oyibo
wallets.
Amina was saving up these small windfalls so that she could pay for a midwife when the time came. She'd already spoken to several prospective women on her street and had amassed almost enough for the fee. She was stockpiling water as well, bringing a plastic bottle in to work every day and filling it with tap water before she left. The water smelled of bleach, and she couldn't drink it unless it was boiled with pepper as a soup. But Nnamdi wasn't as picky, and would take a bottle of hotel water with him when he left in the mornings.
A mechanic without tools, Nnamdi hadn't spoken with his cousin protector since that first day in Lagos. When he'd broached, with Tunde, the possibility of a small advance so that he could buy the equipment he needed, to be repaid with interest, of course, the man had flown into a rage. "Ingrate! He has given roof to you, is that not enough? Go now and scavenge a livelihood from the lagoon. You're Delta born, should be used to that."
And so, after seeing Amina off, Nnamdi would make the long walk through labyrinthine streets, through the Hausa quarters and the Igbo, past the prostitutes' town and forgers' alley. Down to the water's edge in the slums of Makoko, a city built on stilts.
Constructed piecemeal from scrap wood and tin, the shacks were perched above the black and brackish waters of Lagos Lagoon downstream from the main sewage feed. Makoko teemed with activity, was ripe with life. Replace untreated sewage with raw crude, and he might have been back home, in the Delta.
A few kobo in coins gave Nnamdi the use of a flat-bottomed pirogue for a day. The first boat had leaked so badly he'd turned it around and come back. "You are trying to kill me," he shouted to the man he'd rented it from as he slid the vessel back into its makeshift berth. "And you aren't even married to me!" The man had laughed and, charmed by Nnamdi's smile, had relented, giving the young Ijaw the use of a better boat and a longer pole.
Nnamdi would punt his way along the tidal mudflats near the sewage outlets and the runoff points, dreaming of stashed coins and lost earrings, finding none.
Past the sawdust sludge of the Ebute Metta timber yards was a dumping ground where mountains of rubbish collapsed in on themselves, tumbling at times into the lagoon. Feral children had staked out the high ground, scavenging for copper wire and brass fittings, for tin and rubber, anything that might be sold to the scrap dealers, and every new truckload of rubbish brought swarms of pickers rushing forward. Nnamdi had watched the struggle from the pirogue and soon learned that he could come in from the water instead, pole right up to the edge and sift through what had already been sifted. Very little was left. A flattened can here, a broken-strapped rubber flip-flop there: they lay on the bottom of his pirogue like a paltry days catch of fish. Nnamdi's eyes would drift up to the long line of cars snaking across the Third Mainland Bridge, sunlight flaring on their windshields.
On the other side of the lagoon, high-rise buildings rose up, hazy in the distance. Lagos Island. Would he and Amina ever get to the other side of that bridge? Had they come so far to fall just short?
Nnamdi had been casting stones, looking for messages. But the
orumo
and the
owumo
hadn't followed him to Lagos. Their voices had been lost somewhere between There and Here.
The few naira Nnamdi made from scavenging scrap hardly paid for the canoe, and as the days went on he found it harder and harder to make the walk to the water's edge. He would prepare Amina a breakfast of corn porridge and fried plantain, perhaps boil her a bowl of Nescafe, and then see her on her way, deeply ashamed to be living off her tips.
At night, when Amina's legs were throbbing and her back was aching, Nnamdi would reach a hand through, under the curtain, would rub her belly and sing softly. Ijaw lullabies to calm the child inside her. "I have so many stories saved up," he would say. "So many stories to gift you with. You must be strong so you can hear them." And he would whisper the Story of the Girl Who Married a Ghost and the Boy Who Fell in Love with the Moon.
Amina had seen the feral children from the windows of the
danfo
minibuses as she passed, pauper kings atop fetid mountains.
She felt her own child trying to escape, turning this way and that, pushing against the walls of her body. This was the future she feared: to have walked so far only to contribute another child to the pile.
And so, when Ironsi-Egobia finally sent for Nnamdi, Amina was elated. She would remember that, how happy she'd been when Tunde had arrived and told Nnamdi to come with him. How beautifully Nnamdi had smiled when he turned and looked back at her.
CHAPTER 106
"Do you have the money?"
"Understand," Winston said with a pleading sincerity. "I am putting my life in jeopardy just by meeting with you."
Laura stared at him. "Do you have the money or not?"
They were sitting in the hallway outside the hotel swimming pool.
Winston hadn't wanted to meet in the main lobby, hadn't wanted anyone at the front desk to see him. So Laura had chosen this busy nook instead. Guests flitted past in bathrobes as the cleaning staff wheeled their carts up and down patterned carpets.
"Please, miss," he said. "Listen to reason. For your own safety and mine, it's best you give up on this mad quest. Go home, madam. If you don't, I fear that someone may die."
"Well," she said. "It won't be me."
A tight smile. "You can see into the fixture, then? You can glimpse what is coming?"
"Listen, I'm not leaving this hotel until I get the money. If you wanted to kill me, you missed your chance."
"I do not wish to kill anyone, miss. But I can no longer protect you."
"Protect me? I'm not asking for your protection. I'm asking for my money. Now. Do you have it or not?"
"Miss, please—"
She started to get up.
"Wait, wait. Yes. I do."
He passed her the satchel that was sitting beside him. She opened it, riffled through, not bothering to count it. "It's in naira.
And it's not enough. I asked for American currency."
"It's all I have! Everything. I was at the bank all morning. I cashed everything I had. There was no time to convert."
"It's not enough." It didn't really matter how much he'd brought; it would not have been enough, would never be enough.
"Wait, wait." He slid a thick manila envelope from his inside pocket. "This was what I was going to live on."
She leaned in, smiled with all her teeth. "Asked your parents to sell their plasma TV, did you? The one my dad helped buy?" And then: "Still. Not. Enough."
"But miss—"
"Open your wallet. I want to see how much you have."
She took it all. A thick sheaf of naira. She even claimed the kobo coins that were worth only a fraction of a cent. Only when he offered his St. Christopher medal, his Rolex watch, and his Ray-Bans did she feel she had reached the bottom.
"You can keep the watch and the sunglasses." She considered taking the medallion. "And you can keep that as well. Wait here. I'm going to the business centre to see what the exchange rate is."
"I have nothing left I can give you. You understand, my life is in danger. Please. Help me get out of Nigeria. I have had some troubles getting a visa, due to a past misunderstanding. Sponsor me and I will come to your country, I will work hard, I will bring my parents over. We will contribute to your nation. I will pay you back five times what I owe."
An educated young man, brimming with ambition and business acumen? He certainly would contribute.
"Help me get out, miss. It's the only way I can make amends. If you leave me here, I will be beaten and massacred. You have taken every scrap of money I have. Help me get a visa, and I will pay you back tenfold."
"Fivefold is fine. Let me deposit this, make sure everything goes through, and then we'll talk about getting you a visa."
"Thank you, thank you. You won't regret it."
He was still sitting there, hopeful and buoyant, when security arrived.
Laura had unpacked the stacks of high-denomination naira at the hotel bank counter. She'd set aside a fold of bills for the taxi to the airport the next day, but had given the rest to the teller to be counted and converted, had filled in the forms and presented the bank with her passport number. It was unusual for naira to flow the other way, but not unheard of; this was the Airport Ambassador Hotel, and business deals were consummated here every day. By hotel standards, it wasn't even that large an amount. Large enough to require government notification on the forms Laura dutifully completed, but not large enough to raise alarm. There were millionaires staying here, after all. The teller stamped the necessary forms, obtained the necessary signatures from the necessary office managers, gave Laura a confirmation slip.
"So the money's now in my account? Back home?" she asked the teller.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Laura walked across the lobby and asked one of the doormen to summon security. When the guards arrived, she informed them that a young man had been harassing her whenever she went to the pool. "He was threatening me, making sexual advances. I suspect he's not a guest at this hotel. I think he may be a thief."
Laura watched as the guards manhandled Winston through the lobby and out the door even as he pleaded with them, eyes searching the lobby, frantically looking for her.
Goodbye, Winston.
She'd won, and yet—
She felt, not triumphant, but only alone. No bursts of confetti appeared, no balloons rained down. No champagne. No Dad, either.
She had a drink at the hotel bar, something frothy and sweet, and then slipped into the comfort of chlorine, taking long, slow victory laps in the swimming pool. Exhale, inhale. Breathe out under water, breathe in above. The crawl, the breast stroke, the butterfly. As she swam, it entered her mind, fleetingly, that perhaps she shouldn't have wired the money home quite so quickly, that having sent Winston's funds out of the country, she now had nothing to bargain with if things turned bad. It was a thought that sank as quickly as it surfaced, though, and she flipped over, floated on her back, eyes closed, leaving slow spreading waves in her wake.
The ride through Lagos the day before had left its mark on Laura in the form of prickly heat. Sweat, trapped in her pores, had formed small blisters along her neck and forearms, and the itch only grew worse with the scratching. She'd applied soothing creams she'd bought in the hotel pharmacy, but the rash still bubbled and burned below the surface. She felt as though she were stewing in her own body, and after her swim she stood for a long time under the changing-room showers, letting the water wash over her.
Laura patted herself dry, wrung out her swimsuit, had another drink in the hotel lounge as the television above the bar played images of riots with the sound turned down. Petrol shortages in Abuja. Ethnic violence in Jos. Beauty contestants in Lagos.
A tickertape of headlines scrolled along the bottom of the screen as an officer in battle fatigues spoke into a mike, his mouth chewing the words in silence. Behind him, bodies were being loaded onto a Coast Guard vessel labelled JTF, militants and hostages alike, according to the tickertape, all of them draped in oilskin.
It was evening by the time she got back to her room, wobbly on margaritas and missing her dad. It took three swipes of her card to open the door and several more miscues to reach the bathroom.
Why must they make hotel rooms so dim? She hung her swimsuit over the shower bar to dry, splashed water on her face, studied herself in the mirror.
This is me in Africa.
She had pulled it off, had made it out alive, would be heading home tomorrow.
It was only then that she realized someone else was in the room.
As she stepped out of the bathroom, she sensed it. There was a phone beside the toilet. She might have barricaded herself inside and called down to security, raised a mighty tumult. But she didn't.
Instead, she did what anyone else might have done. She said in a loud voice, "Who's there?"
Housekeeping staff? A radio left on at levels so low you could hear it only when things were completely quiet?
It was none of those. It was a smile, with a boy attached. He was sitting on a chair beside the window under the half-light of an early moon. He was holding what looked like a letter opener, but wasn't.
Laura Curtis had fallen through to the other side, into that counterfeit world she'd helped create.
Miss Scarlet, in the bedroom, with an ice pick.
"Hello, madam."
CHAPTER 107
Cousin guyman had leaned in so close Nnamdi could feel each puff of breath, could smell the sweet sticky smell of blood in Mr.
Ironsi-Egobia's lungs.
"You've speared fish?" Ironsi-Egobia asked.
"Of course, cousin. I'm of the Delta, we grow up spearing fish."
"Such is so. It's like that now. One, two, through the gills, twist it wide and let it bleed. One, two—and everything you want is yours. The market stall, the mechanic's tools, a future for your child. The only thing required is this: one, two, and walk away."
Everything we need.
Nnamdi had tossed the stones, had looked for guidance, but there was none coming. He was on his own.
And so was the
oyibo
woman.
CHAPTER 108
Laura, throat dry. Voice a whisper. "Is this about the money?"
