“No,” the woman said firmly. “I want her to do it.” Ejem, who’d been pretending to straighten products on the shelves, turned to see the woman pointing at her.
Soon she was in one of the treatment rooms, helping the woman to disrobe, feeling the texture of the cloth, wanting to rub it against her cheek. She left to hang it and encountered the manager, who dragged her down the hall and spoke in a harsh whisper.
“Do you know who that is? That is Odinaka, the Odinaka. If she leaves here less than pleased, you will be fired. I hope I’m clear.”
Ejem nodded, returning to the massage room in a nervous daze. Odinaka was one of a handful of independently wealthy women who flouted convention without consequences. She was unclaimed but covered herself anyway, and not in modest cloth either, but in fine, bold fabric that invited attention and scrutiny. She owned almost half the cloth factories across the globe. This unthinkable rebellion drew criticism, but her wealth ensured that it remained just that: words but no action.
Odinaka sat on the massage table, swinging her legs. At Ejem’s direction she lay on her stomach while Ejem warmed oil between her hands. She coated Odinaka’s ankles before sliding up to her calves, warming the tissue with her palms. She asked a few casual questions, trying to gauge whether she was a talker or preferred her massages silent. She needn’t have worried. Not only did Odinaka give verbose replies, she had questions for Ejem herself. Before long she had pried from Ejem the story of how she’d come to be here, easing muscle tensions instead of pursuing a promising career as an architect.
“It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that you have to remain uncovered?”
Ejem continued with the massage, unsure how to reply to such seditious sentiments.
“You know, you and I are very similar,” Odinaka continued.
Ejem studied the woman’s firm body, toned and slim from years of exercise. She considered the other ways in which they were different, not least that Odinaka had never had to worry about a bill in her life. She laughed.
“You are very kind, but we’re nothing alike, though we may be of the same age,” she responded, as lightly as she could, tilting the ending into a question. Odinaka ignored it, turning over to face her.
“I mean it; we are both ambitious women trying to make our way unclaimed in male-dominated fields.”
Except, Ejem didn’t say, you are completely free in a way I am not, as covered as you wish to be.
“Covering myself would be illegal—” she started.
“Illegal-smeagle. When you have as much money as I do, you exist above every law. Now, wouldn’t you like to be covered too?”
Odinaka was her savior. She whisked Ejem away from her old apartment, helping her pay the fee to break her lease, and moved her into a building she owned in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods.
Ejem’s quarters, a two-bedroom apartment complete with a generously sized kitchen, had the freshness of a deep clean, like it had been long vacant or had gone through a recent purge, stripped of the scent and personality of its previous occupant. The unit had a direct intercom to the osu women who took care of the place. Ejem was to make cleaning requests as needed, or requests for groceries that later appeared in her fridge. When Ejem mentioned the distance from the apartment to her job, Odinaka revealed that she didn’t have to work if she didn’t want to, and it was an easy choice not to return to the spa. The free time enabled her to better get to know the other women in the building.
There was Delilah, who seemed like a miniature Odinaka in dress and mannerisms but in possession of only half as much confidence. Doreen, a woman close to forty, became Ejem’s favorite. She owned a bookstore—one that did well as far as bookstores went—and she had the air of someone who knew exactly who she was and liked it. She eschewed the option to self-clothe.
“Let them stare,” Doreen would declare after a few glasses of wine. “This body is a work of art.” She would lift her breasts with her hands, sending Ejem and the other women into tipsy giggles.
The remaining women—Morayo, Mukaso, and Maryam—were polite but distant, performing enough social niceties to sidestep any allegations of rudeness, but only just. Ejem and Doreen called them the three Ms or, after a few drinks, “Mmm, no,” for their recalcitrance. They sometimes joined in Odinaka’s near-nightly cocktail hour, but within a few weeks the cadre solidified into Odinaka, Delilah, Doreen, and Ejem.
With this group of women there were no snide remarks about Ejem’s nakedness, no disingenuous offers to introduce her to a man—any man—who could maybe look past her flaws. Odinaka talked about her vast business, Doreen about her small one, and they teased each other with terrible advice neither would ever take. Ejem talked some about the career she’d left behind but didn’t have much to add. And for the first time her shyness was just shyness, not evidence of why she remained unclaimed, nor an invitation to be battered with advice on how she could improve herself.
Besides, Odinaka talked enough for everyone, interrupting often and dominating every topic. Ejem didn’t mind, because of all of them, Odinaka had had the most interesting life, one of unrelenting luxury since birth. She’d inherited the weaving company from her father when he retired, almost a decade ago, which had caused an uproar. But if one of the wealthiest dynasties wanted a woman at the helm, it was a luxury they could purchase. And if that woman indulged in covering herself and collecting and caring for other unclaimed women, who had the power to stop her?
“I imagine creating a world,” Odinaka often said, “where disrobing is something a woman does only by choice.”
On Ejem’s first night in the building, Odinaka had brought a length of cloth to her, a gift, she said, that Ejem could wear whenever she wanted. Ejem had stared at the fabric for hours. Even in the confines of the building, in her own unit, she didn’t have the courage to put it on. At Odinaka’s cocktail hour, Doreen would sit next to her and declare, “It’s us against these bashful fuckers, Ejem,” setting off an evening of gentle ribbing at everyone’s expense.
“You really go to your store like that?” Ejem asked Doreen one afternoon. “Why don’t you cover yourself? No one will say anything if they know you’re one of Odinaka’s women, right?” She was trying to convince herself that she too could don the cloth and go out in public without fear.
Doreen stopped perusing invoices to give Ejem all her attention. “Look, we have to live with this. I was disrobed at age ten. Do you know what it feels like to be exposed so young? I hid for almost a decade before I found myself, my pride. No one will ever again make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I plan to remain unclaimed and uncovered for as long as I live, and no one can say a damn thing about it. Odinaka rebels in her own way, and I in mine. I don’t yearn for the safety of cloth. If the law requires me to be naked, I will be naked. And I will be goddamned if they make me feel uncomfortable for their law.”
The weeks of welcome, of feeling free to be her own person, took hold, and one night, when Ejem joined the other women in Odinaka’s apartment, she did so covered, the cloth draped over her in a girl’s ties, the only way she knew how. Doreen was the first one to congratulate her, and when she hugged Ejem, she whispered, “Rebel in your own way,” but her smile was a little sad.
Odinaka crowed in delight, “Another one! We should have a party.”