“I like this one,” she said.
I didn’t. It was one my mother had circled a million years ago for our seamstress to make, back when she regularly had dresses made. It was ugly, something Grace and I agreed on, and my mother had overheard. The tongue-lashing Grace received had not been pretty. But Mayowa didn’t know that. I hoped she thought I had circled it and said she liked it because she thought I liked it. I found myself wanting to tell her everything that had happened to me, why I started wetting the bed and why my father left. How Brother Benni had fisted my hair so tightly braids popped off my temple, leaving a bald spot that gleamed in certain lights.
The familiar sound of my mother’s car horn honked at the gate. I jumped up and scrambled to put the magazines away. Mayowa got up unhurriedly, still holding the magazine with the dress.
“You can keep it,” I said, part kindness, part wanting to hustle her outside before my mother found her in the house. She nodded, unaffected by my mother’s now-insistent honking.
I opened the gate and after my mother drove in, Mayowa snuck out, the magazine rolled in her fist.
The next day when I heard the Ajayis’ gate squeak, I peered through our gate to see Mayowa holding a plastic bag that looked to be filled with empty bottles of Mr. Ajayi’s prescriptions. She was going to the pharmacy, about a ten-minute walk within the estate. I must have made a noise, or she must have sensed me, because she stopped and stared in my direction, waiting. I lifted the metal lever that secured our gate and stepped out. She smiled the careful smile of one who hasn’t much cause to. We matched gaits toward the pharmacy, neither of us speaking. While I tried to think of what to say, Mayowa quickened her steps and I sped to keep up. When she moved even faster, I kept pace. One of us giggled and we broke into a run at the same time, gasping and laughing. I made it to the store first. I liked to think she let me win.
I imagined how we would become good friends, how our secret friendship would come to define us over the years. We could run away and become Nollywood stars and live in an exclusive apartment on Victoria Island, like sisters, or something more, something I didn’t yet have words for. I wanted her to teach me to throw things.
—
Mayowa and Grace were planning something. I could tell by the way they avoided each other’s gaze and how whenever anyone called their names, they stilled like deer. My mother remained oblivious, except to note that Grace was getting clumsy and didn’t she know that nobody wants a clumsy wife. “You would know,” Grace muttered out of her hearing, and dared me with her gaze to tell. I tried to catch Mayowa’s eye and whenever I did, I smiled tentatively, and she’d smile tentatively in return. But she didn’t let me in on it, though I could have guessed.
I didn’t say a word when I saw Grace eyeing the red velour bag. I didn’t say a word when Mayowa, who was rarely at our house, invented reasons to stop by. Mother was not as kind to her as Mrs. Ajayi was to me, making her wait outside by the kitchen door for whatever it was she wanted. That’s where she and Grace were talking when I heard “offering mutter mutter we can take transport mutter mutter.” I knew I should say something, but I didn’t.
They were caught anyway. Grace’s fault, I can imagine. They’d gotten as far as the bus station one town away, where they had planned to split up. Grace was returned to my mother in tears. Mayowa had melted into the crowd. The money disappeared, probably pocketed by the men who apprehended them. Grace’s mother came up from the village to beg on her daughter’s behalf. My mother wanted the full story, but every time Grace began with “Mayowa told me to—” my mother cut her off.
“How can some little girl tell you what to do? You will tell me the truth now. If you do not tell the truth, I will take you to the police. Do you want to go to the police?” Everybody knew what happened to pretty young girls in police stations.
The new truth made Grace the mastermind. She’d planned the robbery from beginning to end and roped Mayowa in because she was young and followed orders. That didn’t sound right to me and couldn’t have sounded right to my mother, but there was something between the two women my mother had finally won.
—
Mayowa showed up three days later, dirty and hungry but unharmed. Mrs. Ajayi, who didn’t believe her innocent any more than I did, hesitated to let her in but didn’t have it in her to turn away a child at her gate. A strange mood permeated our corner of the estate.
Mayowa ambushed me the next day, as I walked past the Ajayis’ gate to our own.
“You told.”
“No, I—”
“You told.” She sneered and spat on the ground.
I wanted to tell her I would never, and that she even thought I would stung me. I wanted to tell her that the next time she wanted to run, I would run with her. The weight of all I wanted to tell her sat in my mouth and stilled my tongue.
She ignored me from then on. When I stopped by the Ajayis’ she found ways to not be around, and when it was unavoidable she kept her attention on Mrs. Ajayi and never looked my way.
I felt jilted, and in that sly way infatuation can flip, the turning over of a mattress to hide an embarrassing stain, I began to despise her. I thought of Grace and her beating, the many ways a girl can be broken. And I began to lie.
“Mrs. Ajayi, Mayowa told me she kept some of the change when she went to the market.”
“Mrs. Ajayi, Mayowa complained you haven’t been feeding her, is that true?”
“Mrs. Ajayi, Mayowa said she preferred feeding the dogs living outside to the ones living inside, whatever did she mean?”
I wanted the Ajayis to beat her, to open her up and scoop out the thing that made her brave. To leave her like the rest of us, like me.
They sent her to Brother Benni. For deliverance, Mrs. Ajayi told my mother. He was so good with children and Mayowa was a troubled child in need of prayer. Mrs. Ajayi was shocked at what followed.
What followed: Brother Benni was praying with the girl in his office when he began to howl and howl. It was a Wednesday night and the people attending Bible study rushed to see the fuss.
What followed: Brother Benni crouched on the floor, gripping his upper thigh around a flowing wound. Several someones called on the name of Jesus. Someone called for a car so they could take him to the hospital. Someone grabbed Mayowa and squeezed her wrist till she dropped the razor blade. Someone asked what they were to do with this mad girl. It was Mrs. Ajayi who got the story from her, about how Brother Benni pulled out his oko and tried to make her taste it. It was Mrs. Ajayi who overrode the protests of the crowd by pointing out that Brother Benni’s belt was unbuckled and asking why, if Mayowa cut his leg for no reason, was there no matching tear on his trouser. Someone called the police despite Brother Benni’s claim that the devil made him do it. Someone said it’s not like he did anything, the girl stopped him, no need to call the authorities for a crime that never happened. Nobody bothered calling off the police, who would arrive long after the church was vacant.
It was settled. Brother Benni would go to the hospital and Mayowa would go away. For her own protection, Mrs. Ajayi said. You know how people can be about these things.
What followed: my mother, fist strangling the arm of the settee, face like a stone.