Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

Bisola and Osei could not find a seat when they walked in. The ticket taker was in her usual place: on a narrow stage of mounted bricks, seated behind a table that overlooked the rest of the hall where people sat in clusters according to appointment times. Those who had no seats wandered about calling out for family, suckled babies, or snored on mats in corners. Peace enforcers, recruited from the pastor’s own church disciples, shouted here and there for order. One threatened a crying toddler. Another enforcer carried a standing fan in search of a place to set it down. The heat was choking.

Bisola pressed to the front, pulling Osei behind her. She showed her ticket to the woman on stage and the woman frowned without looking up. “No, no. You’re late. You’ll have to wait, na.”

“But I’m—”

The woman looked up. “See,” she pointed at a group, “those are seven forty-five people. They are next.”

Bisola said, “I’m pregnant.”

The woman looked Bisola up and down. She called to an enforcer and whispered into his ear. The man went away and returned with a high-backed plastic chair. The ticket woman handed it to Bisola. “Sit down. Find a place and sit down.”

With chair in one hand and the squawking chicken in the other, Bisola caught the attention of a thin-lipped, petite woman who turned to move her sleeping son’s body on the floor. Bisola thanked her and set down the chair, then placed the chicken beneath it. When she turned to Osei to receive the other thanksgiving items, she saw that he was looking again at his fingernails. His face was flushed from the heat, his hair grease running along his ears.

Bisola took the items and placed them under the chair. “Sit.” She stood to the side and Osei fell into the chair, his knees neatly pushed together. The thin-lipped woman stared, openmouthed, and Bisola spoke calmly: “He’s not well. My good husband is not well.”

An enforcer with an old microphone and speaker horn was calling for the next batch, the seven forty-five. All around, people stirred afresh, falling into line, searching for drifting children and spouses. Bisola immediately seized an empty chair just as a man was making his way toward it. The man cried, “Even the one with a big stomach is strong enough to seize my blessings!” and looked around frantically for another seat. He advanced as soon as he saw one, but then stopped and made another exclamation. Bisola sat a short distance from Osei since there was no space beside him. She wedged the hem of her dress between her spread knees, leaned forward to massage her swollen ankles with the heel of her hand. Positioned like that, with her back slightly bent and face angled to the right, she could smell Osei’s oranges across the distance between them, a fragrance undaunted by the dust and exhaust smoke of travel, or the fumes of cooking coals and sulphuric belches trapped in her clothes. He was studying the crowd around him with a detached gaze, his slender fingers going tap, tap, tap in his lap. Soon, she knew, he would say he was going out for fresh air; and fresh air would take time, whatever length of time it took for her to move through the line, wait at the inner anteroom, and have the pastor finally minister to her and her baby in his office.

She kept up the pressure on her ankle, waiting for Osei to make his exit, waiting for the enforcer with the microphone and speaker to announce a new group with her added to it. The enforcer made a new announcement after about an hour, and when she joined in and he demanded to see her ticket, she said she was six thirty. The enforcer paused a moment, then waved her on. Bisola turned to Osei, who passed her the chicken and yams. Seeing she was overloaded, he held onto the flask of food.

“I’m going for some fresh air,” he said. “I’ll bring the food when I return.”

Bisola hesitated.

“Just a little fresh air,” he said. “Just a little fresh air.”

His lips were doing the movement again. Bisola turned and followed the group, trudging carefully to avoid collisions with the bodies pressing around her. A corridor stretched from the reception lobby to the pastor’s converted offices, its floor of ceramic tiles disintegrating to show the mossy concrete beneath. Slowed by the gas scorching its way about her chest, the offering items in both her hands, and the growing worry that now Osei should come back to join in the prayers, she found herself left behind as others pushed on.

For the first time since she’d walked down this corridor two days ago, she took the time to observe the framed Bible verses along the walls. People said that when K. Kasamu, the oil magnate, still ran the factory as a front for his friend and then-president, you could see huge framed portraits of Kasamu and the army general on the walls and in every office. But the pictures were all gone; it was now fifteen years since the general had fallen from power and Kasamu had fled the country. In those days, the people on television said he had been airlifted to the Cameroonian border, where he made his way to Europe disguised as a woman. As if being a woman would make escape any easier, Bisola thought. She studied the framed verses that stretched beside her on both sides now, squinting to read them. She slowly called out the numbers under her breath: “Five... one... twenty-two...” Numbers were more familiar, being articles she dealt with daily in her trade. As for the words, she tried to string them together if a familiar vowel was present. There was Lord, Hope, Je-sus, Se-vy-you or Say-vee-yor. Yes, Savior. Osei had pointed out that word to her once. She felt a headache coming and looked away from the walls.

Bisola stepped into the anteroom where fewer people sat in chairs arranged in rows. This room led to the pastor’s main office where he met one-on-one with supplicants. Bisola found a seat, right beside the family that had been ahead of her, once again placing the chicken and yams on the floor. There was a lady enforcer seated not far from the pastor’s door, ushering people into the office in turns. When someone stepped out, the enforcer waved her hand at the waiting group. The next person rose and walked into the office, while the rest of the group migrated up the chairs, shuffling quietly. Sounds intermittently boomed through the door: that of the pastor’s voice broken by the crazed scream of a supplicant, or a chorus of clapping and singing. And when crashes and clatters could be heard inside, everyone in the anteroom understood it was the pastor chasing the evil spirit around the office.

Bisola patiently moved up the seats, pulling the chicken and yams along as she went. As she settled into a new chair, warm from the body heat of the person who’d just vacated it, she placed a hand on her stomach and said a prayer: “Baby will live again on the third day. Baby is alive.”

These were the exact words the pastor had told her to say three times a day for three days. Today was the third day; this was her second repetition today. The third and final time she would say it would be in the office, right there with the pastor’s final act of resurrection. It was going to be great, she could feel it. The gas hadn’t receded; it burned as strongly as it had when baby was still kicking, which was a sign that there was still life inside her. Those hospital people would say she told them so. Her baby’s heart was still working, its mouth yawning, its eyes blinking. Those machines could make mistakes. They used batteries, didn’t they?

The way Osei had explained it to her, the machine — with the screen and the other part that looked like a corn cob — worked like a telephone, except it wasn’t two people at opposite ends of the line. Instead, it was baby at one end and something like a magnet at the other, creating sounds for baby to do a small dance. So as baby danced, the screen displayed the show for Bisola, who kept saying that baby looked like he was whispering something all the time. When she was thirty-eight weeks gone and went once more to watch baby whispering away, she had pointed at the screen and laughed. “Hehehe, how the gossip has finally grown tired. Mama is here now. Talk.”