Butter Honey Pig Bread

by Francesca Ekwuyasi

  Banji was one of three people privy to the affair. He’d asked her over the phone a week prior, “Are you sure he’ll be okay with us staying?”

  “Yes, jare! In fact, he’ll be out of town, so no wahala at all.”

  By the time they drove through the compound, the sun had begun its slow descent, painting the low-hanging clouds in orange and magenta streaks. Kambirinachi had never met Toyosi in person, but she liked her voice on the phone, and she liked all the stories of Banji’s childhood in which she featured as a brash fearless lizard catcher, or agbalumo thief, or general cheeky trickster. As an apology for missing their wedding, Toyosi sent Kambirinachi presents of delicate lace lingerie and pearlescent waist beads. The accompanying card joked that it was actually more of a present for Banji, and Toyosi signed off with many Xs and Os, and a PS expressing how eager she was to meet Kambirinachi in Lagos, finally.

  And when they did meet at the front door of her flat, Toyosi squealed and wrapped her plump arms around Kambirinachi. “So good to finally meet you!” She pulled back, squeezed her shoulders, tilted her head to the side, and added, “And you are fine, sha!”

  To Banji, she said, “Well done!” with a playful slap to his shoulder.

  “Thank God you arrived well o,” she said, and led them into the sparsely furnished living room where a ceiling fan spun lazily. The lights dimmed and brightened, dimmed and brightened.

  “Toyo, this whole place for you?!” Banji exclaimed and dropped their bags by a sofa painted in giant red hibiscuses. He gave her a proper hug before he collapsed, exhausted, into a chair and pulled Kambirinachi into his lap.

  “Yes, ke!” Toyosi replied. Then she said to Kambirinachi, “You’re always so quiet?”

  Banji laughed. “She’s not o, don’t be fooled.”

  Kambirinachi rolled her eyes at him and smiled demurely at Toyosi.

  “Sorry, I was just distracted, thinking. I really like this sofa.”

  “Thank you, my bo—the person I’m dating had it made for me.” She placed a manicured hand on the arm of the chair; her glossy red nails matched the flowers.

  “It’s very beautiful,” Kambirinachi said, and stifled a yawn.

  “No sleeping before supper.” Toyosi wagged her finger at Kambirinachi. “I hope you two are hungry.”

  “Three.” Banji winced. “Kenny is coming to get his van. He’ll join us for supper, jor no vex.”

  “That mugu owes me petrol money!”

  KENNETH RANG THE SHRILL DOORBELL and let himself into the flat. Kambirinachi was very smugly beating Banji at a game of Ayo, and Toyosi had disappeared into the kitchen to heat a pot of egusi soup.

  “Baba Banji!” Kenneth shouted from the door as he slid off wet squelchy sandals. “Longest time, brother!”

  Banji flew off the couch and embraced his old friend. They did an elaborate handshake that involved a few finger snaps and finished with a lean back and a whistle.

  “Longest time!” Banji exclaimed. He stretched his hand out toward Kambirinachi and said, “Kenny, this is my wife, Kambi. Kambi, Kenny and I went to primary school together.”

  At the sight of Kambirinachi, Kenneth’s features arranged themselves in an expression of utter bewilderment. He was confident he knew this woman—and knew her well, down to her smell and the white flecks on her fingernails—but for the life of him, he couldn’t say from where.

  Kambirinachi ignored his slack-jawed ogle and shook his outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you, Kenny.”

  “Sister, no vex, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  “I don’t know. Did you go to OAU?”

  “No, UNILAG.”

  “I grew up in Abeokuta … maybe there …?”

  “My father’s people are from there, but I grew up in Ife with them Banji and Toyosi.”

  “Well, I was in Ife as well, so maybe that’s where.” Annoyance was climbing up and down her neck and shoulders. Kambirinachi did not like the way he looked at her face, an intense stare that was certain of something she could neither confirm nor deny.

  “Bros, abeg leave my wife before I woze you.” Banji stepped in, as confused as Kambirinachi was annoyed.

  “Jor, no vex …” Kenneth reluctantly tore his eyes away from Kambirinachi’s face. He scratched the back of his neck, as if to disperse the awkwardness that was clouding the spaces between their bodies, and asked, “Where Toyosi dey?”

  “Kitchen.” Banji motioned in that direction with a sideways tilt of his head.

  After Kenneth vanished into the kitchen, Banji turned to Kambirinachi with raised eyebrows. “Have you met him before?”

  Kambirinachi shook her head and shrugged. “No.”

  “He’s funny,” Banji said, but it was clear by his tone that he meant something considerably more serious.

  BETWEEN SWALLOWS OF EBA made with yellow garri and the peppery egusi chock-full of stockfish and chicken, the three friends and Kambirinachi played a tight game of Ludo. All except Banji had successfully moved all four of their tokens out of their yards and were in a close race for the finishing square. Sade Adu’s silky voice poured out of a cassette player and filled the living room with the sultry rhythms of “Smooth Operator.”

  “Where is your interview tomorrow?” Toyosi asked Banji, as she rolled the dice to determine how many squares forward her token could move.

  “On the Island, Ikoyi.”

  “What time?”

  “Nine thirty.”

  “Ah, you better leave here around seven, just to be safe.”

  “I can drop you off,” Kenneth offered. The young man was making a valiant effort to not look at Kambirinachi. “What is the name of the company?”

  “Dasha Microfinance, it’s a ne—”

  “Are you joking?” Toyosi asked, cutting him off, her eyebrows knotted in a sudden tight frown. She handed the dice to Kambirinachi and sat back with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Yes now, why? You know it?”

  “That’s my”—she waved a hand vaguely—“you know, my person’s new company.”

  “Are you serious?” Banji asked.

  The game paused.

  Kenneth and Kambirinachi looked from Toyosi to Banji and back again.

  “How did you even find out about it?” Toyosi asked.

  “One of Popsie’s connections … wait, why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “Ah ahn, sebi, you know I don’t like to mix my life with his life like that now.” She pouted ever so slightly, a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance playing out across her heart-shaped face.

  “So, is this somehow for you?”

  “Well, I can’t be the one to tell you not to interview for the job.”

  “No,” Kenneth piped in, “but you can put in a good word for him with your Oga and make sure he gets it.”

  “Kenny, no,” Banji interrupted. “Toyosi, you don’t have to do that—”

  “She doesn’t have to, but it would be nice if she did,” Kambirinachi said softly.

  All three of them turned to look at Kambirinachi, surprised that she had spoken up after her near silence for the majority of the evening. The rain was coming down hard again, and the pittering sound merged with the noise from the traffic below and the din from many nearby beer parlours. So it wasn’t quite an awkward silence that enveloped the room but a disquiet that refused to be quelled when Toyosi finally said, “Well, he’s out of town anyway, so he won’t even be the one interviewing you.”

  “He owns the company,” Kambirinachi scoffed. “You could always call and let him know that your dear childhood friend—”

  “Kambi, stop.” Banji was firm.

  Kambirinachi only shrugged, put the dice down, got up, and sauntered to Toyosi’s spare bedroom.

  BANJI, EVER CHARMING, IMPRESSED THE VICE-PRESIDENT of Dasha Microfinance, convincing her that what he lacked in experience he compensated for with sheer enthusiasm and keenness to learn. Granted, the vice-president happened to be the disgruntled wife of the f
ounder; acutely aware of her husband’s indiscretions, she decided that at the very least she could have a beautiful boy to look at.

  Moreover, despite her hesitation and new-found dislike for Kambirinachi, Toyosi did put in a good word for her childhood friend. Although, if you asked Kambirinachi, she would say that while her husband slept, she whispered prayers of luck and favour into the starched cuffs and collar of the striped button-down he would wear to the interview. She would add that she sweetened his path with a heavy dusting of crushed sugar on the soles of his brown leather loafers, and that, she would explain, is why he got the job.

  The point remains, however, that he did get the job. The considerably well-compensated job that, because he had to relocate to Lagos, included housing. The housing was a rather modest one-bedroom bungalow in the dusty boys’ quarters of Banji’s new employers’ recently acquired property in Ikoyi.

  Banji and Kambirinachi were thrilled to be securing a life for themselves in the nation’s capital. Before moving into the bungalow, Kambirinachi clapped and prayed into every corner in all four rooms to clear away whatever spirits belonged to its previous residents. And to invite only goodness into her new home. Then, with their sparse belongings still mostly packed, they celebrated on a raffia mat spread on the pale yellow linoleum tiles of their tiny living room, drinking palm wine—a gift from Kenneth—and digging into catfish pepper soup—a gift from Toyosi.

  Taiye

  OUR LADY’s VOICE BECAME A FIXTURE IN TAIYE’s MIND, a kindly inquirer, never mocking or cruel but always honest. Her voice grew so similar to Taiye’s that the two became quite indistinguishable. Her ethereal embodiment merged with Taiye’s reflection so that all Taiye had to do was look upon any reflective surface and there Our Lady would be: skin a deep dark brown, eyes widened and darkened, face narrowed, exactly like Taiye’s. So that Taiye would never be alone.

  During those first few lonely months in Halifax, with its salty fogs and gorgeous ocean and monuments to cruel colonizers, Our Lady was Taiye’s only companion. She followed Taiye on the charming ferry, across the dazzling harbour, to the Akerley campus of the community college, where Taiye took culinary courses. She whispered encouragements when Taiye’s body felt too heavy and entirely uninterested in crawling out of bed to engage with the world, sometimes for whole weekends. She suggested that Taiye attend free lectures at the public Central Library on Spring Garden Road, if only to be around other people, if only to share the same air and hear other voices. Our Lady joined Taiye on long evening walks from where she rented the finished basement in a four-bedroom house on Creighton Street in the North End of the small city. Like her attic flat in London, her place had its own separate door and a tiny afterthought of a kitchen. She only had to share a bathroom with the rotating roster of roommates upstairs.

  Their walks invariably included a perch on one of the picnic benches by the harbour, the cold breeze from the ocean whipping through Taiye’s insufficient layers of clothing, raising goosebumps on her skin. It was a simple matter of loneliness. The same grief that drove her to seek respite in the beds of willing women, that drove her into nearly anything that paused her whirling mind, and most recently, that drove her abruptly out of London. It was always the same creature, creeping up and dressed for different occasions, and it felt somewhat matched by the vastness and dramatics of the ocean.

  On a particularly frigid Wednesday evening, after a tiresome knife skills class revisiting technique that she’d already learned, Taiye cried cold tears on her bench by the ocean, and then continued her walk up traffic-clogged Barrington Street and onto Argyle Street. She walked down the cobblestoned sidewalks and considered the bars. Many Irish pubs, a Mexican bar, at least two oyster bars, a karaoke bar, a French bistro, a wine bar. She was considering the soothing silence of intoxication when Our Lady said to Taiye, Look at this sweet little place. Check it out.

  Taiye turned toward the small tea shop at the back of an old Marriott Hotel, with the words GOOD TEAS displayed in large grey lettering across its bright red awning. She walked inside, smiled at the blue-haired woman at the counter, and scanned the wall behind her for a list of teas.

  “We have smelling samples on the wall over there,” Blue Hair said.

  Taiye stood, holding small glass jars of tea to her face, mmming at the feast of aromas, losing herself in the green tea section for nearly an hour. On the adjacent wall: black tea blends. She selected a sample jar of lapsang souchong and the deep earth, glowing fire smokiness blossomed ideas of smoked rice, chicken marinated in the potent brew, a glaze made of tea reduction with honey and fish sauce. Taiye, eyes closed, nose buried in the jar, a half smile on her face, was oblivious to the woman watching her with amusement.

  “Good?” someone asked, startling Taiye out of her tea-fuelled reverie.

  Taiye looked up, saw the owner of the voice, and her smile widened, bashful.

  “Really good,” she replied to the woman whose dark skin and sloe eyes roused in Taiye a familiar longing. She turned away, entirely unaware that this person would scrape through her poorly hidden wounds to reveal something worthwhile.

  HALIFAX IS A SMALL CITY, beautiful and old. If you visit during the sweltering height of summer, you can prance along the crowded boardwalk and sway your hips to the music of many buskers performing in the salty breeze of the harbour. You can stop along the waterfront for a variety of full-fat ice creams; salty, saucy, cheesy poutine; sugar-coated beaver tails; fish and chips; and an assortment of taffies, cakes, and sweets. Downtown, you can visit the public gardens, where you may enjoy the pretty flowers, the fountains, and the comical sight of fat bumbling geese in the bird enclosure. If you wander north, to any of the many microbreweries and bistros, it might be difficult to ignore the glaring scars of gentrification, but you must, if you have any intention of savouring your Jonah crab bao, or your mezcal and tepache cocktail. And if while nursing the aforementioned cocktail, you start to wonder where all the Black and Indigenous people are … well … we’ll have to get back to that.

  If, like Taiye, you turn up in September and are lulled into sentiments of warmth and wellness by all the torrid gorgeousness of red oak trees aflame in autumn, don’t lose hope when the brittle cold descends swiftly and without notice. If you feel discouraged by the severity of that wet winter cold seeping right down to your core, hold tight until spring; it all comes alive again. In the meantime, there will be hot tea, wool socks, warm bread, and soups to tide you over.

  By mid-March, after a lonely Christmas that included Catholic Mass, a two-hour video call with her mother, and the drunken preparation of a Christmas feast that she lived off for over a week, Taiye found her rhythm, just as the air started to warm and the trees slowly clothed themselves in green again.

  Her culinary skills program was chugging along; in a Protein and Sauce Foundations course, she learned the basic techniques of butchering a pig and how best to cook its various cuts.

  The first step is to break the hog down to its five main cuts: shoulder, belly, loin, ham, and head. Then you can whittle the beast down further to steaks, chops, and bacon. Cuts like the loin, sirloin, spareribs, and shoulders are ideal for roasting, whereas the blade steak, chop, tenderloin, and arm steak are better braised. Pan broiling ham slices and bacon does those cuts the most justice. Very little is wasted, especially not the fat. Lard, Taiye discovered, was much less challenging to make than she’d anticipated. It was, in fact, a simple matter of using the leaf fat from around the pig’s kidneys, as this particular kind of fat produces a versatile white and mildly flavoured lard. First, you must dice the fat in small pieces or, perhaps, grind it up. Then place it in a heavy pot, something that distributes heat evenly, like a cast-iron Dutch oven. Simmer over low heat. The fat will begin to melt, and it will smell blissful. Then the cracklings will sink, rise up again, and start to crackle and sigh—only then can you turn off the heat and thoroughly strain the oil.

  Good lard is divine, unless you take issue with the killing and
consumption of sentient creatures. Taiye had no problem with it. So when the instructor suggested that each student keep some of the lard they’d rendered, Taiye eagerly obliged. She was holding the warm sixteen-ounce Mason jar of pig fat in her lap as she sat on the top deck of the ferry from Woodside to Halifax when she saw the woman from the tea shop again.

  The woman had a boyish demeanour and was leaning against the railing, beside a sign that read DO NOT LEAN OVER GUARDRAIL. Beside her was a lanky child with chunky chin-length locs, also leaning against the railing. They wore matching black patent leather boots, the kind that Taiye associated with American punks. Both pairs were covered in chalky white salt stains. Taiye was sure it was the same person from the tea shop, if only by the deep belly gnaw of attraction she felt toward her.

  The child said something in a comically animated fashion that Taiye couldn’t hear from where she sat. And when the woman threw her head back in laughter, her hood fell to reveal a short tapered Afro with a sharp undercut. As if she was suddenly aware of Taiye’s gaze, the woman turned in her direction. When her eyes settled on Taiye, she raised a thick brow and offered a small smile that illuminated her fine-boned features.

  Taiye’s smile in return was much more tentative—feeble, in fact. She was uncharacteristically cautious: keeping to herself at school, keeping off dating apps, keeping away from most of her favourite vices. Yes, she routinely got profoundly stoned alone at home, masturbated to the kind of hentai that made her confident she was a disgusting pervert, and ate copious amounts of meat and pastries. But the point was that she did all this alone. No cocaine with strangers, no shrooms with new lovers, no booze with beloved friends, no sex with anyone but herself. No one to abandon, and no one by whom to be abandoned.

  By the time the woman looked in her direction again, Taiye was gone. Down to the interior of the cabin, perched on a seat close to the exit. Ready to jet off the ferry once it docked, before she could convince herself to ride out her desire for touch.