The Girl with the Louding Voice(74)

As we pass a stall selling shoes leather and rubber and all sorts of shoes, all climbing up, up to the top of the shop, a woman with a small bowl full of bottles on her head press an ice-cold block to my cheeks and shock me with it and say, “Cold water. Very freeze, very pure.” She put up one hand, pull out a Coke from the bowl on her head, press the bottle to my chest. “Or you want Coke? We have Mirinda, 7UP. Which one?”

There are buildings to our left and right, but all the buildings are covered with things hanging from the windows: trousers and shirts and suits, gray telephone wires crossing the top of our heads from one building to the second building, tangling up with all the signboards for church and mosque and herb medicine.

Ms. Tia keeps walking, gripping my hands. “We will take a turn by the left of the fish seller’s stall,” she shout. “It’s a crazy world out here!”

It doesn’t feel like we are moving.

I feel as if the crowd is a moving machine, floating me along with the people, until we turn left and then the crowd is not as much as the first street. This road is a long stretch of people selling beads and ankara fabric, and before I can ask Ms. Tia if this is the right place to stop, a man wearing a black t-shirt with the word “PRANDA” on it smile at Ms. Tia, pull the giant red beads on his neck, and say, “Madam, we have everything you want. Which one?”

“For goodness’ sake!” Ms. Tia say, swiping a hand on her forehead. “I’m just after some fabric.”

“We have designer t-shirt too,” the man say and bend to a bowl by his feet, pick up a white t-shirt. “Very original. Brand-new.” He spread out the shirt, and Ms. Tia eye the word on it—“Guccshi”—before she shake her head no and start to walk away.

“I need authentic ankara,” she say. “That’s all I am here for.”

“But we have Channel bag inside,” he say, pulling my hand with his own hot, sweaty hands.

“Why don’t you go to Big Madam’s shop?” I say to Ms. Tia as I snatch my hand back from the man. “I have never seen anything like this in my life. Is this Lagos?”

In Ikati, the market is like a quarter of this, and everybody is quiet, and everybody is knowing each other, talking peaceful.

“It is Lagos,” Ms. Tia say with a tired laugh. “Florence’s fabrics are bloody expensive. This way.”

We jump over a stinking gutter in the road, full of black water with little frog-fishes swimming through the wet siga and tissue and newspaper inside it. We cross to the other side of the street, where there is another line of shops full of fabrics.

“Finally,” Ms. Tia say as we turn to a stall the size of a toilet, with a wall of colorful folded ankara hanging from the ceiling to the floor. The woman in front of the shop, round like a rolling drum, was singing a Yoruba song and folding a fabric into two, but when she sees us, she drop the cloth, point to the wall of fabric behind her.

“Welcome, mummy,” she say to Ms. Tia. “We have Woodin, ABC Wax, New Satin, anyone you want. Everything here is original. Wash it and wash it, but it will not change. See this one. Latest.” She pull out a folded yellow and green pattern of ankara and press it into Ms. Tia’s hand.

“This is stunning,” Ms. Tia say, speaking in her clear, clean English. “So soft to touch. Simply exquisite. Can I have like three of these? Six yards each? I want to make bedsheets and pillow cases out of them for the guest rooms.”

“London mummy,” the woman say to Ms. Tia, “for you, six yards is six thousand naira. You want three? I have three. Sit down, sit down, let me pack it in a London nylon bag for you.”

Watching the way Ms. Tia’s eyes are lighting up at the fabric is making me long so sudden for my friend Enitan. She was always having a light in her eyes too when she see a new color of a eye pencil or a lipstick in the market. Only thing is, most times, Enitan will not have money to buy anything, so we will just look at the makeups, laugh, and keep walking. Ms. Tia has all the money and can buy things that she doesn’t even need, and sometimes, like today, I wonder about Enitan, and about Ms. Tia, at how different two of them are, how Ms. Tia and I are friends, but not like me and Enitan.

“Adunni!” Ms. Tia wink at me, and I nod, bring back all the memory of how my mama was teaching me to be arguing price with the market women in Ikati.

“No way,” I say in Yoruba to the seller. “Six thousand naira for six yards? God forbid. It is too costly. Sell it to us for three thousand.”

“Four thousand five. Last price,” the woman say, snatching the fabric from Ms. Tia as if she vex her. “This is original. Latest.”

I smile at the seller, say, “Mama, I am your daughter-o. If you sell it for us for three thousand, I will come back here next week with her. We will buy plenty from you. We have come from very far in this hot sun. Collect three thousand from us. Please.”

The woman sigh, say, “Bring your money.”

I turn to Ms. Tia. “She will collect three thousand. Pay her.”

Ms. Tia laugh, say, “Adunni, this is exactly why I brought you here with me.”



* * *





Two hours later and my two legs are swollen.

My head feel like a hot, burning football. My throat is dry, tongue clipped. Ms. Tia keep shopping like something curse her, buying this and that, making me low the price until my mouth is too dry to keep talking. She is so excited, too happy with how I am saving her money, and every time we finish with a seller, she will clap her hands and say, “You are a genius! We must do this again!”