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Cherry lips at Iya Mosun’s Midnight Club mean the wearer is available. It doesn’t matter that the room is intentionally poorly lit, save for the red embroidered lamp shades dimming the orange lights of the already dim lanterns– the lips can always be seen lurking in the dark corners waiting to be chosen. The guests can only tell who the wearer is by the vague descriptions on the tags they wear on their necks handwritten by Madam and based on what she believes to be their best features: 22. woman. tall & gorjus. can bend lo. man & woman. 19. man.  short. last long. onli man. 27. big brez. onli man. Madam got into this business when she should have been in school, so she knows it’s not one for too many words. In her time, she always says, there was no time to haggle or say what you could offer. There was only the split second of decision in a shaded alleyway away from the drunk, extortionist police at Allen Avenue roundabout waiting to make some cash off an inexperienced prostitute, and maybe pass her around if they were bored enough. You only had what you were selling, your nylon bag of cash, and a free corner of the alleyway. No time for too much talk.

It’s a long way from Allen Avenue but the rules are similar. The patrons take their pick from the crop of silent cherry lips, and they are led away to rooms that are nobody’s concern but the people using them. The wearers of the lipstick remain silent till the doors close, and their work begins. Patrons cannot physically harm the workers unless previously agreed upon by the worker and Madam. Some repeat customers have their favourite workers and that’s mostly okay. In that instance, the cherry lip can approach the patron in a sultry fashion. There are some guests who absolutely cannot be approached. At the exit, there is a brown cardboard box for reviews.

Sometimes, we have some feisty workers. Aliyah resumed work only last month and she has already stirred some trouble. She is young, and her skin is the color of milky tea. Her hair is loose and always braided in thick tracks that run down her scalp and end below her shoulders. Her father must have been a greedy, forceful man because her coils are too loose, and her eyes are a color you don’t see around here. We know her mother is that woman that sells freshly fried akara in front of Central Market in the mornings before walking a long distance to clean the big men’s houses in Victoria Island and Ikoyi. That forceful greed clearly still holds some fortune because Aliyah is very popular among Madam’s guests, and even with madam herself. Her tag says: 20. woman. butiful half cast. fresh. man & woman.

It’s clear she’s done this before. She doesn’t flinch when handled in the hungrily impatient way that some eager guests behave when checking her out; rather she guides their hands round her body, hiding that innate scorn workers are familiar with behind steamy eye contact. She’s graceful in her movements, somehow the center of attention from her dark corner of the room, but the thing is, you can’t be the center of a room with others fighting for that same center. You will become a quiet enemy, and you will be alone, and that isn’t good when you are a new girl like her. You are new. Even after a month, you are still new. You were old and worn at the shack in Idumota where you serviced bus conductors and mechanics, and even then, you were desirable enough to get your sister clean uniforms for school and never let her be pulled out of class for unpaid fees, and things were okay until your mothers legs began to swell and she began to pant heavily when trying to get to the toilet from her room and the nurse at the hospital gave you a test bill with too many numbers. You’d heard about Iya Mosun from one of the girls you worked with and made your way to Government Residential Area the next day wearing a dress that squeezed your tummy so tight that it hurt when you sat in the bus, and you prayed it wouldn’t tear before you got there. Iya Mosun, scary as she might look, is immediately taken by you and slates you to be presented that very night. After her sixty percent cut, she says, you would make so much money that it would leak from your nose. That night, you dip your fingers into a container of red pigment and paint your lips next to a girl that tells you Iya Mosun puts something in the lipstick to make the customers hungry for the workers. The next morning, after the guests are gone and Iya Mosun has counted and taken her money, you squeeze the ten one thousand naira notes you are given tightly in your palm so they wouldn’t fly away by mistake or magic before you get home.

You continue there that week and quickly make enough money to match the numbers on the hospital bill slip, and thankfully too because your mother’s illness, though bad, is treatable, but with a lot of drugs that cost too much money. She would need to rest more, so there can’t be any more trips to the big men’s houses or akara selling, thereby punishing you with the role of the breadwinner of your household. You tell yourself there is nothing to worry about because, if you continue working at Iya Mosun’s, you just might be able to handle everything. Your sister is fourteen and although she doesn’t look like you, she is blossoming and the men of Idumota can see it.  You’d started at that age but already decided long ago that there would be none of that for her; she would go to school.

Iya Mosun’s club becomes your sanctuary. You don’t make friends because the others are wary of you and you don’t blame them; to make it in this business, one must be careful of who they let near them. This doesn’t do you any good though because you routinely take the regular customers of the others– initially because you didn’t know of the rule but later because you are hungry for something the others will not be able to understand. So, you stand alone in your corner and every night, you can feel angry eyes bore holes into your back as you saunter into a room with someone else’s regular, and you don’t care. Iya Mosun can see your infractions, but nobody runs a successful business on fairness and because your beauty lines her pockets, she busies herself with other things to keep her eyes away from you. Your brazenness alienates you, and when the day breaks and lines of sunlight begin to form through the slits of the rooms’ window blinds, you are not invited to join groups carpooling home.

On one of these mornings, the sun is behind murky clouds and the sky weeps showers. You are ready to leave when someone calls your name. It’s the girl that told you the thing about the lipstick. She says she’s Abike and you should follow her– were you planning to go under the rain? Her boyfriend is coming to pick her up and you should come.

In the club, you can’t really see the features of a person because every colour is muted in the brightness of the cherry lips, so this is your first time seeing her fully. She is tall and her hair is cropped short and dyed a crisp yellow. Her neck is long and holds up a small head with features that almost look too big for them. She talks a lot too, about the weather, about the traffic, about how she hates her hair and loves yours, about that girl at the club that she knows is pregnant for the gay guy, about herself, about her boyfriend. His car smells synthetically fruity and the seats are clean. He sizes you up as Abike introduces you and you write him off in your mind. When he stops on the road to buy fruits, she tells you he works in tech. He makes a lot of money from making friends abroad, she says, and that’s basically the same as tech since he uses a computer for it. What friends? Abike hesitates before she leans in and tells you they’re short-term friends. You nod your head knowingly; he is a scammer. You don’t want to know more. Abike gives you her number along with three plump oranges when they drop you off at your junction.

You become friends fast and, at work, you are in sync. She introduces her regulars to you and sometimes, cajoles them to invite you to her sessions with them. Afterwards, Iya Mosun would split the money between both of you. Abike takes you home every morning, sometimes with her boyfriend, and when he’s too busy or too tired to make the trip, you sit next to her in crowded buses where she tells you the latest gossip of the club, and she drops off with you at your bus stop. You introduce her to your family one morning and she immediately becomes your mother’s other daughter. Your mother relish her presence in your home and this warms you up to her, and even your shy sister makes sure to greet her when she comes over. You had never been one to have friends or accept the help of others, so you don’t know how to respond when she tells you she has a better job for you to help with your mother’s rapidly declining health.

She tells you she’s been working at Iya Mosun’s for almost two years, and she knows you will never make enough money to fully break free from her; there are bigger, better ways. What could be bigger than earning ten thousand a night on a good week? You wonder this aloud and she snorts and remind you about her boyfriend’s work. Sometimes, she says, there are no ways to make his ‘friends’ fast enough, so she helps him by bringing in ‘clients’. These ‘clients’ are the club’s customers. She fills your head with talk of how much money they have and wouldn’t mind letting go of. Do you know, she asks, how much you can get from their cards? And not just in naira? Naira is chicken change, and you can get more and maybe even move your family abroad where your mother can get better drugs, and you can leave this line of work. You partly marvel at how foolish she must think you are and how desperate you must seem for her to think this can work with you, and you have to ball your fists to restrain the other part of you that can already smell the damp notes you could get from the ATM if you worked with Abike.

Sometimes, in the obscurity of the club and in between customers, your mind rests for a split second of immense guilt.  You think about how dirty you feel, how dirty you are. You are the embodiment of the sin of lust. You get dizzy with these thoughts, so much that sometimes the lips of your coworkers’ blend into one another and, with the red hue of the lampshades, the room turns a blurry red and you feel like you’re in hell, then your mind strengthens in the same split-second way, and you catch yourself with your mantra– this isn’t your fault. You didn’t impregnate your mother. You didn’t carry the pregnancy to full term. You didn’t make your mum sick. You didn’t inflict poverty on your family. You were conceived through sin, so your actions are beyond your control. This is not your fault. In spite of this, as if to prove to yourself that you are not all wrong, there are some sins you cannot let yourself get into. You tell Abike no. As you paint your lips red, she still tells you to think about it.

The customer that picks you is new. He is wearing a clean shirt and can’t meet your eyes. His friends guffaw and cheer him on as you link your arms with his and walk to an available room. It’s his first time here and he hopes you wouldn’t be too disappointed. He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. It’s his bachelor party and his friends just wanted to show him a good time. Are you into role play?

“I can do anything you want,” you tell him the rehearsed line.

As both of you undress, you decide that he’s nice enough to make you forget Abike’s offer. Ten thousand naira nightly isn’t so bad right? If you could take on more customers, maybe you could scale through. Maybe you could leave Idumota with your family, enroll your sister in a school where men wouldn’t openly talk about how they are waiting to taste her. But what if there isn’t enough time before then? Your mother’s breathing has been more labored by the day and you don’t know how to raise more money for your family’s upkeep and her hospital bills. You’ve already taken over your mother’s cleaning job and you’re stretched thin as it is. You think about this as he pants over you and tells you he has never seen someone so beautiful be a filthy whore. He strikes you across your face and spits on you. He tells you to tell him you know how dirty you are and how much you love it. He rolls off you when he’s done and walks wordlessly to the adjoining bathroom.

When you can hear the water rushing out of the tap, you pad to the table on which he had draped his jeans and search the wallet in the pocket for his card as the spit dribbles from your hair to the tip of your nose.