On Black Sisters Street (26 page)

Alek had made lunch in silence, alone, muting the kitchen radio that often kept her company. If only she knew what she had done wrong, she would swallow her pride, forget the woman’s rudeness, and apologize to her. But how could she start apologizing for something she was not aware of? Where would she start? What would she be expected to say? And Polycarp saying nothing did not help matters at all.

Alek had always wanted to meet Polycarp’s family. She had imagined loving them and they in turn loving her. Nothing had prepared her for such a slight. She bent her head over her plate of rice, chewing quietly, trying hard to swallow the disappointment that rose a bile inside her.

After lunch, Alek’s food barely touched, mother and son retired to the sitting room and left Alek to clear up alone. They sat side by side, conspirators, speaking in soft tones even though Alek did not understand Igbo, so it would not have mattered if she had heard them.

Done with the dishes, Alek came back to the sitting room to find Polycarp alone on a chair, his hands folded behind his head, the way he always sat when he slept. Except he was not sleeping. His eyes were focused on the vase above the TV, gazing through the frieze of the plastic flowers to the wall.

“Where is your mother?” Alek sat beside him. Behind her was a gold-plated framed photograph of Polycarp and her taken at a studio in Ikeja. Polycarp straddled her, his arms around her chest. The photographer
had told them that he had never seen a couple so obviously in love, so totally happy in each other’s company that they had not even needed his “cheese” to smile.

“She’s gone to lie down. She’s tired.”

Alek sensed something uncomfortable in Polycarp’s voice. Like a ball of wool trying to stop itself from unraveling. A sandstorm trying hard not to erupt. Alek sneezed.

She leaned forward and took his hand between hers, rubbing it, but he claimed it back almost immediately.

And then Alek knew. She knew that she and Polycarp had come to an end, and she did not know why.

“I’M THE OLDEST CHILD,” POLYCARP BEGAN WHEN THEY LAY IN BED
. Alek pressed her nose to the wall. It smelled of dust. “I’m the oldest son, and my parents want me to marry an Igbo girl. It’s not you, Alek, but I can’t marry a foreigner. My parents will never forgive me.”

He always mispronounced her name, Ah-lake, and she always corrected him, Uh-lek, but this time she ignored it. She did not care anymore how he called her. He sounded like a stranger, anyway. His voice was faint, weakened by this speech he had begun and halted several times already that night. He was making no sense. Talking of loving. And forever. Of a place in my heart. And then of a father’s illness. And of grief that would crush him if Polycarp did not give him an Igbo daughter-in-law. And of obligations. First son. Culture. His voice skittered in the dark, saying the same things over and over again. Love you. Can’t live without you. Can’t live with you. Kill. Live.

Alek curled up, a fetus with her knees under her chin. She rested her head against the dust-smelling wall. It flattened her nose and hurt its bridge. What could she say? What would she say? The walls smelled of dust. The bridge of her nose hurt.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I am really sorry. I tried not to go. I tried to avoid them because I knew this would happen. I—” He turned and touched her shoulder. She shrugged it off. “I know you can’t go back to Sudan. You want to leave Nigeria? Go abroad? I remember you said once that your father had hoped you could all go abroad. I know a man who’ll help you. I will pay him, and he can get you into London. America. Anywhere you choose.”

London. America. Londonamerica. Said with ease. Londonamerica. Americalondon. Interchangeable. Alek wished she were a man. She wished she were a match, physically, for Polycarp, then she would have shown him what she thought of him and his silly proposal. She would have ripped open the scar on his face, sliced it open with her bare hands so that it hurt with a fresh pain.

In the morning the framed photograph of the two of them, hanging on the sitting room wall, was gone. The patch of wall where it had been hanging a hurtful rectangle of dusty starkness. She grabbed a kitchen towel and started to wipe the area clean.

EVEN FROM A DISTANCE, THE HOUSE, STANDING HIGH UP IN THE AIR
, was majestic. It looked so out of place in Lagos that Alek wondered if somehow they had driven out of the city and she had slept through it. Not having slept much the last days, she had been seduced by the potholes rocking the car into a snoreful slumber. “You were snoring!” Polycarp chortled. Alek looked out the window and ignored him. She had not spoken to him in two weeks. Not since the night he told her that they had no future together because she was a foreigner. Yet she made his meals as if nothing had changed. Breakfast. Lunch. Supper. Eaten with smacked lips (from him) and derisive grunts (from his mother). She cleaned up after the mother, mopping the bathroom floor that she constantly flooded with water as if that was her intention, her sole purpose in taking a bath. Alek swept her bedroom,
plumped her pillows. Dusted the louvers and the bedpost. Perhaps in a part of her mind she did not control, the idea had snaked in that in remaining dutiful, she may yet sway their minds. Yet it was not in the stolidity of the mother’s face when she looked at Alek or in Polycarp’s refusal to fight for his girlfriend that Alek saw their relationship fleeting by, fading. It was in their lovemaking: furtive and desultory yet at the same time immensely beautiful. He would never marry her. So why was she stubborn in her dutifulness? She could not tell.

The house was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a white gate that was wide open. As they got closer, Alek saw that there were people in the compound. Groups of young men and a few young women with brash makeup and tawdry clothes. At one side of the gate was a huge water tank, and in front of it a man in an off-white caftan sat alone, his arms wrapped around his knees. At first the men in the compound ignored the car, but the nearer it got to the gate the more their eyes became fixed on it, as if daring Polycarp to drive all the way in. Polycarp inched the car to the nose of the gate and then killed the engine. The man in the caftan slowly got up, straightened out his caftan, and walked over to the car. He yawned and poked his head into the car. “Wetin una want?” He drew out his words, stretching each one as if testing for its elasticity.

“We wan’ see Oga Dele. I get appointment with am today. My name na Polycarp,” Polycarp answered.

The man withdrew his head and pointed to a spot inside the compound, indicating that Polycarp should park there and wait. The man walked past them into the house and came out five minutes later and motioned with his head for them to go in. Alek could feel the eyes of the men boring into her. She tried to disregard them, fixed her gaze on her feet, and, fighting the urge to hold on to Polycarp’s extended hand, took fifteen quick steps into the house. Fifteen steps and she was in a living room the size of her father’s house in Daru.

The man sitting in a gray leather chair was the fattest person Alek
had ever seen. He looked like he was fitted into the chair and could not shake it off no matter how much he might have wanted to. He wore a black short-sleeved linen shirt with trousers to match. His arms were short, and the hand he brought out to shake Polycarp’s was podgy and sweaty. He had huge gold bracelets on both wrists. He held a brown handkerchief in one hand and repeatedly wiped sweat off his face, even though the room was air-conditioned and nobody else was sweating.

“Sit down. Sit down.”

Alek and Polycarp sank into a deep green sofa that segued into the lighter green of the walls.

“Today na very busy day for me. Una see all the people outside?”

Polycarp nodded. Yes, they had indeed seen all the people outside. Alek studied the L-shaped bar behind the man, reflecting that for someone who claimed to be very busy he did not look it at all. He had a glass of wine on a side table beside him and a bowl of fried meat beside it.

The man was still talking. “Everybody wan’ Senghor Dele help. My brother, life is hard.” He said the last in the tone that rich people usually reserve for when they talk about how much easier life is without excessive wealth. There was something self-congratulatory about it. Alek was not impressed. She counted the different bottles of alcohol that she could see, lined up on a shelf running the length of the bar. She had gotten to twenty-one when Polycarp touched her and said Senghor Dele had just asked her a question.

“Something to drink? Fanta? Coke? Sprite? Anything. I get dem all,” the man repeated.

Alek shook her head. No. She did not want a drink, thank you for asking. Polycarp asked for a beer. Star, if he had, please. Thank you.

“Ah, I no know if I get any beer oo. I dey tink make I open a church. Dat na where the money dey these days. If you wan’ make big money, go become pastor, I swear. You don’ see the big big cars
wey dey follow these pastors when dem dey comot? De one wey I see yesterday na only Lexus and Jaguar full everywhere like
san’san’
. Some even get private jet for dis Nigeria!
Tori olowun
. I swear. I no fit have beer if I wan’ become pastor oo. Pastor Dele. Hallelujah!” He belched out a laugh, and Polycarp joined in, saying mock-heatedly, “Why you go wan’ make more money? Rich man like you?”

“I never rich like those pastors. I be small man.”

This seemed to instigate another gust of laughter. Alek looked from one to the other. Convinced that there was nothing funny, she kept her face passive and then returned to her bottle-counting.

In the wake of the laughter dissipating, their host yelled out, “Good luck! Good luck!”

His voice boomed into the house, bounding over the chairs to drag out a young boy of about eleven with a big head and very skinny legs. He made Alek think of an ant.

“Sah!”

His voice did not belong to his legs. It belonged to his head. Big.

Dele swigged the rest of the drink on the side table, handed the empty glass to the boy, and said, “Bring us two bottles of Star and a bottle of Fanta. The Fanta is for the lady.” He winked at Alek. Alek ignored the wink. The same way she ignored the drink when it arrived. She had no plan of being bullied into having a drink she had not ordered. Who did this man think he was to be bossing her about? And why did Polycarp think whatever he said was funny? She looked momentarily at Polycarp and looked away as soon as he caught her eyes.

Polycarp took a huge gulp of his beer. “Oga Dele, this is Alek. I told you already about her.” His voice was almost servile.

The fat man nodded at Alek and said, “The name has to go. Alek. Sound too much like Alex. Man’s name. We no wan’ men.
Oti oo
. That man’s name has to go, one time. Give am woman name. Fine fine name for fine gal like her.” He laughed and Polycarp laughed.
Alek hated them both. “Make I see … Cecilia? Nicole? Joyce? I like Nicole. Wetin you tink, Polycarp? Nicole no be nice name?”

Polycarp nodded. Yes, it was a good name. Nicole was an excellent choice, he said.

Dele shook his head. “No. Not Nicole. Dat Nicole Richie too skinny. No flesh. She be like stick insect. No be good name for fine gal like dis.” Another roar of head-bobbing laughter.

Polycarp laughed along. “No, Senghor Dele. Na true. Nicole no be good name for fine gal. Nicole Richie too skinny.”

“Joyce. Yes. Joyce. Dat one sound like name wey dey always jolly. Joooooyyce!” He ripped out a loud laugh, a
hee-hee haw-haw
that wobbled his stomach.

Polycarp joined in, his laughter sounding noncommittal, deferential. “Yes, yes, Senghor Dele. Joyce is a much better name!”

Alek crossed her arms and looked from one man to the other. Dele pointed at her, slapped his thighs, and burst into fresh gales of laughter, holding his head in his hands as if the force of the laughter would snap it off. Anger rose in Alek’s throat and threatened to make her shout, but she pushed it down. What would she say she was angry about? She had no energy left for anger. The soldiers who raped her that night in Daru had taken her strength, and Polycarp’s betrayal had left her unwilling to seek it back. From now on, she resolved, she would never let her happiness depend on another’s. She would never let anyone hurt her. She would play life’s game, but she was determined to win. Her resolve gave her thirst, and she downed the Fanta without tasting it. She had forgotten that she had not asked for it.

She could not remember how long they stayed there, how long she sat there, her legs crossed at the ankles, while Polycarp and the fat man talked and laughed and ate heartily. Arrangements that she understood neither head nor tail of were made. She was to take passport pictures. A passport and visa would be organized. Money would be
paid. Lots of it, but it did not have to be paid at once. She would be taken to Belgium.

“Make you go look after people. Nanny work,” the fat man told her, his eyes bright, a brightness that Joyce would understand only in hindsight.

Polycarp added quickly, “Yes. Look after children. Dele will find you a job as a nanny in Belgium.”

Alek said nothing. She did not ask why she needed a change of name to be able to babysit children. She uncrossed her legs.

“Ah ah ah, dis one dey ungrateful oo,” the fat man said, his face wobbling as he shook his head disapprovingly at Alek. “She sabi how many people dey wan’ opportunity like dis? I throw opportunity for her lap and she jus’ sit there like
mumu
dey look de ground. Na cow she be? Na grass she dey chop?”

Polycarp gave a faint smile and said not to worry, she just had a lot on her mind. “She’ll do a good job,” he added, his voice smooth like a lie, as if he was afraid that the man would withdraw his help.

IN THE PASSPORT PICTURES THAT ALEK TOOK, HER FACE WAS BLANK
, her eyes fixed on a spot beyond the camera, at a cobweb in a corner of the studio ceiling. She was thinking of the spider that built the web, admiring the intricacies of web building, cloning the web, transferring the clones on the back of her hand with henna that would stain the lines first orange then the reddish brown of a brick.