to listen. I was really wondering, wondering whether maybe this house, Lagos, maybe even the world, was melting away and I was the only one who could remember how things used to be.
I wanted to answer her with the thoughts I was thinking, but I could not form a complete sentence. My thoughts were choking me, draining me. I wanted to ask how she could have no faith in Father. But I could not say what I wanted to say. She was stern and angry, pitiful. She looked old to me, like one of those women who sold tomatoes at Sabo night market.
Yet, after that occasion, whenever Father’s friends came by she was well dressed, commanding, funny. Mother was funny when she wanted to be, she would speak in the military president’s voice, making solemn announcements: Fellow Nigerians, I Am Announcing the Suspension of Milk Subsidy with Immediate Effect.
I saw that Father enjoyed her new attitude. He stayed home longer, started going out only in the evenings. He was talking about starting a business of his own, being an entrepreneur. One of his friends had recently been deported from Germany. It was this friend, Mr. Gary, who had all these big ideas about what they could do for money. They were becoming motivational speakers for hire. Gary had the interesting accent, my father had the looks, together they booked deals in colleges and universities, speaking to graduating students about the job market. But their partnership lasted less than a year, ending things quickly. They argued about splitting profits and separated. Then Father became a recruitment consultant. After that failed to work out, he started a business magazine with some other friends.
“What’s this?” Mother asked him when he brought home the galley copy.
“What does it look like?”
“Like another stupid way you’re wasting my money.”
“I am a businessman. This is what I do,” he said.
“You are a lazy man,” she replied. “Get a job.”
When Business Insights magazine failed—they kept at it far longer than they should have—Father’s group of friends disbanded. They had run out of courage and enthusiasm, each person moving on to independent pursuits. Father was keen to start something new. He wanted to convert the lower part of our home into a business-services support center. With a couple of computers and printers, some old photocopiers, the business would provide services to other businesses in the neighborhood, ones still dependent on traditional typewriters.
“I would rather convert it to a flat and rent it out,” Mother replied when he told her his idea. “The Soweres next door paid two years’ rent in advance; how much can a business center bring in?”
We were sitting at dinner while they argued. Peter was making a mess: okra soup spilled from his plate, forming a tiny puddle on the table. He was putting his fingers in it, handwriting shit fuck on the walls. They did not notice.
Bibike and I had visited the Soweres the day before. Their daughter, Titi, was a year older than we were. Her parents were home early from work. I was impressed by how basic and transactional their conversation that afternoon was.
“Did you put on the water-pumping machine?” Titi’s mother had asked.
“Do we still have yellow garri?” Titi’s father asked.
“What time will you be back tomorrow?” Titi asked.
It was nothing like our house. In our home, everything was at stake. Nothing was inconsequential. Even the way you said good morning could set them off. The house we lived in was a wedding gift from Mother’s father. Whenever they argued about Father’s idea, Mother said, “I will do what I like with my father’s house,” and Father said, “Do what you like, endanger our children because of your being stubborn.”
After a few months, the arguments were no longer as loud as they had been. Father was resigned, quiet. Mother was eating less and less, drinking schnapps and agbo, laughing even when nothing was funny. We entertained ourselves by dressing up with Mother’s makeup and hanging out in filling station tuck shops. I am great at meeting new people; Bibike just went everywhere I did. We made plans to run away, to leave the country. Move to Ghana, make our own money, get our brothers, Andrew and Peter, into better schools. Bibike was to sing in a live band. I would work as a waitress in the bar.
We even met a man who promised to get us ECOWAS travel booklets. We wouldn’t need visas to travel anywhere in West Africa. It was such a simple plan, really. He just wanted to take pictures of us in swimsuits, which was silly because we had already told him we did not know how to swim.
Mother announced one day at dinner that the school where she was teaching was closing in the middle of the school year. She said the owner had sold the property it was built on. The new owner was tearing down the school to build an apartment complex.
It was March of ’98, and Mother was without a job again. We, all of us, went to visit Mother’s boss, the proprietor of Oguntade school. He hadn’t paid Mother any salary for the last three months before the school closed, and it was her idea to take the whole family to his house.
“I know that man made millions when he sold the school. Yet he refuses to pay me my arrears. If my pleas have not moved him, let him look into the eyes of the children he is starving,” she said before we left our house. And so, the six of us got in a bus and went to his house.
It did not work.
“I will pay you as soon as I get the money, madam,” the proprietor had said. “I cannot turn myself to money for you. My children are also hungry.”
“So, will you now consider trying out my idea?” Father asked.
We were sitting in the back, the very last row of the danfo bus, when they were talking about this. Mother was whispering. The quietness made her voice sound like she was about to cry.
“It’s not like I have a choice,” Mother answered.
LATER THAT MONTH, our parents asked me what I thought of their business plans. I promised to work in the business center as often as possible. They had taken to including Bibike and me in every discussion about the family’s finances. We did not give any opinions, we just listened and tried to look sad. Father’s plan was all we had left. Money for the business center came from selling our parents’ wedding bands and Nestlé PLC shares, the only other thing (apart from the house) Mother had inherited from her deceased parents. The money bought two used photocopiers, one desktop computer, one scanner, one laminator, and one printer. Father was excited to finally get his chance. He promised his business would bring in, every other day, what Mother had made in a month as a teacher.
The trouble with his new business started early. Our photocopy machines were temperamental and unreliable. They made faint and unreadable copies, they leaked ink all over the place, they consumed way too much electricity and even more petrol whenever there were power cuts. Our patrons were infrequent and often needed services rendered on credit.
It was during this season of hopelessness, when we were learning to wait for whatever money was to be made from the business center, to know whether there would be food to eat the next day, that an old work colleague, visiting the neighborhood and seeing Mother manning the typesetting business, had advised her, face contorting with the exaggerated sympathy usually reserved for victims of hit and run accidents, to attend Pastor David’s church.
My sista! Please attend this meeting. You will receive a breakthrough. Your life will change.
I was so happy when Father and
