Everything Good Will Come (23 page)

“When did you graduate?”

“77.”

I stepped back. “No.”

“Yes,” he said.

That was the year of the Festival of Arts and Culture we called Festac. Stevie Wonder came to play at our national theater, Mariam Makeba, Osibisa, every African person in the world represented in Lagos. I thought I would die because I was in boarding school in England. We had color television for the first time in our country, and everyone was growing vegetables in their back yards in support of the government's Operation Feed the Nation. My mother grew an okra patch, my father said the whole regime, its Operation Feed the Nation and Festival of Arts, was all nonsense.

“See my eyes,” he said. “I never lie. I have a six-year-old son.”

My mouth fell open. “You're married?”

“Divorced,” he said.

“You're married,” I said.

As far as I was concerned.

“Well,” I said. “Nice meeting you.”

“You too,” he said.

“I'd better get home.”

“I've enjoyed talking to you.”

“You're welcome,” I said, without thinking.

I almost curtseyed. How old was I in 1977? Seventeen.

I was determined to find out about his wife the next time we met. This time, we sat in the drinks lounge.

“You must miss your son,” I said, as we waited for our beers to arrive.

“Yes.”

“You get to spend time with him, I'm sure.”

“No,” he said.

“That is a pity,” I said.

I thought I should give up prying. It was not my business.

“He's in England with his mother,” he said.

“Your wife's in England?”

“She's not my wife.”

Our waiter arrived with the beers. Niyi immediately reached for his wallet and paid. The waiter obscured his face for an instant.

“You drove the poor woman to England?” I said.

I reached for my bottle.

“She left,” he said. “I was twenty-three. Let me see... she was pregnant, still in medical school. I was working for my father. My parents are strict Catholics, but I didn't get married because of that. My father was not an easy man to get along with. He kept threatening to sack me. One day I said, ‘I've had enough' and walked out. That was the beginning of our troubles.

“I found a new job, but it was hard. She was working in the teaching hospital, we were living in Festac Village. My son is an asthmatic. One day her car was stolen, this, that, you can imagine. But she had this group of friends. Like rats those women, shoe-and-bag girls. They were always wearing something, traveling somewhere. She wanted all of that. One day her parents gave her a ticket and she took off. She went to England with my son. She didn't even call until she found a job then she phoned crying and asking me to come and join her.”

“What did you say?”

“I had a job here. I wasn't qualified over there. What was I going to do? Who would employ me? She was a doctor, and I would be what? All the time we were in Lagos, she was telling everybody I couldn't provide. Now she wanted me to go to another country and take an odd job?”

“That would have been difficult.”

“I could have gone, for my son.”

“Would she have done the same for you?” I asked.

As he drank his beer, I watched him. Every movement he made was large.

“No,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “She knew exactly what she wanted. She always knew what she wanted. She wanted to get married. She wanted to travel. She wanted to work in England. She just wouldn't admit it. Women do that, you know.”

“What?”

“Dribble past you and score. Phoosch! Mental football.”

I smiled. “You generalize.”

“You're not like that?”

“I'm not perfect.”

“Tell me your faults,” he said, smiling.

“I trust too fast,” I said. “I don't forgive easily. I'm terrible, terrible with that, and I'm scared of death.”

“Yours?”

“Mine, and others.”

“That's not a fault.”

I pictured myself as a drunken woman, ramming my head into a wall, thinking I would eventually walk through. I was always hopeful about men.

“I'm hopeful,” I said.

“That's good,” he said, taking another drink.

I glanced at his hands.

“Do you play the piano?”

He studied them, looking pleased. “How come you know?”

I brought my glass to my lips.

“How did you know?” he said. “You must be a mammy- water, hanging around pools, looking for men to entice and wagging that ass of yours.”

My beer went down the wrong way.

Sheri was sitting on her bed. I stood before her mirror, wearing work clothes: a black skirt suit that always needed to be coaxed down.

“You can't go out like that,” she said.

I checked my lipstick. “Why not?”

“To the Bagatelle? People dress up to go there. Your suit looks un-ironed.”

“Who's looking?”

She walked to her wardrobe and began to sift through.

“You'll never find anything in there for me,” I said.

“Wait and see,” she said.

“I won't like it, Sheri. I know I won't, and I'm not going to change to please you.”

Always. She asked if I'd eaten. She fixed my hair as I walked out of her door, made me iron my clothes. I told her she had an old woman's soul. She said that was why she was wiser. She pulled out a black gown with a large gold print. It was narrow and the neckline was a little wide, Senegalese style.

“Tell me you don't like it,” she said.

I wore it. Niyi arrived early. I thought he would have made an effort, but he was wearing work clothes. Sheri was looking forward to meeting him, and he ended up not staying. We were running late, he claimed, then he later confessed he was hungry.

“How long has she been living here?” he asked as we drove out of the apartment complex.

“Two years,” I said.

“She's come far,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

We approached the junction leading to the main road.

“Living here and no job,” he murmured.

I watched one car whiz past, then another. I was about to answer when he whistled. His gaze followed a red car which looked like a miniature space ship on the antiquated road. The car slowed by the gates of the large apartment complex across the road. “What?” I asked.

“The new BM,” he said.

“BM what?” I asked.

“W,” he explained.

He stared at the red brake lights. The gates opened and the car rolled in.

“Em, can we go, now?” I asked.

The main road was clear. He gave it a cursory look before coming out.

I sniffed. “So materialistic.”

He looked me up and down. “You don't like good things, Madam Socialist?”

I turned my face to the window.

He patted my knee. “It is good to see that your politics doesn't affect your dressing. You look nice in your black and gold. ”

I kept my face to the window. I did not want him to see me smile. How the man annoyed me.

But I knew he joked because he thought he was flawed. Not flawed the way most people were, secretly, for their own self-obsession, but flawed publicly, so that everyone could see: a wife who had walked out on him, a son he was not raising. Anywhere else in the world it would be hard to deal with, more so here. A woman was used to humiliation by the time she reached adulthood. She could wear it like a crown, tilt it for effect even, and dare anyone to question her. A man would wear his like an oversized cloak.

“Move your broken down car,” he shouted.

He drove terribly, as if we were rushing to the airport for the last flight out of Lagos, and accused other drivers of sleeping.

“Please,” I said. “Don't crash us.”

The Bagatelle was one of the oldest and best run restaurants in Lagos, owned by a Lebanese family. Throughout dinner I was laughing. Niyi ordered falafel as lafa-lafa. When it arrived, he said it would give him gas. I asked if any food pleased him. He said home cooking.

“I'm sorry, I don't cook,” I said.

“Serious?”

He contemplated my confession for a moment then thumped the table.

“I'll marry you, anyway.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said, holding my head. If I did, I would be in trouble.

“Eat up,” he said.

“I'm full,” I said.

“You're wasting good food,” he said. “I thought you were a socialist.”

“You've been calling me names since you met me.”

“Eat up, o-girl.”

“Please, let me digest.”

How the man annoyed me. He had a wicked mouth, even to kiss.

I was surprised to find Sheri's door ajar when I returned. I pushed it open and peered into the living room. There was a pot on her sofa, overturned. I slipped and realized there was okra on the floor.

“Sheri,” I said, placing my hand to my chest.

I walked around the sofa, found more stew on the floor. In the kitchen, I saw a bag of yam flour lying half empty on the floor.

“Sheri!” I said.

Her voice came from her room. I hurried there and found her lying on her bed.

“What happened?”

She propped herself up slowly.

“Nobody hits me. You hit me and I will hit you back. God no go vex.”

There was yam flour in her hair.

“Who hit you?”

She patted her chest. “Telling me I'm a whore for going out. Your mother is the whore. Raise a hand to hit Sheri Bakare, and your hand will never be the same again. Stupid man, he will find it hard to play polo from now on.”

“Sheri, you beat up the brigadier?”

With a pot, she said. The Civil War hadn't prepared him for her. She beat him for every person who had crossed her path in life. I told her she didn't have a drop of white blood in her. Anyone who had white blood wouldn't beat up a whole brigadier, like that, with a pot of okra stew.

“I was raised in downtown Lagos,” she said. “Bring the Queen of England there. She will learn how to fight.”

She swept the yam flour off the kitchen floor.

“You know you will have to leave this place,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“And you know he might send people over to harass you.”

“Let him send the president,” she said. “United Nations troops, even.”

“You're prepared to die?”

“I know people who will beat him up for ten naira alone,” she said. “And I know things about him that will land him in Kirikiri maximum security prison for the rest of his life, if he tries any nonsense. The man is a coward. That is why he hit me. He won't dare send anyone here. If he does, he will read in
Weekend People
how a woman beat him up.”

I shook my head.

“Me and you, I don't know who is crazier.”

“After what my eyes have seen? If I'm not crazy, what else will I be? The man is jealous of me. Can you believe it? He's jealous of my success. With all he has. He wants me to have nothing, except what he gives me. He says he will take it all back. I said take it! All of it! I did not come to this place naked.”