The Death of Vivek Oji(39)

His colleague took pity on him. “It’s okay. After all, it’s not as if we can expect you men to even tell the difference when it comes to hair. My brother till today can’t tell the difference between extensions and someone’s real hair.” She laughed at the male ignorance of it all. “He thought that when you relax it, it gets longer and then you can braid it.”

“It was at the bank!” her colleague exclaimed, having not listened to anything she’d been saying. “Eh hehn! There were these two girls who came in, and they had this long long fine hair! Kai! I think they were sisters. They were there with their father, but I’m sure their mother was a foreigner.”

“Oh,” said the woman, sucking her teeth. “If you’re talking about half-castes, then that one is different.”

“I know those girls,” said Ebenezer, tightening the tire he’d just replaced on the man’s car. Both bankers looked down at him in surprise, crouched and greasy with worn slippers and dusty feet.

“Ehn, you know them?” The man was smirking as he asked. “How do you know them?”

“Their father is a customer. They look like twins except that one of them is taller, abi?”

The banker nodded grudgingly. “It’s true,” he said. “That’s what I thought also, that maybe they were twins.”

The woman was getting impatient with the conversation. “And so? I’m saying that tall woman was wearing weave-on. End of story.” They all turned to look at the woman and her hair again, but she was too far down the road.

The bankers paid Ebenezer and left, and he went back to wondering if the orange-seller would walk by that day or not.

In the weeks that followed, he saw the tall girl a few times. Once she was returning from the market with polythene bags filled with vegetables; another time she was going to the Mr. Biggs at the junction. Once she just seemed to be going for a walk, listening to a Discman in her handbag. Ebenezer decided she must live in the area because she was always walking, never on an okada or in a taxi. She looked like the kind of girl who just liked to walk everywhere. That’s probably why she’s so slim, he thought.

She usually wore sunglasses, and after that first day her hair was always tied up at the back of her head. Ebenezer could never figure out if it was weave-on or not. He even thought of asking Chisom, but by now she wouldn’t even let him touch her at night. “How are we supposed to have a child if you won’t even try?” he complained, but she ignored him. Ebenezer knew she wanted him to get checked out at the hospital, but the shame of it was too much, so they just continued like that. Chisom would have known if it was weave-on or not, sha. Her immediate junior sister was a hairdresser.

One afternoon, when there weren’t many customers around, he asked Mama Ben instead.

“Ah-ahn. How long have you been watching this girl?” She seemed a little disapproving, so he rushed to reassure her.

“Mba, it was one of the customers who was saying it. Me, I don’t even look at small girls like that. Resembling stockfish. I like proper women.” He gestured fullness with his hands and winked at her. She laughed, placated.

“Maybe the girl is from Niger,” she suggested. “One of those refugees who are always in the market.”

One of Mama Ben’s friends chimed in: “Haba now, those ones are beggars. I’ve seen the girl he’s talking about. She looks like she comes from a good family. And besides, she’s not fair enough to be one of them. It’s probably weave-on. Under it, I’m sure her hair must be like this.” She grabbed a tuft of her afro and tugged at it, laughing. Ebenezer laughed as well, his eyes meeting Mama Ben’s.

In recent weeks, Mama Ben had told him her name: Florence. He had also found out that she was a widow and had three children, not the four or five he’d previously thought. Her unmarried sister now lived with her, helping to take care of the children. He had even been to her house once, telling Chisom he was doing a house call for a customer in the evening. He hadn’t gone inside, had only escorted Mama Ben home and chatted for a bit. She knew her neighbors would talk, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t as if they knew he was married.

Ebenezer felt he was getting somewhere with her—he wasn’t sure where exactly, but he looked forward to it. He was eating rice and stew at her canteen on the day the market burned, savoring the goat meat when the first noises started coming from down the road. As Mama Ben and her customers stood in front of her canteen, peering down the street, sounds filtered toward them slowly, first shouts and then a few alarming screams. Some of the customers hurriedly finished their food and left, heading in the opposite direction from the commotion.

Mama Ben looked worried. “It sounds like one of those riots is starting,” she said. “Should I close?”

“Don’t you live in that direction?” Ebenezer asked.

“Yes, but I don’t want to be in the middle of it. You never know what will happen.”

“Wait here,” he said. He ran across the road and threw a tarpaulin over his work things, then came back to her. “Pack everything,” he said, as he stacked the plastic chairs and took them inside. Mama Ben tilted the tables on their sides and pushed them against the walls. They worked quickly, conscious of the noise growing louder. Ebenezer shoved empty bottles into their crates and dragged them to the back. The last thing he wanted was for convenient glass to be lying around like that. He’d once seen a man struck in the head by a broken bottle, separating scalp neatly from skull before blood filled the gap. It was the worst thing in his memory.