I heaved past the other wives in the sitting room. They stared at me and then at one another in puzzlement. I pretended not to see them and marched ahead to the desolate spot in the backyard where the old drum was. Charred bits of metal and melted plastic that had been pushed into the ground by rainfall protruded from the earth like gravestones. The ground around was scalded, the stones discolored by soot.
I eased the cardboard box onto the ground with a clatter and gave the blue keg a generous jiggle. The liquid trickled from paper to pottery and immediately the air around the box distorted the patterns on the crockery. It took only two matches to set the box alight. I stood there and watched the fire cremate my past, even when the heat drew sweat from my face. When the fire died, I gathered scattered shards, dug a hole in the warm soil and buried them.
Back in my bedroom, I surveyed the open spaces that rolled out before me. Now there would be room for a cot, I thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IYA SEGI
I WAS AN ENORMOUS child. My mother said I made her back curve like a cat’s tail. She said she didn’t know what to do after my father left her so she just ate and ate. After I was born, she consoled herself by eating more. She ate and ate and what she couldn’t eat she rammed into my mouth till I was rolling on the floor, beckoning sleep. She said she was forced to wean me because I shamed her in front of her customers by demanding breast milk. Let me suck, I am hungry, I whined, to the surprise of the old women. My mother sent me to day care the next day, like every other four-year-old.
The food my mother ate seemed to toughen her: her arms and legs could rival a man’s for strength. She said so herself. And she was the only woman who turned fufu and sold it wholesale. My youth was filled with the smell of fermented cassava, my nails brittle from immersion in water.
I never knew my father. “Your father left me for a beautiful woman. I told him I was pregnant but he didn’t want to hear it. He sliced me like okra and left. He pursued another woman’s hole and died inside it,” my mother said. When she spoke of my father, a small Adam’s apple bounced around her neck like an erect nipple under a loose blouse. “Men are nothing. They are fools. The penis between their legs is all they are useful for. And even then, if not that women needed their seed for children, it would be better to sit on a finger of green plantain. Listen to my words. Only a foolish woman leans heavily on a man’s promises.”
My mother had a friend who sold dye. We called her Mama Alaro. Her fingers were always stained violet and the soles of her feet were black like burned rubber. Even though she knew that children were afraid of her, she insisted on stroking the head of every child who greeted her. She was a widow too and she had just one child—a son called Ishola. Iya Alaro and my mother were great friends. Both of them were fat and callous to the eye. When they sat on a bench under the guava tree, it was as if two elephants were swaying on a branch. The children around the village would summon each other, just to look at the spectacle. Some of them could not hold their laughter. “May that laughter choke you,” Iya Alaro would curse.
By the time I was eighteen, Ishola, who would be my future husband, had gone to Ibadan to be a bricklayer’s apprentice. I had become quite adept at making fufu, and like my mother I had a stash of money under my mattress. But it was a small mattress, in a small room, in a tiny two-bed house. I troubled Mama about getting my own quarters; I was tired of squeezing past her at every doorway. “I have told you before that you cannot buy land and build your own house. The village men will say you are ridiculing them, doing what they can’t!”
“But it is just a house, Mama!”
“And they will tear it down and burn it, daughter!”
My money grew until I had to hide it in old water pots in my room. Every night, I would light my kerosene lamp and sit with my buttocks against the closed door. Even if I had counted the day before, I counted the money all over again. My fingers liked the feel of money. My eyes liked to see the piles of money swell. I worshipped money. Even when boys teased me over the flap of flesh that circled my neck, I was not bothered. I looked at them and sniggered, knowing their fathers’ fathers could not have a fraction of the wealth I had accumulated.
My mother grew weaker until death shone in her eyes. I could see it without looking. I was twenty-three and my breasts had bulbed and sagged. It wasn’t until the day I went to call the carpenter to repair our bench that I realized there was a whole path in life that I had never trod. The carpenter was about my age and as I described the extra reinforcement I wanted for our new bench, I noticed that he was looking at the buttocks of the tomato seller walking by. As if she knew, she turned to him and smiled. “You want it?” she asked.
“Only if you are giving it away for free.”
“Nothing in this world is free, let alone a woman.”
“Tell me the price and let me consider it.”
“It is beyond your means.” The girl swung her hips like ripe mango on a tree.
I could not stop looking at her. Her walk, her filthy tongue, her short-cropped hair, her bare feet—everything about her fascinated me. I was awash with lust.
“Lady, I cannot afford you but here is somebody who can,” the carpenter shouted after her. He was guffawing and his front teeth protruded in my direction.
The tomato seller looked at me, kissed her teeth and chuckled.
I returned the next day and sat with the carpenter with a list of new furnishings for him to construct. I’d hoped that the tomato seller would hawk through the same route but she did not return. Her brazenness meant she probably wasn’t even from our village. I walked home with the new bench balanced on my head. I was disappointed.
I went to bed scattered and perplexed. That night, I did not help my mother put balm on her rheumatism. And when she knocked, I lay still. I couldn’t get the girl out of my mind. For comfort, I started to count money, but before long, I was lying dreamily on the bed. There was money everywhere, spread liberally over my thighs, my neck, my upper arms. This is how my mother found me—bathed in money, wearing the notes like a garment—when she barged in at midnight. She was equally alarmed to find me naked but for my underwear. My clothes were strewn all over the room. Mama concluded on the spot that the root of my madness was money. “You have made money your husband,” she said.
From then on, marrying me off became her life’s ambition. “Child, did you see Baba Elepo’s son? He asked of you when he passed just now,” my mother would ask. It was as if she wasn’t the same woman who’d said God gave men bollocks for the weight they lacked in brains.
“I do not want her to die alone like me,” I heard my mother saying as she lifted the skin of her thigh to scratch the inside of her knee.
“She has entered the age of shame,” Iya Alaro replied in agreement.
“Money has taken over her senses. She does not even care about bearing children.”
“Did I not warn you? Now men mean nothing to her. She’s grown up hearing you rip them to shreds!”
“I just wanted her to know the truth.”
“Ah, well, she knows it too much now.”
“Come, my friend, where is your son? Will he not return?”
“Look at me talking about the holes in your roof when mine is leaking. My son is twenty-six. Every time I ask him when I will see my grandchildren, he tells me he has to make the money he will use to feed them first.”
“You mean he has not found a wife after all this time?”
“He says Ibadan doesn’t have wifely women anymore, only women who are after money.”
“Then why doesn’t he come and take a wife from here, in Omi Adio?”
“You have spoken wise words, my friend.”
“We have been friends for a long time. I am dying. Why don’t you take my daughter and make her yours? Let me give her to you with my blessing. Let your son take her from me and I will watch over them from the next world.”
From my bedroom, I heard my mother sobbing, which was strange becau
se the prospect of death did not usually upset her. She said she wanted to go to heaven and kill my father all over again. She was desperate for me to be married.
Mama Alaro looked at my mother and made a decision there and then. Although she worked as hard as my mother, she was not as wealthy. “Whether we accompany our palm oil with yam or we accompany our yam with palm oil, the most important thing is to have a good meal of oil-soaked yam. We must help each other.”
Even listening in on their plans for me did not take the tomato seller off my mind. After searching for days, I traced her to the farmland on the edge of our village. When I saw her, courage failed me. My liver weakened and I could not bring myself to talk to her. I abandoned my fufu and stalked her, overjoyed to be breathing the air she was breathing. I saw every man she teased. A gasp escaped my lips every time she rolled her hips and jiggled the beads that adorned her waist. Sweat was dripping from my neck like rain from the awning. I can’t explain why but I wanted her for myself. I wanted to build a house for her and keep the key between my breasts. I wanted to dress her in the finest aso oke so she could parade herself for my delight alone. I wanted to lock her between my thighs.
When I got home that evening, I opened my bedroom door and immediately the shadows cleared from my eyes. My room had been ransacked and all my money was gone. My heart beat so loud that the sound filled my head. I couldn’t scream lest demons rush out of the forests so I opened the door of my bedroom to report the tragedy. Mama was standing there filling up my doorway. “It’s all gone,” she said. She was standing erect without leaning on the doorpost. I had not seen her like that in two years. “I have given it to the man who will be your husband. He will need it to look after you.”
“My husband? Mama, women don’t need husbands.” I quoted her own words back to her.
“You do. You need one to bear children. The world has no patience for spinsters. It spits them out.”
“Is this all so I can bear children?”
“It is every woman’s life purpose to bear children. Do you want to become a ghost in the world of the living? That is not how I want to leave you in this world.”
I did not hold her words against her but nodded approvingly throughout the wedding festivities. Omi Adio will never be able to boast of a more lavish marriage. Both my mother and Mama Alaro did not hold back in spending money. They bought three cows and eight bags of rice. They invited the chiefs from all the neighboring villages.
“Come and see the splendor of the woman who was abandoned for mere beauty,” my mother said as she welcomed guests.
I surrendered because I knew it was the prelude to her death. The celebrations were her last dance with the living. She could no longer stand up unaided and when she sat back to survey the caliber of the wedding guests, each breath sounded like a long drawn-out fart. I knew, as many did, that she would soon breathe her last.
My new husband observed me with interest but I looked ahead and turned my ear to him. I could see the tomato seller dancing with the carpenter. A small crowd had gathered around them. The moments of notoriety made the carpenter euphoric; his teeth were high up in the air and he rolled his hips in jerky movements. My husband followed my gaze, perceived my repulsion and decided it was time for us to get up to thank the guests at each table.
“Eyin Iyawo o ni m’eni.” They prayed for a fruitful union.
“Ase o!” he replied, rubbing his palms together and looking at me mischievously, as if to warn me that I would soon bear lashings from his penis.
As I prepared to accompany him to Ibadan the following day, I knew he didn’t know the source of the money his mother had stuffed into a belly bag. From the way he held his head, it was clear he believed it was a great gift from his mother. On the bus to Ibadan, his arm rested on mine. It was as if someone had placed a twig on my wrist. He was a thin man in those days, so slight that a whirlwind could have swept him away. I looked up at him and found him smiling at me. I smiled back, with all my teeth. My weight may have made me the butt of many jokes but my teeth shone like light through leaves.
Later that night, at his one-bedroom hovel in Ibadan, he wriggled between my thighs and marveled at the size of my breasts. He said they would do him for a lifetime. It was my first time so I hardly heard his words. The pain in my belly spread through my back and up my neck to my ears. That night, I dreamed of the tomato seller. She was sitting on top of a huge tomato shrub yelling, “Where are you, carpenter?” The carpenter was hiding behind a tree nearby, pelting her with little red tomatoes. Every time one hit her, it splattered and left a red ring on her skin. When I woke, I told myself that my heart had stopped aching for her and that she could have the carpenter if that was what she wanted!
My new husband turned to me. “I am pleased you are here with me, if only to fatten me up a little,” he said.
“I will follow you anywhere, my lord.” I raised my buttocks and let him fill me again. I would follow my money anywhere.
After two years, his business began to flourish and he bought a piece of land. He rallied cheap laborers and our house rose from the ground very quickly. For a time, he seemed happy. I was certain that I satisfied him. Men! They always try to swindle you out of what is yours.
When he brought home other wives, I did not complain. I did not say a word. I did not even show that I feared for my money. I just kept quiet and watched him. Who can tell what madness makes men go in search of things that puncture their pockets? Kruuk. But that was the path he chose, and I accepted it. Women are my husband’s weakness. He cannot resist them, especially when they are low and downcast like puppies prematurely snatched from their mothers’ breasts. I do not blame the women either. They too are weakened by the prosperity he offers.
Besides, apart from that Bolanle, whose nose is so high that it brushes the skies, the other wives do not offend me. They are like humble maidservants who live for a kind pat on the head from the mother of the house. They know that I am the true provider. My husband only thinks he controls this household and I let him believe that he does. I want him to believe he does but I am the one who keeps this household together. Good things happen here because I allow them. I alone can approve vengeance and only I know how to bring calm.
As a baby, Segi clung to me as if the spirits had warned that I would one day run away and leave her. She has grown to be a loyal daughter. When I knew the damage that Bolanle would do to our home, I warned her. I told her that a girl who abandons her mother’s breast for another woman’s will be cursed. I told her that she must be my eyes, my ears, my nose and my hands when I am not in this house. She has been faithful. She tells me everything that happens in my absence. I have told her that she must cling to me until the day she leaves to rule her own home. She will not falter. I have trained her well.
Akin refused my milk after a year and cried for morsels of food. Rather than be bound to my back, he preferred to walk beside me. All day, he sat next to me at my first cement stall. Never did I have to wipe a tear from his kind eyes. He entertained himself: watching me as he fed himself, smiling each time I tucked money into my belly bag. Now I have eight cement shops in Ibadan alone and my wealth swells by the day. Do not say I am greedy because I am not. It’s just that as my money grows, my path to freedom becomes clearer. Every body wants to be free from whatever binds them. Baba Segi will breathe his last one day and my money will return to me. I will pile it on top of the money I have now and the heap will be as hefty as the hills of Idanre. Then, I will leave this city and return to my village. I will buy a big marble head-stone for my mother. I will burn down her bungalow and build a four-story building in its place. From the top balcony, I will watch hawkers come and go.
I will not let Bolanle turn my future upside down.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEATER
ST. GABRIEL’S ULTRASOUND CENTER was not what I expected. The building was in a small compound in Yemetu and there was a sign that pointed visitors in the direction of the top floor. The f
ront wall was decorated with large stones cemented together so it looked as if the building had been sculpted from a mountain of granite. From the gate, I saw women sitting on benches, their backs leaning heavily against the iron rails that enclosed the balcony. There was a drugstore on the ground floor where a garage should have been but no windows to shed light on the boxes of tablets bundled together on the shelves. It looked dark and dingy. A large yellow fridge held the garage door open. A young woman sitting outside on a bar stool called to me, “Auntie, cool yourself down with a bag of cold pure water.”
I ignored her; I wasn’t thirsty. I’d hailed a taxi on Sango Road and instructed the driver to take me directly to my destination. The taxi driver peered at me through his rearview mirror, probably wondering why an ordinary-looking woman was wasting money on such an extravagance. As if to pay me back, he tried to overcharge me. “Two hundred naira,” he said, fiddling with some wires behind his steering wheel.
“Fifty!” I asserted.
“Madam, pay a hundred. Each passenger pays twenty naira from where I picked you up. And this car carries five passengers.”
“I will give you eighty. You are only supposed to carry four.”
“Madam, you must help us poor taxi drivers. If we don’t carry five, how will we feed our children?”
“By not trying to swindle your passengers.” I counted four twenty-naira notes and placed them in his open palm.
The man looked at the money. He contemplated haggling some more but relented when he saw that I had folded my arms and cocked my head to one side, daring him to do so.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives Page 9
