“Come on. You know I haven’t been home in ages,” she said.
“You mean home as in Naij in general or home as in New Lagos itself?” Ola replied.
Souraya dropped her eyes. She didn’t like talking about home or people trying to trace where she’d grown up before she got out. Honestly, she’d never thought she’d go back. The world was such a big place once you escaped. “You know I was raised more in the East,” she said. “And you know I don’t want to discuss it.”
Ola sighed. “Fine! This girl and your mystery. No one is asking you to go back to your father’s village. Just come and stay with me small. I have a big client in the city, and usually he travels and flies me out, but this time he has…work.” She was suddenly vague, but Souraya had no interest in pushing.
“I don’t know, Ola,” she started saying, but her friend jumped back in.
“Oh, come on, Sou! I already told him I won’t come without a friend, so he’s agreed to book us a suite each at the Signature. You literally don’t have to do anything other than relax next door to me. It’s like a holiday!” Souraya hesitated and Ola made a wise play. “Sleep on it, okay? I know it’s been a while since you took yourself on a holiday, habibti, you’re always saving, saving, I don’t know for what. I can gist you more about it tomorrow if you’re interested.” She glanced at her watch and swore. “Fuck, I’m supposed to meet someone; I have to find my driver.” She shoved a wad of noodles into her mouth, grabbed her purse, and blew a kiss to Souraya as she left, scarves and perfume flurrying in the air around her. “Call you tomorrow, darling!”
Souraya sat there and looked at the roti on her plate. She tore off a piece and dipped it into the bowl of curry, then chewed it perfunctorily. The thought of returning home burned in her chest like pepper. It was true that the city wasn’t home, not really; she’d spent only a year or two there before she left but still. There are some places that you swear you’ll never go back to because the space itself has become inseparable from the time; the there is the same as the then and you don’t know how to deal with the space if it’s inside a different slot of time. This was the whole of Nigeria for Souraya ever since her father went back to Lebanon, leaving her and her mother behind as if they were nothing, inconsequential items that didn’t fit into his suitcase. When her mother got a chance to get married, her new husband didn’t want a half-caste bastard in his house, so she shipped Souraya off to extended family in New Lagos. Nothing was the same after that, and Souraya ran away, disappeared into the city and never saw her family again. She had her reasons for not returning.
When Ola called her the next day, it was to tell the story of how a client’s wife had found some of his text messages and had started bombarding her on WhatsApp with accusations and curses.
“Can you imagine? She was there telling me I was going to be barren for life, that my womb had been poisoned, and I just laughed and told her I never had one in the first place!” Ola’s laugh gurgled through the phone. “She was so confused; she didn’t know what to say again. Started calling me abnormal, so I blocked her. It was getting annoying.” She kissed her teeth. “These wives just don’t know what to do when they find out their husbands are fucking a trans woman, you know?”
“Not just that, they also think the worst thing that can happen to a woman is not giving birth to children.” Souraya spun in her hanging chair, her headset snaking white from her ears.
“Ugh. For what? So, we can end up like them, trapped in some fat bastard’s house? God forbid.”
“Don’t mind them. You’re the embodiment of a kind of freedom they can’t even begin to dream of.”
“Abi! They can’t be angry at themselves, so they decide to come and vex with me. Abeg. Carry go.”
Souraya stared out at her skyline. “I’ll come with you,” she said, switching tracks.
Ola paused on the other end. “Back home? Are you serious?”
“Why not. Just make sure your guy doesn’t disturb me. And tell him I need some pocket money to entertain myself while he’s busy with you.”
Ola laughed. “That one is no problem, forget. Thank you, thank you so much! I was going to ask Liza, but trust me, I wasn’t looking forward to it.”
“Didn’t she try and steal that your investor guy when you all went to Sydney?”
“Can you imagine. And she still denies it till today.”
“I can’t believe you’re even still talking to her.”
Ola made a resigned sound. “We still have to look out for each other. But I warned her I would throw acid on her face if she tried that nonsense again. She won’t be that stupid.”
“Inshallah.”
Ola laughed. “Okay, let me go and call this man and tell him to wire me the money.”
“Who is he again?”
“As if you know anyone there. Don’t worry yourself. You won’t have to meet him.”
Souraya wasn’t surprised by Ola’s evasion; it wasn’t rare for girls to try and poach men off each other, so the less you knew, the safer it was.
“As long as I get my first-class ticket, bebi.”
“Of course, habibti. Before nko. Catch you later.” Ola hung up and Souraya’s music automatically turned itself back on. She leaned back and let it center in her skull, loud and engulfing.
Friday, 8:04 PM
Two weeks later, she was listening to the same song as she unpacked her bags in her hotel suite in Lagos, arranging her face serums and creams in the bathroom, turning them so she could see all the labels neatly in a row. Ola was next door, cooing at her guy over the phone, probably throwing dresses all over the place as she tried to decide what to wear for dinner that night.
“He can’t wait to see me,” she’d told Souraya, giggling. “It’s as if he’s starving for me. They spend so much money when they’re in that state. I almost said we should have dinner tomorrow instead, but he would have gotten so angry if I said that.”
Ola’s eyes were bright and Souraya knew her well enough to understand that for her friend anger blurred with passion the same way she’d forgive—or even encourage—jealousy and paranoia. Dangerous games. Souraya had warned her before, it was a man like that who could kill you and call it love. Ola didn’t want to hear it, so she let it go. It wasn’t Souraya’s job to save anyone other than herself, and she was already wondering if it had been a bad idea to come home. The voices were getting to her; everyone sounded so goddamn familiar, like an uncle from a childhood long gone, like a recurring cousin, a resentful stepfather. She’d put in her earphones as soon as she was alone, trying to replace the sounds with something more neutral, like a flurry of strings, the breaking of air over a violin, a cracked voice. It wasn’t really helping.
Souraya sat heavily on the bed, kicked off her black Nikes, and curled up on the huge white duvet, drawing her knees into her chest, her forearms softly scraping against the leather and mesh of her overpriced leggings. Perhaps she could stay in here the entire time and not have to venture out. Order room service for a week. Watch a series of shitty movies or, better yet, Nigerian reality TV, which Ola assured her was a worthwhile and absolutely hilarious option. The bed was swallowing her up. She knew she needed to shower but she couldn’t quite move, not yet.
There was a knock on her door, and it took Souraya a few moments before she could gather the energy to raise her head, let alone roll off the bed to answer it. As soon as she unlocked it, Ola pushed past her and came swirling into the room, draping herself dramatically across the bed. Her dress was frilled and silk and butterscotch, a slit running almost up to her hip.
“Can you imagine, that bastard just canceled our dinner!” Ola propped herself up on an elbow and her cleavage deepened. Souraya closed the door and sat on the lounge sofa.
“On the first night? That’s weird.”
“He’s just lucky I hadn’t started doing all my makeup. Do you know how angry I would be if I had done all of that for nothing?”
“What did he say was his reason?”
Ola flopped back down. “Guy, I don’t even know. He said he had a party to go to and he didn’t realize it was tonight.”
“Are you serious? He canceled you for a party?”
