The day Ejem was disrobed was also the day her father stopped interacting with her, avoiding the impropriety of a grown man talking to a naked girl. Ejem hadn’t wanted to go to school or market or anywhere out of the house where people could see her. Chidinma, still under her father-cloth, told her (horrified, well-off) parents that she too felt ready to disrobe, so that she and Ejem could face the world together, two naked foundlings.
Chidinma’s parents had tried to spin it as piousness, a daughter disrobed earlier than she had to be because she was so dedicated to tradition. But it’d had the stink of fanaticism and they’d lost many friends, something for which, Chidinma confided, her parents had never forgiven her.
A part of Ejem had always believed they’d be claimed at the same time, but then Chidinma had secured a wife-cloth at twenty, with Ejem as her chief maid. And then Chidinma gave birth to a boy, then two girls, who would remain covered their entire lives if Chidinma had anything to say about it. And through it all, Ejem remained uncovered, unclaimed, drifting until the likelihood passed her by.
She downed a mug of wine in one huge gulp, then another, before sifting through yesterday’s mail. She opened the envelope she’d been avoiding: the notice of her upcoming lease renewal, complete with a bump in monthly rent. With the money she’d earned today, she had enough to cover the next two months. But the raised rent put everything in jeopardy, and Chidinma’s abandonment meant Ejem could no longer sell to her wealthy set. If she couldn’t secure income some other way, a move to a smaller town would soon be a necessity.
When she’d first leased the apartment, Ejem had been working at the corporate headquarters of an architecture firm. Though her nakedness drew some attention, there were other unclaimed women, and Ejem, being very good at what she did, advanced. Just shy of a decade later, she was over thirty, the only woman in upper management, and still uncovered.
Three months ago Ejem was delivering a presentation to a prospective client. As usual, she was the only woman in the room. The client paid no attention to her PowerPoint, focusing instead on what he considered to be the impropriety of an unclaimed woman distracting from business matters. Ejem was used to this and tried to steer the conversation back to the budget. When the man ignored her, none of her coworkers bothered to censure him, choosing instead to snicker into their paperwork. She walked out of the room.
Ejem had never gone to Human Resources before; she’d always sucked it up. The HR manager, a covered woman who was well into her fifties, listened to her with a bored expression, then, with a pointed look at Ejem’s exposed breasts, said, “You can’t seriously expect a group of men to pay attention to pie charts or whatever when there is an available woman in the room. Maybe if you were covered this wouldn’t happen. Until you are, we can no longer put you in front of clients.”
Ejem walked out of the building and never returned. She locked herself away at home until Chidinma came knocking with a bottle of vodka, her youngest girl on her hip, and a flyer for home-based work selling makeup.
Now that lifeline was gone, and it would be only a matter of time until Ejem exhausted her savings. She switched on the TV and flipped channels until she reached an uncovered young woman relating the news. The woman reported on a building fire in Onitsha and Ejem prepared dinner with the broadcast playing in the background, chopping vegetables for stir-fry until she registered the phrase unclaimed women repeated several times. She turned up the volume.
The newscaster had been joined by an older man with a paternal air, who gave more details.
“The building was rumored to be a haven of sorts for unclaimed women, who lived there, evading their responsibilities as cloth makers. Authorities halted firefighters from putting out the blaze, hoping to encourage these lost women to return to proper life. At least three bodies were discovered in the ashes. Their identities have yet to be confirmed.”
That was the other reason Ejem wanted to remain in the metro area. Small towns were less tolerant of unclaimed women, some going so far as to outlaw their presence unless they were menials of the osu caste. They had a certain freedom, Ejem thought—these osu women who performed domestic tasks, the osu men who labored in the mines or constructed the buildings she’d once designed—though her envy was checked by the knowledge that it was a freedom born of irrelevance. The only place for unclaimed women, however, as far as most were concerned, was the giant factories, where they would weave cloth for women more fortunate than they.
The town’s mayor appeared at a press conference.
“This is a decent town with decent people. If folks want to walk around uncovered and unclaimed, they need to go somewhere else. I’m sorry about the property loss and the folks who couldn’t get out, but this is a family town. We have one of the world’s finest factories bordering us. They could have gone there.” The screen flipped back to the newsman, who nodded sagely, his expression somehow affirming the enforcement of moral values even as it deplored the loss of life.
Ejem battled a bubble of panic. How long before her finances forced her out into the hinterlands, where she would have to join the cloth makers? She needed a job and she needed it fast.
What sorts of jobs could one do naked? Ejem was too old for anything entry-level, where she’d be surrounded day after day by twentysomethings who would be claimed quickly. Instead she looked for jobs where her nudity would be less of an issue. She lasted at a nursing home for five weeks, until a visiting relative objected to her presence. At the coffee shop she made it two and a half hours until she had to hide in the back to avoid a former coworker. She quit the next day. Everywhere she went heightened how sheltered she’d been at her corporate job. The farther from the center of town she searched, the more people stared at her openly, asking outright why she wasn’t covered when they saw that she didn’t bear the mark of an osu woman. Every once in a while Ejem encountered osu women forced outside by errands, branded by shaved heads with scarification scored above one ear. Other pedestrians avoided them as though they were poles or mailboxes or other such sidewalk paraphernalia. But Ejem saw them.
As her search became more desperate, every slight took a knife’s edge, so that Ejem found herself bothered even by the young girls still covered in their father-cloth who snickered at her, unaware or not caring that they too would soon be stripped of protection. The worst were the pitying Oh, honey looks, the whispered assurances from older covered women that someone would eventually claim her.
After a while she found work giving massages at a spa. She enjoyed being where everyone was disrobed; the artificial equality was a balm. Her second week on the job, a woman walked in covered with one of the finest wife-cloths Ejem had ever seen. She ordered the deluxe package, consisting of every single service the spa offered.
“And may I have your husband’s account number?”
“My account number,” the woman emphasized, sliding her card across the counter.
The desk girl glared at the card, glared at the woman, then left to get the manager. Everyone in the waiting room stared.
The manager, a woman close to Ejem’s age, sailed in, her haughty manner turning deferential and apologetic as soon as she caught sight of the client. “I’m so sorry. The girl is new, still in father-cloth. Please excuse her.” The finely clothed one remained silent. “We will of course offer you a significant discount on your services today. Maria is ready to start on your massage right away.”