The Book of Echoes by Rosanna Amaka

Author:Rosanna Amaka
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473569591
Publisher: Transworld

Part IV

* * *

Ngozi

14

The Lizard Tongue

Lagos, 1988

Lagos is alive: it bustles with noise and dirt. People jostle and fight their way through the streets. Roads with large craters, gutters brimming over with sewage, and hills of rotting garbage slow people down as they struggle to make their way to work. Street merchants, taxi drivers and disfigured beggars tout for business along the motorways, adding to the chaos of the morning traffic jam. The car horns can be heard for miles around as drivers beep in frustration, while the start of the morning heat begins to create big patches of perspiration on people’s shirts. Yes, Lagos is alive. It comes at you in surround sound, it blazes, it breathes, it bursts with life.

Ngozi makes her way through the commotion to the bank where she works as an assistant at the reception desk. She’s been in Lagos now for over two years.

After the morning when she was beaten by Mrs Obindu, she had only three choices: to take her own life, to kill someone else – the Obindus – or to run away. Ngozi tried the first but wasn’t successful, and had begun to plan the second but chickened out.

I watched their conversation unfold.

‘E’mma, come run with me,’ whispered Ngozi into the room darkened by the drawn curtains.

‘Ngozi, I no sure,’ answered Emmanuel. Once again he had tiptoed into Ngozi’s room to help dress the wounds on her back.

‘But, E’mma, I thought you say you love me.’

‘Yes, but where we go run, O?’ he said. ‘Sit still. Let me put the dressing on.’

‘To the city, to Lagos.’

‘What we go do there? How we go eat?’

‘I don’t know. But, E’mma, don’t you dey want more, just dey serve all your life?’

‘Yes, but Lagos?’

‘E’mma, we go find work there – we go find more there than here.’

‘I no sure, O. You know, Ngozi, I love you, but—’

‘But what?’

‘Sit still. Nothing. Let me dey think about it.’

So Emmanuel thought about it. He had plans, had always had plans, just different plans – he was quietly ambitious, you see, and he’d figured out a long time ago that he had more opportunities at the Obindus’ than anywhere else. He was learning all about the textile business, working on Mrs Obindu’s customers, gaining their loyalty and when the time was right, his plan was to set up his own business to compete with his old employer. But E’mma loved Ngozi so he gently cleaned the cuts on her back, tended to them till they were healed, quietly listened to her pleas. You see, he wanted to make her happy, wanted her, and Ngozi, in her own way, in the only way that she could, cared for him back, but she knew there was something better out there for her, better than Mr Obindu, than Mrs Obindu, better than killing herself and if it came down to it, better than E’mma. But it didn’t come down to it, so on the fifth night after her beating, E’mma came to her with a plan.

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