On Black Sisters Street (33 page)

ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT

A POT OF TEA HAS APPEARED AS IF BY MAGIC IN THE MIDDLE OF THE
sitting-room table. A squat orange ceramic kettle in the shape of a cock that Madam bought at the flea market in Brussels one Sunday morning. It is Madam’s favorite pastime. Spurred on by daytime BBC programs like
Antiques Roadshow
and
Bargain Hunt
, Madam spends Sunday mornings rummaging for bargains at the Brussels market, convinced that she will find a priceless antique she can resell and make pots of money. So far she has failed to find anything worth reselling, but she always brings back something interesting for the house: the chimpanzee-hand ashtray, a flower vase shaped like a pair of clogs, a knitted tissue-box holder, and a cuddly cat that snores when pressed.

Somebody must have gone into the kitchen and made the tea, but who?
Joyce wonders. She does not remember seeing anyone get up. She pours herself a cup of tea and halfheartedly starts to sip, holding the cup around the rim rather than by the ear. Its taste is flat, and she gives up drinking. But it as if the little she has drunk has reminded her stomach of its emptiness, because it starts to grumble and rumble. Maybe she should make something, rustle up something quick and easy for all of them to eat. She goes to the kitchen. She stumbles over a hammer lying on the floor. “Segun’s left his hammer out
again,” she grumbles as she picks it up and puts it away in a kitchen cupboard. Why can’t the man clean up after himself?

A thoughtful silence has descended on the women once again and is extending into the kitchen, so that even the fridge does not give out its normal whirr. Joyce opens the fridge and scans the contents. Jollof rice. Sisi made that. Joyce brings out the container and rubs her hand over it.
Sisi touched this
. She opens it and looks at the rice, faint orange grains sticking together. Cubes of green bell pepper are visible in it. And three fried snails, curled up, looking like ears.
Sisi cooked this
. She smells the rice. It is still good.
Is Sisi’s body already decaying? How long does it take before a corpse starts to rot? A few hours? A few days? How long did it take for Mother and Father to rot? And my brother, Ater? They must be rotten by now. Three years is a long time for a corpse, isn’t it?
She does not want to think about her family, decayed. Unidentifiable bits of matter. She returns the container to the fridge. Her appetite is gone. She is in the mood for a bit of self-pity. She thinks about her life, and it seems to her like she is being punished for something she did in a previous life.
People I love get taken away from me. Whatever it was I did, haven’t I paid enough? If only I knew what sin I committed, I could make amends. I could begin to rectify it
. But she can also feel that her relationship with Ama and Efe is beginning to change. It is this change that makes her, many years later when she has her school, hang on her office wall a framed inscription—
IT IS NOT THE BLOOD THAT BINDS US IN THE END
—which she will find in a supermarket in Yaba.

She goes back into the sitting room just as Madam is coming in. Madam’s face is less drawn than it was when she left. Her flame-orange
boubou
brightens the room like a match lit in the dark. “I have spoken to them,” she says. “Everything will be all right. No need for any of you to worry.” “Them” being the police. Madam has spoken to them, for lingering in the house, on the women’s minds, is also the thought that they might be deported. Madam has often said that
she knows enough of the right people in the police force to ensure that as long as they do not try to cheat her, the women are safe in Belgium. “Everybody has a price, even
oyibo
police! Pay the right price and you are safe. Tomorrow I want all of you back at work. I have to find a replacement for Sisi.” Madam disappears into her bedroom, saying that she does not want to be disturbed. Her slippers slap against her soles as she walks. Joyce finally says what has been on her mind the entire day, gnawing away at her, eating at her like acid on paper. “Madam does not even care!”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Ama answers. “What did you expect?” Her voice is mocking.

Something snaps in Joyce and she shouts, perhaps louder than she intends to, “We’re human beings! Why should we take it? Sisi is dead, and all Madam can think of is business. Doesn’t Sisi deserve respect? What are we doing? Why should Madam treat us any way she wants and we just take it like dogs?”

“What do you suggest we do?” Ama asks, the mocking quality in her voice dissipating, making her voice a murmur. Like that of a Catholic at confession.

“We fit go to de police,” Efe answers before Joyce can say anything. It shocks her, because she has never thought of it.

Ama laughs. “Madam has the police in her pocket. You heard her. We tell the police and then fucking what?”

“We’re not happy here. None of us is. We work hard to make somebody else rich. Madam treats us like animals. Why are we doing this? And I don’t believe that we cannot find an honest policeman. I don’t believe that for a second! We report Madam, and who knows, maybe we can even get asylum here. There are always people looking for causes to support. They can support us. We can be free. Madam has no right to our bodies, and neither does Dele. I don’t want to think that one day I will be dead here and all Madam will do is complain about how bad my death is for business. I don’t know what will
happen to us, but I want to make sure Madam and Dele get punished.” Joyce pulls at the tip of the cloth hanging from the waist of her trousers.

Ama impatiently lights another cigarette, then squashes it into the ashtray immediately. She is crying. “Come here,” she says to Joyce and Efe. She stands up and spreads her arms. Joyce gets up and is enclosed in Ama’s embrace. Efe stands up, too, and puts one arm around each woman. Their tears mingle, and the only sound in the room is that of them sniveling. Time stands still, and Ama says, “Now we are sisters.” The women hug one another tight. Years later, Ama will tell them that at that moment she knew they would be friends forever. They will never go to the police, but they do not know that now. They believe that they will, and that gives them some relief. They disentangle and sit again on the black sofa. It creaks under their weight, and someone lets out a small, high laugh. Joyce pulls the rag from her waistband and pushes it under the couch, prodding it with a finger until it is out of sight. “I wonder if I can find henna here,” she says. Ama has started to say something about making lunch when the doorbell rings. The women look at one another, wondering who it can be.

Joyce gets up and opens the door to Luc, his long hair disheveled and lank, almost covering his face. It is as if someone has ringed his eyes with eyeliner. He looks like a man who has not slept in many years. She does not say a word to him. She simply turns her back and walks into the sitting room.

Luc pulls the door shut behind him and follows her in, asking, “Where’s Sisi?”

SISI

BY THE TIME SISI GOT BACK TO LUC’S, THE MAY SKY WAS A SPREAD OF
azure anchored by a band of pinkish red, the color of a fresh bruise on white skin, but Luc was not yet home from work. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to six. Luc had said he would be back between six-thirty and seven; he wanted to get some shopping done. Oh, that he were already home, she thought. Her new life excited her, pleasured her into squeals of joy.

Sisi ran upstairs, dumped her shopping on the bed, and thought perhaps she ought to start cleaning the kitchen. She would clear out the breakfast plates and maybe light the candle in the middle of the table. She had just entered the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

When Sisi answered and found Segun at the door, it had her surprised but not alarmed. “Hello, do you want to come in, Segun?”

He did not want to. “But … bu … but I want you to come, I mean … to—to co … to come with me in the car. We, we, we, I mean, we … we … we have some … thing to dis … dis … dis … I mean, to discuss.” Busy hands flailing all the while. Restless feet tapping on concrete.

“Discuss,
ke
? We can discuss it here,” she told the lanky man. Where was Luc?
Luc, please come home now!
Maybe she should have
gone to the police after all. What did Segun want with her? Where was Luc?

“No. I am sorry, Si … si. Not here. No … no … I mean not here. It, it, it, I mean … it wo—wo … won’t take time, I promise.” His voice was low. He clenched and unclenched his fists. It struck Sisi that this was the longest he had ever spoken to her.

What harm will it do? Nobody can make me go back to the Zwartezusterstraat. That part of my life is over. And certainly not this wimp of a man. This man with only half a brain whose mouth always hangs open
.

She got into the car. Whatever it was he had to discuss, she hoped he would keep it short. She wanted to be home by the time Luc got in. She wanted to tell him how much fun she’d had spending her money on herself. To kiss him and tell him that she was glad he’d broken the rules and come to the church on the Koningin Astridplein. “Segun, I can’t stay out too long.” He nodded.

She was not scared of Segun. He was harmless, everyone knew it. So the hammer hitting into her skull had come as a shock. She had not even had time to shout. She was not yet dead when he dragged her out on the deserted road leading to the GB and pushed her into the trunk of the car, heaping her on top of a purple-and-gray plaid blanket, her ankle-length green dress riding high up her legs to expose her thighs. One of her leaf-green flat-heeled slippers fell off, and Segun picked it up and threw it nonchalantly into the trunk. It landed beside Sisi’s head.

In the instant between almost dying and cold-stone dead, the instant when the soul is still able to fly, Sisi escaped her body and flew down to Lagos. First she went to the house in Ogba. When she came, her father was in the sitting room reading the
Daily Times
, thinking that when next Sisi called he would mention that at his age and with a child abroad he ought to have a car, and could she not send him
one? Sisi whispered in his ears. He shooed away the fly that had perched on his right ear. She found her mother in the kitchen beside the secondhand fridge they had just bought with the money Sisi sent. She was pouring a glass of water, at the same time complaining of the heat and the power failure. “A whole week and still no light. How am I supposed to enjoy my fridge, eh?” she muttered, placing the bottle on a kitchen counter and screwing its cap back on. She lifted the glass to drink. At that moment Sisi tapped her on the shoulder, and the glass slipped from her hands, spilling water and breaking into two uneven pieces. Sisi’s mother would say the next morning, when the phone call came, that she knew dropping the glass was an omen. She would wail and tell the gathered mourners that she felt a coldness in the air just before the glass slipped. “That was when my daughter died. What have I done in this life to deserve this? How have I erred?
Onye? Onye ka m ji ugwo?
” She would burst into an elegy that cracked her voice and left her hoarse for many weeks.

Her husband would not cry, for men do not cry. He would sit on the chair facing the door, so that he saw everyone who came in and everyone who left. He would sit there and look at the mourners coming and going, trying to see behind the tears those who wished him ill. For it was not normal that his daughter should die just as she was starting to do well. Only that morning she had sent them money, the largest amount ever, strengthening his resolve to ask for a car. Somebody, somebody who envied him his fortune, must have had a hand in this. So he watched the mourners with the eyes of a hawk. And when they said, “
Ndo
, sorry for your loss,” he would nod, slowly, as if his head were twenty times its size, the head of a masquerade.

Once it left Ogba, Sisi’s soul found its way to a house where she had never been. A house in Aje, a magnificent duplex. It was just after seven o’clock, and the Lagos sky was dark, a violent shade of black, like ink. The darkness was thick and quiet, but inside numerous lights were on, and Dele was talking loudly into a telephone.