The House on Campos Street by Sade Foo
Having travelled halfway across the world to escape her grief, Tiara returns - ten years later - to the city where she lost her family.
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Loss
She is lost. She, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, in full charge of her faculties, has somehow managed to find herself in this predicament.
It started with dinner for three in Southampton, on a hot night in July a year and a half ago. No, not Southampton in England. She means Southampton, New York, the largest of the towns that form that Long Island fork. The fork that certain types refer to as the Hamptons. Not that she has a problem with these types, not at all. It is more how they inject the phrase into conversations when it is unnecessary. It is how they turn up their noses, and square their shoulders, and their voices develop a different pitch when they say the phrase. In any case, the where doesn't matter. What matters is how that last dinner with her ex-husband's parents came to confirm what she suspected before she married. It took two sentences to destroy her carefully curated life, two out of the many phrases thrown back and forth that night.
"You aren't like them, Tiara," her father-in-law said.
They were discussing the death of George Floyd, and the protests and riots that followed his murder.
Her mother-in-law must have seen the look on her face, because she followed her husband's comment with, "It is a compliment, dear. I wish more of your people saw things the way you did. It doesn't have to be this way."
Even now, she still feels ashamed that she said nothing. Instead, she rearranged her face into a smile, continued chewing her bland fish and spearing her cubed potatoes. She even hugged her mother and father-in-law as she said goodbye, as she left them and made her way back to the Manhattan apartment she shared with their son. Later, through floor-to-ceiling windows, she would watch a small boat bob along the Hudson as she felt the beginnings of something. That feeling would later grow, its tentacles reaching and occupying every corner of her body. She left her husband soon after, breaking him, breaking herself in the process.
Maybe broken is a better word than lost for describing her current state. It's not like she is physically lost. No, she has just misplaced parts of herself and has no idea how or where to retrieve them. She left New York for London six months later. In January this year, she moved to Amsterdam, still wanting to forget, wanting a new start. But neither city provided solace. They gave her nothing with which she could exorcise the thing within her.
This is how she came to be in this taxi, in a place that she has avoided for years, in a city that took the lives of her parents and her younger sister in a five-car pileup a decade ago. But, when one feels grief - that bottomless of emotions - not for one incident, not for a single episode, but for a whole chapter of one's life, one follows the tug, and goes wherever to fix what is broken.
Return
Her mind is doing that topsy-turvy thing again. It has been doing this since the break-up. Up and down, side to side, folding over itself. She tries to fight it, presses her lips together and turns her attention outside the car windows. In the darkness, the street hawkers hurry between cars, trying to make one last sale. The roadside sellers and their bargaining customers are here too, their voices a constant thrum, reminding her of this city's energy, unmatched anywhere else. Cars zig-zag and weave labyrinth paths in front of and behind her. Yet, the pace of traffic is slow, as it always is in Lagos. It's probably why she still uses the phrase go-slow in her less guarded moments.
Much has stayed the same, but even with little light, she notices the changes that mark her time away. For one, the yellow danfo buses that used to hug the side of the road are no longer there. Instead, new, sleeker blue buses whizz past, causing her heart to travel into her mouth. There are new bus stops too, and dedicated bus lanes marked in black and white, guarded by men and women dressed in yellow and red, almost police, but not quite.
The car turns into Broad Street, the once famous commercial hub. Even before she stopped spending her school holidays here, the banks and the multinationals had begun to move their offices across the lagoon to the newer skyscrapers of Victoria Island, whitewashed with tinted glass. Many buildings on this road, formerly the envy of cities and towns across Nigeria, now carry an aura of worn neglect. On one side of the road, dusty beige walls are covered in half-torn and peeling posters of musicians, politicians, and pastors in shiny suits. On the other side, it is all stark grey concrete, broken window louvres and air conditioning units that should have been retired to Lagos' rubbish dumps years ago.
The taxi driver makes a second turn into Campos Street, and she counts down houses until he stops in front of the big gates, now repainted black from the burnt orange of a decade ago, but otherwise still the same.
Her hands are clammy. She wipes them on her jeans before taking crumpled naira notes from her purse and paying the man.
"We are here, ma," the taxi driver says, when she doesn't get out immediately.
He looks at the gates, then back at her. His mouth forms a perfect circle as if he is surprised or about to say something, ask her more questions. She slings her handbag across her shoulder before he can get the words out, grabs her small suitcase and exits the car, slamming its door behind her.
Despite the harmattan wind, sweat soaks through her white t-shirt, and wet patches have formed under her armpits. She smooths her hair and puts on her sunglasses. Then, she takes them off and stuffs them back in her bag. They might have softened her dishevelled look, but they will make others suspicious of her at this time of night. She looks at the gates again, takes in the barbed wire at the top. The fence walls are so high that no part of the house on the other side is visible from the street. Now that she thinks about it, the house on Campos Street has looked like a small military barracks for a long time. A memory shows up, of her father talking to her grandmother.
"Mummy, ti e ba fe gbo temi, if you continue to refuse to move, we should do something about the gates and the fence. Anyone who knows anything about anything in Lagos knows that Campos Street isn't what it used to be."
She might have been five years old, maybe younger. But even then, she had understood what was said without further explanation.
Her mind starts on her again. Why has she come here? What was she thinking? What if no one is home? Still, she pushes hard on the intercom next to the gates. There is no response. She tries again, keeps pushing till a male voice answers.
"Yes?"
He drags out the yes long and hard, leaving her in no doubt that she is an inconvenience, an interruption of his normal routine. The voice isn't one that she knows. Bubba, Boniface or Moshood would know who she is, would recognise her voice as soon as she opened her mouth. All three have guarded her grandmother's house for decades. Instead, she must talk again to a stranger.
"It's Tiara. Is Mama in?" she asks, quickly.
"Madam, I don't know any Tiara. And no Mama here."
She takes a breath and raises her voice. If she doesn't revert to Lagos habits, he won't budge, won't admit that her grandmother lives here.
"My friend, stop this nonsense! If you don't know who I am, go and ask! Will you come and open this gate right now?"
Her words jar against her accent so that she sounds faulty, like a pretender actively trying to deceive. Nigerian, yet not Nigerian enough. American, but not. He must hear it too, because he doesn't respond. She can almost hear his brain ticking over, weighing his options.
Eventually, he says, "Sorry, ma. Sorry, madam. Just wait small. I'm coming."
Minutes pass. Street traffic decreases. Gates open and close. Rusted bolts and padlocks lock and unlock. Finally, the hinges of the big black gates shift too. A man stands beside the open gates, gun in hand, pointed to the sky. She assumes he was the one who answered the intercom. He looks at her. She wants to apologise for how she spoke to him, wants to explain why she had to shout. Instead, she squares her shoulders and walks past him, past the guards' house and through a second set of gates. Only then does she see her grandmother waiting at the bottom of the footpath, hibiscus flowers and security lights on either side of her.
Her dreams wake her the next morning. She slept that half-in-half-out sleep, her mind replaying events of hours before, changing them, perverting them into a grotesque version of the truth. Her grandmother's panicked face as large as a football, her voice amplified enough to be heard up and down Campos Street instead of the quiet, firm voice with which she asked,
"Kilosele? Kilosele? What has happened? How did you get here at this time? Are you by yourself?"
Her grandmother's arms around her replaced by those of her mother. Her father and Pelumi - her sister - watching. All three laughing, maybe at her, as if they know something she doesn't.
After she showers and washes off the stench of yesterday's travel, she makes her way downstairs in search of food, but there is no one about. The house is quieter than she remembers it. She used to hate the busyness of the house. People coming and going, always seeking something, usually favour or money. Her grandmother holding court, long conversations with politicians; governors, senators and ministers alike. This stillness is worse, disconcerting and disorienting.
Only when she arrives at the door to the kitchen does she hear voices. She almost skips as she pushes the door open, expecting to see Auntie Roseline, her grandmother's cook, chopping, stirring one of those large pots, singing to herself. Instead, she finds three strangers staring at her, their voices dying mid-speech. She guesses the clean-shaven teenager, seated on a small stool close to the floor, with a mortar and pestle between his legs, is the house boy. Beside him, the house girl of similar age, maybe seventeen or eighteen, is spooning soft-boiled yam that is already breaking apart into the mortar. Tiara swallows a giggle. The beginnings of pounded yam for lunch. Trust her grandmother to insist on doing things traditionally when a food processor would give identical results. She can almost hear her complaining.
"Iyan should be made properly, pounded in a mortar to get that smooth texture. All that poundo you young people eat never tastes right."
An older, heavier woman with an apron tied around her waist and a scarf on her head sits at the table, cutting bitter leaf into long, thin strips. Auntie Roseline's replacement, probably. Tiara's throat tightens. All three are quiet, waiting for her to speak.
"Madam, you want something?" The older woman says, finally.
Tiara swallows and moistens her lips.
"Good morning. Do you know where Mama is?"
"She don go out. You wan eat?"
"Yes, thank you. I can make something for myself if you show me where things are."
This discomfort, the need to apologise for service, for being waited on, is new, unexpected. She didn't feel like this ten years ago.
Memories come in a sequence of short, rapid bursts. Auntie Roseline dusting pancakes with maple sugar for her, for Pelumi too. Auntie Roseline looking for ways to keep feeding them. The sight of their mouths idle, not chewing, causing long sighs and tuts and the inevitable question about snacks and food.
"Do you want groundnut, Unwana mmi? We just bought three new bottles yesterday."
"Inem, don't worry, eh. You want make I make jollof rice and plantain for you? And plenty puff puff for after?"
Tiara's eyes begin to water, making it difficult to concentrate on what Auntie Roseline's replacement is saying. Something about Ghana bread. When the woman hands her a plate with three thick slices and scrambled eggs, she mumbles a thank you and retreats behind the door. She makes her way to the dining room with the long table but finds herself distracted by the photos on the walls, on every wall. Her great-grandfather standing on this plot of land when it was a swamp, before the house was built. Her grandmother graduating as a lawyer from Cambridge in the 1960s. Her grandfather and grandmother on their wedding day, dressed in Aso Oke. The family standing with her grandmother on the steps of the century-old Cathedral on Mission Street, for her grandfather's funeral and service of songs.
No matter where she sits, and she changes her seat thrice, she faces family members. When finally, she sits across from a framed photo of the four of them - her father and mother, Pelumi and her - as they were that last holiday before the accident, she gets up and takes her plate with her. She wanders from room to room, eating with her hands, tearing pieces of bread and piling eggs, as she goes.
Most of the rooms haven't changed. It is like walking back in time. Heavy mahogany furniture, brocade curtains with adjoining ties, matte ceramic tiled floors covered in faded Turkish or Persian rugs. When she reaches the room at the end of the corridor on the first floor, she cannot touch the door handle. It is the one her father and mother used. She needs fresh air from outside, not this too cold, too thin air-conditioned air that makes breathing difficult.
Just as she makes it outside, plate in hand, a car driven by a woman rolls in through the outer gates.
The next morning, it is the stench of alcohol that wakes her up. Her pores ooze of it. Her mouth is sour, her head throbs and her thoughts are hazy. This is all Adesewa's fault. The woman who turned up in the Mercedes yesterday is her cousin, three years younger, one of many that she hasn't seen since she stopped coming here. Before yesterday, all she knew about her were the tidbits that Mama delivered during infrequent phone calls. Adesewa lives in Geneva now and works for one of the big banks. According to Mama, Adesewa is in Lagos at least once a month.
Adesewa's presence brings the three from the kitchen outside. They circle the car, talking at once, striving for her cousin's attention.
"Auntie Adesewa, welcome!"
"Auntie Adesewa, we have missed you oh."
On and on with Auntie this, Auntie that. Also, why do they all call her Auntie when two of them are older than her? Even the gateman, who hasn't said a word to Tiara since she arrived, runs to hold open the car door, smiling his gapped tooth smile at her cousin, gun nowhere in sight. Adesewa beams back at him and says loudly, almost shouting,
"Uncle Marcus, Auntie Cocoma, Fortune, Yemi, how una dey? Don't worry, I will see you later, na. Let me talk to this my prodigal cousin first."
Before Tiara has time to gather her thoughts, Adesewa has extricated herself from the small crowd and is hugging her and her dirty plate.
After that, it is a series of disconnected images. Adesewa shouting about dirty December, and pulling her into the car. By some miracle, they are at a party at a beach house on an island off the coast, wearing matching bikinis, silk-pressed hair blowing in the wind. There are people here that Tiara hasn't seen in years: friends, distant cousins, ex-schoolmates. Everyone wants to know where she has been. Talking, laughing, eating, drinking, dancing. Lagos feels like it can be hers again. This, right here, is why she came back. Here, she can forget.
Then, she is alone in an empty room with a tall guy, young, younger, teeth too white, muscly arms with a tattoo of an eagle beneath his shoulder. He smells of beach, and expensive oud. She kisses him first, remembers him fumbling with her bikini strap. He isn't her type. She thinks this even as she accepts his too-cold hand cupping her breast. Too perfect, too much polish, but, but, maybe for today, for tonight. Just because his lips are so soft, and he tastes of mint and orange juice and vodka, and he stares at her body with wonder in his eyes. Then, he ruins it all by talking. A constant diatribe in between planting kisses on her bare tummy. Something about the way he speaks irritates her. It might be the American accent. But he sounds exactly like her, so why should that be off-putting? She tries to quiet him by pulling his head up to hers and kissing him again. But, as soon as she releases his lips, his nattering continues.
"I just got back. Just finished from Jarvis in Texas."
He says Jarvis as if she should know it.
"I don't usually go for mainland girls, but you are breathtaking."
This part stuck despite the fog of drink. Without having to ask, she knows he is one of the new Lekki set. The ones who know nothing of the long history of Lagos, who know nothing about the places that made this city. Tell them of Popo Aguda, of Maryland, Apapa and Ilupeju, and they stare at you blankly. They assume their superiority based on broken knowledge, just as her ex-husband did when they met, and continued to do throughout their marriage.
"I don't even usually go for Yoruba girls," he says, reminding her of that one time her ex-husband told her pointedly that all the girls he dated before her were white.
She isn't surprised when this man tells her it is his first year in Lagos, that he lived in Abuja before he moved to the United States for college.
His mouth is below her navel. His fingers tracing the top of her bikini bottoms when he says,
"It's the culture, you see. I can't understand your people."
Her right hand is rubbing the fuzzy crew cut on his head. She stops and folds her fingers into a tight fist. If she knocks him hard enough, at the centre of his head, will she draw blood? Instead, she pushes him off, walks out of the room, and heads back to the terrace with the drinks. Bottles are on display, stacked neatly by height. She grabs a bottle, tottering on the edge of a glass table and heads to the beach by herself, away from the noise and all the happily dancing bodies. The first swig makes her cough. She doesn't even like whisky. Still, she keeps drinking.
When Adesewa finds her, the bottle is near empty.
"Why did you make me come here?" she shouts, "I didn't want to come here. I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have come."
Her words come out of her mouth slower than she intended. She hears the stops and gaps in her speech, sees alarm slowly spread over Adesewa's face. The waves crash onto the golden sand and then lose velocity about a metre shy of where she sits, dissolving into harmless surf and bubbles. Like her, they have no tether, all pointless movement and air. She lies down flat and covers her ears, turns her face towards the sand, feels its particles prick her bare skin. Thankfully, she can no longer see Adesewa's face. No more. No more. A moment without anyone or anything. Just a moment...
That is the last she remembers from yesterday. Try as she might, she can't figure out how she returned to Campos Street.
Renewal
She hears the buzz from downstairs as soon as she steps out of the bedroom. Voices and laughter, like the old days. There is music coming from the living room, something old. Majek Fashek, she thinks. She bumps into Adesewa, carrying a steaming mug of something. If her cousin had to stay over, she must have been in a bad way last night. She waits for Adesewa to bring up her behaviour yesterday, but her cousin is as breezy as ever, all smiles and gesticulation with her one free hand.
"What's happening?" Tiara asks, eyes scanning the floor, avoiding her cousin's face.
Adesewa places her one free arm around Tiara's shoulders.
"Have you forgotten what day it is? It's Christmas Eve, family brunch day."
The pidgin of yesterday is gone, replaced by fine speech sharp enough to cut glass. She envies this ability of her cousin's, chameleonic, at ease and at home, whoever she is with, wherever she finds herself.
It is true she had forgotten, not the family eating together, but that it is Christmas Eve. These last few years, time has existed in broad swathes and chunks, for her. Individual days roll into each other, each one the same as the one before. Wake, shower, eat, watch years of savings slowly dwindle into the red, sleep, repeat.
Adesewa interrupts her thoughts. Her cousin's free arm is still resting on her shoulders.
"By the way, Mama is a little miffed about yesterday," she says. "You might want to grovel a tad when you see her. I have had an earful already. Worth it, though. It was lovely spending time with you after so long. I hope you're feeling better. Fuck that guy!"
Who? Fuck who? Is she talking about the guy from yesterday? She should explain, tell her cousin that yesterday was never about him. But Adesewa disappears into one of the bedrooms, mumbling about seeing her when it's time to eat.
She is leaning over the bannisters, trying to catch a glimpse of those in the living room, when Mama suddenly appears at the bottom of the stairs. Where did she come from? For a woman in her eighties, she moves too quietly, ghostlike.
"I think you better come with me," Mama says.
That's that, then. She follows Mama into the dining room.
"Ekaaro, Mama," Tiara says, while attempting to half kneel, one knee almost touching the floor.
She hopes this marked show of respect will tell Mama that she is sorry for last night. But, her body has forgotten how to kunle. She has to sit quickly to stop herself from keeling over.
Mama doesn't respond to her greeting in Yoruba. Instead, she switches to English. Tiara's heart quickens. She is in trouble now, for sure.
"So we are drinking till we are drunk now, are we?" Mama says.
Tiara feels like she is seven years old again, receiving a telling-off for using crayons on the walls or fighting with Pelumi.
"I'm sorry, Mama. I really am," Tiara says.
She waits for her grandmother to respond, examines her face. The wrinkles are deeper. Her grey hair is in a half turban that matches her floor-length satin boubou. But, it is her shoulders that tell Tiara what the years have done to Mama. They are rounded, stooping towards the table, as if she is collapsing under heavy weights. Tiara walks over to her and hugs her from the back. Mama stands and turns to face her. She is crying. Mama never cries. She didn't even cry that night ten years ago when everything changed.
"I gave my life for this family," Mama says. "All those loathsome people I wined and dined in this house over the years, even after your grandfather died and left me to handle all of it alone. It was all to keep us safe. I failed. I failed."
Tiara doesn't speak. She knows what Mama means because she asked the same questions that night. She too, feels like she failed by surviving, by being alive when the people she loved most in the world were not. It is what drove her into the arms of her ex-husband and his family. She thought she could start over, recreate her life before the accident.
"I'm sorry for staying away for so long, Mama," she says. The tears come freely.
"No, I'm sorry, Tiaraoluwa."
It is the first time she has heard her full name in so long that the sound of it causes her to step back from Mama's embrace. She grasps the table's edge with one hand, Mama's hand with the other. They both stand like that, facing the family photos and weep. When they are spent, they sit and talk. Tiara isn't sure how long they stay in there, the two of them, talking, apologising, reminiscing. It is only when Yemi, the house girl, comes in to tell them it is time to eat that they join the rest of the family in the garden. No one asks why she stayed away. No one castigates. Her uncles, aunts, and cousins shout and whoop and offer her hug after hug. Uncle Timi even tells her,
"We would have come sooner, but Mama said to give you space, to give you a day."
It isn't until she is sitting beside Adesewa, eating strips of spicy suya, that she realises the tentacles have let go. There is no more rage. She is home.
She is lost. She, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, in full charge of her faculties, has somehow managed to find herself in this predicament.
It started with dinner for three in Southampton, on a hot night in July a year and a half ago. No, not Southampton in England. She means Southampton, New York, the largest of the towns that form that Long Island fork. The fork that certain types refer to as the Hamptons. Not that she has a problem with these types, not at all. It is more how they inject the phrase into conversations when it is unnecessary. It is how they turn up their noses, and square their shoulders, and their voices develop a different pitch when they say the phrase. In any case, the where doesn't matter. What matters is how that last dinner with her ex-husband's parents came to confirm what she suspected before she married. It took two sentences to destroy her carefully curated life, two out of the many phrases thrown back and forth that night.
"You aren't like them, Tiara," her father-in-law said.
They were discussing the death of George Floyd, and the protests and riots that followed his murder.
Her mother-in-law must have seen the look on her face, because she followed her husband's comment with, "It is a compliment, dear. I wish more of your people saw things the way you did. It doesn't have to be this way."
Even now, she still feels ashamed that she said nothing. Instead, she rearranged her face into a smile, continued chewing her bland fish and spearing her cubed potatoes. She even hugged her mother and father-in-law as she said goodbye, as she left them and made her way back to the Manhattan apartment she shared with their son. Later, through floor-to-ceiling windows, she would watch a small boat bob along the Hudson as she felt the beginnings of something. That feeling would later grow, its tentacles reaching and occupying every corner of her body. She left her husband soon after, breaking him, breaking herself in the process.
Maybe broken is a better word than lost for describing her current state. It's not like she is physically lost. No, she has just misplaced parts of herself and has no idea how or where to retrieve them. She left New York for London six months later. In January this year, she moved to Amsterdam, still wanting to forget, wanting a new start. But neither city provided solace. They gave her nothing with which she could exorcise the thing within her.
This is how she came to be in this taxi, in a place that she has avoided for years, in a city that took the lives of her parents and her younger sister in a five-car pileup a decade ago. But, when one feels grief - that bottomless of emotions - not for one incident, not for a single episode, but for a whole chapter of one's life, one follows the tug, and goes wherever to fix what is broken.
Return
Her mind is doing that topsy-turvy thing again. It has been doing this since the break-up. Up and down, side to side, folding over itself. She tries to fight it, presses her lips together and turns her attention outside the car windows. In the darkness, the street hawkers hurry between cars, trying to make one last sale. The roadside sellers and their bargaining customers are here too, their voices a constant thrum, reminding her of this city's energy, unmatched anywhere else. Cars zig-zag and weave labyrinth paths in front of and behind her. Yet, the pace of traffic is slow, as it always is in Lagos. It's probably why she still uses the phrase go-slow in her less guarded moments.
Much has stayed the same, but even with little light, she notices the changes that mark her time away. For one, the yellow danfo buses that used to hug the side of the road are no longer there. Instead, new, sleeker blue buses whizz past, causing her heart to travel into her mouth. There are new bus stops too, and dedicated bus lanes marked in black and white, guarded by men and women dressed in yellow and red, almost police, but not quite.
The car turns into Broad Street, the once famous commercial hub. Even before she stopped spending her school holidays here, the banks and the multinationals had begun to move their offices across the lagoon to the newer skyscrapers of Victoria Island, whitewashed with tinted glass. Many buildings on this road, formerly the envy of cities and towns across Nigeria, now carry an aura of worn neglect. On one side of the road, dusty beige walls are covered in half-torn and peeling posters of musicians, politicians, and pastors in shiny suits. On the other side, it is all stark grey concrete, broken window louvres and air conditioning units that should have been retired to Lagos' rubbish dumps years ago.
The taxi driver makes a second turn into Campos Street, and she counts down houses until he stops in front of the big gates, now repainted black from the burnt orange of a decade ago, but otherwise still the same.
Her hands are clammy. She wipes them on her jeans before taking crumpled naira notes from her purse and paying the man.
"We are here, ma," the taxi driver says, when she doesn't get out immediately.
He looks at the gates, then back at her. His mouth forms a perfect circle as if he is surprised or about to say something, ask her more questions. She slings her handbag across her shoulder before he can get the words out, grabs her small suitcase and exits the car, slamming its door behind her.
Despite the harmattan wind, sweat soaks through her white t-shirt, and wet patches have formed under her armpits. She smooths her hair and puts on her sunglasses. Then, she takes them off and stuffs them back in her bag. They might have softened her dishevelled look, but they will make others suspicious of her at this time of night. She looks at the gates again, takes in the barbed wire at the top. The fence walls are so high that no part of the house on the other side is visible from the street. Now that she thinks about it, the house on Campos Street has looked like a small military barracks for a long time. A memory shows up, of her father talking to her grandmother.
"Mummy, ti e ba fe gbo temi, if you continue to refuse to move, we should do something about the gates and the fence. Anyone who knows anything about anything in Lagos knows that Campos Street isn't what it used to be."
She might have been five years old, maybe younger. But even then, she had understood what was said without further explanation.
Her mind starts on her again. Why has she come here? What was she thinking? What if no one is home? Still, she pushes hard on the intercom next to the gates. There is no response. She tries again, keeps pushing till a male voice answers.
"Yes?"
He drags out the yes long and hard, leaving her in no doubt that she is an inconvenience, an interruption of his normal routine. The voice isn't one that she knows. Bubba, Boniface or Moshood would know who she is, would recognise her voice as soon as she opened her mouth. All three have guarded her grandmother's house for decades. Instead, she must talk again to a stranger.
"It's Tiara. Is Mama in?" she asks, quickly.
"Madam, I don't know any Tiara. And no Mama here."
She takes a breath and raises her voice. If she doesn't revert to Lagos habits, he won't budge, won't admit that her grandmother lives here.
"My friend, stop this nonsense! If you don't know who I am, go and ask! Will you come and open this gate right now?"
Her words jar against her accent so that she sounds faulty, like a pretender actively trying to deceive. Nigerian, yet not Nigerian enough. American, but not. He must hear it too, because he doesn't respond. She can almost hear his brain ticking over, weighing his options.
Eventually, he says, "Sorry, ma. Sorry, madam. Just wait small. I'm coming."
Minutes pass. Street traffic decreases. Gates open and close. Rusted bolts and padlocks lock and unlock. Finally, the hinges of the big black gates shift too. A man stands beside the open gates, gun in hand, pointed to the sky. She assumes he was the one who answered the intercom. He looks at her. She wants to apologise for how she spoke to him, wants to explain why she had to shout. Instead, she squares her shoulders and walks past him, past the guards' house and through a second set of gates. Only then does she see her grandmother waiting at the bottom of the footpath, hibiscus flowers and security lights on either side of her.
Her dreams wake her the next morning. She slept that half-in-half-out sleep, her mind replaying events of hours before, changing them, perverting them into a grotesque version of the truth. Her grandmother's panicked face as large as a football, her voice amplified enough to be heard up and down Campos Street instead of the quiet, firm voice with which she asked,
"Kilosele? Kilosele? What has happened? How did you get here at this time? Are you by yourself?"
Her grandmother's arms around her replaced by those of her mother. Her father and Pelumi - her sister - watching. All three laughing, maybe at her, as if they know something she doesn't.
After she showers and washes off the stench of yesterday's travel, she makes her way downstairs in search of food, but there is no one about. The house is quieter than she remembers it. She used to hate the busyness of the house. People coming and going, always seeking something, usually favour or money. Her grandmother holding court, long conversations with politicians; governors, senators and ministers alike. This stillness is worse, disconcerting and disorienting.
Only when she arrives at the door to the kitchen does she hear voices. She almost skips as she pushes the door open, expecting to see Auntie Roseline, her grandmother's cook, chopping, stirring one of those large pots, singing to herself. Instead, she finds three strangers staring at her, their voices dying mid-speech. She guesses the clean-shaven teenager, seated on a small stool close to the floor, with a mortar and pestle between his legs, is the house boy. Beside him, the house girl of similar age, maybe seventeen or eighteen, is spooning soft-boiled yam that is already breaking apart into the mortar. Tiara swallows a giggle. The beginnings of pounded yam for lunch. Trust her grandmother to insist on doing things traditionally when a food processor would give identical results. She can almost hear her complaining.
"Iyan should be made properly, pounded in a mortar to get that smooth texture. All that poundo you young people eat never tastes right."
An older, heavier woman with an apron tied around her waist and a scarf on her head sits at the table, cutting bitter leaf into long, thin strips. Auntie Roseline's replacement, probably. Tiara's throat tightens. All three are quiet, waiting for her to speak.
"Madam, you want something?" The older woman says, finally.
Tiara swallows and moistens her lips.
"Good morning. Do you know where Mama is?"
"She don go out. You wan eat?"
"Yes, thank you. I can make something for myself if you show me where things are."
This discomfort, the need to apologise for service, for being waited on, is new, unexpected. She didn't feel like this ten years ago.
Memories come in a sequence of short, rapid bursts. Auntie Roseline dusting pancakes with maple sugar for her, for Pelumi too. Auntie Roseline looking for ways to keep feeding them. The sight of their mouths idle, not chewing, causing long sighs and tuts and the inevitable question about snacks and food.
"Do you want groundnut, Unwana mmi? We just bought three new bottles yesterday."
"Inem, don't worry, eh. You want make I make jollof rice and plantain for you? And plenty puff puff for after?"
Tiara's eyes begin to water, making it difficult to concentrate on what Auntie Roseline's replacement is saying. Something about Ghana bread. When the woman hands her a plate with three thick slices and scrambled eggs, she mumbles a thank you and retreats behind the door. She makes her way to the dining room with the long table but finds herself distracted by the photos on the walls, on every wall. Her great-grandfather standing on this plot of land when it was a swamp, before the house was built. Her grandmother graduating as a lawyer from Cambridge in the 1960s. Her grandfather and grandmother on their wedding day, dressed in Aso Oke. The family standing with her grandmother on the steps of the century-old Cathedral on Mission Street, for her grandfather's funeral and service of songs.
No matter where she sits, and she changes her seat thrice, she faces family members. When finally, she sits across from a framed photo of the four of them - her father and mother, Pelumi and her - as they were that last holiday before the accident, she gets up and takes her plate with her. She wanders from room to room, eating with her hands, tearing pieces of bread and piling eggs, as she goes.
Most of the rooms haven't changed. It is like walking back in time. Heavy mahogany furniture, brocade curtains with adjoining ties, matte ceramic tiled floors covered in faded Turkish or Persian rugs. When she reaches the room at the end of the corridor on the first floor, she cannot touch the door handle. It is the one her father and mother used. She needs fresh air from outside, not this too cold, too thin air-conditioned air that makes breathing difficult.
Just as she makes it outside, plate in hand, a car driven by a woman rolls in through the outer gates.
The next morning, it is the stench of alcohol that wakes her up. Her pores ooze of it. Her mouth is sour, her head throbs and her thoughts are hazy. This is all Adesewa's fault. The woman who turned up in the Mercedes yesterday is her cousin, three years younger, one of many that she hasn't seen since she stopped coming here. Before yesterday, all she knew about her were the tidbits that Mama delivered during infrequent phone calls. Adesewa lives in Geneva now and works for one of the big banks. According to Mama, Adesewa is in Lagos at least once a month.
Adesewa's presence brings the three from the kitchen outside. They circle the car, talking at once, striving for her cousin's attention.
"Auntie Adesewa, welcome!"
"Auntie Adesewa, we have missed you oh."
On and on with Auntie this, Auntie that. Also, why do they all call her Auntie when two of them are older than her? Even the gateman, who hasn't said a word to Tiara since she arrived, runs to hold open the car door, smiling his gapped tooth smile at her cousin, gun nowhere in sight. Adesewa beams back at him and says loudly, almost shouting,
"Uncle Marcus, Auntie Cocoma, Fortune, Yemi, how una dey? Don't worry, I will see you later, na. Let me talk to this my prodigal cousin first."
Before Tiara has time to gather her thoughts, Adesewa has extricated herself from the small crowd and is hugging her and her dirty plate.
After that, it is a series of disconnected images. Adesewa shouting about dirty December, and pulling her into the car. By some miracle, they are at a party at a beach house on an island off the coast, wearing matching bikinis, silk-pressed hair blowing in the wind. There are people here that Tiara hasn't seen in years: friends, distant cousins, ex-schoolmates. Everyone wants to know where she has been. Talking, laughing, eating, drinking, dancing. Lagos feels like it can be hers again. This, right here, is why she came back. Here, she can forget.
Then, she is alone in an empty room with a tall guy, young, younger, teeth too white, muscly arms with a tattoo of an eagle beneath his shoulder. He smells of beach, and expensive oud. She kisses him first, remembers him fumbling with her bikini strap. He isn't her type. She thinks this even as she accepts his too-cold hand cupping her breast. Too perfect, too much polish, but, but, maybe for today, for tonight. Just because his lips are so soft, and he tastes of mint and orange juice and vodka, and he stares at her body with wonder in his eyes. Then, he ruins it all by talking. A constant diatribe in between planting kisses on her bare tummy. Something about the way he speaks irritates her. It might be the American accent. But he sounds exactly like her, so why should that be off-putting? She tries to quiet him by pulling his head up to hers and kissing him again. But, as soon as she releases his lips, his nattering continues.
"I just got back. Just finished from Jarvis in Texas."
He says Jarvis as if she should know it.
"I don't usually go for mainland girls, but you are breathtaking."
This part stuck despite the fog of drink. Without having to ask, she knows he is one of the new Lekki set. The ones who know nothing of the long history of Lagos, who know nothing about the places that made this city. Tell them of Popo Aguda, of Maryland, Apapa and Ilupeju, and they stare at you blankly. They assume their superiority based on broken knowledge, just as her ex-husband did when they met, and continued to do throughout their marriage.
"I don't even usually go for Yoruba girls," he says, reminding her of that one time her ex-husband told her pointedly that all the girls he dated before her were white.
She isn't surprised when this man tells her it is his first year in Lagos, that he lived in Abuja before he moved to the United States for college.
His mouth is below her navel. His fingers tracing the top of her bikini bottoms when he says,
"It's the culture, you see. I can't understand your people."
Her right hand is rubbing the fuzzy crew cut on his head. She stops and folds her fingers into a tight fist. If she knocks him hard enough, at the centre of his head, will she draw blood? Instead, she pushes him off, walks out of the room, and heads back to the terrace with the drinks. Bottles are on display, stacked neatly by height. She grabs a bottle, tottering on the edge of a glass table and heads to the beach by herself, away from the noise and all the happily dancing bodies. The first swig makes her cough. She doesn't even like whisky. Still, she keeps drinking.
When Adesewa finds her, the bottle is near empty.
"Why did you make me come here?" she shouts, "I didn't want to come here. I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have come."
Her words come out of her mouth slower than she intended. She hears the stops and gaps in her speech, sees alarm slowly spread over Adesewa's face. The waves crash onto the golden sand and then lose velocity about a metre shy of where she sits, dissolving into harmless surf and bubbles. Like her, they have no tether, all pointless movement and air. She lies down flat and covers her ears, turns her face towards the sand, feels its particles prick her bare skin. Thankfully, she can no longer see Adesewa's face. No more. No more. A moment without anyone or anything. Just a moment...
That is the last she remembers from yesterday. Try as she might, she can't figure out how she returned to Campos Street.
Renewal
She hears the buzz from downstairs as soon as she steps out of the bedroom. Voices and laughter, like the old days. There is music coming from the living room, something old. Majek Fashek, she thinks. She bumps into Adesewa, carrying a steaming mug of something. If her cousin had to stay over, she must have been in a bad way last night. She waits for Adesewa to bring up her behaviour yesterday, but her cousin is as breezy as ever, all smiles and gesticulation with her one free hand.
"What's happening?" Tiara asks, eyes scanning the floor, avoiding her cousin's face.
Adesewa places her one free arm around Tiara's shoulders.
"Have you forgotten what day it is? It's Christmas Eve, family brunch day."
The pidgin of yesterday is gone, replaced by fine speech sharp enough to cut glass. She envies this ability of her cousin's, chameleonic, at ease and at home, whoever she is with, wherever she finds herself.
It is true she had forgotten, not the family eating together, but that it is Christmas Eve. These last few years, time has existed in broad swathes and chunks, for her. Individual days roll into each other, each one the same as the one before. Wake, shower, eat, watch years of savings slowly dwindle into the red, sleep, repeat.
Adesewa interrupts her thoughts. Her cousin's free arm is still resting on her shoulders.
"By the way, Mama is a little miffed about yesterday," she says. "You might want to grovel a tad when you see her. I have had an earful already. Worth it, though. It was lovely spending time with you after so long. I hope you're feeling better. Fuck that guy!"
Who? Fuck who? Is she talking about the guy from yesterday? She should explain, tell her cousin that yesterday was never about him. But Adesewa disappears into one of the bedrooms, mumbling about seeing her when it's time to eat.
She is leaning over the bannisters, trying to catch a glimpse of those in the living room, when Mama suddenly appears at the bottom of the stairs. Where did she come from? For a woman in her eighties, she moves too quietly, ghostlike.
"I think you better come with me," Mama says.
That's that, then. She follows Mama into the dining room.
"Ekaaro, Mama," Tiara says, while attempting to half kneel, one knee almost touching the floor.
She hopes this marked show of respect will tell Mama that she is sorry for last night. But, her body has forgotten how to kunle. She has to sit quickly to stop herself from keeling over.
Mama doesn't respond to her greeting in Yoruba. Instead, she switches to English. Tiara's heart quickens. She is in trouble now, for sure.
"So we are drinking till we are drunk now, are we?" Mama says.
Tiara feels like she is seven years old again, receiving a telling-off for using crayons on the walls or fighting with Pelumi.
"I'm sorry, Mama. I really am," Tiara says.
She waits for her grandmother to respond, examines her face. The wrinkles are deeper. Her grey hair is in a half turban that matches her floor-length satin boubou. But, it is her shoulders that tell Tiara what the years have done to Mama. They are rounded, stooping towards the table, as if she is collapsing under heavy weights. Tiara walks over to her and hugs her from the back. Mama stands and turns to face her. She is crying. Mama never cries. She didn't even cry that night ten years ago when everything changed.
"I gave my life for this family," Mama says. "All those loathsome people I wined and dined in this house over the years, even after your grandfather died and left me to handle all of it alone. It was all to keep us safe. I failed. I failed."
Tiara doesn't speak. She knows what Mama means because she asked the same questions that night. She too, feels like she failed by surviving, by being alive when the people she loved most in the world were not. It is what drove her into the arms of her ex-husband and his family. She thought she could start over, recreate her life before the accident.
"I'm sorry for staying away for so long, Mama," she says. The tears come freely.
"No, I'm sorry, Tiaraoluwa."
It is the first time she has heard her full name in so long that the sound of it causes her to step back from Mama's embrace. She grasps the table's edge with one hand, Mama's hand with the other. They both stand like that, facing the family photos and weep. When they are spent, they sit and talk. Tiara isn't sure how long they stay in there, the two of them, talking, apologising, reminiscing. It is only when Yemi, the house girl, comes in to tell them it is time to eat that they join the rest of the family in the garden. No one asks why she stayed away. No one castigates. Her uncles, aunts, and cousins shout and whoop and offer her hug after hug. Uncle Timi even tells her,
"We would have come sooner, but Mama said to give you space, to give you a day."
It isn't until she is sitting beside Adesewa, eating strips of spicy suya, that she realises the tentacles have let go. There is no more rage. She is home.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/CJfr5Qw
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