by Chika Unigwe
I saw a madman weaving a basket and he wove me a trap to catch you in. He said, catch that man with the devil in him, catch him and roast him on a big big big fire.
Lagos dey burn burn burn, you dey here dey chase rat rat rat.
Rat go burn, you go burn
And your bones go scatter over the sea.
In the end Efe would not tell him, leaving it up to him to notice and initiate a discussion, drunk or not. But she would tell her sister. Not that night but in the morning, after they had eaten and the younger ones had been fed and sent off to school. Some things were better discussed on a full stomach and in a quiet house. Rita would not have the words to articulate the fear that gripped her when she heard. What would they do with a baby in the house without their mother to teach them what to do? With a father who stumbled over his own feet after he’d had a drink? But Efe did not need her words because an identical fear had taken ahold of her the moment she suspected she was with child, and the fear refused to let go. But she knew her baby’s father. That in itself was a blessing. Rita agreed with her. And from all indications, Titus had the wherewithal to take care of their offspring. Some babies entered the world with far worse prospects. There were babies born with fathers unknown or with fathers who did not have anything to their names. Not even two coins to rub together. At least my baby will never want for anything, Efe consoled herself, trying hard not to think about the baby extending her stomach and making it difficult for her to sleep at night in any position. She spent many nights on her back, swearing that she would never as long as she lived go through another pregnancy, wondering how her mother had done it. How had she coped with four pregnancies? And the women who went on to have twelve children? How had they done it, knowing the pain that came with the pregnancy?
If her father noticed that her body was changing, he said nothing of it. He maintained an air of stolidity that Efe found mildly irritating. Surely he could see her stomach. At the beginning of every month, he faithfully gave her money from the wages he earned as a laborer renting himself out to building contractors, and guzzled the rest up at Mariam’s, as was his custom. Even when he was in a screaming mood, he never mentioned the stomach that was starting to bulge not just forward but sideways. “Making me look like a pregnant goat,” Efe complained to Rita. It was as if the stomach were invisible to him. If his daughter’s growing stomach was indeed invisible to him, it was not to the neighbors, the women especially, who pointed at Efe and laughed out loud whenever they passed her, clapping their hands and baring mocking teeth. Their daughters, girls who had played with Efe or gone to school with her, either avoided her or were called away as soon as they stopped to talk to her. Collectrose! Go and get me matches from the store! Evbu, you need to do your homework! Efe’s laughter became muted. Her steps slower. And it was not just the stomach that hindered her laughter or slowed her steps.
“People look at me as if I am dirt,” she complained to Rita.
“Don’t mind them, Efe,” her sister consoled. “Once the baby is out and the father starts taking care of him, they will know that you’re not one of those useless girls who just sleep around with any man.”
Efe smiled at her sister, grateful for her support. “I hope it’s a boy. If it’s a boy, his father will definitely want him.”
“Don’t worry, Efe. God is not asleep. It will be a boy.”
“Amen.” Efe sealed her sister’s prayer.
When she became too big and developed a waddle like an overfed pigeon’s, she handed over the reins of power to Rita, eleven months younger. Their father did not ask Rita why it was she and not Efe who came to him for money. He just counted out the notes, mainly crumpled notes that had gone soft from too much touching, permeated with the musky odor of utaba, snuff, the way poor people’s money smelled. Rita proved as capable as her predecessor, shopping, cooking, and organizing the younger ones to help with the cleaning so that Efe could get on with the time-consuming business of being pregnant. Efe would think much later, when her life was more settled and she had lost the weight she gained in pregnancy and had regained a normal appetite, that she never would have gotten through it without Rita.
When her water broke and she feared that birth was imminent—she remembered her mother telling stories of when she, Efe, was born, how her water had broken while she was making lunch and how she had barely made it to the hospital before Efe came—it was Rita she woke up and begged to get her to the hospital because the pain was sawing her in two, separating her torso from the rest of her. She held on to Rita all the way to the hospital, pinching her when the pain became too much for her to bear, and Rita bit her tongue and shared her sister’s pain, urging the taxi driver to take it easy, go jeje, when he drove into a pothole and Efe cried out in agony. The driver snapped at Rita that he was not responsible for the bad roads in Lagos.
“If you wan’ complain about potholes, go talk to the gov’ment. Na just driver I be. If you no as I dey drive, I go stop make you comot.”
The man had had a rough day, and the last thing he needed was to be told how to drive by two young girls who could have been his children, one of whom was pregnant. He had not noticed a wedding band on the pregnant one’s finger. Lagos girls, he fumed silently, they have no morals at all. When he got home later that night and told his wife about his day, he would tell her that the pregnant girl looked fourteen. “Right about to have her bastard in my car, I swear.”
Efe was relieved to see the reassuring creaminess of the All Saints Maternity, and Rita was relieved to hand her sister over to a matronly nurse whose very walk as she guided Efe to a bed was a lesson in efficiency. The klop klop klop of her black shoes, the cadenced accompaniment to her hands, which searched around for a hospital gown and gloves. Efe was undressed and hooked up to a machine that bleeped intermittently and then stopped. The nurse unhooked her and said, “Sorry, the machine’s stopped working. We have run out of paper. But some hospitals don’t even have this. We have three here. Donation. It shows the progress of labor. It draws it on a paper and we can see how bad the pain is, if it is real labor or not.” She tapped the machine in awe.
A doctor with too many teeth came in, a stethoscope around his neck like an oversize metal necklace. Rita worried that he looked tired, that he would not be able to look after Efe well. She wondered if she should voice her worry, ask for maybe a different doctor, say that this doctor needed a bed and hours of sleep. She looked at Efe and smiled, hoping her sister would not see the worry on her face. He sat at the foot of Efe’s bed and asked the nurse questions. She gave her answers in the confident tone of one who was competent and knew it. “Four centimeters dilation. Water broken. Baby not distressed.” None of what the nurse told the doctor made sense to either Rita or Efe.
The pain in Efe’s stomach came and went in waves, peaking and dipping at irregular intervals. She said no to pain relief. She wanted to feel it all, as if in expiation of this pregnancy that had marred her life, marked her out as a loose girl. She wished she could insert her hand inside the womb and drag out this baby who was causing her to writhe so much in agony. Rita sat by her on the bed as soon as the doctor left and cried along with her sister when the pain became too much for Efe to bear. When Efe cussed the “evil child” who was the cause of all her pain, Rita told her to stop, for everyone knew it was taboo to cuss a baby who had its head half into the world. It was bad luck.
“Just try and bear, Efe, you hear? Just try. It’ll soon be over. You’re doing great. It’ll soon be over. You hear?”
Thirteen hours later, when Efe shrieked her son into the world, it was Rita who stood beside her, holding her hand and crying softly as the slimy baby with a headful of hair was laid on Efe’s chest. Exhausted beyond words, she left it up to Rita to name her son. Rita, uninspired and emotional, named him Lucky. Perhaps in light of the fact that her sister was lucky she was there for her. Or that the child was lucky to be born. Or perhaps it was simply her wish for her new nephew that he be lucky in life. Afte
rward, when Efe had recovered and was in better spirits, she would rename him Ikponwosa, Titus’s middle name.
The baby was shriveled and small, with scaly dry skin that made her think uncharitably of a reptile. He was about the ugliest thing she had ever set eyes on, and she could not believe she had birthed him. Still, he was her responsibility and needed looking after. Efe did not like the thought of it much, but she was ready to face up to her responsibilities with a maturity that she felt motherhood required. She would look after him, but she thought she would need help from Titus. Babies required things; they needed food and diapers and clothing and medicine. Her father’s housekeeping money could not stretch to cover those.
The day she left the hospital, she resolved to get Titus involved in the upkeep of his son. After all, men wanted sons no matter how many they had. Sons were trophies they collected to carry on the family name. Efe knew that Titus had children—he had mentioned them a few times, complaining good-humoredly of how much sending them to a good school cost, how well they were doing in their good school where fees were not paid in the local currency. “Only dollars and pound sterling accepted!” He had money, so one more child should not make a difference.
He could send their baby to a good school, give him everything Efe could never imagine giving him. And so it was that three weeks after she had Ikponwosa, she dressed him up in blue pajamas that covered his toes, wrapped a cream shawl around him, and went to Titus’s house on the other side of town. She planned her arrival for the time of day when Titus was likely to be home. She had not seen him since she told him she was pregnant. She wanted to talk to him, to present his son to him. A Titus in miniature, for even at three weeks there was no denying that father and son bore a resemblance that would only get more striking with time. She did not want much: just enough to look after this baby, who ate a lot and was the spitting image of his father. She wanted him to grow, away from the slum she was raised in. Titus had enough money to ensure that.
When Efe was shown in by a maid, husband and wife were eating a supper of eba and egusi soup. The not-so-old wife had just dunked a lump of eba into the communal soup bowl when the maid said, “Somebody to see oga.” The wife brought out the lump, raising her head at the same time to see the somebody. She took a look at the bundle of cream and blue asleep in Efe’s arms and gave a half smile. Titus said nothing, and neither invited Efe to sit. She sat anyway, sinking into the nearest couch. Now she was here, faced with a Titus who gave no sign of recognition, her throat dried up and she felt the urge to cough. The baby woke up and started to cry, and she shushed him. “Hush, hush. Don’t cry.” She cradled the baby into quietness and said, before she lost her courage, “I brought your baby, Titus.”
Titus concentrated on his eba, extracting a fish bone that had attached itself to the lump he was about to throw down his throat. It was as if he had not heard her, as if she were not even there. It was his wife who washed her hands in the basin of water beside her, dried her hands on her wrapper, and stood up without her bones creaking, krak krak. She walked over to Efe and planted herself before the younger girl. “You.” She pointed a finger at the girl. “You come into my house and accuse my husband of fathering your baby. How dare you? Eh? How. Dare. You?” Her voice was soft, and the half smile of before stayed on her lips, so that Efe thought perhaps it was no smile at all but something else. A sneer. Or something worse.
“Useless girl. Ashawo. May a thousand fleas invade your pubic hair. Useless goat. Shameless whore, ashawo. Just take a look at yourself. Small girl like you, what were you doing with man? At your age, what were you doing spreading your legs for a man, eh? Which girl from a good home goes around sleeping with a man who is old enough to be her father, eh? Answer me, you useless idiot. I see you can’t talk anymore. You have gone dumb, abi? And you have the guts to show your face. You were not afraid to come into my home with that thing in your hands, eh? You were not scared to ring my doorbell and show your face, eh? Now I am going to shut my eyes, and before I open them, I want both you and that bastard of yours out of my home.”
Even without looking at Titus, Efe knew that he was still eating. She could hear him smacking his lips as he sucked bone marrow. She got up and slowly walked out.
Lucky Ikponwosa would never see his father again.
What Efe had not known, for who would tell her, was that she was the sixth woman in as many years to come to Titus with an offspring from an affair. And all six the wife had dismissed in more or less the same way, marching them to the door with orders never to return, asking the house help to bolt the door behind them.
From the day she married Titus and caught him looking at her chief bridesmaid with a glint in his eye, she had known that he had a roving eye. As long as women swayed their hips at him, he would go to them, a drooling dog in heat. It was not his fault; it was just the way he was created. She could live with it. He could have his women. Have their children, even. She had no problem with that. What she had a problem with, though, was the women turning up with their children and expecting him to take care of them.
Titus, this is your baby. I’m not looking for marriage, just for you to help with upkeep.
Titus, here is your son. He needs to know his father.
Titus, this. Titus, that. Well, she was having none of that.
When she met Titus, he was just finishing his apprenticeship to a car parts salesman with a shop in Ladipo, but his heart was not in spare parts. He complained that there was no joy in it, but the parts man was one of the wealthiest men from his village, and to have made the money he made, he must have business knowledge enough to spare. It was that—the knowledge of how to make money—Titus wanted to milk, so he had jumped at the chance of living with the man for five years, working in his shop and learning the secret of his success firsthand.
In his first year of marriage, his apprenticeship was done, and even though his former master gave him some money, as was customary, to start his own business in car parts, he had thrown his lot in with a man—another just-graduated apprentice with big ideas—and they pooled resources. They brainstormed and agreed that money was in women; their logic was that even a man who would not spend money on himself would spend it on a woman. They started by importing wigs—shiny, glossy wigs they hoped to sell to all the Lagos women dying for good hair without the trouble of going to a salon. It had not done as well as they had hoped. They had huge competition from Aba and Onitsha traders who imported wigs from Korea and sold them at much cheaper rates than they sold theirs. So they invested a huge chunk of what was left of their capital into skin-lightening creams. Lagos men loved light-skinned women; this was sure to be a winner. But their shipment of Yellow Skin toning lotion, with its promise of “noticeably lighter skin in fourteen days guaranteed or your money back,” arrived with half its contents broken and the unbroken half sullied by lotion. They spent five days and three thousand naira on cleaning the dirtied jars. Titus’s business partner would see this as a warning sign that worse was in store for them if they stayed together, and he would pull out, preferring to cut his losses. But Titus was the sort of man who persevered, especially if he was convinced he was right. That was one of the lessons he picked up from his former master: “Never give up if your heart and your head tell you that you are right. People can disappoint you, but your heart and your head never will. Make them your best friends.”
Titus was still certain he could become rich by concentrating on women. There was nothing flawed in the logic that had attracted him to a business that targeted women in the first place. He was also certain that his partner was a fool for pulling out before they had struck gold. He only had to find something that pandered enough to women’s vanity to make him wealthy. His wife remained patient, counting pennies while he dreamed up one unsuccessful scheme after another, rubbing his tense muscles at night, telling him, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay, don’t worry about it, eh. Just don’t worry about it.”
He discovered the lacuna in the hum
an-hair business quite by accident in his bed. He said it came to him in a dream, a sort of vision. A deep biblical voice instructed him to go to India and import the finest hair Lagos had ever seen. Not even his wife knew if this was true, if the vision was a tale he had made up. But he had gone to India and returned after eleven weeks, gaunt and hungry for some proper food. Close on his feet, a container full of hair extensions followed. “The rest, as they say, is history” was how his wife always concluded the narration of their rags-to-riches story. She was beside him when they bought their first car. She went with him when he consulted an architect to draw up plans for their house, saying how many rooms she wanted, where she wanted the kitchen, the playroom. She stood beside him when the foundation of their new home was laid. And when the house was finally ready, she bought the furniture and curtains. She was not about to let any other woman lay claim to the fruit of her patience. None would share the money she had waited so patiently and so good-humoredly for Titus to make. It was her right and her children’s legacy, so she guarded it jealously. He could have his women—honey always attracted bees—but the bees had to remain in their hives and keep their young with them. The honey jar was hers to keep, and she intended to do so, encircling it with two hands to keep it close to her heart.
Titus, for his part, let his wife get away with chasing his out-of-wedlock children out of the house. He was grateful to her for staying with him when he’d had nothing, steeped deep in a penury that he could only fantasize about escaping. Many women would have left for less. Besides, he appreciated having a wife who did not nag him about where he had been, whom he had been with. What man wanted to come home to a nagging woman? She accepted him for who he was, and he knew well enough to be thankful for that.
