I laughed. ‘You sound just like Jamie,’ I said, referring to her three-year-old son. Nulia. A baby that had a baby. ‘I’m still not your only sister. Jachinma even has a supermarket. Allow me to have peace please.’
‘Please now. You know you’re the only one that understands me. Apunanwu doesn’t even pick my calls, and she’s earning in dollars, that stingy girl.’
It wasn’t just Nulia’s calls, Apunanwu no longer answered anyone’s calls since she and her family moved to Canada. My mother said her children would grow up to be borderless, with no knowledge of self and home; they would pronounce their names like white people did.
Urenna, Jachinma and Sofuchi had formed a clique of wives who behaved like wives, posting pictures of their children’s school parties and sports days with captions like, ‘Congrats to my lovely daughter on completing Year 4’, the others dropping heart and smile emojis underneath with their comments: ‘It is the Lord’s doing.’
Then there was Nulia and me. My defiance had only served to strengthen my father’s resolve. Initially, he’d acquiesced to my mother’s tearful request after my return from the hospital that he allow us live our lives without the guillotine of an early arranged marriage over our heads. But just months later, he announced that he’d accepted a suitor for Urenna, then Jachimma, then Sofuchi and Nulia, citing me as a cautionary tale. The others had accepted their fate without contest. They were their mother’s daughters; pliant, eager to prove they were unlike me, the disappointing first child. But Nulia showed up at my door when her turn came. ‘Zina, please,’ she pleaded, like I was her only hope, and for a while at least, I was.
With the aid of a police officer, they dragged her out of my home a week later, kicking and screaming and begging. ‘You will not ruin her life like you ruined yours,’ my mother said, her finger pointed at my face. I did not attend the wedding.
‘Zina, please now. I promise, I’ll spend better this time. I’ll be more judicious,’ Nulia begged.
‘So you even know the word “judicious”?’ I cackled. ‘I saw your new car o. Or you think you’re the only one that likes good things?’
‘Zinaaaaaa. Pleeeeaaaasseeee.’
‘Okay, what about your job? Where is your husband?’ Her husband worked at a local bank as a marketing officer, slowly moving up the ranks. A steady hardworking Catholic man who provided for his family, grateful to have such a beautiful wife; the sort of man my father had chosen for all his children. Nulia treated him with stolid indifference, and I often wondered if she would have liked him more if she’d chosen him for herself.
‘Why are you asking about him?’ she asked.
‘Is he not your husband?’ I retorted.
‘That’s not why I called you. It’s just a quick loan. I promise I’ll pay it back.’
I hissed. ‘You still haven’t paid me back for the last time and you’ve bought a new car. Maybe next time I’ll see a new house on your page.’
There were no pictures of her husband on her social media. Occasionally, she posted pictures of her son, but only on special days, like his birthday or the new year.
‘Zina, please now.’
‘What do you even need the money for?’
‘I need to sort out some things, just a few gaps here and there. Please now Zina.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I responded.
I scrolled through her Instagram again after the call. There were several pictures of me, and of us together, glossy pictures at red carpet events, at promos and premieres, each caption clamorously vaunting. They said: see my sister the actress, don’t we look alike, aren’t we one? In them, I sensed a dissatisfaction at the simplicity of her life, an eagerness to live vicariously through mine.
As children, she’d been just as vocal declaring who she looked up to: ‘I’m just like Sister Zina.’ I opened my bank app and entered a figure that was twice the amount she’d requested for transfer. It was the least I could do for having the life she’d wanted, for not doing enough to ensure she’d been able to live it.
It had begun as an escape, an ambition to be someone else, anyone but myself. But actors need co-stars, and so I’d recruited my sisters.
‘Why am I always the daughter? I want to be the friend,’ Nulia had complained.
‘Because you’re the youngest,’ I explained.
‘At least you’re not the husband or boyfriend,’ Jachinma quipped, rolling her eyes.
‘You’re the tallest, you took Daddy’s height,’ I said, defending my casting decision.
We always drank Coke, either real (stolen from the fridge when our mother wasn’t looking) or imaginary bottles; we gulped Coke because that was what they did in the American movies. We said ‘Oh my God’ to express shock and ‘shit’ – pronounced ‘shirt’ – when we spilled our drinks; the drinks always spilled, it was how the Americans did it. Until my mother told us they drank water in America too, and that she would punish any child she caught calling the Lord’s name in vain.
From romcoms, we drew inspiration for our acting – the swooning, the music, the chance meetings and endings that sparkled. It was possible to exist in a world with effervescent magic.
‘You’re a natural,’ the casting director said at the very first audition I attended. My parents had given me an ultimatum: find a job or get out of the house. My presence was too strong a reminder of a failure on their part. But the text I received weeks later indicated an interest in hiring me for anything other than the role I’d wanted.
‘Isn’t every industry like that? Men will take advantage once they hold any power over you. Plus you’re very pretty, you should be used to it by now,’ Eriife said when I told her what had happened.
But still, I refused to give up. Ego was at Oxford by then, but called often, asking how it was going. ‘Very fine. Everything is going well, I read another script, another role came up,’ I told her, my voice so shrill and full of false cheer, that it seemed to be another role I was playing. If she suspected any dishonesty on my part, she pretended not to notice.
‘You’re wasting your life,’ my mother said, standing in the doorway of my room like a ghost in the early hours of the morning.
‘Did I do something?’ I asked. I’d only just woken up.
‘ “Did I do something”?’ she mimicked. ‘Every day you go out and return jobless. If you’d only listened to your father, you’d be married to a responsible man, you would have stability. But look at you, loafing about like a waste of space.’
I said nothing as her words pierced through. I’d learned that speaking only encouraged her to say more.
‘You even have a law degree. Your father could have gotten you a job with a decent law firm after your marriage if you’d listened to him. Now what are you going to do? You really think you can be an actress just because you’re fine? Are you the finest person to ever be born? Me, your mother, am I not beautiful? I was even more beautiful at your age. Did you ever see me abandon my responsibility to chase ridiculous ambitions? Who do you think you are?’
Beauty was a double-sided curse. It announced your presence, generated an unwanted buzz and desire within others that you had no control over; it created assumptions about your person, it meant you were hated for a face you didn’t create, even by your own mother.
‘The East is where everything is happening. Why not go there?’ someone advised after another failed audition; a time before Lagos became a filmmaking hub.
At the back of the bus to Onitsha, I counted the only money I had, feeling hopeful. Ego had called the week I’d purchased the tickets. ‘I had some extra this month so I sent you something. Go to Western Union with your ID card o, make sure you don’t forget it,’ she said. But I knew there was no extra money, she was sent a fixed sum every month as part of her scholarship arrangement.
‘I don’t need it,’ I protested. ‘How can you be sending me money from your scholarship allowance? Things are so expensive over there. Chioma said when she visited London with the savings from her business, she could barely buy anything because she kept converting to naira in her head.’
