The Chemistry Class Note He Wrote Me in 2012 Still Makes Sense in Ogbete Market

The rain had just stopped over Ogbete Market when I saw him haggling over a bale of used clothes like his life depended on it, and something about the way he tilted his head while arguing made my stomach drop before my brain even caught up with my eyes.

I am Adaeze, and I had not seen Emeka Okonkwo in fourteen years. Not since secondary school in Enugu, not since the afternoon he left for Lagos with two bags and a promise to write that he never kept.

Standing there under the tarpaulin stalls, watching mud water drip from the roof edges onto sacks of secondhand jeans, I almost walked past him. Almost.

Emeka, is that you? I heard myself say before I had decided to say anything at all.

He turned so fast he nearly knocked over a stack of folded shirts. For a second his face did that thing faces do when they are trying to place a voice against a memory, and then his mouth opened wide enough to catch rain.

Ada? Ada Nwosu? Chai, this cannot be real life.

The bale seller, a woman everyone in the market called “Mama Fine Fine” because she swore every single item she sold was fine and fine, stood between us looking thoroughly confused about whether her sale was still happening.

We stepped out from under the tarpaulin into the thin drizzle still falling, ignoring the danfo conductors shouting Awka, Awka, one chance behind us, ignoring the okada riders splashing through the gutter water, ignoring everything except each other’s faces, which had both aged in ways that felt unfair and familiar at the same time.

You cut your hair, he said, like that was the most important development in fourteen years.

You grew a belly, I said, and he laughed the exact laugh from 2012, head thrown back, one hand slapping his own thigh.

We ended up at a small buka near Zik Avenue, plastic chairs sinking slightly into wet earth, a generator somewhere behind the kitchen coughing black smoke into the grey afternoon.

Over plates of jollof rice and fried plantain, Emeka told me about Lagos, about years selling phone accessories at Computer Village before the business collapsed, about a marriage that ended quietly two years ago, about coming back to Enugu because his mother’s health was failing and somebody had to be near her.

And you, madam big grammar, he said, pointing his spoon at me. Last thing I heard, you were studying abroad. London or somewhere.

Manchester, I corrected him. Came back three years ago. My mother needed help running her shop, and honestly, I was tired of pretending cold weather agreed with me.

He laughed again, softer this time, and for a moment neither of us said anything, just listened to the rain picking back up against the zinc roof above us, that particular Enugu rain that always sounds like somebody upstairs is angrily sorting coins.

What he did not know yet was that the bale of clothes he had been haggling over in the market was mine. Not literally mine, but from my supplier, from the same container I had been buying stock from for eleven months to restock my small shop on Ogui Road.

I sold “London Bend Down” fashion, secondhand clothes from bales that everyone pretended came straight from London boutiques even though we all knew they came from a warehouse in Cotonou.

So what are you even doing in Ogbete today? I asked him.

Trying to start something small, he said, and something in his voice went quiet in a way that made me put my spoon down. I do not have capital for a shop yet. I was thinking of buying a bale, sorting the good pieces, and hawking them around the estates in Trans Ekulu. Small small, until something grows.

I recognized that voice. It was the voice of somebody who had already been embarrassed enough times that admitting a small hustle out loud still felt like admitting defeat.

Emeka, I said carefully, do you know anything about how I make my money?

He shook his head.

I sell bend down select from a small shop. I started exactly the way you are describing. Buying one bale, sorting it myself at night under a rechargeable lamp because NEPA would take light every evening at exactly seven, selling piece by piece until I had enough for two bales, then three.

He stared at me the way you stare at somebody explaining a magic trick you thought was actual magic.

You are serious, he said.

Very serious. And I am not saying this because we used to be secondary school sweethearts who wrote each other embarrassing notes during chemistry class.

Ah ah, you still remember that note?

Emeka, I will remember that note until the day I die. “Ada, you are the pistil to my stamen.” Which kind foolish boy writes that.

He put his face in his hands, laughing so hard the plastic chair creaked under him, and two women at the next table glanced over, smiling at whatever joy they assumed we were having.

By the time the rain stopped completely and the buka owner started stacking chairs around us, hinting without words that closing time had arrived, we had a plan.

Not a grand plan, nothing dramatic, just an arrangement between two people who had once known each other completely and were now getting reacquainted through spreadsheets and sorting strategies instead of love notes.

I would let him work with me for a season, learning how to grade items, how to spot the difference between real denim and the cheap imitation that falls apart after three washes, how to negotiate with bale sellers who smell inexperience the way mosquitoes smell blood.

He would put in the labor. We would split whatever profit came from the pieces he personally sorted and sold.

This is not charity, I told him firmly, because I could already see him building an excuse to refuse. This is business. If you cannot carry your own weight, I will tell you straight, and you will go and find something else.

Understood, oga madam, he said, giving a small mock salute, and something about the gesture, so exactly like the boy who used to salute our chemistry teacher behind her back, made my chest feel warm in a way it had not felt in a long time.

Three weeks later, Emeka sold his first properly sorted batch of shirts to a civil servant’s wife in Trans Ekulu who called him back the following week for two more bags. He came to my shop that evening, soaked from another sudden downpour, holding a small nylon bag of roasted plantain like an offering.

Ada, he said, standing in my doorway dripping onto the tiled floor, I do not know how to thank you.

Sort the next bale properly and stop bringing me dodo like it is Valentine, I said, though I took the plantain anyway.

He laughed that same laugh, unchanged after fourteen years, after Lagos, after a failed marriage, after everything Enugu rain had washed over both of us since we were teenagers passing foolish notes in a chemistry class we both nearly failed.

Some reunions happen because somebody plans a class reunion on WhatsApp. Ours happened because of a bale of secondhand clothes and a market woman who insisted everything she sold was fine and fine, and honestly, for once, she was not lying.