The generator had gone off again, Sade lit a candle on the kitchen counter and didn't bother complaining about it, After six years of living in Lagos, you either made peace with NEPA or you spent your whole life angry, but she had chosen peace, mostly.....
She was stirring egusi soup when Tunde walked in, He was still wearing his work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, His tie loosened. He looked like a man who had fought traffic on the Third Mainland Bridge and barely survived, "It smells good " he said.
"It is almost ready " Sade replied.
He sat at the kitchen table and loosened his tie the rest of the way, the candle threw soft shadows across his face,Outside, rain was beginning, first the smell of it, then the sound, then the full Lagos downpour that turns every road into a river.
They had been married for three years, they had been five years before that. Eight years in total, Sade sometimes counted in her head the way you count something you are afraid of losing.
"Amaka called me today " she said without turning from the pot.
Tunde was quiet for a moment. "What did she say?"
"She said her brothers company in Abuja is looking for a head of operations " Sade paused. "She said she mentioned your name."
There was another silence. This one was longer.
"Tunde."
"I know."
"You know?" She turned now spoon still in her hand, "So you already knew about this?"
Tunde looked at her steadily, He was not defensive, He was not guilty exactly, Just careful, The way he got when he was trying to find the words before he spoke them, Sade used to love that about him, Now it was testing her patience.
"Emeka called me a week ago" he said. "I did not say anything because I had not decided anything."
"Now?"
"And now I still haven't decided anything."
Sade set the spoon down on the counter, outside the rain was loud and consistent, It was hammering the zinc of the roof of the boys quarters next door, She crossed her arms.
"Abuja is not Lagos, Tunde."
"I know where Abuja is."
"That is not what I mean and you know it." She sat across from him at the table, The candle flickered between them "We built everything here,My job, Your mother, Our friends, This flat, Everything is here and you just want to pack and go?"
"I want us to have a better life."
"We have a life."
Sade.... Tunde said her name the way he used to say it when they were younger, softer, Like it meant something "I am not running away from anything, I am trying to build something, You know for us, For...." he stopped.
She looked at him.
He looked at the candle.
They both knew what he had not said The thing they had been carefully not saying for a year now. The empty room down the hall they had painted yellow. Too optimistic, Too soon, the name they had chosen and quietly folded away.
"For us " he finished.
Her eyes were wet, She did not let them spill.
"If you go to Abuja " she said quietly. "What are you promising me?"
Tunde reached across the table and covered both her hands with his, his palms were warm, Sade remembered the time he held her hands, at a wedding in Surulere. A friends reception, A man she barely knew who held her hands during the song like he had been waiting to do it.
"I am promising you the thing I promised you in that church three years ago " he said. "That where I go you go, That I do not make decisions without you, That this...." he squeezed her hands "is the thing I am building everything around."
"That is a lot of words."
"I know."
"Tunde I need more than words."
"Then let me show you." He stood up. He came around the table, crouched in front of her the way he used to when she was sad and he did not know how to fix it but refused to leave "Come with me to Abuja, Just to see it, just to look.. If you hate it, If it feels wrong. We do not go. Simple."
She looked at him for a time.
The rain kept falling.
"The soup will burn " she said.
Tunde smiled that quiet smile. "Then lets go and eat."
She stood, He stood too. She went back to the pot, He got the plates down, from the cabinet,They moved around each other in the kitchen the way people do when they have shared a space long enough that their bodies know the choreography.
It was not a full yes, it was not resolution, It was two people choosing again, The way you have to keep choosing to stay inside the story.
Outside Lagos rain fell on everything equally. The goslow, The generator smoke and the street hawkers who had long gone home.. It asked nothing of anyone.. Promised nothing in return.
Inside that kitchen in the candlelight something small and stubborn held.
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