On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe Page B

dismissed him and said a quick prayer before walking into the building.
    The office was still open, and Efe was interviewed on the spot bya man three times the size of Titus, who would become her new employer, and who, despite the “and Sons” attached to the name of his company, seemed to be the only one working there.
    “Do you know how to use a vacuum cleaner?” the man wheezed, to which Efe said, “Yes, sir.”
    It was the default answer she gave to all his other wheezed questions. “Can you be here every Thursday?” “Can you get here before seven A.M .?” “Do you live close by?” “Are you a hard worker?” Had he asked her if she could fly, she would have replied just as enthusiastically as she did to the other questions, “Yes, sir! Of course I can fly.”
    Dele would also turn out to be the most generous of her three bosses, giving her huge bonuses at holidays.
    He often complimented her, noticing when she had her hair done, when she looked worn out, or when she had a new outfit on. When she mentioned that she had a nine-month-old son, he exclaimed that she did not look like a mother, telling her she must be one of the lucky women whose stomachs were like rubber bands: No matter how hard they were stretched, they snapped back into shape. He inquired cautiously if she had a husband. Or a boyfriend. Anybody waiting for her at home?
    “No. The papa of my son no wan’ sabi him. We no sabi him, too.” She dismissed Titus and any claims he might lay on the boy later, had he been interested. “I no get anyone,” she added, head bent, eyes down. She hoped she had given enough hints that she was available but not loose, the sort of girl he could have an affair with but treat with respect at the same time. And, if she played her cards right, even marry. She did not have anything left over from what she’d saved while she was with Titus. And the money she made working just about paid for L.I.’s necessities. She did not want to be reduced to the sort of girl who went around with just any man for money. The sort of girl, like so many she knew, who went with carpenters and car mechanics for a bit of cash. She might have had a baby outside wedlock,but it did not mean she was cheap. She could still pick, and Dele seemed the type of guy to give his girlfriend a munificent allowance. The type to give L.I. everything she hoped for him and more. The sort of man to see that she got a break from the scrimping and the cleaning and the tiredness that were taking over her life.
    But try as she might, Dele never asked her out, and it was not until seven months later, when she started to complain about finding a good nursery school for L.I. so that Rita could go back to school, that Dele asked if she would like to go abroad. “Belgium. A country wey dey Europe. Next door to London.”
    He made it sound as if you could walk from Belgium to London. From one door to the next.
    Had he not started talking seriously about payment, an installment plan to repay the debt, of her sharing a house with other “Nigerian women” being looked after by a friend of his, she would not have believed that he had not asked her the question in jest, that he had not dangled the idea in front of her like a wicked adult might dangle food in front of a hungry child, keeping it always out of reach but close enough to be seen and smelled.
    “If I wan’ go abroad, Oga Dele? Anybody dey ask pikin if de pikin wan’ sweet?”
    Who did not want to go abroad? People were born with the ambition, and people died trying to fulfill that ambition. Was it not just the week before that the cyclist whose
okada
she had boarded told her of the Nigerian man who died at the airport in some abroad country he could not pronounce because the bags of cocaine he swallowed had burst in his stomach? “Sister, dem say the man face come swell like dis and he jus’ fall dead!” the cyclist said, demonstrating with his hands how the head had swelled, so that Efe had to