Chapter summary
Tobe’s carefully managed obligations collapse after Sarah’s forged email triggers suspension and two flattened tyres.
TOBECHUKWU
Monday Tobe woke at six in her flat in Yaba and lay for a moment doing sums.
Rent, due in three weeks. Her brother’s school fees, due in two. Her mother’s medication, a standing monthly order that she paid for without being asked and without it ever being mentioned. The car loan. The bank. Her phone showed a message from the family WhatsApp group, which was called Anyanwu Family Parliament and in which she was the only member who never argued.
Her mother had sent a voice note at five. Tobe played it with the volume turned low. “Nne, good morning. I have been dreaming of you. Is everything all right? Eat before you go. Greet your boss.” Seventeen seconds of an Enugu voice, a rooster somewhere behind it, and the cough that had never gone away.
She sent back a thumbs up and a heart.
She was the first of five. In the village they said it with a smile, the way you say the name of a bank. Tobe will fix it. She had fixed her brother’s university fees at nineteen and her sister’s wedding at twenty-six. She had never in her life been asked whether she minded. She dressed carefully in the navy skirt suit that she kept for Mondays, the one that said I am not a woman you interrupt. She took the Honda Accord that she was still paying for up Ikorodu Road in the Monday traffic, past hawkers and danfo buses and a billboard that promised wealth by Friday.
In her handbag there was a phone, and in the phone a note called Sunshine List.
She did not think of it as cheating. She had told herself that, in the beginning, in a voice firm enough to carry across a room. It was not cheating. It was networking. A man who loved her mentioned over dinner that a certain company was about to buy another, and she called the buyer on Monday morning and asked a good question. She had never lied to a client. She had never taken a single kobo that she had not earned with her own mouth and her own mind.
She had said it so often that it had become true, the way a path becomes a road if enough people walk it. But some mornings, at traffic lights, the road gave a little under her feet.
At 8:45 she stepped out of the lift on the sixth floor into the smell of carpet and photocopier toner. The sales and marketing unit was quiet and bright and full of people pretending to read. She had sent her presentation to Mr. Briggs at 11:47 the night before and had gone to sleep as happy as she had been in a month.
She put her bag down on her desk and straightened her jacket.
Mr. Briggs came in late, as always, jingling his keys. He was a small man in a loud tie, with a stomach that arrived a full second before the rest of him. He passed her desk. He did not look at her.
“Good morning, sir,” said Tobe.
He did not return it. It was completely out of character. He was always excited to share a side hug with her whenever he sauntered late into the sixth floor, where he supervised a group of seasoned sales and marketing executives.
She shrugged it off. He was probably having a bad start to the week.
Then he had barely settled into his office when she heard him call her name.
“Tobechukwu Anyanwu.”
He had never called her by her full birth name. Never!
Something was definitely amiss. She hurried over to her supervisor, who thrust a printed sheet of paper at her. He had picked it off the printer on his desk.
“What is the meaning of this?” His voice was shrill, spine-tingling, like nails on a chalkboard.
Tobe shivered, unsure what to do. “I don’t understand, sir.”
Anger curled hot in his gut, a blazing inferno that wanted to burn him from the inside out. He let the paper drop to the carpeted floor, and Tobe quickly picked it up.
It was an email addressed to Mr. Briggs. It had been sent from her own address at 11:52 the night before, five minutes after the deck she had sent him.
“I can bet my two-month salary on the fact that Mr
Briggs penis is smaller than my pinky finger. Na why he
dey always vibrate like small generator whenever he sees
Madame Angelina… lol” It ended with a caricature that expressed the thought graphically and succinctly: an oversized head with spindly limbs, and an unmistakable dot for the penis.
The sender was Tobechukwu Anyanwu.
“Mr. Briggs, this has to be some joke. I had absolutely nothing to do with this.”
“Really? I wonder what Group HR will think about this level of indiscretion and irresponsibility.” He barked and clenched his fist.
Confused, Tobe wondered how a joke she had written in the notes app on her phone, while she sat on the toilet in her bedroom last weekend, had ended up in his inbox. It was just not possible. She remembered sending only one email, the one with her PowerPoint slides attached. There had to be some mix-up.
Her dark eyebrows crinkled together as the haze of confusion thickened.
“I do hope you know what the Handbook says about this nonsense? Need I say more?”
Tobe’s pleading eyes were made worse by the deepening furrow between her brows. She tucked an unruly lock of hair behind her ear as sweat beads broke out on her forehead.
“Jesus! What is this?” Perplexed, she quickly got down on one knee. “Dear sir, I don’t know anything about this. I did not send this email. I can’t explain what is going on. Please understand me. I beg you, sir. Please don’t take this too seriously.”
He let out a loud growl of annoyance and pointed at the door. “Get out of my office!”
Mr. Briggs was a man of his word, and he made good his threat. Tobe received her suspension letter, duly signed by the Head of Human Resources, that same afternoon. She was to leave the office immediately and stay away for a full month without pay.
She had cried her eyes sore while waiting for the outcome of Mr. Briggs’ meeting with executive management. She lost hope the moment her colleagues began to avoid her as if she had an infectious ailment.
When the envelope was handed to her, she pleaded again and again. There was nothing else she could imagine doing. She simply wept and pleaded in vain.
She cried so badly that her make-up was ruined, smeared by the trails of tears she wiped away at intervals.
Security retrieved her ID card and her laptop before walking her out of the building to the car park, where her Honda Accord sat nicely tucked in its corner.
“What a horrible way to start the week,” she sniffed.
But it was about to get worse!
Her two front tyres were completely deflated, flat to the rim. The car leaned forward like a tired animal, the weight of the engine pulling it down.
“Unbelievable!” She shook her head in exasperation.
She tossed her handbag into the back seat. She could no longer stifle a scream as she slid down against the kerb and brought her knees up to her chest.
“What have I done to deserve this?”
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 7
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The featured photograph is used under the Pexels licence. Contextual scene illustrations are original editorial artwork created for this serial; the characters and events are fictional. Featured photograph source. Editorial design by akinakingbogun.com.
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