Esohe was a head above most girls, so she was easy to spot. But the girl could also move. God hadn’t blessed her with obvious hips, but she knew how to move what little He had given her. Her whole body was twisting. The dress she wore was silver and shone against her dark skin, and it was short, all the better to flaunt her long legs. I stood and watched from the bar as guy after guy tried to slip in behind her, to better enjoy the art of her moving hips, but she would simply twist away from them.
I only meant to check on her. She was my uncle’s girl, and she wasn’t even my type. I bought her a drink. She would have been a little thirsty after all that dancing. I had to squeeze myself through the masses of people. Half the drink had swirled out of the glass by the time I got to her.
‘Bambi!’ Her voice was breathless, husky. I handed her the drink. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’
She drank and handed the glass back to me. I put it on a handy table. She had started dancing again. It was only natural that I join her. She didn’t turn away from me. Instead, she began to twerk. I let her do her thing. It was just dancing. She wasn’t even the type of girl I was attracted to. Her breasts were like apples, and a man didn’t feel good unless he could hold on to watermelon-sized goods. But she wasn’t wearing a bra, and it made me feel a little light-headed.
I hadn’t come alone. I had arrived with a friend, but we both knew how it was. I glimpsed him now and again, and he would give me a thumbs-up. He didn’t know who Esohe was. There had been no reason to ever mention her. After a while, I saw he had also found a girl to keep him busy. I returned his luck with a thumbs-up of my own.
I had not planned to spend my whole time with her. I figured I would dance with her once, maybe twice or three times, and then I would move on to another woman. But things don’t always work out the way you plan them. We left the club together. I took her to a hotel close by.
Were there moments when I felt guilty? Yes. But the sum of those moments was not enough to hold me back. And besides, she wasn’t Uncle Folu’s wife. She was free to sleep with whomever she wanted to sleep with. My phone rang a couple of times – the woman I was dating at the time was clearly looking for me. But despite her generous body, she was not able to move as expertly as Esohe did, and so she was far from my mind.
That night was about Esohe and me.
Chapter Twenty-six
‘Bambi!’ Esohe screamed. ‘Bambi!’
I sprinted from my bedroom and met her coming down the hallway. She was holding Remi in her arms and he was limp. Esohe kept on coming, holding the baby out to me. It was as though she were presenting an offering. I took a couple of steps backwards – I was terrified.
‘I don’t know what to do!’ I cried.
‘His skin is hot!’
So he was still alive, then. Yes, his chest was rising and falling. It was faint, but it was there, and as long as there was breath, there was hope. ‘Give him to me,’ I said, and she quickly slipped him into my arms. It was as though she was handing over her duty. He was so small. He was hot … too hot.
‘Run a bath, Esohe. Lukewarm water!’
She rushed off and I followed her, gently cradling Remi. ‘It’ll be OK,’ I whispered, as much to myself as to him. When I got to the bathroom there were already several inches of water in the baby tub. I knelt down beside Esohe and dipped him into the water. He shivered but he didn’t cry.
‘What’s happened?’ I turned around to see Aunty Bidemi standing in the doorway.
‘Help us!’ cried Esohe.
Aunty Bidemi crumpled against the door frame.
‘Is he going to die? He is going to die. I know it!’ she cried.
‘What?!’ screamed Esohe.
‘Can’t you see? Neither of these babies are going to survive. My dear baby died! He died! And now Remi is being taken from us!’ Aunty Bidemi was weeping and pulling her hair. ‘Ah! He is going to die! I know it!’ She was frantic.
I took the baby from Esohe and left the bathroom before Aunty Bidemi forced me to lose my shit. Esohe followed me and watched me as I tried to get Remi to drink a bottle of milk and then a bottle of water. We had baby Calpol, so I gave him some of that too.
She tried to speak to me while we waited for his fever to go down, but I wasn’t replying. Fear wouldn’t let me speak. Perhaps it was fear that was making Esohe talk so much.
‘She is mad. I told you she is mad. She wants my baby to die,’ she said.
And then,
‘I named him Efosa because he is my wealth.’
And then she said,
‘I gave birth to him here, you know. I wanted to go to the hospital, but because of the virus … My doctor wasn’t even picking up my calls. Aunty Bidemi helped me. She told me to push.’
I lifted Remi up. I was afraid to let him lie down for too long. He started throwing up. When he was more settled, I tried to call Uche but he wasn’t picking up.
‘What happened?’ I asked Esohe.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was he hot before you slept? Was he grumpy? Did he eat anything he shouldn’t have?’
‘Are you saying this is my fault?’
‘No. No, I’m not. I am just trying to work out the cause.’ I tried to keep my voice steady. I needed to find out what happened, more than I needed to lash out.
‘He was fine. And then he was, like, crying and he felt really hot. He has been pooing a lot, too. Like a lot, a lot.’
‘OK. OK.’
We watched over him. I tried to give him plenty of water. I searched Google endlessly, in order to find out what could be wrong with him. I looked for advice on babies with diarrhoea. Eventually he fell asleep, but I went on searching. The internet offered me a solution. I went to the kitchen to make him a drink of six level teaspoons of sugar and half a level teaspoon of salt dissolved in one litre of water. I got him to drink a little when he was up, but he quickly fell asleep again.
I had never felt that kind of total, all-consuming tiredness. If I tried to nod off, fear would wake me and I would be alert once more. My eyes tired from watching his chest rise and fall. I prayed for the first time in ages.
Aunty Bidemi seemed to have moved on from her ‘he will die’ nonsense. She offered to watch him. But I did not bother to reply.
I was almost asleep when I heard him cry. Remi’s cry was strong and beautiful. It broke my heart in a thousand different ways. Esohe was snoring. How could she sleep through such a wonderful sound? I managed to get him to drink some more of the sugar-water before he fell asleep again.
Uche finally called me back and I broke down Remi’s condition to him.
‘You’re doing the right thing, Bambi. Give him the solution each time he poos. And remember to keep him watered. He will be fine in a couple of days.’
‘OK. Good. But I don’t even know why he was sick …’
‘Just make sure you keep his bottles clean and you don’t give him old milk.’
‘We aren’t newbies.’
He laughed at me and I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Stay safe.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
‘Is he OK now?’ asked Aunty Bidemi. I opened my eyes and knelt in front of the bed. He was fine. Esohe was also asleep, slumped half on, half off my bed.
‘He is OK.’
‘Do you need anything?’
‘No.’
It wasn’t true – we had run out of clean bottles. I walked about the house collecting empties. Most of them were in Esohe’s room. It was as though she was allergic to the task of washing. Or any task at all.
There was a sour smell coming from one of the bottles. I brought it closer to my nose and took another whiff. And then another. The milk had gone bad. Had she fed Remi that milk? I couldn’t find any bottle in her room that looked fresh. I looked around her room again, and saw that even Remi’s clothes were unclean. When had she planned to wash them?
I put the bottle with the others and went to the kitchen to steri
lize them. Then I woke Esohe up gently and told her to go to her room.
‘I’ll take over from here.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
I packed my clothes into my suitcase slowly, afraid that I would be caught in the act. Even though I was fairly certain that both women were fast asleep.
I gave the room a once-over to see if there was anything I had missed. My charger was in my rucksack, along with my laptop and headphones. My wallet was still at Mide’s. Getting my stuff together was the easy part.
I crept outside, opening the door as carefully as I could. Remi’s freshly washed clothes were still hanging on the washing line. I grabbed all of them. Then I went to the store room to collect the unopened nappy bundles. I took his bottles and the sterilizer and put them in the boot of my car. The quiet made it so that every sound seemed three times louder than normal. I tried to get my hood to click without slamming it shut.
I went back to my room to find Aunty Bidemi standing there with Remi in her arms. What might I do to take him from her?
‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘I’m leaving with Remi.’
‘And Esohe.’
‘No. Just Remi.’
‘You’re not taking Esohe with you?’
‘No. Why would I?’
Aunty Bidemi sighed. Her major concern seemed to have been about Esohe. She looked down at Remi and stroked his black curls. She brushed his forehead with a kiss.
‘I really do love this baby. It is not as if I don’t love him. I know you think I’m a bad woman. But I tried and tried for a child. And when I finally got one, he—’ She began to cry. I should have felt sorry for her, but all I could think about was the safety of the baby in her arms. ‘This girl opens her legs for my husband, and she becomes pregnant within months. Would you believe that he told me Esohe’s baby would comfort me when my own baby...? He said this baby would bring us joy! He brought Esohe into our home. And then he died and left me with her!’
Her body was shaking. I worried that she would wake Remi up, and he would cry. Then his tears would wake Esohe up and we would be trapped in the house with them.
But Aunty Bidemi gave Remi another kiss and then handed him over to me.
‘Bring him back to me when this is all over.’
‘Yes.’ I would have promised her anything. I left the house.
There was no car seat, so I was forced to use his baby basket and stuff it with blankets. I put the basket in the front seat, so I could use my hand as a seat belt when needed, and I drove really slowly.
I was taking a gamble. It was more than likely Mide would leave me standing outside her apartment block. So the sound of the door buzzing and unlocking was like a hymn in my ear. I pushed the door open and took myself and Remi into the lift.
When Mide opened her door, she looked at me and then at Remi.
‘Bambi, for goodness’ sake, you were only gone a week …’
Acknowledgements
Thank you:
To God, always, for the grace He has given me.
To Clare Alexander and everyone at Aitken Alexander – thank you for all you do for me and for my career.
To James Roxburgh, Kate Straker, Poppy Mostyn-Owen and everyone at Atlantic, for all the support, encouragement and hard work.
To Fanny Blake and Quick Reads, for the opportunity to be a part of this project.
To Temidayo Odunlami, for reading and listening and pushing me to do more.
To Folake Okuyemi, for taking the time to help me manoeuvre my way out of the medical corner that I had backed myself into.
To my family, for putting up with my eccentricities.
Read on for an extract of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s
My Sister, the Serial Killer.
WORDS
Ayoola summons me with these words—Korede, I killed him.
I had hoped I would never hear those words again.
BLEACH
I bet you didn’t know that bleach masks the smell of blood. Most people use bleach indiscriminately, assuming it is a catchall product, never taking the time to read the list of ingredients on the back, never taking the time to return to the recently wiped surface to take a closer look. Bleach will disinfect, but it’s not great for cleaning residue, so I use it only after I have first scrubbed the bathroom of all traces of life, and death.
It is clear that the room we are in has been remodeled recently. It has that never-been-used look, especially now that I’ve spent close to three hours cleaning up. The hardest part was getting to the blood that had seeped in between the shower and the caulking. It’s an easy part to forget.
There’s nothing placed on any of the surfaces; his shower gel, toothbrush and toothpaste are all stored in the cabinet above the sink. Then there’s the shower mat—a black smiley face on a yellow rectangle in an otherwise white room.
Ayoola is perched on the toilet seat, her knees raised and her arms wrapped around them. The blood on her dress has dried and there is no risk that it will drip on the white, now glossy floors. Her dreadlocks are piled atop her head, so they don’t sweep the ground. She keeps looking up at me with her big brown eyes, afraid that I am angry, that I will soon get off my hands and knees to lecture her.
I am not angry. If I am anything, I am tired. The sweat from my brow drips onto the floor and I use the blue sponge to wipe it away.
I was about to eat when she called me. I had laid everything out on the tray in preparation—the fork was to the left of the plate, the knife to the right. I folded the napkin into the shape of a crown and placed it at the center of the plate. The movie was paused at the beginning credits and the oven timer had just rung, when my phone began to vibrate violently on my table.
By the time I get home, the food will be cold.
I stand up and rinse the gloves in the sink, but I don’t remove them. Ayoola is looking at my reflection in the mirror.
“We need to move the body,” I tell her.
“Are you angry at me?”
Perhaps a normal person would be angry, but what I feel now is a pressing need to dispose of the body. When I got here, we carried him to the boot of my car, so that I was free to scrub and mop without having to countenance his cold stare.
“Get your bag,” I reply.
We return to the car and he is still in the boot, waiting for us.
The third mainland bridge gets little to no traffic at this time of night, and since there are no lamplights, it’s almost pitch-black, but if you look beyond the bridge you can see the lights of the city. We take him to where we took the last one—over the bridge and into the water. At least he won’t be lonely.
Some of the blood has seeped into the lining of the boot. Ayoola offers to clean it, out of guilt, but I take my homemade mixture of one spoon of ammonia to two cups of water from her and pour it over the stain. I don’t know whether or not they have the tech for a thorough crime scene investigation in Lagos, but Ayoola could never clean up as efficiently as I can.
THE NOTEBOOK
“Who was he?”
“Femi.”
I scribble the name down. We are in my bedroom. Ayoola is sitting cross-legged on my sofa, her head resting on the back of the cushion. While she took a bath, I set the dress she had been wearing on fire. Now she wears a rose-colored T-shirt and smells of baby powder.
“And his surname?”
She frowns, pressing her lips together, and then she shakes her head, as though trying to shake the name back into the forefront of her brain. It doesn’t come. She shrugs. I should have taken his wallet.
I close the notebook. It is small, smaller than the palm of my hand. I watched a TEDx video once where the man said that carrying around a notebook and penning one happy moment each day had changed his life. That is why I bought the notebook. On the first page, I wrote, I saw a white owl through my bedroom window. The notebook has been mostly empty since.
“It�
��s not my fault, you know.” But I don’t know. I don’t know what she is referring to. Does she mean the inability to recall his surname? Or his death?
“Tell me what happened.”
The Baby Is Mine Page 6
