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Chika Unigwe is the winner of the 2012 Nigeria Prize for Literature for On Black Sisters Street.
On Black Sisters Street tells the haunting story of four very different women who have left their African homeland for the riches of Europe and who are thrown together by bad luck and big dreams into a sisterhood that will change their lives. Each night, Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce stand in the windows of Antwerp’s red-light district, promising to make men’s desires come true if only for half an hour. They offer their bodies to strangers but their hearts to no one, each focused on earning enough to get herself free, to send money home, or to save up for her own future. Drawn together by Sisi’s murder, the women must choose between their secrets and their safety.
This first paperback edition of On Black Sisters Street celebrates once again the U.S. publication debut of Chika Unigwe, a brilliant new writer and a standout voice among contemporary African authors.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
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Chika Unigwe was born in Nigeria and now lives in Belgium with fellow and a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation fellow. She holds a PhD from the University of Leiden. She is the recipient of several awards for her writing, including first prize in the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition. In 2004 she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her first novel, De Feniks, was published in Dutch in 2005.
MAY 12, 2006
The world was exactly as it should be. No more and definitely no less. She had the love of a good man. A house. And her own money--still new and fresh and the healthiest shade of green--the thought of it buoyed her and gave her a rush that made her hum.
These same streets she had walked before seemed to have acquired a certain newness. Humming, relishing the notion of new beginnings, she thought of how much her life was changing: Luc. Money. A house. She was already becoming someone else. Metamorphosing, she told herself, recalling the word from a biology class. Sloughing off a life that no longer suited her.
What she did not know, what she would find out only hours from now, was just how absolute the transition would be.
Sisi navigated the Keyserlei and imagined everything she could buy with her brand-new wealth. It would buy her forgetfulness, even from those memories that did not permit silence, making her yell in her sleep so that she woke up restless, wanting to cry. Now the shops sparkled and called to her, and she answered, touching things that took her fancy, marveling in the snatches of freedom, heady with a joy that emitted light around her and made her surer than ever that the Prophecy was undoubtedly true. This was the true epiphany. Not the one she had on a certain Wednesday night on the Vingerlingstraat. That one was a pseudo-epiphany. She knew that now.
She was hungry and stood undecided between the Panos and the Ekxi on the Keyserlei. Her new life smiled at her, benevolent and lush. It nudged her toward the Ekxi, with its price a notch higher than Panos's. She went in and bought a sandwich with lettuce spilling out the sides, ruffled and moist. To go with it, a bottle of thick fruit cocktail. She sat at a table outside, her shopping bags at her feet; the bags shimmied in the light spring breeze, evidence of her break from a parsimonious past. What should she get? Maybe a gift for Luc. A curtain for his doorless room. Imagine a room without a door! Ha! The architect who designed the house had a thing for space and light, and since Luc was coming out of a depression when he bought the house, he had been certain that space and light were the very things he needed. The lack of a door had not disturbed him in the least. "Rooms must have doors," Sisi told him when he showed her around the house. "Or curtains, at the very least!" Luc had said nothing in response. And silence was acquiescence. Certainly. Curtains with a frenetic design of triangles and squares, bold purple and white splashes against a cocoa brown, found in the HEMA. She imagined what the other women would say of Luc's doorless bedroom. She imagined their incredulous laughter. And that was enough to feed a guilt that she was trying hard to stop. She hadn't abandoned them. Had she? She had just . . . well, moved on. Surely, surely, she had that right. Still, she wondered: What were they doing now? When would they notice that she was gone?
In a house on the Zwartezusterstraat, the women Sisi was thinking of--Ama, Joyce, and Efe--were at that very moment preparing for work, rushing in and out of the bathroom, swelling its walls with their expectations: that tonight they would do well; that the men who came would be a multitude; that they would not be too demanding. And more than that, that they would be generous.
"Who has my mascara? Where's my fucking mascara?" Ama shouted, emptying a makeup bag on the tile floor. Joyce was at the same time stuffing a denim duffel bag with a deodorant spray, a beach towel, a duster, and her Smiley, so nicknamed by Sisi. Smiley was a lubricant gel, innocuously packaged in a plastic see-through teddy bear with an orange conical hat and a wide smile; it might have been a child's bottle of glue. She blocked her mother's face, looking aghast at Smiley, her lips rounding to form a name that was not Joyce.
"Where's Sisi?" she asked.
"I haven't seen her. Maybe she don' leave already," Efe said, putting an electric toothbrush into a toilet bag. In an inner pocket of the bag was a picture of a boy in a baseball cap. On the back of the photograph were the initials L.I. The picture was wrinkled and the gloss had worn off, but when it was first sent to her it would have been easy to see (in the shine of the gloss that highlighted a broad forehead) that the boy bore a close semblance to her. The way a son might his mother. She carried this picture everywhere.
They still had a bit of time before they had to leave, but they liked to get ready early. There were things that could not be rushed. Looking good was one. They did not want to turn up at work looking half asleep and with half of their gear forgotten.
"How come Sisi left so early?" Joyce asked.
"Who knows?" Ama answered, running her hand quickly across her neck as if to assure herself that the gold chain that she always wore was still there. "All this Sisi, Sisi, Sisi, are you lovers? Maybe she's gone on one of her walks."
Ama laughed, slitting her eyes to brush on mascara.
Sisi went out alone at least twice a week, refusing company when it was offered. Nobody knew where she went except that she sometimes came back with boxes of chocolate and bags of Japanese fans and baby booties embroidered in lace, fridge magnets and T-shirts with Belgian beer logos printed on them. "Gifts," she mumbled angrily when Joyce asked her once who they were for.
Joyce was already out of the bathroom. She had hoped Sisi would help her cornrow her hair. In between perm and braids, her hair was a wilderness that would not be subdued. Neither Ama nor Efe could braid. Nothing for it now, she would have to hold it in a bun and hope that Madam would not notice that the bun was an island in the middle of her head, surrounded by insubordinate hair that scattered every which way. If Sisi had not left, if she was simply running late, she would have Madam to answer to. For Sisi's sake, Joyce hoped she would be back on time. How could anyone forget what Madam had done to Efe the night she turned up for work late? Nothing could excuse her behavior, Madam said. Not even the fact of her grandmother's death.
ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT
It was not every death that earned a party. But if the departed was old and beloved, then a party was very much in order. Efe's grandmother was both. And since she was too far away to attend the burial herself, the next best thing, the expected thing, was a big party. Plus, in dismal November, nothing could beat a good party.
Efe did not tell Madam of the death. Or of the party. Nobody told Madam anything. It was not like, if she were invited, she would attend anyway.
The girls had started the day in the kitchen doing dishes from the previous day. Sisi's laughter was the loudest, rising and drowning out the voices of the other women. She slapped her thighs with a damp kitchen towel, and the strength of the laughter shut her eyes. "Tell me, Efe, your aunty really believed her husband?"
"Yes. She did. He told her she could not go abroad with him because the British embassy required her GCSE results before they would give her a visa. Dat na de only way he could tink of to stop her wahalaing him about traveling with him. Four wives, and she wanted him to pick her above the rest? And she no be even the chief wife. Imagine! De woman just dey craze!"
"Your uncle handled it well. Sometimes it's just easier to lie to people. Saves you a lot of trouble and time," Joyce said, placing a drinking glass she had just dried in the cupboard above her head.
"Men are bastards," Ama said.
"Ama, lighten up. Since when did this story become about men being bastards, eh? Everything has to be so serious with you; you know how to spoil a good day. You just have to get worked up over nothing!" Sisi wiped a plate dry, examined it for smudges, and finding none, placed it on top of another on the work surface beside the sink.
Ama turned toward Sisi and hissed. "Move the plates, abeg. If you leave them there, they'll only get wet again. Why don't you put them away as soon as you've dried?" She hissed again and went to work scrubbing a pot in the kitchen sink. "How could you burn rice, Sisi? I can't get the fucking pot clean!"
"I don't know what's eating you up, Ama, but I don't want any part of it. Whoever sent you, tell them you didn't see me, I beg of you."
"Fuck off. Why don't you fuck off on one of your long walks?" Ama's voice was a storm building.
Efe tried to calm the storm. "Girls, girls, it's a beautiful day. Make una no ruin am!" She hoped it would not rain. It was a beautiful day for November: leaves turned aubergine-purple and yellow and white by a mild autumn and a sky that did not forebode rain. A minor miracle for the time of year. "See as de day just dey like fine picture, and una wan spoil am?"
"Nobody's ruining anything. Anyway, I'm done here." Ama pulled out the now gleaming pot and walked out of the kitchen into the sitting room. She flooded the room with the twang boom bam of a Highlife tune. She lit a cigarette and began to dance.
Efe, swishing a kitchen towel over her head, sighed and followed her into the sitting room. "I can see you don' dey get ready for the party, Ama. Oooh, shake that booty, girl! Shake am like your mama teach you!"
"Oh, shut it! What has my mother got to do with my dancing?" Ama moved away from Efe, the crucifix around her neck glinting. Her anger seemed blown up. Exaggerated. But Efe let it pass. She had other things on her mind.
The party, for starters. The Moroccan man who had promised to get her cartons of beer at a discount had just called to say that his contact had not come through. Now the drinks would cost her a lot more than she had budgeted for. The girls had promised to help her with the food, but with Ama in this mood, she might have one fewer pair of hands. Everything had to go to plan today. A burial ceremony for her grandmother had to be talked about for months to come. That was how much she loved the woman. And they were not even related. ...
The world was exactly as it should be. No more and definitely no less. She had the love of a good man. A house. And her own money--still new and fresh and the healthiest shade of green--the thought of it buoyed her and gave her a rush that made her hum.
These same streets she had walked before seemed to have acquired a certain newness. Humming, relishing the notion of new beginnings, she thought of how much her life was changing: Luc. Money. A house. She was already becoming someone else. Metamorphosing, she told herself, recalling the word from a biology class. Sloughing off a life that no longer suited her.
What she did not know, what she would find out only hours from now, was just how absolute the transition would be.
Sisi navigated the Keyserlei and imagined everything she could buy with her brand-new wealth. It would buy her forgetfulness, even from those memories that did not permit silence, making her yell in her sleep so that she woke up restless, wanting to cry. Now the shops sparkled and called to her, and she answered, touching things that took her fancy, marveling in the snatches of freedom, heady with a joy that emitted light around her and made her surer than ever that the Prophecy was undoubtedly true. This was the true epiphany. Not the one she had on a certain Wednesday night on the Vingerlingstraat. That one was a pseudo-epiphany. She knew that now.
She was hungry and stood undecided between the Panos and the Ekxi on the Keyserlei. Her new life smiled at her, benevolent and lush. It nudged her toward the Ekxi, with its price a notch higher than Panos's. She went in and bought a sandwich with lettuce spilling out the sides, ruffled and moist. To go with it, a bottle of thick fruit cocktail. She sat at a table outside, her shopping bags at her feet; the bags shimmied in the light spring breeze, evidence of her break from a parsimonious past. What should she get? Maybe a gift for Luc. A curtain for his doorless room. Imagine a room without a door! Ha! The architect who designed the house had a thing for space and light, and since Luc was coming out of a depression when he bought the house, he had been certain that space and light were the very things he needed. The lack of a door had not disturbed him in the least. "Rooms must have doors," Sisi told him when he showed her around the house. "Or curtains, at the very least!" Luc had said nothing in response. And silence was acquiescence. Certainly. Curtains with a frenetic design of triangles and squares, bold purple and white splashes against a cocoa brown, found in the HEMA. She imagined what the other women would say of Luc's doorless bedroom. She imagined their incredulous laughter. And that was enough to feed a guilt that she was trying hard to stop. She hadn't abandoned them. Had she? She had just . . . well, moved on. Surely, surely, she had that right. Still, she wondered: What were they doing now? When would they notice that she was gone?
In a house on the Zwartezusterstraat, the women Sisi was thinking of--Ama, Joyce, and Efe--were at that very moment preparing for work, rushing in and out of the bathroom, swelling its walls with their expectations: that tonight they would do well; that the men who came would be a multitude; that they would not be too demanding. And more than that, that they would be generous.
"Who has my mascara? Where's my fucking mascara?" Ama shouted, emptying a makeup bag on the tile floor. Joyce was at the same time stuffing a denim duffel bag with a deodorant spray, a beach towel, a duster, and her Smiley, so nicknamed by Sisi. Smiley was a lubricant gel, innocuously packaged in a plastic see-through teddy bear with an orange conical hat and a wide smile; it might have been a child's bottle of glue. She blocked her mother's face, looking aghast at Smiley, her lips rounding to form a name that was not Joyce.
"Where's Sisi?" she asked.
"I haven't seen her. Maybe she don' leave already," Efe said, putting an electric toothbrush into a toilet bag. In an inner pocket of the bag was a picture of a boy in a baseball cap. On the back of the photograph were the initials L.I. The picture was wrinkled and the gloss had worn off, but when it was first sent to her it would have been easy to see (in the shine of the gloss that highlighted a broad forehead) that the boy bore a close semblance to her. The way a son might his mother. She carried this picture everywhere.
They still had a bit of time before they had to leave, but they liked to get ready early. There were things that could not be rushed. Looking good was one. They did not want to turn up at work looking half asleep and with half of their gear forgotten.
"How come Sisi left so early?" Joyce asked.
"Who knows?" Ama answered, running her hand quickly across her neck as if to assure herself that the gold chain that she always wore was still there. "All this Sisi, Sisi, Sisi, are you lovers? Maybe she's gone on one of her walks."
Ama laughed, slitting her eyes to brush on mascara.
Sisi went out alone at least twice a week, refusing company when it was offered. Nobody knew where she went except that she sometimes came back with boxes of chocolate and bags of Japanese fans and baby booties embroidered in lace, fridge magnets and T-shirts with Belgian beer logos printed on them. "Gifts," she mumbled angrily when Joyce asked her once who they were for.
Joyce was already out of the bathroom. She had hoped Sisi would help her cornrow her hair. In between perm and braids, her hair was a wilderness that would not be subdued. Neither Ama nor Efe could braid. Nothing for it now, she would have to hold it in a bun and hope that Madam would not notice that the bun was an island in the middle of her head, surrounded by insubordinate hair that scattered every which way. If Sisi had not left, if she was simply running late, she would have Madam to answer to. For Sisi's sake, Joyce hoped she would be back on time. How could anyone forget what Madam had done to Efe the night she turned up for work late? Nothing could excuse her behavior, Madam said. Not even the fact of her grandmother's death.
ZWARTEZUSTERSTRAAT
It was not every death that earned a party. But if the departed was old and beloved, then a party was very much in order. Efe's grandmother was both. And since she was too far away to attend the burial herself, the next best thing, the expected thing, was a big party. Plus, in dismal November, nothing could beat a good party.
Efe did not tell Madam of the death. Or of the party. Nobody told Madam anything. It was not like, if she were invited, she would attend anyway.
The girls had started the day in the kitchen doing dishes from the previous day. Sisi's laughter was the loudest, rising and drowning out the voices of the other women. She slapped her thighs with a damp kitchen towel, and the strength of the laughter shut her eyes. "Tell me, Efe, your aunty really believed her husband?"
"Yes. She did. He told her she could not go abroad with him because the British embassy required her GCSE results before they would give her a visa. Dat na de only way he could tink of to stop her wahalaing him about traveling with him. Four wives, and she wanted him to pick her above the rest? And she no be even the chief wife. Imagine! De woman just dey craze!"
"Your uncle handled it well. Sometimes it's just easier to lie to people. Saves you a lot of trouble and time," Joyce said, placing a drinking glass she had just dried in the cupboard above her head.
"Men are bastards," Ama said.
"Ama, lighten up. Since when did this story become about men being bastards, eh? Everything has to be so serious with you; you know how to spoil a good day. You just have to get worked up over nothing!" Sisi wiped a plate dry, examined it for smudges, and finding none, placed it on top of another on the work surface beside the sink.
Ama turned toward Sisi and hissed. "Move the plates, abeg. If you leave them there, they'll only get wet again. Why don't you put them away as soon as you've dried?" She hissed again and went to work scrubbing a pot in the kitchen sink. "How could you burn rice, Sisi? I can't get the fucking pot clean!"
"I don't know what's eating you up, Ama, but I don't want any part of it. Whoever sent you, tell them you didn't see me, I beg of you."
"Fuck off. Why don't you fuck off on one of your long walks?" Ama's voice was a storm building.
Efe tried to calm the storm. "Girls, girls, it's a beautiful day. Make una no ruin am!" She hoped it would not rain. It was a beautiful day for November: leaves turned aubergine-purple and yellow and white by a mild autumn and a sky that did not forebode rain. A minor miracle for the time of year. "See as de day just dey like fine picture, and una wan spoil am?"
"Nobody's ruining anything. Anyway, I'm done here." Ama pulled out the now gleaming pot and walked out of the kitchen into the sitting room. She flooded the room with the twang boom bam of a Highlife tune. She lit a cigarette and began to dance.
Efe, swishing a kitchen towel over her head, sighed and followed her into the sitting room. "I can see you don' dey get ready for the party, Ama. Oooh, shake that booty, girl! Shake am like your mama teach you!"
"Oh, shut it! What has my mother got to do with my dancing?" Ama moved away from Efe, the crucifix around her neck glinting. Her anger seemed blown up. Exaggerated. But Efe let it pass. She had other things on her mind.
The party, for starters. The Moroccan man who had promised to get her cartons of beer at a discount had just called to say that his contact had not come through. Now the drinks would cost her a lot more than she had budgeted for. The girls had promised to help her with the food, but with Ama in this mood, she might have one fewer pair of hands. Everything had to go to plan today. A burial ceremony for her grandmother had to be talked about for months to come. That was how much she loved the woman. And they were not even related. ...
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- PublisherOhio University Press
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 0821419927
- ISBN 13 9780821419922
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages272
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