He boasts to his cronies that he has two women to boss

around in Lagos, until her eyes shoot darts of ice

at him, decades of frozen anger, and his words quake

mid-sentence, stream back into his mouth.

On her last day in Lagos she surveys the Atlantic

from fashionable Bar Beach on Victoria Island

where the ocean attacks the sand in hostile waves.

Her bare feet sink deeper as each wave retreats

and she toys with the idea of crossing over to Brazil,

completing her own three-point turn.

CHAPTER 18

Lagos Island, Nigeria, 1931 –

LAGOS ISLAND cooking. It simmers all day long

till twilight creeps in and the sun slips into another time zone.

Here sun is omnipotent: a scorched orb blazing a lazy

blue sky, everyone and everything bakes. It pounds down

onto the white-washed houses of the Brazilian Quarter,

steam rises from the swamps of Five Cowrie Creek

named after the old ferry fare of cream-curled shells

to Victoria Island. But those were the old days, today

they use the nickel penny and paper pound for in 1861

the island was stolen by the British. Now they own it.

This is a sizzling, buzzing island with long, long streets,

some wide or winding, others climbing, others cramped

where the Agudas live. They’ve been back a long time.

Shades style skins, stories colour sins: burnt almond,

caramel, umber, ivory, rust – antiquities now, long dark

wheals form striped designs across some backs, others

have the stamp of ownership burnt into baby flesh.

All were marked for life. Ships sailing sugar canes,

slave legacy surnames: Salvador, Cardoso, Roberto,

Evaristo, da Souza, da Silva and da Costa.

NO WIND. No air. Red-necked lizards crawl up walls.

Dogs lie in the shade of the sprawling branches

of mango trees – slumped, clammy, panting.

Thirsty foliage, dust-flaky-dry, aches for the sweet

voluminous wet of the rainy season. Fishing boats

sit motionless on the beach, coarse, weather-beaten

sails hang limply from rusty masts. Lethargy claims

Lagos like a slothful buffalo wading through mud.

In Ibosere Road, the majestic Zenobia stands,

a wooden statue on her veranda, sweats droplets

and surveys: palm-thatched huts for the latest arrivals,

flamboyant sobrados for wealthy Agudas, with balconies,

balustrades, tiled roofs, arched doorways and windows.

Senhor da Rocha of the Water House in Kakawa Street

nods to her as he purrs slowly by in the back of his new

Model T Ford Coupé. A crowned crane, owned by Dr Maja,

struts pompously down the centre of the road – ignored.

Vincento Ferriera lurches around a corner, palm wine

slurping in two calabashes from his wonky bicycle.

Next door the ample Yinka sways to market, maid in tow.

And Zenobia – wife, iya, solitary, lovely as a flame tree,

the rattle of words in her head as intrusive as crickets.

FAR FROM her Sowemima family in Abeokuta, Zenobia

showered in the holy water of the Irish nuns in Nigeria.

Thus was she plucked from the ordered convent garden