Hassana: At least your votes count here
Then Mrs Aluko sent the pictures with the caption: ‘Let’s all congratulate our very own Mrs Adebowale on her award and magazine cover spread.’ And all other conversation was abandoned to do as Mrs Aluko said.
Hours later, Saratu returned with other news: ‘This is so sad,’ she wrote as she shared a blog post. The caption read: ‘Actress Zina’s Mother Down With Cancer.’
I was fifteen, losing my mother again, watching her body lowered as the pastor mouthed the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer, but Aunty Ada had taken my mother’s place, and Zina, Ego and I were rolling in the dirt by the graveside.
My vision stuttered as I struggled to read the article – she’d been undergoing treatment for a year. A year and I’d had no idea. I swiped through my phone frantically, searching for the social media apps I almost never used except to keep tabs on my friends. But Ego had stopped using Twitter since she’d outed Kamsi.
Zina’s Instagram was the same as ever – premieres, events, promotion for her movies, an announcement of a new production company with Ego; she wasn’t one to show weakness.
‘What do you want to do now?’ Zina had asked me when I returned from the hospital after the surgery to take out my womb. I hadn’t told her about it, but somehow she’d found her way to my home when I needed her the most.
‘What?’ I said, unable to comprehend what she was asking.
‘What do you want to do now?’ she repeated, her eyes clear. It was how Zina moved through life – propelling forward through action, refusing to be stopped. ‘Do you want to stay with him?’
Ego, Zina, Aunty Uju. What was it about Soye they’d all seen that I was blind to? ‘We’re married.’
She shrugged. ‘And?’
‘I thought you liked him?’
‘I liked him more than Ego did, which isn’t saying a lot, but I thought he made you happy,’ she said.
‘And you don’t think he does anymore?’
‘I don’t think you even remember what that feels like. You’re too busy making him happy.’
Adelola returned from America for the Christmas holidays the week the magazine cover was released. Digital versions were broadcast across blogs and social media and I received further requests for interviews. ‘Don’t respond to them yet. You have to appear scarce and unavailable,’ Mrs Aluko advised, and so I scrolled through their fawning emails instead, wondering when they would discover the fraud I was.
On the coffee table in our main living room, a stack of glossy proofs was arranged and Adelola took a copy along every time she went out, only to return without it. ‘My friends keep asking for copies. Everyone says you look so fine. And I’m like “yes, that’s my mum!” ’ she said.
Soon the stack had reduced to a small pile of copies that Soye largely ignored. ‘It’s nice,’ he finally said one afternoon, skimming through. ‘They could have done better with some of the pictures. I’ll arrange a better interview for you.’
They’d included a brief mention of my parents and my ‘multicultural’ background, and my father messaged to say congratulations: ‘I’m proud of you, your mother would be too.’ I cried for my mother because I didn’t want her proud of me from a metaphysical other side; I wanted her there in my living room, leafing through the glistening pages and laughing at the pictures, always laughing. ‘You never take anything seriously,’ Aunty Ada used to complain.
One day, Adelola asked to come with me to the salon. ‘I need new braids for Christmas,’ she said. And I agreed because I knew it was just an excuse to go out with me.
As a child, she’d emulated my mannerisms, wanting to be like her mummy. In school, she’d told everyone she was going to be a doctor and that we looked just alike. I’d felt guilt for taking the place of a mother she’d never known. Even though she was now old enough to understand the truth of our circumstance, neither of us would acknowledge it.
Aunty Hannah – my father’s distant relative – owned a salon in Bariga, and because she did, I never went elsewhere to get my hair done. Growing up, she would ask my mother to allow me to spend the weekends in her salon because she never married or had children of her own. ‘I don’t want any man collecting my money,’ she always averred.
In the confined container of her salon, large peeling posters of hairstyles on the wall, the air thick with hair spray and jerry-curl chemicals, I’d learnt the ways of hair and adults, and listened to the stories my mother had been too protective to tell me. And even though I’d offered several times to help her get a better place in Lagos Island, Aunty Hannah refused to move from her salon on the mainland. Soye said it was good I still went there – it was a good way to feel the pulse of the people.
A film was playing on the television in the corner when we arrived. Aunty Hannah was pulling at attachment and giving instructions to a younger girl.
‘Aunty Hannah, I’m here,’ I said as I pulled back the sliding glass door, and she shouted, throwing her arms wide open, ‘Ay! My daughter is here o.’
Later, I was seated under a dryer and two girls surrounded Adelola, their arms moving deftly as they wove through waist-length braids. A woman in faded clothes was mixing akamu in a bowl to give to her little daughter. ‘Check that cupboard there for milk,’ my aunty said, and the woman got up to tear out a sachet from the line, murmuring thanks.
‘This country is so hard,’ Aunty Hannah said when the woman was gone. She was sewing a weave into a woman’s hair. ‘People cannot afford basic things. The other day I went to the market and when I saw the price of things, I screamed. How is the regular man expected to survive?’
‘My sister,’ said the woman whose weave she was sewing. ‘And our wicked politicians are just living their lives and travelling up and down like nothing is happening. God will punish them and their generations.’
Adelola sent a panicked glance my way.
‘Businesses are closing every day,’ another woman said. She was under a dryer as well and was almost screaming to hear herself. ‘My friend’s husband just lost his job because the factory closed and moved their operations to Ghana. Businesses that are not closing are trying to adapt. Almost everything is in sachets these days so people can afford to buy. The other day I saw Baileys in a sachet. Baileys!’
‘You must know how to practise sachet economics to survive in this country,’ a woman who’d only just arrived said, her scarf still tied on her head.
‘Which one is Baileys again?’ Aunty Hannah asked. ‘You know I didn’t go to school like you people.’
‘It’s an alcoholic drink, aunty,’ I explained.
‘Oh! People still have money to drink? Anyways, na only woman and drink dey to comfort people,’ Aunty Hannah said.
‘Why don’t you move abroad and set up a salon there?’ the woman in front of her said. ‘If you hear how much these black Americans are charging for braids that we make here for how much ehn? No wonder they’re always carrying their hair for three months.’
The woman with the scarf pulled it off and ran her fingers through the shrub of hair underneath. ‘Everyone is moving abroad these days. My colleague and her husband just sold off all their furniture because they got Canadian permanent residence. If it’s not Canada, it’s Europe. America is not the in thing like before, it’s too hard to move there. Me too, let me start planning my japa, can’t be dulling myself.’
‘Do you know how much it is to apply for Canadian PR? Even to run away, you need money,’ the woman under the dryer shouted.
‘I’m too old to move,’ Aunty Hannah said. ‘If all of us move, how many of us will remain in this country?’
Before we left, I pushed a thickened envelope into Aunty Hannah’s apron, ignoring her protests. ‘Buy more dryers – the place is looking fine,’ I said.
She smiled, a motherly smile that exposed the new lines around her eyes, and patted my cheek. ‘Call your father, I know he has offended you but call him.’
