“Yes, ma.”
“You are feeling better, Esther?” Doris asked.
“Yes, ma, Thank you, ma.” Esther curtsied, Yoruba-style. She had been standing by the door as though waiting to be dismissed, listening in on the conversation. “I am taking the medicine for typhoid.”
“You have typhoid?” Ifemelu asked.
“Didn’t you notice how she looked on Monday? I gave her some money and told her to go to the hospital, not to a chemist?” Doris said. Ifemelu wished that she had noticed that Esther was unwell.
“Sorry, Esther,” Ifemelu said.
“Thank you, ma.”
“Esther, sorry o,” Zemaye said. “I saw her dull face, but I thought she was just fasting. You know she’s always fasting. She will fast and fast until God gives her a husband.”
Esther giggled.
“I remember I had this really bad case of typhoid when I was in secondary school,” Ifemelu said. “It was terrible, and it turned out I was taking an antibiotic that wasn’t strong enough. What are you taking, Esther?”
“Medicine, ma.”
“What antibiotic did they give you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know the name?”
“Let me bring them, ma.”
Esther came back with transparent packets of pills, on which instructions, but no names, were written in a crabbed handwriting in blue ink. Two to be taken morning and night. One to be taken three times daily.
“We should write about this, Doris. We should have a health column with useful practical information. Somebody should let the health minister know that ordinary Nigerians go to see a doctor and the doctor gives them unnamed medicines. This can kill you. How will anybody know what you have already taken, or what you shouldn’t take if you’re already taking something else?”
“Ahn-ahn, but that one is a small problem: they do it so that you don’t buy the medicine from someone else,” Zemaye said. “But what about fake drugs? Go to the market and see what they are selling.”
“Okay, let’s all calm down? No need to get all activist? We’re not doing investigative journalism here?” Doris said.
Ifemelu began then to visualize her new blog, a blue-and-white design, and, on the masthead, an aerial shot of a Lagos scene. Nothing familiar, not a traffic clog of yellow rusted buses or a water-logged slum of zinc shacks. Perhaps the abandoned house next to her flat would do. She would take the photo herself, in the haunted light of early evening, and hope to catch the male peacock in flight. The blog posts would be in a stark, readable font. An article about health care, using Esther’s story, with pictures of the packets of nameless medicine. A piece about the Nigerpolitan Club. A fashion article about clothes that women could actually afford. Posts about people helping others, but nothing like the Zoe stories that always featured a wealthy person, hugging children at a motherless babies’ home, with bags of rice and tins of powdered milk propped in the background.
“But, Esther, you have to stop all that fasting o,” Zemaye said. “You know, some months Esther will give her whole salary to her church, they call it ‘sowing a seed,’ then she will come and ask me to give her three hundred naira for transport.”
“But, ma, it is just small help. You are equal to the task,” Esther said, smiling.
“Last week she was fasting with a handkerchief,” Zemaye continued. “She kept it on her desk all day. She said somebody in her church got promoted after fasting with the handkerchief.”
“Is that what that handkerchief on her table was about?” Ifemelu asked.
“But I believe miracles totally work? I know my aunt was cured of cancer in her church?” Doris said.
“With a magic handkerchief, abi?” Zemaye scoffed.
“You don’t believe, ma? But it is true.” Esther was enjoying the camaraderie, reluctant to return to her desk.
“So you want a promotion, Esther? Which means you want my job?” Zemaye asked.
“No, ma! All of us will be promoted in Jesus’ name!” Esther said.
They were all laughing.