Abigail is no stranger to the things one’s hands can do. She slices through a piece of onion with the precision of one who knows the workings of a knife, wielding it with extra firmness, and approaching her task with unnecessary carefulness, forgetting that she isn’t hovering over someone’s head, their brain to be precise, and angling her scalpel in a manner that separates skin from muscle, and muscle from bone without doing too much damage.

Occasionally there is a break in her focus. It happens when the sound of laughter collides with her ears, when the door to the restaurant swings open, or when she hears the raised voice of one of her staff seeking her attention. And each time, she returns to her task with a feeling of mild disappointment that buttresses the anticipation dancing at the bottom of her stomach. Anticipation that built up steadily within the past three weeks since he agreed to perform at her restaurant.

She raises her eyes to the entrance again, her hands absent-mindedly finding the ceramic bowl that will accommodate the onion slices. The door swings open and she holds her breath even though the clock on the wall reveals the time to be four in the evening. She chides herself because she knows his scheduled time of arrival is 6 p.m. His manager informed her assistant, Sharon, who had been the one to initiate contact, even though Abigail initially refused her idea of asking him to perform at the restaurant, citing the chances of him granting such a request as low.

But of course, Sharon didn’t know Abigail’s initial refusal was due to something else. She wasn’t aware that Abigail’s heart skidded to a stop when she heard he was touring Lagos. She also wasn’t aware that Abigail secretly longed to see him, had longed to see him. For five years. As Abigail stirs the onion slices in a sizzling pan of vegetable oil, her staff don’t know that he is the reason she is making this dish even though it’s common knowledge that egg fried rice isn’t exactly good business for the restaurant. Patrons rarely asked for it and most of it ended up going to waste.

“Madam, why you dey make fried rice with eggs?” Sisi, the head cook, asked when Abigail told her to bring eggs from the store in the back.

“Some new customers might want to try it,” Abigail replied, evading the question.

Sisi didn’t probe further, although Abigail could tell she wanted to. Just like she wants to right now as Abigail sprinkles Cameroon pepper into the pan, the beady, black molecules mixing with the yellowish-brown hue of the maggi. When several customers complained about excessive spiciness in some of their dishes, they eliminated Cameroon pepper, and resorted to using the regular red pepper Nigerians were accustomed to; the type that burned your tongue and infused your taste buds with a fieriness that wasn’t so strong it deterred you from exploring your food any further.

He loved Cameroon pepper, finding every opportunity to slip it into his meals. Noodles, jollof rice, egusi soup. It didn’t matter what food it was. For a moment, Abigail wonders if this trait of his has changed. Over the years, she found herself doing that often, wondering how much of him had changed. So much it became second nature to her.  He didn’t have much of an online presence, so there was a dearth of posts and pictures to sift through on social media.

But he granted interviews, mostly to TV stations and YouTube channels who, enamored by his musical prowess and his burgeoning status as a seasoned Afrofolk musician, wanted to know how he had done it, how he had carved a niche for himself. How he had managed to garner a huge number of fans who might not have gravitated towards his genre of music initially but began to find his presence in the music industry refreshing. Afrobeat was embedded in the soul of the average Nigerian. And so, he struggled for years for people to hear him, to see his talent.

Abigail saw it instantly, the first time they met. She had just graduated from the University of Lagos, and her friend, Bisola, the goofiest and most daring of her friends at the time, had taken it upon herself to throw a party at her parents’ estate in Banana Island. They had survived seven arduous years of medical school, with barely any time to spice up their social life, so Bisola had thought it fitting that they have a party and drown themselves in booze and spicy shawarma.

Something thrilling was added to the mix. A private concert, Bisola called it, and he arrived almost immediately with a guitar slung across his right shoulder and a confident smile to match. He introduced himself as a struggling musician, his dry humor eliciting cackles from Abigail’s friends. He carried himself with an apparent ease, slipping his guitar off his shoulder, before sitting cross-legged at the makeshift stage Bisola’s domestic staff had set up for him.

His voice wasn’t the only thing that mesmerized Abigail that night. He exuded a quiet strength that drew her in, propelling her to want to know more. When his eyes found hers in the crowd of giggling girls surrounding her, she hoped he also felt the surge of pleasure that zipped through her. Later, when they bumped into each other at the restroom and he shook her hand in what she presumed to be a formal introduction, she was almost sure he felt the charge that zinged through her fingers, burning and taunting her nerve endings.

Abigail was quick to say yes when Bisola informed her that he had asked for her number. When the sauce is ready, Abigail turns her attention to the rice, watching as it boils furiously over the stove, the cover almost slipping off. She positions the cover over the pot, steadying it. Through the dividing glass that separates the kitchen from the restaurant, she watches patrons filter in. A group of girls, dressed for a night out, move like a swarm of bees towards the bar. One has her hand above her head, angling her phone for a selfie. Or she could be recording. Probably an influencer documenting her experience at the restaurant so others can check it out.

Perhaps the girl’s recording might be the restaurant’s salvation if all else fails, and his performance tonight isn’t sufficient to attract the bevy of customers they once catered to until a Taxify driver tried to kidnap a patron in an alley nearby. News spread like wildfire on social media;  gossip blogs and hashtags were efficient messengers. Abigail’s restaurant, Hadassah’s Place, was implicated, and as should be expected of Nigerians who are poster children for caution and vigilance amidst the craziness that was Lagos, some patrons steered clear of the restaurant. No one wanted to be kidnapped.

Hadassah’s Place drew a diverse crowd. Self-proclaimed “Big Men,” influencers looking to satiate their curiosity on the happening places in Lagos, migrants from other states looking to make a name for themselves in what they regarded as the melting pot of the country, and couples seeking spots to commemorate the blissfulness of their love. In the past there had been proposals, birthday surprises, graduation gatherings. Now, things in the restaurant had slowed to a lazy murmur with only a few patrons threading their way through the restaurant in search of tables.

Still, Abigail takes it all in. Just like she did in the past, breathing in the airiness of life and freedom as she watched patrons through the dividing glass, her hands methodically working their way through whatever food was at their mercy. When a Big Man walked through the doors with a woman young enough to be his daughter on his arm, she pondered on the wife at home, sitting at the dining table, grinding her teeth, and staring hard at the cold food laid before her, untouched.

When a couple made their way through, stopping at the bar, and gazing longingly at each other, she wondered when they had known they loved each other, how long it would last, and if they would be the couple who grew old together, grey hairs at their temples with bones an almost breakable, fragile mass, their love an immutable emotion that stood the test of time.

When someone’s laughter rang out into the heat-infused air, embedding itself in the cacophony of cutleries colliding with plates, and patrons chatting feverishly, Abigail would close her eyes momentarily, imagining that by letting herself feel the life and rawness behind someone’s laugh, she could sever her mind from thoughts of death.

She would inundate herself with these sounds and sights, so if her legs ever steered her back to Third Mainland Bridge again and her mind enslaved her with its compulsions, beckoning her to throw herself overboard into the deep trenches of the river, she could easily override it.

“It will help to surround yourself with people, you know. Just try to see what it is they still hold on to in life, why life is still pleasant for them, why life is worth living. That way you won’t get drowned in those thoughts,” said her therapist, a bespectacled, Igbo woman in her fifties,  three years ago, when Abigail had just opened Hadassah’s Place.

Abigail thinks back to the first time she stopped at the bridge. It was their fourth wedding anniversary, and he was waiting for her at a new restaurant in Ajah. He told her over the phone that he had a surprise for her, and she forced her voice to carry excitement through the phone, murmuring “love you too” in a low tone, in return to his effusive declaration of love, because a lump had suddenly made its way up her throat.

She felt like a puppet, strung along by an invincible hand as she clambered out of her car, and stepped closer to the railing, the sound of cars hurtling past no match for the beat thrumming through her ears. A beat she realized came from the erratic dance of her heart as she stared down at the water and wondered what it might feel like if the water seeped through her skin, into her mouth, and made her lungs its home.

She heard yelling from the distance, and the harshness of a blaring horn as a car stopped a few meters away from hers, before rushing into her car, the spell that held her captive broken as she sped off, embarrassment coursing through her. What was I thinking? She thought angrily, confused as to why she had even considered throwing herself overboard.

Later, when she sat across from him, she almost sighed in frustration at his choice; a rooftop restaurant with a dizzying view of the lagoon that did nothing but resurrect the powers that had taken hold of her mind at Third Mainland Bridge. She tried to focus on his eyes, the smile lines at their corners as he took her hand and pressed his cold lips against it. She looked at his lips too, conjuring the pleasure that came with kissing them, hoping the distraction they engendered in the past would re-emerge.

Anything to prevent her from thinking of the water and its depths. From wondering if a brightness would replace the bleakness of her mind once she was pulled under by formidable currents. He had known she was sad. And that’s why he produced the tickets to Dubai from his pocket, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight, a shine in his eyes as he presented them to her.

In Dubai, he indulged her, and Abigail did her best to engage herself, savoring the hot, Arabian sun, letting a cold drink sizzle on her tongue, and burying her nose deeply in magazines so her mind wouldn’t wander. When they made love, she tried not to think of the IVF appointment that awaited her at the fertility clinic they patronized in Nigeria, tried not to regard their sexual expertise as futile and useless because it wouldn’t give them the child they sought.

Abigail saw in his eyes, a raw need, as he thrust in and out of her. She saw confirmation that he didn’t think of her body as less because of its failures. And she wished as she watched him sleep, his naked body tangled with hers, that she could look down on herself and see herself that way, see her body that way.

She wished that when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t feel the heaviness in her chest, didn’t feel like there were large stones tugging at the chambers of her heart. She wished when she cut through someone’s brain, determined to fix them, that she didn’t think of dead babies, and that the image of her lost babies, a serial, muddy mess of bloody cells that slipped from within her each time she conceived, didn’t form in her mind.

She wished that each time she began a new round of IVF treatment, anticipation didn’t metamorphose into disappointment that was both crippling and searing. Abigail googled sadness and infertility, hoping someone might spell it out for her. A word loomed in her mind, like a ghost waiting to appear, but she ignored it, refused to acknowledge it, refused to type it in the search bar. Sadness was easier. Sadness was normal. She couldn’t be depressed.

In Nigeria, no one openly or boldly said they were depressed. Depression meant something wasn’t quite right with your brain. Not a tumor, but an intangible thing likened to craziness. And craziness was the lean, starving man, who danced in tattered clothes, occasionally intercepting cars, rumors that he had escaped from Yaba Left¹, circulating the air.

Often she waited for him to see it, to notice, not wanting to say the word herself, because saying it would grant it validity, and then it would become something she couldn’t take back, something that would change the look in his eyes, remove the shine that beautified them and enamored her.

With each IVF treatment, she had summoned hope, and waited patiently for the child that would take away that feeling of heaviness. But with each crushed hope, the compulsions of her mind waxed stronger and she found herself returning to the bridge often, waiting until cars no longer hurtled past.

He was worried sick one night when she returned home rather late. The fear in his eyes as she came through the door disgruntled her, guilted her, and she promised herself not to return to the bridge again as he nestled close to her in bed, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

Now, Abigail wonders how different things might have been if she kept to that promise, if she didn’t stop her car at the bridge, again, on her way back from her night shift at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). She wonders how different things might have been if she simply told him the truth, if she didn’t take matters into her own hands and make a choice she sorely regrets now. She also wonders if she made assumptions about him, prematurely dictated his actions before he even had a chance to know.

Perhaps he would have accompanied her to Allen Avenue where she meets with her therapist twice a week. Perhaps he would have sought out a therapist even before she did, even before she came to terms with the severity of her condition. Perhaps he would have been comfortable with the absence of children in their home, her companionship all he needed.

But she won’t know these things except she opens a can of worms that is the past, except she asks him these things, except she reveals the secrets she has held onto when she sees him tonight. When his manager asked Sharon for the restaurant owner’s name, Abigail told Sharon to tell him Abigail Johnson. Johnson was her mother’s maiden name, a name he didn’t recognize. A name he wouldn’t discard easily. The name change was her means of cementing his coming.

But Abigail knew him to be observant, analytical, detailed. Perhaps when he heard Abigail he didn’t just think of her. Perhaps he also looked up the restaurant, even after his manager had done so, to confirm that Abigail Johnson wasn’t Abigail Abejide. That Abigail Johnson wasn’t the woman who swept him off his feet the first time he set eyes on her and carried his last name for five years.

That Abigail Johnson wasn’t the woman he stumbled upon in the arms of another man, defiling their matrimonial bed. That Abigail Johnson wasn’t the woman who tore his heart into shreds and propelled his next album to be centered on love and heartbreak.

Perhaps when Abigail sees him tonight, she can tell him that she didn’t mean to hurt him. That the man he saw her with was a “pretend lover,” someone desperate for money and eager to help her out with her plan. That she did it because she knew he wouldn’t grant her an easy break. Perhaps when she sees him tonight, she can tell him that her love still waxes strong, even after five years, and that she had to break away because their love was always one of ease, and the demons in her head had turned it into a baggage, one she struggled to juggle with other weights.

The weight of a career she came to realize was her parents’ dreams being lived through her, the weight of society and its expectations of her body, the weight of normalcy and the battle to keep a strong front to show that she wasn’t one of the crazy ones. Their love was never a weight, and so she had to release him once it became one.

Perhaps when Abigail sees him tonight, they can sit together, and reminisce about the past, oblivious to the hustle and bustle of patrons and restaurant staff around them, thinking of that night when they sat in the comfort of their living room, and joked around about opening a restaurant with live music.

That night when they thought of merging two things together, her expertise at cooking and his expertise at music. That night when they thought of a united dream and whispered sweet nothings to each other. Sisi alerts Abigail to the rice on the stove. Abigail turns off the stove and opens the pot, allowing the aroma to permeate the kitchen.

Translation Index

1. Yaba Left: The Federal Neuro Psychiatric Hospital in Nigeria. Popularly referred to as “Yaba Left” by Nigerians and located in Yaba, Lagos Mainland, Lagos State, Nigeria.

Oreoluwa Oladimeji is an MPH student at Drexel University. Originally from Nigeria, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biology (pre-medicine) from the Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. When she isn’t dealing with the familiar rigor of school work, she enjoys penning down her thoughts in the form of stories. She will be starting medical school this fall and is in the process of choosing a school. She has been published in African Writer Magazine and was a semifinalist in the Tulip Tree New Writers Story Contest. Her work is forthcoming in the Kalahari Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and The Meadow.