Funmi broke into my thoughts in moments like that, in the moments that did not submit themselves to my routine. And the idea that I too had become one of those women who would eventually be declared too old to accompany her husband to parties would flutter into my mind. But even then, I could trap those thoughts and keep them caged in a corner of my mind, in a place where they could not spread their wings and take over my life.
That morning, I brought out a notepad from my bag and began to write down the list of new items that I needed in the salon. I drew up a budget for my planned expansion for more salons. There was no point in thinking about Funmi; Akin had assured me that she would not be a problem and nothing had happened yet to prove him wrong. But I did not tell any of my friends about Funmi. When I spoke with Sophia or Chimdi on the phone, it was about my business, their babies and Akin’s promotion at work. Chimdi was an unmarried mother and Sophia was a third wife. I did not think either of them could give me any useful advice about my situation.
A roof that had caved in and a car that would not start – if her day had begun like that, Iya Martha would have gone back to her room and spent the day behind locked doors and shut windows because the universe was trying to tell her something. The universe was always trying to tell that woman something. I was not Iya Martha, so when the rain slowed to a drizzle, I turned the key in the ignition one last time and got out of the car in my slippers. With my handbag slung over my shoulder, umbrella in one hand and wet shoes in the other, I walked to work.
My salon held the warmth of several women. Women who sat in the cushioned chairs and submitted themselves to the mercies and ministries of the wooden comb, the hooded hairdryer, to my hands and the hands of the stylists I was training. Women who quietly read a book, women who called me ‘my dear sister’, women who made loud jokes that still had me laughing days later. I loved the place – the combs, the curlers and the mirrors on every wall.
I started making money from hairdressing during my first year at the University of Ife. Like most female freshers, I lived in Mozambique Hall. Every evening for the first week after I moved into the hostel, I went from room to room, telling the other girls that I could plait their hair for half the price they would pay to regular hairdressers. All I had was a small wooden comb, and while I lived at the university the only other thing I invested in was a plastic chair for my customers to sit in. That chair was the first thing I packed when I moved to Moremi Hall in my second year. I did not earn enough to buy a dryer, but by my third year I was making enough money for my upkeep. And whenever Iya Martha decided to withhold the monthly allowance my father routed through her, I did not go hungry.
I moved to Ilesa after my wedding and though I drove to Ife for classes on weekdays, it was impossible to continue the hairdressing business as before. For a while I wasn’t making any money. Not that I needed to: apart from the housekeeping stipend, Akin gave me a generous personal allowance. But I missed hairdressing and did not like knowing that if for some reason Akin stopped giving me money, I would not even be able to afford a packet of chewing gum.
For the first few months of our marriage, Akin’s sister Arinola was the only woman whose hair I wove. She often offered to pay me, but I refused her money. She didn’t like elaborate styles and always asked me to weave her hair into the classic suku. Weaving her tresses into straight lines that stopped in the middle of her head bored me after a while. So I persuaded her to let me spend ten hours plaiting her hair into a thousand tiny braids. Within a week, Arinola’s colleagues at the College of Education were begging her to introduce them to her hairdresser.
Initially, I attended to the growing stream of women beneath a cashew tree in our backyard. But Akin soon found a salon space that he told me would be perfect. I was reluctant about opening up a real salon because I knew I would only be able to work there over the weekends until I got my degree. Akin convinced me to take a look at the place he’d found, and once I stepped into that room, I could see that it would really be perfect. I tried to contain my excitement by telling him it was not sensible to spend money on a place that would be closed for five days a week. He saw through me and a few hours later we held hands in the landlord’s living room as he negotiated the rent.
I was still using that salon space when he married Funmi. And that morning, although I arrived later than usual because of the rain and the trouble with my car, I was still the first in the salon. None of my apprentices was in sight when I unlocked the doors. They usually came in earlier to set up shop for the day, but even as I switched on the lights, the pitter-patter of rain picked up speed until it sounded like a hundred hooves were pounding on the roof. There was little chance that the girls would make it across town before the rain let up again.
I switched on the radio my father had given me when I went to university. It was now broken in several places but I’d put it back together with duct tape. I fiddled with the dial until I found a station that was playing music I did not recognise. Then I started setting out shampoos and pomades, styling gels and curling irons, bowls of relaxers and bottles of hair spray.
I did not bother to check if walking in the rain had ruined my braids in spite of the umbrella. If I looked in the mirror, I would have had to examine the shape of my face, my small eyes, my big nose; the things that could have been wrong with the dip of my chin or my lips, all the different ways in which any man, Akin specifically, might find Funmi more attractive. I did not have time to indulge in self-pity, so I kept on working because handling the equipment focused my thoughts on hair.
After the rain stopped, the girls trickled in one after the other. The last one came in just before our first customer showed up. I grabbed a wooden comb, parted the woman’s hair in the middle, dipped two fingers into the sticky pomade and started my day. Her hair was thick and full, the tresses crackled softly as I wove them in tiny rows that gathered at the nape of her neck. There were four people waiting when I was through with her. I moved from head to head, sectioning hair, weaving strands into patterns, snipping off split ends and dispensing advice to the girls in training. It was bliss; time slipped by and soon it was well past noon. By the time I took a break for lunch, my wrists were hurting – almost everyone wanted weaving and braiding that morning and few easy wash-and-sets were coming our way.
That afternoon I went for rice cooked in eeran leaves and topped with palm-oil stew. There was a woman on that street who cooked it so well that after enjoying the bits of smoked fish and cow hide in the stew, I always had to fight the urge to lick the leaves clean. It was the kind of food that demanded a moment’s pause after the plate was empty and induced a level of contentment that had me staring into space while the salon buzzed around me. Outside, the sky was still a threatening indigo although the rain had finally stopped. Cold air swept into the salon in draughts and battled the hairdryers to set the room temperature.
I thought she was a customer when she came in. She stood in the doorway for a moment, the overcast sky hanging behind her like a bad omen. She looked around the room with a frown on her face until she saw me. Then she smiled and came to kneel beside me. She was so beautiful. She had the kind of face that would complement any hairstyle, a face that would have other women looking longingly after her in the market, a face that would have some of them asking who her hairdresser was.
‘Good morning, our mother,’ Funmi said.
Her words pierced me. I was not her mother. I was not anybody’s mother. People still called me Yejide. I was not Iya This or Iya That. I was still merely Yejide. That thought tied my tongue and made me want to pull hers out of her mouth. Years before, nothing would have stopped me from punching her teeth down her throat. When I was a student at Ife Girls’ High School, I was known as Yejide Terror. I got into fights every other day. In those days, we would wait until school was over before starting a fight. We would leave the vicinity of the school compound and find a path that none of the teachers passed through on their way home. And I always won – not once, not one single time did I lose. I lost a few buttons, broke a tooth, got a bloody nose many times, but I never lost. I never got one single grain of sand in my mouth.
Whenever I arrived home late and bloodied up from another fight, my stepmothers would scold me loudly and promise to punish me for my disgraceful behaviour. At night they whispered, with washed-out wrappers tied