Elisha

Last week I promised Elisha I’d never do it again. My sleep was going to shit. My social life was going to shit. My relationship and mental health were also going to shit. Plus, I had a headache. And my body creaked as I stretched.

It was nine pm. The office—a converted Victorian industrial building—was full with people working at their desks. The white-painted steel-framed windows were open. I could hear the excitement from the pub outside. I need a drink, I thought.

I’d not moved from my computer screen since my ten-minute lunch break where I’d wolfed down my food. Food prep was time-efficient and suited to the demands of my boorish boss: lanky and balding, George Poole. I didn’t bother thinking about what to eat or head out of the office, away from my desk to hunt the best meal deal suited to my mood. I ate the same thing every day. Thank God for Elisha, who prepared it all—stacking Tupperware in our fridge. At lunch, I’d simply pull a Tupperware out of my bag, run down the stairs to the kitchen, pop it into the microwave and be back at my desk within five minutes. RUBBISH, eh? I know.

When I started working at George Poole Architects, drawing lines, which morphed into buildings, I was so damn excited, you know. I thought I could make a difference. I believed I could make a positive social and emotional impact on everyday people by designing things that benefited them. Once, I blurted it out and George mockingly repeated, ‘positive social and emotional impact,’ and laughed. I wanted to tell him to fuck right off, but my strict Nigerian upbringing taught me to never disrespect my elders. So, I just smiled. Maybe it was the floggings from my teachers as a child in Nigeria that drew me to the punishment of this job. Fuck knows!

The truth was, I designed for property developers and rich clients, with a promise of affordable and accessible spaces, only to sell the buildings to rich foreign investors, who rented out the properties at exorbitant rates. It pained me. But I needed to pay rent, tax and bills. I was glad to get a salary, though, not a great one. So I had to do my job honestly, heartily and consistently. Fuck my feelings.

Anyway, these were my thoughts as I sat at my desk, half asleep, holding my mouse. Fucking hell! I suddenly remembered I was late for another date with Elisha. She tolerated my shit— over-dedication to work and under-dedication to our relationship. Once, she said she was becoming what she never wanted to be: a woman who waits for her partner to arrive, food running cold on the dining table.

On our first date, we bonded over jokes about 1950s American housewife adverts— women in aprons and wearing animated smiles.

‘Never. Never. I never wanna be like that,’ she’d said. I laughed and agreed. And to remind us, we got a 1950s American housewife poster and hung it in the kitchen. I think she thought she was becoming the caricature on the wall because one day—sat at the table in the kitchen—she shouted at me when I got home. She’d freshly washed and blow-dried her hair. I could tell, because the flat smelt of the coconut and lavender shampoo I liked. She stared at me from behind the table, wearing smokey eye makeup, matte nude lipstick that complemented her olive skin, and the brown one-strap dress I liked. I really fucked up—she’d prepared a perfect meal and table. Now it was all over the linoleum floor. After getting over the shock, I slowly salvaged what I could of my favourite dish—Jollof rice, plantain and fried chicken—from the floor. Eating the floor meal, I apologised, explaining that a man had to provide and care for his partner. It’s the African way.

‘But you don’t have to provide for me, I work too,’ she said.

‘Or maybe it is because I’m part of an underrepresented group of people in architecture, which means I’m an exemplar—a testament to the potential of my group of people in the industry,’ I said.

Whenever I recited that rehearsed shit, she couldn’t say anything because she wasn’t Nigerian, neither was she an underrepresented race. I would see it in her face—red and filled with this explosive urge to let me have it—but she would just walk away in defeat. It was shit. But what did she know about my plight? And I would go to her and apologise again because I wanted the relationship we craved—the relationship we promised each other. I wanted to make her happy. But it happened many more times and that fucking smile of the 1950’s housewife widened with every missed date. Regardless, we stayed together. I admired her boldness, which I lacked. She loved my ambition and passion. And it wasn’t long after these arguments that we’d be lying in bed—anger dissipated from passionate entanglement, body heat and sweat.

One of those nights in bed, Elisha turned to me and said, ‘Make sure you don’t stay up thinking about work. That’s what gives you nightmares.’ She laid her head on the right side of my chest and rested her palm on the other side. I could sense she was feeling my heartbeat. I never could remember the nightmares, but I would wake up drenched in sweat, crying—oscillating between worry and horror. Sometimes—and I admit this shamelessly—I’d wake up and I would have pissed myself. After that, I couldn’t drink before bed anymore.

I turned to face her, and the mattress protector crackled beneath me. ‘Maybe there is some way you can help me out with my boss?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. To get out of it.’

‘You want to quit?’

‘Never mind. I’m being silly,’ I said, turning away to turn off the bedside lamp. But I stayed awake until I heard her gentle snores. Variations of this repeated for the three years we’d lived together, while I worked at George Poole Architects. I knew something was brewing.

‘When do you think it’ll be done?’ George Poole said, standing behind me, looking over my shoulder at my computer. I didn’t hear him approach. Normally, the old floorboards groan under the pressure of the bustling office. But George was so ensconced in the office block—as if he and it were one—that his feet knew the noiseless spots, allowing him to sneak up on the workers.

I was immediately fearful and anxious. Everyone in the office was always fearful and anxious, constantly burdened by deadlines and George’s pressure. I looked over my shoulder at the skyscraper-like figure in a blue Oxford shirt behind me, hoping that he hadn’t seen that my eyes were closed. A million reasons for my closed eyes flickered through my mind like a Rolodex. But judging from George’s expressionless pasty, pink-splotched face, it seemed he hadn’t noticed.

‘Another thirty minutes, sir. I mean … George.’ Sometimes I said that shit—sir—because of my strict Nigerian upbringing. You never refer to elders by their first name in Nigeria. Never! But in London, saying sir was odd. It sounded like pleading. It sounded like an Oliver Twist shit—like a poor and hungry boy begging for more food. So, sometimes I reminded myself not to sound so pathetic.

‘What’s taking so long?’ Sweat formed on my palms. I could feel drops rolling down the ridge of my back. I’d gone blank as if I’d suddenly been transported to a vast dark space—frozen in time.

‘Hello?’ George snapped his fingers. I imagined flakes flying off his pasty skin and landing on my shoulder.

I thought about George’s question, searching my mind for any reasonable explanation. But all roads ended at the fact that I was knackered. I looked at my computer screen and saw that it was twenty past nine and Elisha would be pissed again. I drifted to what her reaction would be this time. But she was unpredictable. So, I returned to the room, illuminated like a stage actor, by the directional lights that riddled the ceilings of the office. I inhaled and exhaled three times—a habit I’d developed for dealing with stress. The air was filled with an intoxicating smell, cautioning that the room could flame up with the smallest spark. Last week, my colleagues and I spent hours restoring the pine floorboards of the office by sanding and finishing with wood varnish.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Always,’ George replied. ‘Just get it done.’

Of course, I wasn’t the only one in the office at this hour. I wasn’t the only one subjected to this treatment. It was collective: fear, anxiety and dedication to work. No one said anything. All I heard were clicks of keyboards and computer mice. All I saw were the back of heads. Just as I was about to return to my computer screen—as George walked to his desk—the office doorbell rang.

Elisha wasn’t happy. Nah, she was fuming. I stared at her—only two feet away from me— standing in the middle of the office floor. There was a calm resoluteness about her. She had her hair in a tight bun like she did on days we found time to go to the boxing gym. Her olive skin glistened under the directional lights—radiating potent heat. She looked around at everyone as if they were the ones in the wrong place. I tried to mollify her: babe, sweetie, honey pie, apple and sugar. One of them had to work. But it was no use. She’d been stretched beyond return.

‘What kinda fucking shit is this?’

‘Hey babe,’ I reached out to her. ‘Please … ’

‘No. No … ’ she raised her palm to me. ‘It’s … ’ she looked at her phone clasped in her hand. ‘It’s nine-thirty on a Friday evening. I’m sure all these people have places to be—lives to live.’

We looked at George in unison—as if he was our spokesman and we could only speak when given permission.

‘What are you all looking at?’ She surveyed the room again and stopped at George. ‘George, is it?’ she said glaring at George who was standing at the other end of the room. He looked devoid of life. His face had gone white.

‘Yeah?’ George said.

‘Why does my boyfriend have to work so late all the time? And miss our dates, eh?’

‘I … I haven’t asked him to stay late?’

‘You haven’t? It seems like you are. Tell me, why are these people here on a Friday night?’ She tilted her head slightly, her dimpled chin pointing at George as she nodded inquisitively while speaking.

‘Well… we have a deadline.’

‘And?’

‘And work needs to get done. Why are you here?’

‘He has no life working here,’ she said looking at me.

‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on at your home, but my office … ’

‘No. No,’ she said. ‘Hell no. Don’t deflect. You know damn well how this toxic work culture is affecting him. Affecting us.’ We stared at George. He walked towards her like a large wild cat—silently and focused on his prey. The noise from the pub outside was at odds with the scene in the office. When he got to a distance from her that he was satisfied with, he stood with his hands on his waist as if scrutinising a terrible drawing one of us had made. He was at least a foot taller than her.

‘Well?’ she said, staring up at him.

‘I think you’re taking things too personally.’

‘Too personally? Do you think robbing someone of their personal life isn’t something to take personally?’ She said and looked at everyone. ‘C’mon, people.’

‘Yeah,’ someone said softly.

‘Yeah? Are you not all tired of this?’ she said.

‘YEAH,’ everyone cried. ‘WE ARE.’ They stood up from their desks.

George looked around at everyone. ‘Sit down. We have a deadline.’

‘It can wait till Monday morning,’ she said.

‘Look. We’re just working. And we need to get on with it,’ George said, furrowing his eyebrow quizzically. ‘You okay? Are you on your menstrual or something?’ He concluded and looked at me, as if to say, come get your woman. She looked at me too and grinned. It was a knowing grin. The kind that I’d seen before and never wanted to see again. Her blue eyes had darkened. There was an endlessness about it. And with one swift right-swinging motion, Elisha knocked George off his feet and he crashed onto the pine floor.

—

Elisha and I were standing in the police station lobby as a young policewoman took our statements. When the officer finished, she walked through double doors, disappearing into the back of the building. Soon after, George came through the same double doors into the lobby. He was holding the right side of his face in his hand. His quickest path out of the building met with Elisha and me, but he took a different path that made the distance longer, weaving through waiting chairs with his left eye focused on us. When he was out of the building the policewoman came back. She had a tight grin on her face as if holding back her excitement.

‘You’re free to go,’ the policewoman said.

‘Really?’ we said.

‘Yes. You’re lucky—only a warning. He decided not to take it any further.’

‘Thank you,’ we both said.

‘Don’t you go punching anyone who makes sexist, dismissive remarks,’ the policewoman said.

‘We won’t,’ we both said.

‘I mean her,’ the policewoman said.

We both walked out into the cold London night. There were many people, drunk and laughing, in the street. I looked at Elisha. Her bun was loose—light brown strands hung freely. I tightened the bun by pushing the knot tighter with my thumb, then ran my palm along the top of her head to flatten the hair. It didn’t stay flat. She brought out her hair-finishing stick from her handbag. Then I applied it and flattened her hair with my palm again. It stayed down.

‘What should we do now?’ I asked.

‘Go for a drink?’

I laughed. ‘You read my mind.’

We held hands and walked, looking for the nearest pub.

‘You reckon I can still go back to the office?’ I said.

‘I think you’ve lost your job babe.’

‘Yeah. Definitely.’

We got to a pub with green glazed tiles. I stood aside to let her in, then held her hand, pulling her back.

‘You know when I said you could help me out,’ I said. ‘That’s not … never mind.’

She looked at me with a knowing smile. I preferred this smile. Then we walked inside.

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