The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (11 page)

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.

S
T
. G
ABRIEL’S
U
LTRASOUND
C
ENTER
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 front 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 des
tination. 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 stairs were steep and cumbersomely coiled. I reached the top to find an array of women: different heights, different widths, different stages of pregnancy, all of them huffing and puffing, most of them emptying small plastic bags of water into their mouths. They all looked like they were set to leak from every orifice and flood the faded rubber tiles.

I saw the waiting room through a wall of windows. Every space on every bench was taken. Beside a wooden counter, a door inside opened into a corridor. I looked down the passage. There were two doors on either side; three were signposted
with doctors’ names, one was baldly labeled
TOILET
. There was a small queue at each door but no less than nine women clenched their thighs outside the lavatory.

A nurse in a gleaming white dress assessed me as I approached the counter. She was short and heavy hipped, but her ebony skin glowed. Her teeth were white with a sizable gap separating the two front incisors. I spotted the gap as soon as she spoke; my passion for blemishes had not left me. She took down my name and deftly stapled my request forms to the ultrasound center letterhead.

“You have to sit down and wait. Drink some water. It makes it easier for the doctor to see everything he needs to see. We recommend three bags.”

“How long do you think I’ll be waiting for?”

“It is impossible to say, but if you leave, you will lose your place. You are number seventy-eight; number twenty-three just stepped in now. Have a seat and wait, like everyone else.”

I scowled and walked out onto the balcony without making eye contact with anyone. Did I say I was different from everyone else? I reflected on her abruptness as I picked my way down the stairs. I snubbed the drugstore again; I wanted a bottle of water. The thought of scrunching bags of dubious water down my throat held little appeal. As I walked out of the gate, a policeman in his faded black uniform caught my eye. He stood across the road from me and was filling his tank with a small keg of gasoline. There were more policemen sitting on a bench under a trimmed almond tree. Squatted before them was a young girl measuring boiled groundnuts
into old milk tins and transferring them into newspapers that had been folded into neat triangles. The policemen were in a jolly mood; they kept falling forward in fits of laughter.

I walked past a fragrant roasted-plantain stall; a woman in a lacy low-cut blouse fanned the coal with a sheet of cardboard. The smoke made my eyes water so I quickly crossed the driveway of a mechanic’s workshop and stopped in front of a pharmacy. From outside, I could see that the pharmacy was brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs. The windows were closed too, which meant it had air-conditioning.

Back at the ultrasound center, I sat on the hard wooden pew and shifted my weight from buttock to buttock. I didn’t seem to have as much cushioning as the other women. I reasoned that pregnancy must be kind to the backside. I glanced at the women’s fattened nostrils and marveled at the immodesty with which they displayed their swollen ankles. As they waddled out of the dark corridor, I tried to guess who might be carrying twins, triplets, a boy, a girl or a stillborn child. After all, some of the women left with bloodshot eyes and bits of tissue stuck to their faces. Why else would they be so bereft? It was a tedious game but it helped to pass the time. The women probably thought I was in my first trimester; the thought awakened butterflies in my belly, not the sorrow I anticipated.

My eyes caught a sign on the wall:
IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER BABY GIRL, BLAME DADDY
! I was just thinking of Iya Tope and her desire to give birth to a son when it registered that my number had been called.

“That’s me,” I said, standing up hurriedly. My forms fell from my lap.

“Go to room three and
wait
until you are invited.” The nurse frowned and eyed the forms as I retrieved them from the floor, as if to be certain that I picked up every single one.

The doctor was pleasant looking. His chin jutted out slightly, giving his face a glum appearance. The armpits of his tie-dye shirt were darkened from perspiration even though cool air was blowing from a noisy air conditioner hitched into a rectangular hole in the wall. His eyes did not leave the scan monitor.

“Your forms, please,” he said, motioning to me. I handed them over to a nurse holding out her hand.

The doctor’s fingers were long and his nails were bitten into the cuticles. He flashed me a reassuring smile as he splattered a globule of gel onto my belly. He called out figures and letters to the nurse. She repeated everything he said and filled out the blank spaces on the forms.

“Turn onto your left side, please,” the doctor requested. He held out his arm so I could grasp it and change position; he pressed my belly with three fingers.

It was mildly uncomfortable but I did not let out a sound. When the examination was complete, he told me to change in the adjoining room, all the time sealing his findings away in an envelope. I wanted to ask questions but decided not to. Whatever the news was, it was best to hear it at once. I took the envelope and went in search of a diagnostic laboratory.

T
EN YEARS AGO
, I
STOOD
beneath that same
agbalumo
tree not far from here. I was alive then. I was head girl of my secondary school, head of the school literary and debating society. I knew I was the daughter every parent wanted. I could tell from the way they asked my opinion of their children’s conduct in school. Those were the days when I was Mama’s beloved child. Mama said my sister Lara was so lazy that she’d need a maid to lift food into her mouth. I was the good daughter.

That day, it rained so hard that birds’ nests fell from the trees. It was impossible to stand by the roadside without being edged downstream by the currents. There was muddy water everywhere, swishing around people’s feet and sweeping along scrunched-up newspapers and plastic water sachets. The wind had turned my umbrella inside out and my clothes were wet to my skin. As was the case when it rained hard, the taxis didn’t respond to whistling or
psst
s. They preferred to preserve their carburetors rather than brave waterlogged potholes. I’d never come home late from singing practice before and I knew my mother would soon start worrying. I hadn’t even done my chores. I kept looking at my watch with the hope that the second hand would tick a little slower. I reassured myself that at least Awolowo Road was safe, a place where rich, decent people lived.

I was looking at the palm trees peeping over the fences crowned with shards of broken glass, when a Mercedes screeched to a halt, reversed and parked about a yard away from me. Hoping it would be one of my school friends, I ran
to the car and poked my head through the window. The face I saw was unfamiliar so I apologized and took two steps back. My mother had warned me about kidnappers.

“You are going to get swept away by the rain,” came a soft voice from the driver’s seat. “Where are you going?”

I took another step back and looked in the direction of the passing cars. Maybe he’d drive on if I looked away.

“Are you waiting for someone? Look, you are the only person standing here in the rain. If you are waiting for a taxi, I could give you a ride farther down. There are lots of taxis at Osuntokun junction.”

I moved a little closer. I glanced at the car and then at him. He looked respectable, not like the thugs my mother had described. I could smell his cologne; it was like freshly cut grass. His face was handsome and his fingernails were filed to perfection. He was wearing a polo shirt with a crocodile on the left breast. His jeans were clean.

“My mother has told me not to accept rides from people I don’t know,” I said as I reached out to the door’s handle.

“I am not a stranger anymore, am I? My name is Thomas and I’d say we’ve already been having a pleasant conversation.” He grinned.

When he got to the roundabout, he took a sharp right instead of taking the second exit.

“Sir, you said Osuntokun.”

“Are you in a hurry? I just want to make a quick phone call to my sister in the U.S. She’s in the hospital. I live just round the corner. As soon as I am done, I’ll run you down to
Osuntokun. I may even be able to take you home. Where do you live?”

“I live in Agbowo. The problem is that my mother will be worried.”

He sniggered. “Big girl like you, mentioning your mother in every sentence. You sound like a baby. Are you a baby? How old are you?”

“I am fifteen. I am not a baby.” I held my head high.

He turned round and looked at my face, then his eyes dropped to my breasts. “You don’t look fifteen. Are you really?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Anything.”

“Anything? Well, this will be to your taste then. It’s perfect for people who like anything.” He took out a Wasiu Ayinde CD and inserted it into the car deck, which swallowed it and belched a familiar drumbeat.

He turned up the air conditioner. I felt its coolness blow up my bare arms and through my damp blouse. It smelled like rain hitting hot pavement. It was a comforting smell. I sat back and relaxed against the velvety seat.

He turned into Lower Awolowo Road and sped down a close. He jumped out to open the gate, thrusting the key through a makeshift hole in the thick iron.

After he drove in, he locked the gate behind us.

“I won’t be a minute,” he said, and ran indoors, shutting the car door.

I looked around me. There’d been a power cut so it was dark. The deafening blare of generators came from the houses on either side. From the lamps in the house next door, I could make out bloodred hibiscus, rows of potted partridge pea plants lined the walls.

The man suddenly rushed out of the house with an umbrella. He was now wearing a pair of khaki shorts.

“I want to put the generator on. I can’t see a thing inside. It’s one of those cordless phones and I don’t know where it is. Why don’t you get down and help me look for it so we can be on our way?”

“No. I’d rather wait in the car. Thank you.”

“But you’ll get bitten by mosquitoes. There’s more music inside.”

I huffed and left my bag in the car to show that I had no intention of staying long. I was inquisitive. I had never been driven in a Mercedes before. My father owned an ancient Peugeot 504 and my mother had hopped on and off buses for as long as I’d been old enough to note it. Part of me wanted to see how this man lived. I wanted to see the inside of his house, see the kind of chairs he sat on. I wanted to know if he had the wall-to-wall carpeting my friends at school often described. I wanted to smell wealth and glimpse the lifestyle I aspired to, the luxury I would live in when I was older and rich.

Soon after his generator started roaring, he reappeared and I followed him into his kitchen. He held the door open for me and locked it behind us. “Security,” he reassured me.

The kitchen was covered in white tiles. A large chest freezer hummed in the corner. The spotless gas cooker had six burners; I’d never seen one like it. The work surface was tiled, all white except for a few drops of what looked like black currant juice.

His sitting room walls were light green. Cream leather armchairs were arranged around a square rug that had acacia trees around the edges. There were oxblood cushions everywhere.

“Just wait here while I search the bedroom.”

He knew I was taking everything in. It was probably obvious from my clothes that I was unfamiliar with this sort of bounty. I sat on a sofa and looked ahead at the big-screen television. I got up first to touch it and then to switch it on. I couldn’t tell what button to press so I squatted to look at the diagrams. I didn’t hear him creep up behind me.

“So, how about a little fun before you go?” He had taken his shirt off and there was a mass of curly hair petering out as it reached his boxer shorts.

I covered my eyes. I perceived something uncompromising in his tone. It unsettled me and my heart began to race.

“Come on, don’t waste time. Isn’t this what you came for? You think I don’t know your type? You just came to fuck. Didn’t you? You want to be fucked!”

“No, sir. I just want to go home. I don’t want anything else, sir,” I whimpered.