbing.
“Zora was right,” Taiye said to Our Lady. “I have nothing that nourishes.”
Our Lady lifted Taiye’s chin and said, You haven’t eaten today.
TAIYE WALKED SLOWLY, still calling Timi, time warping around her—a gift from her mother—until Our Lady shimmered at the entrance of a café with a mustard-yellow awning and a sign that read ABEILLE in bronze lettering. It was late afternoon with the sky hanging low, laden, and grey, refusing to give in and just break open in the drizzle that everybody was expecting.
Taiye had talked, more than once, with Timi about the “something daft” Aiden had mentioned. Always in semi-jest, always as something they would never do, never.
But: “You know, sometimes a queen gets tired.”That’s how Timi put it.
Taiye knew that she would never go there, not while Kehinde was alive in the world. She would never leave her sister alone, even if they never spoke again. But Timi was an only child; he was his mother’s miracle. He took form after she’d spent many years casting and binding every evil spirit and every curse that kept her womb tied shut. He took form and filled her life with purpose, that’s how she put it when, seven months pregnant at age forty-three, she gave testimony at Unchained Ministries. Timi’s mother meant well; really, she loved him like a vice. But her words started to take cruel shapes when she saw the softness in his gestures. He had never been exceptionally masculine, but that was fine in boyhood. She expected a certain level of toughening up as he grew, but no. No, he leaned deeper into femmeness, until she highlighted the parameters of her love. She made it clear that neither she nor the church would protect him from the inevitable wrath of God if he didn’t stop all that rubbish and behave like a normal man. So he became two people. One person for God and his mother, and another for himself. And he shared himself with his queer friends like Aiden, like Taiye.
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