Free On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe Page B

money—Titus wanted to milk, so he had jumped at the chance of living with the man for five years, working in his shop and learning the secret of his success firsthand.
    In his first year of marriage, his apprenticeship was done, and even though his former master gave him some money, as was customary, to start his own business in car parts, he had thrown his lot in with a man—another just-graduated apprentice with big ideas—and they pooled resources. They brainstormed and agreed that money was in women; their logic was that even a man who would not spend money on himself would spend it on a woman. They started by importing wigs—shiny, glossy wigs they hoped to sell to all the Lagos women dying for good hair without the trouble of going to a salon. It had not done as well as they had hoped. They had huge competition from Aba and Onitsha traders who imported wigs from Korea and sold them at much cheaper rates than they sold theirs. So they invested a huge chunk of what was left of their capital into skin-lightening creams. Lagos men loved light-skinned women; this was sure to be a winner. But their shipment of
Yellow Skin toning lotion
, with its promise of “noticeably lighter skin in fourteen days guaranteed or your money back,” arrived with half its contents broken and the unbroken half sullied by lotion. They spent five days and three thousand naira on cleaning the dirtied jars. Titus’s business partner would see this as a warning sign that worse was in store for them if they stayed together, and he would pull out, preferring to cut his losses. But Titus was the sort of man who persevered, especially if he was convinced he was right. That was one of the lessons he picked up from his former master: “Never give up if your heart and your head tell you that you are right. People can disappoint you, but your heart and your head never will. Make them your best friends.”
    Titus was still certain he could become rich by concentrating onwomen. There was nothing flawed in the logic that had attracted him to a business that targeted women in the first place. He was also certain that his partner was a fool for pulling out before they had struck gold. He only had to find something that pandered enough to women’s vanity to make him wealthy. His wife remained patient, counting pennies while he dreamed up one unsuccessful scheme after another, rubbing his tense muscles at night, telling him, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay, don’t worry about it, eh. Just don’t worry about it.”
    He discovered the lacuna in the human-hair business quite by accident in his bed. He said it came to him in a dream, a sort of vision. A deep biblical voice instructed him to go to India and import the finest hair Lagos had ever seen. Not even his wife knew if this was true, if the vision was a tale he had made up. But he had gone to India and returned after eleven weeks, gaunt and hungry for some
proper
food. Close on his feet, a container full of hair extensions followed. “The rest, as they say, is history” was how his wife always concluded the narration of their rags-to-riches story. She was beside him when they bought their first car. She went with him when he consulted an architect to draw up plans for their house, saying how many rooms she wanted, where she wanted the kitchen, the playroom. She stood beside him when the foundation of their new home was laid. And when the house was finally ready, she bought the furniture and curtains. She was not about to let any other woman lay claim to the fruit of her patience. None would share the money she had waited so patiently and so good-humoredly for Titus to make. It was her right and her children’s legacy, so she guarded it jealously. He could have his women—honey always attracted bees—but the bees had to remain in their hives and keep their young with them. The honey jar was hers to keep, and she intended to do so, encircling it with two hands to keep it close to her