Tari screamed with laughter, the other women joined, including Ego, that traitor. ‘Zina, can you see your life outside? Everybody knows you’re not serious.’ Tari’s accent was Nigerian again.
‘Please please please. Don’t start,’ I said, raising a palm.
Tari wrinkled her nose in my direction before saying to Marve, ‘I could introduce you to my husband’s friends. Many of them are footballers.’
Marve sat up straighter.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Cassandra interjected. ‘These footballers and sports people are never faithful partners. My husband’s friends are settled, and they don’t have the time and energy for such nonsense.’
Tari rolled her eyes, and just as she was ready to respond, a small Filipina woman shuffled into the room, Tari’s weeping daughter attached to her hip. ‘What happened?’ Tari demanded as she jumped to her feet and followed the woman out of the room, her battle with Cassandra abandoned.
Ego studied Tari and her nanny as they left the room and I knew she would comment on this when we were alone, the reason Tari had thought it necessary to fly in a nanny when there were many Nigerians who could handle the position just as well. ‘It’s not like they speak French. And she could have hired our Cameroonian neighbours for that. What is with the Nigerian obsession with pale skin?’ she would say.
In Tari’s absence, I introduced Ego to the others. And they chirped at her in excited and ardent curiosity. Marve in particular didn’t understand why Ego was single, and Cassandra could scarcely believe that Nwakaego had spent ten years in the land of the white man and returned without one.
24
Murky waters
The murky waters came to me at night again, as they’d done since the day my mother first called me a murderer. Rising from their centre was a face that haunted, plump and rosy. It had my eyes and nose; its lips were not mine but its father’s, and from it, gurgled water that steadily darkened: copper then sepia, mahogany then crimson. I was at the edge again, unable to take the plunge to save it. And like previous times, an invisible hand prodded me from behind until I was suspended in the air then pulled underneath the bleeding waves of my own making.
In Onitsha, I’d been convinced the hand and fingers were my mother’s, jeering at my lofty ambitions and failures. Then, the dreams had left me shaken and convinced I was cursed. Why else was I living in a boarded room with sporadic electricity supply and well water for over a year, unable to make any tangible progress?
‘Is everything okay with you?’ Binyelum, the girl who lived in the next room, asked one day. We were queued outside the bathroom with our buckets full of well water, waiting for its current occupant to vacate the cubicle.
I turned to blink at her. ‘Why would you ask that?’
She leaned in and lowered her voice so the others behind us wouldn’t hear. ‘I heard you screaming in the night. And it did not sound like the other type of scream, if you know what I mean.’ She winked at me. ‘It wasn’t the first time too. Is everything okay? Are you having bad dreams?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said and tried to turn away.
‘You know the devil likes to pursue fine girls like you,’ Binyelum persisted, leaning even closer. ‘My pastor specialises in prayers for women like you. Very powerful prayers, and you’ll stop having these dreams.
I could see my mother laughing as I knelt the following Wednesday in front of Binyelum’s pastor. Zina who’d run away from the church, who’d dodged attending mass with her father and labelled her own mother a fanatic, kneeling for prayers of her own will. ‘You demon, let her go!’ Saliva flew from his mouth to my face, but I was desperate for the shower, anything that would redeem my soul.
The dreams continued unabated, sharpening in vividity. I avoided sleep altogether, running from them, and the skin underneath my eyes began to darken. Then I started to forget my lines and directors no longer had recommendations to offer, and even the minor roles that had become a means of sustenance began to wither away.
My mother called one night as I lay awake in the dark, calculating just how much I had left to spend. I pressed the green telephone answer button, convinced it was an error on her part.
‘Zinachukwu,’ she said as soon as I accepted the call. No, it wasn’t an error.
‘Good evening, ma,’ I answered.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
Hope bubbled in my belly at the concern in her voice. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘How is everyone?’
‘We’re fine, we thank God. Your sister Urenna is getting married soon and I’m calling to let you know.’
‘Oh,’ I murmured, feeling the hope fizzle out.
‘ “Oh”,’ she mimicked, before unleashing: ‘Is that all you have to say? I said your younger sister is getting married and you say “oh”. Won’t you talk about coming home to see your sister? Leave all these reckless fantasies and settle down to build a decent home?’
The beeping from the call ending sounded in my ear before I could say anything.
I drank catfish pepper soup the very next night, the spices burning a path down my throat and clearing my sinuses. I paid the restaurant owner with a quarter of what was left of my money. I handed over the remaining fraction to a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the River Niger Bridge.
The bridge hadn’t been rehabilitated in decades, but it was the connection between the east and the rest of the country, and as always vehicles milled through: trucks carrying goods to be sold, oil tankers delivering petroleum products, long buses transporting those seeking their fortune elsewhere. We waited in the car as evening turned to dusk. I asked the taxi driver to play his favourite CD, and the highlife tunes of Ebenezer Obey burst through the player and we sang along; my father loved Ebenezer as well.
At three in the morning, when the traffic had thinned, besides the occasional vehicle and travellers’ bus, I stepped out of the taxi and waved the driver and his questions away. The railings were rusty, and moss grew at the bottom of the stone. I stared at the river below, how vast, majestic and murky the waves looked in the night light. Would they find my body? It was probably better if they didn’t. It was how I deserved to be remembered: the mami water that suddenly vanished, never to be heard from again.
I gripped the railing and lifted a leg to the other side, bracing myself against it to lift the other. I did not see nor hear the feet running in my direction until an obstinate arm grabbed mine and pulled me from the ledge.
The bed was drenched in sweat when I opened my eyes, sweat so copious it saturated the sheets, and soaked through the mattress. I picked up my phone to look at the time: 4am. I pulled my nightstand drawer open and scattered my fingers through its contents for the pill bottle Tari had given me almost a year ago when I’d casually mentioned that I almost never got any sleep.
‘Bad dreams,’ I’d said flippantly.
‘They’ll help calm you down so you can sleep. How do you think I survive the stress of all this?’ she said, folding my fingers around the bottle after the others had left.
‘I don’t want to abuse drugs,’ I said and pushed the bottle towards her. Her face fell and I realised I’d hurt her feelings. ‘I don’t mean you abuse drugs,’ I quickly added, in an attempt to rectify my error.
‘They’re just sleeping pills. You can read the prescription at the back. I struggle with sleep too and they help me.’
‘Were they prescribed by a doctor?’
She looked away and I knew the answer. ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the bottle from her.
Now, I turned the cap open and slipped two capsules between my lips the way Tari had described – bite, break, swallow – and slowly faded into dreamless slumber.
