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are rejoicing that he has left me, our love is still strong, let me tell you, he will walk back to me with his two legs.”
    People on the street pretended not to be listening, but we were all ears. Some of the men and women were making comments in whispers.
    “Some women have bad luck,” a woman called Sisi Yellow because of her skin color said. “They will suffer with a man for a long time
so tey,
but as soon as they tell themselves they cannot take the suffering anymore and move out of his house, the man’s luck changes. When I was living on the other side at Ajangbadi it happened to a woman I knew. She had seven children and was drinking
garri
and wearing the same brown cloth every day, but the day after she left her husband, he won five hundred thousand naira from Face-to-Face Pools.”
    “Beauty may be lucky; the man loves her. White people’s love is forever. Once they love, they love.”
    “Not in this case. Do not forget she threw the man out
gabadaya,
she even tossed his slippers out, and in our culture it means she no longer wants to see his two legs in the house. And she also swept her house after he left; it means she is done with him.”
    “That will be too bad, I mean after all they went through together. Remember the time the man nearly died of typhoid fever right before our eyes, and she could not afford to take him to the hospital, and he was drinking boiled traditional roots and
    herbs?”
    “The man is not going to remember that. Men do not remember the good that women did for them. But do one bad thing to them, and they will not forget it, that is what they will be saying each time you quarrel.”
    Beauty must have overheard some of the comments because she began to sing a popular Fuji song, “Let my enemies live long and see what I will become in future.”
    The film was a success. It was so successful the cast toured the entire country. The film was shown in schools and was commended by the military head of state as a great work with cultural authenticity.
    Beauty told people on the street that Mark was going to come back to her when he returned from his tour. She even said he had sent her a message through another actor.
    The tour ended, and Mark did not return. We heard he was on location shooting another film on the slave trade and was playing the role of the evil and notorious slave dealer Captain Wilberforce Bomberbilly. It was also said that he had commenced a relationship with an actress and had even moved in with her.
    Beauty told anyone that cared to listen that Mark visited her in her dreams every night and had reassured her that he was coming back for her with gifts of gold and lace and high-heeled shoes. Her business was not going too well either, because each time she met a man at the nightclub, she began to tell him about her white boyfriend turned popular actor Mark. Her stories made the men yawn, and the other girls began spreading rumors that she had lost her mind. This was after they saw her standing alone in the dark talking aloud to herself: “Come to me, my lover, why did you leave me, come let me show my new style of bedmatics, come to me, my lover. I have always known you will come back to me.” A few of the girls laughed at her, but one of them went to her, took her by the hand, and led her back to her house.
    One morning she came back with a taxi and crammed her things inside, cursed out everybody on the street as witches, wizards, wasters, rumormongers, bad luck people, and gossipers. And then she left and never came back again.
    As for Mark, he actually married the actress and took her to America, but we heard they got divorced after a few months. Mark came back. People on the street said they were not surprised. Any white man that eats pepper must return to Lagos.

Jimmy Carter’s Eyes
    W hen she was three, the girl accidentally upturned the boiling pan with which her mother was frying bean cakes on herself. The hot oil left two thick lumps of scar tissue across