Page 19

Aminah shrugs. ‘Sabotage, obviously. I’m gonna get a Rachel Dolezal-type to infiltrate MelaninMatch or something. Then get someone to expose it. Gonna say that he, like, recruited counterfeit Black people to fill out the numbers of his app.’

I tilt my head to the side and stare at my five-foot-two best friend. For someone so physically compact, she truly harbours a lot of righteously bellicose energy. Like a Bichon Frisé raised by tigers. I’ve never stopped being in awe of it.

‘You know, sometimes I feel like you could be the don of an organised crime group.’

‘Duh. That’s why the streets call me Minah Mafia.’ There’s an oblique beat, and then Aminah’s eyes widen so much her lashes almost touch the edge of her immaculately threaded brows in panic. Minah Mafia was the nickname Malakai dubbed Aminah after we started going out, primarily because he was terrified of her, but really because with charm she could get anyone on campus to do what she wanted, like cajoling extra donations in her capacity as communications officer of Blackwell society and convincing the acapella group to move their rehearsal so we could have an extra hour to prep for an ACS social.

The name is also a reminder that our lives were folded together once, that my best friend was his friend and his best friend mine, and soon I’m going to have to confront that fact. My heart starts pounding like an 808 and I’m choosing to believe that it’s because of the three matchas I’ve had today, not the impending Return of the Kai, because I’m cool, so cool about it, so past it, and yes, sure, recently, more memories of Malakai and I have crawled out to curl around my consciousness from the crevices in which I buried them, but that’s nothing, merely evidence of an idle mind– maybe Ishoulddo a masters. Or take up sudoku.

Aminah steps closer to me, still holding my hands. ‘Um, he’s not here yet, but he will be soon.’

I push out a broad smile, and let go of her hand to link my arm through hers as I draw her back to the midst of the gathering party, pointedly away from her mother, who is attempting to get her attention so she can introduce her to an auntie. ‘Good. I’m sure Kofi’s missed him. Someone here should.’

Two hours into this party, he’s still not here, and I still don’t care. I couldn’t even if I was inclined to do so. I have my hands full ensuring that Aminah’s make-up stays the perfect grade between matte and dewy with the mini setting-spray I’m keeping in my clutch and interrupting any conversation she has with her sisters after seven minutes. This is the precise amount of time it will take for them to say something that will make her want to fight them. (The last thing that made Aminah want to scream was her sister saying she looked ‘nice’. ‘Nice?Nice?Would you call the Sistine Chapelnice?’)

Besides this, there’s too much to enjoy and focus on, for instance, Shanti, in her gorgeous, form-fitting, deep-navy strapless mermaid dress is flirting with Kofi’s suited-up finance-bro cousin by the bar and they are the kind of pairing that is perfect for around ten minutes until he starts talking about how he loves and respects women, but they can’t ‘pick and choose’ when they want to be feminist and he doesn’t mind paying for everything if she also understands her ‘divine feminine duty’. I have no doubt that he will try to diminish her entrepreneurship. He cornered me once at one of Kofi’s birthday parties and told me that he was impressed by my ability to make a career out of ‘nothing’, which from someone else might sound like a compliment, but from him– a man whose perma-WhatsApp status is ‘the grind neva stops’– sounded like he was congratulating a five-year-old on their lemonade stand. He will, of course, end up doused in alcohol at some point in the night, but the question is which one?

Right now, Shanti is still on the champagne. Long-term friendship equips you with intimate clairvoyance and so I know that in about thirty minutes she is likely to move on to rum and ginger beer from the bar downstairs.. Her university ex, our mate Ty Baptiste (a rugby jock turned sweet sports writer and Internet Golden Retriever Boyfriend ever since a clip of him being in unabashed professional awe of a female athlete went viral), is also set to arrive any minute now and I hear he’s newly single so that could potentially make things even more interesting, given that he melts to broad-shouldered goo in Shanti’s palm.

And then there’s Chioma, decked in a silver lamé gown, sat on a low pink velvet cushy couch by a window with Aminah’s twice-divorced fashion-designer Cool Auntie in a regal purple kaftan, grey twists to her waist and a gold stud in her nose. Chi Chi is nodding intensely, eyes narrowed and giggling, totally charmed and tucking away life lessons. Just a few minutes before now, she’d rushed to me and Shanti and gushed, ‘Guys. I really think that she’s my spiritual soulmate. Or my future self. I see so much of myself in her. Did you know that Fela was her lover? And she partly radicalised him?’

I fought the urge to say that in the seventies it wasn’t too difficult to have Fela as a ‘lover’, and that though I adore Auntie Wura and wouldn’t dare doubt her mind or her pussy power, I do kind of think that it is more likely that it was Fela’s activist mother that radicalised him. Relevant information is that Auntie Wura also makes the assertion that David Bowie only married Iman becausesherejected him. I didn’t say all this, on account of Chioma seeming so gassed that she’d found herself a new muse and role model.

Instead, I said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’

Shanti stoically sipped her drink and enquired whether Chioma was high. She is, in fact, quite high. I can tell by the fact that I saw her sneak-eat a piece of suya, which means in about forty minutes I’m going to have to dissuade her from reading people’s auras– something to which I don’t think a room full of African elders would take kindly. Chioma once off-handedly said to Aminah’s mother that she’s ‘such a Virgo’, which led to Auntie Rafiat looking at her as if she might genuinely be a witch.

I’m sipping champagne with Aminah’s mother now, by the tall, wide windows, the city lights forming a twinkling tapestry behind us. She’s a formidable former executive at a Nigerian bank, who retired early to join her husband in running a snack empire, and her clan of three strong-willed girls are born of her spirit. I am simultaneously frightened of and obsessed with Auntie Rafiat, who is kind and warm in a regimented way, like a queen who has allowed you into her court. Her attention is graciously bestowed, not merely given. She blesses me with that focus now, graceful in her tailored blush-pink, long-sleeved and square-necked lace gown. She has a fuscia gele, and her ears and neck are bedecked in shimmering crystalline jewellery that I try not to believe are diamonds or my eyes will water. Her lips are painted in a glossy matching pink lipstick and they spread in a smile as she asks me how my family are doing (‘well, thank you, ma– we thank God’), how work is doing (‘working on an exciting creative project– we thank God’, and she nods kindly as if any of those words mean anything to her. I didn’t lie to her. Creating a job from thin air is somewhat exciting in an existential doom sort of sense).

‘And how,’ she enquires finally, ‘is that young man of yours doing? In fact, where is he? He should be here.’

I don’t feel like I can quite explain why he isn’t to Auntie Rafiat, who is looking at me with an expectation that is somehow both calm and impatient, so I reply with:

‘Bakari? Oh, he had a meeting.’ I swallow the last of my champagne. ‘In Tokyo.’ An egregious lie, but I figure that placing the fictional meeting out of the country would make the idea of my boyfriend(ish?) missing my best friend’s engagement party because of work less embarrassing. I soon discover that this is not the case because Mrs Bakare blinks at me with confusion that manages to be on Aminah’s prescribed theme ofelegant.Her blinks are shimmery and pink, faster than normal, but not so fast as to beuncouth.

‘My dear,’ she utters with genuine befuddlement, ‘who is Bakari?’

She laughs a little, like I’m an eccentric kook just saying names at her, and the question is immediately dismissed– she doesn’t give a fuck who Bakari is, actually, and I am not to waste any time explaining. ‘I am talking,’ she continues, ‘about Malakai.’

‘Oh.’ I put my empty glass on a passing tray and swap it out for a full one. It is an action I immediately regret, because almost imperceptibly to those not well versed in the body language of Judgemental Auntie, Mrs Bakare’s gaze follows my movements, fast as a hummingbird wing, labelling me a drunken lout. There are a couple of things that might be happening here.

I am an idiot for thinking that Auntie Rafiat has retained any information about my love life, the fact that I have had the grand total of two boyfriends my entire life notwithstanding. She met Malakai at Aminah’s second-oldest sister Damola’s wedding, and therefore that is who my boyfriend is. Why should I expect her to keep up with my revolving door of men? She’s a busy woman with Nigerian Women in Business conferences to attend and facilitate in Houston, Atlanta and Lagos.

She remembers and does not approve. I showed her a picture of Bakari the last time I told her about him (three months ago) and all she replied was, ‘Hmm. OK. God is with you as you make your decisions, my daughter.’

One thing I know for certain, however, is that neither option demands me correcting her. In fact, she might actually find correction offensive.

So I decide upon, ‘I am not sure, ma.’

She nods with a little disappointment. ‘Ah. That’s a shame. Nice boy. A handsome boy. I liked the way you smiled around him. With your whole body. Light and free. I wanted to ask him when it will be your turn.’ She says this with a broad, warm smile as my blood makes a mockery of biology and physics and cools and heats up simultaneously. I feel a little light-headed suddenly, and there’s a time warp, years and events contracting into a tight shock at the fact that a future that was once so certain slipped beneath my feet, made me fall and flail into the unknown.