The Worst That Could Happen

I was that awkward girl who did not get much interest from boys. I was gangly, tongue-tied, unattractive, and I was okay and fine. I helped my mom in the market to sell her perishable goods. I was hardworking, and people would always tell my mother, “Oh your daughter works so hard like a boy. You are so lucky.”

My mother would smile and nod, and I would keep my face blank.

It was almost a good thing that I hardly got serious attention from boys, until Chima appeared. Chima with his dark muscular build and charming smile. Chima had machines that ground things in the market for him, things like pepper, tomatoes, corn, cassava. His shop wasn’t far from my mother’s, and he even had boys working for him, boys who did most of the messy work for him. It was either they were learning work, or they were hired as proper workers.

I had always been happy with myself, gangly or not, beautiful or not. I didn’t bother about makeups, it just wasn’t my thing. If anyone would ever have something to do with me, that person should be acquainted with the real me. Not hating on people who use make-up, though. I’m just saying it wasn’t my thing. The highest I did while going to church on Sundays was to apply black tiro – the ones I imagine Nollywood actresses used in their epic, culturally-rich movies, and on some dramatic Sunday mornings I would stand in front of our large mirror and mimic the voices of Nollywood actresses. I would start with Ngozi Ezeonu commanding a palace maid, and I would end with Chioma Chukwuka flirting with a cute, muscular black man beside a quiet stream.

I didn’t know that Chima was interested in me until I gave him an envelope for our church harvest. Every year we were given large envelopes in church to share with people we knew, family, friends and well-wishers, and they were supposed to put money in those envelopes for the work of The Lord. When I went to take it back, Chima had put ten thousand naira in it. Other people had put five hundred naira, one thousand naira highest, but Chima put ten thousand naira. I was startled. I had never been interested in anybody’s money, except for business. Right from a young age I was getting money, I hustled with my mother in the market. What else did a young girl need? I was properly fed, I had come out of secondary school. Nobody was talking about going further, my mother wouldn’t afford that, so I was content with myself, doing business with my mother, trying to be a succor to her soul as a woman who left an abusive husband – my father – many years ago. I was twenty-two when Chima picked interest in me, but never been in a serious relationship before. Somehow I thought things would unfold on their own, but the way mine unfolded scared me.

Chima started giving me money every weekend, without me asking him for it. I never knew how to ask, by the way. I had always been satisfied with my mother’s financial coverage, and with the little income I made. I took Chima’s money for weeks. I saved it. Because of Chima I added a little more effort in the way I dressed to the market. At least I tried my best. The market wasn’t a place where one needed to dress extravagantly while going out for the day, but I tried my best to look very good or sharp, in the Aba slang.

Ahịa Ọhụrụ market wasn’t like working in the bank, or in an office where you could dress yourself daintily. Here in the market you dress in a certain way, in a subtly rugged way because anything could happen. A fight might break out. A barrow pusher might hit you, somebody might look for your trouble, a rogue might try to steal your goods, so one came to the market with a certain kind of dressing void of superfluity.

Chima got more friendly with my mother, and I wondered if my mother suspected anything.

Then I started visiting Chima in his house. Many months had passed, and yet Chima was still giving me weekend money as though I was working for him, as though I did anything for him. It started with him saying, “You never ask me where I live. You never bother to just pay me a visit.”

That was how I started visiting Chima, me the unattractive, skinny girl. The first day I visited him was the day I took a proper look at myself, really observed that I didn’t have a robust nyash – buttocks – like a proper girl should have, a proper Igbo girl, if there was any such thing. I just observed it, but I did not pity myself. I was not the type that wallowed in self pity. I was ready for anything. What was the worst that could happen? The worst that could ever happen was Chima to stop being interested in me, to stop giving me money, and to stop grinning too widely when he spoke with my mother. That was the worst that could ever happen, and I was ready for that, in case it happened.

So on that first day of me visiting him in his house I prepared myself and went, wearing a new gown I had bought in Ariaria market. It was a bit loose, the gown, modern, and a bit churchy. And I went, feeling confident and reserved at the same time.

Isaac Aju is a Nigerian writer whose works have appeared in Poetry X Hunger, Writers’ Journal -New York City, The Kalahari Review, and is forthcoming in Flapper Press. He lives in Aba where he works as a fashion designer.