When you have tried everything to become big and your success is stuck in traffic, you change tactic.
Right now, my tactic has changed.
And it is now veering in the direction of cream – skin lightening cream.
Because, like my artificially yellow colleagues, I have refused to call it what it is.
Oh please, nobody is throwing shade at anyone. It is my new business venture, so I am wearing it like a cheap Hausa perfume.
I glance at Aunty Claudette, she is counting money with her fingers. She sticks her tongue out, dips her thumb and the counts.
She repeats the action as she counts the huge wad of cash in her hands. Aunty Claudette’s acrylic nails are shaped like a bow, she said it’s an ode to some of my old colleagues in the Industry.
I want to say that her eyebrows have also been shaved off and now replaced with artificial brows that look like she drew them with that protractor thing that used to come in Maths set when we were in secondary school.
But I won’t.
We’re counting money from my new business venture and that is what matters.
‘Tharry tawsan.’ Aunty Claudette says when she’s done. She screams in excitement as she dumps the money on the table before me. ‘A whooping sum of tharry tawsan naira.’
I want to tell Aunty Claudette that thirty thousand naira is not a whooping sum, but just like I have decided not to worry about her brows, I have refused to worry about her opinion on money matters.
Last month, I met with one of my new ‘best friends’ in Nollywood.
I call her ‘sister girl’ in the comment section on Instagram because, well, it is what some of us have decided to call each other.
Even though sister girl sounds like something a bunch of ratchet wannabe American women called themselves twenty-five years ago.
Anyway, I call her sister girl on Instagram, Twitter and even Snapchat when I put her on there. Just so all these blog people can refer to us as ‘bestie goals’ when it’s a slow news day. It’s been working so far.
Anyway, this bestie of mine launched her skin lightening range last year and it’s been popping. It’s something that smells like rotten eggs doused with banana fragrance.
I once asked her why it smelled so confusing like Bobrisky’s sexuality, but she told me to shush.
‘It is good for the skin, removes dark circles around the eyes and makes your skin pop, slay queen. That’s all you need to say and get used to!’ she chided.
And then I laughed and high-fived her while screaming, ‘Uh-uh! Sister girl!’
She took me to one face-me-I-face-you house in Oshodi that looked like it should be a tourist attraction and that might have housed the first settlers in Lagos.
There, they mixed cream for us.
But sister girl told me to always video myself mixing it on social media, with my own hands, so I can tell the world I did it myself from the scratch.
I obeyed dutifully.
And today, I am the CEO of a cream manufacturing company.
My dear sisters, God can do it for you too. Just look beyond your current job and take the leap! Dive!
My phone beeps and I check it. It is an alert. I don blow!
Before you start asking me stupid questions, of course, I have been using it myself too. How will I sell something well if I haven’t been using. Sister girl made me use it from when I was buying from her.
She says she uses it too and her skin is so frosh.
Oh no, we don’t say fresh anymore. Lingo change.
‘Olamide baddo is coming to perform at Quilox. I am going.’ I say to Aunty Claudette as I go into the bedroom. Last time I went to Quilox, I was not only bounced, but hurled across the shoulders of a bouncer who clearly keeps malice with shaving sticks and body spray, and thrown in the car park.
Took me minutes to steady myself in the sky high heels that were sizes smaller than me.
But now that my face is everywhere, he wouldn’t dare.
I overhear Aunty Claudette telling somebody on the phone that ‘her creams’ are ‘the best.’
I rush out and give her a tongue lashing about her claiming my business as hers, again.
‘Stop eet!’ I yell.
‘Whaz mine is yours…’ she says, of course, trying to say the exact opposite.
I hiss and return to the room. When I tie my towel, I look at myself in the mirror.
I scream. On my face are boils of different sizes.
I hear Aunty Claudette screaming and I dash out, still in my towel.
At the entrance, I see three women with the same sores on my face.
I am about to scream when a police woman steps into view. She also has sores.
‘She is the one who sold the cream to us on Instagram. Arrest her!’ they yell.
I turn to Aunty Claudette. ‘Please o, ees not my business.’ She says, hands in the air.
‘Please let me go and change…’ I say to Police woman but she pulls me out of the house and shoves me outside.
Can. I. get. a. break?!
This post first appeared on TNS.
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