Bibi bent over it, perfecting all four pages of the final draft in her most careful handwriting.
She had no reason to suspect that anyone would salvage her discarded pages from the bin.
I think Paul has a girlfriend in school, she wrote. I suspect it. I don’t even know if she’s fine since I haven’t seen a picture, and my younger brother, Ajie, is being stingy with details. All I know is that she’s a Hausa girl.
You know our neighbor I wrote to you about in my last letter? Wendy. Hmm. Story is beginning to come out. She really liked Paul. I think they went to the abandoned trailer park not too far from the house to hang out and they kissed. I’m not too sure, but it’s very likely.
Now, here is the gist. Paul took Ajie with him the next time he was supposed to meet her. I think he was feeling guilty because he kissed someone else when he has a girlfriend. Not sure…but you know me, my instincts are always right. I overheard something! I think Paul wanted Ajie to learn how to kiss from Wendy. My brothers are so weird. Anyway, the whole thing backfired. The girl got so upset she wouldn’t let Ajie anywhere near her bicycle. She was just enduring Paul and me for half of one afternoon, and then she couldn’t take it any longer and she exploded like a grenade.
What’s happening with that Obinna boy? Is he still begging you?
My father and mother are going to America in two months’ time. We are going to stay with Uncle Tam, who is not really our uncle but that is what we call him.
CHAPTER TEN
Ajie followed Paul into the yard. Abandoned tractors were afield, overgrown by elephant grass and shrubs of awolowo. Two or three earth tillers gathered rust, their flattened tires sinking into the loam. A woman with a child braced on her hip came out of a house on the far corner of the compound and emptied a basin of wash water in front before disappearing into the darkened passage. The windows of the unplastered house were boarded up with planks.
“Ajie.” Paul beckoned, stepping aside on the tiny path so his brother could walk ahead as they made their way toward the fence. Paul began to whistle. Everything was yellowy under the November sun. The chill of the coming harmattan was already in the breeze. Ajie looked at his feet and felt that he had applied too much of the pomade. Grains of sand were stuck on his feet, between his toes, and on his calves, courtesy of his flapping oversize slippers.
“Can you jump?” Paul asked.
“Mhm.” Ajie nodded confidently.
“Oh, look,” Paul said, and walked off the path again and onto the grass. “There is a hole in the fence. I didn’t see that last time. Let’s squeeze through instead.”
“Okay,” Ajie said, disappointed. He had wanted to scale the fence ever since Paul had suggested it was a nice shortcut from the street behind their house to the barber. They didn’t have to walk on the road past Ikom Street all the way down to Sangana. They had gained ten minutes now, as the sound of traffic reached them from the road up ahead. Ajie followed his brother’s blue T-shirt while they weaved through the bush, dwarfed by the tall grass. Startled dragonflies buzzed and darted.
They came out of the bush and walked toward a row of newly built shops. The first was a restaurant. A glass showcase arrayed with fried fish and skewered peppered beef was stationed right in front. A little board leaned on the legs of the showcase with a sign written in white chalk: Better Isiewu inside. The strong smell of the spiced goat meat came through the beaded curtain as they walked past. A dry goods store was next, with empty beer crates piled high on the veranda, nearly touching the ceiling. The third was a barbershop. Loud bumpy music came from inside.
Paul slid open the glass door and walked in like someone who was quite used to coming there. The posters on the wall were of American rappers and R&B stars in baggy jeans and shirts accessorized with big shoes, long neck chains, silver crosses, rings, and tall hair: Kriss Kross, Naughty by Nature, Boys II Men, Poison, MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, Da Brat.
The barber nodded at them as they took a seat. He was putting finishing touches on a customer’s hair. “Two of you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Paul said, “my brother will go first.”
Ajie sat down. “Which number?” the barber asked him, motioning toward the picture catalog of numbered hairstyles stuck to the mirror. The barber wrapped tissue paper around Ajie’s neck, then threw a blue cloth over him and clipped it at the back of his head with a plastic peg.
“Number eighteen.” Ajie pointed at a box on the catalog. The man in the picture had the sides of his hair cropped in a fading pattern that came together in a medium rise toward the center, and then on the left side, a slight part.
“Mandela.” The barber nodded, approving. “Nice choice.”
Ajie sat upright and grinned into the mirror. “You know the side part?” he asked, looking at the barber. “Can you do it on both sides?”
“What?” Paul stood up to look. “No. Ajie, you know Ma will be angry.” Then to the barber, “Only one side part, please.”
From the mirror behind, Ajie could see what the barber was doing to the back of his head. He watched as Paul bopped his head to the music and then the barber’s hand covered his eyes so he couldn’t see anymore. When the barber was done, he used his talc brush all over Ajie’s neck and face, and afterward Ajie looked in the mirror, turning his head this way and that, squinting and at the same time gauging Paul’s face for signs of approval. Paul gave him a thumbs-up and made to take his seat. Nothing, Ajie thought, would ever make him return to that other barber that Ma took him to at Mile 3 market, with his manual clippers that left faint zigzag lines on your head.
Ajie sat back on the padded bench as the barber began to work on Paul’s hair. Paul explained to the barber carefully and in detail how he wanted his hair. Ajie heard Paul’s voice without taking in the words. Paul touched the back of his head as he spoke, then the sides, brushing his temples in a way that might have meant something, and then looked up at the barber, who nodded as he sprayed the blade with a sterilizer, picked up the vial of blade oil, and applied it to the edge of the buzzing clipper, as if to say he already understood everything (I know I know I know) and that Paul needn’t explain any further. He tested the sharpness of the blade on the back of his hand, then put the clippers to Paul’s hair. The clipper hummed and crackled, and Paul’s hair rolled off like a carpet.
—
A pair of brown leather shoes was set by the door when they got home. Application Master, who was half stretched on the sofa, was woken up by their entrance, and he exclaimed “Swoy! Look at these children.” He looked them up and down the way grown-ups do when they think a child has grown way taller than they ever foresaw. “Come come come.” He opened his arms to the both of them. His teeth were stained brown, his smile wide and childish. His feni tunic smelled of camphor. For Ajie, the smell of camphor was always linked to trunks, dark places, cockroaches, and death. Because it was the smell of people who came to visit from the village, it was also the smell of old people, and it was about old people that news often came.
Bibi and Ma came out of the kitchen. “Look at your hair!” Bibi exclaimed at her brothers. She turned, her eyes wide in consternation, toward Ma, hoping she would comment on the stylish haircuts. Ma paused for a moment to take in their new looks, and Ajie wasn’t sure if it was displeasure on her face; if she approved, that didn’t show, either, she just moved her lips in a way that said this could wait till later. “Application Master, do you want your drink now?” Ma asked. “Bibi.” Ma gestured for her to go and get the drinks.