“What is the meaning of you only coming to see me now?” he asked.
“Oba, you know I’m not the first wife, so I have to give her respect as the eldest and wait till she saw you before coming. How would it look if I had openly ignored her position? I know you care about appearances.” She grabbed his hand and he said, “Omotole you are right, you are always right my dear.” She stayed there mopping his brow and cooing over his feverish body while confirming in her mind she was still at the forefront of his heart and desires.
Gifts
Gifts began to appear in my flat. I found a broken, pink beaded bracelet under my pillow. I kept it in my bedroom top drawer. On the kitchen counter an overly ripe plantain lay blackening, an audience of flies buzzing erratically about it. The bedroom mirror showed long, tapered handprints I didn’t recognise. A green fluffy towel in my bathroom was wet from having been handled. In the toilet, tiny drops of blood ran down the white bowl. I felt uneasy seeing these things, anxious. I ran to the bedroom to check my belongings and there was blood inside my trainers, in the heel area. I inspected my feet for cuts and bites I may have missed but there was nothing.
I padded back to the bathroom, flushed the blood down the toilet, and brushed my teeth. I glared at my reflection in the mirror in case she may have seen something but she only looked back at me wearing a perplexed expression. I pressed play on my answering machine and listened to messages reel off. There was one from Mervyn asking me to call back to check in. His deep voice filled the room, even from a machine. Another message came from Robinson Way debt collectors about an HSBC loan I’d been dodging paying back for years. A feeling of sickness crept up my throat.
In the kitchen I stuck my face under the tap, ran cold water to cool down. On the fridge a couple of holiday snaps from a trip to Greece tucked between stuck bottle tops blinked at me. I noticed that I was missing from some of my pictures: the shot of me in a seafood restaurant next to large tanks of lobsters that threatened to smash through the glass and perch on tables. Another in the city square surrounded by brightly coloured sugar cube shaped houses with a large, grey fountain and birds swooping down to feed on light. On the boat after a day of island hopping, being helped off by a man holding a bottle of water, one by the old town wall where I’d popped my head through an opening. Only my head had disappeared and the opening was filled with a blurred, bright light.
I hadn’t been sleeping very well for a while, staying up late and I didn’t even know why. My nerves were frayed and my body clock had washed down the bath plughole; upright with its eyes open. My Doctor prescribed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication but I wasn’t sure they were doing much. I always swallowed the white tablets with trepidation. Looking like pit stops on my tongue, I sometimes saw tiny versions of myself resting on them to catch their breath. When I couldn’t sleep I watched films late into the night, surfed the net or cut out pictures from magazines to create odd random images on my collage board. A man entering a shark’s mouth, a baby’s head growing on a cactus, a dirty angel flying out of a fan.
The notion of an uninvited guest lingered. In my mind’s eye I saw her at the flower stall, in the photographs I’d taken. She appeared to be doing her long-limbed dance from a distance but each time she and the dance drew closer.
Queenie London 1970: London Nah Wah
After two months in England Queenie still hadn’t fully adapted. She missed her mother’s marauding smile. She caught it circling the sink taps in her room or hovering near cracks on the white ceiling. Sometimes it was the last thing she saw before falling asleep. She missed the sight of lone street vendors on hot tarmac roads, selling spicy rice and stew on broad, green leaves and warm balls of greasy akara. She longed for raucous house parties where there was always somebody new to meet. And the pleasure of bodies dancing so close you could smell intentions mingled with sweat.
She missed the markets. She often recalled the endless chatter and the lingering rich scents of fresh fish, sweet ripening fruits, people’s strong, healthy bodies. Markets in London were not the haggling, bustling markets of back home. Lagos markets fed off the heat. They were animals in their own right, with the heads being the upper halves of traders mid-custom and the tail-ends the backs of customers walking to stalls. Queenie now carried the unfamiliar sensation of the cold in her bones. It even changed her walk, instead of the practiced sashay she’d unleashed in Nigeria drawing admiring glances; she now walked hurriedly, body tucked in and braced with the cruel cold climate perpetually at her heels.
At times at night her room got damp, making her fear of catching flu very real. Mice had gnawed their way through floorboards making holes in her underwear the weight of a yawn. They screeched at each other in an abrasive language and repeatedly flew across the table as if they planned to topple it. In retaliation, Queenie threw anything she could grab quickly at the moving targets of sound. Usually weapons that had no impact: books, shoes, a purple hot water bottle. Sometimes, she saw herself caught in a mousetrap, giant mice hurling objects at her.
One evening she took a walk up Lavender Hill, an undulating stretch of road peppered with shops. She liked the odd, interesting stores; the retro sweets haven selling multi-coloured sins that became small planets on your tongue, the pink and white umbrella shaped treats in tall glass jars that made her think of sugar cane sticks. There was a typewriter shop with rare models in the display window, neatly arranged in rows of five on each side. She imagined the ribbons coming undone at night, pressed against the glass imprinting half formed sentences.
At Sal’s Café, an armpit of a place sporting chipped wooden tables, maroon walls were decorated with old film noir posters and the smell of coffee and hot chocolate intertwined. She saw men who worked construction slouched in their seats, dried bits of cement splattered on their jeans, faces bearing an unhealthy pallor. Broken shadows inched forward and sipped from their cups. Sal himself was a stocky Italian with thinning black hair and a tic in his face travelled through his features. He always wore a stained white apron over his clothes. She liked Sal’s because it was warm and cosy, and because occasionally the same drunken tramp would come in spouting poetry. He’d tell her she was beautiful, and eventually stumble out with a piece of cake in his hands. Sal’s became one of her havens; she often rushed in counting coins from fingers made crooked by the cold unintentionally blowing cloudy breaths in the paths of those she crossed.
She was on her way to Sal’s that day, when she caught the white handwritten sign in the Gift! charity shop window: Store Assistant Wanted. Stop by for details. She peered in, noticed racks of used clothing, stacks of crossword puzzles next to old videos, scuffed shoes dented from rough travels. Beautiful abstract paintings were propped up against mauve walls. Bookshelves teemed with paperbacks. Records, lampshades and china tableware all shared an area. A jewellery display cabinet was positioned beneath the cash register and in the window display sat a family of puppets.
Slouched and wide-eyed, the puppets looked as if they spoke to each other between the ringing of the cash register making up stories about the customers, where they’d come from and who they were buying gifts for. A slender, pink haired woman wearing blue-framed glasses emerged from a set of double doors with a poster of a naked woman entering a lamp. Next to the doors a white arrow read Staff Only underneath. The woman also carried a basket of scarves. Queenie pushed the shop door open gently and was greeted by an upbeat song on the radio about rockets. She smiled at the sole staff member who darted a quick, curious glance her way. She walked leisurely through, studying items that grabbed her attention picking up a few here and there.