Black Sunday

Ariyike’s chapter takes place in 2010. She begins by explaining a segment on her Christian-themed radio show called “Letting God Write Your Love Story,” and how she disliked interviewing people for that part. She believes most people are “completely evil and irredeemable” (162). She thinks people who prefer the happy love stories are not willing to face the world as it is.

Dexter introduces his fiancée Cindy the month before he announces he is leaving Chill FM. He and Ariyike start sleeping together again. Ariyike says she was addicted to the “mix of knowledge that he was on the brink of becoming truly phenomenal in the industry and the idea that I had the ability to hurt someone as beautiful and careful as Cindy” (164).

She also soon finds out that her radio show was ending because the New Church, who funded it, decided to invest in a satellite TV station. Her job was cut in the process, so she decided to go see Pastor David—the leader of the New Church.

Ariyike reveals that right before their father left, he pulled her and Bibike aside and told them to take care of their brothers. She can see Pastor David if she goes to Abuja, where the Full Gospel Business Crusade is taking place.

Ariyike recalls she and Bibike used to identically dress. This stopped when Bibike visited her while she was working at a makeup counter. A man came up and purchased a gift for his wife and daughters and asked Ariyike to walk with him to his car. He said he would pay her and Bibike if they would sleep with him while his family was out of town. She didn’t tell Bibike what he had asked but stopped identically dressing.

In the present, Ariyike sees Pastor David preaching and finds herself, like much of the audience, quite moved. Afterward, she waits in line to meet with him. However, Pastor David spots her and they meet at his hotel. He compliments her beauty and asks if she is dating anyone. He later admits he told Dexter to hire her for her position at the radio station. She asks him not to cancel the show, but he says that the plan for it to be cancelled has been underway for a month already.

He asks again about her boyfriend, saying he should be taking care of her. Ariyike says she has no one to help her and her brothers are dependent on her. Pastor David replies that she’s wrong because she has him and she has God.

His phone rings, and she leaves the room while he answers it. She thinks about how excited Andrew was to start school and how things were starting to look up for their family. As the call continues, Ariyike plans. She orders room service and eats dinner. Pastor David returns and says she can come work for him at the new TV station.

Eventually, she falls asleep in his bed while he takes another call, staying until morning. She awakens to find Pastor David having sex with her. He tells her to go back to sleep. When he’s done, he tells her he will find her parents and ask them for their blessing to marry her. 

The siblings’ mother returns, appearing at their grandmother’s house with a baby. She explains that the child is named Zion and he is her son by an American soldier. She asks where Bibike and Ariyike are. Grandmother answers and asks Andrew to get some rice. He goes into the kitchen to do so but decides to flee, running away from the house.

He finds himself at Stacy’s house. Stacy and her mother moved to the neighborhood around the same time Bibike, Ariyike, Andrew, and Peter came to live with their grandmother. She used to watch the neighborhood boys play soccer, just observing until the day her mother left. When that happened, she walked up to one of the boys and told him he could look at her breasts if he gave her fifty naira.

Stacy was the first woman most of the boys in the neighborhood saw naked. The boys would watch her bathe but if any of them tried to touch her, the rest would rough him up. Andrew mentions that, at the time, it seemed like they were taking care of her by giving her money to look at her and they were learning about girls.

Stacy now works at a club as a dancer and bartender on Victoria Island and has a boyfriend in his thirties. When Stacy welcomes Andrew, he asks if she thinks her boyfriend loves her, to which she replies that she does but she doesn’t focus much on that. Rather, she thinks of the “important stuff. How to get money, how to be happy” (187).

Andrew remembers when Stacy taught him what a period was, and he noticed that she was using a towel to catch the blood. From then on, he would always bring some of his sister’s pads.

Andrew eats the dinner Stacy has made and she asks him about his mother returning:

If you are worried about what happens next, you should not be. If her absence could not kill you, then her presence cannot kill you. Look here, you and me, we are like the barracks. Like Fela sang, “Soldier go, soldier come, barracks remain (190).

They hold hands, squeezing briefly before letting go. They have sex, and Andrew leaves the next morning.

When he returns home, he hears his sisters and mother arguing. Both Bibike and Mother are saying Ariyike should not marry Pastor David, telling her she does not love him and that he is too old. Ariyike responds that “age is just a number” (193), and that the fact that he loves her is enough.

Eventually, they concede and start talking about wedding arrangements. Andrew admits he was skeptical his family could come together again, but he knows Stacy would give anything to have her mother back, making him more grateful that his has.

Peter begrudgingly accompanies his mother to the market. There, she asks if she can tell him something, and he replies he thinks so. At first, she tells him he doesn’t sound sure, but eventually reveals that she was in a detention center in the United States for 18 months after she overstayed her visa.

As she explains this to him, Peter sees Ori-ona, a woman who believes she hears God’s voice. A few months earlier, she lived near a construction site where workers were building a bridge. Every day, she would exclaim, “Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, the kingdom of God is here.” (199). One day, a pillar of the bridge collapsed, and over 50 people were killed. The head of the construction site was arrested, and Ori-ona was taken to a psychiatric hospital. This is the first time since then that Peter has seen her.

He does not relay this memory of Ori-ona to his mother. Instead, they board a bus to Yaba. Peter spots a woman running towards the bus holding containers of food. The bus driver jeers at her, saying she—his wife—was skinnier when they first got married. However, when she gives him the food, he is “softer, kinder, in front of her” (201). Peter considers: “Why, in spite of how obviously fond of her he was, did he disparage her to a bus filled with strangers? Maybe this is what love is for some people. It requires them to do nothing, only receive” (202).

The bus starts moving, and Peter’s mother makes small talk, slipping in details about her time in prison. Peter feels as though she assumes everything is okay now that she has returned, then hopes to let her down. He thinks she is satisfied with the choices she has made, which surprises him since he always believed that, if she were to reappear, she would be apologetic and beg them to take her back.

He remembers the story Bibike told in Part 1 about the woman and the hen. He admits to thinking the king was wicked in requiring that the hen give up a chick. “Now,” he thinks, “I realize that the king, kinder, fairer than I could ever be, was also very wise. No matter what your mother does, this is Lagos. Society will never let you cast her away. Especially when she wants you back” (203).

Peter keeps snapping at his mother after they get off the bus. He starts to think perhaps he is the type of son who hates his mother.

As they shop, Mother apologizes for taking so long and comments on how great America is. Peter wonders what kind of country jails people just for a chance to live in it. Eventually, he tells her he doesn’t want to go to the United States with her and that he’d prefer to stay in Lagos and go to university like Andrew. She says that Andrew is coming to America but doesn’t answer when Peter asks if Andrew actually said that.

They eat together and Mother admits she didn’t know that their father would leave, too. She says she wouldn’t have left if she’d known. She asks if Peter believes her, but he doesn’t reply until she asks if he heard her. Peter replies she is only there because Pastor David gave her money, but she insists she’s there because she wants to be. Again, she argues that Peter would be happy in America.

He asks her if she wonders if she made the wrong choice in leaving, and she says she does, every day. He responds: “You made the wrong choice, and I want to make the right choice for my life” (212). He says he will come to the U.S. for holidays, and she thinks that, once he’s there, he won’t want to go back to Lagos.

As they return home, he asks if she would make the same decisions again, but she doesn’t answer. He’s not surprised by this, thinking he doesn’t hate his mother; however, he will always think of America as the country that took her from him “and sent back something unrecognizable in her place. I will never call that country beautiful, or its people beloved.” (215).