Welcome to Lagos. Chibundu Onuzo
knew these memories of Bayelsa would gradually recede and then disappear from both his conscious and subconscious. When he killed his first man, in Jos, he had thought the image of the man jerking backwards, blood pouring from his mouth, would never leave him. And now, years later, the features were indistinct, blurred into caricature. He remembered a bald head and a large scar on his cheek. Or perhaps that was the second man he killed. Memories were deceptive.
The woman from last night was awake but she had not spoken to him. They had smiled at each other at the filling station in Ọrẹ, her top teeth resting attractively on her bottom lip. Their approach to the city did not interest her. She stared down at her lap, ignoring the billboards that welcomed them to Lagos.
Bournvita Welcomes You to Lagos: the Center of Excellence.
WELCOME TO LAGOS.
PAY YOUR TAX.
EKO O NI BAJẸ.
Welcome to Lagos.
Stuck in Traffic? Only One Station to Listen to: Rhythmic 94.8 FM
Who would he be in this new city? His experience would be of little use here. When the bus slowed in traffic, he had scanned ahead for an ambush, a useless precaution now. The sun was rising over the city. People were already amove, dashing across the expressways in their office clothes, hurdling over cement barriers and dashing to safety again. Women in bright overalls sprouted like fluorescent lichen along the highway, sweeping dust into piles blown away by rushing traffic. There were roadside saplings planted at precise intervals, a regimented attempt at beauty. Near the state boundary, they passed three statues, white stone men in flowing robes, their fists clenched, their heads covered with square caps. The men stared away from the city towards the newcomers, menace in their stance.
“Who are they?” Chike asked the driver.
“We call them Aro Mẹta. The three wise men of Lagos.”
“What are they saying?”
“Shine your eye.”
OMA CLIMBED DOWN FROM the bus a step behind the man from last night. Her husband would be looking for her by now, going through the rooms in their house, opening and shutting drawers, locking and unlocking doors. He would call her brother and her mother, then he would call her “friends,” that tight circle of wives whose husbands were professionals in Yenagoa.
Her husband, I.K., loved her, in the way you loved expensive shoes, to be polished and glossed but, at the end of the day, to be trodden on. He would never believe she would dare board a bus to Lagos and sit beside a strange man with their legs touching.
Yesterday, she had woken up beside her husband, planning to spend her morning in the salon. I.K. liked her to look a certain way, hair curled, eyebrows shaped, and skin the color of building sand. She served his breakfast of steaming yams, body-temperature eggs, and a glass of watermelon juice, blended minutes before I.K. sat down. At the door, he had noticed his footprints from last night, dark tracks she had not yet mopped away.
“You sit at home and do nothing. At least you can make sure this place doesn’t turn into a pigsty.”
As he walked towards her, she thought, He’ll be late to work and in the evening, that’ll be my fault too. When he was gone, she spat out the blood, a red trickle she rinsed carefully from the basin. Then she arranged her possessions in the bag that now sat on her lap, brushing against the stranger from last night.
“Brother Chike, good morning,” a young girl said when they disembarked. She was filthy, almost deliberately ungroomed. I.K. would have sniggered at her matted hair and clothes smeared with dirt. There were two other men with this Chike.
“Good morning. I hope you slept well. I didn’t introduce myself yesterday. I’m Chike.”
“Ifeoma. But everyone calls me Oma. What are you doing now?”
“Taking my friend Isoken home.”
“You know what. My cousin may not be awake yet. Maybe . . . I was thinking that . . . I said that I would help you find somewhere to stay. How about I follow you to drop Isoken, if the place is not too far, then I’ll show you a good area.”
“I don’t want to disturb your plans.”
“Not at all. I need to be doing something while I’m waiting for my cousin.”
On the strength of a midnight conversation, Oma trusted this man who did not know enough of Lagos to threaten her. Better to walk with Chike than remain in the bus park until touts began to circle her.
They boarded a bus, a metal carcass on wheels with a floor like a grater, coin-size holes through which you could see the road streaking by. She would find a space for herself in this city. Even if her cousin should turn her away, Lagos was big enough.
“Owa,” the girl said. The bus slowed for them to disembark.
I AM AN ORPHAN. The thought came unbidden to Isoken as she stood in front of her apartment. The door was worn with age and termites. Termites were of the
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Subclass: Pterygota
The syllabus had not demanded you know past phylum but she had crammed it all anyway. Isoken: the virgin geek, sat with her legs crossed because she wanted to marry a suit man, read her textbooks because she wanted to be a pharmacist, invent drugs, and name them after herself, Edwina, her Christian name.
“Is this the place?” Chike asked.
“Yes.”
She was still wearing the jeans that the villagers thought an abomination, that her mother said made her bum shoot out, that she wasn’t going to change because some dunces felt a woman shouldn’t wear men’s clothes. If ever men set upon you, you would want to be wearing the tightest trousers in your wardrobe, trousers that stuck to you and cut off your circulation, trousers that neither you nor a stranger could slide off without a struggle.
“Won’t you knock?” Chike said.
Knocking: a colloquial term for the introduction of the groom’s family to the bride’s. She did not know the origins of the practice. Only that virgins were preferred, fresh ground where no one else had trod. Knocking: present continuous verb for the repeat application of one’s knuckle to a hard surface to produce a rapping sound. The door shuddered, termites scuttling, alarmed and incensed by this assault on their food.
“Who is making noise?”
It was her landlord running down the stairs in his singlet and boxers. He had made a pass at her once, lunging for her chest, missing and squeezing the flesh over her rib cage.
“My parents’ number, Mr. Alabi.”
“Is that why you’re disturbing everyone? And you can’t greet? You see somebody in the morning and is that the first thing you say?”
“Good morning, sir,” Chike said. “As you can see, the girl is in distress. She’s been unable to locate her parents.”
“And who are you?”
“A friend of the family.”
“You said her parents are missing. I thought they all traveled together. Wait, I will bring my phone. You will find them. Stop crying.”
Her parents’ number did not go through on Mr. Alabi’s phone. If they were alive, they would be crying too, secreting salt water from their lachrymal glands. Her parents did not know the word “gland” nor “lachrymal” nor “didactic” nor “encyclopedic.” With her mother, she wore her education loosely, but her father reveled in her vocabulary.
“Your