The dust of the morning’s fracas had barely settled when someone decided to bestow the evening with its own version. This time, it was Ebere, the landlord’s wife’s apprentice that started it off.

I’ve been here for three years and I still don’t know the name of the landlord’s wife. We all call her Mama Junior. She’s a light-skinned, soft-spoken, petite woman in her late thirties; she walks around with an air of quiet authority. At first, she strikes you as mousy; that is until you spend time with her and find out that you couldn’t be more wrong. She is vivacious, funny and the light of her husband’s life. She used to teach in one of the government secondary schools in Uwani; then she had Junior by caesarian section and during her maternity leave, she decided not to return to work. After weaning her son, her husband decided to open a hair salon for her. She says the hair salon pays better than her former job, although now, her income is dependent on the flow of customers and there is no job security.

Unlike other mothers who would’ve turned lionesses at the thought of their children being threatened in any way, Mama Junior, when she heard, went to meet Mrs. Azubuike to find out what had made her fly off the handle. Some of the compound’s occupants, who were around, lingered outside the Azubuikes’ apartment for the duration of her visit, waiting to see if there would be another conflagration. Nothing happened. After about an hour, both women emerged from the apartment; both were smiling, though Mrs. Azubuike was wiping tears with the corner of her wrapper. Some, minus me, seemed disappointed at the anticlimax to their expectations.

All was seemingly going well until this evening. It was around three-thirty and I was in the room watching the movie, Prince of Persia, admiring Jake Gyllenhaal’s stunts when someone knocked. I stayed the action on the TV, and then got up to see who it was. Ti-abasi was the one at the door. She usually comes around to my apartment for some girl talk; at twenty-two, she’s a couple of years younger than me and we share a lot of things in common, the main one being that we come from the same state. We both love reading and often exchange novels and any other interesting reading material. She is as dark as I am fair; in fact, she is the first girl whom I’ve met who is so dark-skinned and yet so beautiful; people often mistake her for a Yoruba girl and that doesn’t seem to bother her – she even plays along sometimes.

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