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Taiye

WHEN TAIYE AWOKE IN THE WARM GLOW OF SUNDAY MORNING, the day felt like it would be yellow and smell bright. She made a cup of green tea with a generous helping of dark honey and sat with her back against the fridge, her bare legs on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. Coca-Cola cat found her and curled its fat furry body into her lap.

For a long time, even before the bad thing, Taiye felt plagued with, with … “shame” is too blatant and not quite insidious enough a word for the feeling that she wore, draped over her shoulders like a water-laden blanket. There is a way that she can look up at you through heavy-lidded, dark wells for eyes. It will fill you with this unassailable desire to unburden her. She doesn’t know it, but it was this very thing that endeared her to her lovers. The magnetic gravity of the planet that is her.

Among her friends, it wasn’t uncommon to hear: “You like her? Of course you do. Everyone likes her.”

Even when she was callous about the intimacies she shared like cheap sweets, the women she chose made excuses like, “She’s just a bit broken.”

Lovers, Taiye’d had many. Too many. She found herself too lustful, too gluttonous. She desired too much. She recognized her weakness for these particular vices early in her life. As an eight-year-old, she quietly consumed helping after helping of beans and dodo, jollof rice, eba and egusi soup. She ate everything, until her stomach stretched well past its limit, and only pain and nausea forced her to stop.

“Oliver Twist!” Sister Bisi would marvel. “Even as you dey chop nothing dey show for your body.”

It was true; Taiye was a lanky and wispy child. She grew into a lanky and willowy woman, but she never outgrew her voracious appetite.

Lucky lucky. Your sister would kill for that figure.

“It’s as if you eat and your sister gets fat,” her mother said once, finger on her chin in mock seriousness.

One moment on your lips, always always on Kehinde’s tummy.

It was a joke—of course it was a joke—and it was a ridiculous notion. Where Kehinde was lush with soft curves, generous hips, and ample thighs, Taiye’s skin clung tightly to lean muscle over her athletic frame, narrow hips, statuesque shoulders. This was the extent of their physical difference; they were identical otherwise. They had the same deep dark complexion, the same wide-set brown eyes, the same disarming lopsided smile. Disarming, in part, because it was lopsided and opened to reveal a small gap between their front teeth. Taiye would learn later than Kehinde the effect that particular use of that smile could have on people. Soft manipulation.

But every time Kehinde pinched the soft flesh of her belly, or her round cheeks, the plumpness of her upper arms and frowned, Taiye felt deep remorse for her gluttony.

When Taiye was ten years old, she learned about the seven capital sins. It was at Catechism on Saturday, just after the six p.m. Angelus bell had rung its heavy song, and the sun had begun its slow, reluctant descent. The resting sun cast an orange glow through the high dusty windows of the children’s Mass hall. On Saturdays, the white plastic chairs that were usually arranged to face the altar were stacked up high against the stained white walls. And without the lace-covered altar as a focal point, the high-ceilinged hall was exposed for what it was: dusty, old, poorly maintained.

Taiye sat beside her sister on a long wooden bench that they shared with seven other fidgeting children. There were three more benches in front of them and two behind. All filled with squirming but silent preteens. Sister Augustina was teaching, and they all knew better than to speak out of turn.

“Okay,” Sister Augustina said, adjusting the rose-patterned scarf tied tightly around her head. “We are learning about the seven capital sins that Father Raymond preached about last Sunday. Does anybody remember what they are?”

Eager hands flew up.

“You, Kunle.” She pointed at a stout, chubby-faced boy in the second row.

“They are the sins that God doesn’t want us to do,” Kunle said, his voice scratchy.

“Yes, thank you, Kunle. And which sins are they? Someone else? You, Uche.”

Uche hadn’t raised her hand; in fact, she had been falling asleep, her head rolling slowly forward. Jumping when she heard her name, she said, “Sorry,” high-pitched and trembling.

Sister Augustina looked expectantly at Uche, who stayed silent, her chipped teeth gnawing at her lower lip. Tears pooled in her eyes, defying gravity, until Sister Augustina said in a stern voice, “Uche?”

“I don’t remember!” Uche wailed, and the tears poured down, to the laughter of the whole class.

“Olodo!” Sister Augustina scolded. “Okay, I will tell you this time, but make sure you remember tomorrow at Mass.”

Vigorous head nods from a chastened Uche.

“The seven capital sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Do any of you remember what they mean?”

Kunle piped up, “Greed is when you want to eat all the biscuits, even if they’re not your own.”

“No, that is gluttony,” another child interjected. More students jumped in, a small uproar as they scrambled to give the right answer.

Sister Augustina whistled to seize their attention and placed a finger across her lips. Silence. She defined each of the seven deadly sins, starting with gluttony, and then, halfway to lust, she hoped she wouldn’t have to explain it.

Of course Taiye noticed. “What about lust? What does it mean?”

“You people are just small now, but when you are a little bit older, and you girls start liking boys”—Sister Augustina wagged her crooked fingers and made her eyebrows jump in a suggestive dance, raising groans and nervous laughter from the class—“and you boys start looking at girls’ nyash, that is lust. Remember that God doesn’t like lust.”

Another, louder, eruption of laughter.

Taiye felt a prickly rush run from her chest to her cheeks. Was it lust, the thing she felt when she saw Patra winding her hips in slow motion in the “Worker Man” music video?

Lusts of the flesh, rotten girl Taiye.

THAT EVENING, after Catechism, Taiye pulled out the navy blue Oxford English Dictionary from the row of Encyclopaedia Britannica volumes stacked against the wall by the bathroom door in her parents’ bedroom. Her father was sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed, still in his navy blue suit and round tortoiseshell glasses, pawing through a stack of papers on his lap. He worked even on Saturdays.

“What are you doing, Baby Two?” he asked, without looking up from his papers. A Yoruba man, he believed the lore that she was the younger twin. That even though Taiye was born first, her sister, Kehinde, was actually formed first and had merely sent Taiye out before her to make sure the world was fit for their arrival.

“I’m looking for a word,” Taiye responded. “What are you doing, Papa?”

“I’m looking for some numbers.”

Taiye flipped through the sepia pages of the old dictionary, all the way through to L.

Lust

Pronunciation: /lʌst/

Definition of lust in English:

noun [Mass Noun]

1. Strong sexual desire

1.1 [In Singular] A passionate desire for something: a lust for power

1.2 (usually lusts) chiefly Theology A sensuous appetite regarded as sinful: lusts of the flesh

This was how Taiye learned that she was sinful.

IT WASN’T JUST PATRA’S DANCING that let Taiye know that her desires lay on the left side of expectations. There was also the quickening in her chest whenever she saw Isabella. Or smelled Isabella. Or heard the dulcet melody of Isabella’s voice. They had been neighbours as children and went swimming together at Ikoyi Club. As sixteen-year-olds, during the haze of teenage melodrama, Isabella stopped speaking to Taiye. An abrupt ending to a long-time friendship. Isabella never explained, but Taiye suspected that she’d known something of the warm rush that dizzied Taiye whenever Isabella smiled in her direction.

Thirteen years and many lifetimes later, Isabella was engaged, but she’d been writing and phoning Taiye almost incessantly since they’d run into each other at an Afrobeat concert in Freedom Park.

It was an uncharacteristically cool evening for Lagos when they came across each other again. Taiye had been home for seventeen sluggish days, and aside from a few trips to the market in the Falomo police barracks, she hadn’t left the house. So when, on one of her home visits, Dr Savage mentioned that her nieces would be going dancing that evening, Taiye took it as an invitation. She asked if they would pick her up on their way.

Habiba and Kareema drove up in a black Jeep with tinted windows and greeted Taiye with glossy lips and wide white smiles. They sparkled, not with any kind of inner light necessarily; they literally sparkled. Their pin-straight weave-ons shone in the glinting street lights, their bracelets and earrings clinked and shimmered, their lips, their bright eyes. They were perfectly lovely, but Taiye wasn’t in a terribly talkative mood. They eyed her as she settled into the back seat.

“Nice to meet you, Taiye,” Habiba said, smiling from the driver’s seat. “Aunty Folake said you just moved back from Canada?”

“Yes,” Taiye said. “Good to meet you, too. Thank you for picking me up.”

“Welcome back home.” Kareema smiled. “Where in Canada? I have some friends in Toronto.”

“Halifax.”

“Oh, I don’t think I know anybody in Halifax. Where is that?”

“It’s farther north than Toronto. There’s a lot of Nigerians there, but we’re everywhere, so that’s not saying much.” Taiye laughed; the girls laughed. “It’s small, but it’s right on the ocean, like the Island,” she added.

“How long were you there for?”

“Like two and a half years.”

“Really? Aunty Folake said you and your sister had been gone for a while.”

“Yeah, I was in London for a bit before I moved to Halifax.”

“Oh, okay. How about your sister?”

“She’s still in Canada. Montreal.” Taiye adjusted the neckline of her kaftan; the stiff opalescent embroidery fell in a deep V down her sternum, revealing the beginnings of a tattoo. She had small breasts that forgave her choice to go without a bra; still, she felt exposed in the cold gusts of air rushing out of the A/C.

“I like your kaftan dress thing,” Kareema said, turning her shiny head to flash Taiye a toothy grin. Endearing.

“Thank you.” Taiye smiled back. “How about you girls? You’re in school?”

“Habiba just graduated from Covenant, pharmacy degree. I’m still there, engineering, one more year. I want to go to Canada for my master’s. Toronto, though.”

“Congrats, Habiba.” Taiye said. “And you, too, Kareema, in advance.”

Besides the pulsing rhythms blaring from the speakers, the rest of the car ride passed in smooth silence. There was some traffic in Obalende, but it eased up when they climbed onto the Ring Road bridge. At Freedom Park, Habiba slid the car deftly into the last remaining spot in the crowded lot. They starting walking toward the main stage, where a dense crowd had already formed. Excitement bounced around like an eager contagion. Taiye smiled wide, more to herself than anyone in particular, suddenly grateful for a night out: a desire to become enveloped by the crowd, dance as if she were alone, maybe get a little fucked up. She told the girls she’d meet them by the stage and headed toward what she assumed was the bar. A gin and tonic—maybe three, no ice, mostly gin—would ensure the desired mellow buzz.

Several white plastic chairs were spread out by the open-air bar, all turned to face the stage, mostly occupied. Taiye wove past them. She didn’t recognize anyone, but there was a light-skinned woman perched, legs crossed, on a stool by the bar, her heart-shaped face haloed by a short Afro. And she was staring right at Taiye, her eyes widening.

“Taiye Sokky Adejide, is that you?” Isabella asked, a green bottle of Heineken paused midway to her mouth.

Without skipping a beat, as if she’d been expecting to see her childhood friend, Taiye said, “Isa, long time! How far?”

She felt the familiar rush and laughed at herself. She wanted Isabella on sight; that hadn’t changed.

“Look at you!” Isabella exclaimed, the smell of cigarettes and alcohol dancing on her breath.

“You look great!” Taiye said, taking in the looping curls, the black V-neck shirt stretched tight, the jeans cinched high on her waist with a leather belt.

“So do you!” Isabella exclaimed. Her mannerisms were oversized, her voice loud. Taiye thought she might be drunk.

“Thank you.”

“When did you get back?”

“About two weeks now. How about you?”

“I’ve been here, o! I was in the UK for, like, two years, at Reading for my master’s, but I’ve been here since.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. A breeze flapped Taiye’s kaftan around her.

Isabella gestured for Taiye to sit on the empty stool beside her. “Are you here on your own?”

“No.” Taiye pointed toward the stage, where Habiba and Kareema clutched their purses and swung their hips. From that distance, they looked identical. “You?”

“My people are dancing as well. I’ll introduce you later. But we have a lot of catching up to do! How far your sister?”

“She’s in Montreal. She’ll be here later in the year, actually. Around September, I think.”

“Wow, so you guys are moving back for good?”

“I am. I’m not sure about Kehinde. She’s coming with her husband, so I guess they’ll decide, I don’t think so sha.”

“Ah! Kehinde is married!” Isabella clapped. “Eyah, to who?”

“This guy named Farouq.”

“Muslim?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Nigerian?”

“No.”

“Oyimbo?”

“I think, partly maybe. I’ve seen pictures, he’s brown.”

“You haven’t met him?”

“Nope.”

“Na wa for una sha, I don’t know sisters that don’t talk like you people.”

“We’re special like that.” Taiye shrugged. “How about you?”

“Well,” Isabella stretched out her left hand to display a solitaire engagement ring, a delicate silver band with large round-cut diamond, “I’m engaged!”

“Congrats! To who?”

Isabella laughed. “You remember Toki?”

“Of course I remember Toki!”

“We went to UNILAG together, been together since third year.”

“Congratulations, Isa, really, God bless. When is the wedding?”

“We’re thinking next April, in Dubai.”

“Good for you.” Taiye wondered whether it was dishonest to express a bit more excitement than she felt.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Ah ahn, how about you, jare? Are you seeing anyone?”

“No.” Taiye smiled and looked down at her sandalled feet.

“No one before you came home?” Isabella pressed.

“No, I haven’t been lucky like you.” It was only a half lie.

“Na lie! I know you.” Isa raised an eyebrow to suggest something that Taiye couldn’t immediately identify. “I know of you.”

Taiye sucked her teeth and feigned amusement. “My life is boring. There’s nothing to know.”

“I know for sure that’s not true.”

“Whatever. What are you doing for work?” Taiye changed the subject.

“Senior account manager at Adekunle and West!” Isabella laughed. “It’s very nine-to-five, but let me tell you, the money is good!”

“Good for you o jare, I’m happy we’re not all aimless and jobless.” “

How about you?”

“I don’t really know. I left a bakery job in Halifax, and now I’m trying to find anything.”

“Wait, what did you study at uni again?”

“Chemistry, but I’ve ended up mostly working with food, so I went to culinary school to try and make it official.”

“Culinary school sounds fancy.” Isabella lit a cigarette. She ran a free hand through her curls, twisted her mouth to the side to blow smoke away from Taiye. “What are you going to do in Lagos? Any restaurant connections?”

“I don’t know yet. If you know anyone that will pay me to cook, hook me up, yeah?”

Taiye wouldn’t be able to tell you at exactly what point the quality of the air between their bodies changed. Most of the time, with the women she took or followed home, there was an intentional stirring, mostly her doing. There was a way that she gently, sweetly captured their attention and, with a particular use of that gap-toothed smile, shared her intentions. With very little else, she found that the attraction was mutual. But despite her desires, she hadn’t intended anything with Isabella. In fact, all Taiye’s memories of Isabella carried a salty scent of shame and some self-loathing that she had spent many years working to unlearn. Taiye wanted none of that. And yet, it had been what? Twenty minutes? Not even. And there it was, that thing.

“Where’s Toki?” Taiye heard herself ask.

Why do you want to know, Taiye? “

In Abuja.”

“For work?”

“Yes, for a few weeks.”

Taiye nodded and started to get up. “I’m going to see what those girls are up to, but it’s been really good to catch up.”

“In a rush suddenly?” Isabella tried to mask her disappointment with humour.

“No, it’s just that they brought me here, it would be rude …” Taiye trailed off.

“Okay, give me your number. We should plan something,” Isabella cut in with a wave of her cigarette-holding hand and gave Taiye her phone. “You know, I heard gist about you, Taiye.”

“Yeah? What did you hear?”

“I heard that in London you were experimenting with …?”

“Is that a question?”

Isabella shrugged and arched a meticulously shaped eyebrow.

“Yeah, I’m gay. Is that what you’re not asking?” Taiye shrugged. So much shrugging and eyebrow-raising between them; Taiye just wanted to talk plainly.

“Yes,” Isabella replied.

LATE INTO THE NIGHT, after Habiba and Kareema dropped her off, and she’d tiptoed up the stairs to keep from waking her mother, Taiye undressed and lay beneath thin covers. She was exhausted from all the dancing, but sleep denied her. Her mind spun and spun. Then a beep from her phone alerted her to a message:

It was so good to see you today, Taiye. I’m sorry about all the personal questions, I didn’t mean to be so somehow. Let me make it up to you. Mumsie is making small chops for an Easter get-together, you should come.

After Easter Mass and a quiet meal of pepper soup and steamed ofada rice with her mother and great-aunt, Taiye draped her narrow body in an oversized white button-down, tied at the waist, and pulled a tight pair of dark jeans over her hips. She started to apply a deep red stain to her lips but decided against it.

What are you going for, Taiye?

She shrugged at her reflection and left.

Isabella’s mother, Sabirah, still lived just two houses down from Taiye’s childhood home. When Patience, the chubby, wide-eyed maid, led Taiye inside, Isabella was busying herself at the dining table by her mother’s side, swaying her hips in a short lace tunic the colour of butter. They were arranging palm-sized samosas and spring rolls on a white plastic tray.

“You came!” Isa exclaimed. “Mummy, remember the twins from down the road?”

Sabirah smiled, faint and shallow. “Of course I remember the twins. Long time no see.”

She gave Taiye a very brief embrace, so brief in fact that it was merely a matter of lightly touching her warm cheek against Taiye’s and gingerly patting her on the shoulder. Except for a few new fine lines at the corners of her eyes and her plump mouth, Sabirah looked exactly the same as Taiye remembered. Her shoulder-length locs were wrapped in a red silk scarf, and a purple and yellow adire bubu hung elegantly from her slender shoulders.

“Which one are you?” Her voice was a calm, dispassionate purr. To Taiye, she’d always seemed bored and vaguely disinterested in anything other than her only child and their house—both of which she kept impeccable.

“I’m Taiye. Good afternoon, ma. Happy Easter.”

“Happy Easter. How is your mother?”

“She’s fine. She’s at home.”

“It’s been long since you came home abi? When did you get back?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And your sister, she’s back as well?”

“She will be here in a few months.”

“Haba so many questions,” Isabella interrupted. “Taiye, do you want anything to drink?”

“Water is fine, thank you.”

“Okay, come with me through the kitchen. There are people in the backyard.”

Taiye trailed her through the old but pristine kitchen to the backyard, large and covered in lush grass. In the centre stood a white canopy. Under it, a feast and a few people, none of whom Taiye recognized at first glance. She followed Isabella to a blue plastic cooler filled with large jagged chunks of ice and bottles of soft drinks, beer, and water.

“You guys, this is Taiye,” Isabella said to the small crowd of guests. “We’ve been neighbours since we were small.”

Taiye tried to be friendly, to seem interested, but she was distracted. In the daylight, on the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Taiye thought she might un-feel whatever it was that had passed between her and Isabella the night before. But she thought wrong. The thing remained; it had marinated in its own fervour (the fervour of an unresolved childhood crush) and become more potent: a childhood crush calcified by rejection into some sort of hallowed wanting. Taiye knew that she should leave. Instead, she took a beer out of the cooler and made small talk.

Despite having spent all the sunlight and a healthy portion of the evening at Isabella’s get-together, or perhaps because of that, Taiye’s memory of most of that afternoon blurred almost as soon as she left. Isabella followed her out and walked her the five minutes home. She seemed to be vibrating in the night breeze, her face shifting in and out of the air in front of her. They were both considerably intoxicated—Isabella by the numerous drinks she’d thrown back, and Taiye by Isabella’s focused attention. So when Isabella invited herself up to Taiye’s room, Taiye let her. But when they got up there, she panicked and blurted something about needing some cold water.

By the time Taiye had returned from the kitchen with a plastic jug of water and two small tumblers, Isabella’s lace dress was a crumpled pile of soft fabric at her feet. She smiled in a way that swallowed Taiye into a tingle. The air between their bodies—Isa in dark cotton underwear and Taiye fully clothed—bristled electric. Isabella traversed the space that separated them in four languid steps; Taiye counted. Isa kissed a soft line along Taiye’s earlobe, across her cheek, to the corner of her mouth, the whole time humming a melody that had haunted Taiye for a long time. A melody that Taiye forgets almost the moment after she hears it.

Isabella looked Taiye square in the face before leaning in for her lips.

Taiye, who’d known this was coming, pulled away. “What are you doing, Isa?”

“I’m trying to kiss you.” Isabella was matter-of-fact about it; she was not shy, not accustomed to being rejected.

“What about Toki?”

“What about him?”

“You’re engaged.”

“Like he’s not fucking around,” she scoffed.

“Listen, I’m not trying to be part of some kind of revenge plot.”

“Chill jare, it’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“Are you not attracted to me?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am. Are you not attracted to me?” Raised eyebrows.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t fuck my friends.” Shrug.

“We’re not really friends, though, are we?” Again with the raised eyebrows.

“I’d like to be.” Shrug.

“I wouldn’t.” Isabella’s pupils were dark discs in honey-brown irises. Her mouth curved in a smile, but her eyes stayed mute as she continued. “But if you say no, I’ll put my dress on and leave.”

So much silence passed.

Taiye didn’t say no.

She was an adaptable lover, quick to intuit her partner’s preferences and unabashedly inquisitive whenever desires weren’t entirely clear. With Isabella, Taiye took the lead. Isa was pliable, eager, vocal. They were both inebriated well past the point of inhibition.

“Try not to be too loud, my mumsie is asleep,” Taiye said against the soft skin of Isabella’s throat.

“Oh,” Isabella cooed, “you must think really highly of yourself.”

“No, that’s not what … I just mean … actually, well, yeah.”

On to kissing, fingers thrusting firmly, tongue lapping, a bite here, sucking, gasping; Isabella came quickly, hard, several times. Then, with her face still resting on the warmth of Isabella’s thighs, Taiye drew her own wetness and made herself come.

THE TRUTH WAS, Taiye would have been happy with just a kiss. She realized this, alone again in her bed, moments before drifting into sleep.

Now the affair had lasted longer than either of them could have predicted. Taiye told herself that she didn’t want to see Isabella anymore, but follow-through had proven difficult. Her resolve around these matters had always been easy to sway. Just the day before Taiye picked up Kehinde from the airport, Isabella had showed up at the gate of their house in her fiancé’s red Honda.

“I’m just here to gist small,” she’d said. “Also, I brought suya.”

She’d offered up the newspaper-wrapped roasted meat, and then started to undress as soon as Taiye shut her bedroom door. And Taiye, with a plastic bottle of cold zobo hibiscus tea in one hand and two tumblers cradled in the crook of her elbow, had stood there, defenceless.

Afterward, Taiye said, “We need to stop.”

“Okay,” Isabella replied, and licked a dusting of spice mix off her fingers. “I understand … I don’t even do this. Like I’m not a lesbian, or whatever.” She exhaled loudly and lifted her sweaty face to the ceiling. Eyes closed, she said, “There’s just … I don’t know. I like being with you, Taiye …” She shook her head slowly, having heard this from “straight” women many times before.

She hadn’t heard from Isabella since. It was a good thing.

It’s a good thing, Taiye.

Oh, the struggle to be better than oneself.

“Coca-Cola, I won’t call her,” Taiye said to the cat purring softly in her lap.

“Who aren’t you calling?”

Taiye jumped, and the cat flew out of her lap.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Farouq said as he walked into the kitchen.