Boomeee!!! Aunty Ekio shouted when she had a broken nail, bring me the file now-now, even though Bummi might be eating, or constipated on the toilet, or doing her schoolwork, or making sure the two boys took their bath without killing each other
she herself had to wash-down with the garden hose
Boomeee!!!, she heard when she was spitting into Aunty’s cup of tea and muttering, I go injure you, lady, I go injure you, before taking it to her on a pretty plastic doily on a small tray
Boomeee!!! she heard when she went to market, realizing it was an echo within the corridors of her mind, arriving back home to Aunty asking what took her so long? do you take me for a fool-fool? were you making chit-chat with the boys?
Boomeee!!! was shrieked into her sleep amid nightmares of losing this home too, just as she had in Lagos and Opolo before that
Boomeee!!! she heard while sitting on the bus to the University of Ibadan when she began her studies in mathematics in the overcrowded lecture theatre
students sitting on the floor and in the aisles
where she dropped off to sleep at the back during her first lecture
only to be woken up by a graduate teaching assistant who had entered the empty room to set up for the next lecture
a young man called Augustine Williams
Augustine
who invited her to lunch that day, telling her she was a very pretty girl when she knew for a fact she was not
Augustine
who thereafter sought her out at lunchtime to sit in the shade of a tree in the grounds to eat ugba and abacha or peppered snails, suya or moi moi
the two of them soon existed in a force field that cut them off from the bustle of the rest of the campus, how did this happen? two people meeting by chance and feeling as if they had known each other for ever
he said he could see sadness in her face when it was in repose, which made her appear mysterious and beguiling
she was surprised he was trying to see inside her, that anybody would, was she now mysterious and beguiling? she looked at herself in the mirror from every angle that evening trying to see herself as he saw her
unlike the boys at college who treated women like toilets, he waited a long time before he tried to kiss her – a quick peck on her left cheek which she refused to wash off for three days
with Augustine in her life, Bummi did not feel so alone
they were two halves of a circle moving towards completion
Augustine had grown up with his social worker father and typist mother who had resided in the same house since they were first married, whose own parents lived locally, as did his brother and sisters, aunts and uncles, who all descended on Sunday afternoons for a buffet of okra soup with fu fu, buku stew, sesame spinach stew with palm-nut oil, vegetable yam, noodles, pasta, fried chicken and salad
when he asked Bummi to be his wife, he reassured her that his parents would accept her, even though she had no close family to vouch for her, his parents believed marriage should be about love and compatibility above all other considerations
they prided themselves on being progressive
Bummi’s hair was newly hot-ironed when she walked through the door of Augustine’s home in a lacy white dress which came modestly below her knees and wearing her freshly whitened Bata sandals
you are welcome, Mrs Williams said, as she ushered her into the living room, flowery curtains shutting out the midday sun
Mrs Williams wore an elegant bubu of blue birds in flight
she joined Bummi who sat stiffly on the wicker sofa looking up at the many framed black and white ancestral photographs dotted on the ledge that ran around the top of the walls
Mrs Williams took Bummi’s hand in both of hers and held them, Bummi marvelled at their soft warmth, her own mother’s had been hard and scratchy
Mrs Williams said she wanted her son to be an honourable and responsible person, that was all a mother should ask for
we do not want a dowry, you have our blessing, you will be our daughter now
Bummi thought she was a very lucky girl
Augustine did not feel so lucky, he complained when they went for their long Sunday afternoon walks past miles of maize fields in the hazy sunshine
his family was not connected enough to get him a job in government or business as befitting his PhD in Economics
if he left for England, he was sure to find a job that would take him around the world as a globetrotting businessman or consultant
he would eventually own properties in New York, LA, Geneva, Cape Town, Ibadan, Lagos and of course, London
he would do it, yes, he would do it
by the grace of God.
3
By the grace of God
Bummi and Augustine migrated to Britain where he again could not find work befitting his qualifications
he settled into the seat of a minicab until he had saved enough money to set himself up in business (import-export)
and researched trade possibilities between Britain and West Africa via the sweatshops of Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh
sadly, London was more expensive than he had imagined, saving was impossible and when the Nigerian economy went on a downturn, he had to send cash transfers back home
Bummi and Augustine agreed they were wrong to believe that in England, at least, working hard and dreaming big was one step away from achieving it
Augustine joked he was acquiring a second doctorate in shortcuts, bottlenecks, one-way streets and dead ends
while transporting passengers who thought themselves far too superior to talk to him as an equal
Bummi complained that people viewed her through what she did (a cleaner) and not what she was (an educated woman)
they did not know that curled up inside her was a parchment certificate proclaiming her a graduate of the Department of Mathematics, University of Ibadan
just as she did not know that when she strode on to the graduation podium in front of hundreds of people to receive her ribboned scroll, and shake hands with the Chancellor of the University, that her first class degree from a Third World country would mean nothing in her new country
especially with her name and nationality attached to it
and that job rejections would arrive in the post with such regularity she would ritualistically burn them in the kitchen sink
and watch them turn to ash to be washed down the plughole
which is why when their daughter was born, they named her Carole
without a Nigerian middle name
Augustine worked nights, collapsed fully clothed on to their bed, smelling of the cigarettes he smoked all day and the can of extra stout he drank when he got home
just as Bummi dragged herself out of bed
to join her tribe of bleary-eyed workers who emerged into the dimmed streetlights of her new city to clamber aboard the red double-decker buses that ploughed the empty streets
she sat in sleepy silence with others who had hoped for a better life in this country, huddled in her eiderdown jacket in winter, her feet in padded boots, longing to sleep, afraid to miss the stop for the office building where she scraped away hardened faecal matter in toilet bowls and disinfected everything that came into contact with human waste
where she hoovered up dead skin cells into vacuumed fluff, mopped and polished floors, emptied paper baskets and rubbish bins, cleaned keyboards and wiped down monitors, polished desks and shelves and generally made sure everything was spotless and dust free
striving to do her best, even if her job was not
Augustine said the least he could do was be a good father to Carole, as his mother continued to advise him by letter
do not be distant, authoritarian and uncommunicative, my son, be close to your daughter when young and you will remain so when she is older