So, at 6:33 p.m. I find myself pulling into the traffic in front of the marina next to the governor’s residence. Sometimes I want to park my car and just go sit by the sea. But these government dunderheads have put up fences around the parks and waterfront. And besides, there’s nowhere to park. I miss water. I miss sitting on the sand at Bar Beach with the smell and smoke of Igbo teasing me as the boys on the beach smoke joints. They filled the ocean with sand to build their Atlantic City, can you imagine that? These government people won’t let us have anything, even moments of quiet.
But what’s the point of getting angry in a city like Lagos, where everything tries to drive you up the wall? You will just kill yourself for nothing, as my boss likes to say. Though I shouldn’t be quoting that motherfucker because I’m pissed. But again, what’s the point of getting angry? It’s not like I can easily find a new job if I quit this one.
“Ashewo, o je lo gba driver. Who gave you car?”
I don’t even realize these words are directed at me until the yellow taxi pulls up so close to my car that I could lean over the passenger’s side and touch his wrinkling, tribal-marked face if I wanted to. I watch him gesture about my driving skills for a few more seconds.
“All you small, small girls with the car your aristo sugar daddy bought you.”
I roll up the windows and turn on the AC. I stare at the dents and the chipped yellow paint of his old Toyota. I can see him laughing and gesturing at me intermittently, even as he drives forward. I still don’t know what I have done to annoy this man. When the car ahead of me moves, I drive till I draw up to the yellow taxi and swerve my car into his. I hear the screech of tires as the car behind stops short of my bumper, but I barely pay attention. I watch the taxi driver’s jaw drop then begin to move furiously as he curses at me. I turn my music up. He is still struggling with his door when the car behind me reverses and pulls out into the next lane. I turn the wheel, reverse, and drive off. In my rearview mirror, I watch as the gray-bearded man continues to struggle with his car door.
Stephanie is at my door — not at the gate, at the door. I hand my car key to the guard, making a mental note to scold him for letting her in. He should know better than to let anyone enter without my permission.
“The mechanic will come and pick up the car early in the morning. Don’t wake me,” I say to him.
Since I started working at the microfinance bank two years ago, Stephanie and I have only had a reason to talk twice: the two times my boss wanted me to request a bribe from applicants before he approved their loans. I’d gone to her both times because she was in HR. Both conversations went the same way.
I’d say, “This isn’t a part of my job description, and I thought I should report Kaz to HR because I don’t want to do this.”
Her laugh, like a bird’s shrill caw, was loud and sharp. It sounded like a weird mating call. “Tola, everybody does it. Just explain to the applicant that it will speed up the process.”
Both times I caved and, without protest, kept the N50,000 my boss left on my table the morning after he approved the loans. The money was useful, anyway. There’s no point getting angry or acting stupid here in Lagos.
“Sorry I showed up at your door like this,” Stephanie says. She is staring at me in a way that lets me know I have my resting-bitch face on again.
“It’s okay,” I reply, even though we both know it’s not. I open the door to my apartment. “I have a pet, so don’t scream.”
“Because of a dog?” She laughs nervously as she walks in. I turn on the light and she lets out a half-scream before composing herself. She giggles again and moves closer to the wall opposite the glass cage.
“It’s in a cage,” I say. I imagine that the dead mouse in there probably made Lucy look scarier. “She’s slow these days; I don’t know why she hasn’t had her breakfast.”
The shrill nervous laugh comes again. I wonder what she’d do if I told her Lucy tried to bite me twice in the last week while I was cleaning.
Every woman has that friend — you know, the one you go to when you need a procedure done. You don’t go to her because she told you she’s had one done, you go to her because you know she has.
After five minutes of beating around the bush, wondering if you should say you’re asking on behalf of a friend, you come right out and say it: “I’m pregnant, and I need to find somewhere to get rid of it.”
You hold her stare, and your eyes beg her not to pretend that she doesn’t know a place, that she hasn’t had a procedure.
Less than a year later, here I am being ambushed into being that friend for Stephanie. I’d never told her I’d had an abortion, but I figure she must have not believed it was typhoid that caused me to constantly walk briskly into the ladies’ room for two weeks. Especially since I’d refused to go to the office clinic, saying it would pass. It did pass, after I took two personal days off and came back looking as normal as ever.
I’m so hungry for a smoke that after frantically searching my hollowed-out decorative book, I go to my ashtray and light a quarter-smoked joint I find there.
All the while she’s watching me without a word. I recognize the look in her eyes.
“Don’t worry, I don’t feel the need to hide certain things about myself,” I say.
Stephanie spends the next two hours crying and telling me about her issues with the man she’s dating. I spend the time relighting partially smoked joints. I drag on about six of them till my fingers are burning.
“You just have to learn how to pleasure yourself by yourself,” I mutter.
“What?”
“I have to let Lucy out soon,” I say.
She starts to leave a few minutes later — without a phone number, but with detailed directions to the clinic.
“It’s been there for about fifteen years, my friend told me. You’ll find it easily.”
She pauses and asks what I think the likelihood of a police raid is.
I laugh. “In Nigeria?”
“You should laugh more. Or smile.” She is standing at the door, inviting mosquitoes into my house, talking this nonsense. “People in the office say you never smile, and when you do it is fake because your eyes look dead. Your laughter sounds nice. A little scary, but nice.”
Later that night, I stand in my bathroom naked, smiling at my reflection. With teeth showing. Without. With lips spread wide. Without. Only left cheek raised. I smile. Eyes widened. Eyes crinkled. I smile.
Some days, like today, I get really tired. I want to be at home with the covers over my head but I’m sitting at my desk instead, earphones in, Frank Ocean’s “Strawberry Swing” playing so loudly it is going to my chest. I’m watching the others at their desks in the open office, looking like bubbleheads. They’re loud bubbleheads, and I really want to scream at everyone to shut the fuck up and get out. Days like this, I hate people. Hate their ease of conversation, their laughter, their being.
I walk to the bathroom and call my doctor to ask if it’s okay that I’ve been using diazepam to sleep, along with the prescribed epilim.
“I should have told you before I started taking it, but it’s just been hard to sleep and every night I try on my own but it’s been impossible.”