Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham

Author:Tola Rotimi Abraham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948226578
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2019-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

3

HOW TO LOSE YOUR LAGOS LOVER

BIBIKE

2006

WE MET BEFORE I was ready. It was the year I turned twenty. All the signs were already there. The earth was instructing me to prepare my heart for a solitary life. But I am not a good listener. I was not watching for signs. My mouth was instead wide open like a crocodile’s, begging for more.

His face was like the Benin moat; firm, brown, and wide like it was built to keep strangers out. He had a big mouth filled with crowded teeth struggling for space, like a deep ditch overflowing with water. There may be other ways to describe the fullness of his lips, the hollow of his cheeks, the four equal parts his bulging forehead split into when he frowned, but even now I can only think of the cultivated inaccessibility of it all.

His face really was unapproachable, believe me. It was like the run-down house in our neighborhood where the boys who worked in long-distance transit buses gathered to smoke weed at the end of the day. His eyes were small and always red. When he looked at me, he made me want to apologize for all the wrong I ever did.

But the first time I saw him, I was not looking at his face. I saw only his legs. It was a Saturday at the start of the rainy season. I had hurried out of the house without my umbrella. The winds were bellowing before I arrived at the bus shelter, but I could not go home and come back in time for the bus. He saw me before I saw him. I felt the warmth of a gaze at the back of my neck, but when I turned in his direction all I could see were those legs. I was wearing a happy dress and the wind was battling with it, I was gathering the tulle with my hands, tucking the skirts between my legs. His legs were thick and long, majestic, like the trunk of a leadwood tree. He must have noticed me staring at them, for he moved them with swiftness to my side, covering me beneath the shade of his umbrella. It was already raining. It really was only a light drizzle, but the drains around us were blocked with refuse, so soon my feet were soaked with murky water. He was looking at me, saying nothing, as I watched the water ruin my work shoes and caress his ankles.

All those people waiting for the Rapid Transit Bus, sheltered under raincoats, umbrellas, polyethenebags, all their noise, all their muttering—about the morning crowd, about the clogged drain, at the lateness of the bus, about the unnecessary earliness of the Lagos rains—was nothing but the incidental music to my destiny.

I waited until the fifth time I saw him to speak with him. When I did, it was to ask him if he lived alone.

His name was Constantine, like the emperor, but I called him Aba for the city where he was born.

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