The next room, to the right of the courtyard, was for receiving visitors, and the last room in the back was the kitchen. The bathroom was inside the house, not outside. And Yaya Silvina had given Husseina her own room, on the second storey. It had a raised bed, which Husseina sank into. It felt as if she’d flown into the sky and fallen asleep on a thick cloud. The same bed was invaded with small red ants only a few nights after she’d moved into the house. She threw herself on to the bed, and suddenly felt as if her skin was being pocked with a thousand needles. Tereza had helped her beat out her mattress, and Yaya admonished her for taking food to the bed. She hadn’t eaten anything in the bed.
The ants didn’t stop her from loving her room. Also in it was a big window that overlooked Bamgbose Street. She loved sticking her forehead on its glass pane and watching women and men come and go. Sometimes, there were people like Baba Kaseko in simple cloths draped over their shoulders; sometimes, there was a white man, dressed in what looked like three layers of clothes; then women either all in white like Yaya or similar to the way Husseina dressed when she was back in Botu, with a square of cloth wrapped around her body. There were animals, too. She liked the horses attached to carts waiting for their owners. The pigs were funny. They reminded her of people, the way the little ones chased after their mothers to get her milk, and how their mothers, exhausted, would sometimes shoo them away. The window at Yaya’s was a gift. In the early evening, before she had to go and help with dinner, she watched people light up their lanterns as they prepared to sell their evening food, and how the street was lit up with huge candle-like posts that brought a daytime glow to the night. She watched how people returned from their days at work, some of them already drunk as they made their way home, especially the one they called Ship Master—he always limped home. Then there were women who began to leave their homes just as everyone else was coming home. Sometimes, Tereza watched with her, filling in the blanks that had crossed Husseina’s mind. Tereza had told her those were women of the night.
“You want to know what they do,” said Tereza, the whites of her eyes sparkling.
Husseina nodded.
“I’ll tell you when you’re old enough.” Tereza laughed and smacked her thigh.
Tereza was talkative and loud, so Husseina was sure that one day she would slip up and then Husseina would learn. She could stare out of the window for hours, but often, just as she got sucked into a story, Yaya called her to come to pin some hems.
Husseina scrambled after Yaya as they wound around the Agarawu market, early one Saturday morning. She’d been living with Yaya for a month. Husseina knew Agarawu market well, because Baba Kaseko often sent her to buy tree bark or some foul-smelling concoction. Sometimes, just as she arrived at the house, another basket would be thrust at her to get more items for the house. Husseina always went without complaining, even though it was quite a long walk. In the market, no one paid attention to her, so she was happy to go back and watch the range of goods, dead and alive, being sold. Cages of birds—green, yellow, all colours. The gnarled dried hands of dead monkeys and rodents, small and large. Some other things it was impossible to identify. If Lagos was the smell of earth before it rained, in Agarawu market, that smell disappeared, buried under the stench of animals, rotting vegetables and sweat.
Yaya Silvina, dressed in white with a white scarf around her head, waved here, paused there to say hello, and they roamed the entire market before stopping in front of a mat covered with a motley of fabrics that glimmered in the morning sun. She held on to Husseina, also dressed in white, and knelt down, and began to pick and rub the fabric between her fingers. She picked up one bale, as blue as the sky, and held it up against the sun. The halo of the sun was clear from where Husseina sat—it was too transparent. No one had come yet to see to them, so Yaya continued choosing different pieces of fabric and holding them up against the sun, until she found a green fabric opaque enough to block the sun’s rays. Then, she picked another that barely held away the sun, one that could have been the sun itself with its golden shine. Yaya went for a range of green and gold fabrics. She looked around—still no one had shown up.
“Where’s that one?” said Yaya, with her tendency to switch to Portuguese when irritated.
They stood up and scanned the market with its flower-garden display of umbrellas. Husseina especially loved the sound of this place. The voices of a thousand people trying to get a good deal, and many more trying to peddle their wares. The beats of distant drumming. The bleats of sheep and goats, probably trussed up, waiting to be sold as meat. Loud singing, most likely from someone whose brain got tired of living in this reality and had found a new place to live in.
A small body ran towards them, clutching a piece of cloth, and when he arrived, he wasn’t that small. He towered over Husseina and Yaya, even as he doubled over to catch his breath.
“Good day, Yaya,” he said, between gasps for air. “Someone tried to steal my cotton.” He brandished the small square of fabric.
“I almost went to your rival,” said Yaya. “For this small piece, you almost lost your customer.”
“Oh! Don’t say that.”
Yaya extracted the two fabrics she’d chosen and showed them to the seller.
“From Brazil?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t be asking. Certified Brazilian.”
“I’ll give you one pound.”
“Bring on your money.”
They went on and on, Yaya proposing a price and the trader trying to increase it, until the trader relented and took Yaya’s coins.
Yaya hooked her arm in Husseina’s and they continued to a woman who sold calabashes full of buttons. Yaya bent over and grabbed a handful of buttons, thread and beads. Yaya’s client—a Brazilian woman marrying a Saro lawyer—wanted a wedding that would outshine all other Lagos weddings. The Saros had come from a place called Sierra Leone, and Tereza told Husseina there was often competition between their community and the Saros. The woman wanted her in-laws to know that the Brazilians could not be outdone.
When they got home, Yaya pushed through the door with her fabric. Husseina followed with a basket of beads and buttons. As she was about to close the door, something thumped to the ground just outside the entrance. It was a rodent, a rat or squirrel, dried like the ones she’d seen in the market. It looked rock hard and its smell of death wafted up. She wanted to kick it away from their threshold, but its bloodied claws stuck out, as if it had been scratching at something before it was killed. Probably better not to touch it. Had someone thrown it at them? She looked up, and a few people were walking away in the direction of Campos Square. Not one of them looked back. She shut the door, wondering if she should tell Yaya about it.
“Vitória!” Yaya shouted. “We have work to do.”
Lagos had its share of rats, but for one to just fall from the sky was strange. Maybe it wasn’t important, she convinced herself, although she had a hunch it might be—but, sometimes, it was easier not to talk. The creature may simply have got stuck in the space between the door and the frame. Yaya had more pressing things to deal with than a dead rat.
The next two weeks were spent cutting, stitching, trimming, hemming, ruching and sewing outfits for the wedding and for some of the guests. Husseina marvelled at the machine that Yaya used to stitch. She could make a whole dress in less than three hours with the thing. She thought of her father and how, with a machine like this, he could have produced at least ten shoes in the time it took him to make one. Where was Baba? Where was her mother? Where were her siblings? Where was her twin? She would not give in to these questions. Instead, she filled her days with as much activity and window-watching as she could, because she was sure there was no easy answer to any of these questions. Luckily, there was so much to do, and she didn’t spiral into her thoughts of loss.