A Bit of Difference (24 page)

And always over a fairly decent meal, Deola thinks. The manner in which Anne relays these facts is unsettling. Back home, people are more dispassionate when they talk about other people's suffering, which may be more honest. They drop their voices and avert their eyes. They speak with humility, not compassion, and Nigerians are not naturally humble, but they do understand that someone else's suffering could so easily become theirs.

“When are you traveling to Rio?” Deola asks, desperate to change the topic.

“At the end of the month,” Anne says.

“Have you succumbed to a Starbucks latte yet?”

Anne smiles. “Not yet.”

Deola pretends to be interested as Anne rehashes her fears of corporate invasions. She is suspicious of package positions and Anne seems to have one. She can predict, for instance, that Anne is vehemently opposed to zoos.

Their waiter returns with their pizzas. “Markeriter?” he asks, and Anne raises her hand. “Naplitaner,” he says, and Deola raises hers.

z

The next day, she calls the clinic to find out the results of her remaining tests and she is given the all-clear. She does not see her period, though, which normally begins on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth day, but the progestin pills might be responsible for the delay.

At work, Kate Meade calls in sick. Her husband and daughter have a stomach virus and she is feeling under the weather. So is Deola throughout the day and this evening at home, she is more tired than she usually is midweek. She grills lamb chops with rosemary for dinner and eats them with salad sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. She considers having water with her meal and opts for wine, telling herself she has been around too many women who are preoccupied with motherhood. Yes, this is the problem. She is only a day late.

As she eats on her couch, she listens to a Maze and Frankie Beverly CD,
Live in New Orleans.
She holds the lamb chops with her fingers and sucks on the bones. She would not give up moments like this. It was just a matter of time before she got used to being on her own again. She thinks of Wale as she burps with her mouth open and picks her front teeth with her fingernails, imagining his reaction if he could see her. She sings along to “Before I Let Go.”

After dinner, she calls Subu, who has the latest multi-band cell phone with this and that feature. Shanghai is hours ahead, but Subu wakes up early to get her prayers in before anyone else, which makes Deola wonder if Australian Christians benefit from waking up before Chinese Christians.

“Shoe Boo,” she says.

“How now?” Subu asks. “Where are you?”

“At home, but see me, see trouble yesterday.”

She tells Subu about her dinner with Anne Hirsch, struggling to keep her voice low. Her block is quiet and her neighbors might overhear her.

“The woman didn't want to hear anything about self-sufficiency. Anything at all. You think I'm being paranoid here?”

“I don't think she wanted to hear your opinions.”

“I mean, she said Dára's comment was sexist. How can that be sexist? He's just daft.”

“Don't mind these
oyinbo
women. They come with their feminism. When push comes to shove, they turn to their men. Don't trust them.”

“Actually, she's gay.” “
To.
”

To
. End of matter. Nothing left to be said. Deola regrets bringing this up. She should have known how Subu would react.

“I mean, she went on and on trying to take me on her guilt trip, women and children, this and that. ‘You'd have to be involved in fieldwork to fully understand how bad things are.'”

“
Oyinbos
. That's their stock-in-trade. They can't get enough of our suffering. We exist so they can feel good about themselves.”

“It's not that I'm against charity.”

“I am.”

“Since when?”

“Since since. Where has charity ever got us?”

“No, no, Subu. We need charity. We need charity in Africa. Don't tell me this. Aren't you a Christian? Don't you give tithes?”

“Okay, please tell me, ” Subu says, “did you see any beggars when last you were at home?”

“Of course! Plenty, plenty! In fact there were more of them. You know how you normally see beggars on the streets or outside church? This time, I saw them everywhere.”

“Thank you,” Subu says. “So all these years people back home have been giving beggars money, how come we have more of them, not less?”

“That is a different issue.”

“How?”

“It's a different issue, Subu. That is because our economy is getting worse.”

“Exactly. So why don't we solve our economy problems instead of begging for funds all over the place? Why should Africa always be seen as a charity case? Can't people invest in Africa instead?”

“Invest? Are you investing in Africa?”

“The Chinese are.”

“For what purpose?”

“I don't know, but make no mistake, these charities are dangerous for us.”

“Subu.”

“They are!”

“Subu, why?”

“It's true! I blame them for the lack of progress in Africa. They make us dependent on the money they keep handing us. They do, and their ultimate aim is to hold us back.”

Deola shakes her head. She never expected to get into another leftwing–right-wing argument with Subu. She forgot Subu is as financially conservative as she is Christianly. Her friends are stubborn. They are as stubborn as she is. The fact that they sometimes vehemently contradict themselves proves this. For her, all it takes is for someone to make an assertion and she is ready to object. Perhaps this is partly due to her boredom in London.

“Hear me out,” she says. “The only Africans I hear complaining about foreign aid are Africans who don't need aid. I don't see Africans who receive aid complaining. I don't see Africans helping each other that much either. How many of us are well off? How many percentage-wise? They expose us, that's all. That is why charities annoy us so much.”

“Expose us how?”

“To the world, for who we are and what we can live with. We don't care about each other.”

“Who said?”

“We don't. If we did, we would be in a better situation than we're in. In fact, all I see around me is contempt. The contempt we have for one and another, and every humiliation we have abroad is to remind us of the mess we have left behind.”

Subu hisses. “Giving never cured poverty and Africans should stop begging for funds from developed countries. What is it? Isn't our continent the cradle of civilization? And this same Mandela that they keep using his name to raise funds, wasn't he the one they once branded a terrorist? No. They don't want us to be self-sufficient. They don't want us to be powerful. That's all. What you are seeing is the contempt they have for us.”

It is getting dark in the sitting room. Deola switches on her lamp and rubs her eyes until the framed batik on her wall and the photograph of her nephews and niece on her side table come into focus.

She couldn't care less if Africa is the cradle of civilization. What difference does it make to the state Africa is in? How could any reasonable person be comforted by the fact that long ago civilization began in Africa? Subu doesn't want to go back to Africa. Even black Americans, who champion the whole “civilization began in Africa” business, don't want to go back. The Egyptians they credit with starting civilization barely identify with Africa.

“Naijas,” she says. “That's the trouble with us, talk, talk, talk, no action.”

She curls up on the couch. She is too tired to argue. Why is she so tired?

“I hear our friend Dára says polygamy is a cure for AIDS,” she says.

Subu sighs. “What do you expect? Someone who didn't finish his education. He is even in the Internet news this morning.”

“For what?”

“He was arrested for lewd and lascivious acts.”

“Hah?”

“They are deciding whether to charge him or not as we speak.”

“What's wrong with the
bobo
?”

“You're asking me?”

“Is he in jail?”

“He's out on bail. He says she was the one who violated him. You know how people dance nowadays. He met her at a nightclub and she either rubbed up against him or it was the other way around. The next thing you know, she was calling the police.”

“Swear?”

“Swear.”

“He is finished. They will bury him for this.”

“They've already started. They're putting pressure on his main sponsor to drop him.”

“It was a matter of time. I'm telling you. I didn't even know how to respond when I heard what he had to say about polygamy. I made excuses for him. My colleague called him ‘green,' which was nice of her.”

“They saw fit to choose him to represent them.”

Deola yawns. She has already made up her mind. LINK's policy on Africa bothers her more than their public relations strategy, though she has no doubt the latest news about Dára will cause a stir in the office.

“That's their business,” she says. “All I know is that I am going to work tomorrow to talk to them, and if they can't be open to an idea that involves a community of Africans being independent, then maybe I'm working for the wrong organization.”

“You will quit?”

“I might.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Why?”

“Aren't you the one who's against charity?”

She gets some satisfaction out of shocking Subu, but the thought of quitting her job scares her.

“Don't do that,” Subu says, “You will meet the same attitude wherever you go. It's the Tarzan Complex. You have to make them feel useful to get ahead. If you ask for respect, they don't want to know. Forget about getting through to these people.”

z

After she hangs up, Deola checks her e-mail. Jaiye still hasn't replied. In her inbox, she has adverts
for Viagra, male-enhancement drugs, Christian singles and a scam letter from a Mr. Ahmed, who claims to be a managing director of a bank in Ouagadougou. She deletes them, resisting the temptation to look up more information about the morning-after pill. That would be like praying after the fact. Instead, she Googles Dára. There are several articles about his charges and a few that are critical of his comment on polygamy. She finds a blog where someone called “TJ” refers to him as a “punk ass African” and another called “Nubian Queen” replies that he is a fine brother. Most of the postings are hostile to the woman who accused him.

She Googles Stone Riley afterward and finds an article where he says he has adopted Africa as his cause. Deola is not surprised. In the photograph, he looks as if he hasn't taken a bath in days, his hair is greasy and his belly bulges. Yet he has a smirk on his face, as if he thinks he is sexy.

How accurate is Subu? Deola asks herself after she logs off. Of course, her instinctive answer is “very,” but she wants to be rational. It is true she has to be careful about how her colleagues perceive her. Sometimes she acts a little reticent, as she did at Trust Bank, but for different reasons. She wasn't vulnerable in the same way she is here, working in London. Here she is anxious about being exposed. Everyone has an office persona. Everyone is subject to work norms and anyone who wishes to get ahead ought to learn how to keep their opinions to themselves. She can't for much longer.

This might just be the third job she'll resign from. Only once has she ever lost a job. That was when she was made redundant from the accountancy firm she trained in. She has since called the firm “Stuckupsdale and Hoitytoityheim.” A Nigerian classmate from LSE who worked for Price Waterhouse referred to it as a Jewish firm. “They probably don't open on Fridays,” he said, and she
thought, What does he mean?

The only Jewish manager she was aware of at Stuckupsdale was never made a partner while she was there. He was married to a Filipina and Deola's fellow trainees said she had to be a mail-order bride, which Deola also found bizarre. How did they come to that conclusion?

Back then, bigotry was often cryptic, like a missed punch line in a joke. It always took her a moment to catch on. She was put off most by the gossipy culture in the audit department, the toadying and the fagging especially. Senior auditors ordering junior auditors, “Get me these files.” “Staple these papers together.” “Empty this bin.” All trainees went through the same apprenticeship, so perhaps she was too proud, but she found her first year intolerable, walking around in skirt suits because female employees were not allowed to wear trousers. In the winter, her tights couldn't keep the cold out, and they laddered. She knew it couldn't possibly be her wool coats that gave her a constant feeling of being weighed down. Apart from the “braids were unprofessional” business, she had a somewhat unpleasant encounter at a pension fund when a manager looked at her palms and said, “You're two-toned,” another at a bank, when she arrived at the reception with audit files and said, “I'm here for the audit,” and the receptionist replied, “Deliveries are through the side entrance.” But those were not enough to say she was discriminated against. How would she explain Subu's rise in the management consultancy department otherwise?

In the audit department, she worked for a manager who was prematurely gray and all chin. He flirted with the department
secretary, Trish. He went to pubs with senior managers and played golf with partners, so he was bound to make progress. He specialized in financial services and once invited her to a game of skirmish with clients, on a Sunday, and she didn't show up, so she lost favor with him. In retrospect, all she learned from him was how to make her audit files look tidy. She doubted her work had any impact. She was not surprised to hear about the Johnson Matthey Bankers, Barings Bank and other such scandals. She knew how easily they could happen and had to come to terms with the fact that the fat cats who ran financial corporations were doing the same work as her father.