Chapter Three

"How much is in our joint account?" 

Halima wiped her face and sipped some of the cold sachet water she'd bought on the way in. She hesitated to tell Salisu what was remaining in the account. 

"Fourteen thousand." 

His eyes widened comically and Halima would have laughed if not for the situation on ground. But,she held in her laughter and sipped some more water and plainly minded her business. 

"We don't have any foodstuff. We'll need to eat before going to look for jobs in the morning, so I propose we take ten thousand and buy some semo, some couscous due to the price of rice and buy some beans and charcoal for the coal pot. We don't have money for kerosine if we don't want to starve." Salisu nodded and leaned back on the throw pillows he was sitting in front of. Then he scrolled through his phone again. 

Halima had it on the top of her tongue to ask him to stop going on all those data sipping apps, but she knew her advice would be taken the wrong way. 

And she definitely had no time for unnecessary drama.

"What of this afternoon though, what would you like to eat?" Salisu shook his head at her and smiled, confirming Halima's fears that his mother had brought him food and he didn't even think she'd eat. 

"What did you eat?" He licked his lips. 

"Fried rice with soy oil, the vegetables were just well fried, just a little. Daidai yanda Nike so" Halima mentally turned her lips down and nearly swore at her mother-in-law but she held it in and walked to the small bedroom that Salisu and her shared and some of the time that Salisu's mother slept in whenever she came. 

She locked the door securely, making sure the dead bolt didn't make a single sound and picked up her small phone to check her account balance. 

She was used to doing home services for people who couldn't come to her Madam's shop and now she'd be reaping the benefits because she had saved, surely hunger wouldn't beat her to death. 

She checked and sighed in relief when she saw her thirteen thousand naira still intact and safe from prying eyes. 

******

"What's your qualifications?" 

Halima listed the shops she'd worked at, as well as where she'd learned and watched as the owner of a salon in wuse 2 nod her head, it was an elite salon and she wondered if they plaited just hair without attachments there. 

"I'll take you because I'm short on staff at the moment. And I'll pay you only twenty thousand naira. Your first month, I'll pay you ten because frankly I can't trust anyone. But from the next month I'll pay you in full." Halima calculated and nodded her head encouragingly. 

"Follow me, let's go test your skills." 

She was pointed in the direction of a doll with black hair sewn into its head and was asked to make a particular hairstyle on it, one that ended at the nape. 

"Okay ma. Fancy or just normal." The lady waved her hand and said "just do however you want." 

Halima began first by gently combing out the strands that had been made to look like real hair before she began to use a cutting comb to open each end. 

Twenty minutes later, she was done with the style and her almost new boss was looking at it with a critical eye. 

"You're good. I'll give you that. You have to be fast, very fast because we have clients. Okay?" Halima nodded but not without trepidation because she feared what would happen if Salisu found out she was going to be leaving their area every morning to come to Wuse 2. It would be hard to convince him. 

"If that's all. I'll see you when you resume." Halima muttered an In Sha Allah and dragged herself out of the air- conditioned salon. Once outside, she heard the Adhaan for Zuhr begin to ring from her bag and from a mosque across the road. 

She picked her phone up and turned the alarm off, taking the mosque as a good sign for the new job. She locked her belongings in a small locker and tucked the key in her hijab's pocket near the sleeves where she could feel the key while praying. 

************

"Salisu, I understand your point but I think it's continually unfair to put our finances at the mercy of your mother. It's completely unfair that everytime I want something, we have to go ask her for money to supplement our funds. This job will give us some security In Sha Allah and you're telling me to turn it down?" Salisu rubbed a hand down his full muggy beards that lined his face in a somewhat ugly manner. 

"Can't you find somewhere closer?" Halima shook her head, not wanting to loose her temper and make her already sick husband shout. 

"Every shop in the 20 mile radius has been notified that I leave work without notice. One lady owner even told me that even though my skills are nice, her shop needs stability that I cannot give. I felt it in my heart." She knew how to give her closing argument and she knew very clearly that she had won this one with a landslide victory. 

"Okay, I agree, but what will I eat in the afternoons?" 

Halima resisted the urge to bare her teeth in anger, his mother should come and cook for him. But, she didn't say that, instead she smiled and told him that she'd make food and keep it in very good warmers for him. 

That seemed to settle his fears

.