‘Is it sewing that will give me a child? Even if I had managed to pass to go to school, I would still want a child now.’
‘There is no rush, Ari.’ Olanna wished she could shift her stool closer to the door, to fresh air. But she didn’t want Aunty Ifeka, or Arize, or even the neighbour to know that the smoke irritated her eyes and throat or that the sight of the cockroach eggs nauseated her. She wanted to seem used to it all, to this life.
‘I know you will marry Odenigbo, Sister, but honestly I am not sure I want you to marry a man from Abba. Men from Abba are so ugly, kai! If only Mohammed was an Igbo man, I would eat my hair if you did not marry him. I have never seen a more handsome man.’
‘Odenigbo is not ugly. Good looks come in different ways,’ Olanna said.
‘That is what the relatives of the ugly monkey, enwe, told him to make him feel better, that good looks come in different ways.’
‘Men from Abba are not ugly,’ Aunty Ifeka said. ‘My people came from there, after all.’
‘And do your people not resemble the monkey?’ Arize said.
‘Your full name is Arizendikwunnem, isn’t it? You come from your mother’s people. So perhaps you look like a monkey as well,’ Aunty Ifeka murmured.
Olanna laughed. ‘So why are you talking marriage-marriage like this, Ari? Have you seen anybody you like? Or should I find you one of Mohammed’s brothers?’
‘No, no!’ Arize waved her hands in the air in mock horror. ‘Papa would kill me first of all if he knew I was even looking at a Hausa man like that.’
‘Unless your father will kill a corpse, because I will start with you first,’ Aunty Ifeka said, and rose with the bowl of clean rice.
‘There is someone, Sister.’ Arize moved closer to Olanna. ‘But I am not sure he is looking at me, oh.’
‘Why are you whispering?’ Aunty Ifeka asked.
‘Am I talking to you? Is it not my big sister I am talking to?’ Arize asked her mother. But she raised her voice as she continued. ‘His name is Nnakwanze and he is from close to us, from Ogidi. He works at the railway. But he has not told me anything. I don’t know if he is looking at me hard enough.’
‘If he is not looking at you hard enough, there is something wrong with his eyes,’ Aunty Ifeka said.
‘Have you people seen this woman? Why can’t I talk to my big sister in peace?’ Arize rolled her eyes, but it was clear she was pleased and perhaps had used this opportunity to tell her mother about Nnakwanze.
That night, as Olanna lay on her uncle and aunt’s bed, she watched Arize through the thin curtain that hung on a rope attached to nails on the wall. The rope was not taut, and the curtain sagged in the middle. She followed the up-down movement of Arize’s breathing and imagined what growing up had been like for Arize and her brothers, Odinchezo and Ekene, seeing their parents through the curtain, hearing the sounds that might suggest an eerie pain to a child as their father’s hips moved and their mother’s arms clutched him. She had never heard her own parents making love, never even seen any indication that they did. But she had always been separated from them by hallways that got longer and more thickly carpeted as they moved from house to house. When they moved to their present home, with its ten rooms, her parents chose different bedrooms for the first time. ‘I need the whole wardrobe, and it will be nice to have your father visit!’ her mother had said. But the girlish laugh had not rung true for Olanna. The artificiality of her parents’ relationship always seemed harder, more shaming, when she was here in Kano.
The window above her was open, the still night air thick with the odours from the gutters behind the house, where people emptied their toilet buckets. Soon, she heard the muted chatter of the night- soil men as they collected the sewage; she fell asleep listening to the scraping sounds of their shovels as they worked, shielded by the dark.
The beggars outside the gates of Mohammed’s family home did not move when they saw Olanna. They remained seated on the ground, leaning against the mud compound walls. Flies perched on them in dense clusters, so that for a moment it seemed as if their frayed, white kaftans had been splashed with dark-coloured paint. Olanna wanted to put some money in their bowls but decided not to. If she were a man, they would have called out to her and extended their begging bowls, and the flies would rise in buzzing clouds.
One of the gatemen recognized her and opened the gates. ‘Welcome, madam.’
‘Thank you, Sule. How are you?’
‘You remember my name, madam!’ He beamed. ‘Thank you, madam. I am well, madam.’
‘And your family?’
‘Well, madam, by the will of Allah.’
‘Is your master back from America?’
‘Yes, madam. Please come in. I will send to call Master.’
Mohammed’s red sports car was parked in front of the sprawling sandy yard but what held Olanna’s attention was the house: the graceful simplicity of its flat roof. She sat down on the veranda.
‘The best surprise!’
She looked up and Mohammed was there, in a white kaftan, smiling down at her. His lips were a sensual curve, lips she had once kissed often during those days when she spent most of her weekends in Kano, eating rice with her fingers in his house, watching him play polo at the Flying Club, reading the bad poetry he wrote her.
‘You’re looking so well,’ she told him, as they hugged. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be back from America.’
‘I was planning to come up to Lagos to see you.’ Mohammed moved back to look at her. There was a tilt to his head, a narrowing of his eyes, that meant he still harboured hope.
‘I’m moving to Nsukka,’ she said.
‘So you are finally going to become an intellectual and marry your lecturer.’
‘Nobody said anything about marriage. And how is Janet? Or is it Jane? I mix up your American women.’
Mohammed raised one eyebrow. She could not help admiring his caramel complexion. She used to tease him about being prettier than she was.
‘What did you do to your hair?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t suit you at all. Is this how your lecturer wants you to look, like a bush woman?’
Olanna touched her hair, newly plaited with black thread. ‘My aunty did it. I quite like it.’
‘I don’t. I prefer your wigs.’ Mohammed moved closer and hugged her again. When she felt his arms tighten around her, she pushed him away.
‘You won’t let me kiss you.’
‘No,’ she said, although it had not been a question. ‘You’re not telling me about Janet-Jane.’
‘Jane. So this means I won’t see you any more when you go to Nsukka.’
‘Of course I’ll see you.’
‘I know that lecturer of yours is crazy, so I won’t come to Nsukka.’ Mohammed laughed. His tall, slim body and tapering fingers spoke of fragility, gentleness. ‘Would you like a soft drink? Or some wine?’
‘You have alcohol in this house? Someone must inform your uncle,’ Olanna teased.
Mohammed rang a bell and asked a steward to bring some drinks. Afterwards, he sat thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Sometimes, I feel my life is going nowhere. I travel and drive imported cars, and women follow me. But something isn’t there, something isn’t right. You know?’ She watched him; she knew where he was going with this. Yet when he said, ‘I wish things didn’t change,’ she was touched and flattered.
‘You’ll find a good woman,’ she said limply.
‘Rubbish,’ he said, and as they sat side by side drinking Coke, she recalled the disbelieving pain on his face that had only deepened when she told him she had to end it right away because she did not want to be unfaithful to him. She expected that he would resist, she knew very well how much he loved her, but she had been shocked when he told her to go ahead and sleep with Odenigbo as long as she did not leave him: Mohammed, who often half-joked about coming from a lineage of holy warriors, the very avatars of pious masculinity. Perhaps it was why her affection for him would always be mingled with gratitude, a selfish gratitude. He could have made their breakup more difficult for her; he could have left her with much more guilt.
She placed her glass down. ‘Let’s go for a drive. I hate it when I visit Kano and only get to see the ugly cement and zinc of Sabon Gari. I want to see that ancient mud statue and go around the lovely city walls again.’
‘Sometimes you are just like the white people, the way they gawk at everyday things.’
‘Do I?’
