He made a face. ‘Wooh, you drank palm wine with me at the school joint every weekend. Now you’re all bougie.’
I smiled as I searched for a corkscrew. ‘Please, I was just managing you then. This is my true form.’
He took the bottle and corkscrew from my hands gently and proceeded to work on the seal. ‘You have only one form. You can’t change.’ He pulled the cork free and poured the wine into two glasses; he handed one to me.
‘What?’ I exclaimed in mock offence. ‘Don’t be so sure. It’s been a long time. I have multiple forms. How do you think I play different roles?’
His stare turned intense and the room suddenly felt charged. ‘I’m sure because I know you,’ he said. Then he kissed me, a gentle kiss at first, uncertain – he wasn’t as confident as I’d thought – then it turned deeper. We were meant to be drinking wine and catching up like old friends, but we were in my living room kissing, then we were in my bedroom, taking off each other’s clothes like we were on a bunk in law school, unhinged from time: we were twenty-three again, zestful for a life we pictured together.
He stroked a hand across my belly afterwards. ‘I’m so sorry Zina, I should have been there.’ And I thought he sounded just as tortured as I’d been.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ Ego said to me in my living room a week later. She was spending the weekend. ‘It’s lonely over there sometimes,’ she said.
‘Just say Emeka travelled and stop lying,’ I told her.
Ego was still speaking. ‘What about Halil? Does he know anything about this? It’s unfair to do this to him. You’re many things, Zinachukwu, but you’re not a dishonest person.’
Halil had called several times for days and I’d left the phone ringing on my nightstand, unable to face him, to think of a way out of the maze I’d created, then suddenly he was at my door, asking to know what he’d done wrong and I couldn’t conjure an answer. Instead, I picked a fight, acting a part that wasn’t me – surly and rude for no reason at all except my pricking conscience – and he’d left, only to return with a wrapped box and an apology, and not for the first time, I truly felt like the spawn of the devil my mother thought I was.
‘Haven’t you ever felt a connection that you can’t explain? There are things I can talk to him about that I can’t even think of mentioning to Halil. Maybe it’s because of our past or because he’s Nigerian and I’m not always thinking of how to explain issues in a way he’d understand or in a way that wouldn’t offend his sensibilities or make him think we’re strange or something,’ I said.
Ego harrumphed and tore open a packet of biscuits. She stretched it in my direction. ‘Diet,’ I said, putting my hand up.
She hissed. ‘You’re always on a diet. Don’t kill yourself o, this life is only one. Aye o pe meji.’
I laughed at her distorted Yoruba pronunciation, then I said, ‘You know you’re being judgemental again,’ steering the conversation back to where it began. ‘How’s this different from what you and Emeka have?’ I did not add that just like them, tragedy tied Bayo and me together.
‘I get what you’re trying to say, I really do, on all levels.’ She held my gaze to let me know she’d heard the words unsaid. ‘But Zina, I know you. You don’t love him – even back then, you didn’t. You liked how innocent and infatuated he was with you and everything you did. The boy couldn’t believe his luck that you gave him a second glance. You barely knew each other, you still don’t. I’m sure you still haven’t told him about your time in Onitsha and what led you here. Or even about that married fool that is harassing you now.’
‘I don’t love Halil either,’ I protested.
‘Well fine, break up with both of them – I’ll always think Halil is cute by the way – but this double life isn’t for you.’ She picked up the TV remote; she was done saying her piece. ‘What does Zino think?’ she asked, her eyes frozen on the channel scroll.
‘Why would I ask Zino?’
‘Well, he seems to be the one with more sense of the both of you.’
My foot connected with her side.
We’d watched several Mexican telenovela episodes in quick succession when Ego decided she was in the mood for a sermon. She flipped through the cable channels until she landed on a religious station.
‘Nwakaego, stop playing around and give me the remote. I was enjoying that,’ I said.
‘You need a good sermon to reset your brain,’ she retorted.
I’d grown up under the weight of sermons: the declarations against evil, the prayers for wayward and sinful children, the miracle services and pastors waving fingers and blowing air until members of their congregation flipped over. They were all my mother watched, her anchor in the storms of her marriage to my father. After cable TV came to Nigeria, my father paid for a decoder and the accompanying satellite dish, and soon enough, my mother gravitated towards the American evangelists, digesting their every word, discerning situations only through the tunnel of their views. My father never missed a cable payment after that, and I thought that he appreciated the distraction it gave her, the reassuring hope it ignited so she would never realise she deserved better.
Choir members led the congregation in song. Ego sang along and I wondered how she could watch anyone sing without remembering her father. Perhaps she was no longer hungry for his approval, and I felt a pang of jealousy.
‘I love this hymn, it comforts me every time I hear it,’ she said as the choir sang ‘Amazing Grace’.
The singing ended and a young man took the stage to perform the duties of what would have been a hype man had it been a concert and not a church service: ‘… a man of God! A man of vision! God’s anointed to break every chain in your life! If you’re ready to hear from heaven today I want you to raise your voiiiiccceee!’ The crowd roared.
I smiled, amused by his antics. If this pastor was as good as he said, perhaps he would have a solution to my recurring nightmares. The camera panned to the seated man, his head bowed in prayer, and I felt my blood turn to ice. Ego’s phone rang then. It was Emeka. ‘Don’t change the channel o, I’m coming back now,’ she shouted as she ran out of the room without looking at the television. I was too frozen to move.
I stared at the bowed head again; I’d seen it only once but I could recognise it anywhere. I’d heard stories of him, through many others, and Ego would have too if she’d been given to gossip. He’d started his own ministry since the last time I saw him, and now he owned a private jet and was only ever clothed in designer items. He’d married his then fiancée and had two children; the stories still trailed him, but more than ever, he had the backing to squash them. Reckoning never came for evil in our world, instead it was elevated and exalted.
I watched Pastor Kamsi amble up the stage with confidence, and thought I’d never felt so much hatred for one person. How he could be allowed to exist freely and brazenly, maiming and devastating the lives of others without consequence I could never understand. Were his protectors all just like him, or were these women’s lives so negligible that they could be sacrificed on the altar of ambition?
I overheard Ego telling Emeka she loved him and I realised that their conversation was about to end. My limbs loosened and sprang into action.
‘This woman, why did you change the channel?’ Ego whined as soon as she returned to the living room.
‘I’m not in the mood for a sermon. This soap is very interesting. I’ve already missed some scenes and now I don’t know why this guy is under surveillance,’ I responded, infusing as much nonchalance as I could into my tone.
‘Give me the remote,’ she demanded.
‘No!’ I said, pushing it further into a corner behind me.
We wrestled like professionals, falling off the sofa to the floor. She was taller than me and should have made quick work of my efforts, but I had determination on my side, and when I was determined, I was undefeated.
I cut my slits with my mother in mind. Whenever the designers asked, ‘How high?’ I placed my finger at a point I knew my mother would consider scandalous, and as I admired the final products of their imaginations, I imagined her screaming at the photos in the magazines and on the blogs, powerless to do anything about it.
‘Zina, your dress is fine o. Ahn-ahn, which designer is this?’ Tare said. We were at her house preparing for the premiere of the movie I’d shot in South Africa because we’d agreed to hire out the same makeup and hair studio.
Cassandra stood to run her fingers across the mesh of the middle and the wing of the arm. ‘This is good.’ It wasn’t a compliment she gave out easily. ‘Zina, it’s like you’re out to intimidate us today. Take it easy,’ she said.
Cassandra and Tare had settled their differences over party invites – Tare’s husband’s footballer friend had organised a party Cassandra was eager to attend and Tare had gotten her the invite – and now they posted pictures together on Instagram and left saccharine comments on each other’s posts to remind the bloggers they were no longer enemies.
