“I wish I’d been there,” Taiye says, disrupting the silence that has fallen between us. “At your wedding, as a witness, or just to dance with you afterward.”
She adds my shoddily minced onions to the pan of hot oil.
“I would have loved to be there.” The longing in her voice is palpable enough to rise over the loud sizzling.
Silence emerges again, as onions caramelize to a translucent golden brown, and then she asks me to add the rice and sauté it for a moment before adding the saffron liquid, three cups of water, and salt.
In the time it takes the saffron rice to cook through, the catfish vindaloo is ready, and Taiye has made us black tea with evaporated milk and honey from her hive. We are sitting at the table with the pregnancy tests between us, but she is elsewhere, receded into herself. I recognize this trait of hers, the way her pupils widen, regardless of the light, as she slips behind them and dips herself away to away. She’s done this since we were small, but it grew more frequent after our father died.
“I’ve been reading your letters,” I say, to bring her back.
“You need to go to a clinic for checkups and stuff,” she says quietly, “to see how far along you are and get vitamins …”
“I’ve been reading your letters,” I say again, though I’m sure she heard me the first time.
“Mami will be so happy about the baby.” Still ignoring my revelation, she takes a sip of her tea.
“Taiye,” I say, my tone forceful now, “I said I’ve been read—”
“I heard you.” Her voice stays soft, but she looks away from me.
Before I can respond, I hear heavy footsteps descending the stairs. At the same moment, a stir begins in my stomach and grows more vigorous with each breath. I am bent over in my chair, combatting an intense wave of nausea, when Farouq crouches beside me and starts rubbing my back. When the nausea passes and I sit up, I see his eyes dart from the tests on the table to Taiye to me before he says, “Uh … babe?”
Kambirinachi
KAMBIRINACHI BLOSSOMED in the gaze of her growing babies. She was suited to motherhood. Those first few years back in Lagos were truly blissful.
Banji’s employers, the Austrian couple, however, were unsatisfied with their own marriage, and thus poured all their affection into renovating their property. They transformed the deteriorating block of flats into a three-storey home with massive windows to swallow all that Lagos sunshine. They ensured there were many bedrooms for visiting relatives, a high-ceilinged kitchen, a spacious backyard. But the new home failed to coax new love out of them, and the government—another military dictator had taken office—the heat—the Island humidity!—the failing business—who would have thought that small-time traders wouldn’t be able to pay back microloans?—were making their time in Nigeria unbearable.
The wife left first. She returned to her home city of Klagenfurt. The husband followed two years later, after Toyosi called things off. She’d met someone else, a soft-spoken pastor and sharp businessman who would go on to start one of the city’s largest megachurches. Weeks before leaving, the boss called Banji to his office to tell him they would be closing shop. And he was giving Banji the house.
“So I’ll be jobless, but we’ll have a home,” Banji reported to Kambirinachi that evening while she peeled old yams for fufu.
The six-year-old twins were playing hide-and-seek by the plantain palms, Kehinde squealing whenever Taiye found her, poorly hidden under the same canopy of leaves where she’d hidden the last three times.
“And he wants nothing in return?”
Banji shook his head, slicing fingers of okra for soup. “Nothing.”
“This is a gift!” she shouted. “Why do you seem stressed about it?”
“Isn’t it too big a gift?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She waved his anxieties away and set the large chunks of yam to boil on the stove. “Somebody wants to dash us a house, and you’re panicking.”
“People don’t do things like this for free, Kambi.”
“Rich oyimbo people who feel guilty about leaving you jobless and are leaving the country do.” She laughed. “Have you talked to Toyosi?”
“No, I don’t want to say anything until I’ve signed the papers and he’s moved out, and we’ve moved in.”
“Probably wise.”
“Not that I think she’ll have an issue with it.”
“So what else are you worried about, worry worry?”
“It’s just,” he chuckled softly, “it’s a whole house, Kambi.”
She smiled and took his hands, slippery with okra. “It’s a gift. Let’s just say thank you.”
“Mami!” Kehinde ran into the kitchen, out of breath. “I can’t find Taiye!”
But Kambirinachi lifted her eyes to see Taiye perched on the knobbly limb of the frangipani tree outside the kitchen window, giggling at having successfully disappeared.
OH, HOW THE TWINS LOVED THAT HOUSE! So many rooms in which to play hide-and-seek. So much space to twirl and dance. Such high ceilings to carry their voices when they sang. So many corners to in which to whisper secrets. Inseparable, they shared the same room, slept in a tight ball, clutching each other in the soft centre of their small bed. They were a small family of four, but they filled the house right up.
Aunty Akuchi came to visit, and she brought her music; it mingled with so much laughter, rose up to coat the ceilings of the home with joy. They hosted a small housewarming party with Kenneth, Toyosi, Banji’s mother and sisters, and a handful of new Lagos friends. A lovely celebration of blessings or luck or whatever benevolent force had seen fit to hook them up so well. During the party, Kambirinachi escaped the buoyant chatter for a moment of quiet in the well-appointed kitchen she was still getting used to. There she found Toyosi looking up at the ceiling. “It’s so big,” she said, when Kambirinachi came into her view.
“It is,” she replied, and sat cross-legged on the cold tile floor.
Toyosi sat across from her, and Kambirinachi could read the taut lines of envy on her face.
“Maybe I would have got it if I wasn’t trying to be a pastor’s wife,” she said, intending her statement to come off light, a joke.
But Kambirinachi understood scarcity and the fear it invokes. “Maybe.”
“You just have it all,” Toyosi said, “don’t you?”
“I do?”
It had been almost eight years, and they had not grown close.
“Gentle husband, twins—your tiny waistline after birthing twins.” She laughed. “In England, for that matter. And now, a beautiful, newly renovated house on the Island.”
“I suppose I’m fortunate.” Kambirinachi smiled.
“Or blessed.” Toyosi returned the smile, albeit tight and insincere. “Or something else …”
“Is there anything else?”
“Kenneth seems to think so.”
“Kenneth finds me attractive and doesn’t know what to do about it.” Kambirinachi was frank, but her smile didn’t falter. “What do you think?” she asked Toyosi.
“How are you going to furnish this whole house?” Toyosi deflected.
“With time,” Kambirinachi answered, and she asked again, “What do you think?”
“I’m a woman of God.” Toyosi shrugged. “So I think you’re highly favoured.”
“You lost nothing, Toyosi.” Kambirinachi unfolded her legs and got up. “If it’s wealth that you want, the man you chose, he’ll attract plenty. If it’s children that you want, you’ll have many.”
“How do you know?”
“What is yours is yours, no one can else can claim it.”
Toyosi looked down at her palms and muttered through sudden tears, “Thank you for the blessing.”
“We’re all creatures of the cosmos,” Kambirinachi said. “It’s only the law.” Then she returned to the party.
BANJI KEPT HIS PROMISE to love Kambirinachi every day. In many ways, his love looked as one might have been taught to expect fr
om a man, a husband, a provider. For over a year after Dasha Microfinance folded, he exploited every connection he could to find another job. Until, with a fine dusting of sugar coating the soles of his shoes, he walked into an interview with a corporate law firm in desperate need of an accountant, their last one having attempted to flee with a considerable portion of the firm’s previous year’s earnings. That man was sitting in a filthy jail cell as Banji was being interviewed.
“Despite the fuckery of this country, we value honesty and integrity here.” The interviewer was abrupt. He looked no more than a decade older than Banji and was the newest partner at the firm. “That is the culture of this firm: honesty, integrity, diligence. We won’t waste your time if you don’t waste ours. I’ve interviewed eight other candidates today, and everyone has been rubbish, barely able to string a sentence together. I see you have a certificate from LSE, and you worked in microfinance, not bad. You’re a bit young. You have a family?”
“I do.” Banji leaned forward in his chair. “A wife and twins, they’re eight years—”
The interviewer cut him off. “The hours here are long. We have international clients who expect fu—”
“Apologies for interrupting,” Banji said. “I’m exceptional at what I do. I may not have done it for very long, but I work smart, I work quickly, and my numbers are flawless. I want this job.”
Pleased with Banji’s forwardness, the interviewer took a long pause before asking, “When can you start?”
“That depends on the salary.”
The interviewer flipped open the paper file on his desk and pushed it toward Banji. There was a work contract with the salary highlighted in yellow. Banji looked down at it, cleared his throat, and then looked up at the interviewer and said, “I can start tomorrow.”
Banji’s love also looked more tender than one might have been taught to expect from a man and a husband. He hung Kambirinachi’s paintings all over their new house and suggested she consider selling them.
“It’s incredible!” he would gasp whenever she churned out another kaleidoscopic piece.
Work consumed his hours, but despite exhaustion, he stayed awake to cuddle the twins while Kambirinachi told them stories of magic people in Abeokuta. Whenever they fought, he conceded, if only because he didn’t want to waste time divided by anger.
“I don’t care who’s right,” he would say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, tell me how to make it good again.”
Banji was there, he was loving, and he was content.
And then he died.
A LITTLE OVER FOUR YEARS AFTER HE STARTED AT THE LAW FIRM, Banji was on his way home from the work. He was driving a new car, a company car, on the Falomo Bridge. The sun had only just sunk beneath the horizon—he had watched it from the standstill traffic—when a group of robbers surrounded the car and demanded that he roll the windows down. Banji shook his head and honked, but every other car was honking, too. The driver behind him noticed what was happening and honked as well.
“Oga open, or we go shoot o!” one of the robbers shouted. Their faces weren’t even covered; their eyes were red, lips blackened and chapped. Five of them, all armed with black assault rifles. The youngest one was shaking; he was thin, and the gun looked heavy in his spindly arms.
“Open the door!” the shortest one shouted. He must have been the ringleader; he was muscular and the least shaky of the lot.
Banji closed his eyes and whispered the Lord’s Prayer. He opened the door and stepped out of the car with the keys in his hand.
“Take it,” he said. His whole body shook. “I have twins,” he said. “They are only twelve years old. And a wife. She’s waiting for me at home.”
“Shut up!” The ringleader snatched the keys from Banji’s outstretched hand.
They entered the car. Two of them leaned out the windows with their rifles out. They revved and honked and waved their guns so that the other drivers would move out of their way, driving their vehicles up onto the sidewalk, fear of violence clearing the traffic. Banji leaned against the concrete barricade and exhaled.
The driver who had been behind him rolled down his window, his eyes wide, and said, “Jesu Christi, bros abeg enter my car. Where I fit take you?”
“E-e se o,” Banji stuttered. Dazed, he started toward the car, until he saw the youngest robber running toward him, crying. Banji froze, his mind screamed, but he couldn’t move. In slow motion, the young robber raised his rifle and shot Banji square in the chest.
A scared nineteen-year-old, still a child, newly recruited into armed robbery, fingers twitchy with nervousness, was asked to prove his loyalty, or be killed.
Does it matter what made him a killer?
On the bridge, Banji wheezed as his lifeblood poured out of him. He closed his eyes so that the last thing he would see was his wife’s face, smiling at him, welcoming him home.
On the other side of the bridge, Kambirinachi squeezed Kehinde’s shoulders between her knees and braided the squirming girl’s dense coils in the living room. In the kitchen, Taiye helped Sister Bisi, the housegirl they’d hired when Banji got the job at the law firm.
Kambirinachi was lifting a glass of water to her lips when the young robber pulled the trigger. And when the bullets tore open her husband’s chest, she gasped. She felt a swift force slam her own breast and dropped the glass of water to shatter on the floor beside Kehinde. In the kitchen, Taiye crumpled onto the tiled floor in a sudden convulsion.
Something you must know is that Kambirinachi and Death were no strangers—no, but certainly not friends, either. Kambirinachi knew Death from before before. And regardless of what Kambirinachi thought about her, or what the world knows about her, Death is not, in fact, a dreary, hooded, scythe-bearing bore. She is a doorway personified, vibrant and hilarious, quite whimsical, actually. But she takes her job very seriously, more diligently than the tides that pull back the ocean’s skirts. She is prompt and focused, and this is what Kambirinachi loathed about her. Having done it herself, Kambirinachi knew that one can deny one’s nature, and she believed that one ought to, sometimes, decline the pull of one’s blood to run its course.
After Banji was killed, Kambirinachi called upon Death and presented her petition. She pleaded, “Just this once, I beg you, don’t take him.”
“Ha!” Death exclaimed. “Just once? As if you haven’t attempted to cheat me before.” She sucked her teeth and cut her eyes at Kambirinachi.
Kambirinachi whimpered, “But you still collected what was due.”
“After,” Death raised a glowing finger in accusation, “after you stole time from me!”
“Please …” Kambirinachi begged, “please, please.”
“I won’t hear, I won’t hear it,” said Death. “You know that I am the marrow. This is my work. If I sway for you, then everything will falter. It’s all meaningless if I’m a bad worker, easily moved by passionate petition.”
“I beg you, take me instead, please.”
“What you’re asking me to do is an abomination. But it seems you are more comfortable with that, now that you’ve become an abomination yourself.”
Kambirinachi swallowed the insult. “Please take me instead.”
“I don’t want you,” said Death. “I collect only what I’m owed. Otherwise, everything unravels.”
Kambirinachi’s wailing was hard to hear, even for a dedicated worker like Death.
Death had nothing soothing to say, yet she tried. “You have little ones. He lives in their faces, in their blood, too. Look there and be content.”
KAMBIRINACHI’S GRIEF WAS PERMANENT.
The whole house grew cold. The windows seemed to shrink and the ceilings rise higher.
Her Kin rushed forth to comfort her, and she let them, basking in the soothing numbness of dissociation. But, as is their nature, they tried to lure her home again. Remembering her daughters, Kambirinachi turned away from her Kin once more. At Banji’s funeral, she held the twins’ small damp hands and stood still in the u
nrelenting sun, held their hands tight as the casket lowered into the dry earth. The twins wept quietly on either side of their mother. Taiye hadn’t spoken since Kambirinachi told the girls their father was dead. She cried when Kehinde cried; otherwise, she seemed to recede into herself. She never came all the way back after her convulsion in the kitchen.
For over a week after the funeral, the house was flooded with Banji’s relatives. They trickled out slowly only after Banji’s mother and Aunty Akuchi gently suggested over and over that they allow the widow and her children to mourn in peace. Everyone left except Funke, Banji’s fourth cousin from his late father’s side of the family. She insisted on staying to help Kambirinachi with the twins, and within a few days, her boyfriend, Ernest, joined her.
Taiye
SALOMÉ LIVED IN A TWO-BEDROOM, two-storey semi-detached home on Dresden Row in the South End, which was a fifteen-minute walk from Saint Agnes University, where she worked as an associate professor in the sociology department. On the days she had Hachim, dinner was simple: stir-fried veggies and rice, tofu scramble on molasses seed bread, baked sweet potatoes with tahini and black beans. Hachim was two years into veganism, a choice he made after a class visit to a small pig farm where they learned the origin of bacon. He had come home distraught and determined not to eat animals.
On this particular night, however, Salomé wanted to impress Taiye, who was, much like her, a voracious meat-eater. She ordered pork belly kimchi stew and had it heating on the stove when Taiye arrived.
The sultry melodies of D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar met Taiye when she arrived. “I like this song,” she said, as she stepped in through the heavy wooden doors. “It’s … smooth.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to seduce you.” Salomé chuckled. “I can’t compete with your cooking, so I’ve enlisted the help of D’Angelo and the other Soulquarians.”
“Who, or what, are the Soulquarians?”
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