Page 68 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

of the women in the room were wearing wigs, down to ***
the simple Buba and wrapper – a blouse teamed with a long strip of patterned material she had tied around a slim waist. Her eyes were large and deep-set in a dark face, her smile revealing a gap between her teeth, and she had two small tribal marks that told him that she came from Abeokuta, a large town in western Nigeria.
His work meant he worked late and her work meant she would pop into the offices when everyone had gone home. Sometimes she would bring a take-out and a couple of beers.
“Thank you.”
On one such evening she sat on her uncle’s chair eat- ing fish and chips and asked without looking up, “You got a girlfriend back home Oyedeji?”
She smiled and moved on gracefully through the crowd. He watched her go, his eyes fixed on her poste- rior. He smiled slowly and turned his attention back to his food. Nice looking, but a little plain. Maybe he just liked his women, just like his food, slightly spicier like this bean cake. His eyes flicked through the crowd and settled on another girl. She was fair and had bright pink lips the same colour as the silk skirt and blouse that showed off some ample cleavage, her hair swept back into elaborate beehive. He kept on looking, and the girl looked up and gave him a small smile.
“No.” He remembered Elizabeth, the student nurse waiting patiently for him back in Lagos and realized that he was not the same person she had fallen in love with.
The summer nights lengthened into autumn, and he found himself working a collection of assorted jobs. The first one was working as a cleaner in a care home; the second was as a security guard in a firm that made electrical supplies.
She choked on the food and had to take a drink. “Eight?”
Slush swept away the debris summer left behind, and the streets were slippery. Oyedeji fell down a couple of times trying to walk fast like the Oyibos who had been born with the ability to walk like robots, in all kinds
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I have never been mar- ried to several women at the same time.”
of weather. It was on one of these cold wet miserable mornings when, standing at the bus stop, he met an attractive Oyibo girl with a man’s laugh. Her number was still hidden away in his suitcase under the warm clothes he had brought from home. You never know when you might need such things–like warm clothes or a warm-hearted white woman.
“Yeah, I know, but I’m sure you and your mates talk about these things.”
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“What about back home – in Africa? I hear you folk usually have three or four wives – like a kind of ha- rem.”
He put down the bottle of beer and smiled deciding to humour her. “Yes. In fact my father had eight of them.”
“Maybe nine. I forget.”
Silence. Then a cough. “So how do you do it then.... I mean keep all those women happy?”
He was in the middle of concentrating on the moun-