Swallow, page 5
When I first moved in, I introduced myself to her and she glared at the door of Rose’s flat and said, “Hope the situation next door improves.”
“What situation?” Rose asked, when I repeated the comment to her. “That frustrated old fowl. I’m going to her place to find out what situation she means. She’s been looking for my trouble since I came here, and today, today, she’ll see my red eyes.”
I tried to stop her. We struggled by the door and collapsed over each other. From then on, I wouldn’t tell Rose a word Mrs. Durojaiye said.
Then Sanwo started visiting. I was always embarrassed whenever Mrs. Durojaiye saw him, the way she looked at him, judging his appearance. Sanwo’s sense of style had improved from his college days, but he was still color-blind and could wear a red shirt and green trousers and walk around confidently. Mrs. Durojaiye never greeted him and I would nudge him to greet her, because Yoruba people loved respect more than fine clothes. Mrs. Durojaiye eventually accepted Sanwo because he greeted her the proper way, bowing with one hand behind his back and pointing his forefinger to the ground. Still, Mrs. Durojaiye would not smile at him.
Then he began to stay overnight. I would have to check that the corridor was clear before he came out. Sanwo would stand behind the door and I would stand in front. I would knock on the door to tell him when he was free to come out. Sanwo would hurry down the stairs and I would follow. Once, Mrs. Durojaiye appeared at the same time Sanwo was hurrying down the stairs. I caught up with him after she had driven off to work and asked him, “What did she say? How did she look?” I was holding his collar so tight I almost cut off his air supply.
I never cared to show off Sanwo in front of Mrs. Durojaiye. I began to because I decided that what God had seen, Mrs. Durojaiye would have to get used to. Yes, I was committing fornication. She was like a Sister Superior really, and the only neighbor I became close to eventually. The other tenants avoided us after Rose and Violet fought on the balcony.
I went downstairs that night to empty our dustbin. Rose had gone to bed early. She was drinking more than usual and beer made her drowsy. We had had a power cut at the time we expected one. The street was dark and within our compound were battery and kerosene lanterns, visible in several windows. My flashlight was switched off. Mrs. Durojaiye was driving in as I emptied the dustbin in the dump near our gates. For a moment, the headlights of her Peugeot blinded me. I waited as she parked.
“Ah, Tolani, it’s you?” she said.
“You’re late today, ma,” I said.
She slipped her car keys into her handbag. We always spoke in Yoruba, Mrs. Durojaiye and I. If I didn’t, she would be offended: English was not polite enough. I noticed her hair was disheveled. Normally, her threads were tighter. Tonight, her bases were puffy and one end was loose. It made her look kinder.
“I’ve been at a union meeting,” she said.
“Hope all is well.”
“No. We’ve decided to go on strike in support of the doctors.”
“Ha,” I said, clapping my hands in sympathy.
“Yes,” she said. “Again. The last time we did this, the government threatened to stop paying our salaries. This time they say they will arrest us.”
“Arrest?”
“They are just boasting, you know these army men. They think because they are military they can command us and we will obey, but they cannot intimidate us, not this time. We stand with the doctors.”
Her voice trembled. Mrs. Durojaiye sounded much younger and more nervous than she actually was.
“They will have to consider your pay demands,” I said.
“Let them pay us regularly first,” she said. “That’s what we need. Don’t delay our salaries, and improve our working conditions. They tell us that patients will die if we go on strike. We say they are dying, anyway, no beds, this and that. The government says it’s our fault. We are not managing our facilities and supplies well. Can you imagine that?”
I couldn’t imagine going to the hospital she worked in. If I were dying, I would rather die at home. Patients had to buy their own medications, IV drips, and bandages. There were never enough beds and during operations they had power cuts. Patients died from a lack of simple oxygen. They had to pay deposits before they were admitted and they were given oily meals and slept on dirty bedsheets. To top it all, the nurses were rude. The hospital was, of course, not private but government-funded. One of our very best.
As we walked toward the block, Mrs. Durojaiye lifted her chin in the direction of our balcony. “Your friend upstairs, I saw her walking around yesterday afternoon. She’s on leave or something?”
Mrs. Durojaiye never called Rose by her name. It was her way of showing she didn’t approve of her.
“She lost her job.”
Rose would be angry I told Mrs. Durojaiye, but Mrs. Durojaiye would find out anyway and come back to ask why I hadn’t told her the truth. I couldn’t take that risk.
“Hm,” she said. “What a pity. You’d better hold on to your own job then. Me with no pay and your friend with no job. We might be coming to ask you for rent money at the end of this month, eh?”
I smiled. “That will never happen, ma.”
As we approached the stairs leading to the first floor, I switched on my flashlight. In the dark, with the lanterns in the windows, our block of flats looked like a normal place to live. During the day the building was as it really was, as though it had barely survived a fire. The green paint had a smoky gray film; the mosquito netting over our windows was ripped and brown with dust. There was laundry hanging on our balconies. The compound was cemented and had pockmarks from past rains. Around the compound was a wall about eight feet high, spiked with broken glass to prevent thieves. Our landlord had had the block built as close to the wall as possible to accommodate six flats. Every month he arrived on time to collect his rent.
Mrs. Durojaiye turned to me. “Have you heard any noise from my sons this evening?”
“No,” I said.
“This new girl I have looking after them, Philomena, I think she is lazy. Watch them, please. I don’t want them running around and getting into mischief.”
“They are good boys.”
“No one is born bad. You have to watch them.”
She had been fighting for a long time, to feed her sons and keep her job. She had probably fought her husband and in-laws. Why else was she alone? What I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be like Mrs. Durojaiye, that tough and lonely. She was so tough, the government would be a small foe for her. She was some sort of senior official in the nurse’s union. I wasn’t sure what her exact title was.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I will have to send them to their father for this period of the strike. Maybe I will keep my youngest, Ayo, here with me. His brothers are getting to an age when I can’t handle them anymore. I beat them these days and my arm begins to ache.”
The beam of my flashlight danced as I laughed. Mrs. Durojaiye beat her children like no other mother. I let her walk up the stairs first. The woman scared me, and I, too, was on my own strike until Sanwo met my demands.
No one in the world loved shoes more than me, no one, and the higher and sexier they were, the more I cherished them, quite frankly. I polished all my shoes and kept them in a row under my bed, stuffed them with old newspaper sheets and walked softly, softly so they wouldn’t scuff. When my soles became worn down, there was an elderly shoe repairman down our street who replaced them. “Papa,” everyone called him. He sat on his bench with his jaw jutting out and was forever going on about backlogs. Whenever I handed my shoes over to Papa, I had anxiety from thinking that he might lose them or ruin them. I’d actually pray that he wouldn’t. I once confessed this to Rose. “God forbid bad thing,” she said. “You treat those shoes like pets.”
She was quiet for a few days after I started working for Mr. Salako. I’d ask her a question and she’d answer with a grunt, which didn’t surprise me. What I wasn’t prepared for was to come home in the evenings and find her lying on the sofa like some rich madam, watching television. She was drinking beer like water now, drinking and falling asleep. We hardly spoke. The atmosphere at home was full of tension, rather than the usual haze of Flit mosquito repellent. Then on Saturday morning, she announced, “Me, I done tire from all this resting. I beg, let us go to Tajudeen.”
To me, that meant she’d forgiven me. Normally, we went to Tajudeen market at Christmas with our yearly bonuses. This time, we went with transport money alone. The market was not far by bus. It was indoors, three stories high and built around a quadrangle. There were stacks of imports and every kind of shopper came by: traders, professionals, students, young, old and rich even. We brushed shoulders along the corridors and searched for bargains. It wasn’t unusual to bump into a friend or to duck from one because, for some, Tajudeen market was not exactly a place to be proud of. The stalls were cramped concrete lots. Fluorescent lamps lit them up and colors always appeared stark. Most of the shopkeepers were young men who looked like they would be area boys if they were not trading. They howled at women shoppers, “Baby, show me your particulars.” Rose would answer, “Show me yours first.”
Today, we walked arm in arm and refused to step aside, which was our modus operandi for getting through the market. People made a path for us along the corridors. “Let’s try this one,” she suggested at a stall we knew. My heartbeat quick-ened. The stall had shoes from Greece. They were colorful and supple. I had a weakness for shoes like that.
“Rambling Rose,” someone said as soon as we walked in.
“Johnny,” we both shouted.
It was Johnny Walker. We called him that because he looked like a bottle of whiskey and was forever perambulating. Rose flung herself at him.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, easing out of her arms.
“Why not?” she asked.
“You never ask about me,” he said. “This is my only wife in Lagos.”
He kissed my cheeks. Johnny smelled of musk cologne. I knew the smell would remain on my blouse for at least a week. If Johnny sat in a chair, it would stink of his cologne. Anything he touched would, including cups he’d used, and he took as long as a woman to get dressed.
“My dear Tolani,” he said to me.
“Dear John,” I said.
He was tall with freckles on his face. He was also a flirt, always asking when I would leave Sanwo for him.
“Rambling Rose,” he said, hugging her finally. “Where you’re rambling, heaven knows.”
“What’s your concern?” Rose asked.
When they were going out, Johnny irritated her by saying this. Rose took the words of the song personally. Who was Johnny to question her rambling? He was often wandering around himself, even on environmental sanitation days, when people were supposed to stay at home and clean up their surroundings. Her last curse on Johnny was that he would be detained indefinitely like those who dared to break the sanitation law. I walked over to a rack of shoes and picked up a purple stiletto with three-inch heels.
“You-sef,” I heard Rose say. “What are you doing here? I thought you only wear snakes and crocodiles on your feet.”
“My friend is the one buying,” Johnny answered.
He pointed at a man who was seated on a bench before an array of men’s sandals. The man’s white silk shirt was open low enough to show a gold chain around his neck. He wore sunglasses, and there was a scar over the bow of his mouth.
“OC,” Johnny called out to him. “These are my two favorite wives in Lagos.”
The man nodded. He had a square-shaped face and thick sideburns.
“That is my friend,” Johnny said to Rose. “He has just returned from the United States.”
“Of America?” she asked.
I was not impressed. OC didn’t look like an “Andrew” from America. They were usually freshfaced. OC’s face was drawn and his posture was hunched as though he’d spent time lifting heavy loads.
The stiletto in my hand was tempting me again. I visualized it with a purple cat suit I owned and even imagined myself dancing on Ladies Night at Phaze Two. Rose picked up a flat brown loafer from a separate rack.
“Johnny, since I’m your wife,” she said, “will you buy this for me?”
Johnny dipped his hands in his pockets and pulled out the empty flaps.
“You know I don’t carry money around.”
“Why not?” Rose asked.
“Austerity measures.”
“You miser!” she said. “You never want to pay for anything!”
The shopkeeper laughed. I walked over and lowered the loafer in Rose’s hand. Johnny was quick to sulk, and the more he sulked, the louder Rose could become.
“Leave my brother alone,” I said.
“No,” she said. “He must pay today, today.”
I eased the loafer out of her hand. “This ugly shoe? Please leave my brother alone. If he buys you a shoe, he will buy a better shoe than this.”
Rose’s stare didn’t waver from Johnny’s face. Every disappointment she’d ever had was in that stare. “They will bury you with your money, Johnny Walker,” she grumbled. “You can’t even buy somebody something, after all these years.”
“Bring it here,” OC said.
He was walking toward the shopkeeper with a pair of sandals. Rose eyed him.
“For what?” she asked.
She didn’t seem impressed with him either.
“I will pay for it,” he said.
She smiled. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” he insisted. “Let me have it.”
“You see, Johnny?” she asked. “Hope you’re learning how to treat a woman.”
OC beckoned and she hurried over. He paid for her loafers. She thanked him as Johnny marched out of the stall with his pocket flaps still sticking out.
“No vex, my brother,” I called after him and he didn’t answer — me, his dear Tolani.
“I hope you’re not staying with that man,” Rose was saying to OC. “He doesn’t like to spend money. He will give you water and garri to chop every day.”
“I have a place of my own,” OC said. “What is your name again?”
She exaggerated the “z” sound. Yorubas especially frustrated her when we called her “Roace.”
“Rose Adamson,” he repeated correctly. “It seems like you’re a woman who knows what she wants.”
Rose smiled. “Of course. Maybe I will come and see you, even sef. I’ll ask Johnny how to...”
“Don’t ask me anything,” Johnny protested from the corridor.
OC laughed. “I’ll be expecting you. He knows where to find me.”
He was a bowlegged man, stocky, and left dipping his shoulders from side to side. Now, I wondered if I could ask the shopkeeper to set the purple stilettos aside for me. If I hurried, it was possible to go home, get some money, enough for a deposit, and return before the market closed.
“He’s nice,” Rose murmured.
“Hm?”
“That OC bobo,” she said.
I was still preoccupied with the stilettos, but I glanced at OC. He patted Johnny’s back to appease him. How would she know? Johnny for instance, was young, trim, funny, and could talk about politics until dawn. He was nothing like Rose’s other boyfriends, who would not open their mouths for fear of revealing their dirty secrets. The trouble with Johnny was that he did not like spending his money. The first time he took Rose out, he’d asked her to pay half the bill. They’d come home not speaking. “What happened, Johnny?” I’d asked. “S-she’s trying to b-bankrupt me,” he’d said. He was so upset from having to pay the bill that he could barely explain.
I placed the purple stiletto back on the rack. OC was not nice; I sensed it then, and I hadn’t even seen his eyes behind those dark sunglasses he was wearing. He sounded bogus with all that “woman who knows what she wants” business.
“You don’t know the man, Rose,” I said. “You’ve just met him.”
Her troubles started with the brown loafers, not because she’d lost her job. Bad things had happened to Rose before. She handled them by arguing, defending herself, drinking beer, or eating a bowl of pepper soup. Never did her solution come from unexpected generosity.
Her father, Boniface Adamson, was the only man to spoil her, she once told me. “Eh, you should see him, bringing me new church dresses and school shoes, giving me pocket money for Goody-Goody and puff-puff...”
She didn’t even know where Daddy Adamson lived and she asked Sisi to stop insulting him during those visits. Sisi would control herself until Daddy Adamson left, then she would begin her tirade: “Him face like a horse, broken-down car, dirty shirt, mouth like Oxford English Dictionary...” Rose would cry, “Leave my daddy alone. He likes me.”
She visited OC that same week and at first Johnny wouldn’t say where OC lived. Then when he did, he kept pestering Rose about her relationship with OC.
“Can’t you see?” she told me. “He’s jealous because OC likes me.”
My roommate and boyfriend were similar. They saw other people’s envy instead of seeing their own flaws. I wondered what exactly had attracted her to OC and why he never came to our place and why Rose had to visit him each time. Week one, week two. She would come home and brag about how he’d bought her a bottle of Mateus or Liebfraumilch. OC didn’t approve of women drinking beer or spirits apparently, and I got bored of hearing about his achievements.
“OC? He takes no nonsense from anybody. OC? He’s a man in his own right. OC? He was successful in America. OC? He only came back home to buy a plot of land and build a house.”
For someone who had had so many boyfriends, she was behaving like an impressionable teenager. OC didn’t even want other men to look at her, according to her, and by week three, he had asked her not to speak to Johnny anymore. Johnny had asked too many personal questions. At the end of the month, OC paid her rent, and she began to come home with new shoes.
