‘Me?’ I cackled.
In the car, behind the tinted shade, she unzipped the front of her jumpsuit to just below her breasts, then she reached behind to pull at her bra hooks.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘You don’t know that part of the reason I was crying was because my bra was too tight?’
I laughed. ‘Why didn’t you take it off on the plane? You’re a mad woman.’ She hadn’t changed. I turned on the engine.
‘Jesus!’ she screamed several minutes later, as I manoeuvred between lanes. ‘You drive like a mad person. You’ve not changed o.’
‘We’re all mad in Lagos.’
Eriife remained quiet in the back of the car.
For a while, Ego stared out of the tinted window at the broken tarred roads, hawkers and beggars hanging by the windows, street sellers, their wares spilling off the pavements, the ramshackle yellow buses and their passengers jumping on and off, the passers-by constantly screaming, cursing and sweating. I wondered if she was reconsidering her decision in the glare of the reality of Lagos.
I opened the compartment by the passenger side and pulled out a CD, waving it in her face. ‘I bought something to commemorate your return,’ I announced, pulling off the film.
She pulled away from the glass and shook her head. ‘Who buys CDs in this day and age?’ She stared at the cover and Craig David’s face. ‘Oh my God! Born To Do It! I haven’t listened to this in forever.’
I grinned as she pushed the CD into the player and the intro guitar notes tinkled through. ‘We were so obsessed with him, my mother wanted to break our player.’
She sighed. ‘What a time, life was so different.’ She turned to look at the rear seat. ‘Eriife, why are you so quiet? You were talking my ear off on the phone, and now that I’m here, you’re quiet?’
Eriife laughed a stilted laugh. ‘I’m just tired. It’s been a long day at the clinic.’
Ego’s eyes slimmed in a squint, perceptive as ever. ‘Or are the both of you fighting?’
Forced laughter from Eriife and me followed.
‘You’re not serious,’ Eriife said.
‘Remember Jide that used to DJ all the school parties?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘His father got him a job in a ministry, and now he’s an assistant director in Abuja.’
Ego let the issue go with a stare that said she would address it later. ‘You don’t mean it? Remember how he used to help us transfer songs to our phones? Your flip Motorola with the “Good Girls” ringtone? Every time I hear that song, I remember your phone and your night calls.’
We smiled, settling into the cushioned embrace of the past.
‘That was when you were still serious about being a lawyer,’ I said to Ego.
‘Yes o, every time, justice this, justice that,’ Eriife chipped in all of a sudden.
Ego rolled her eyes. ‘Ahn-ahn, I’m still a lawyer now, it’s just a different version of law. Man must chop.’ She glanced at Eriife. ‘And look who’s talking? You did not let us hear word about medicine but your clinic is now a side hustle, madam politician.’
We laughed again, Eriife joining in this time, and for a while, we were girls again, alive in a time before life separated us.
Ego shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe the escalator stopped working as soon as I got on it. What can we ever get right in this country? And the officers kept asking for money. I had to adjust my accent immediately so they’d know my British passport is just for show. I accidentally packed my Nigerian passport in one of the boxes I sent over.’
I grinned. ‘What accent were you using before? The nasal one you use to talk to your colleagues in the UK?’
During her first year in Britain, she’d called me, fuming with barely contained anger: ‘Can you believe my classmate said he can’t understand me when I speak? That I pronounce words in a weird way. This, from an Australian. An Australian! He’s mad. I’m not changing my accent for anybody.’
A beggar knocked on the window by my side as we waited for a traffic warden to pass us. I pulled a bank note from my handbag and rolled down the glass to hand it to him.
‘You didn’t give anything to the last one that knocked,’ Ego observed.
‘He’s a child,’ I said simply. We both understood the significance of those words.
At home, the security men lugged Ego’s suitcases up the staircase; we’d dropped Eriife off at her clinic with glib promises to meet up later.
Ego had commented on how the streets had changed as we transitioned from the mainland to Lagos Island and then my estate. ‘The disparity in this country is so jarring.’
She flapped the skin of her jumpsuit as she settled into a sofa. ‘The weather is so sweltering. Has it always been this humid or has it gotten worse?’
I giggled. ‘Oyinbo. I can’t wait for you to meet Zino,’ I said, picking up an AC remote, ‘the both of you can be speaking English together.’
The AC bristled, then it grumbled to a stop. The lights flicked off. The power was gone.
I laughed even harder. ‘Welcome home.’
My mother arrived as I arranged the platters delivered by the caterer on the dining table. Ego had just taken a bath, the generator was running, and the air conditioners in the living room gushed frigid air.
‘You should think of getting a solar generator and inverter installed,’ Ego said to me. ‘You know everyone is going green, we can try to save the planet.’
I huffed. ‘Nwakaego, please! Like Africa is contributing anything significant to the global warming numbers. We have more pressing problems.’
‘We still have to do our part.’
