Lagos Noir

The Swimming Pool by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Victoria Island

Speaking of oceans, Victoria Island is slipping into the Atlantic, but nobody wants to know. People have other, more pressing things to worry about. Take Mr. Adewale, for example, who, on his last day, while having breakfast, complains most vociferously about the neighbors. Would he have done so had he known that the next day these same neighbors would be wailing at the news of his death? But in that moment, as in every moment of his life, his own death fails to cross his mind. His audience, Mrs. Adewale, gently reminds him that where they live is still considered the crème de la crème of Lagos, which brings Mr. Adewale no comfort. He built his Victoria Island mansion in 1991, and deems every house constructed thereafter an encroachment — a mass of higgledy-piggledy dwellings conspiring to block his ocean view. So no, Victoria Island is not the crème de la crème. Not anymore.

“Listen,” he says, opening the sliding doors so that the wife might better hear the roar of the neighbor’s pneumatic drill and the drone of generators.

“Yes, dear. Please close it,” she sighs, slapping about her legs in expectation of mosquitoes let in from outside.

“You see what I mean?” he presses, impatiently kissing his teeth. “All of this random construction with no zoning laws, no building codes, and no thought for aesthetics! Is this the sort of legacy we want to leave for our children?” He believes he’s made his case, oblivious to the fact that his wife is bored with the topic and especially bored with him.

Mrs. Adewale finds her husband’s ramblings tiresome and pedantic, and the reference to children irritating. She sometimes wishes he’d just hurry up and die. He’s grown fat in recent years and prone to wheezing. One would think that in such a state... and yet the man lives on. Things might have been more tolerable if only she had someone to complain to, but her friends are jealous. They wonder why she isn’t content with her wealthy husband. Who cares if she’s never been able to bear the man a child, or that the inherited daughter from the man’s first marriage is trouble? The girl is away at boarding school most of the time, so what’s the problem? But never mind these friends. She’ll soon put all of this behind her.

The inheritance now joins them for breakfast, to which Mrs. Adewale reacts with her habitual withering glance, envious of the ease with which the girl wears her low-rise jeans and sequined tank top. It’s not a look meant for middle-aged women, but Mrs. Adewale has occasionally tried squeezing herself into such things, maddened that her youth and beauty are slipping away just when the new pastor has taken an interest in her. Why these sudden blotches on the face, the threads of gray hair, and worst of all, the deep fleshy rings encircling her neck like Indian bangles — dozens of them!

“Look at you!” Mr. Adewale exclaims, seeing how his daughter is dressed. “Who told you to dress like Jezebel?

“Go and change!” chimes Mrs. Adewale.

“Didn’t you hear your mother? Go and change!”

“She’s not my mother,” Tinuke mutters, seething at being shamed in front of the wicked witch.

“Go!” he shouts, loud enough for Cecilia to hear from the kitchen.

Cecilia lifts the frying pan off the stove and listens. She’s worked for this family long enough to know when to be quiet, but now that she’s decided to leave, she wonders why she bothers. She thinks again of the petroleum minister whose cook, the papers say, stole millions from the minister’s vault. What she intends to take is just pocket change in comparison.

“Cecilia!” Mr. Adewale calls.

“Saaah.” Cecilia hastily dries her hands against her apron and hurries to the breakfast room, straightening and pulling down her skirt as she goes.

“Where are my eggs?”

“Is coming, sah!”

“And toast? What’s taking you so long? Hurry up!” He claps his hands quickly.

“Sorry, sah. I’m coming just now.”

Cecilia scurries back to the kitchen, relights the burner, and starts frying the onions. She pauses for a moment, listening to make sure nobody’s coming, then spits into the bowl of eggs. She beats swiftly before pouring the eggs into the pan. While the omelet cooks, she serves the akara and cuts the toast into triangles. When everything is ready, she wipes her brow with two fingers and flicks the sweat onto her employer’s plate. Added seasoning for his coming up behind her yesterday and squeezing her breasts while she was removing a cake from the oven. She ought to have thrown the hot pan at his feet.

Mr. and Mrs. sit silently over the remains of breakfast. Beneath the table, Mrs. Adewale fingers the unwanted bulges that pad her waist, and with her other hand helps herself to a third piece of toast, regardless. Mr. Adewale momentarily returns to thoughts of his neighbors before drifting back to more pleasant thoughts of his current love — Nadia.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Tinuke throws herself onto her bed, and with muffled cries pounds the mattress with both fists. “I can’t take it, can’t take it!” she sobs, eventually sitting up. She unzips her jeans, flings them to one side and puts on a skirt, wipes the tears from her face, and stares at her seventeen-year-old self in the mirror. Just a few more weeks, she reminds herself. Just a few more weeks.

Mr. Adewale eyes his daughter, now back at the breakfast table, dressed in more sensible clothing. He reaches over to squeeze her shoulder, but she pulls away. Let her be then. He remembers her as a little girl, the way she used to sit on his lap and eat from his plate. He used to carry her around on his shoulders, play tickling games, and tell ijapa tales of the clever tortoise outwitting all the other animals of the forest. The stories made her laugh, and for a while she took to calling herself Ijapa, hiding behind furniture and then jumping out to shout, Boo! Not anymore though. Now she seems wary of him. Accuses him of being too strict. But if you were to see her ample breasts and the way her buttocks move so seductively in tight jeans... He sucks his teeth.

Everyone in the Adewale household understands that when it’s time for Mr. Adewale’s swimming lesson, they’re not allowed to watch, so they do. The gardeners peep through the purple bougainvillea by the side of the house, while Cecilia watches from the conservatory. They see him looking silly in his knee-length shorts tied with a drawstring that disappears beneath a bulging stomach. They watch as he lowers himself gingerly into the water, holding onto the handrails as though his life depends on it, until both feet are firmly planted in the shallow end. The water cuts him off below the chest, and he stands for some moments with arms held high above the water, shaking as he eyes the pool’s inflatable life buoy for reassurance. The gardeners laugh at the sight of the boss looking foolish, although it’s Nadia who interests them the most. When she stands in the shallow end, water glistens like jewels on her bare shoulders and swishes around her waist beneath her large breasts. The workers have heard that the latter may not be real, that Master may have paid for them to be just so. People with money can afford such things. Her skin is light and even lighter in places normally covered by clothes. When she swims, her long brown hair fans out behind her. She allows Master to cling to the edge and tells him to kick, but he has trouble with this maneuver and the goddess must hold him stable under his tummy. The gardeners laugh again, imagining what must be happening down there in the aquamarine pool. Cecilia looks on with disgust while Mrs. Adewale, herself a former mistress, observes in anger from the balcony of the upstairs bedroom.

Tinuke is the only one not watching her father flail around in the water. She’s messaged a friend, changed back into jeans and a halter top, and sneaked away. Sami waits for her outside the front gate in his father’s Range Rover. They drive to the Eko Hotel where Sami buys drinks and they sit outside beneath a parasol. They chat, but mostly just smoke while Tinuke stares at the pool. “Wish they’d both drown,” she mutters, thinking of her father and his latest girlfriend.

“Forget about them,” Sami says, standing up. “At least you’ll soon be back at boarding school, at least your father has the money to send you away!”

“I don’t care about his money,” she snaps, wishing Sami didn’t have to bring everything back to money.

“Look, we’ve been here for hours, let’s go to the beach,” he suggests, trying to cheer her up.

“Not now.” She sighs, standing up. “Shit!” she whispers.

“What?”

Tinuke indicates with a jerk of her head.

“Shit,” Sami mumbles, turning to see the fat man striding toward them. Mr. Adewale glares angrily at the table with the bottles of beer, the half-eaten suya, and the empty pack of Marlboro Lights.

“Get out!” he shouts.

Sami backs away, but not before Mr. Adewale grabs him by the shirt and slaps him. Sami yelps in pain.

“Daddy!” Tinuke screams, wishing her friend wasn’t such a wimp, such a little boy.

Mr. Adewale takes his daughter and marches her past the hotel guests, back to his car. The driver, thinking he and the radio were all there would be for the next few hours, is dozing when Mr. Adewale arrives and flings his daughter across the backseat. In his rage, Mr. Adewale forgets that he’s brought Nadia to the hotel and left her waiting by the bar.

“Never,” he shouts at Tinuke, “will I see you with any stupid boys again, behaving like a tramp and a whore! And from now on, there’s no more going out! You hear? You hear?”

“Leave me!” she cries.

“Did you fuck him?” he shouts.

The driver glances in his rearview mirror, his eyes widening at the look of fury on the girl’s face as she leans forward. What he doesn’t see is how hard she’s squeezing her legs, her hands futile against her father’s hand, thrust between her thighs.

Back at the house, Mr. Adewale storms past the gardeners and the security guards who look away sheepishly, knowing they too will suffer for this.

“Leave me alone! Stop dragging me!” Tinuke screams, wriggling from her father’s grip.

“Come back!” he shouts, as Tinuke runs, clutching her face where he’s just slapped her. “Go outside and clean the pool. From now on you’ll stay at home. No going out and no returning to England! No more boarding school for you. You’re staying here, where I can keep my eye on you.”

“No way, I’m not staying!” Tinuke screams, running to her room and locking the door behind her.

An hour later, the house is quiet. Mr. Adewale, barely able to stand after the afternoon’s exertions, lies down. Mrs. Adewale watches him as he starts to snore, kisses her teeth in disgust, then returns to thoughts of what to wear for the evening prayer meeting. She cannot decide what is most likely to impress her new pastor. Straight-laced or seductive? Cheap or expensive? The church has just launched its sacrifice drive, requesting congregants to give at their highest level — in naira, dollars, pounds, or euros. Failing that, people can donate their cars, houses, or land. And seeing that she has helped the pastor redesign the pledge forms, she knows she must be careful not to dress too flamboyantly.

Mr. Adewale stirs. He sits up, still complaining of a headache. Mrs. Adewale sighs, goes to the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet, and takes out some pills. “Here, dear,” she says, offering him more than he needs. He throws them back quickly, almost chocking on one before he stands up and waddles over to the window. “Careful,” she calls, guessing that the reason he races out has something to do with what he must have spotted his neighbors doing outside. But she has better things to do than fuss over him. She must dress for tonight and find out what that girl Cecilia is up to.

Cecilia is downstairs chopping plantains and wondering when Tinuke might reappear. She’s never seen so much anger on a child’s face. She heats her oil and starts frying the perfectly sliced yellow circles of which she is most proud, using a fork to turn them when they are golden. By next week, God willing, she’ll have other maids working for her. And all she’ll do is fry plantains and polish silver. But then, what is she thinking? If all goes according to plan, she’ll never have to work again. She forgets about Tinuke until she hears someone shouting and runs out to see what’s happening. Master is racing down the stairs, shirt undone. He opens the sliding doors that lead to the pool, and there is Tinuke, dressed in a red bikini, smoking.

“Tinuke!” Cecilia calls out in warning, seeing that the girl is wearing headphones and her eyes are closed. The father cannot abide cigarettes.

Seemingly unaware of who has just arrived, Tinuke dips a foot into the deep end and nonchalantly splashes water. Try me, she’s thinking, just try me, as her father rushes toward her.

“What are you wearing?” he shouts, snatching roughly at the strap of her bikini top. Tinuke’s hand moves as if to cover the exposed breast, only to lash out instead, striking him hard across his neck. Cecilia sees it all. One leg goes up, the other follows, and then he falls, banging his head on the concrete as he lands. For one uncertain moment, the head lolls back over the edge of the pool, and the shoulders follow, and then with a rapid whoosh and a half-hearted splash, all of him slips in and under. Tinuke throws the butt of her cigarette into the water after him. She waits for a minute, then another. Then she screams for help.

What Are You Going To Do? by Adebola Rayo

Onikan

When the traffic inches forward, I watch as the wheel cover on the car ahead of me moves, jutting out ever so slightly and spinning almost independently of the wheel. For a brief moment, I imagine it flying off, cutting through my windscreen, and slicing my head down the middle. I hold onto that image, thinking it would be an interesting way to die. I only wonder if it would be painless, if I’d be dead before I realized what happened.

I imagine that the last thing I would see is the wheel cover hurtling through the air, and that I’d be shocked and fascinated by the horror of it, not knowing that it was coming for me. Would I die immediately, or would my head, split in two in the last moments of consciousness, recognize that my eyes were seeing from farther apart than usual?

The traffic is starting to build up. I knew it would if I left work this late, but my attempt to leave at five p.m. on the dot was thwarted when my boss dropped a folder on my desk at a quarter to five and sat on my table. I hated it when he did that. What was it about me that made him feel comfortable enough to plop himself on my desk? And why did he like these last-minute tasks so much? I was convinced he did it on purpose, deriving some sort of satisfaction from making me stay back. Knowing that, unlike my colleagues, I wouldn’t try to convince him to let me turn it in in the morning.

So, at 6:33 p.m. I find myself pulling into the traffic in front of the marina next to the governor’s residence. Sometimes I want to park my car and just go sit by the sea. But these government dunderheads have put up fences around the parks and waterfront. And besides, there’s nowhere to park. I miss water. I miss sitting on the sand at Bar Beach with the smell and smoke of Igbo teasing me as the boys on the beach smoke joints. They filled the ocean with sand to build their Atlantic City, can you imagine that? These government people won’t let us have anything, even moments of quiet.

But what’s the point of getting angry in a city like Lagos, where everything tries to drive you up the wall? You will just kill yourself for nothing, as my boss likes to say. Though I shouldn’t be quoting that motherfucker because I’m pissed. But again, what’s the point of getting angry? It’s not like I can easily find a new job if I quit this one.

“Ashewo, o je lo gba driver. Who gave you car?”

I don’t even realize these words are directed at me until the yellow taxi pulls up so close to my car that I could lean over the passenger’s side and touch his wrinkling, tribal-marked face if I wanted to. I watch him gesture about my driving skills for a few more seconds.

“All you small, small girls with the car your aristo sugar daddy bought you.”

I roll up the windows and turn on the AC. I stare at the dents and the chipped yellow paint of his old Toyota. I can see him laughing and gesturing at me intermittently, even as he drives forward. I still don’t know what I have done to annoy this man. When the car ahead of me moves, I drive till I draw up to the yellow taxi and swerve my car into his. I hear the screech of tires as the car behind stops short of my bumper, but I barely pay attention. I watch the taxi driver’s jaw drop then begin to move furiously as he curses at me. I turn my music up. He is still struggling with his door when the car behind me reverses and pulls out into the next lane. I turn the wheel, reverse, and drive off. In my rearview mirror, I watch as the gray-bearded man continues to struggle with his car door.

Stephanie is at my door — not at the gate, at the door. I hand my car key to the guard, making a mental note to scold him for letting her in. He should know better than to let anyone enter without my permission.

“The mechanic will come and pick up the car early in the morning. Don’t wake me,” I say to him.

Since I started working at the microfinance bank two years ago, Stephanie and I have only had a reason to talk twice: the two times my boss wanted me to request a bribe from applicants before he approved their loans. I’d gone to her both times because she was in HR. Both conversations went the same way.

I’d say, “This isn’t a part of my job description, and I thought I should report Kaz to HR because I don’t want to do this.”

Her laugh, like a bird’s shrill caw, was loud and sharp. It sounded like a weird mating call. “Tola, everybody does it. Just explain to the applicant that it will speed up the process.”

Both times I caved and, without protest, kept the N50,000 my boss left on my table the morning after he approved the loans. The money was useful, anyway. There’s no point getting angry or acting stupid here in Lagos.

“Sorry I showed up at your door like this,” Stephanie says. She is staring at me in a way that lets me know I have my resting-bitch face on again.

“It’s okay,” I reply, even though we both know it’s not. I open the door to my apartment. “I have a pet, so don’t scream.”

“Because of a dog?” She laughs nervously as she walks in. I turn on the light and she lets out a half-scream before composing herself. She giggles again and moves closer to the wall opposite the glass cage.

“It’s in a cage,” I say. I imagine that the dead mouse in there probably made Lucy look scarier. “She’s slow these days; I don’t know why she hasn’t had her breakfast.”

The shrill nervous laugh comes again. I wonder what she’d do if I told her Lucy tried to bite me twice in the last week while I was cleaning.

Every woman has that friend — you know, the one you go to when you need a procedure done. You don’t go to her because she told you she’s had one done, you go to her because you know she has.

After five minutes of beating around the bush, wondering if you should say you’re asking on behalf of a friend, you come right out and say it: “I’m pregnant, and I need to find somewhere to get rid of it.”

You hold her stare, and your eyes beg her not to pretend that she doesn’t know a place, that she hasn’t had a procedure.

Less than a year later, here I am being ambushed into being that friend for Stephanie. I’d never told her I’d had an abortion, but I figure she must have not believed it was typhoid that caused me to constantly walk briskly into the ladies’ room for two weeks. Especially since I’d refused to go to the office clinic, saying it would pass. It did pass, after I took two personal days off and came back looking as normal as ever.

I’m so hungry for a smoke that after frantically searching my hollowed-out decorative book, I go to my ashtray and light a quarter-smoked joint I find there.

All the while she’s watching me without a word. I recognize the look in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I don’t feel the need to hide certain things about myself,” I say.

Stephanie spends the next two hours crying and telling me about her issues with the man she’s dating. I spend the time relighting partially smoked joints. I drag on about six of them till my fingers are burning.

“You just have to learn how to pleasure yourself by yourself,” I mutter.

“What?”

“I have to let Lucy out soon,” I say.

She starts to leave a few minutes later — without a phone number, but with detailed directions to the clinic.

“It’s been there for about fifteen years, my friend told me. You’ll find it easily.”

She pauses and asks what I think the likelihood of a police raid is.

I laugh. “In Nigeria?”

“You should laugh more. Or smile.” She is standing at the door, inviting mosquitoes into my house, talking this nonsense. “People in the office say you never smile, and when you do it is fake because your eyes look dead. Your laughter sounds nice. A little scary, but nice.”

Later that night, I stand in my bathroom naked, smiling at my reflection. With teeth showing. Without. With lips spread wide. Without. Only left cheek raised. I smile. Eyes widened. Eyes crinkled. I smile.

Some days, like today, I get really tired. I want to be at home with the covers over my head but I’m sitting at my desk instead, earphones in, Frank Ocean’s “Strawberry Swing” playing so loudly it is going to my chest. I’m watching the others at their desks in the open office, looking like bubbleheads. They’re loud bubbleheads, and I really want to scream at everyone to shut the fuck up and get out. Days like this, I hate people. Hate their ease of conversation, their laughter, their being.

I walk to the bathroom and call my doctor to ask if it’s okay that I’ve been using diazepam to sleep, along with the prescribed epilim.

“I should have told you before I started taking it, but it’s just been hard to sleep and every night I try on my own but it’s been impossible.”

“Try it for two more days and if you still can’t sleep, we’ll find you something to use more permanently.”

“Okay,” I say. “Also, I’m running out of diazepam.”

“Have you been drinking coffee?”

“Yes, in the mornings.”

“You know you are not allowed that. It’s a stimulant.”

I whine about how he’s taking all the good things in my life away from me. We always do this: I complain about every drug and instruction; he insists I do what is best for me.

“Something is bothering you. That’s why you can’t sleep and that’s why you’re cranky.”

“It’s nothing.”

Honestly, it is nothing. Sometimes this happens. I don’t know there is something, but I’m reacting to it, then I finally figure out what it is hours or days later.

“All of this sucks.”

“What?”

“Living. It gets heavy after a while.”

“Have you thought more about taking a vacation?”

“See, the only reason I like to go to new places is because I like the journey, eating up roads or clouds and moving through the world quickly — it’s just the way I want to live: a flash through life. I wish journeys would last forever. Like I wonder if the plane could just keep flying and never land. So I don’t have to actually live, work, or vacation. I like sitting in a plane or a car with nothing to do but just watch time pass.”

“You know you could make your life a constant journey, right? Be an air hostess or something,” he says.

“No, no. Then I’d be living during the journey. Serving people. I hate interacting with people.”

“Okay.”

He says nothing else for a while and I think the connection has broken. Then, “So, why do you like suspending your life?”

This is the part I hate. Whatever answer I give won’t satisfy him. He’ll try to find some deeper meaning to it and ask me if that’s what I’m masking. That’s why I prefer the phone calls, because it’s easier to get out of the conversations.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

I hear that little ah sound, but the silence fills the space again, like when someone starts to say something but they change their mind. I hated it when my last boyfriend did that. To have my therapist do the same thing is even more annoying.

“That’s your assignment,” he says after a while. “Write about why you want to suspend living.”

“But I already wrote about why I want to die.”

“So, is the answer to both the same?”

I think for a moment. “No,” I reply.

“If you say no, that means you already know the answer. But I won’t push. We’ll talk about it in our next session, okay? Actually, you need to come in person soon.”

“Okay.”

On my way back to my desk, I walk past Kaz’s office and he calls out for a cup of coffee.

I used to get angry about being asked to perform these menial tasks, but not anymore. I stop at my desk to pick up my purse. Then I make him a cup of coffee. What’s the point of getting angry in this Lagos? I add two cubes of sugar, and two ten-milligram diazepam tablets. No cream. I started adding the tablets last week after his wife came in to drop off his hypotension medication one morning. He didn’t notice when I added one pill; he still hasn’t noticed now that I use two.

After work, I walk past Freedom Park, turn left on Broad Street, and head to the taxi park in front of the hospital. I stop at the makeshift canteen, where a group of men are sitting under a sign that says, No idle sitting — eat your food and go.

“I’m going to Lekki.”

One of them gets up and says, “N3,500, let’s go.”

“E never reach your turn-o.” He yells back that Baba Hafusa has gone to pray, so it’s his turn. The other men grumble and argue.

“Is anyone going?” I ask, tired of their bickering.

“See,” one pipes up, “Baba Hafusa ti n bo.”

The man who wanted N3,500 says to me, “Sorry, sister, the next person has come.”

I turn around and see a limping man. I reach into my mind, trying to figure out why he looks so familiar.

“Sister, where are you going? My car is in front.”

I walk behind him. “Lekki, and I’m only paying N3,000. Will you drive...” I drift off as he lays a hand on his bonnet, rubbing the chipped yellow paint on its dent.

“N3,500, aunty. Traffic go plenty at this time. Where is the address?”

So I sit in the back, listening to the engine rattle and the sound of him hacking up phlegm between coughs, and I wonder if he recognized me too. Probably not, because he’s chattering away about the traffic and the new fuel price, and for the first time I’m happy that I chose to pay the police for a car tint permit that was supposed to be free.

“Now I have to work nights because of this fuel increase,” he’s saying. “Good thing I finished praying and saw you. After evening prayers now I carry one more passenger, then I go home to Iya Hafusa.”

I don’t know what it is about me that invites monologues from stangers, but there’s no point getting angry or saying I don’t want to talk. I just nod, hmm, and eeyah from time to time.

I’m leaning back so the chair is rocking on its hind legs. He flips through my file and then stares at the prescription pad.

“Are you sleeping these days?”

“Not without the diazepam.”

“Did you try breaking the pills in half like I told you to?”

“No.”

“What about the dreams?”

“They’re still there. Very vivid.”

“Still sci-fi themed?”

“Yes, and I still wake with a heavy head.”

The nurse smiles when she sees me on my way out. “You’re adding some weight. That’s very good.”

I smile back at her, but as soon as I get outside I turn to look at my reflection in the glass door. I’ve put on three kilos since I started using epilim, that’s three kilos more than I’ve gained in the last ten years, since I hit my last growth spurt at fourteen. I know I’ll obsess about it again but I tell myself not to panic.

I go to the canteen to eat amala and ewedu before heading to the pharmacy. I’ve developed a rhythm around my visits and I have to do everything in the same order. The last time I came, there was no ewedu soup and I found myself tearing up later at the pharmacy.

Today, to make up for that last time, I order an extra portion and tell my past self that everything will be all right at the end of the day.

I hate waiting, but I find that often I have to wait for others to arrive. So now I’m sitting here nursing a lukewarm bottle of Coke, waiting for the taxi driver to get here. I hate driving to the mainland, but that’s not why I’m waiting for him. I’ve been driving less and less these days, and finding myself at the taxi stand more often. Some days they say he’s out, but I wait for him to come back and drive me home from work. Today, I took a taxi to Yaba from home, then I called and told him to meet me here at three p.m. Yet now it’s 3:32 and I’m still waiting.

Lucy has barely been eating for weeks, and I’m tired of my apartment smelling like dead mice. I moved her cage to the spare bedroom two weeks ago, but I can’t avoid taking her to the vet anymore. I put her in the shift box and latch it.

At work, whenever anyone asks me what’s inside the box, I say that it’s toys for my nephews.

“I didn’t know you had nephews,” Kaz says, grinding his hips into my desk and shifting my papers to make space for himself. “In fact, I thought you were an only child.”

“Yeah.” The box shakes and I raise my voice: “There are rattles in there. I should take out the batteries.”

“Have lunch with me today,” Kaz says. “You play hard to get.”

I smile.

“You see? I’ve never seen you smile. Your eyes are prettier when you smile.”

“I have to run a quick errand to VI at lunch,” I say, pointing at the box. “Is it okay if I go?”

“Okay, but you can’t escape me. Clear it with HR and go. You must have lunch with me soon, Tola. But before you go, please make me some coffee.”

I smile and widen my eyes as he walks out.

I go to the kitchen to make him a cup of coffee. Three cubes of sugar this time, with eight ten-milligram diazepam tablets and no cream.

When I give it to him, he looks at me and says, “When you come back, please remind me to call my doctor. The man says my drugs haven’t been working well.”

“It must be all the coffee you drink,” I remark.

“Hey, Steph.” I drop by her office before my lunch break. These days I call her Steph — it makes her eager to do what I want. She smiles. Her smile is pretty, unlike her laugh.

“What’s up, girl?”

I tell myself not to cringe, so I smile and widen my eyes. I’ve learned that it makes my eyes brighter and my smile seem more genuine.

“I have to run a quick errand and I don’t know how long it’ll take. Cover for me?”

“Sure, girl.”

“You’re the best.”

I hold the shift box in front of me and walk to the taxi stand on Broad Street. All the cabbies know me by this point.

“Baba Hafusa,” one of them calls out, “come and carry your customer-o.”

But he’s busy arguing in front of the hospital gate. The young lady he’s talking to has a phone in her hand and is not paying him mind.

“I be taxi driver nor mean say I nor fit born you. I get your type at home. I have child your age. Mo ni e nile nau.”

“Oga, story niyen, please give me my change.”

And this is the point where he flips and threatens to slap her.

“Try it,” she says, typing on her phone.

“What are you going to do?” he yells at her.

The other men are laughing and telling him to leave her alone.

“You get customer wey dey wait for you-o,” the taxi park chairman calls out to him.

The driver sees me and walks over. “Don’t mind this Ashewo girl,” he says. “All these small, small girls are following big men, and because of that she thinks she can be talking rude to me.”

I stare at him, willing him to shut up. My phone beeps. It’s a message from Stephanie: Babes! Kaz just collapsed in the office. They’re taking him to the hospital. Poor guy.

I smile and my eyes widen.

“All these Lagos girls,” the taxi driver says as he jimmies open his door. “You close early?”

I get in the back. “No, I’m going to VI.”

As he turns onto Marina Road, I say to him, “Did you know that girl you were fighting with?”

“No-o. I drove the yeye girl to the hospital and she’s talking rude because of N200.”

“So why did you call her a prostitute?”

“All these Lagos girls, that’s what they are,” he replies. “God save us from them. Few responsible girls with job like you.”

I smile. “But why must woman exist for man to be closer to God?”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“I guess man always needs a woman to blame.” I twist the latch on Lucy’s shift box and let her slither onto my lap and down my legs.

“Are you talking to me, aunty?”

“Stop at the beginning of Ahmadu Bello,” I tell him, handing him money.

“I go carry you home for evening?”

“We’ll see,” I say, clutching the empty box to my chest.

For Baby, For Three by Onyinye Ihezukwu

Yaba

Right there, at the street corner by the roundabout that circumscribed the faded statue of the army general in a marshaling pose, stood Bisola’s food shed. It was an old shed, built from corrugated zinc, cardboard flaps, and an oversized sun umbrella to protect her burning coal embers from the frequent lashes of gritty breeze. Bisola’s Power Joint, everyone called it — for it was here you could buy the best roasted corn and coconuts, when in season, or the juiciest chicken gizzards dunked in pepper sauce and garnished with onion rings. Even better — this was like legend — her akara was made from properly processed, unadulterated bean paste fried in properly purchased, unadulterated vegetable oil. When the bean balls emerged from her pan of hot oil, they remained golden brown with a soft simmering dent in the middle, so abounding with freshness that people lined up for meters to fill their stomachs with these spheres of delight. For her regular customers, Bisola dusted a spice mixture of pepper and groundnuts into the dents in the center, then smiled a dimpled smile when the non-regulars protested the unfairness of her selective service. Pretending to point out that the added spice would cost them more, she would sprinkle the pepper and groundnuts anyway, talking in her slurred, deep voice and working her large, veiny hands. Her laugh sounded like a drum roll from the marching drill at the army barracks not far away, a laugh that might have tumbled from something strong, like the chest of the statue of the army general perpetually striding toward her shed, observing her as she sat basting gizzards, roasting corn, and molding bean cakes six days a week from noon till a little after ten p.m.

Now a buyer was requesting two particularly large corn cobs, evenly browned on all sides from where they lay on the coal wire mesh. Bisola quickly plucked them off the mesh in swift motions, blowing on her fingers to soothe the sting. She bent over to rip a page off a heap of newspapers in the corner, and as she wrapped the steaming cobs in the paper, the customer said, “You’re forgetting the coconuts, na.”

Bisola tapped her waist and thumped her chest softly. She blinked. “Sorry,” she replied, and leaned over, cradling her stomach to reach the basin of shelled coconuts.

“Ah, this belly issue is getting in the way,” the buyer said with a grin. “Since this belly, Bisola has been forgetting, na.”

The other customers laughed. One woman piped up: “And you people think carrying baby is easy? God should have made you men share in the work too. Then we’ll see who’ll cry first.”

A man not far away scoffed. “Huh? What is there to cry about? Baby business? You mean making baby? But that’s easiest of all!”

Bisola, with a face flushed from the heat of her ashes and a chest filled with the acid of her badly digested lunch, did not flash her dimples this time at the teasing. She let them talk, trying to ignore the sensations of stiffness in her shoulders, peering above the customers’ heads as if searching for something in the horizon. Her mind held a ticking clock inside. This moment — the sun setting over the barracks, the young children peddling biscuits and wristwatches, the motorcycle riders fleeing annoyed traffic wardens — all pointed to the fact that it was about six p.m., offices were closed, the prayer meeting was at hand, and Osei would be arriving soon to pick her up.

She watched the signs, marking the bustling world through the fumes rising from her pan of oil.

When the last batch of akara was served up, she refused to mix a new batter. She sprinkled water on the coals and slowly rose to her feet. The customers in line raised a fuming chorus. She said, as quietly as she could, “I don close. Come back tomorrow.” Then she uprooted the sun umbrella from the soft earth and folded it like a pocketknife. Through the threats of departing customers, none of which she responded to, she gathered her wares of business: the glass showcase for fried gizzards, the now-empty basin for holding coconuts preserved in water, the wire mesh, raffia fan, sitting stool, coal pot, batter pot, and plastic spice containers; and stacked these items inside the slanted shed of zinc and cardboard. She sat on the stool inside, pulling the door slightly closed so she could still see Osei arrive. She stretched her long, trunk-sized legs before her, huffing and belching and thumping her chest softly.

Twice she leaned forward to peer through the door at the sound of an approaching motorcycle, and then she stepped outside to study the roads carefully. It was darker now, the sun had set completely, leaving a faint yellow cast on the general’s face of stone. His boots, surrounded here and there by dogs plodding among small patches of grass, held her attention for a moment before she remembered that she didn’t want to be seen by persistent customers thinking she had changed her mind. She watched the roundabout again, noticing a traffic warden blowing a whistle and charging at a ducking and laughing motorcycle man; a child hawking Coke ran after a motorist for his money; and a distant bugle blared from the barracks. The prayer meeting was at six thirty. Now traffic was almost locked. Did Osei not leave his shop in time?

She retreated to the shed and checked the collection of gifts again. She could tell, from placing her hands around the food warmer, that the specially reserved akara balls were still hot, along with the gizzards in the saucer inside the warmer. There was a bundle of three yams tied together with a string. And there was the broiler chicken, now too tired to squawk, lying quietly on its side and blinking in the dimness of the shed. Bisola turned to the door, her face pressed to the rotting zinc. Osei had not left his shop in time.

When the rattling combustion sounds of his motorcycle finally drew near, she was on her feet to greet him. He hurried in like there was a secret he had been rushing to say, but just as the putrid air of the chicken’s shit hit his nose, he stopped and rubbed his goatee. He turned to his wife, who was watching him from her towering height.

“Bisi,” he said.

“We’re late, my husband.”

Osei rubbed his forehead. He smelled like the orange air freshener that hung above his barbershop mirror. He stroked his goatee again, then examined his fingernails. His delicate lips moved as if to kiss something in the air. Then he was saying, “The customers, today’s business...”

“I have the money for the pastor. It’s all right.”

Osei nodded, but did not look up.

Bisola motioned to the stool. “Sit.”

He lowered himself carefully onto the stool, his legs pressed together like a girl’s. He polished off his dinner as soon as Bisola served it, and while she put the empty plates away, he found a tortoiseshell comb in his breast pocket and brushed his hair in three quick strokes: one each for the flat sides along his ears and another for the well-greased punk outgrowth in the middle. He rose to his feet and his eyes smiled. “Look at this stinking shit. But what has this chicken been eating all day! Your roasted corn, eh?”

“Take the yams and the food,” Bisola replied. “I’ll carry the chicken.”

Osei flexed his shoulders, cracked his fingers. “I feel alive!”

Bisola picked up the now-clucking chicken. As she found a string to tie its feet together, Osei said, “What if I grabbed these volleyballs the way you’re grabbing that chicken?” He took hold of her ample behind, one throbbing cheek in each palm. He wriggled them around in her cotton dress. “Jigi-jigi! Look at that!”

Bisola tapped her chest, trying to hold down a belch.

“And the ball in front!” Osei rubbed her stomach, cackling loudly.

Bisola opened the squeaky door and stepped into the night. Osei followed her, still talking, and after he watched her secure the chicken to the back carrier of his motorcycle, he remembered he had left his keys inside the shed. When he reappeared a moment later with keys in hand, he was quiet, his lips puckered and contemplating. Bisola climbed into the backseat, securing the machine with her weight so he could get on with ease. She angled her frame so that Osei’s elbows would not bump against her stomach. As he started the ignition, she asked in a soft voice, “You think baby can feel your hand now?”

He paused. “My child. My own child.” He pumped the cycle’s pedal with a small foot. “When the pastor brings it back to life.”

Osei zoomed in the direction of the roundabout.

The pastor with the long name — Joshua Isefudiah Promise Esoko Loveday — was no ordinary pastor, like the ones used for headaches and small fevers. It was known that his name, meandering as it was, was that way because an angel had bestowed it on him in the nine minutes the man, while yet unconverted, had died in a drinking parlor, gone to hell, then heaven, and back to earth. To consolidate his mission, the pastor received what he said was a designation of numbers from the angel. It didn’t matter what the problem was; there was a fixed length of time in heaven for every problem on earth. The angel broke down the numbers to him in a prehistoric code, one that had existed since languages evolved from Babel of Bible times. First the pastor would lay a hand on a believer’s head, determine the root cause, and the number of hours, days, or months needed to pray till it was all over.

Bisola’s was three thousand years, reduced to three days, because the pastor said that with God, a day was like a thousand years. And three was a figure that held the power of resurrection, since Jesus lay in the tomb three days and three nights. Three sessions of prayer over three days and the dead would be restored to life. Two done and one left. This was what Bisola’s ticking clock indicated as she was pulled on her husband’s motorcycle, through the dust gathering on her thick calves, along thirteen kilometers of traffic on the bridge off the mainland of Lagos, till they found themselves in the fishing settlements. The houses started passing as soon as they came off the bridge, slowly pulling into Yaba where a fork appeared in the main street, leading the way to the defunct plastic factory. Behind the factory was a complex of administrative offices, long and curving slightly. The offices stretched side by side for kilometers, but the pastor had claimed only a few, along with the reception lobby which could seat close to a hundred people.

Bisola and Osei could not find a seat when they walked in. The ticket taker was in her usual place: on a narrow stage of mounted bricks, seated behind a table that overlooked the rest of the hall where people sat in clusters according to appointment times. Those who had no seats wandered about calling out for family, suckled babies, or snored on mats in corners. Peace enforcers, recruited from the pastor’s own church disciples, shouted here and there for order. One threatened a crying toddler. Another enforcer carried a standing fan in search of a place to set it down. The heat was choking.

Bisola pressed to the front, pulling Osei behind her. She showed her ticket to the woman on stage and the woman frowned without looking up. “No, no. You’re late. You’ll have to wait, na.”

“But I’m—”

The woman looked up. “See,” she pointed at a group, “those are seven forty-five people. They are next.”

Bisola said, “I’m pregnant.”

The woman looked Bisola up and down. She called to an enforcer and whispered into his ear. The man went away and returned with a high-backed plastic chair. The ticket woman handed it to Bisola. “Sit down. Find a place and sit down.”

With chair in one hand and the squawking chicken in the other, Bisola caught the attention of a thin-lipped, petite woman who turned to move her sleeping son’s body on the floor. Bisola thanked her and set down the chair, then placed the chicken beneath it. When she turned to Osei to receive the other thanksgiving items, she saw that he was looking again at his fingernails. His face was flushed from the heat, his hair grease running along his ears.

Bisola took the items and placed them under the chair. “Sit.” She stood to the side and Osei fell into the chair, his knees neatly pushed together. The thin-lipped woman stared, openmouthed, and Bisola spoke calmly: “He’s not well. My good husband is not well.”

An enforcer with an old microphone and speaker horn was calling for the next batch, the seven forty-five. All around, people stirred afresh, falling into line, searching for drifting children and spouses. Bisola immediately seized an empty chair just as a man was making his way toward it. The man cried, “Even the one with a big stomach is strong enough to seize my blessings!” and looked around frantically for another seat. He advanced as soon as he saw one, but then stopped and made another exclamation. Bisola sat a short distance from Osei since there was no space beside him. She wedged the hem of her dress between her spread knees, leaned forward to massage her swollen ankles with the heel of her hand. Positioned like that, with her back slightly bent and face angled to the right, she could smell Osei’s oranges across the distance between them, a fragrance undaunted by the dust and exhaust smoke of travel, or the fumes of cooking coals and sulphuric belches trapped in her clothes. He was studying the crowd around him with a detached gaze, his slender fingers going tap, tap, tap in his lap. Soon, she knew, he would say he was going out for fresh air; and fresh air would take time, whatever length of time it took for her to move through the line, wait at the inner anteroom, and have the pastor finally minister to her and her baby in his office.

She kept up the pressure on her ankle, waiting for Osei to make his exit, waiting for the enforcer with the microphone and speaker to announce a new group with her added to it. The enforcer made a new announcement after about an hour, and when she joined in and he demanded to see her ticket, she said she was six thirty. The enforcer paused a moment, then waved her on. Bisola turned to Osei, who passed her the chicken and yams. Seeing she was overloaded, he held onto the flask of food.

“I’m going for some fresh air,” he said. “I’ll bring the food when I return.”

Bisola hesitated.

“Just a little fresh air,” he said. “Just a little fresh air.”

His lips were doing the movement again. Bisola turned and followed the group, trudging carefully to avoid collisions with the bodies pressing around her. A corridor stretched from the reception lobby to the pastor’s converted offices, its floor of ceramic tiles disintegrating to show the mossy concrete beneath. Slowed by the gas scorching its way about her chest, the offering items in both her hands, and the growing worry that now Osei should come back to join in the prayers, she found herself left behind as others pushed on.

For the first time since she’d walked down this corridor two days ago, she took the time to observe the framed Bible verses along the walls. People said that when K. Kasamu, the oil magnate, still ran the factory as a front for his friend and then-president, you could see huge framed portraits of Kasamu and the army general on the walls and in every office. But the pictures were all gone; it was now fifteen years since the general had fallen from power and Kasamu had fled the country. In those days, the people on television said he had been airlifted to the Cameroonian border, where he made his way to Europe disguised as a woman. As if being a woman would make escape any easier, Bisola thought. She studied the framed verses that stretched beside her on both sides now, squinting to read them. She slowly called out the numbers under her breath: “Five... one... twenty-two...” Numbers were more familiar, being articles she dealt with daily in her trade. As for the words, she tried to string them together if a familiar vowel was present. There was Lord, Hope, Je-sus, Se-vy-you or Say-vee-yor. Yes, Savior. Osei had pointed out that word to her once. She felt a headache coming and looked away from the walls.

Bisola stepped into the anteroom where fewer people sat in chairs arranged in rows. This room led to the pastor’s main office where he met one-on-one with supplicants. Bisola found a seat, right beside the family that had been ahead of her, once again placing the chicken and yams on the floor. There was a lady enforcer seated not far from the pastor’s door, ushering people into the office in turns. When someone stepped out, the enforcer waved her hand at the waiting group. The next person rose and walked into the office, while the rest of the group migrated up the chairs, shuffling quietly. Sounds intermittently boomed through the door: that of the pastor’s voice broken by the crazed scream of a supplicant, or a chorus of clapping and singing. And when crashes and clatters could be heard inside, everyone in the anteroom understood it was the pastor chasing the evil spirit around the office.

Bisola patiently moved up the seats, pulling the chicken and yams along as she went. As she settled into a new chair, warm from the body heat of the person who’d just vacated it, she placed a hand on her stomach and said a prayer: “Baby will live again on the third day. Baby is alive.”

These were the exact words the pastor had told her to say three times a day for three days. Today was the third day; this was her second repetition today. The third and final time she would say it would be in the office, right there with the pastor’s final act of resurrection. It was going to be great, she could feel it. The gas hadn’t receded; it burned as strongly as it had when baby was still kicking, which was a sign that there was still life inside her. Those hospital people would say she told them so. Her baby’s heart was still working, its mouth yawning, its eyes blinking. Those machines could make mistakes. They used batteries, didn’t they?

The way Osei had explained it to her, the machine — with the screen and the other part that looked like a corn cob — worked like a telephone, except it wasn’t two people at opposite ends of the line. Instead, it was baby at one end and something like a magnet at the other, creating sounds for baby to do a small dance. So as baby danced, the screen displayed the show for Bisola, who kept saying that baby looked like he was whispering something all the time. When she was thirty-eight weeks gone and went once more to watch baby whispering away, she had pointed at the screen and laughed. “Hehehe, how the gossip has finally grown tired. Mama is here now. Talk.”

Today the technician was quiet. He pushed the cob along the dark midline of Bisola’s stomach. He paused, probed again. Bisola turned her eyes from the screen and worked out that baby may have forgotten his dance steps today. The technician left the room and returned with a nurse. The nurse made the technician move the cob up and down again, studying the screen all the while. She finally turned to Bisola and helped her sit up. Baby wasn’t breathing, the woman said. There was no heartbeat.

But Bisola said it couldn’t be. Only last night she had dreamed of baby, with a full head of hair like his father, small wet lips, and short slender fingers. She had dressed him in a jumper made from wax print and greased his hair with Vaseline mixed with palm kernel oil. He was colored a little like a grapefruit. He liked to be fed all the time and slept little. When he slept he made fists with his hands. Baby showed her these things because he wanted there to be an understanding between them before he made his appearance. He knew she knew little about babies, had learned nothing in the last forty-something years she’d been without a husband. Baby knew, baby knew. The cob machine was just something to make him dance when he pleased. And today, right where they sat across from this nosy screen, baby wanted a rest from sending last night’s message.

The nurse led Bisola to see the doctor, who examined her on a gurney and finally wrote her a prescription. Still explaining that these things happened without warning, to women across all ages and ethnic groups, the nurse held Bisola’s hand and led her down the blocks to the pharmacy. She told the story of her own niece, whose baby had been dead two weeks in her womb before the cob machine found out. Her niece had gone on to have three healthy children after that. So there was yet hope if Bisola took care of things early enough to start over. The pharmacist handed her a transparent pouch containing two small white tablets, each one six-sided with a thin vertical groove in the center. Bisola asked the nurse on their way out, “What’s the medicine for, na?”

“It’s to make your womb soft. Take them this evening and come back in two days like the doctor said.”

In the zinc shed, before they packed up her batter pans for the day, Bisola told Osei what the hospital people had said about baby and his dancing. Osei took the pouch from her and said he was throwing away the medicine. Bisola agreed, surprised he could still read her mind this quickly despite the four years and eight months they’d been married. Perhaps that was what these younger men were good for, especially when one single-handedly set up their barbershops, bought them motorcycles, and kept them well fed and clothed.

First he read her mind about throwing away the medicine. Next he read her mind about getting a prayer ticket from the once-dead pastor who advertised on the radio. Hence, the next day, before she went to open up shop at the Power Joint, Osei rode her to the defunct factory site. He waited outside to get some fresh air as she received an initial analysis from the pastor, as well as a prayer schedule.

Two days down, one to go.

Bisola shuffled down the line of chairs in the anteroom, taking the yams and chicken as she went.

As she settled her hand yet again on her middle, she saw there was a commotion to her right — people arguing about a seat. It was Osei, speaking in placating tones to a burly man who was next in line after Bisola. He explained that Bisola was his wife and they were together. The man finally shrugged and Osei approached. Bisola saw the fresh sheen of his reapplied hair grease, the soft curve of his just-fed belly showing beneath his shirt. She felt panic that he had cut short his air-taking time just as she was close to entering the pastor’s office. As he sat next to her, she gently nudged his side with her elbow and smiled tiredly.

He held the food flask in his lap, looking straight ahead. “Bisi, I ate the akara and gizzards.”

She nodded. “You were hungry.”

“Yes. But there’s some left.”

“We’ll eat that when we get home.”

“Yes, to celebrate.”

They shifted down three more seats within forty minutes, till Bisola was next in line and the enforcer waved her ahead. Bisola was conscious of Osei breathing heavily behind her as they entered the pastor’s office, his shoes dragging in postmeal stupor. A woman materialized and shut the door after them. She had a face Biosla knew well: the pastor’s attendant, dressed in a brown frock belted in the middle with a smooth black sash. A tall woman with a muscled visage, she seemed to have an established camaraderie with Bisola, to whom she spoke cordial words of welcome. She accepted the chicken and yams, saying, “The pastor will see you now.”

The office itself was orange-lit from the drawn curtains and fat candles burning from the floor corners. In the middle stood the only furnishing: a sprawling altar the size of two standard desks laid side by side. It was decked in white cloth, with a leather-bound Bible and sixteen candles along the rim. A cubicle cordoned off with hospital-blue curtains was stationed on left side of the table, and it was from here that the pastor materialized. He swept aside the blue cloth with one hand, stepping into the orange light with short thudding strides. Immediately, Bisola took off her shoes and kneeled before him, hands upraised. “Pastor!”

“Daughter Bisola,” the man said in a lazy, syrupy voice that seemed to make the candle flames hold still for an instant. He was a man of average height with strangely large hands. His eyes sat deep in his face so that when they roved in his head, he looked like a toy straining against tight screws. He drew closer, placed a hand on Bisola’s head as he muttered a few words: “Glory, glory. Our God has conquered death.”

Bisola cried out, “Save my baby, Pastor!”

“Your baby lives if God says so. I’ve already told you that, daughter Bisola. Get up.”

Panting, Bisola stood.

The muscled attendant in the frock came forward. “Place the money on the altar,” she said.

Bisola reached into the neckline of her dress and pulled out a wad of notes from where she’d tucked them into her brassiere. She deposited the rolls on the table, then started straightening the bills with shaking fingers.

Osei, who until now had been rooted to a spot not far from the door, hurried forward to help Bisola.

“Leave it.” The pastor waved a hand and turned to the attendant. “Is the water ready?”

Between the altar and a fat candle in a corner was a large plastic tub, large enough to hold a squatting adult. A pail of water sat by the tub, and a small scoop floated on the surface like a miniature boat. As if she understood what was required of her, Bisola began to lift her dress over her head. Osei’s lips flapped like a fish out of water. Without thinking, he took a step toward Bisola, but the pastor’s voice stopped him.

“Ah, the husband. Isn’t she doing this for the both of you?”

Bisola stood stiff in a half-slip and thick-strapped brassiere. The attendant led her by the hand as they circled the altar three times in long strides. After the third round, they were back to their earlier spot before the plastic tub. The pastor raised a song, “Behold the resurrecting power of the Almighty,” as Bisola stepped into the tub and kneeled. The attendant gently peeled off her half-slip and brassiere, and Osei watched as parts he thought were known only to him — Bisola’s hulking breasts pinnacled with dark-brown areolas; her hairy thighs, gnarled as old forest trees; her stout buttocks, his volleyballs — all tumbled out of her underwear in the full gaze of the pastor and the woman in the brown frock.

The frocked woman was the one who doused Bisola with holy anointing oil before pouring the water from the pail over her. The pastor paused his singing. “Wait, let the husband do that,” he said.

The woman walked over, handed the scoop to Osei, who now drew forward, no longer able to feel his legs. He tipped the scoop into the pail, poured water over his wife, and saw her shiver as if cold, despite the warmth of the room. As Osei poured, the pastor went to work. He laid his large hands on Bisola’s head first, then her forehead, jaw, neck, and shoulders. Lower and lower he went, till her whole body was covered from front to back with the resurrecting essence of the third day. He commanded the earth to release the baby’s trapped soul, and then commanded the mother’s body to reabsorb the soul. Bisola belched and belched, all of the pent-up gas unfurling itself at the combined sensations of water and hands cascading down her body. At the end, she stepped out of the tub gleaming with oil that smelled like incense. The attendant helped her into her clothes, telling Bisola that she was strong, she had held on till the end, and she was now being rewarded. Before he disappeared behind the cubicle to ready himself for the next supplicant, the pastor gave Bisola a bottle of curry-smelling oil and told her to place it under her pillow before she went in for delivery the first day of the following week. The bottle was calibrated, and for every night she had it, the oil was meant to drop a notch. If she ever woke up to see the oil hadn’t dropped, she was to phone her husband and hurry to the hospital before the sun rose high in the sky. The pastor’s deep eyes glowed as he retreated behind the blue curtains.

Bisola turned to the attendant. “So will I feel baby kick now?”

“Of course!” The attendant took one of Bisola’s hands and placed it over her stomach. Bisola waited for the familiar thud. She moved her hand all over, thinking the restarted heart may have shifted with the force of all that spiritual activity. She waited some more. “Osei, come and feel...”

But Osei was already beside her, feeling too for the thud. Suddenly he said, “Yes! Yes!”

“What?” Bisola stared at him. “You feel it then?”

“Thank you. Oh, thank you!” Osei was now at the door, where he had left the half-empty food flask on the floor. He grabbed it and pushed it at the attendant. “Thank you for helping us.” Then he was out of the office in a flash.

The attendant was laughing. “All this for me?” she asked, holding onto the flask with both arms.

Bisola called out to Osei. She hurried after him, past the anteroom where the crowd calmly shifted in their chairs, past the corridor with framed words of hope, and past the thick sweat of clamoring desperation in the reception lobby. Outside, she didn’t try to talk to him until they got to where he had parked the motorcycle. He had chained it to a massive, useless chunk of metal that once belonged in the factory. As Osei unlocked the chain and rolled out the motorcycle, Bisola saw that he had his face turned into his shirt collar. He was sobbing. But he still gripped the handlebars like he was waiting for her to embark. Bisola didn’t come close. The silence of the late night, except for the sounds of the ruckus from the lobby a distance away, bubbled in the rift between them. Finally she said, “It’s all for a miracle. And miracles cost more, my husband. What would you have me do?”

“Bisi. Oh, Bisi,” Osei mumbled.

Bisola approached, climbed onto the back seat, and anchored the cycle with her weight so he could get on with ease. It was then she noticed that the smell filling her nose was not his oranges or hair grease, but the lingering fragrance of incense from the tub.

“But it’s also like a hospital, not so? I’m their open farm and can’t run from the cutlasses and knives.” She shifted her weight on the motorcycle, placed a hand on the last spot the attendant had positioned it on her stomach. “We will go home now, wait for the oil to drop in the morning. And we must never, ever be late, my husband. The oil will drop. You’ll see.”

Eden by Uche Okonkwo

Obalende

Madu had never reached into the back of the videocassette cupboard: that dark, dusty place where the films were older than God. But today, bored and desperate not to rewatch another film — Nneka the Pretty Serpent, Terminator 2, Mortal Kombat — with his sister Ifechi, he got on his knees in front of the cupboard and thrust his hand in, taking out the first tape he touched. The cassette had his father’s initials on its side, written in black ink on a strip of adhesive paper.

Ifechi peered at it. “What film is that?”

Holding the cassette up to his face, Madu read the title: A Taste of Paradise.

Ifechi hesitated. “Madu...” she warned, “it’s Daddy’s film.”

“So what?”

Madu stood and took the tape out of its case, noticing, through the clear plastic in the cassette’s center, that both spools had almost an equal amount of tape around them. He slipped the tape into the player and pressed play.

“Won’t you rewind it?” Ifechi asked.

“Let’s see what kind of film it is first.”

They waited as the familiar whirring sound started from the cassette player. Then a massive penis filled the screen.

“Jesus!” Madu shrieked, jumping back and away from the TV without taking his eyes off it. His sister stood frozen, watching the screen like it would rip her into a million pieces if she dared to turn away. For a while, the only sounds in the living room were the hum of the cassette player and the creaking of the ceiling fan as the blades turned. The old TV was acting up again — there was no sound. Madu crept toward the set and brought his palm down against its side twice, sharply, like he’d seen their father do many times to get the speakers to function. It worked. They heard moaning sounds carried on waves of fluty background music.

Two white men, one white woman, a white bed, white walls, a white floor littered with long-stemmed red roses, all the more stark against so much white. The woman lay writhing on the bed, her legs spread wide as she touched herself. Ifechi, distressed to find that the exposed flesh between the woman’s legs was the same pink as her best pinafore, decided that yellow was her new favorite color. One of the men straddled the woman’s head and she took his penis in her mouth.

“She’s licking it, sha!” Madu cried, his mouth hanging open.

The second man, who’d stood leaning against a wall watching the other two while he stroked his penis, bent to pick up a rose. He held it in one hand, and with the thumb and forefinger of the other he stroked the rose’s unnaturally smooth stem: up, down, then up and down again. He kneeled between the woman’s legs and took the hand he found there, sucking on each finger like she’d dipped them in chocolate. Then he trailed the flower up the woman’s thigh.

“Hei!” Ifechi said as the rose stem disappeared beneath the patch of blond pubic hair between the woman’s legs. “Is it not paining her?”

“It’s not paining her,” Madu replied without looking at his sister. “She would have told them to stop.”

“Madu,” Ifechi said, with a nervous glance at the door, “what if Aunty Hope comes?”

Aunty Hope ran the small hair salon downstairs, and she looked in on the children while their parents were at work. It was also her job to make sure that the children did not mix with the urchins, as their father liked to call the happy, unkempt bunch that ran about the neighborhood most afternoons, rolling tires down the streets.

With the children on holiday, Aunty Hope had to check on them more often. Some days she would march them down to her salon and have them sit there for hours with their books. Aunty Hope’s moods were tied to the frequent and unannounced NEPA power cuts: happy when there was power, surly otherwise. Like many of the residents and small businesses in their Obalende neighborhood, Aunty Hope could not afford a generator.

Sometimes Aunty Hope would invite the children to watch her work. Ifechi liked watching her comb creamy white relaxer into the women’s hair and felt a malicious delight when they scrunched up their faces as it started to burn. At seven, Ifechi was not allowed to have her hair relaxed. She longed to turn ten, like Madu. She would be a big girl then.

“Go and lock the door,” Madu said now, his eyes still on the TV. Ifechi stayed put, frowning and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Madu spun around to face her. “Ifechi, go and lock the door, and stop acting stupid!”

Ifechi stomped to the front door, locked it, and returned to her place, her brother’s glare following her.

“Idiot,” he muttered, before turning to the TV again.

Ifechi was finding it hard to breathe. The room seemed to get warmer, the air thicker, as the minutes passed. The woman on the screen was on her hands and knees now, one man behind her, the other in front. “I don’t want to watch anymore,” Ifechi said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears.

“Then stop watching,” Madu said. “Silly baby.”

Ifechi did not turn away.

Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi lived in a big white house on Glover Road in Ikoyi. Even though it was only a few minutes from their home in Obalende, Madu and Ifechi’s parents were careful not to take the family visiting too often. “Before they think we only visit for their light and AC,” their mother would say, with an edge to her voice.

Madu and Ifechi enjoyed visiting Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi. They would pile into their father’s Santana and ride with the windows down — the car’s AC had been broken for as long as the children could remember — inhaling the breeze and exhaust smoke blowing in their faces. They would look out the window as they passed the police barracks and the market on their muddy street, the sights and smells at once teasing and assaulting. On Ikoyi Road, they would pass the immigration office, quiet and deserted on the weekend, and then the massive building of the old Federal Secretariat compound, with almond trees lining the fence and dotting the grounds. It was around this point that the noise and grime of Obalende began to give way to Ikoyi’s genteel influence. The streets grew quieter, with actual sidewalks and streetlights that mostly worked. Colonial-style houses stood proud in vast tree-lined compounds with green lawns. Even the air felt different. The children would often spot white people in shorts and canvas shoes walking exotic-looking dogs, and they would stare at the dog-walkers until they became flecks of white in the distance. Madu liked to imagine that the oyinbos were never able to go beyond the secretariat. That if they tried, some unseen, all-powerful barrier would literally stop them, and they would turn around and walk their dogs back to Ikoyi.

Madu adored Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi’s big home, with the big generator that had its own house. He didn’t mind that the couple had no children for him and Ifechi to play with, even though his mother often said how unfortunate this was. For Madu, it was enough that they always had electricity in their house. Plus, his uncle had loads of video games, and comic books that he let Madu borrow and not return.

Ifechi liked Uncle Zubby. She liked Aunty Agodi too — she made the best chin-chin in the world! — but she liked her uncle more. He reminded her of Father Christmas, with his lips buried beneath a forest of graying beard. Every time the beard parted to let him speak, Ifechi would feign surprise to find his lips there. Uncle Zubby always greeted her with a hug, and Ifechi would raise her forehead and rub her skin against the crisp hairs on his chin.

As they often did on these visits, the adults left Madu and Ifechi in the smaller living room with soft drinks, a platter of chin-chin, and the TV, while they sat and talked in the larger one. Today Ifechi sat sipping her Fanta, wishing her brother would settle on a channel; he’d been fiddling with the TV remote since they got there. She listened to the voices of the adults drifting in from the next room, and she remembered the conversation she had overheard last week.

“Madu.”

“What?”

“Come, let me tell you something.” Ifechi glanced at the doorway to make sure nobody was coming.

“You come here,” Madu said as he changed channels again. Ifechi sighed and shuffled closer to her brother on the couch.

“Do you know,” Ifechi started, her voice low, “that when a girl becomes a big girl, if a boy touches her she will get pregnant?”

Madu stared at Ifechi in reproving silence.

“Just touch like this-o,” Ifechi said, poking her brother’s thigh to demonstrate.

“You’re stupid.”

“But it’s true! I heard Mummy and Clementina’s mummy saying it. Remember that day that Mummy said we should read our science books after church; that day the rain fell? When I went to the kitchen to drink water, I heard them. They didn’t see me, but I heard them.”

Madu found a channel showing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He placed the remote beside him on the couch. “So, you’re an eavesdropper,” he said.

“What’s eavesdropper?”

“Olodo, don’t they teach you English in primary three?”

“You’re abusing me, abi? Okay, I won’t tell you anything again.” Ifechi sat back with a pout, her hands folded across her chest.

“Okay, sorry,” Madu said. “Sorry. Tell me.”

Ifechi’s eyes went bright as she turned to her brother again. “They were saying that one of their friend’s daughters got pregnant without a father. They said that all the boys in Lagos have touched her, that’s why they don’t now know which one is the father.”

“Oh, so you mean if I touch you now you will get pregnant?” Madu laughed as he pressed his sister’s neck. “I’ve touched you; now you’re pregnant.”

“No jor!” Ifechi said, frowning at her brother’s show of ignorance. “They said it’s when somebody is a big girl. I’m not a big girl yet.”

“And how will you know when you become a big girl?”

Ifechi glanced at the door again. “You did not hear what Clementina’s mummy said. She said that Clementina... that blood was coming out of Clementina’s pee-pee. That means she is now a big girl. If you see her in school when we resume, better don’t touch her.”

“Why are you lying, Ifechi? How can a person pee blood?”

“Shhhh! I’m not lying, that’s what they said. Clementina’s mummy said she told Clementina that if a boy touches her she will become pregnant. And Mummy said she will tell me the same thing too when I’m a big girl.”

“So where does the blood come from? Will there be a wound inside your tummy?”

“Me, I don’t know, but that’s what they said.”

Madu contemplated this for a moment. “So after you start peeing blood, if I touch you, you will get pregnant?”

Ifechi blinked up at the ceiling and considered the question. “No,” she decided. “Because you’re my brother. If it’s another boy, then I will get pregnant. Then my tummy will swell like a watermelon and my pee-pee will tear when the baby is coming out.”

“Ifechi!”

“But that’s what they said — it’s not me that said it!”

Madu rolled his eyes and turned back to the TV. But he was curious and so, even though he hadn’t decided if he believed his sister, he asked, “But... what if a boy touches you by mistake? Just by mistake-o.”

“I will still get pregnant,” Ifechi responded with quiet certainty, her lips turned down at the corners. “That means that once I become a big girl I won’t allow any boy to come near me. And you too, don’t be touching girls anyhow.” She pulled her earlobe for emphasis. “Because you can’t know who is big.”

Madu bit his lower lip. “How do I know you’re even telling the truth?”

Ifechi shrugged. “I’ve told you. If you like, don’t hear. Mummy said that if any of her children disgrace her she will send us back to our father in heaven.”

They watched the TV in silence for a few minutes.

“Madu?”

“What?”

“Will Mummy send us to heaven if they catch us watching those bad films?”

Madu reached for a handful of chin-chin and stuffed it in his mouth.

One rainy night when there was no electricity, the children played Catch the Light with their father. Their mother lay on the couch, laughing and shouting warnings — “Careful, watch her head!” Catch the Light was their game, invented by their father for nights like this, when the electricity was gone and there was a sense of camaraderie. He would put out the candles and let the warm darkness surround them. Then he would turn on his flashlight and move the beam all around the room, the children scrambling to touch it with their hands or feet. It was the only game they played together.

The stakes were high on this night. Their father had promised the winner three over-the-head spins, to be redeemed at any time of the winner’s choosing. Madu and Ifechi loved being held above the head of their tall father and spun, loved opening their eyes to see the furniture, barely discernible in the dark, whirling around them. They loved the dizzying sensation that remained after they were set down gently, like honey lingering on their tongues. But most of all they loved the chafing feel of their father’s palms as he gripped them, and they imagined that his hands left an imprint on them that remained long after he let go.

The children rushed from spot to spot, shrieking and stretching their limbs toward the light. But just when they thought they’d got it, the light would move away and they would laugh out their frustration. The light was all they could see, and they followed wherever it went, sometimes bumping into each other and their father.

At one point their father directed the beam of light to a spot close to his feet. As the children rushed forward, Ifechi in front, Madu bumped into her, sending her face into the region of their father’s crotch.

Ifechi felt her cheek make contact with her father’s penis through his shorts, and she straightened up at once. She stifled the urge to run, to cover the offending cheek with her palm. She glanced at her mother’s dark form on the couch; it was still. Had she seen? Ifechi tried to find her father’s face in the gloom, certain that he knew. But he was still moving the light, and Madu was still running and screaming.

When their father was ready to let someone win, he chose Madu. Their father picked him up and spun him over his head, both of them laughing while Ifechi watched with remorse from her place on the ground.

When the dreams first started — dreams of thick pubic hairs in many colors, and breasts with dusky, hard-looking peaks that he imagined would taste like cola candy — Madu had considered telling Ifechi about them. But how would she help? All she knew how to do was cry. Madu did not consider telling his parents: his father would send for his whip, and his mother would make him kneel with his hands raised for hours, and then command him to fill a twenty-page notebook with the words, I WILL NOT BE A BAD BOY.

In this latest dream, a woman looked up from the penis she’d been painting with her tongue, turned in his direction, and stared into his eyes. She smiled and beckoned with an index finger. Madu woke up to find his heart pounding and his penis straining against his pajama bottoms. He glanced at Ifechi’s bed across from his and, satisfied that she was asleep, felt the unfamiliar hardness with a tentative hand, awe and dread churning inside him. When Madu noticed that it felt good touching himself, he shoved his hands under his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut as he murmured Hail Marys. After twenty slow recitals Madu’s penis went back to normal.

He let out a sigh and slept like an innocent.

Madu and Ifechi were watching Pussy Palace that afternoon — with their parents at work, the front door locked, and Aunty Hope busy in her salon — when the TV screen went dead. Like people emerging from a cave into daylight, the children looked up at the ceiling fan that was slowing to a stop above their heads. They were thinking the same thing.

“Don’t worry,” Madu said, as much for his own comfort as for his sister’s. “NEPA will bring back the light before Mummy and Daddy come back... Don’t worry.”

The hours passed and the electricity did not return. The tape player stayed silent and stoic as Madu examined it with angry eyes, pushing the eject button over and over, lifting the player up from its stand, turning it upside down, rubbing the top of it, as though to coax it into spitting out the cassette.

“Hei, God...” Ifechi prayed-sang every few minutes, trying not to cry because she knew it would annoy Madu, “please let NEPA bring back the light before Mummy and Daddy come.”

But by six thirty when their parents returned, all the praying and glaring had neither caused the electricity to return nor the cassette to eject itself from the machine.

All evening, Madu and Ifechi tiptoed around their mother while she made dinner. They offered their help with sweet smiles and worried her with questions, which she answered with a slightly tortured air. When she’d had enough she waved them out of the kitchen with a stew-covered ladle.

As the family sat down to eat, Madu and Ifechi exchanged nervous glances. When their father cleared his throat to say grace, they lowered their eyelids but kept their eyes open, watching the candlelight play on their parents’ faces.

The children picked at their dinner of boiled yams and tomato stew with much ceremony, making their cutlery clink busily against the ceramic plates. But their mother wasn’t fooled.

“Why aren’t you two eating?” she asked.

“We’re full, Mummy,” Ifechi said.

“Full? When you’ve not even eaten anything?” Their mother frowned as she reached forward and felt their necks with the back of her hand, Madu’s first, then Ifechi’s. “Are you not feeling well?”

“We’re well, Mummy,” they chorused. Not feeling well meant visits to the hospital and injections. They shoveled down their food.

Before their mother could make more of a fuss, the ceiling fan started to turn, sending the flames of the candles into a mad dance. The house hummed with the sound of working appliances. The children sat very still while their mother stood, with a grateful sigh, to close the drapes and turn on the lights.

“My friend, blow out the candles,” their father scolded Madu. “Or is your mouth too heavy you’re waiting for the fan to do it?”

After dinner, their father settled down in front of the TV for the evening news while their mother did the dishes. Madu and Ifechi stayed up in the living room with their father long after their mother had gone to bed, watching over the tape player and the evidence inside it, pretending to be taken with the documentary that was showing. It was only a matter of time; their father would get up to go to the toilet, or to get something out of his room.

After the documentary, their father looked at Madu and Ifechi, as though noticing their presence for the first time since dinner.

“It’s almost ten,” he said. “You two go to bed.”

“Daddy, please, we’re not feeling sleepy yet,” Ifechi begged.

“And we’re still on holiday,” Madu added.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Their father leaned forward in his chair. The children got up and shuffled out of the living room, then hid in the doorway peeping at him. Without taking his eyes off the TV, he called out, “Madu, Ifechi — if I come out and find you still standing there, ehn...”

The children ran into their room and lay down in silence, listening for sounds from the living room. They thought they heard their father moving about and hoped he was going to bed. But they didn’t hear any doors open or shut.

“What if Daddy...” Ifechi whispered.

“Shhh!”

Apart from the thumping in their chests the children could hear nothing. They lay quiet for what felt like a very long time. Soon, Ifechi began to drift off to sleep. But the next sound wiped every trace of sleep from her eyes and almost stopped her brother’s heart.

“Madu! Ifechi!”

Ifechi felt hot liquid seep between her legs and she clamped her thighs together. “Madu! Daddy is calling us,” she whined.

“Shut up,” Madu hissed. “Act as if you’re sleeping.”

“Madu! Ifechi! Come out here now!” Their father’s voice was closer; they could hear his footsteps approaching their door.

“Madu,” Ifechi pleaded.

“Shut up and close your eyes,” Madu said. “Don’t say anything.”

The children’s bedroom door flew open, ricocheted against the wall. Their father filled the doorway.

“Both of you, get up right now!”

Madu blinked up at his father’s face. “Yes, Daddy?” he said, attempting a sleepy murmur. Ifechi, with her wide eyes and trembling lips, was less convincing.

“Get out now! To the parlor!” their father barked.

They stumbled out of their beds as their mother came to the door. “Chuma,” she said to their father, “what is it?”

He gave no reply. He followed behind Madu and Ifechi as they shuffled into the living room. Their mother joined them seconds later.

“Who has been watching this film?” their father asked, brandishing the cassette tape.

Ifechi glanced up from her feet to her brother’s face. Maybe if she confessed quickly their father would have mercy. She could tell the truth and shame the devil. She could say it was Madu’s idea, which was the truth. But if she did that Madu would never talk to her again.

“What film is that? Let me see,” their mother said. She stepped closer and took the tape from their father. She read the title, and her body grew tense. She gave her husband a long, pointed glare as she held out the cassette to him. He took it, but only when he looked away did their mother turn to Madu and Ifechi.

“So I have been breeding dirty maggots in this house, ehn?” she said. “Instead of reading your books, this is what you spend your time doing when we are at work?”

“This is the last time I will ask both of you,” their father said. “Who watched this film?”

Ifechi looked at the tape in her father’s hand. His palm now covered the portion of paper on the cassette that had his initials.

“It was me.”

Ifechi gasped and snapped her head up to look at her brother. He was staring into the space in front of him.

“Only you, Madu?” their father asked after a brief silence. He turned to Ifechi. “What about you?”

“She was with Aunty Hope,” Madu answered for his sister.

“Is it true?” their mother asked Ifechi, who could only nod. She knew her voice would fail her if she tried to speak.

“Ifechi, go to my room and bring my koboko,” their father commanded.

Ifechi managed to steady her legs and direct them out of the living room. She’d always loved the smell of her parents’ bedroom — camphor and a blend of their perfumes. But as she entered their room this time she took quick, shallow breaths. She reached into the floor of her father’s wardrobe for the whip: Mr. Koboko, as they called it when they were being playful. But there was nothing playful about the rough brown leather of the whip when it stung the skin, the three strands, like tentacles, curling around limbs and leaving welts wherever they touched. Ifechi felt lightheaded at the thought of the koboko hitting her brother’s flesh. She stumbled in the bedroom doorway on her way out and paused to gather herself. Still, her hands shook as she presented the whip to her father, careful not to make contact with his skin.

“Now go to your room,” he said to her.

“No,” their mother snapped. “Let her watch so she can learn.”

So Ifechi watched as her brother lowered his pajama bottoms and placed his palms against the nearest wall. Their father raised his hand with the koboko in it, and as he let it come down on Madu’s buttocks Ifechi squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t see, but she could hear — the whoosh of the whip, her father’s grunts, her brother’s gasps. After six lashes Madu started to cry. Tears stung Ifechi’s eyes and she squeezed them even tighter, but the tears found a way to seep through. By the tenth stroke Madu was begging, his voice choked with phlegm: “Please, Daddy! Daddy, please, please, I won’t do it again!”

Their father’s response was a warning: “If you rub your buttocks, I will start counting from one.” That was when Ifechi stopped counting.

When it was finally over Ifechi felt like her legs would crumple beneath her. Their mother’s was the only dry face in the room; their father’s was dripping with sweat. He let the koboko fall from his hand, like he’d purged himself of something.

“What do you say?” their mother asked.

Ifechi looked from her to Madu as the seconds stretched into an eternity.

“What do you say?” she asked again, her tone sharp this time.

Madu stared at the ground. When he opened his mouth his words were almost inaudible. “Thank you, Mummy. Thank you, Daddy.”

They were sent to their room. With each shaky step Madu took he grew bigger in Ifechi’s eyes — her big, strong brother who would protect her from the world. She promised to never annoy him ever again, swore she would do anything for him.

Madu flopped onto his bed, burying his face in his arms. Ifechi could hear his sobs, hear the sound of their parents trying to argue quietly in the living room. She sat on the floor beside Madu’s bed, rubbing his head and chanting, “Madu, sorry. Madu, sorry...” Seeing that her brother was not comforted, Ifechi went to their dressing table and grabbed the tub of Vaseline, because Vaseline could heal anything.

“Madu, should I rub Vaseline on your bum-bum?”

Ifechi got no response. When she started to tug on Madu’s pajama bottoms, his arm shot out of nowhere, knocking the tub of Vaseline out of her hand and across the room where it crashed into the wall.

It was two weeks later and school had reopened after the long holidays. Madu and Ifechi’s school was on a side street off St. Gregory’s College Road. Even though Obalende Primary School was much closer to their home, their parents would not hear of it. “I can’t have my children mixing with those urchins,” their father had said once to a neighbor who’d expressed concern at the distance Madu and Ifechi had to walk every school day. Before their mother got a job she used to be around to take them to and from school. Now she only dropped them off in the mornings, with prayers and admonitions to guide them on their way back home: Don’t talk to strangers, look properly before crossing, never pick any money or strange object from the ground, never ever ride on an okada to get home.

The first few times they’d walked back home on their own Madu had murmured his mother’s warnings like a mantra, all the way from St. Gregory’s College Road, to Obalende Roundabout, to Forest Street, and onto Ijeh Village Road. Gripping his sister’s hand he’d weave through throngs of people at the bus stops. He’d attach himself, his sister in tow, to unwitting adults and cross the busy roads with them.

But those days felt like a long time ago to Madu. Removed now from the shelter of his parents’ cars, he had grown accustomed to the pulsating mass that was Obalende, with its countless yellow danfos and molues, conductors courting passengers to faraway destinations across the city — Oshodi, Ikeja, Yaba — traders wooing passersby with wares that could cure anything.

Madu and Ifechi walked back home from school in the afternoon heat. As they did most days, they walked in silence until they got onto their street, where Madu let go of Ifechi’s hand and slowed their pace.

Ifechi hopped onto the rim of the gutter that ran beside the road and walked on it. She spread her arms for balance as she looked down into the gutter, at the litter and grime inside it. After a while, Madu pulled his sister off the rim and close to his side. “There’s this girl in my class,” he said. “She showed me her panties today, during break.”

“Haa!” Ifechi gasped, covering her mouth with the palm of one hand. She stopped walking, forcing Madu to stop too. “Why? What were you doing?”

Madu shrugged. “Nothing. We were just playing. I asked her what color they were, and she raised up her uniform and showed me.” Madu eyed his sister. “What? Why are you saying haa like that?”

“Madu... have you forgotten what happened with Daddy’s films?”

“So what? This wasn’t a film.”

“But it’s still bad! Did you touch her?” Madu resumed walking, and Ifechi went on as she followed. “Madu, Mummy said I should tell her if you do anything bad again-o.”

Madu spun to face his sister, and she noticed for the first time how much like their father he looked. She took a small step back.

“Good girl,” Madu sneered. “So you want to report me to Mummy now, because I covered for you. Didn’t we watch those films together? And wasn’t it me and you that went back to look for Pussy Palace even after Daddy beat me? You would have still continued to watch with me if Daddy didn’t remove the films from the cupboard. But you are now the good one, and Madu is bad.”

“No,” Ifechi muttered, staring at her feet.

“You’re just a baby. So you can run and tell Mummy if you want. That’s what a baby would do.” Madu leaned toward his sister, bringing his face as close to hers as possible without their skins touching. “Baaaabyyyy.”

He stalked off and Ifechi stood watching him, tears filling her eyes. She blinked them away and ran after him.

They were in bed that night when Madu heard their bedroom door open. He propped himself up on his elbows just in time to see Ifechi slip out the door. The sound of the TV floated in from the living room. And then all went quiet.

Several minutes passed before Madu got out of bed to follow after her. But then he heard the lash of the koboko, and Ifechi’s cry right after. He froze as it slowly dawned on him what Ifechi must have done. It was foolish. She was foolish. Still, Madu couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for his foolish little sister.

He was sitting up on his bed when Ifechi returned. He could only see a silhouette of her in the darkened room but he knew her legs would feel like melting wax, pain pulsing through every nerve. He knew that the heat would spread from her behind, infecting the rest of her like a fever.

She fell facedown onto her bed, crying, her legs hanging out over the frame. Madu stood and went to the dresser. He felt around the top of it until his fingers touched the tub of Vaseline. He picked it up and took off the lid. Then he went to Ifechi and raised the hem of her nightie. She shoved it back down and shifted an inch or two on her bed, away from Madu. He waited a few seconds before trying again, and this time Ifechi let him raise her nightie until it was halfway up her back. He scooped up some Vaseline with his right forefinger.

Ifechi flinched as Madu touched her skin. He paused for a moment, and then he began rubbing gently, his fingers making a steady circular motion on the mound of his sister’s buttock. He found it mesmerizing, and not altogether unpleasant, the feel of skin against skin, the contact made even smoother by the Vaseline.

“Why did you tell them?” he asked.

He was on the second buttock when she answered. “Because I am bad too.”

Madu’s fingers went still as he contemplated his sister’s words, the sureness with which she had said them. For the first time he could remember, he did not know how to feel.

He went back to rubbing, his fingers going around and around in an endless loop.

Joy by Wale Lawal

Surulere

Near the end, you’d remember you forgave Joy — nothing too vivid, at best the memory would occur to you as fleeting as a hint. You’d recall the evening of her first transgression and that she believed you had forgotten about her being half-naked in your bedroom, trying on your clothes. And you’d despise yourself for this. You’d wish you had not stayed quiet, had not walked over to your side of the bedroom and picked up your phone from the dresser, when you should have slapped the girl across the room. Your mother always said you had a heart like an akara — you could go through fire and remain soft. Turns out your mother was right.

You didn’t even know the girl’s real name. But you knew it was Mama Lateef’s style to give her girls English names once they arrived in Lagos. Mama Lateef, who supplied your mother with house girls when you were growing up, had once explained to your mother that English names made her clients comfortable; the least of her reasons being that names from the West bore neither secrets nor ancestral curses. In her line of business, English names were rivers old and without current; they couldn’t possibly carry the dead.

Mama Lateef was in her sixties now and sat in your living room repeating the same things she had told your mother all those years ago, and then she suggested that you and your husband could call the girl Joy.

“Joy?” you said, and the girl nodded on impulse.

“Ṣ’o ri?” Mama Lateef said, amused. “The girl has already taken the name.”

Joy was from Cotonou, in Benin. As far as you knew, she had no family, as was typical of Mama Lateef’s girls. She was slim, not pretty, with big marble eyes and even bigger pink lips. She spoke Fon, Yoruba, and some French, and her English, which was barely basic, Mama Lateef swore would improve quickly. According to Mama Lateef, Joy was nineteen, though you sensed the girl was younger: fourteen, sixteen at the most. Her age troubled you, and you told Mama Lateef that you needed to discuss this with your husband first; and, thinking you were going to ask for his permission, Mama Lateef said she understood.

But Joy was disappointed, would sulk as if the entire world had collapsed on her tiny frame. And in a moment of weakness at the end of your meeting, you assured Joy that you liked her. That your delaying was for her own good. Later in the evening, Yinka, your husband, suggested that you take the girl anyway. What did it matter if she was underage? Aimọye eyan: her type see much worse in Lagos than a young couple, and surely it wouldn’t be helpful to leave her with Mama Lateef, who had all kinds of clients.

“She’s better off living with people like us,” he said. “We’ll feed her well, can even send her to school. After all, we only really need her to help around for when the baby comes.”

He was that good, quick-thinking, quick with you; his buddies from university hadn’t called him Papapa for no reason. The baby was your pressure point and the prospect of raising a child together always made the two of you happy. So that was how you settled the argument that night — happy.

That same night, you called Mama Lateef and told her you were interested in the girl, and the next day you hired her. Joy arrived in the morning, shortly after Yinka left for work, with two black polyethylene bags filled with her belongings, all of which she showed you — as was customary — with Mama Lateef as witness. Joy didn’t come with much: three T-shirts, two skirts, a new toothbrush, a pair of green rubber slippers, a pair of black, worn-out leather flats, a Bible, an unopened pack of Always, and two pairs of underwear — no bras. Days later, Mama Lateef’s reaction would still be fresh in your mind. “Bra nkọ? Bra da? Ṣe ere lo ro p’owa ṣe nibi ni? What nonsense!”

“She’s a hardworking girl,” Mama Lateef later said. “Ọmọ to da ni. You’ll see, everybody lo ma n like ẹ.” And before she left, Joy rose from where she had been kneeling, repacking her things, and embraced Mama Lateef. “Face your work, ṣ’o gbọ?” Mama Lateef said, holding her by her shoulders. She turned to you, smiling: “Sometimes, ẹ mọ, these girls forget.”

Mama Lateef didn’t exaggerate — Joy was extremely likable. Were she still alive, ọmọ to fa iṣe mọ’ra, your mother would have called her. She reminded you of Mercy, the girl who served your mother for years. A girl so loyal that when your mother tried to poison her husband, the girl swallowed both accusation and punishment without regret. And you hoped to make such a girl out of Joy. Once she got past her shyness, Joy aimed to please. She kneeled when she spoke and buried her eyes when she was spoken to. She smiled when you complimented her, and had a way of laughing into herself whenever she became the object of attention. She reminded you of a mimosa; quiet, delicate, she moved like a secret.

Yinka thought Joy was awesome (all men have a go-to adjective and that was his) and sharp. Her maths, he used to say, was on point. It was strangely entertaining the effect adding currency to random numbers had on her mental acuity; how, for Joy, the difference between genius and stupidity was the naira. She couldn’t tell you twenty times five, but ask Joy N1,520 times fifteen and it was like NEPA had brought light behind her eyes — from her mouth, the girl churned numbers. So when you brought it up that Joy should attend a primary school in the area, Yinka agreed. More so, he offered to fund it.

The women in your book club liked Joy too. They made no comments about her and that was enough. The club met on the last Wednesday of every month, late in the afternoon, and rotated living rooms as venues. By the time they met Joy, it was your third meeting, and all five members including you were discussing The Bluest Eye. You hated it — not the book, which you had suggested at the previous meeting, but the book club. You had only joined because Yinka thought it would be good for you to be around other women. Plus, reading with them, he swore, would be a bonus since you had always wanted to get back into what used to be your favorite pastime. He thought, also, that the book club would get you some friends, the two of you being new in the neighborhood, and you being at home most of the time. But Yinka didn’t know these women like you did, much less like you had come to know them after having read with them.

He didn’t know how Bola, forty-two with Eucharia Anunobi eyebrows, openly gushed about Yinka’s photographs and would always steer the conversation toward his role in your sex life. Yinka couldn’t imagine a woman like Nneka, thirty-eight, who treated her house help like garbage, and once, when the club met at her house, she asked the girl to kneel down and fly her arms (for making me repeat myself, Nneka had explained). And women like Ibukun and Jumoke, both your age, thirty-six, sickened you for how often they spoke about their pastor, Daddy this and Daddy that. But Yinka couldn’t know that; after all, both women reminded you of his mother, whose company you enjoyed, as far as he was concerned. These women knew nothing about books. They were, after all, the kind who concluded that Toni Morrison had tried with The Bluest Eye (though Bola thought the punctuation could have been better), and meant it as a compliment.

It was September and the women were seated in your living room that Wednesday when it occurred to them that the next book should be Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. Bola, who suggested it, claimed the idea just popped into her head. Moments later, Joy walked in with a tray of iced tea and Bola squealed that it must be more than coincidence: Joy. Joys of... If you rolled your eyes any farther back, they’d have thought you were Liz Benson in Diamond Ring. None of the other women had read Joys of Motherhood but Bola claimed her oldest daughter, who was in secondary school, had brought it home once.

“I haven’t read it yet but it’s a good book, well-written,” she said. “Not like that last book — who even suggested it? Nneka, I’m sure it was you.”

Nneka responded, “What do you mean by that?”

And Bola: “Nothing-o, don’t mind me.”

Nneka: “Before, nko? You see, it wasn’t even me. But I don’t blame you, we kuku know your memory is one-kind.”

Everybody knew what Nneka meant. One way or another, Nneka, a classic eke, had gotten around to telling everyone in the book club how she suspected that Bola’s husband wasn’t the one responsible for Bola’s children — everyone except Bola.

“Women, please!” cried Ibukun.

“We didn’t come here to fight!” Jumoke added.

You left the women in the living room for your bedroom, where you had sent Joy to fetch your phone — the girl was taking too long.

The truth was, since you moved to Surulere you had been beset with melancholy. Sure, living there had its advantages, including the area’s organic electricity, which compensated for the absence of actual electricity. For you especially, Surulere provided a unique proximity to Nigerian films and to your favorite actors and actresses, whom you ran into randomly at restaurants, salons, and supermarkets. Once, at a supermarket, a man you swore was Fred Amata had asked if you would like to star in a film he was producing, but you declined. Still, living in Surulere was nothing like living in Ikoyi had been, and Yinka would often remind you that deciding to sell the house in Dolphin Estate was the third-best decision the two of you had ever made, the first being to get married and the second being to have a child together. The book club only made things worse but, really, you preferred when the women fought to when they discussed books. The former was something they were actually good at.

You found yourself just as drawn to as you were repulsed by Jumoke. Jumoke, who described herself as pregnant-pregnant (because she had been pregnant for more than six months), and had mentioned to you that by the next meeting she would have delivered her fourth child. “How many months is it now?” she had once asked you, and you had replied that you would be three months pregnant in a week. Then she asked why you looked so tired already when you had two more trimesters to complete. She went on to tell you to eat more vegetables, fresh vegetables-o, and it didn’t matter that you hadn’t asked. The novelty of being pregnant — the effusive attention from onlookers, the platitudes, how you had become the American Embassy for unsolicited advice, the nausea — set you apart from the other women, far enough to recognize how so quickly you had become a Nollywood wife.

But there was Joy, who took your mind away from these things. Joy, who at night rubbed your feet with Chinese balm and in the mornings massaged your joints with hot, moist towels; Joy, whose fingers were nimble and deft; who, even as you swelled, looked at your naked body through a combination of zeal, envy, and adoration, your skin the color of salmon and hers, peat. Joy, who took to learning the mechanics of your body with steadfastness, and lotioned your back as though the skin around it was of silk tapestry and hers to keep. And you wondered: Would she do anything for me? Could she be my own Mercy?

The same Joy, you had observed, was growing into a remarkable girl. She had gained some weight, some light around her cheeks, plump to her breasts, and wore confidence like an ipele of emeralds around her shoulders. It would make you laugh if it didn’t terrify you a little. They were always girls, never women, your mother had cautioned you — about the Joys of the world. There can only be one woman in any household, even your father with his four wives ensured each had hers. “So jẹ ki o ye ẹ dada,” she always told you. “Such girls don’t need your pity or friendship.” And how — for she had told you this when you were at that age where daughters believe themselves to be the Euodia to their mothers’ Syntyche and challenge them — you pitied and befriended those girls still.

But Joy was childlike, you’d tell yourself. Nothing like the girls your mother had employed, you reminded yourself as you walked to your bedroom that evening. She was almost like a younger sister, you thought, before wondering how difficult it could be to find a phone you had left on the dresser. You needed to call Yinka, to ask him what he’d like to eat when he got home, and you were already behind schedule, five p.m. instead of four.

“Sorry, ma, sorry, ma,” you started hearing as soon as you entered the room, and that was when you saw her standing by your wardrobe shirtless; your clothes scattered around her feet like petals — her first transgression.

Nearer to the end, you’d wonder if Mama Lateef had also been right about this other thing: whether girls like Joy were quick to forget. And whether or not she had been right, it would already be too late. By the time Joy would commit her second transgression, you’d had your child, a pretty boy who would grow up to cause the women of the world much trouble. You had him a few minutes past one a.m. in May; a boy with his umbilical wrapped around his neck, a boy the unique circumstances of whose birth would compel you to give him the oriki “Aina,” long before it was decided that Sesan would be his first name. And though you never told Yinka, you had thought that the baby would never make it, that he’d enter the world as a pool of blood. It was what the woman in your dreams had told you, the one who pestered you every night until you told her a story. And so many did you tell her — folktales, urban myths from your childhood, the salacious love stories that colored your secondary school years, and awful summaries of your book club readings — until you believed you had run out of stories. And then she reminded you that you had one more: the story about your son, how he never makes it out of the maternity ward, how he dies before being born because nothing survives women like you.

You blamed the book Joys of Motherhood for your nightmares, for it was while reading it that the nightmares began. And you were not alone: so strong a hold did the novel take on your book club that, thenceforth, the discussions were sober and somber, as though a wreath of clouds had appeared around your group. Things may have worsened when Jumoke, who gave birth — as she had predicted — before the club could discuss the novel, lost her baby to pneumonia less than a day after arriving home from the hospital. Nneka called you to break the news and not in her usual way, not katikati, but delicately. And the next evening, Bola called you to say book club meetings had been temporarily suspended and, before ending the call, warned you about your girl.

“Some of those girls are bad luck,” she said. Hers, for instance, had been telling Peju, Bola’s husband, things. “And Jumoke,” she added, “confronted her house girl in a dream before losing her child.”

You would ask Bola to calm down, to be reasonable, not expecting the deluge of confessions that followed.

She asked, “Are you alone? Do you have time to talk?”

You would leave your bedroom and respond, “Bola, you’re scaring me.” And during the rest of the phone call that seemed your longest yet, you would learn not only of Bola’s husband’s impotence, but also of the many things women do to remain women.

Joy’s second transgression took its time before it occurred, and when it happened, it didn’t catch you off guard. Rather, it left you feeling the girl had intended for you to discover that particular offense easily. And there was motive: only a few days after you had given birth, Joy came to you requesting permission to leave school for good. She had felt it would be better (for her mostly) if, instead of going to school, she trained to be a seamstress, learned a trade among people her age. She had found a seamstress who was willing to train her and you knew this woman, Rasheeda, whose studio was right across the street. Rasheeda had sewn every aṣọ-ẹbi you had bought since you and Yinka started living in Surulere.

It was June when Joy came to you with her plan: she promised she’d stay in school until the term ended in July; the last thing she wanted was to seem ungrateful or for Mama Lateef to brand her a waste, an oniranu, should you take Joy’s suggestion the wrong way and send her back to the old woman. Joy was shocked when you barely looked at her and said no; when you told her you were, as a matter of fact, relieved she no longer wanted to go to school because you needed her at home to watch the baby. She nodded when you told her you would be returning to work very soon, and replied, “Yes, ma, okay, ma.”

It took you until Christmas that year, your second Christmas with Joy, to realize the following changes the girl had undergone: first was her English, which no longer had gaps and creases but was smooth enough for Yinka to notice and even ask you about it. But you dismissed it then as nothing important. She was learning from television, you had explained to Yinka. Now that she stayed at home with the baby, she spent a great deal of time watching films, mostly Nigerian, sometimes Indian, and it was only natural that she pick up a few phrases. If her reading had improved too, it was because the Indian films required she be able to understand the subtitles.

After her English, you started noticing the way she smelled: like you. That is, like you after your usual spritz of Terry Mugler’s Angel, one on each side of your neck. It violated you, the thought of her creeping over your belongings (once, you could accept as an error, but again and again?); it made you ransack your dressing table, counting your creams, perfume bottles, and lotions, but none, it appeared, was missing. And locking your bedroom had no impact. Still, sometimes you felt your wigs had been tampered with; sometimes your clothes (bras especially) felt warm, ill-fitting, as though someone else had been in them. And then, the crown of all changes was how Joy no longer buried her laughter in your presence but sounded ebullient. How her laughter bloomed, percolated, and spread bold colors. How even from your bedroom upstairs, you could hear her. And always it stunned you to find her downstairs, with Yinka at the root of her laughter.

You suspected whatever it was between Joy and Yinka began on Christmas Eve that December, the year everything changed. Yinka, who had been the branch manager of a bank in Ikeja, had called you one evening the first week of that very month, claiming he was on his way home.

“Why?” you had asked. It was too early; you hadn’t even started cooking; was he feeling well? He had been complaining to you about migraines; was he driving? Could he make sure he was careful? The worst things happen around the end of the year. Yinka would explain that he was fired that morning (no, you’d respond); his bank (no), which had just been acquired by a bigger bank, was (no, no, no, no) restructuring; many banks, you knew, had been restructuring since 2005. The banks were too small in terms of how much money they held as capital, Yinka had told you back then, and because he didn’t want to bore you with the details, papapa, he had summarized that the Nationwide Recapitalization Program would be good for everyone.

“Trust me,” he had said. As he wept over the phone, you remembered how smug he had been telling you about Nigerian banks that year, how proud he was because he believed in his bank, and how proud you were of him because nobody needed to tell you that your Yinka was an astute banker, one of the best.

Even when, months before you hired Joy, he told you that a much bigger bank was planning to acquire his bank, when he confessed that he feared they’d let him go if the acquisition fell through, you had told him, “Let you of all people go, kẹ? Those are fears of sheep and I married a leopard. Ko possible. End of story.”

But not only was it possible, it happened. Yinka was fired that December. And Yinka wilted in unemployment, he shriveled, might as well have swallowed himself — in other words, o ru. You had decided to put your savings into retail and had made the final payment for a store on Bode Thomas, where you would sell children’s clothes imported from the US, and the months that followed were the most difficult yet. In those months, you felt the entire weight of your marriage shift toward your side. Sometimes, as you lay together at night, you would ask Yinka how things were going, whether things were going to be better, wanting him to say yes. But Yinka would never respond. All you knew was that he was looking for a job, and that he was getting tired of it. You would face your side of the bedroom, your back against his, and sigh.

And then one night, you asked again how he was feeling and as you turned away ignored, you heard him say: “You had no right to withdraw that girl from school.”

Ọlọrun, you swore to yourself, that girl will not kill me.

The film was Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and you were the only one in Lagos who hadn’t seen it. You had asked your salesgirl, Kemi, to buy a copy as she left for Ola Iya, the nearest canteen to your store, where she bought lunch for your favorite customers. The boys who hawked films always swarmed that area. It was Bola from your still-defunct book club — who since you opened the store had become one such customer — that recommended the film. She owned a beauty salon in Akerele that was famous for its stock of Indian films and was surprised when you told her you had never heard of it.

On Christmas Eve, you walked into your living room while the film was playing. You still hadn’t watched it, but you recognized the soundtrack, which the girls at Bola’s salon overplayed. That evening, you arrived home from your shop to a house that smelled of your signature perfume, and a front door that had been left unlocked, as if for you. You could hear laughter, a commingling of voices. You feared the worst was happening and stormed into the living room to meet Yinka, laid out on the sofa, laughing, and Joy, seated on the ground across the sofa, laughing too. She saw you and greeted, “Welcome, ma.” She no longer hid her face when she spoke to you and you were still very unfamiliar with this renewed Joy. She even looked at you as if she was searching for traces of panic and enjoying it.

“Go and bring the things from the car,” you said to her, your voice scattered, eyes darting. “Where is Sesan?”

She responded: “Baby is sleeping, ma.” And when she walked past you heading for the door, you swore she meant to lean toward you, because you smelled it all over her. Yes, your perfume, but that wasn’t even it, the ọdaju-eyan wasn’t wearing any underwear. She stank of lust.

You never discussed Christmas Eve with Yinka. You simply weren’t sure, still had your doubts. Premature confrontation was for women in Yoruba films and you were more pragmatic than that. The only time you had tried to tell Yinka that there was something odd about Joy, he looked at you strangely, having never forgiven you for removing the girl from school, having threatened you about sending her back to Mama Lateef, yelling, “Haven’t you done enough?” Besides, you don’t just wake up and accuse your husband of sleeping with the house girl because what if he says that he did? What then? O-hoo. And you knew Yoruba men owned up to much worse.

You tried taking the matter to God. You followed Bola, whose issues with her husband seemed to have been miraculously resolved, to three prophets, one of whom was an ẹlẹmi that assured you the Devil was in your house.

“The Devil,” the elemi said in tongues the other prophets translated, “wants all that is yours. The Devil covets and when you have lost everything, the Devil, being insatiable, will come for you.” Bisi, ṣọ ara ẹ. La oju ẹ! The prophets wanted to know if you had been having strange dreams and you told them of the woman you sometimes dreamed of, who by this time had some stories of her own. You told them how now the woman in your dreams wanted you to listen to her own stories, how you had never seen the woman’s face, never mind the many times you had tried to steal a glance. You never mentioned Christmas Eve, never mentioned how, on several occasions since then, you had caught Joy glaring at you, and how, each time, you had felt like something about to be eaten. You only listened as they told you what special prayers they would make on your behalf and wrote down their instructions for your part in this battle against Satan: Light one abẹla each day of the week for seven weeks; mark what is yours with anointed oil; cover all mirrors; read Psalms 27 and 109 first thing every morning and last thing every night; gbadura! Gbadura!

And you would have put your heart into each and every one of these things had they seemed dependable, had you not closed your heart to God long before you even met Yinka, and if prayer didn’t turn to dust in your mouth whenever you tried to call on Him. You remembered that in the Nollywood films both you and Joy used to watch, justice arrived on the heels of crimes — if not immediately, eventually. The question, then, was should you simply wait for your justice to arrive? Throughout your life, you had watched women like Patience Ozokwor play villains, and seen that villains were always vanquished, but you also knew that the Hilda Dokubos of Nigerian cinema played scorned, tortured women who always outlived their malefactors but were never duly compensated. Always. Where on that spectrum would Joy place herself? Where would she place you? Did she consider these things as she tormented you?

You believed justice according to Nigerian films was clumsy, neither fair nor meaningful, always lax on villains: all one really needed to do was confess her crimes and next were the credits and To God Be the Glory. But that did not mean such films were false; in fact, you were banking on the inevitability of getting away with whatever it was you were going to do to Joy. If you looked hard enough, wouldn’t you see that everyone who was anyone in Lagos was a villain in some way? You were going to trade places with Joy, take control of the script, give Hilda the juju for once, and let Patience mourn. You wanted it that way so that when people tell this story, because they always will, listeners will find it difficult to imagine you. In their minds, you’d transcend that spectrum, being neither a typical Patience nor a Hilda and nowhere in between. There are three kinds of women, and the third, you swore, was your kind — an Ijebu woman defending her house, the kind of woman to go after what was hers, the kind to hold no regrets over whatever she does to remain a woman, the kind who never lost.

Once you defined being such a woman as contingent on Joy suffering, there was no stopping you. It was like hearing the voice of God, and nothing had ever sounded as fulfilling, reassuring, or sweet. The moment that voice came to you, you abandoned the prophets for more practical instruments. Then you waited: for the right price, the right amount, for night to arrive, for Yinka to fall asleep, and then for Joy to fall asleep. Once you were certain your conditions had been met, you walked to her bedroom, where Joy slept under air-conditioning and on a foam mattress wrapped in cotton sheets — excesses the result of unnecessary kindness. You had five liters of sulphuric acid in a keg you were going to douse over her like a gardener tending her hedges, until every drop had been assigned a patch of skin. So you opened the door and crept into her bedroom. The room was unlit but you could make out her bed by the window; just outside in the sky hung a sickle moon. You called out to her softly, “Joy, Joy,” and when there was no response you were sure she was fast asleep. It gladdened you. Carelessly, hands shaking, you unscrewed the keg. You held it over her bed and screamed when the door opened behind you with a bang. It was Joy in the doorway and the bed was vacant, just a bunch of pillows that had more than deceived you. She terrified you when she opened the door, and you dropped the keg. You could hear its contents spilling over the ground, singeing the carpet.

“Mummy,” she sometimes called you this, “ṣ’ẹn wa mi?”

You stormed out of her bedroom.

“Emi ree,” she said as you ran to your own room. “Mummy!” she screamed after you. She was on to you. If not that night, one day the ẹlẹmi-eṣu would come for you.

It was a week before Easter, your third year with Joy, when Yinka got a job interview in Abuja. He didn’t dwell on the details, having gone for numerous interviews already, all of which had been unsuccessful; he wanted to temper his hopes. It was an impromptu interview for a managerial position at a telecom company with several offices in Lagos. In Abuja he’d be meeting with the executive director of the company at a conference. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you had heard him tell someone over the phone. The way he spoke, he could have been referring to either the interview or the job.

At first, you didn’t want him to leave you in Lagos, not with that girl, not with Joy. But you knew how important the interview was to him, and so in the morning on the day he was set to leave, you made him promise to come back home that very night. He explained that flights between Lagos and Abuja were unpredictable and unreliable, but you made him swear he would try. He wanted to know why you were frightened; he confessed to you, as a way of easing you, that he had a good feeling about this particular interview: his former boss had recommended him, had reached out to the ED on his behalf. Things were about to change for the better. But ki lo dẹ de? He wondered why his saying all of that had not put your mind at rest. You told him not to worry, he wouldn’t understand. Things had been strange for a while between the two of you and he wanted to talk once he got back, to smooth things over were the words he used. You realized that he meant this sincerely and it occurred to you then that Christmas Eve could have been a lie, something Joy put together to throw you off-balance. It felt unfamiliar as you said it but you told Yinka that you loved him, and although he looked perplexed he said he loved you too. You wanted to tell him everything then, about that night with Joy, the keg of acid, how she cackled as you ran back to your room, but instead you wished him a safe flight and asked him to call you once he had landed. He said he’d tell you all about the interview when he got home that night.

“Ṣe iyẹn wa okay?” he asked, teasing you with the present tense. It was the happiest you had seen him in a while.

“Ẹhn mo ti gbọ,” you replied. Just come back home tonight.

Ever since that night with Joy, you kept your distance from her. That was what Bola, the only person you shared your fears with, advised. On Joy’s part, you explained to Bola, she acted as though that night had never happened and this only made her more sinister, an ẹlẹmi-eṣu, true-true. As soon as Yinka left for the airport, you decided that no longer was Joy going to be allowed anywhere near you and your family. You moved her things to an old room behind the house, so that she would no longer sleep inside the same building as you. Unsatisfied, you called Mama Lateef, telling yourself you didn’t care if it would upset Yinka; men, you and Bola had agreed, never understand these things until it’s too late. Even when Mama Lateef tried to persuade you to take another girl, you let her know that you had had one house girl too many, though you never explained what you meant.

All you said was, “We don’t know where these girls are from, who they are, what animosities they carry inside of them; we can never really know. Yet we invite them into our lives, we leave them with our babies, we let them cook for us, claim we can trust them — what if they turn out to be bad people?”

“Joy isn’t a bad girl,” Mama Lateef said. She insisted she knew the girl. At the last place she worked, the children refused to eat if Joy wasn’t around; she brought the parents so much luck they would have paid triple the amount you paid to keep her, but it was Joy who left. “Joy likes you. Mi o mọ reason ti o fi like yin, but she does. She said to me, the first time she saw you, that she must live with you. She thinks you are the most beautiful woman she has ever seen.” At this, Mama Lateef laughed. “Ṣe yẹn wa jọ ọmọ buruku? Haba!”

You decided you couldn’t blame Mama Lateef for Joy, you made it clear you blamed yourself, all of it was your own fault, you who had enabled a society in which girls like Joy were forced to exist, you who had once relished such a society.

“Ẹ ma binu,” you told Mama Lateef finally. “We just think we can manage by ourselves. We don’t want Joy anymore.” And you looked forward to Easter Sunday, when Mama Lateef was coming to take her away.

That evening, you got a call from Yinka. He wanted you to know that his interview had been moved to the following day, which meant he wouldn’t be able to make it home that night. You were standing by the window, watching the children in the compound next door. They were playing Catcher. All day, there had been no light at home and you told Yinka what you had learned that afternoon, that the generator that powered your house had packed up. Your security guard had blamed the diesel on which the generator had been running. He claimed the diesel that had been in the house was a bad batch that had been mixed, it seemed, with kerosene. Most likely the person who sold the diesel had tampered with it. As a result, the engine, he said, had knocked. You told Yinka the guard had been out all evening looking for a mechanic. Yinka groaned over the phone but you had an odd feeling that things were going to be fine. You felt strangely lightheaded and the horizon had never seemed so promising. So you told Yinka not to worry; to focus on his interview; this time next year the two of you would be looking back with Sesan — Sesan, you suddenly wondered, where was he? “Hold on,” you told Yinka. You walked over to the other end of your bedroom, to Sesan’s cot, and he wasn’t there. You searched your own bed, threw the sheets across the room, and your baby wasn’t there. He wasn’t across the corridor in Yinka’s study. He wasn’t downstairs in the living room or in the room that was formerly Joy’s (you went downstairs because he was crawling now, and you knew he wasn’t good at climbing stairs yet, so you hoped he hadn’t tried to and failed). It wasn’t until you left your bedroom that you realized you could smell smoke, and only when you arrived downstairs did you see the smoke was coming from the kitchen. You ran there, opened the door, and the backdraft sent you crashing into the cabinet where you kept some porcelain ornaments. You ran to the front door, already screaming for help, but the front door, too, was locked. So you dashed upstairs to your bedroom, evading the fire, but for how long?

Back in your bedroom, your phone was on the windowsill, propped against the burglary-proof bars that separated you from the window’s glass. Yinka was asking: “Bisi, are you there?”

You ran to the phone, meaning to respond, but something in the other compound caught your attention. It was Joy, playing Catcher with the other children. She was holding your son against her waist; your son, whose first word, you remembered, had been her name. The children stopped playing for it had become obvious that the house next door to them was burning. Then they started running, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” All except Joy, who knew your window and stood glaring at it, at you. She stood there, watching. On her index finger was a key ring and affixed to that ring, a bunch of keys you watched Sesan playing with idly. You didn’t even have time.

“Joy,” you screamed. “My baby! Joy!” All that came to you while screaming was that September when Joy stood in that same bedroom half-naked, when she showed you who she was and you thought it safer to doubt her. You tore your lungs weeping as people gathered to watch your house, hands tucked underneath their arms, heads shaking, mouthing, Omaṣe o.

Is this me? you wondered. Is this my life? By the time you remembered your phone, Yinka was saying, “Never mind, I’ll call you later. Darling, I have to go.”