Dusty Winds
The riveting coming-of-age story of a young woman— from Melony Akpoghene
The streets are cold tonight, so cold that it could be thought that the yellow lights hanging from the few rows of the long aluminum poles which tripped on and off in a weak attempt to illumine the walkways were shuddering from frostbites. The streets are cold tonight — cold and near empty, save for a few of the girls who, inundated by debt and obligation, had opted to come out to “work”.
Work.
If Sister Efe had heard me using the term “work” once again, but this time, to describe the hurried tip-tap of eager feet, the inviting voices softened by perceptible tones of wily enchantments, and the colourful faces expressing a variety of emotions bleeding into one another — hope-panic-victory, hope-panic-loss — instead of the way I had loosely said “Amara dey inside. She dey work²,” when I was still bursting at the seams from an agitated naivety, she would stare sternly at me before diving into the familiar litany of “pastor-mummy said..” and expect me to, as usual, punctuate every of her long sentences with faithful nods.
She would pinch the curve of her left nostril and tell me of how “work” is something that one does standing on her two feet, a purposeful task that one engages in whilst griping and groaning from exertion. “The sort of exertion that births pure satisfaction — that type of satisfaction that travels through your mouth and fills your throat till it settles in your belly and fills it with warmth,” I had believed. Even though our eyes were usually red and sunken, and we could always feel the clenching of our bellies from the familiar pangs of emptiness, we would huddle on the threadbare mat that fit on the floor of the tiny room we shared as the soothing warmth of that satisfaction rested calmly in our bellies. Or so I thought. Maybe it did not cauterize our bodies of the desperate yearning and need that looped again and again from the growling sounds we would hear in the quiet of the room, or fill out the hollow dips and curves in our emaciated bodies, Sister Efe had called it “pure” so it was enough. I often wondered why the warmth of that satisfaction did not travel fast enough through Esiso’s body, spreading through her lungs and pervading her nostrils so she would discontinue that painful wheezing that seemed to attack her breathing whenever Sister Efe started to hold her slender body strongly, chanting: “Asmah¹, asmah.” Maybe if it did, Esiso would have only stopped the wheezing, not breathing altogether, and I would not have found Sister Efe laying on our mat with her left wrist in a big pool of blood.
I remember how Sister Efe would whisper to me to always strive for the good work. Not the kind, as I would discover later, that always reminds me of that starless night when I stumbled upon Amara and papa Tega in the backyard. I was too startled by the unexpected sight of papa Tega’s face squeezed tightly as though in pain, and his body jolting with angry jerks as if he was being overrun by a sudden, unexpected bout of epilepsy that I forgot to tap Amara’s shoulders and ask why she knelt in front of papa Tega with her face buried in front of his black police trouser, the bulbous shape of his hairy midsection peeking out — too stunned by the way which papa Tega was grasping her newly done braids (was he trying to yank them off from the roots? Was she not feeling the bite of his fingers on her scalp?) to hurriedly remind her that mama Tega was intensely jealous of her husband and that she would not take too kindly to Amara being so close to him.
If Sister Efe were here tonight, I would expound to her how it was not my intention to join that “work,” how I willed into nonexistence the overbearing catastrophe that my life had become since the painful event of her demise, how I prayed and fasted for the weight of the “key to financial freedom” which Pastor Eze with his too-large clothes and his battered shoes, had told me would settle in my life if I gave him some money for the prayer water that I had to sprinkle all over my face and tongue.
I had no money at that time to give Pastor Eze, but Amara gave me some. She scoffed cynically at what I told her the money was for, but it didn’t make her clutch her palms too tightly. Amara always gave. She gave me a space in her much larger room after Aunty Landlady flung my torn polybag from the tiny room I had shared with Esiso and Sister Efe — she gave me some of her blouses which she said had become too tight — she gave me the truth of how, when she was twelve, she had seen her mother’s head twisted cruelly at an abnormal angle on their yellow carpet, how she would have laughed when she looked closely at her mother’s crooked head and wide glassy eyes because she thought it resembled the doll that she owned at nine years old — the doll that had limbs that could be moved back and forth — she would have laughed, but she did not. She had seen the jagged ends of a large dark stain on the yellow carpet climbing from underneath her mother’s head, and panicked that she needed to grab a mop and clean the dark stain before it travelled, on its rapid journey, to her feet, past her ankles, up to her neck, spreading all over face, clogging her nostrils, filling her eyes and blocking her ears, staining her hair. She explained that she always heard her mother shouting to her father, “You will kill me today,” whenever her father came home late and had wondered if her mother would suddenly jump up, straighten her bent neck, and start pacing because her father had quickly grabbed his belt and left.
It was Amara who had introduced me to Fidelis. Fidelis who was a whooping forty-five to my seventeen, Fidelis who bought me my first pair of earrings — yellow, round, glowing in garish prettiness — because he thought I was “good girl.” Fidelis whose gaze I always felt on my skin like oily tongues licking and stroking me with an unwelcome fervour. I remember the vehemence with which I had shoved the sweaty palm that I felt snaking around my thighs that afternoon when Fidelis had visited and Amara had left the room, beaming and muttering “Make I give una privacy.³”
“Privacy? What privacy? I did not want to be left alone with this man who was looking at me the way Chukwudi and Ade at the next compound who caught lizards for dismemberment looked at those their fresh catch.
I had turned my pleading eyes to Fidelis, sobbing almost loudly while thrashing against the forceful grip that my flailing hands were yielding to. His fetid breath smacking my face with the smell of stale cigarettes and alcohol was the last thing I smelt as his callused palm with the dirty fingernails squashed my nose and covered my lips. A welcome peace had settled over as me as I felt my eyelids shutting restfully with the thought that I would finally go to meet Sister Efe and Esiso wherever they were. Not until I felt myself being dragged on the harsh rug onto my belly and my head held down into the rug. Five years later and I could still feel the burn of the hot tears that slipped past the bridge of my nose as I felt Fidelis’ body propelling me forward from behind as my cheeks scraped the rug. If I stretched my nostrils wider, I could still smell the rotten odour of the white semen that he splashed all over my nose and forehead — some of it had slipped into my eyes, stinging and burning them into a sharp redness.
It was also Amara who had told me that I was “now a big girl” so I had to “hustle” for myself. I remember that evening when she told me that she had someone who could employ me and took me to see Madam Chip. The large cloud of thick, gray smoke that reached high and touched the ceilings had almost made it impossible for me to see the thin, almost bony, woman that sprawled across a large sofa which rested on the the right side of the blue-painted room with a funny looking bottle (what I later learnt was called a “hookah”). Madam Chip had looked me over carefully, her voice raspy and rough like sandpaper scratching my eardrums as she coughed. We stood there for long minutes, Amara and I, my eyes watering from the smoke billowing from Madam Chip’s lips, the brilliant red staining her mouth almost contrasting with the dark brown splotches of colour staining the frail and papery skin on her cheekbones and forehead. Somehow, she reminded me of Aunty Landlady: Aunty Landlady who we would see scrubbing the white areas of her hair black as she sat outside her room, grumbling as someone who passed by greeted her “Good morning, ma.”
Madam Chip allowed the mouthpiece of the hookah slip from her lips as she asked while exhaling a cloud of smoke, “Wetin dem dey call you?⁴”
“Efurhievwe, ma,” I quietly replied.
She had burst into a sudden attack of cackles that I almost thought the smoke from the hookah had clogged her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe. A rush of anxious euphoria had formed its way up my head, making me dizzy with the thought that Madam Chip would choke and slump on her sofa, then she would be unable to ask me anymore questions and Amara would quickly take me home. Amara and I would live in her room, and forget about the thin looking Madam Chip or the colourfully flamboyant room that we hurried out of. That thought had been squelched immediately as she mockingly demanded, “Which kain name be dat one⁶,” hints of derisive amusement lurking in the depths of her eyes, distaste crinkling in the shadows of the remarkable cocktail of colours coating her face.
“Who was she to mock my name?” I flustered inwardly. A name that my mother had pressed and flattened to fit inside my narrow body since before my birth, so that one day it would stretch and inflate with fulfilled promises and granted prayers. My throat bubbled with words that I would use to explain to Madam Chip that my name was a vow, a tapered line pointing to only one plausible point. But I recalled the night my mother had gently seeped into death, her musty wrapper tied around her chest, the bottle of anointing oil laying idly, almost jeeringly, beside her cooling body. Mama had laid breathless in a tiny room that boasted of a single mat and an oil lamp as its only decoration, even though she had named my elder sister, “Efemena” which meant, in English, “Here is my wealth,” my younger sister, Esisorigho, meaning “Bag of riches” and me, “Efurhievwe” translated to English as “destined to be rich.”
I reasoned that my name was not that important, after all, as Madam Chip fell into a disturbing chant of various names: “Betty, Lily, Sandy, Priscilla…” She had complained that “Betty” was too common, “Sandy” did not sound nice enough, and Priscilla was too complicated. So she settled on Lily because it was “simple and sweet.” I had stood in front of Madam Chip, numbly, the cool temperature of the tiles on the floor chilling my toes, as she selected a name for me like I was a mannequin and she was pondering on what clothes to put on me for advertisement. “This hat? No, this blouse. This skirt? No, this trouser.” In a way, I was. Except that, unlike a mannequin, I could breathe, think, and feel.
The name, “Lily,” had reminded me of that time my mother worked as a part-time cleaner in Oga Sam’s house. She would take Efe and me there because she did not want to leave us at home. Oga Sam smelt of ginger and lemons. He laughed boisterously, almost happily, whenever he saw us, repeating the words, “feel at home.” He would hand out stick sweets to Efe and me and tell us to wait in the parlour while my mother went inside with him to clean his room after cleaning other areas of his house. Efe and I would clasp our fingers together while we sat quietly and watched the moving pictures on the big screen and I would pretend, for those minutes, that I was, indeed at home, that I would not have to hurry up from the soft chair when my mother came out, adjusting her scarf. I would sit and hope that the fluffy bristles of the rug would somehow grow longer, thicker and wrap around my legs with a knot impossible to unravel, tying me to that spot so that I never had to leave. It was much later, after six months of constant worry, that my mother had found out that Oga Sam had a wife and three children in London and had left Nigeria to stay with them. By then, my mother’s abdomen had swollen to a size large enough to repudiate concealing.
I did not need to be told twice what Madam Chip wanted to employ me as, but I held a sliver of hope — maybe she would take me as the errand girl, or as the cleaner, or as her cook, anything but one of the girls that lined the front of the building she stayed in, occasionally prepping and propping their barely-covered breasts. I thought about all the Bible verses that my mother had stuffed into our mouths — about the girl that had been found naked on the side of the gutter, her body mangled and some parts missing — about Bose who had been found dead one morning, a cloying smell floating over her body like the whispers and rumours of “AIDS” that floated for years over her father’s house and haunted the rest of her family. I thought about these things as Madam Chip had drilled into my ears every of her rules. I had wanted to reach up to my ears with my fingers to check if I would find blood dripping down the curve of my jaw from the scratchy texture of her voice, but the weight of her words had settled thickly over my shoulders, much like lead, weakening my arms.
A tiny shiver crawls up my arms, forming goosebumps, as I absently berate myself on my choice of outfit this cold night. I should have worn the wool gown with the sequined belt that cinched at my waist or the leather tights that hugged my thighs and framed my hips. A loud horn honks close to me, jolting me from my thoughts. A man peeks from the side of the window and beckons to me.
“Fine girl, come jor⁵,” he repeats. He looks drunk. There are two other men in the car with him, leering at me. I want to spit on their faces and tell them to drive away from me — I want to compress my arms into my legs and melt into the cold wind blowing over my face. I want all these, instead I let my lips stretch till the corners almost touch the lobes of my ears and sashay to the side of the car, flipping my waist-length braids.
“10k for each, oh,” I reply. They sit silently for some seconds, their eyes judging to see if my body is worth the price.
“Oga, are you interested or what?” I reiterate.
“Okay. Enter, enter,” the man agrees.
Later that night, I would feel the chill of the walls on my back as I am rocked back and forth, thinking hazily of the events that had led me to that brightly-lit room, wondering if I would be there if I had gone to the university like Joy, or if I had been raised by affluent parents like Steph, but I would remember that Joy and Steph both shared a room with me at Madam Chip’s.
- Asmah: Asthma
2. Amara dey inside. She dey wor — “Amara is inside. She’s working.”
3. Make I give una privacy — “Let me give you privacy.”
4. Wetin dem dey call you? — “What’s your name?”
5. Jor — Please (mostly used rudely).
6. Which kain name be dat one? — “What kind of name is that?”
Melony Akpoghene is a Nigerian writer and voice-over artist. She’s a student of English in the University of Lagos. When she’s not eating cakes, she’s completing stacks of unfinished drafts.
