The two both of us are sitting on the floor, me in my uniform, her in her blue jeans-trouser and t-shirt. Today, her t-shirt is white. They write GIRLS RULE on top the front in black biro. She have on a white canvas-shoes on her feets. She so small, sitting beside me, her size make me think of Khadija.
“Gate?” She look up, squeeze her nose. “On my teeth?” She laugh. “My braces?”
“Brazes? That is what you call it?”
“Yes, braces,” she say. “I had crooked teeth when I was growing up. My teeth were growing on top of each other. I looked a bit like a baby shark. They come off in a year. I guess they do look like tiny iron gates.” She use her tongue to climb the braces, feel them one by one. “So I was thinking, we should start with the simple stuff, your tenses.”
She pick up a pencil and exercise book from the floor, take the pencil, and write ADUNNI on top the cover of the exercise book. Her writing style is full of plenty curves, everything joining each other, making me think of the henna Enitan drawed on my hand when I was doing my wedding. “I checked online for a beginner syllabus,” she say. “A syllabus is a plan for how we would work, what I can teach you.”
“See-lah-bus,” I say, talking slow.
“Good pronunciation. Where was I? Yes. I checked online. On my phone.” She lift her leg, dig inside her pocket, bring out her phone. She draw something on her phone with her finger, and light is coming on inside it. She hold it up and I am seeing plenty words like a newspaper.
“I would suggest we start with the intermediate course.” She turn the phone to herself, begins to read from it. “This website has courses that can help. It’s the BBC website.”
I look her, blank.
“I have also found some free-to-learn online courses,” she say. “Some days, I will teach you. Other days, I will give you my phone to just listen and learn.”
“On which line?” I ask.
“The internet,” she say. “That’s what I mean by ‘online.’”
“The inta . . . net.” I see this in The Book of Nigeria Fact, but it only make me think of a cloth with plenty holes inside, of the hairnet on Labake’s head.
“Here.” She take the phone, turn it to myself. “This phone connects me to the internet. Think of it as a place where you can connect with people anywhere in the world and access almost any information. When you connect with your phone or computer to the internet, you are going online. You can shop, make friends, send emails, do loads of stuff online.”
“You can be going to the market on this online?”
She nod. “I buy stuff from shops online. Food, clothes, whatever I need, really.”
“That will be costly,” I say. “Why not go to the real market?”
She laugh. “I don’t have the time to go to the proper Lagos markets. When I do go, my crappy Yoruba doesn’t make things easy, plus I am pretty useless at haggling. ‘Haggling’ means asking the seller to sell stuff below the asking price. Anyway, I am crap at it, so I always end up feeling frustrated and leaving.”
“Maybe I can follow you one day,” I say. “In Ikati, I was always buying things for my mama at low price, more low than the market womens are selling it, because we didn’t always have the money. I can show you how to do this haggling, or what you call it?” I smile. “I want to help you a little, just like you are helping me now.”
“That’d be so wonderful,” she say, smiling back. “Thank you.”
“How did you and your husband meet each other?” I ask. “Was it in this Nigeria? Or in the Abroad?”
“I actually met my husband online,” she say. “On Facebook. We dated for a year, long-distance, not the easiest thing. We got married about eighteen months ago in Barbados.”
“Is Facebook inside the online too?”
“Let me show you.” She press something on her phone and show me. I see the white and blue color of the Facebook, see small pictures of Ms. Tia, plenty photos of many peoples but nobody in all the pictures is facing their book. “It is a social networking site,” she say. “People from all over the world can find each other on it at the click of a button. Say I want to find— Oh, here we go, Katie just sent me a message.” She press a picture of the girl face. “That’s Katie, my friend. We used to share a flat.”
The Katie friend is laughing with all her teeths. Her skin is pale like chicken skin, after you have peel all the feathers. Her nose is the shape of question mark, long with a quick curving at the tip of it. Her hair look like a waterfall, the red of blood, pouring from her head to her shoulders. “She is not from the Nigeria?”
“She’s British,” Ms. Tia say.
I think on what she say a moment. Then I say, “Your friend collect our free. But we collect it back on October 1st, 1960.”
“The British government did,” Ms. Tia say with a small smile. “Not Katie or any individual.”
“One day, I collect my own free back from Big Madam,” I say.
“You will,” Ms. Tia say. “One day.”
I look the Katie picture again. “I didn’t know that peoples like you can be living in the Abroad because when I am watching news in the tee-vee with Big Madam, I am only seeing peoples that look like Katie.”
“What, you only see white people when you watch the news?” She force a quiet laugh. “That’s not— I mean there are loads of black people on TV in England and in— Actually,” she sigh, low her voice, make it somehow sad, “you have a point. There aren’t enough black people anchoring the news . . . or in parliament . . . or in top positions. Not enough.”
I didn’t too sure I understand what Ms. Tia is talking about, or why she is calling her Abroad peoples white and black when colors are for crayons and pencils and things. I know that not everybody is having the same color of skin in Nigeria, even me and Kayus and Born-boy didn’t have same skin color, but nobody is calling anybody black or white, everybody is just calling us by our name: Adunni. Kayus. Born-boy. That’s all.
I look Ms. Tia, wanting to ask her if it matter much that a person is one color or another color in the UK of the Abroad, but she is pinching her lips with her teeths and still looking sad, so I keep my words to myself and tell her another fact: “Mr. Mungo Park was discovered River Niger.”
“What?” she say.
“Is another fact,” I say. “In The Book of Nigeria Fact. Mr. Mungo Park, a man from the British, was traveling to Nigeria and just discovered the River Niger. But he is not from the Nigeria. How he can discover a river that been in the Nigeria for since? Somebody from Nigeria must have show Mr. Mungo Park the river, point him the way to the place. Who is the person? Why didn’t they put the person’s name inside The Book of Nigeria Fact?”