Blackass (17 page)

Furo’s phone rang. The sound came from Syreeta’s bedroom, and so he let it ring on. Seven missed calls later, by which time it was apparent that whoever was calling wasn’t giving up, Furo unlocked the guest room door and crept into Syreeta’s bedroom to find the phone under the bed. As he’d suspected, his caller was Syreeta, who said when he picked up the call, ‘Why didn’t you answer?’

When Furo made no response, she continued in a calmer tone, ‘I just wanted to tell you, I put the plantain in the fridge. Can you fry dodo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there still light?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should warm the stew in the microwave before light goes.’

‘OK.’

Her next words were weighted with casualness. ‘I’ve gone out with my friend. I’m not coming back tonight. I’ll return in the morning.’

Furo said nothing.

‘Are you all right?’ Her tone was touched with defiance.

‘I’m fine.’

A pause, then a slow sigh, and she said: ‘Till tomorrow then.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Furo said and hung up.

After plugging his depleted phone into the wall socket beside the vanity table, Furo headed to the kitchen. He took the peeled plantain and the covered dish of tomato sauce out of the fridge, placed the plantain in a pan of groundnut oil on the gas burner, and while the slices sizzled and caramelised, he heated up the sauce in the microwave. Afterwards he trotted over to the bathroom to pee, and on the stroll back to the kitchen, he caught sight of a folded newspaper on the centre table. Bola’s no doubt; even the toilet smelled of him. His meal ready, he set it on a tray and bore that to the settee, then drew the parlour curtains, turned on the TV, and returned to the kitchen to fetch a can of Maltina from the fridge. The big new fridge, the glitzy microwave, the IKEA tableware, his appetising meal, he knew whose money paid for all of this. The fridge door closed with a
whump.

As Furo sank down on to the settee to eat, he winced from the pain in his rump. His buttocks felt bruised. He had first noticed the sting in the morning as he rubbed on the whitening cream, but he made nothing of it, too much sitting around he supposed. The smarting had gotten worse this afternoon, it was becoming painful to sit, and it now seemed his right cheek had a sore. And so, after he finished his feast and put away the dishes, he entered the bedroom to look in the mirror.

The whitening creams were working: the skin of his buttocks had brightened. No doubt about it, a layer of shade had sloughed off, and the reddened skin underneath shone like a good egg held up to the light. And yet, seen beside the whiteness of his back and legs, his rump looked black and angry. The bleaching action had opened a sore on his right buttock, the size of a large coin, raw-red in the centre and ringed by encrusted ooze. It looked even worse than it stung.

There it was.

It was easier to be than to become.

Furo was certain he had made the right decision. He was determined not to give up until his ass was as white as the rest of him. But for now, faced with the mirror, he admitted the painful truth: until the sore healed, he had to stop bleaching his buttocks.

Around midday on Thursday, Furo was inspecting his laundered clothes in the parlour when he heard the scratching of a key in the front door lock, and the door swung open to reveal Syreeta awash in the avenging light of the bright sun. Her chipper tone, as she spoke from the kitchen, seemed forced to his ears. ‘I have a surprise for you.’ She moved forwards and left the door open, then stared at the blaring TV, avoiding Furo’s eyes. ‘Dress up. We’re going out.’

On the drive down Syreeta refused to tell him anything about the surprise. She fended off Furo’s questions, only revealing that they were headed to a place near Alpha Beach. Their destination turned out to be a shopping complex at the mouth of a wide sand road that ran straight as a chalk line towards the crashing ocean. Syreeta spent some time finding a spot in the jam-packed car park, and after they got down from the Honda, she led Furo past several blocks of shops. The row they turned into was lined on both sides with shops whose fronts teemed with party-dressed, white-looking mannequins. Furo guessed the nature of the surprise even before they halted in front of Success Is the Lord’s Clothings, ‘stockists of Italian suits and ties, British shirts and shoes, American wristwatches and belts, French perfumes & etc.,’ as the signboard announced. Chuks Yelloman Emmanuel was the MD/CEO. When Syreeta rapped on the sliding glass door and called out his nickname, he approached and wrestled the door open, then pressed his shoulders against the wall so they could squeeze past, and once they were through, he shoved the door closed as if anxious to keep in the clouds of frost blowing from the air conditioner.

‘Madam the madam!’ he said in stentorian tones as he engulfed Syreeta’s hand in both his massive paws. Pulling her deeper into his blue-lighted shop, he barked at his young assistant to move his yansh from the only seat in sight. Syreeta settled into the deckchair, and placing her handbag in her lap, she crossed her legs. While she responded to Yelloman’s animated greetings, Furo admired the painted toenails of her dangling foot, his eyes following her baby-oiled shin all the way up to her pampered knee, which peeped out from under the frilly hem of her skirt. Then he turned his gaze to the shoes spread across the floor like a horde missing its bodies. Every bit of space in the shop was taken up by all manner of fashion items. Folded on ledges and swinging from hangers were authentic designer clothes as well as their Aba imitations – but the real and fake were segregated, displayed with varying degrees of esteem. It was obvious to Furo why Syreeta had brought him here. The shop owner practised business with conspicuous candour.

It struck Furo that Yelloman hadn’t yet greeted him.

Syreeta addressed Furo. ‘This is it, the surprise. We need to get you some clothes for work. I can spend …’ She shot a glance at Yelloman’s averted face, and then held up her hands, one with fingers spread and the other curved in a fist. Furo’s eyes widened as she mouthed,
Fifty thousand.
He had never spent that much on clothes, not at one time. And never had he needed clothes as much as now. He felt a boiling need to express his joy, his relief at a problem solved. He wanted to fling his arms around Syreeta and squeeze her till she understood.

‘Thank you,’ he said in a quiet, even voice.

It was time to choose. He needed shirts, trousers, ties for the office, a set of underwear. But where to start? The shop was stuffed so full it seemed futile to search. No matter what he found, no matter how right for him it might seem in the blue light of the buying moment, the dim lighting of the shop, there would always be something better he had missed. He glanced at the corner where the assistant had scurried to, but the youngster was no longer there, he had slipped out the back door. And so Furo turned to Yelloman. ‘I want some shirts that look like what I’m wearing, but a bit cheaper than this. Can you advise me?’

Yelloman was standing perhaps two feet away, right beside Syreeta’s seat, and yet he acted as if Furo hadn’t spoken. When Syreeta tapped his leg with a knuckle, he glanced down at her. ‘My friend dey talk to you,’ she said.

In a tone edging towards aggression, Yelloman responded, ‘Wetin e talk?’

‘But see am for your front nah! E get mouth, abi?’

Yelloman turned to Furo, but his eyes were lowered. He was light-complexioned, his skin tone the Semitic hue associated with the most Roman Catholic of Igbos, and in the open neck of his shirt Furo could see a flush spreading. Reluctance pulsed through his frame and his fleshy nose quivered. Furo felt a thrill of misgiving. Yelloman was over six feet tall and built like a discus thrower. Veins rippled beneath the stiff hairs on his bulky forearms; his muscled legs made his trousers look small and tight. He appeared the quick-tempered sort, a man to be treated with caution, and something about Furo had clearly incensed him.

Yelloman made a sound in his throat in preparation to speak. Like a conductor at the start of a symphony, he raised his arms in the air, and then, with sweeping gestures, his movements exaggerated as if sign talking to the brain damaged, he said to Furo, ‘What—did—you—say?’

A spasm of laughter touched Furo’s face but he forced it back in time. Yelloman was staring at Syreeta, who was bent double in the chair with her hands gripping her sides and her shoulders heaving. She laughed so long that Furo got embarrassed on Yelloman’s behalf. Finally she straightened up, flicked a tear from her eye corner with a finger, and then met Yelloman’s look of brooding. ‘Abeg, Yelloman, no kill me with laugh,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘My friend sabe speak pidgin. No need to wave your hand like person wey dey drown.’

Yelloman’s face lit up with excitement. ‘Talk true? E dey speak pidgin?’

‘Talk to am, you go see.’

Yelloman looked Furo in the face for the first time. His golden-brown eyes glistened like boiled sweets. He sucked on his lips, as if tasting his words, and then he fired, ‘How you dey?’

‘I full ground,’ Furo replied.

‘Hah hah – correct guy!’ Yelloman barked in exultation, spreading his arms at the same time as if to throw them around Furo in a big-brother hug. But he checked himself, then glanced down at Syreeta and declared, ‘I like this oyibo.’

He talked nonstop as he led Furo around the shop and guided him to the best bargains. Long monologues about Nigeria, about the meaning of man’s existence as discovered through the experiences of a clothing salesman, and then questions about Furo: prying questions, eager questions, assertions phrased as questions. Where was Furo from, did he watch football, what did he think of Lagos, was he Syreeta’s man, wouldn’t he hurry up and start a family with her? His only daughter was six years old and already she spoke English better than her father. (‘Bone that CK shirt, no be orijo. Carry the Gap one. I dey sell am for six thousand but if you buy five I go give you everything for twenty-five.’) He was a self-made man, his father had lost everything during the civil war and so he had to give up school to learn a trade, but nothing spoil, he was successful as you can see, he was the owner of this shop and another in Ojuelegba, and he was widely travelled, he used to visit London every year for summer sales but had recently stopped, partly because it was cheaper to shop in Dubai and import from China, but also because those oyibo dey knack English like sey nah only them sabe the language. (‘That jeans nah your own, dem make am for you, nah your size finish. Take am for two thousand.’) But Furo was different, he spoke pidgin like a trueborn Nigerian, and even though his skin was white and his bia-bia was red and his eyes were green, his heart without a doubt was black. Abi no be so?

‘I be full Naija,’ Furo agreed, and Yelloman pounded him on the back in approval, then slashed the price of the leather slippers they were haggling over. With that last purchase Furo’s budget was exhausted and, as the assistant – who had returned to receive a reprimanding knock on the head from Yelloman – began bagging his wardrobe, he took the cash from Syreeta and paid Yelloman. ‘You be my personal person,’ Yelloman said as he walked them to the sliding glass door. ‘My gism number dey for the nylon. Call me anytime you wan’ drink beer.’

Arriving at the car, Syreeta unlocked the doors before taking the shopping bags from Furo’s hands and, after dropping them on the back seat, she turned back to him and linked her arms round his waist. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice muffled against his chest. She gave him a squeeze before stepping back. Her eyes shone with emotion.

‘Why?’ Furo asked in surprise. ‘I should be thanking you!’

‘I’m thanking you for what you did in there, for being nice to Yelloman.’ She opened the driver’s door, stuck a foot in the car, and spoke into the sun-baked interior: ‘And for being you.’

Sunday evening arrived at last, and Furo, who had spent the whole day waiting for Syreeta to return from her weekend outing, now turned his attention to the TV as he supped. He watched Cartoon Network until his plate was empty, then Fox News Channel as he drank his malt. In the Fox studio sat several pundits debating US debt, and the sole black man on the panel was the least articulate, the least flattered by the camera lighting, the least distinct against the blue and red of the studio’s backdrop. Furo’s attention soon wandered from the rigged TV show to Bola’s newspaper, which had been gathering dust on the table since his visit on Wednesday. It was the Tuesday edition, the same daily Furo used to read every week for job announcements. A lifetime ago, it seemed. Returning to his seat with the newspaper, Furo began to flick its pages, his gaze scanning desultorily. Seven die of cholera; Caribbean nations plan to invest in Nigeria’s power sector; Boko Haram strikes again: same old news, same recycled words, and same old faces of recycled politicians. And then – in a double-spread interview with a quarter-page photo of a soft-cheeked and heavy-lidded man – the same old problem of unemployment, but highlighted in a new way by Alhaji Jubril Yuguda, the Chairman and CEO of the Yuguda Group. Furo didn’t read the interview past the opening paragraph, but the pull quote at the bottom of the page held his attention:

Several pages later, Furo was still mulling over the implications of Yuguda’s words when his eyes fell on a face he thought he recognised, and as he leaned in close to read the photo’s caption, his name jumped out at him. It was his photo, his old photo, a selfie of the old him. He remembered snapping it with the camera of the phone he left behind. It was a missing person announcement.