A Bit of Difference. Sefi Atta
she also hated. A West Indian woman at an audition suggested she use TCB conditioner to tame her hair and Tessa’s mother had to go all the way to Shepherd’s Bush to find some.
Tessa has had her hair blow-dried straight for auditions and worn wigs for roles. When they were roommates, Deola was amused that girls wanted cornrows after they watched the film Ten. She could either see it as a fashion trend or an insidious undoing. A boy who called her his mate asked if he could rub her Afro for good luck. She has had to get her hair chemically relaxed for interviews. A partner in her accountancy firm commented that her braids were unprofessional. Not once did she think her hair was the issue at hand.
‘I mean,’ Tessa says, dusting her hands, ‘all my life I haven’t been right for the roles I’ve wanted. If it’s not my hair, it’s my age. If it’s not my age, it’s my height. It’s been like that from the very beginning, rejection after rejection. Never mind what I said in school. I was such a little liar then.’
‘Weren’t we all?’
‘I actually thought you fitted in more than me.’
‘Me?’
‘You were a right little miss. “Would you please keep the noise down?” “Would you please not leave clothes strewn all over the floor?” I mean, what fifteen-year-old uses the word “strewn”?’
Deola steadies her teacup as she laughs. What she remembers is the careers adviser in their school telling her Africans were not intelligent enough to go to university and the drama teacher asking her to sing ‘Bingo bango bongo, we belong back in the jungle’ in an end-of-term musical, and trying to convince her that it was a satire.
Tessa did also have a reputation for lying. She said her parents had a mansion in Richmond. The mansion in Richmond turned out to be a semi-detached in Twickenham. She said she had to leave school because she was missing out on roles. Her mother was a music teacher and her father was a cellist. Tessa was on a scholarship. They withdrew her from boarding school because they feared she was losing her self-confidence. She was embarrassed about her upbringing, which she could claim was unusual until she met international students like Deola, who grew up overseas. ‘My life is so blah,’ she would say to Deola, or ‘I’m so pale. I wish I could swap skins with you.’
Deola didn’t want to swap skins with Tessa, nor did she believe Tessa would consider it a fair exchange. She thought every boarding school had the same sorry array of international students and had seen them at their loneliest, sobbing over a mean comment someone had made. All of them were levelled by their desire to go home.
‘I’ve known you for so long,’ Tessa says. ‘You have to be a bridesmaid.’
‘Of course.’
‘There will be fittings.’
‘I will be there for each one.’
‘Our colours might clash.’
‘That’s not fair, Muir.’
‘What? You started it. When will you be back from Nigeria?’
‘In a week.’
‘When would you like to be measured then, the Saturday after?’
‘Make it the Saturday after that. I usually need two weeks to recover.’
Tessa makes a fist. ‘Do us a favour, if you meet someone over there …’
‘Um, I think it’s a little precarious for one-night stands.’
‘“I think it’s a little precarious.” See what I mean? It won’t kill you to have one before you die.’
‘Tessa.’
‘What will you do otherwise?’ Tessa asks. ‘You might not get another chance if you’re so picky about your options here. What’s that look for?’
It is almost parental, the way Deola considers what she can bring up about her experiences as a Nigerian in England. Tessa would probably feel guilty, without realizing that Nigerians are as prejudiced as the English, and more snobbish. Nigerians, given any excuse, are ready to snub. Without provocation and even remorse. They snub one another, snub other Africans, other blacks and other races. Nigerians would snub aliens if they encountered them.
The first time she was ever aware her race mattered, she was in Nigeria. She was in primary school and must have been about eight. She was taking ballet classes at another school for expatriate children. The girls in the class were mostly English, but there were Chinese, Lebanese and Indian girls as well. Deola was one of a few Nigerian girls. The ballet teacher was English. She walked around clapping in time to the music, and ordering, ‘Tuck your tails in,’ as girls practised pliés. She would pass the Nigerian girls and say, ‘I know it’s hard for some of you.’ She would pass the other girls and say, ‘Good work!’
The next time, Deola was fourteen and in a summer camp in Switzerland. She shared a room with a blonde girl from Connecticut who was always getting into trouble with counselors and calling her parents in tears. Deola was combing her hair with an Afro pick one night when the girl pointed at her and laughed. This surprised her because during the day the same girl was constantly throwing her arms around a boy who looked like the youngest Jackson 5 brother, until he said she was so fat that if she jumped in the swimming pool, half the water would splash out. He was from Chicago. Deola, too, was infatuated with him. But one afternoon, they were at horseback-riding when he started dancing around her with his knees bent, flapping his arms like chicken wings and chanting, ‘Ooga shaka ooga shaka.’
She went to boarding school in England a year later. In English class, she sat next to a boy who was forever cracking jokes. She noticed how her classmates called him ‘Jacob’, wrinkling their noses, as if his surname were a cough syrup. She knew he was picked on for a reason neither he nor they may have been conscious of. Then one day, they were taking turns reading Look Back in Anger out loud, and he asked a question about ‘wogs’ that she didn’t catch. ‘Now, now,’ their English teacher said, with a smile. ‘We don’t say “wogs” here. We say “Western Oriental gentlemen”.’
None of these experiences are worth mentioning, Deola decides. They are laughable.
‘Want another scone?’ she asks. ‘I think I’ll have another danish.’
Tessa’s thirteen-year-old niece is a Dára fan. She is a fan of hip-hop in general and she does the hand signals and calls girls she doesn’t like ‘biatches’.
‘She is such a silly sweetheart,’ Tessa says. ‘You just want to give her a clip around the ear. She says to me, “Can you ask your Nigerian friend to get me Dára’s autograph?” So I ask her, “What do you see in him?” And she says, “He’s gangsta.” My brother and his wife are going spare. I told them not to worry. It’s like rock and roll, really, this whole hip-hop thing.’
‘Dára is not gangsta,’ Deola says. ‘He’s just a college dropout.’
‘How funny. I can see what she sees in him, though.’
‘You can?’
‘Mm. There’s something about him. Something … very noble about his looks.’
Deola doesn’t know what to say to this. The man at the next table with the bulbous nose looks noble to her, like a Roman emperor.
‘How’s your dad?’ she asks.
Tessa’s father is much older than her mother and he has Alzheimer’s. He can no longer play the cello.
‘Dad’s not doing well,’ Tessa says. ‘That’s one reason why I have to make a decision about this wedding soon. Mum’s doing her best. It’s something to witness, something to aspire to, the love between them. I just hope Pete will be there for me if anything like that happens.’
‘He will,’ Deola says, sincerely.
One night that week, she catches the end of a television interview with Dára and