Once, after they’d quarreled about it, Chisom had thrown her hands up.

“Every time it’s me going to a doctor. Ah-ahn! I don tire. You sef, why don’t you go and see if the problem is with you?”

Ebenezer had recoiled in shock. Before he could even reply, she turned over in their bed and pulled her wrapper to cover her, pretending to fall asleep. He sat there for a few minutes, and by the time he thought of something to say, it seemed childish to wake her up, so he went to sleep, too. When he mentioned the conversation to one of his brothers a few days later, his brother laughed.

“Shey I told you?” he said. “Na so she dey blame you because say her womb dey dry. You see wetin you don start?” He went and told the rest of the family, and from there everyone got involved in condemning Chisom and telling Ebenezer what a useless wife he had.

Chisom stopped speaking to her husband because of it, and they started to move around each other like strangers. Ebenezer missed her, but he didn’t feel he should apologize for talking to his own family members about his marital problems. Chisom thought that, if he already knew how they felt about her, why would he tell them and give them more ammunition against her? So a silence grew up between them, and Ebenezer was too proud to break it.

He started to look more at other women—not with intent, just a lazy wondering, about what kind of wives they would have been, what it would be like if he’d married one of them and had some children. There was an Abiriba woman who ran a small food stall across the junction from where he worked. Everyone called her Mama Ben and she made the best beans Ebenezer had ever tasted. She had maybe four or five children, he wasn’t sure, and she was still pretty: very clear skin, a nice smile, and she dressed well. Ebenezer wondered what it would be like if he was her husband, with all these children and his wife with a business of her own, just like he always wanted.

He started going to Mama Ben’s food stall more and more, sitting at the round plastic table with cardboard folded under one leg to balance it. She always welcomed him with a smile, like she did with every customer, and while it was tempting to believe that the smile she gave him was different, special, Ebenezer knew it wasn’t. Still, it was nice to sit there, drink Pepsi, and talk with her other customers. Mama Ben looked at him as if he didn’t have that scar on his face, and the only other woman who had done that was Chisom. Ebenezer would stay at the food stall until it was late, keeping an eye out across the road in case a customer stopped by, and then he would wander home filled with goodwill and contentment. He ignored his wife’s silence and went to sleep with the memory of Mama Ben’s smile in his head.

One evening, when her other customers were gone, he offered to help her out with something in the kitchen, which gave him an excuse to get her alone. There, in a back corner, he plied her with sweet nonsense words and she giggled and he kissed the side of her sweaty neck. She tasted like salt. That night, he reached out in the dark of his bed and tugged at Chisom’s hip and she gave in to him, but he wasn’t thinking of her, not for any of the time. In fact, it was only with effort that he managed to say her name at one point, and then only because he didn’t know Mama Ben’s given name, and what else could you call out when you were in bed, really?

Chisom still slept as far away from him on the mattress as she could get, even after they’d had sex. The next morning she didn’t speak to him, and this time Ebenezer didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about Mama Ben. No, the woman on his mind now was this orange-seller he’d seen last week, with a sweet voice and a nyash that rolled seductively under her wrapper. She had shown up in his dreams, and he considered this to be a sign. Her hips looked like those of someone who could have children easily. Ebenezer had woken from the dream with an erection, and he thought of the woman as he had a quick breakfast of bread and tea. He looked for her on his way to work, and as he handled his first customer of the day, but he didn’t see her. The customer was a banker from Emerald Bank around the corner, sweating in his buttoned shirt and making small talk with a colleague he was giving a lift to, a short woman with fat braids cornrowed onto her head and a sharply ironed polyester skirt.

“I know the manager is afraid I will take his job,” the banker was saying. “And why not? The man is lazy! I could be doing the same work that he’s doing, if only I was provided the opportunity. You know, that is the key to success.” He looked down at his colleague, his face arranged with the seriousness of someone imparting great life advice. “Mark my words. Opportunity is what will land you success in life. When you see the door opening, you must step in! I’m sure your husband has experienced this. Ask him. He will know.”

The woman shot him a nasty look but the man completely missed it, his attention diverted by yet another woman, this one walking past Mama Ben’s canteen across the street. She was tall with long mammy-water hair in two plaits down her back, wearing a flowered dress that cut off at her calves. Her sandals were plain and brown but her toes had been painted a bright red. She walked like a model and looked like one, thin arms and sharp cheekbones. The banker ogled her, then made kissing noises at her, puckering his lips. When she didn’t turn her head, he shouted, “Tall babe! Come make I climb you small!” then burst into uproarious laughter, as if he’d said the wittiest thing. “Is that your hair?” he continued.

“What kind of nonsense question is that?” interrupted his colleague. “Does it look like her hair?”

The banker gave her a contemptuous glance. “Just because your own hair resembles broken broomstick, can somebody not grow their own?”

She ignored the insult. “As long as that? Abeg, it’s weave-on. Use common sense.”

“It’s a lie, I’ve seen plenty babes with long hair before.”

“Biko, all of them are weave-on! Are you stupid?”

“What about those Northern babes, nko? Their own hair grows well.”

“Those ones are always plaiting it. Besides, where are you seeing them like that?” She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him.

The banker was thinking hard. “I know I’ve seen somebody with long long hair like this before. Not this weave-on nonsense you’re talking about.” He snapped his fingers on alternating hands as if it would call forth the memory. “Somewhere, somewhere.”

His colleague took pity on him. “It’s okay. After all, it’s not as if we can expect you men to even tell the difference when it comes to hair. My brother till today can’t tell the difference between extensions and someone’s real hair.” She laughed at the male ignorance of it all. “He thought that when you relax it, it gets longer and then you can braid it.”

“It was at the bank!” her colleague exclaimed, having not listened to anything she’d been saying. “Eh hehn! There were these two girls who came in, and they had this long long fine hair! Kai! I think they were sisters. They were there with their father, but I’m sure their mother was a foreigner.”

“Oh,” said the woman, sucking her teeth. “If you’re talking about half-castes, then that one is different.”

“I know those girls,” said Ebenezer, tightening the tire he’d just replaced on the man’s car. Both bankers looked down at him in surprise, crouched and greasy with worn slippers and dusty feet.

“Ehn, you know them?” The man was smirking as he asked. “How do you know them?”

“Their father is a customer. They look like twins except that one of them is taller, abi?”

The banker nodded grudgingly. “It’s true,” he said. “That’s what I thought also, that maybe they were twins.”

The woman was getting impatient with the conversation. “And so? I’m saying that tall woman was wearing weave-on. End of story.” They all turned to look at the woman and her hair again, but she was too far down the road.

The bankers paid Ebenezer and left, and he went back to wondering if the orange-seller would walk by that day or not.