Chapter summary
Dami shadows Tonye across Port Harcourt, recognizes her knocking ritual, but postpones their inevitable reunion.
9.40am, Saturday 10 October 2026, Port Harcourt
Dami came into Port Harcourt on a Saturday morning, in the rain, with one small bag and a list of four things she was not going to do.
She was not going to run across the road. She was not going to call out. She was not going to go into the pharmacy with a speech, or follow a stranger home, or say a name aloud in a public place, and see it fall on a face that did not know it. She had written them on the back of her boarding pass, in capitals, as she had written the numbers of the undertaker and the doctor and the cousin in Ibadan on the night that her mother died.
She had not written what she was going to do. She did not know.
The airport was a low, wet, crowded shed that smelled of floor polish and jet fuel and roasted corn. A man in a brown safari suit was reading a newspaper by the luggage belt, a small round man with an ironed moustache, who looked at her over the top of the page, and looked away. She noticed him as one notices a bird on a wire. She took a taxi to a hotel in Old GRA with a view of a car park, and sat on the end of the bed in her wet coat, listening to the air conditioner. It was quiet. It was the quiet of a place where nobody knew her name.
She had come, she told herself, to look.
Sunday 11 October
On Sunday she stood across the road from the pharmacy in Trans-Amadi in the same place she had stood a year before, beside a woman who sold puff-puff, and bought a bag, and held it.
It was a bright sticky morning with the road steaming. The shop was shut. A blue-and-white sign hung over the shutters, and a hand-painted board beside it said: BRIGGS PHARMACY. HEALTH YOU CAN TRUST.
She read it eleven times.
On the other side of the glass, a young woman with braids piled on her head was mopping the floor, and singing under her breath. A van was parked in the yard. A bell hung over the door.
She did not cross.
She walked instead to the main branch in Old GRA, a quarter of an hour away, and sat on a low wall in the shade of a flame tree, and watched a different door. It was a pretty building, white, with a green cross and a ramp for wheelchairs and a row of pots with red geraniums. Customers came and went. A tall old man in a grey cap went in with a stick, and came out with a bag, nodding to nobody. Two streets down, where the road bent, a shop front had been thrown open to the sun. She found herself walking toward it as one walks toward a noise. Rolls of ankara cloth hung in the doorway like flags, orange and purple and blue, and a short broad
woman in a wrapper the colour of fire was standing on the step with her hands on her hips, shouting at a young man about a delivery of gold chairs.
“No, no, no! I say the white ones first!”
She turned, saw Dami watching, and raised her eyebrows.
“Madam, you dey look something? You wan buy cloth?”
“I’m just resting,” Dami said. “It is very hot.”
“Ah, na so Port Harcourt be. Come inside. I get fan.” The woman had crossed the pavement already and taken her by the elbow with a firm grip. “Boma. Boma Wokoma. Na me get the shop. Sit. Sit. You go drink water.”
She did not say no. It seemed easier than saying no.
Boma’s shop was a long, bright tunnel of cloth, smelling of starch and cocoa butter and hot iron. She sat on a stool by the counter and was given a plastic cup of cold water and a long, careful, friendly inspection.
“You no be from here.”
“Lagos.”
“Ah, Lagos. You dey look for person?”
The question went in under her ribs like a thumb.
“My sister,” Dami said. “Ehn.” Boma nodded slowly, with a sympathy that did not ask for particulars. “Me too, I dey look for person. Twenty-eight years now. My friend from school. She go Canada and never write. Na
sickness, my husband say.” She laughed, a rich, rueful laugh that made the bangles ring. “But the thing is, you fit still find person. I find another one. A new friend. She dey over there.” She jerked her chin back up the road, toward the pharmacy. “She no get time for noise, but she dey open her heart for small things. Food. She dey hum when she cook. You know say na only good people dey hum?”
Dami’s cup tilted. A thread of water ran down her wrist.
“I am sorry?”
“I say, only good people dey hum.” Boma looked at her. “Madam, you dey alright? You go sit. Make I bring you another water.”
“No,” said Dami. “No. Thank you. I’m fine.”
She stood up. She put the cup down, carefully, on the counter. And she went out, past the rolls of cloth and the flame tree, with the heat pressing on her face, like a woman leaving a room where someone has just said her name.
8.40pm, Tuesday 13 October
She followed her home on the fourth evening. She had told herself she would not. It was the first of the four things. But the evening was dark and wet and the streets were full of people going home, and when the pharmacy shut at half past eight and a stout woman in a deep blue dress came out through the side door with her bag, and set off on foot along D-Line, Dami found that her feet had decided without consulting her.
She kept thirty yards behind, as one keeps a distance from something that might startle. The woman ahead of her did not look back. She walked at a steady, patient pace, with her head slightly bowed, and her left hand held cupped under her right.
She turned in at a gate. It was a three-storey block of flats painted the colour of old custard. A generator hummed in the yard. A bare bulb burned in the stairwell, and then, as the woman reached the landing, went out.
Dami stopped at the foot of the stairs.
She stood in the dark and she did not climb. She could hear the footsteps going up, even and unhurried. First floor. Second. A pause. The click of a key, and then, soft, and clear in the stillness of the wet night, another sound.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three times. On a door. From the outside.
Dami’s hand went to her mouth.
The key turned. The door opened and shut. A bolt shot home.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs in the dark for a long time, with the generator buzzing and the rain beginning again on the zinc.
She had come to watch. She had come, she had told herself, only to see. She had made four rules and kept three of them: she had not run, she had not called out, she had not said a name. She put her hand on the cold iron rail, and lifted it, and knocked.
Once. Twice. Three times. Softly, against the banister, to nobody.
There was no answer. Of course there was no answer. She had knocked on the wrong door.
She sat down on the bottom step and put her head on her knees.
Not yet, she thought. Not yet.
And somewhere in the dark yard behind her, in the shadow of the wall, a small round man in a brown safari suit folded a newspaper quietly and put it in his pocket.
The Third Door · Continue reading
Chapter 39 is the next door
The story continues. Follow the next chapter through the door.
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Cover and contextual photographs are used under the Pexels licence. Cover source; cover design for The Third Door by akinakingbogun.com.
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