Friday Feature: Mofiyinfoluwa O.

Mofiyinfoluwa O. is a Nigerian writer living between Lagos and London. Her work is concerned with the interior of African|Black womanhood. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and The Founder of The Abebi AfroNonfiction Foundation. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Variant Lit, Pleiades, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her work has been selected as a Best American Essay Notable Entry (2022) and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently at work on her debut memoir interrogating the body, soul, spirit, and their relationship with desire.

Victoria Island Blues

We have always known that the land bears witness. That it watches. A thing does not need to have eyes to see. We are an expanse of land in the heart of Victoria Island; 2.7 acres of lush sprawling greenery, only a leap from Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, only a leap from the mouth of the ocean. We have a thousand tiny corners where many dangerous and beautiful things happen. Muri Okunola Park is what they call us, but we know that we are more than just a park, more than green grass trampled underneath eager feet, more than just a place. Even then. A place can behold the clumsy knees of a teenage girl become the sturdy legs of a woman. A place can remain unchanged – dark green bars forming an iron fence, pillars of marble scattered across the field, a black gate that holds many secrets – as it watches a young girl transform every single time she sets foot on the body of our premises. There is no way to tell the story of M becoming a woman in Lagos without mentioning us. Long before the tendrils of womanhood even find her, we see her. It is a rare and beautiful thing to bear witness to the unfurling of a flower – to watch tentative petals reveal themselves in glorious splendor. And what is a glorious tale if it is not told? What is the use of all that beauty, all that danger, all that rage, if we keep it to ourselves? 

6th August 2016. 

The first time she sets foot on these grounds, M. is a seventeen-year-old girl desperate to be desired. You couldn’t see it, though. Unless you looked beyond her carefully manufactured confidence, her stellar grades, her mouth always moving, always distracting, always performing. But if you looked past all that, past the white off shoulder top she chose to wear that day for its ability to hide her entire midriff, past the funny-looking eyebrows she took hours to pencil in and conceal, past the constant fidgeting to make sure she looked fine – you would only see a young darkskinned girl attending a music festival. Lucid Lemons – the hottest hub for young creatives – is hosting a live show for alté musicians, and her sister, ear to the ground on the scene, had told her to be there. Just a few weeks ago, the tailor she met on the scene of her filmmaker cousin’s movie made her a pair of ankara shorts. Red flowers, yellow circles with splotches of white. The perfect fit to show some thigh whilst being high-waisted enough to keep her belly (oh the great belly) out of sight. That day, she is in the midst of a very delicate equation she is trying to balance: how to hide herself, whilst still showing enough skin to draw boys’ eyes, to make them see that although she is fat, although the inside of her thighs are almost black with the heat of constant friction, although she is terrible at makeup, she is still beautiful, still deserving of their eyes, their mouths, their hands. Still, she dances. With her feet in dainty white sandals in the late August air, she sways. Only a few weeks ago, she graduated from Olashore International School, and in the next few weeks she is off to Durham University in the cold cold North of England to study law. Oh, how she dreams of being a lawyer. All those blazers hiding her fat, flabby arms. All those long-sleeved shirts to conceal shoulders. All that brilliance she will radiate. She is certain, unshakably resolved to be a lawyer. And she has the brains for it. Her WAEC results are out any day now and she cannot wait for the rush of validation. Yes, there may be no boys who find her attractive enough to come and say hello, but the litany of As littering her report card will warrant the praise of her family, her teachers, and all her friends. Her iPhone 6 buzzes in her little white purse. Her English teacher, Mrs Emezue, is calling. Slightly confused, she picks up her phone, and a frantic, excited voice blares through the speakers ‘Fiyin! Fiyin! WAEC results are out! Send me your details now! Let me check for you.' Squealing and jumping, the girl reels off the registration number she had memorized waiting for this exact moment. With bated breath, she waits as her teacher fishes out the results. A few minutes pass, and Mrs Emezue begins to scream with joy: ‘My girl! My girl! My girl! All As and only one B (of course, she had a B in math)! You did it! All As and one B!’ Her face cracks into a smile so big, it battles the setting sun for radiance. We see her then, realizing her own power, forgetting the boys for a moment, utterly pleased with herself. The sun will set, and Odunsi The Engine will croon ‘you’re my desire, gone around the world just to find her, omoge wa gbe mi saya’ and she will sing out those lyrics with reckless abandon – her voice lifting towards the heavens like smokefire, the voice of a girl trying so very hard to be enough for herself.   

24th December 2017.

Her skirt is short, so short that her thighs sparkle in their nakedness under the starless Lagos night. The skirt – faux leather embroidered with small red, green, and blue flowers – was bought with her mother in the New Look on Oxford Street nine months ago when she turned eighteen. An adult. And her body is starting to show it. The skin of her thighs is rubbed down with whipped shea butter and coconut oil, gleaming with a vengeance, pollen waiting for the touch of bees. Her top is deep red, baring her shoulders with waterfall sleeves that ripple in the evening breeze. An airy, round, perfect afro crowns her head steadfastly, and a velvet choker, encrusted with many silver hearts sparkling one to another – much like choreographed constellations – wraps the expanse of her neck. Gone is that shy and fidgeting girl of many moons ago. This is the M that has come into the knowledge of her beauty. She has spent the last many months shopping for clothes that fit her frame, shedding all that deadweight of insecurity, standing in front of her camera day after day, photograph after photograph, teaching her brain to look at her body and call it beautiful. If you check her camera roll, you will find many nude pictures, mostly in black and white; she has been cartographing the expanse of her body, rolls of flesh, a sprawling belly, stretch marks across the entire width of her back. She has studied her body like ancient scripture. Her endeavors have been fruitful. So fruitful, in fact, that in the months that have passed since we last saw her, she has obtained a lover that she obsesses over in a near-feral manner. He is sitting beside her now on the raffia mats spread across the park, the smell of chicken barbecue and burning herb dancing through the air as Bez is stringing a guitar and crooning seductively; his voice traveling over them in enchanting waves. In that moment, her gloss-coated lips spill open with laughter, time and time again, as the hands of the clock move nearer and nearer to midnight. No call from her mother. The freedom is delicious. And she is feasting fat on every single bite. D, beside her, reaches out to cover her shoulder with his arm and she lets him, lets herself feel the weight of a man settle on her, and she decides she likes it. On those mats, she is a budding flower unaware of just how bright her bloom will be. 

28th of December 2019.

Her belly is full of gin when she arrives at our gates. Beefeater to be exact. Straight from the bottle, no mixer, no chaser. No, she’s the one being chased tonight – those wide hips encased in deep red, the smooth brown of her shoulders bared to the night sky, lips a pulsing red sea perfect for drowning. Just a few minutes ago, she was at a wedding where men were tripping over themselves to get her phone number as she weaves and bobs between them with the ease of a woman who now knows how to handle men. The Uber ride from Elegushi to Victoria Island is only fifteen minutes, and in that time, she peels herself out of a sinfully tight black dress into an equally (if not more) sinfully tight red jumpsuit. She surprises herself with how deft she has become at navigating this city, this big and blooming life. Maybe there is something about heartbreak that sharpens a woman’s senses. She would know. Five months ago, D said he could no longer love her. And she wept. Worried herself sick with errant thoughts of insufficiency. Wept some more. And then one day, tired of wallowing, she reached out to a man and swallowed him whole, and the tears ceased. Discovering this formula, the girl has developed a ravenous appetite for dick and alcohol (both in surplus in Lagos every December), perfected the calibration, and when she sets her feet on Muri Okunola Park that night, she is ready. Red, blue, and pink lights strobe from every corner of the park, and the air is thick with the sweat of bodies, the heady scent of too many joints burning at the same time, and music so loud it reverberates through her entire body as she meanders her way to the front of the stage where Show Dem Camp is booming their music. When Tec calls out to the audience for girls who are ready to come dance on stage, she does not hesitate. The security man hoists her up like she doesn’t weigh 95kg, and in that moment, she feels light as air as her gold-sandaled feet land on the stage. Her eyes are lined with laali, auburn and blond braids piled in the perfect ponytail. The bass is jumping and she begins to whine her waist, hips brushing from side to side, arms lifted in bliss as that jumpsuit cleaves to every inch of her body, its thin straps digging into the flesh of her shoulders as the fabric strains to contain the euphoria pouring from her. She sways from side to side, running her hands along the grooves of her belly, sticking her tongue out, grinning endlessly as she is being carried by the music to a very magical place. The energy is galactic, hundreds of bodies vibrating and chanting lyrics backed by the most electric live band as the stage is beamed in seething rays of red and blue and pink. There she is in this galaxy, entirely untethered, sensual and free - a woman who is dancing like she knows exactly what her body can do. If you look closely, you will see the back of the jumpsuit rides low enough to reveal the rolls of flesh she once desperately kept hidden. Now, she does not give a fuck. In that moment, nothing matters, not even the useless lair she wants so desperately to fuck, the one who has called her phone seven times now, not even him. She is ascendant, moving with the air, moving the body she taught herself to love, moving it with ease and gladness. On that stage, in front of all those people, in front of us, underneath the starless Lagos night, M. celebrates herself, and what we see is a woman ready to feast on herself, knowing she will be satisfied. 

24th December 2021.

They are both drenched in sweat when we see them, and god are they a sight to behold. He; head full of hair, a pink floral shirt with one too many buttons undone, a silver necklace shimmering in the darkness of night, and black jeans so tight, they could be another layer of skin. She – our girlwomanmagicbeing – is clad in an emerald green bralette, complete with ropes that criss-cross the skin between her breasts, free and unbound with nipples peeking to greet the night air. Her burgundy trousers, tight at the waist and flared towards her feet, have slipped much lower than their initial placement to reveal her waistbeads – all ten of them; red, gold, blue, and bronze, glittering and seductive in the midnight hue. It is another December and another Show Dem Camp concert, but this time she is not on stage. This time she is in the arms of a lover who sees her entirely, a lover her body calls siren-like, and he answers every single time. Their faces are split in these ethereal smiles as they exchange a tiny gold flask between themselves. No one else knows, but just before they arrived here, in a small hotel room off Ozumba, they split a heart-shaped pill into two, each person slipping their half into heated mouths chased with cold Orijin. It hit in the middle of the show. Rays of heat deep from the core of their bodies began to radiate outwards, a kind of cosmic energy beaming from within. Now, the girl is chanting lyrics, engaged in a full-blown rap battle of one: CHOP LIFE CREW, JAIYE TIMES TWO, AFTER ROUND ONE, SHE WANT TATOO. The words tumble from her mouth with a volume she didn't even know she possessed, ebullient and loud as she bounces from one leg to another, everyone around her staring in a mixture of amusement and mild confusion. She does not care. From her small red purse, she retrieves a perfect rolled joint. Oh. This is new. Slinging it between her deep red fingernails, she lifts it to her mouth, flicks her neon lighter against its twisted tip, and takes a deep drag as her eyes flutter closed. She holds it within her, seconds passing before she releases the smoke skyward. Her movements, seamless with the ease of frequency. She does it again, the skin of her bare face supple with sweat, shining. There is a serene beauty to her in the way her entire body rejects the performance of perfection. She is not sucking in her belly, not fretting about the downward slope of her breasts, not concealing the bags underneath her eyes. She is just a girl in a park in the city she loves, getting high with the man she loves. It is all so simple. She lifts the joint to W’s mouth, placing it between his lips, feeding him as her fingers brush his bottom lip, warm and supple. He smiles at her from underneath his eyes. A look passes between them, and we know they will soon carry their bodies away from here to do what they hunger for. To speak a language only their bodies understand. Looking at them, you would only see a young couple having fun in Lagos on Christmas Eve. But if you looked closer, you would see a small fresh scar underneath her belly button, obscured by the beads. Her eyes are slits now, blurred by herb and drink, but just a few hours ago, they poured torrents because her body refused to allow itself to be taken by the man she wanted to give it to. At first, we conclude that wholeness can be an act, easy to put on in a jam-packed field in the middle of Victoria Island. But then we watch her even closer – the move of her hips, the way her eyes light up when her lover traces the skin at the base of her neck, the way she closes her eyes to soak up all that music, all that joy, all that magic – and we know that even broken things possess their own wholeness, a cacophony of healing to rage against the silence of suffering and our girl from all those years ago is still here, still bending, still shifting, still becoming. She walks out of the park that night, and we wrap our arms around her, rejoicing over resilience and beauty, rejoicing over all the ways a girl becomes a woman who fights to be alive and whole, enough for herself in every season.

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