A Bit of Difference (10 page)

“He's always there,” Jaiye says. “He is thinking of buying a house.”

“That would be nice,” Deola says.

Jaiye looks bored. “There's too much crime.”

Jaiye is fashionable, even at work. She wears high-heeled shoes and jewelry with her doctor's coat. Today, she is in a
boubou
and her face is bare of makeup. She says there is a new community of South Africans in Lagos, and Kwara State has just adopted a group of Zimbabwean farmers who lost their land under Mugabe.

“So long as they don't bring their racial
wahala
here,” Deola says.

“What racial
wahala
?” Jaiye asks.

“It's the Chinese I'm worried about,” Lanre says. “You know the Chinese. Before you know it, they take over your economy. Very soon they'll be telling America to shut up.”

“We're used to the Chinese,” Deola says.

The spring roll was as Nigerian a snack as puff-puff.

“Hong Kong Chinese,” Lanre says. “These ones come from the mainland and by the way, they hate each other.”

He still has a scar across his forehead from the car crash with Seyi and his patch of white hair has broadened. He has her father's tall stature and has over the years developed her mother's composure.

“I hear South Africans don't care much for Nigerians,” Deola says.

“I don't blame them after what Nigerians have done over there,” he says.

Lanre and Jaiye have not spent as much time abroad as Deola has. Jaiye studied medicine at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and Lanre got his degree from University of Warwick in England. He worked at Trust Bank for a year and went back to England to get his master's degree from University of Manchester while Deola was in Lagos; then he came home for good after she left. They regard her as a radical for raising issues like this: the négritude sister. Their lack of awareness doesn't surprise her. She was exactly like them when she was at LSE, and was surrounded by other Nigerian students who were the same way. Despite their academic competence, they were so averse to seeing themselves as subjugated or victimized in any way that to say race had any relevance to them was an admission too lowly to contemplate. In fact, if anyone was in the habit of bringing up racial issues, Deola might have accused them of having an inferiority complex. It wasn't until she started earning a living in England that she began to reassess her experiences there. Here, she is virtually color free and she hopes to remain that way.

Lanre stretches lazily. “That's one good thing about this place. We don't have any of that racialism rubbish.”

“I see too much of it abroad,” Deola says.

“Ignore it,” Lanre says.

“Come home more often,” Jaiye says.

Neither of them has left home, Deola thinks. Jaiye is thirty-five and Lanre is forty-one. Everyone they work with knows they are Sam Bello's children. They live in houses they inherited from him. Lanre's is on the other side of Ikoyi and Jaiye's is in Ikeja, where Deola's is. Hers is rented out for now.

Jaiye's children migrate to the dining room. Deola enjoys being their fun aunt. She can't tickle Prof under his chin, as she used to, so she wrestles with him. Lulu is too heavy to toss in the air, so she teaches her to say “Wassup” in a raspy voice.

After a while Prof asks Jaiye, “May I have more apple juice?”

He pauses as if he has asked an in-depth question. Jaiye goes to the kitchen to get him some as Lulu dances to another hymn blaring from the church.

Higher, higher, higher,

Lifting Jesus higher.

Higher, higher, higher,

Lifting Jesus higher.

z

As they eat lunch, they talk about the arrangements for the memorial. Her father's burial was overwhelming in comparison, from publishing the obituaries to organizing the wake-keeping and funeral. There were hundreds of guests to feed. Jaiye couldn't stop crying and Lanre, who confused his sadness for a foul temper, threatened to beat up a distant cousin who was bossing everyone around. Aunty Bisi was busy distributing the
aso ebi
and collecting payments. Another aunt accused her of having a profit motive. Someone else complained about the quality of the
aso ebi
. Deola didn't want to wear
aso ebi
, just as she didn't want to dance at her father's funeral reception. His funeral was communal, well beyond their control.

“None of that fuss,” her mother insists. “We are remembering your father, not trying to bury him again.”

What Deola remembers are road trips to the house in her father's hometown and singing songs like “Mama Look-a Boo Boo” on the way. The harmattan mists in the mornings and the smell of boiled corn in the afternoons. She also remembers family holidays in their flat in Cádiz, which they have since sold. Lanre was always chatting up local chicks and Jaiye once peed in the swimming pool. Jaiye was a cute girl, but she had a bladder problem, and she was lousy at Marco Polo. Her father was a glamorous man with a cigar in one hand and a crystal decanter of whiskey in the other. Her mother wore big round sunglasses and wrapped silk scarves around her head. People in remote villages mistook her for an actress. They came out and stared as she spoke awful Spanish: “Done-day-ester…”

The
Señora
. All she ever wanted was to find the nearest butcher where she could buy an ethnic cut of meat. On one holiday, she went as far as La Línea de la Concepción to buy pigs' feet and tripe.

Today, her
eba
and
efo
stew is delicious. After lunch, Lulu and Prof go upstairs to watch a DVD and she calls the housegirl, Comfort, to get more water.

“Comfort, will you get yourself in here?” she says.

Whenever Comfort falls asleep in the kitchen, her mother calls Comfort lazy. Comfort wakes up at six-thirty in the morning to sweep the floor and she doesn't stop working until nine at night.

Comfort walks in pouting. “Yes, ma?”

She wears rubber flip-flops and her navy gingham uniform is too tight. She circles the table looking for a space where she can lean over and retrieve the empty bottle. Lanre hands it to her.

“Why are you staying in a hotel?” he asks Deola.

“I'm here on business,” she says.

“So?”

“I have to keep things official. No one at work knows I'm here for a memorial.”

“You can't tell them?”

“I've just started working there. I can't take time off.” “England is too strict, man.”

“I swear,” Jaiye says.

“Bring a cold bottle this time,” Lanre says to Comfort.

Comfort returns to the kitchen. Deola recalls being that dependent on house help and quarreling with truant drivers, who were nearly always rude to her. “I'll tell your daddy,” they would say, snapping their fingers. She would snap her fingers back and say, “You'd better respect me.”

Now she would be embarrassed to order anyone around, but she won't put up with the everyday inconveniences her family is accustomed to. She discovered the hotel online. It is a boutique hotel
on Victoria Island, converted from a house. At night, her mother turns off the electricity generator. The hotel has two generators—or so its website claims. It has 24hour Internet access and a restaurant, which means she won't have to wait for food to defrost. Her mother freezes everything to prevent rot during power cuts, sugar included. The hotel also has a car-hire service for guests, with drivers. She would find it impossible to get any work done otherwise, and if she stays at home, her mother might see that as an opportunity to nag her about settling down.

“I need to check in and have a good look at the place in daylight,” she says.

“I'll take you there,” Jaiye offers. “You can see the new car Funsho bought me.”

“Is it nice?”

Jaiye pulls a face. “Wait and see.”

Her mother calls Comfort to clear the table and goes to the sitting room to stretch her legs. Lanre says he has “a meeting” to attend and reads his text messages.

“We all know it's your wife checking up on you,” Jaiye says.

“While the cat's away,” he says.

He is less serious than he appears. This is his playboy routine, which he should have outgrown, but he comes back to it whenever he needs to fool himself into thinking that he is still a bachelor.

“See your brother?” Jaiye says. “This is what he does, then he disappears.”

Deola laughs. In her teens, she would have been the one at loggerheads with Lanre. She was forever confronting someone at the dining table: Lanre, for not helping in the kitchen; her mother, for letting Lanre get away with that; her father for being in favor of the IMF loan or some other government policy. She would call him a capitalist and he would completely ignore her. Her mother would ask why she was getting upset and Lanre, who had a knack for slicing through a person's tender parts, right between the ribs, would answer, “Because she is a
lepin,
” a loser.

“Worry about your own husband's whereabouts,” he says to Jaiye.

His comebacks are more expedient than malicious. He forgets what he says within minutes.

“Jaiye,” her mother asks. “Did you submit the memorial to
The Guardian?”

“Yes.”

“Full page?”

“Half.”

“Why half?”

“Half is big enough,” Jaiye says.

“What did you write?” Deola asks.

“In loving memory and all that,” Jaiye says.

“What?” her mother asks.

“In loving memory and all that,” Jaiye snaps.

Deola shakes her head. She is back home.

“Did she e-mail it to you?” Lanre asks.

“No,” she says.

“Why didn't you e-mail it to her?”Lanre asks.

Jaiye frowns. “Who has time for e-mail?”

“What do you mean you don't have time for e-mail?” her mother asks.

“Don't worry about it,” Deola says.

“I would have e-mailed it to you,” Lanre says.

“You should have e-mailed it to her,” her mother says.

Jaiye slaps the table. “Lanre could have e-mailed it to her!”

“You people,” Deola says. “It doesn't matter.”

The singing stops, which means the church service has ended. Deola goes to the shelf of leather-bound books before she and Jaiye leave. They are English literature classics her father bought in the early seventies. She chooses
Pride and Prejudice
over
Sense and Sensibility
. She was an Austen fan in her teens. She considered herself the sensible sister, but Jaiye was the pragmatic one in the end. Jaiye was able to settle. She, Deola, has been capricious in her relationships as well as her career. The moment she is not happy, she leaves. For her, there are worse situations, but none more preventable than being stuck in a job or marriage.

z

Lanre does not go to his meeting after all. He follows her and Jaiye to the hotel in his
aged Volvo station wagon. Jaiye's new car is a Mercedes, which Deola suspects is meant to appease Jaiye for another affair. Inside, Jaiye turns the CD player on and begins to nod to 50 Cent's “P. I. M. P.”

“You listen to this when the kids are in here?” Deola asks.

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Why not? They love it.”

“Have you heard of Dára?” Deola asks.

“Who?”

“Dára, the rapper.”

“Oh, him! He was a student at LASU, wasn't he?”

“So I hear. He's on tour in America.”

“Is he?”

“Yes. They're really promoting him over there.”

Jaiye hisses. “He's not a rapper. He can't rap like the Americans. He can only sing hooks and not even well. He's not the best Afro hip-hop singer around. The
bobo
sounds like an intoxicated mullah.”

She slips on her sunshades and begins to sing, “I don't know what you heard about me.”

Deola has trouble figuring out what 50 Cent is saying, but she no longer tries to impose her views on Jaiye. And Jaiye can be a tyrant these days, especially when she is at odds with her husband. Still, she doesn't see how Jaiye, who might cradle her children's heads to carry them into her car, can play music like this when they are around.

“I'm a motherfuckin' P-I-M-P,” Jaiye sings.

“When is Funsho coming back?” Deola asks.

“I don't know.”

“Will he make it for the memorial?”

“He says he will.”

“What's he doing in Johannesburg anyway?”

“Ask him.”

Jaiye steers away from potholes on the road. For as long as they have driven on it, the road has not been repaired. It is a measure of the decay and ruin in Ikoyi.

Deola thinks of her generation that was raised here, oil boomers, as she calls them, because they came of age during the oil boom and benefited from it. Does she have any remorse about dancing throughout dictatorships, taking orders like “shake it but don't break it” and “throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care”? No, just a longing for the good old days when she had no responsibilities and didn't spare a thought for the future.

At LSE, one lecturer or the other would approach her and say, “Shame about the coup in Nigeria.” She always got the impression they were snickering behind her back. After all, how had Nigeria governed itself since Independence? Two failed attempts at civilian governments, a four-year civil war and God knows how many military regimes in between. She would say, “Yes, it is a shame,” wondering what their reaction would be if she revealed that “Ain't No Stopping Us Now” (the extended version) almost brought their little section of Lagos to a standstill and “One Nation Under a Groove” ruled for years. Kurtis Blow came along with “The Breaks” just as the economy took a turn and slide, slide, slippity slide they did into a recession, yet oil boomers continued to rock throughout the eighties, chanting, “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.”