IT WAS a Sunday morning, early, and somebody was banging on the front door. Ifemelu liked Sunday mornings, the slow shifting of time, when she, dressed for church, would sit in the living room with her father while her mother got ready. Sometimes they talked, she and her father, and other times they were silent, a shared and satisfying silence, as they were that morning. From the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator was the only sound to be heard, until the banging on the door. A rude interruption. Ifemelu opened it and saw the landlord standing there, a round man with bulging, reddened eyes who was said to start his day with a glass of harsh gin. He looked past Ifemelu at her father, and shouted, “It is now three months! I am still waiting for my money!” His voice was familiar to Ifemelu, the brassy shouting that always came from the flats of their neighbors, from somewhere else. But now he was here in their flat, and the scene jarred her, the landlord shouting at their door, and her father turning a steely, silent face to him. They had never owed rent before. They had lived in this flat all her life; it was cramped, the kitchen walls blackened by kerosene fumes, and she was embarrassed when her school friends came to visit, but they had never owed rent.
“A braggart of a man,” her father said after the landlord left, and then he said nothing else. There was nothing else to say. They owed rent.
Her mother appeared, singing and heavily perfumed, her face dry and bright with powder that was one shade too light. She extended a wrist towards Ifemelu’s father, her thin gold bracelet hung unclasped.
“Uju is coming after church to take us to see the house in Dolphin Estate,” her mother said. “Will you follow us?”
“No,” he said shortly, as though Aunty Uju’s new life was a subject he would rather avoid.
“You should come,” she said, but he did not respond, as he carefully snapped the bracelet around her wrist, and told her he had checked the water in her car.
“God is faithful. Look at Uju, to afford a house on The Island!” her mother said happily.
“Mummy, but you know Aunty Uju is not paying one kobo to live there,” Ifemelu said.
Her mother glanced at her. “Did you iron that dress?”
“It doesn’t need ironing.”
“It is rumpled. Ngwa, go and iron it. At least there is light. Or change into something else.”
Ifemelu got up reluctantly. “This dress is not rumpled.”
“Go and iron it. There is no need to show the world that things are hard for us. Ours is not the worst case. Today is Sunday Work with Sister Ibinabo, so hurry up and let’s go.”
SISTER IBINABO WAS powerful, and because she pretended to wear her power lightly, it only made her more so. The pastor, it was said, did whatever she asked him. It was not clear why; some said she had started the church with him, others that she knew a terrible secret from his past, still others that she simply had more spiritual power than he did but could not be pastor because she was a woman. She could prevent pastoral approval of a marriage, if she wanted to. She knew everyone and everything and she seemed to be everywhere at the same time, with her weather-beaten air, as though life had tossed her around for a long time. It was difficult to tell how old she was, whether fifty or sixty, her body wiry, her face closed like a shell. She never laughed but often smiled the thin smile of the pious. The mothers were in reverent awe of her; they brought her small presents, they eagerly handed their daughters to her for Sunday Work. Sister Ibinabo, the savior of young females. She was asked to talk to troubled and troublesome girls. Some mothers asked if their daughters could live with her,
in the flat behind the church. But Ifemelu had always sensed, in Sister Ibinabo, a deep-sown, simmering hostility to young girls. Sister Ibinabo did not like them, she merely watched them and warned them, as though offended by what in them was still fresh and in her was long dried up.
“I saw you wearing tight trousers last Saturday,” Sister Ibinabo said to a girl, Christie, in an exaggerated whisper, low enough to pretend it was a whisper but high enough for everyone to hear. “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Any girl that wears tight trousers wants to commit the sin of temptation. It is best to avoid it.”
Christie nodded, humble, gracious, carrying her shame.
In the church back room, the two tiny windows did not let in much light, and so the electric bulb was always turned on during the day. Fund-raising envelopes were piled on the table, and next to them was a stack of colored tissue, like fragile cloth. The girls began to organize themselves. Soon, some of them were writing on the envelopes, and others were cutting and curling pieces of tissue, gluing them into flower shapes, and stringing them together to form fluffy garlands. Next Sunday, at a special Thanksgiving service, the garlands would hang around the thick neck of Chief Omenka and the smaller necks of his family members. He had donated two new vans to the church.
“Join that group, Ifemelu,” Sister Ibinabo said.
Ifemelu folded her arms, and as often happened when she was about to say something she knew was better unsaid, the words rushed up her throat. “Why should I make decorations for a thief?”
Sister Ibinabo stared in astonishment. A silence fell. The other girls looked on expectantly.
“What did you say?” Sister Ibinabo asked quietly, offering a chance for Ifemelu to apologize, to put the words back in her mouth. But Ifemelu felt herself unable to stop, her heart thumping, hurtling on a fast-moving path.
“Chief Omenka is a 419 and everybody knows it,” she said. “This church is full of 419 men. Why should we pretend that this hall was not built with dirty money?”
“It is God’s work,” Sister Ibinabo said quietly. “If you cannot do God’s work then you should go. Go.”
Ifemelu hurried out of the room, past the gate, and towards the bus station, knowing that in minutes the story would reach her mother inside the main church building. She had ruined the day. They would have gone to see Aunty Uju’s house and had a nice lunch. Now, her mother would be testy and prickly. She wished she had said nothing. She had, after all, joined in making garlands for other 419 men in the past, men who had special seats in the front row, men who donated cars with the ease of people giving away chewing gum. She had happily attended their receptions, she had eaten rice and meat and coleslaw, food tainted by fraud, and she had eaten knowing this and had not choked, and had not even considered choking. Yet, something had been different today. When Sister Ibinabo was talking to Christie, with that poisonous spite she claimed was religious guidance, Ifemelu had looked at her and suddenly seen something of her own mother. Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that small room full of shadows. It had all seemed benign before, her mother’s faith, all drenched in grace, and suddenly it no longer was. She wished, fleetingly, that her mother was not her mother, and for this she felt not guilt and sadness but a single emotion, a blend of guilt and sadness.
The bus stop was eerily empty, and she imagined all the people who would have been crowded here, now in churches, singing and praying. She waited for the bus, wondering whether to go home or somewhere else to wait for a while. It was best to go home, and face whatever she had to face.
HER MOTHER PULLED her ear, an almost-gentle tug, as though reluctant to cause real pain. She had done that since Ifemelu was a child. “I will beat you!” she would say, when Ifemelu did something wrong, but there was never any beating, only the limp ear pull. Now, she pulled it twice, once and then again to emphasize her words. “The devil is using you. You have to pray about this. Do not judge. Leave the judging to God!”
Her father said, “You must refrain from your natural proclivity towards provocation, Ifemelu. You have singled yourself out at school where you are known for insubordination and I have told you that it has already sullied your singular academic record. There is no need to create a similar pattern in church.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
When Aunty Uju arrived, Ifemelu’s mother told her what had happened. “Go and give that Ifemelu a talking-to. You are the only person she will listen to. Ask her what I did to her that makes her want to embarrass me in the church like this. She insulted Sister Ibinabo! It is like insulting Pastor! Why must this girl be a troublemaker? I have been saying it since, that it would be better if she was a boy, behaving like this.”