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‘Keeks, your voice just went very Mariah whistle-note high. You sure you’re OK?’
‘He and I love you and Kofi lots. So there’s no reason for all this tiptoeing, because it’s not about us. We’re irrelevant in this all, actually.’
Apocalypse aftershocks have been beginning to rattle through me for the past month. I think of the wedding and I feel overfull with excitement – my body thrums with the thrill of it – and then the chaser of tremors occurs, a destabilising feeling from nowhere that makes my chest feel tight and my heartbeat pound and my stomach swirl.
‘Oh shit, forgot to say – am I able to excuse myself from bridesmaid duties? Like, theoretically, what if I just want to be a regular guest? Because I love you, but I know that you’re going to be a bridal terrorist and I am not Kiki or Chioma. I don’t have their patience and it’s not a good look to beat a bride’s ass before her wedding day. I’ve done it on a wedding day before, but that was a whole thing. She came for me first.’
Love the honesty!
Aminah and Shanti are almost the chaotic good and chaotic evil of each other, their positions switching according to the situation.
‘Shit, man, you’re just so easy. Be calm. It would be an honour, bitch. I will slap you if you talk to me crazy, though.’
The two have their own friendship treatise that consists of a comfortable sharpness and the veneer of a grudging affection that you can only find in sisters who are mildly competitive with each other. ‘And I’ll slap you right back, honey,’ she says.
While I initially came to know Shanti and Chioma in second year through the very normal friendship meet-cute of their being previously romantically entangled with the man I was to fall in love with, mine and Aminah’s friendship started on the first day of university. Together, we stripped an obnoxious rugby boy of his toga after some mild racial and sexual harassment on his part at the bins outside our residential building. It was love at first shared spite. Mine and Aminah’s relationship is that of soulmates: my best friend, my sister, my person. It never lets up, our love for each other only
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‘You’re mad at me.’ ‘Nope. I’m not mad, Meenz. Just confused. How could you not tell me that Malakai was coming for your engagement party? I was prepared for the wedding – it’s a while away – but the engagement party is basically tomorrow—’
I nod and squeeze her hand, because annoyance at Aminah doesn’t metabolise well with my body. My blood rejects it – it lies heavy on top of it and restricts its flow – and so I let it go, because it’s hard to carry and because I understand why she did it.
I just think it’s weird how he thinks that he could just offer to be my boss and think I’ll accept. It’s like he doesn’t know me. He once got me a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant.’ Aminah’s face is one of delicate disgust, her nose crinkling slightly. ‘Ew.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Gold?’ she says with some generosity, throwing Bakari a bone, hoping that he at least got my favourite metal tone right. I wince. ‘Silver.’ Aminah gawps at me. ‘No.’
I really respect you not telling me. Gifting heart-shaped jewellery is like someone proposing on Valentine’s Day.’ I stretch out my hands in the air. ‘Thank you! Or having a Great Gatsby-themed New Year’s party.’ ‘Unoriginal.’ ‘Redundant.’
‘You think he has a workplace kink? Didn’t he have that “Yes, Chef” fantasy?’
Aaaaaah!!!
You would at least want to find something else of your own to replace The Heartbeat, but I guess it was his way of being concerned. No offence, but he’s kind of like an alien who is learning to be human. In a cute way!’
Just what everyone wants to hear about their partner.
That little hiccup before was a glitch. We’re good. We’re always good.
‘Besides, this is your moment! You’re getting married to your second-best friend!
Aminah releases a delicate snort that sounds how a fairy might when it sneezes. In my top-five favourite sounds.
You passed me a muffin and asked me if I wanted it buttered.
‘Aminah, please. I can’t blush.’ ‘We’ve been through this – you absolutely can blush.
See, I knew you were discombobulated by this Malakai thing—’ ‘Um, I’m perfectly combobulated, thanks.’
Maybe Bakari was right? Maybe I shouldn’t have quit so recklessly.’ Aminah shakes her head with some disgust, holding a bejewelled hand up. ‘Ew. Never say that in my presence again. You did the right thing. Heartbeat is about heart and they wanted to attack it—’
You know I’m all about securing the bag, but I know you. This wouldn’t have been worth it for you. I’m proud of you.
Aminah’s always been more comfortable than me, her parents having owned a Nigerian snack empire, and it’s never been an issue – she’s never made me feel a way about it – and when I worked in the restaurant during uni summers she’d come almost every day, keeping me company.
‘Um, so we’re changing the date of the engagement party. For three weeks’ time.’
It’s just that’s when my parents are going to be in the country at the same time as Kofi’s. One of my big-mouthed sisters blabbed to them about us having an engagement party and they insisted on coming even though I said it’s just meant to be a gathering of our friends and cousins.
‘Kikiola, I’ve known you since you still thought it was cool to wear ironic lace chokers.’
Our relationship is such that we have been in deeply uncool trenches together. You can’t hide from me.’
My job is to make your life easier in this process, and I know managing two sets of African parents isn’t going to be easy, so let me do this for you.’
She’s a fairy whose sole power is to be able to banish any potential annoyance by being ridiculously adorable. The inability to find her infuriating is infuriating.
Now, how do you feel about a renaissance theme?’ ‘Art history or “Alien Superstar”?’ ‘If we do it in a Tuscan villa, maybe both at the same time.’
Haha!
I’m grateful to redirect my energy from figuring out how to not feel emotionally disembowelled at the sight of the man who stole my heart for, it seems, the sole purpose of breaking it.
Malakai proposed in varying iterations, periodically.
The knowledge was theoretical for now, of course, I was twenty-four and he was twenty-five, with so much to do and to learn and to become. The reality of it was further in the future, but, still, the weight of its existence anchored me to us.
Since graduation, Malakai had rolled through short-term contract stints at various production companies and post-production houses as a runner, whilst filming weddings and christenings and motives and fiftieth-birthday parties for fifty-five-year-old aunties as a side hustle.
It was here, in the basement of a Soho cocktail bar called Smoke & Mirrors, that Malakai had met and subsequently charmed Matthew Knight, British indie darling turned Hollywood juggernaut, the first Black man to win an Academy Award for Best Director (a visually gorgeous and excruciating film called Primative, a loose retelling of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe).
He had an eye for the most visceral of feelings and a heart for the most evocative of visuals, and he was created for this, for capturing moments, helping to tell stories, for helping people feel less alone.
‘So you’d rather beg your dad to work at his property firm in Ikoyi, yeah? You wanna go back to him and tell him that he’s right, and your filmmaking career is the dream of a fool?
And now, a year on, my boyfriend was the protégé of one of the most acclaimed directors in the world, frequenting afterparties with entertainment’s elite and asking me if I could skive off my assistant job at the publishing house in which my role was to order lunch and warm a boardroom seat whenever a white editor (they were all white) needed A Black to wheel out so they could poach a timely, powerful book about race.
My journey after graduation was a little bumpier than Kai’s. Whilst he had a clear direction – he wanted to make films – for the first time in my life, it occurred to me that I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. Throughout uni, I’d been decisive, ambitious: get high grades in my Media and Politics degree, then ensure our university ACS, Blackwell, didn’t crumble under my presidency, then it was to get into my master’s programme, then it was to get a distinction in my Global Politics and Popular Culture degree, and it wasn’t till I’d completed all that, that I realised I had no idea what
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I wrote all the time, but didn’t know if I was good enough to attempt journalism, finding the intersection of my interests tough to write about in a field where it was music or politics or relationships. I considered America – I’d had a summer fellowship at NYU where I’d done well – and I knew Malakai and I would be fine.
when I left uni all the media and broadcast connections I’d made told me they couldn’t afford to sponsor a visa.
because smiling and nodding and saying ‘wow’ and ‘totally’ and ‘so true’ every few seconds seemed to ensure trust.
I wasn’t sure it was exactly right for me, but who had a job that was exactly right? Not everyone had a direct calling like Malakai. I loved books and reading, so maybe it was right enough.
I’d always felt certain of so many things in life – of myself – and now I felt like I was in a place where I was losing my individuality a little, my voice.
Then when I’d come across a breathtaking short story by a young Senegalese girl about Mami Wata, an editor had sucked some air between her lips and said that though she ‘enjoyed’ my ‘initiative’, and that I should ‘keep it up’ (with a tight-lipped smile that one might give to a small child holding up a picture of a wonky triangle they’d drawn), she said she found fairy tales too archaic and, plus, ‘Race-bent Little Mermaid is kind of overdone. Don’t you think?’
Oof.
‘You’re going to make it better, because you’re the best.
Because you can never be lost. It’s impossible for you. There’s something in your core that always knows what you want. You just gotta . . . stay still for a bit. Let it come to you, you know?
Bad advice.
You don’t suddenly one day discover you’re a musician. You are it. Can’t live without it. You just do. You just be.’
’Skinda like loving Kiki Banjo. Ain’t no trying. It just is. You just do.’ His lips brushed a shiver through my ear. ‘You just be.’
Damn. I was so looking forward to sensitivity-reading a fictionalised memoir of a slave owner.’
