(cover photograph direction: Dagim Abebe)
Egbunike is your husband. Remind yourself of this, whatever else he no longer is. Lover. Soulmate. Honey. You blame it on this small flat with a claustrophobic hallway, on the weather that is never right, on the bananas that do not taste as nice as they look, on the recklessness with which you treat your body, always saying you’ve never seen a pastry you didn’t like. You wouldn’t want to sleep with you. You are not the person you used to be. But neither is Egbunike. You try to remember the last time you made love, but you can’t. When he reaches for you in bed, slither away from his arms. You have a headache. A tummy ache. A heart ache. You do not reach for him when he shuffles to his own side of the bed, as he has begun to do recently. You hurt everywhere, like the world in that poem by Warsan Shire you have pinned up on the toilet door. The gulf between you cannot be bridged with a hand thrown carelessly, but intentionally across your breast. Finally, blame it on this country. It has taken your libido too. And maybe one day, when Egbunike gets tired of you saying no every time he reaches for you, it will take your marriage. You don’t want to imagine living here alone, but you can’t return to Nigeria. Some journeys aren’t to be made with your palms cupping the slivered remnants of your dreams. This country is a greedy god, demanding fragments of your soul. You can hear it say, “Give me your joy, your love, your life. Geef me alles.”
#
This isn’t how you imagined living abroad to be. You cleaning homes for a living, and Egbunike working in a chicken abattoir. He comes home every night smelling of dead things. Decay and blood. The house is thick with his smell, and no matter how much you scrub and mop, the stench never leaves it. You yearn for the fresh smell of the homes you clean, scrubbing toilet bowls until their whiteness dazzles, shining wooden floors until they gleam, the scent of pinewood and lavender seeping into the air. You use the same products for your own home with no success.
You want the life you’d imagined you’d have when you married Egbunike. Teetering on heels and bottomless champagne on the first night of your honeymoon in a chic Lagos hotel, you’d promised him that you’d give him many children. You’d have an art gallery, sell so much work your children would never have to work. You fantasized of living in a house with a huge backyard on Banana Island. A kitchen as big as the parlour of your childhood home in Enugu. And why not? Egbunike had just started a business importing and selling computers. Lagos was a strategic move for the two of you from Enugu where you were both raised. It was the city where dreams came to life. Even after everything that happened in Lagos, there are days now when you think the two of you should never have left.
One night, you say to Egbunike, “Maybe if we’d stayed, we could have recuperated what we lost.” Egbunike says nothing. He slips out of bed and turns off the light as if that would make you stop talking. Egbunike is used to your occasional grumblings. At the beginning, he would argue with you, remind you that there was nothing in Lagos for either of you anymore. These days, he ignores you. Yet, you continue. The two of you should have tried harder to get into some other country: America or Canada. Somewhere where you had the advantage of language. Where the houses were bigger. Where you could perhaps have found a job with your art degree. You don’t even draw here. Who wants to buy art from their cleaning woman? It’s not fair, but you blame Egbunike for this too. He was the one who convinced you that taking the agent’s offer of relocating to Belgium was a good one.
“There are many Nigerians doing big things there. And it’s cheaper than trying to get into America,” the agent said.
#
Three years in this country where you have no friends, in a small city in the north that is shaped like a dog on its hind legs— you looked it up on a map—answering names that do not belong to you, you and Egbunike have begun to fall apart. Unravelling at the seams. Hurting everywhere. No more foot massages like in the first year when starting all over again seemed like a romantic adventure, no more kisses before bedtime, no more love-making. You tell yourself you don’t miss any of that. Marriages can exist without intimacy, you read that somewhere. When Egbunike comes close to you, you imagine feathers soaked in blood. Slime and gore. Monstrous chickens pecking at you. He makes you want to throw up. It’s not that you no longer love him, you tell yourself. You can love him without the two of you being lovers. There are things more important than sex in a marriage although you cannot think of what they are.
When Ify, your best friend from university and the only person from your past with whom you are still in sporadic touch tells you there’s a WhatsApp group for your school mates, you tell her you are not interested in joining. What it is, and you do not tell her that, is that you are too ashamed to join. You don’t want anyone to ask you what you’ve been up to. Not even Ify, who envies you your ‘life abroad’, knows the reality of your life. It would kill you if she did. You also want to be spared people’s good news. It works. No one contacts you. No one calls you. Until Poncho does.
Poncho isn’t his real name, but it is the nickname everyone calls him. In the year that you dated at the University of Nigeria, in your sophomore year, that was what you called him too. That was the year you almost lost your mind. Poncho was a woman wrapper. These are the things you want to remind yourself of. Poncho gaslighted you. Every time you saw his bright orange VW Beetle parked in front of your hostel but he hadn’t come to see you, you knew the rumours that he was checking out first-year students were true. Each time you asked, he swore to you it wasn’t his car.
“Are you sure it was my car?”
“Poncho, who else drives an orange Beetle on campus?”
“When was this? I think Tobenna borrowed my car. Babe, I wasn’t even on campus that day.”
You and Poncho only broke up because the one time you mentioned marriage, telling him how you imagined your wedding would be, he had laughed and said, “Babe, I’m not the marrying type.”
#
The day after the riots, Egbunike went to his store to find the glass doors broken, and everything that could be removed gone. Everything the looters couldn’t take—built in shelves, toilets, sinks—they destroyed. Egbunike had come home and cried, his head on your shoulders, tears soaking your T-shirt. The computer shop had just been renovated, all of your savings had gone into that. Egbunike had also taken out a huge loan from the bank. He hadn’t thought of taking out insurance. You sold what you could— your two cars and furniture to pay the agent and pay your way into Belgium with new identities.
#
You scold your heart for fluttering like it does when you hear Poncho’s voice. Deep. Velvety. As if he were in a studio pretending to be Barry White.
“Long time, Babe. I just got your number from Ify,” he says. A warmth spreads through your body. It starts in your stomach and fans out to your toes. You’re happy that Egbunike isn’t home yet from work, and that you’re not working today.
“I’ll be in Brussels in two weeks’ time. Meet me for coffee?” He asks it like a question but it comes out like an order. You are helpless in the face of it. You have forgotten that you could feel this way. Then he asks you to send him a photo. You laugh and say, “I’m married, Poncho.”
“See where your mind has gone, “ he teases. “Just send me a picture of your face.” Nothing he says sounds innocent, but you send a photo of you pulling a silly face, your tongue sticking out. He sends you a text in all caps: STILL BEAUTIFUL, BABES. Before you get a chance to type out your thanks, he sends a photo of himself. His face is swollen with age, his head is balding, he has a salt-and-pepper beard that you want to grasp between your fingers. When he calls back, he tells you he works as a consultant for an oil and gas firm. He talks of the mutual friends who made it to his 50th in Punta Cana. “You should have come,” he says. You think of yourself— a different you, not the you in this city where you’ve never been invited to any party, dancing with Poncho at some luxury hotel in the Caribbean.
“I’d have invited you if I had your number. I’ve missed you, Babe,” he says when you say nothing, so lost in your daydream, you can feel your body pressed to his, his breath hot in your ear. There is a throbbing between your legs.
“Babe? I mean it,” he says. You tell him he shouldn’t be saying such things to a married woman, but you are only half joking. You know he knows that you’re enjoying it, so he asks if he can video call. “I really want to see you, you’re the one that got away, you know?” You let Poncho see you naked when he asks. He tells you he wants to trap your nipples between his teeth. “You’ve added weight in all the right places,” he says. You feel like all your life you’ve been floundering underwater. You think now that Ify lied to you. Even when things were good between you and Egbunike, it was never as good as you remember it with Poncho. You think of buying a train ticket and disappearing to Brussels when Poncho comes. How long does he say he is staying? Maybe you could stay with him and then whatever happens after, happens after. You feel like a new woman. A different woman. All of your body tingles as if you’ve been electrocuted.
#
That evening, when Egbunike comes back from work, the feeling is still there. You imagine that he‘s someone else. You look at his face and you visualize a salt-and-pepper beard. When you go to bed and he shuffles over to his side, you move close to him. You spoon him and push your breasts into his back. You hear him hold his breath. You reach down into his boxers and start to massage him. You remember all the things Egbunike was to you.
Previously published in The Erotic Review (London, 2023)
