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around Lagos.” All three laughed at the happy image of the car. (A Ford? A Daewoo? A Peugeot? “I hope it’s a Peugeot; that brand has served this country loyally since the beginning of time. When I worked for UTC …”) The mother’s mock plea that Papa Chisom should save them from another trip down memory lane would gently hush Chisom’s father, and then Chisom herself would say, “I don’t really care what brand of car I get as long as it gets me to work and back!”
    “Wise. Wise. Our wise daughter has spoken,” the father would say casually, but his voice would betray the weight of his pride, the depth of his hopes for her, his respect for her wisdom, all that wisdom she was acquiring at university; their one-way ticket out of the cramped two-room flat to more elegant surroundings. In addition to the car, Chisom was expected to have a house with room enough for her parents. A bedroom for them. A bedroom for herself. A sitting room with a large color TV. A kitchen with an electric cooker. And cupboards for all the pots and pans and plates that they would need. No more storing pots under the bed! A kitchen painted lavender or beige, a soft, subtle color that would make them forget this Ogba kitchen that was black with the smoke of many kerosene fires. A generator. No more at the mercy of NEPA. A gateman. A steward. A high gate with heavy locks. A high fence with jagged pieces of bottle sticking out of it to deter even the most hardened thieves. A garden with flowers. No. Not flowers. A garden with vegetables. Why have a garden with nothing you can eat? But flowers are beautiful. Spinach is beautiful, too. Tomatoes are beautiful. Okay. A garden with flowers and food. Okay. Good. They laughed and dreamed, spurred on by Chisom’s good grades, which, while not excellent, were good enough to encourage dreams.
    The days after graduation were filled with easy laughter andapplication letters, plans, and a list of things to do (the last always preceded by “Once Chisom gets a job,” “As soon as Chisom gets a job,” “Once I get a job”). As her father would say, there were only two certainties in their lives: death and Chisom’s good job. Death was a given (many, many years from now, by God’s grace, amen!), and with her university degree, nothing should stand in the way of the good job (very soon—only a matter of time—university graduates are in high demand! high demand!). His belief in a university education was so intrinsically tied to his belief in his daughter’s destined future as to be irrevocable.
    Yet two years after leaving school, Chisom was still mainly unemployed (she had done a three-month stint teaching economics at a holiday school: the principles of scarcity and want, law of demand and supply), and had spent the better part of the two years scripting meticulous application letters and mailing them along with her résumé to the many different banks in Lagos.
    Dear Mr. Uloko:

With reference to the advertisement placed in the
Daily Times
of June 12, I am writing to—
    Dear Alhaji Musa Gani:

With reference to the advertisement placed in
The Guardian
of July 28, I am writing to apply—
    But she was never even invited to an interview. Diamond Bank. First Bank. Standard Bank. Then the smaller ones. And then the ones that many people seemed never to have heard of. Lokpanta National Bank.
Is that a bank? Here in Lagos? Is it a new one? Where? Since when?
    Even in their obscurity, they had no place for her. No envelopescame addressed to her, offering her a job in a bank considerably humbler than the banks she had eyed while at school, and in which less intelligent classmates with better connections worked. It was as if her résumés were being swallowed up by the many potholes on Lagos roads. Sometimes she imagined that the postmen never even mailed them, that maybe they sold them to roadside food sellers to use in wrapping food for their customers. Maybe, she thought sometimes, her