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small wedding with a borrowed wedding dress, dry cake, and cheap champagne, nothing at all like a Chinese wedding with its twelve-course banquet, red envelopes, and multiple silk gowns worn by the bride throughout the evening. None of their parents travelled from Hong Kong or Taiwan for the wedding. That night Winston touched her, fumbling with her bra. Afterward, she held him like a child, stroking his hair. The next day, they boarded a flight to Nigeria.
     
     

Chapter 4
    After her baby’s birth, three months went by with Winston travelling to countries Sylvia had never heard of—Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Cameroun. She felt the distance he was putting between them.
    She found the nights in Africa were not silent. They were filled with the shrill chorus of nocturnal insects and the constant undertone of drumming coming from town. Alone in her white-tiled house in the middle of a vast garden, she felt the isolation of this place—a solitary figure in the savannah, invisible villages hiding in the darkness. She had grown up in crowded, garishly-lit, urban Asia, constantly jostled by sweating people. She missed that cramped life, people in small places.
    While Winston was away, Sylvia woke up at all hours of the night, responding to Lila’s every whim. She was discovering that the soft, pastel love of her baby had a dark, hushed-up, twilight kind of underside. Lila was colicky and had bouts of unexplained crying, especially at night. Sylvia knew it was the spirits’ doing.
    One night, when Lila was three months old, her crying suddenly drove Sylvia to the edge of what felt like madness. Sylvia got out of bed, picked up Lila’s wicker bassinet, and walked quickly down the hallway. She placed the bassinet on the floor of the car and started the ignition. She found the repetitive hum and vibration of the car was the only way to calm her baby.
    Fenced in from the real Africa, she circled around the identical houses and smooth lawns of the expatriate compound built to mimic an American suburb with its own swimming pool, clubhouse, and golf course. She never left the confines of the compound except to buy food and supplies at the local market. But tonight, as she drove the smooth concrete streets, doing her usual loop to lull Lila to sleep, she could only think of fleeing. She heard the music coming from the town, a muted rhythm and voice over the static of an old amplifier. She had to leave this place and take her baby somewhere safe. At the fork in the road, instead of turning to go home, she swerved up the hill lined with royal palms, toward the gatehouse.
    The night watchman stopped her car at the tall, white gates flanked by a cement wall lined with shards of broken glass, separating them from the town outside.
    “Madam, where are you going at dis time of night?” The night watchmen were Hausa, a northern warrior tribe known for their black, carved arc-shaped swords. They were hired because they held a natural suspicion and disdain for the local Yoruba tribe, making them immune to bribes from the local population.
    “I have to leave this place,” Sylvia said with determination, even though she had no idea where she was going.
    The night watchman looked Sylvia over. She was dressed only in a white silk robe and slippers.
    He said, shaking his head, “Sorry madam, but I cannot let you out of dese gates. It is not safe dis time of night, you hear?”
    Bands of robbers prowled the deserted road at night, ready to pounce on imported Peugeots or Mercedes—cars of affluent Nigerians and expatriates. Sylvia knew this, but she didn’t care about the dangers of night driving. Suddenly, she craved the chaos, stench, and teeming crowds of the town beyond the compound walls. It reminded her more of home than the quiet, clean American suburban feel of the compound. She had never lived in an American suburb; she didn’t know what kind of life they were trying to recreate in the middle of Africa.
    “But I have to go. I