Pariah

By

Olusola Akinwale

Oloye Bab stood at the thermal-paned window of his bedroom, mulling

over the latest news from Nigeria. He swirled champagne in his glass,
observing the bubbles as they were born, as they swirled, as they popped.
Refracted light from the crystal glass bounced off the window as he drained
the contents, already tepid from the warmth of the space heater. Colonel
Augustine Etomo was the newly appointed military governor of Oyo, Oloye
Bab’s home state. Outside, streetlamps cast pools of light on a snow-clad
Quebec sidewalk.
“The time has finally come to go home,” he muttered.
“I didn’t hear you, dear,” Yewande said from the bed where she was
curled up with a hot-water bottle under a fluffy blanket.
Oloye Bab turned to his wife. “I want to go back to my country is what I
said.”
Yewande shifted and her massive body wobbled. “Which country would
that be?”
He set the glass on the vanity. “Our country.”
“Your country.”
“Don’t you think we belong there? We know who we are: Nigerians. We
should not spend the rest of our lives in this hostile cold.”
He had been born in the town of Ibadan in Oyo, Nigeria, more than six
decades earlier. He’d grown up, married his wife, and had their two daughters
there, in the warm climate of Africa. After four years in Bordeaux, they’d
relocated to Canada, where they had the son he’d longed for. Once Folahan
was born, they’d put paid to any chances of having more children.
Yewande grimaced and her eyes almost disappeared in her round face.
“My children belong here now. This is all they know.”
He pulled his blue polypropylene headband, the color of which matched
his flannel pajamas, down to his ears. “Just because they have Canadian
passports?” He lumbered to the bed and climbed in next to her, taking in a
whiff of her apple-scented shower gel. “They’re sojourners. One day they’ll
find their way home.”
She snorted, “A home with no water or electricity? Where their lives
will never be safe?”
 “You’re not safe in this country either. A few days ago, a man in Saint-
Damien shot his neighbors.”
She set the hot-water bottle on the nightstand. “It was an isolated case.
The man was deranged.” She poked his shoulder. “You know Canada is far
safer than Nigeria.”
“Even with the cold killing you gradually?”
She heaved herself upright, scowling. “In the twenty-four years we’ve
lived here, the cold has never landed us in the hospital.”
“You think your immune system is as strong as it was twenty years ago?
The effect of the winter may be piling up in your body, waiting to knock you
down.”
She sucked in a breath and folded flabby arms across her immense
breasts. “I thought you’d said ‘good-bye’ to Nigeria until a democratic
government was installed.”
“I miss home terribly.” He closed his eyes and pictured his four-
bedroom, one-story house in Ibadan, imagining himself there. “I miss my
extended family.”
“Do you also miss the lack of respect for human life, Babatunde?”
“That’s not true. You know it is not that way.”
“Don’t we see it in the papers and on television?”
He sat up and ran a hand wearily over his face. “I don’t think the events
in our country are as terrible as the foreign media makes out.”
“There are sanctions on Nigeria. Abacha and his soldiers are brutalizing
the citizens. Why would you want to go back to that?”
She was over-dramatizing. Yes, yes, Abacha had killed the green
activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November and the media screamed that 1995 was
the year that Nigeria had become a ‘pariah in the Commonwealth,’ but he
wasn’t going home to sing anti-Abacha songs.
“I’m not returning home to become another Saro-Wiwa. I’m going home
to work with them.”
She tugged at the beanie on her head. “Ohhh, I see. I understand
now. Etomo is the reason for your new found love for Nigeria.”
Colonel Etomo had been the best friend of Ade, Oloye Bab’s younger
brother. Oloye Bab had last seen Etomo four years earlier at Ade’s burial. At
that time, Etomo was still a lieutenant colonel. During the duo’s time at the
Nigerian Defense Academy, Oloye Bab had gone to great lengths to support
them financially. Etomo and Ade had looked up to Oloye Bab as a big brother.
Oloye Bab yawned. “I may be able to help him.”
Yetunde’s nostrils flared. “Help him to loot the state? To divert public
funds into foreign accounts?”
This psychologist of a woman had tapped into his mind again. He
mustn’t give her room to dampen his desire. “Would you stop talking such
rubbish and go to sleep?”
“I’m not talking trash. Isn’t that what government officials do there?”
she ranted.
He snapped off the bedside lamp and thrust himself back on the pillows.
Now that he knew somebody among the powerful elite, there was an
opportunity to claim his part of Nigeria’s oil wealth. If he found his way into
the government, in a single year he could double what he had earned in seven
years as an architect in Canada. He could become stinking rich with the petro-
dollars flowing to the Swiss Bank accounts of Abacha’s men. For this, it was
worthwhile leaving his wife and children. After all, they would enjoy the
booty with him.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not going with you.”
“And you can’t stop me from going,” said Oloye Bab.
He closed his eyes but felt her gaze on him. She must be pondering his
burning desire to go home. Perhaps she thought it was because of his
advancing years. But years of living with him should have taught her that
whenever his mind was made up, nothing could stand in his way.
She mellowed her tone. “What could you get in Nigeria that you haven’t
got here?”
He opened his eyes. “Is there a place like home?”
“At sixty-two, you’re still too young to die.” Urbane and trim, he had
the looks of a man in his forties. Unlike his wife, his hair showed no gray.
“A grandpa need not be afraid of death. Truth is, I’ve only got a few
years left to live. So what’s wrong with going back to the place I want to be
buried?”
“I’m concerned about your safety.”
 “Don’t worry about me.” He turned on his side.


***

A month later, Oloye Bab returned to Ibadan. He lodged at the Vine
Hotel, where he received a few friends and relatives. He could not yet settle in
his house, which had stood empty for so long that the smell of mold swept
over him the moment he stepped inside. The last time he’d been in the living
room, the dust mites had prompted a bout of sneezing. In the bathroom,
mildew spotted the tiles and discolored the porcelain.
It was all quite unlike the air in his living room in Quebec, where he
breathed in the scent of fresh roses. Oloye Bab sighed. The house in Ibadan
needed a facelift. It also needed a generator because the power supply in the
city was erratic. He would stay at the hotel until his house was ready. He had
more than enough money from his job in Quebec to pay all the bills. All he
needed to do was go to the Sabo quarter, the city’s currency exchange black
market, and change his dollars to naira notes.
Every night he called his wife and children to tell them how he was
faring. He reported that the conditions in Nigeria weren’t as bad as they had
been led to believe, hoping to convince his wife to move home. His oldest
daughter, Folake, was still as averse to her father living in Nigeria as she had
been when he told her he was leaving Canada. Married to a Canadian, she’d
made it clear that it would be horrendous to leave the comfort of Edmonton for
Nigeria. His other daughter, Fadeke, didn’t seem to appreciate Oloye’s
enthusiasm for his home country. Folahan would say, “Nigeria may not be for
me, but as long as you’re fine over there, Dad, you have my support. Take care
of yourself.”
Folahan had accompanied his father to Nigeria for Ade’s burial, and
when they’d returned to Canada, he admitted he would struggle to adjust to
life in Africa if they were to live there. Everyone in the family spoke with a
Canadian accent except Oloye Bab, though his wife switched to her native
accent when talking with him. Oloye Bab sometimes complained about their
conversion to Canadianism, arguing they all spoke in a manner alien to their
roots.
 The repair work was finished in three weeks, and Oloye Bab moved into
his house, now painted a pristine white. The fence around the property had
been raised and capped off with electrified barbed wire. In case of a riot
against the junta and its allies, it would be difficult for the protesters to break
in. Unfortunately, the access road was heavily eroded. It rained the day after
Oloye Bab moved in, and vehicles driving by bumped across potholes,
splashing great gouts of muddy water here and there.
After five days of living in the house, Oloye Bab decided it was finally
time to meet with Colonel Etomo. He strode into the waiting room of the
governor’s office, head held high, while hitching the fold of his blue Guinea
agbada. An official told him he would have to wait because Colonel Etomo
and his commissioners were having a meeting of the executive council.
He walked across the ornate green Persian rug to sit on a white leather
chair. As he adjusted the floppy cap perched on his head, his gaze was drawn
to two photos on the wall in front of him. One was of General Abacha wearing
dark glasses and sporting a faint smile that belied his wolfish tendencies.
Beside it was a photo of Colonel Etomo, also wearing glasses, though not as
dark as his boss’s. His face was inscrutable. When did he start wearing
glasses? The colonel’s green uniform bore two pips on the shoulder, and the
inscription on the plastic badge on his chest read, “A. G. Etomo.”
Time dragged on, and Oloye Bab perused the day’s papers, first the
Nigerian Tribune and then The Punch. He watched impatiently as civil
servants went up and down the stairs. After an hour, he’d had enough waiting.
He stepped outside, passed the soldiers toting guns, and went to his car. There,
he found his driver snoring with his head resting on his arms, which were
folded over the steering wheel. He decided not to wake him and moved on.
The midday sun shone brightly, casting a short stubby shadow in front of
him. People moved briskly heading in all directions. A man with cheeks
furrowed like rain-washed crags hurried past in a rumpled oversized suit. Is
his salary enough to pay his bills? In the day’s papers, Oloye Bab had read the
workers were threatening to go on another strike because of unpaid salaries.
As he passed a shop with a Coca-Cola signboard on the wall, he saw a
young woman walking toward the government offices. She was slender and
wore a red blouse with white polka dots over a black cotton skirt. She waved
at a man in a car with whom she talked briefly before continuing toward the
office.
The way she carried herself was elegant. The dark mass of her braids
bounced with each step. Oloye Bab felt a stirring in his loins, and in the spur
of the moment, he began following her. She crossed to the other side of the
road, heading toward the governor’s office. Four cars passed in quick
succession, keeping him from crossing and he lost track of her.
When Oloye Bab sauntered back into the governor’s office waiting
room, he found the woman again. An older woman wearing a white hijab
addressed her as “Sisi Moyo” and asked how she had spent her recent leave.
“I went to Akure to spend some time with my mother,” Moyo replied.
Oloye Bab ogled her unabashedly until their eyes met. Her broad
forehead tapered to a pointed chin, and her eyelids were shaded in purple.
Wouldn’t she make a beautiful companion in Yewande’s absence? She inclined
her head at him before leaving the room.
After waiting for an hour more, Oloye Bab was told His Excellency
would not be seeing visitors because he had to hurry to a council headquarters
to launch new electrical transformers. Oloye Bab would have to book another
appointment.
“After such an endless wait? Nothing? Did you tell him that Oloye
Babatunde Agbeja was waiting?”


***

One week after his first attempt, Oloye Bab finally managed to meet
with Colonel Etomo.
“Oloye, this state belongs to us all,” said Etomo. “If you had been
around when I assumed office, I’d have appointed you as one of the
commissioners.” They sat at a picnic table on the pool patio of the
Government House, feasting on a supper of barbecued meat and a bottle of
Moët under a moonlit sky. Oloye Bab wore a brocade buba and sokoto. Etomo
wore a golf shirt and chinos. Behind them were two more rattan chairs. Two
military officers stood a few meters away from them, watching over the
colonel.
 Etomo swirled the champagne around in his glass and the melting ice
cubes clinked softly in the reddish-pink liquid. “I could create a new ministry
for you if you so desire.” He downed his drink and turned his eyes to the pool
as if he were expecting a new ministry to surface from it. The moon trembled
on the water. “What about a ministry for women’s affairs? No, no. I think we
already have that.”
Oloye Bab filled his mouth with spicy, succulent meat. These military
men were a mismatch for government. How else could one explain a governor
suggesting that a man be commissioner for a ministry whose affairs chiefly
involved women?
“Colonel, it would be much more logical for a woman to head such a
ministry.”
“You’re right. A woman is in fact heading it. Who is she now? What did
she say her name was? I forget.” He gazed into the water again. “How about
the Ministry of Urban Development?”
Oloye Bab set down his glass. “Colonel, I could work with you without
being appointed a commissioner.”
“Okay, chief, tell me what you want.”
“Let me be your government’s main contractor. I’m your man. Ade was
your bosom friend.”
Etomo stroked the corner of his lower lip thoughtfully. “I can’t forget
your support when we were both in the military school.”
“As my younger brothers, I couldn’t have done less for you,” said Oloye
Bab. “What I was after was for you to succeed in your military career, and
here you are today.”
“You’ll have your wish.”
“I’m grateful, but one more thing.” Oloye Bab lowered his voice a
notch. “Isn’t your position an opportunity to invest in something worthwhile
and build a legacy you could leave for your children?”
“I don’t need to be told that.”
“I could front you and execute major contracts on your behalf.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Oloye Bab saluted him.


***

Near the railing on the upstairs gallery at the Dallas Hotel, Oloye Bab
sat at a table with champagne, but he did not drink. Across from him, the
Secretary to the State Government, or the “SSG,” and the Commissioner for
Agriculture and Rural Development topped up their glasses and Oloye Bab’s
to be polite. Now the champagne spilled on the table when a low bass note
shook the balcony.
Oloye Bab peered down at the highlife band, an afro-haired male
bandleader and his female backup singers in long, lilac gowns. A spotlight
shone on the banner draped behind the singers. It read: “D. P. ALAWAYE
AND HIS INTERNATIONAL MERRY MAKERS.” The band impressed
Oloye Bab. He bobbed his head to the synchronization of the saxophone and
guitar, played by two men who wore dreadlocks, but his interest in the music
wavered as soon as Moyo and her friend Sidikat arrived, their gazes moving
restlessly across the room.
He left the two government officials to attend briefly to the ladies, while
he ordered them red wine.
When he returned, the commissioner said, “Oloye, please share the
housing contract with us.” The State Government was about to award a
contract worth 450 million naira for the construction of some housing units in
Ajoda, a satellite town to Ibadan. The commissioner knew that the cost had
not only been inflated, but also that a company fronted by Oloye Bab would
win the contract.
“You had your time when we awarded the contract for the rural water
scheme,” Oloye Bab said. The commissioner’s bony face reminded him of the
seven lean cows that devoured the seven fat cows in Pharaoh’s dream. His
sunken cheeks seemed hungry.
Oloye Bab shook himself off that image and continued. “How many
rural communities are now free from water- borne disease?”
The commissioner looked pained. “Our mobilization fee was reduced.”
Oloye Bab gave him his “and-so-what?” stare, which used to be special
but now seemed to be showing his face everywhere.
 The SSG wiped his dewy moustache. “Please, don’t overlook us. We are
your loyalists.”
“Your governor owns the contract,” Oloye Babs said, looking down to
Moyo and Sidikat seated at a table in the centre of the hall. “I’m just
overseeing things for him.”
“You’re the man he listens to,” the SSG said. “You could convince him
to make some concessions.”
The women both wore brown, floral-patterned ankara blouses and
skirts. Moyo’s back was to him, but he could see Sidikat’s long face with its
two horizontal marks on both sides of her full cheeks, which looked like
dashes and which the locals called ‘minus-minus.’ When he had invited the
two women to dinner earlier in the day, Sidikat had promised that she would
persuade Moyo to meet him here tonight.
Since the first day he had seen Moyo, Oloye Bab had desired her. She
worked in Policy and Planning, a department in the governor’s office, which
offered him the opportunity to watch her at break-time dab pink powder on her
face or slide lipstick across her lower lip. The more he’d persisted, the more
Moyo had turned him down, but she always did so with subtlety and class,
eyes raised to his as if to say, “Not right now.”
At the close of work one day, Oloye Bab had seen Moyo and another
woman going toward the bus stop. He had his driver pull up alongside of them
and he lowered his window, offering the women a ride. When the second
woman happily entered his new Mercedes Benz, Moyo reluctantly followed.
The woman, Sidikat, worked in the Ministry of Health and now acted as a go-
between for Moyo and him.
“Oloye, this is for you,” the commissioner said.
Oloye Bab turned and took a brown business-size envelope from him.
When he opened the envelope, he found a check of five hundred thousand
naira. He drank and then poured himself more sparkling wine, which bubbled
and foamed to the rim of his glass. “I’ll try to talk to the governor about your
proposal.”
The SSG dropped ice into his champagne, which splashed on the table,
joining with the puddles spilled from Oloye Bab’s glass. “You should be able
to convince him.”
 Oloye Bab shrugged. “Well, it’s possible.”
“How is the road to your house coming along?” the commissioner
asked.
“The construction will begin next week.” Oloye Bab checked his watch.
“If you will excuse me, I must attend to my guests downstairs.” He drained his
glass and set it down with a sharp tap. “I’ve kept them waiting for too long.”
He ambled down the stairs, wrinkling his nose as he drifted past two men
expelling plumes of smoke like old cars. He wished to smell pleasant for the
two women, so when he sat at Moyo and Sidikat’s table, he quickly made a
toast to distract their noses with the scent of red wine. But Moyo did not drink.
“My apologies for keeping you waiting.”
“No need to apologize, sir. We’re enjoying ourselves.” Sidikat beamed
and showed her gold tooth.
Oloye Bab winked. “I hope I’ve not kept Moyo here for too long.”
Moyo fingered her pendant, a tiny silver heart. “No, sir.”
Sidikat pushed Moyo’s wine to her. “Take your wine.”
“I am drinking it,” she replied.
“It’s yours,” he said, chuckling at the exchange between the two women.
To Moyo: “Take everything.”
Sidikat topped Moyo’s glass up and stated as fact. “This won’t make you
tipsy.” Moyo accepted the glass and took a sip of the wine. “See? Take
everything. It won’t hurt you. I won’t lead you astray.”
Moyo held the glass, staring at the drink.
“Stop dawdling,” Sidikat said. “It’s far better than any wine you’ve had
before.”
Moyo finished her drink.
Sidikat clapped in delight. “My job is done. I’ll leave you two.”
“Get ready for Mecca,” he told Sidikat, who choked on her wine. “Your
name is on the list of the state’s delegation to Hajj.”
“Mecca?” Sidikat’s eyes grew wide.
“You’ll be among the next set of Alhajas.”
Sidikat half-embraced him. “Thank you.” She turned to Moyo. “Would
you thank Oloye on my behalf? Mecca?”
“Alhaja Sidi,” Moyo teased her.
 Sidikat pinched Moyo’s cheek. “Let me go dance the Hajj way.” She
wriggled to the crowded dance floor where faces glistened like bottles of beer
fresh from a refrigerator. A man approached her and whispered in her ear. She
nodded. They began to dance together, his arms wrapped around her. Oloye
Babs watched them sway with the backup singers’ melodies. The couples on
the dance floor moved like magnets around one another, clinging to their
partners but keeping a few inches of distance between themselves and the
others. He noticed the man touched Sidikat’s ears and for a moment wished it
was Sidikat he had fallen for. He imagined what it would feel like to touch his
tongue to her gold tooth, and he laughed to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Moyo asked.
“Your friend is amiable. I like her spirit,” Oloye Bab said.
“She may dance with everyone there,” Moyo said.
Oloye filled her glass. “How is life in the civil service?”
“It could have been great if the government has not owed us salaries.”
“But your arrears have been paid.”
“After we had suffered for four months.”
“Better days are ahead.”
“I should hope so.”
When Moyo had finished her wine, Oloye Bab asked they go out of the
hall for a quiet chat. He led her into the starry night and they got into his
Mercedes. After a half-a-minute silence, he said, “Why have you avoided me
all this while?”
“If there’s a road that I shouldn’t pass again, it is that of an affair with
you men.” She brushed nonexistent dirt from her lap. “I thought the road was
smooth until I fell on it twice.”
“Your experiences with men must have been bad.”
“Bitter experiences. My first lover was Goke.” She shook her head. “I
bore his expenses for four years because he had no job. I had entered the civil
service then. When he finally got a lucrative job in an accounting firm, I was
happy for him and happier for myself because I thought the long wait for our
wedding would soon be over, but one evening he came home to tell me that
we couldn’t get married because he’d gotten his boss’s daughter pregnant. For
weeks I begged him not to dump me, but all my pleas were in vain. He said
he’d been condemned to marry the girl, that he could lose his job if he didn’t
accept responsibility.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she swiped at them with the back of
her hand. “He couldn’t tell the girl to abort the pregnancy. Yet, he made me
abort twice.”
Oloye Bab felt a deep pity for her. “He treated you badly.”
“It was bad, but the worst was yet to come. After a while I met Tunji.
Things were going well between us until he took me to meet his mother. We
spent a weekend at his mother’s house. I washed her clothes and cooked the
meals.”
“It shows what a good-wife-to-be you are.”
“That’s just the way I am. A week after the meeting, Tunji’s mother
called him and told him that she’d gone to a soothsayer to inquire about me.
The soothsayer had said I was a disaster-in-waiting, because a ‘cloud of blood’
brooded over me. When I asked Tunji what the blood was about, he said the
blood of the lives I’d aborted was crying for vengeance.”
She fought for composure. “I told him that his mother’s soothsayer was
wrong. He said I was the one who hadn’t come clean to him; since he wasn’t
my first man, it was impossible for me not to have been pregnant before we
met.” She took a tissue from her bag and wiped her eyes. “I told him that I’d
only been pregnant twice before and that I’d had the abortions because the
man responsible had forced me to. He didn’t care whether it was twice or five
times. The issue was that the lives I terminated were seeking vengeance, and
he was not ready to be a victim of that vengeance.”
Sidikat approached the car. She leaned into the window. “I wanted to
check on you. You’re crying?”
Moyo smiled sheepishly. “I’m just recalling . . . I’ll be fine. Don’t
worry.”
“We’re all right,” Oloye Bab said.
“Okay, I’ll wait for her at the bar.” Sidikat said, then went back to the
bar.
“That was three years ago.” Moyo sniffled back her tears. “I was thirty-
four. Tunji’s mother called me a murderer and swore that, in her lifetime, her
son would never marry me. When I told her that I was two months pregnant
with her son’s child, she said I should do whatever I liked with the pregnancy.”
Moyo was silent for so long that Oloye Bab had to prompt her to
continue. “Tunji began to show me his vicious side. Whenever I went to his
house, he beat me up. I was hoping he would change his mind because of the
pregnancy. The last time I went there he beat both Sidikat and me. Sidikat’s
artificial tooth is a souvenir of his beating.”
“You should have had him arrested.”
“Sidikat’s former husband did.” She stared off at a lamp post that lit the
parking lot. “But he was released on the second day. I guess the police were
offered money.”
He smacked the steering wheel so hard it honked. “Why is there
so much corruption in this country?”
“I thought I’d been cursed. They say that everything about a person’s
future has been written before birth, that life is a book. I concluded that
marriage was not in my book. I reasoned that, if I didn’t want to suffer further
humiliation, I should stay away from men. I resolved to be alone.”
“What happened to the pregnancy?”
“I kept it. But the child was stillborn. He was beautiful. I wanted to have
him as a kind of consolation.” She blew her running nose. “Why am I telling
you all these things?”
“To let me know who you were.” He would overlook her past and gaze
into her present, which he craved.
“Why do you want me? I’m young enough to be your daughter.”
“But not too young to be my wife.”
“To be your second wife? I heard your first wife is in London.”
“Canada. She has decided not to come back to Nigeria, and I can’t live
alone.”
“I don’t want to be cast off again.”
“You won’t regret marrying me.”
Moyo asked him to let her reconsider his overtures one final time.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
In the evening six days later, Oloye Bab and Moyo sat in the same car.
She gave him her yes, watching the sky’s yellowish, purplish and pinkish
streaks melding into one another as if an invisible hand had turned it into a
canvas.


***

The telephone woke Oloye Bab, a midnight call he would have loved to
ignore. He groped across the bed, across the other half waiting for a woman,
for the phone on the nightstand. Since Moyo had agreed to marry him, he
hadn’t had the confidence to call his wife as he had in the early months after
his return to Ibadan. Yewande might suspect from his voice that he had a
mistress.
When he heard Yewande’s cold “hello,” he suspected that she’d heard
about Moyo. “Happy married life,” she said.
“What do you mean?” His mouth felt dry and stale.
“I sensed it, but didn’t allow myself to believe it. I chose to trust you.
That was a mistake.”
The scorn in her voice nagged him. “Your mistake was choosing not to
return to Nigeria.”
“Only a shameless man acts the way you did.”
His eyes adjusted to the room’s darkness. “Because a selfish woman
forced him to do what he did.”
“Me, selfish?”
“If you don’t want me to have another wife, you must come home.”
“Which home?”
“Ibadan, of course.”
She switched to her Canadian accent. “To come and die?”
“I must have died and been reincarnated then.”
“I’ll sue you for bigamy.” Her voice cut like sharp glass.
He giggled. “Where would you file your suit? Quebec? Send the court
papers to me with UPS.”
“You’re a disappointment to your children.”
The voice he heard next was Fadeke’s. “Hello, Daddy? What’s
happening over there?”
“I needed a companion.” He slammed the receiver, then took the phone
off the hook and went downstairs.
 The steward, Taye, sat on the sofa, his long legs stretched out on the
plum-colored rosewood coffee table, watching a video. The marble floor
glimmered under the bright silver chandelier. Oloye Bab went to sit at the
wine bar. Taye came by and brought out a bottle of Malbec. His sleeves were
folded up, revealing his hairy forearms. As the steward filled a glass for him,
Oloye Bab watched the bubbles rise and burst. He gulped the wine, which
trickled down his chin to his pajamas. Who had told his wife about his soon-
to-be-held traditional wedding with Moyo? He’d wanted the wedding held
before she found out.

***

Moyo’s heels clicked along the walkway that led from the house to the
garage.
“When will my car be ready?” she asked her mechanic.
Taju, the gangling, uneducated mechanic fixing her Jeep Cherokee, lived
in poverty at Ile Ero, the three-story tenement house in front of Moyo’s
duplex. He lay on a runner as he worked under the front of the car. “I am soon
to finish, Ma.”
“Finish quickly. I’m going out with the first lady.”
Sometimes Moyo reported to Mrs. Felicia Etomo instead of her office at
the secretariat. Who would question her? Her husband was the Governor’s
man, which had even gained her a promotion, hoisting her from Grade Level
10 to 13. Once, she’d accompanied the first lady for two weeks without
seeking the permission of her immediate department head. When she returned,
the permanent secretary queried her about her absence. She informed Mrs.
Etomo, who in Moyo’s presence gave him a verbal thrashing, threatening to
fire him from the Service.
Sidikat emerged from the house. She stopped midway and tutted.
Joining them, she asked, “Why is he taking so long to finish?”
“He is too slow for my liking. I won’t use his service again,” Moyo said.
Sidikat and Moyo could have been twins: Both wore white iro and buba
organza lace and red head-ties; they had kohl-lined eyes, jeweled fingers, and
wore diamond-studded pendants. They had first met at the entrance
examination for the Civil Service. When the Service had posted successful
candidates’ assignments, they had both been assigned to the Ministry of
Education, where their friendship had blossomed. Four years later, Sidikat was
transferred to the Ministry of Health, but that didn’t stop them from seeing
each other and talking as usual about hair-dos, men, parties, and fashion.
Later, Moyo was transferred to the Governor’s Office. She had two other
friends, Kofo and Motun, but Sidikat was the only one around with whom she
could strip to her panties. And it was Sidikat who encouraged Moyo to
continue with the pregnancy that had led to the stillbirth.
Taju slipped from beneath the car, sweat streaming down his
pockmarked face. He scratched his scar-mottled scalp. “Mommy, please use
me. I now finish.”
“Don’t call me mommy. Don’t let my husband hear that. I have no son
anywhere.”
He jumped behind the steering wheel. Revving the engine, he grinned as
if he’d been told he could have the car.
Sidikat knocked on the driver’s door. “Hurry up. Don’t waste my time.”
After he’d backed the car out of the garage and given Moyo the key,
Taju stretched and flexed his spine, revealing the brownish, tangled hair of his
armpits. Moyo paid and dismissed him.
Two minutes later, Moyo drove out of the gate onto their recently tarred
road (the tar ended in front of their house, and her husband had named the
road after himself – Babatunde Agbeja Road). Her friend was unusually quiet.
Approaching a T- junction, Moyo asked, “Are you okay?”
Sidikat’s face tightened. “How can I be?”
“You’re feeling sick?”
“You made me feel sick.”
“What do you mean?” Moyo said, thinking, You sometimes talk in a
funny way.
“You were proud to tell Taju that you have no son. Bearing Oloye no
children might become your greatest undoing.”
“Oloye doesn’t want children. It’s as simple as that.”
Sidikat turned dark eyes on her. “Stop! The party can wait.”
Moyo drove on. The issue at hand didn’t warrant stopping the car.
 “I asked you to stop.” Sidikat whacked her on her thigh. “I’m tired of
hearing that Oloye doesn’t want children.”
Moyo pulled off the road. She pinned a gaze on her. Why was Sidi bad-
tempered this afternoon?
“Wasn’t it silly of you to make that kind of agreement?” Sidikat pursed
her lips. “One day, his first wife will come back and send you packing.”
Moyo laughed. “Impossible. We have the same rights in his house.”
Sidikat mimicked her in the manners of little girls when they are
copying one another. ‘We have the same rights in his house.’
“Sidi!”
“Prove it. Show me the evidence of the equality.”
“Evidence?” Moyo turned the word over with her tongue.
“Look.” Sidikat pointed to a young woman coming toward them. The
woman cradled a little girl whom she shielded from the blazing sun with a
small umbrella. “That’s her evidence in her hands. Where is yours? Listen,
whatever you think you’re enjoying is only for the moment. You won’t have a
voice in that house unless you bear his child.”
“He told me he doesn’t want any children.”
“Do you want to exit this world without leaving a child behind?”
Moyo was silent. She had accepted Oloye Bab’s advances with some
skepticism. And when he had told her before their wedding that he did not
want more children, she had seen nothing wrong with it. She had been on
contraceptive pills ever since.
“What do you think I should do?”
“Get pregnant! Bear children for him.”
“I’m on the pill.”
“Flush them down the toilet.”
A prickling of unease passed through Moyo. Her husband might be
upset if she got pregnant.
“I don’t want to offend him.”
“There’s nothing to fear.” Sidikat was confident, boisterous. “Tell him the
pregnancy was accidental, that you didn’t know the contraceptives could fail.”
“How can I tell him all these lies?”
“I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I had a husband that I’ve forgotten it is bad
for a wife to lie to her husband.”
Moyo glanced at her, understood her sarcasm. She leaned her head
against the headrest.


***

Moyo sat in the waiting room of the Fountain Hospital, crossing and
uncrossing her legs, unmindful of the woman groaning beside her. She waited
for her test results. What would she do if it revealed her womb had been
damaged? What would Sidikat’s next advice be?
Moyo’s sudden insecurity had led her to follow Sidikat’s advice after
Oloye Bab made his first journey to Quebec. “It is clear that Oloye’s first wife
is again uppermost in his heart. Now you’re no different than a spare tire to
him,” Sidikat had derided her.
So Moyo had stopped taken precautions. It had been two months since
Oloye came back, but she felt no life in her womb and continued menstruating
normally. She had initially discarded the thought of visiting a hospital to have
her uterus checked, because she feared hearing that her previous abortions had
damaged it. Her jealousy at seeing Oloye regularly communicate with
Yewande on the phone finally decided it: she would see a doctor.
Now Moyo’s beating heart roared in her ears, overwhelming the sounds in the
room: the heavy breathing of the other patients, the wailing of babies, the
clicking of heels across the marble floor. When her doctor appeared in the
hallway and beckoned her to the consultation room, she imagined a monster
was waiting to drive a dagger into her heart.
She sat across from him and glanced into his brown eyes. He handed the test
results to her. Her hand jittered like an unbalanced blender.
“Don’t fret, Mrs. Agbeja. Your uterus is healthy. I suggest you tell your
husband to come in for a test. Then we’ll know what to do next.”
She scratched her cheek. Impossible. She couldn’t ask her husband to
come to the hospital.
Perhaps her husband’s sperm count was low. Maybe age affected its
motility. She had to find a way to boost his fertility. Perhaps medicinal herbs
would work.



***
After this visit, she regularly crushed some fertility herbs into a powder
and mixed it into his drink. She even added some powdered rhino horn into his
food. Still she had no morning sickness.
One Saturday afternoon, she burst into Sidikat’s apartment and slumped
into an armchair. “I can’t get pregnant. Things aren’t working out as I
expected them to.”
“Maybe it’s your womb.” Sidikat stood in front of the low shelf which housed
a TV and a video machine.
“I went for tests and the doctor said that everything was okay. He told
me to tell my husband to come for an examination, which of course is not
possible.”
Sidikat positioned herself behind Moyo, laying her hands on her
shoulders. “If the door and the windows are shut, there must be another way
out of the room.”
“How?” Moyo’s voice wavered. Her future was at stake.
Sidikat came around to stand in front of her. “You create another
opening. You cast your net wide.”
“Cast my net wide?”
“Try another man.”
Moyo’s stomach flipped. “That’s infidelity.”
“Come on!” Sidikat flapped a hand at her. “What do you know about
infidelity? These things are relative. You would be doing this for the greater
good.”
Accustomed to Sidikat’s brazen utterances, Moyo reckoned her friend’s
streetwise directness reflected her background. Where she had grown up in a
run-down area of Ibadan, it wasn’t unusual for a woman to have six children
with four men. Sidikat had three children with two different men. When she
was sixteen, she gave birth to her first child, a boy, whose paternity was the
subject of debate for a long time. She had her two daughters with an ex-
chairman of the local Road Transport Workers Union. The man already had
three wives when she married him. When he married a fifth, she left him.
 Moyo couldn’t imagine herself sleeping with another man. Dangerous
waters. “That’s horrible. I can’t do it.”
Sidikat applauded her in a mock fashion. “What is more horrible than a
woman living with a man without bearing him children? What is more horrible
than you leaving the Earth and leaving nothing of yourself behind?”
Sidikat’s words pricked Moyo’s heart like a dart. She sobbed. “I can’t
sleep with another man.”
“You don’t want a child?”
She wanted a child, but she feared the repercussion of Sidikat’s idea.
Sidikat sat on the arm of Moyo’s chair and wiped away her tears. “It might be
hard for you. But isn’t it a risk worth taking?”
“How can I give Oloye another man’s child?”
“This is nothing unusual. You would not be the first to do it.”
“What if he found out?”
“He wouldn’t. There are many dads out there who are taking care of
children they didn’t father. Men are gullible because of their vanity. Your
husband will be no exception. In this clime, a woman with no children is
without honor in her husband’s family, remember?”
Moyo hung her head. Why were things getting so complicated?
Sidikat, eyes misted, folded Moyo into her embrace. “I’m not leading
you astray. All I want is your happiness.”
Silence settled between them.
“How do I get another man to agree to this?” Moyo asked in a low tone
as if there were cameras in the room. “How would I persuade him to keep
quiet?” What she was ashamed to say was, How could I get a strange man to
sleep with me?
“We can use the mechanic boy.”
Moyo pulled away from her, glaring at her. “Taju? The dirty mechanic?
Never!” She picked up her bag and stomped toward the door.
Sidikat followed her and said evenly. “He is the only person I can think
of. He should be easy to persuade.”
Moyo slammed the door in her face.


 ***

Moyo knocked on the door numbered ‘64’. When it opened, Sidikat’s
expectant face met hers. Moyo shuffled past her, then plopped down on the
queen-size bed, rubbing her brow as if to ward off a headache.
“How did it go?” Sidikat closed the door and then went to stand in front
of Moyo. She crossed her arms and looked down at her friend. “Are you okay?
What about Taju?”
Moyo gagged as if she wanted to vomit.
Sidikat unfolded her arms. “So quickly? That’s a sure sign of
pregnancy.”
“Stop it!” Moyo huffed. “Had someone told me three months ago that
I’d undress for him, I’d have called her a bitch.”
It had taken four weeks for Moyo to accept sleeping with another man;
now she wished it hadn’t happened. She loathed Sidikat for prevailing over
her to accept that Taju would have to be the one—the only one Sidikat said
they could easily buy over.
“I’m not a bitch, am I?” Sidikat asked in earnest.
“He stinks,” Moyo scoffed.
Sidikat wrinkled her nose. “You should have told him to shower first.”
Moyo forced saliva down her throat.
When Taju had come into Room 19 of the Meridian Hotel some minutes
ago, Moyo had told him to go into the bathroom. The hotel was some twenty-
five minutes’ drive from Moyo’s house, almost on the outskirts of the north of
Ibadan, and they chose it to forestall the possibility of meeting people who
knew them.
“I baf for home, dear,” Taju said, moving toward her with his arms
outstretched.
She held up a hand. “Who is your ‘dear’? Go in there and bathe!” she
jeered.
As Taju lay with her, Moyo closed her eyes and tilted her head to the
side. The moment he released into her, she pushed him away. She grabbed her
iro, wrapped it around her, and scampered to the bathroom as though the feel
of his touch and the smell of his sex were a contamination she must quickly
wash from her body.
Now Moyo breathed against a pillow. “It was terrible!”
“That doesn’t matter. You didn’t have him for pleasure; you had him for
the purpose of procreation,” Sidikat said, then picked up her bag. “It’s nine-
thirty.” She crossed to the window. A gibbous moon hung in the sky like a
lonely loquat on a tree. She saw Taju shamble to the bus stop. Turning from
the window, she said, “Let’s go.”
Moyo sat there, letting guilt sink its talons deeper into her heart. Her
husband, who was somewhere chairing Etomo’s nightclub cabinet, wouldn’t
return home until midnight.


***

Moyo opened the passenger door of the Cherokee. She got in next to
Sidikat, who was slouched behind the wheel eating roasted corn in the parking
lot of the University College Hospital.
“It’s positive. I’m five weeks pregnant,” she announced.
Sidikat slid upright and took the test result from her. “This is great news!
My choice of Taju has been justified.”
“But how do I tell Oloye?”
Sidikat turned over the ignition. “I don’t live with him, you do. You
should know how to speak to your own husband.”


***

That night, Moyo perched on the edge of the bed, her heart quaking the
equivalent of a 5.7 on the Richter scale. Lying under the comforter, Oloye
touched the back of her nightgown and found it clammy with sweat. “Do you
have a fever?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong? Are you worried about your promotion? Your letter is
on Etomo’s table. He should sign it before the end of the week.”
“It’s not about that.” She looked down at her lap. How could she present
this lie convincingly?
“What is it, then?”
She raised her head. “I’m afraid—”
“What are your fears? Tell me.”
She sank to her knees. “My contraceptives failed me.”
He stared long at her, as if reading the meaning of ‘my contraceptives
failed me’ on her face. “So? How does that affect me?”
“I. . . I’m pregnant.” The words felt like shards of glass coming out of
her throat.
He sat up abruptly and looked her up and down as if weighing her to
decide the right punishment for her. “I thought we had an agreement?”
“Forgive me. I don’t know how it happened.” She pressed her fist
against her mouth, tears tumbling down her cheeks like the cascade of Victoria
Falls.
They fell into silence, which clacked in her ears.
After a few moments, he asked, “What do you want to do now?”
She fidgeted. “Do?”
“What is your plan for the pregnancy?”
“I want to have the baby,” she whimpered, not meeting his eyes.
“Who says you should have an abortion? The fetus has a right to live,
doesn’t it?”
She took his words to mean a “yes” to the pregnancy. Her scheme had
worked out, but she remained on her knees, feigning soberness.
“You should come to bed. You won’t remain there till tomorrow,” he
said.


***

The evening sky was open and blue. Oloye sat at a table in his front
yard, reading Sunday Guardian. Moyo brought him a glass of Zinfandel, her
bump thrusting out behind her taffeta gown. The bump was so big she
sometimes wondered if it was the baby screaming “Oloye, you’re not my dad!
I’m not your baby!”
He sipped his wine. “I’ll be going to Canada next week.”
 “What? You shouldn’t leave me alone at this time.”
He continued flipping through the pages of the newspaper. “I need to
take some time off to rest. I’ve worked really hard for the last two and a half
years.”
“You deserve it more than anyone,” she replied, “but why Canada? Why
can’t you rest here?”
“It won’t just happen here. I’ve already booked the flight for next
week.” His gaze at her was filled with hostility.
She framed her belly with both hands. “I have one month to go before
the baby comes.”
“I have to see my children,” Oloye Bab replied, then picked up his
newspaper and went back inside.
Moyo may have drunk from the Zinfandel before bringing it to him, but
her mouth tasted like vinegar now. She sat down and puffed out of her cheeks.
Was her husband still pained that Colonel Etomo’s reign had come to a sudden
end two weeks ago? Would he have travelled if his man hadn’t been removed
as the governor of the state? She stroked her belly, as if telling the unborn
child, “Don’t worry; that’s the father you’ll grow up to know.”


***

When Moyo finally gave birth to her child, Oloye was away in Canada.
That night at the maternity ward, Sidikat held the baby boy. “This is enough
joy for you. Don’t be sad about Oloye’s absence. You’ve now given yourself a
strong footing in his house.”
“I wonder if Taju might be—”
“He’s no issue at all. We’ve done well to let him go to Libya. I don’t see
him coming back in the next ten years,” Sidikat whispered.
Five days after Moyo’s delivery, Oloye returned, and life continued as
normal between them. He didn’t hesitate to cradle the child, Bosun, who
shared Moyo’s face.
On two occasions, Oloye went to patronize the new governor, but he
was given no audience. He’d had his time during Etomo’s tenure. Weren’t a
five-star hotel and other chains of properties within and outside the city his
gains?
The Civil Service Commission reviewed its appointments and
promotions and found that Moyo’s rise to the post of Deputy Director was not
in accordance with standard practice; as a result, the Commission dropped her
back to a Level 12. She knew this was payback from senior officers whose
toes she had stepped on when her husband was a strong figure in the
government, so she refused to accept the demotion and consequently left the
Service. It was time to fulfill her long-time dream of setting up a supermarket.
Over the next months, everything went smoothly as she turned one of
Oloye’s properties into the largest one-stop store in the city. It filled three
separate floors, and it was in her office on the middle floor that Sidikat took
one look at her and said, “You’re pregnant again.”
“Yes. Seven weeks,” Moyo said.
“Who’s the man?”
Must you know who he is? “Oloye.”
“Oloye?” Sidikat’s mouth turned up into a doubtful smile.
“You don’t believe me?”
“We both understand our lies.”
“Miracles do happen,” Moyo said despite knowing that her friend was
not a woman easily fooled.
Sidikat studied her for a moment. “That’s why we went to such great
lengths to create the first one.”
“You don’t need to know him.” Moyo swiveled around on her chair. “I’ll
handle that end.”
The young man who had impregnated her was a recent university
graduate whose vanilla fragrance announced him. He had come to the
supermarket to buy some items. She wasn’t sure if it was their second or third
time together in bed that resulted in the conception. She had paid him
handsomely.
“You shouldn’t have done it behind my back,” Sidikat said with a flash
of irritation.
“Why not? Don’t I deserve some measure of privacy?” Moyo’s voice,
though low, was resentful.
“This pregnancy is too soon. Bosun is barely a year old.” Sidikat eyed
the picture of the grinning boy in a silver frame.
“He’s already toddling. Isn’t he old enough to have a sibling?”
Sidikat quietly walked out of the room. If Moyo had known that her
friend was walking out of her life, walking out to be a fiend, she would have
called her back.


***

The death of General Abacha changed Nigeria’s political landscape of
the country. In his maiden broadcast to the nation, the new military ruler
highlighted his readiness to restore the country to a democratic path. When he
subsequently announced the timetable for the new transition programs, Moyo
mobilized Oloye’s allies to convince him to run for the office of state
governor. The attention enjoyed by a first lady, the massive entourage at her
command-- which she had witnessed in the company of Mrs. Etomo-- was her
motivation. She could also get back at those who had championed her
demotion in the civil service.
Two weeks before his party’s primary, Moyo received a phone-call from
Yewande who accused Moyo of not caring about Oloye’s life.
“Stop pursuing your selfish interests at the expense of his life,” Yewande
stated flatly.
Moyo sat down, making herself comfortable on the bed. “Do you care
more about him than I do?”
“If you cared about his life, you would oppose his decision to go into
politics,” Yewande snapped.
“He is my husband. A good woman must give her man her full support.”
“Are you a good woman? I don’t think so.”
“Jealous mama, your opinion doesn’t matter.” Moyo let out a derisive
laugh. “I’ll be the first lady, while you’ll rot from envy.”
“You’re a bitch,” Yewande said.
Moyo wished she could spit at her. “You too are a bitch. Your daughters
are bitches.”
Oloye came into the bedroom, and Moyo hung up quickly to greet him.
“Who was that?”
 Avoiding his eyes, she muttered, “Your woman in Canada.”
“And you dared to call her a bitch?”
“She called me a bitch first.”
Red-faced, he crossed to her side. “So what?”
“She said that—”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear you speak again.” His voice sounded like
the whining of a truck engine in need of a mechanic.
Moyo shrank back, crossing her hands over her protruding belly. He
stared hard at her, the lines on his face deepening. His throat seemed to be
working up insulting words, which he eventually swallowed and left the room.
I may loathe Yewande, but wouldn’t it be better to pretend that I like her
so I can return to Oloye’s good favor? She would apologize and tell him she
would not dishonor Yewande again. But when she drifted off to sleep about
eleven p.m., he had not returned.
About twelve-thirty a.m., a knock at the bedroom door broke into her
sleep.
“Ma’am?” Taye called.
“What do you want?” she asked, still groggy.
“You have some visitors.”
“From where?” she asked, wondering what manner of visitors would
arrive at this hour.
“They said they are policemen.”
What has happened?
Shrugging into her robe, she lurched off downstairs.
“What is it?” she asked the two men.
“Ma’am, something bad has happened,” the shorter officer said.
“My husband is not at home.”
“We’re sorry. It happened to him while he was driving home,” the
second officer said. “He was murdered in his car at Challenge Traffic Circle.”
The news was a fist to her gut. The sandwich and tea that she’d eaten
two hours earlier turned to acid in her stomach. She ran back upstairs to her
bathroom and vomited into the basin. She sank down onto the floor and held
her throbbing head. Oloye’s first wife will soon be back. That is certain. What
will be my fate? What’s in Oloye’s will for me? Oh Sidikat, where have you
gone? I shouldn’t have had a falling out with you. I need you now.


***

In the days that followed, Yewande stormed Nigeria, and the animosity
that had begun over the phone between her and Moyo continued. Yewande
was laying claim to the house, which she said Oloye and she had built before
he met Moyo.
One evening, they encountered each other in the hallway.
“You’ll soon leave here. I’m only waiting for Oloye’s funeral to pass,”
Yewande said.
“I’m a rock. Unmovable.” Smirking, Moyo pranced a few steps away
and then back to Yewande. “Take your bitch self back to your bitch
daughters.”
Yewande punched Moyo in the face. She doubled over, blood trickling
from her nose. Enraged, she raised her hand and aimed a fist at Yewande, but
another hand grasped hers from behind. It was Taye’s.
Moyo struggled to free her hand. “Let me go!”
“Don’t, ma’am,” Taye pleaded.
“Release her Taye. She is not capable of her threat.”
Moyo swung her leg, but it caught only air. Taye held her firmly, while
Yewande flounced into her room.
The next morning, with the sun peeping from behind a cloud like a
recalcitrant child behind a closed door, Moyo drove to the police station. The
air conditioning in the car couldn’t cool her grate-hot resentment against
Yewande.
A desk sergeant and his female counterpart sat behind a tall desk with a
telephone that had to be dead because no cable connected it. On the wall
behind them was the inscription ‘Bail is free.’ Moyo knew it wasn’t that free;
it had never been. Weren’t some officers given to lucre? With money, she
could bend them for her cause. She asked for the divisional police officer, and
the policewoman led Moyo to her boss’s office.
In the office, Moyo found a heavy-set man putting some files away in a
cabinet. He took a seat at his desk.
 “I’m Mrs. Moyo Agbeja.” She eased herself into the guest chair. “The
wife to the late—”
“Oloye Babatunde Agbeja. I’m so sorry about your husband’s death. My
colleagues in the homicide unit will find the killer.”
She sat for a moment, staring at him and wringing her hands. “I was
assaulted.”
He thrust his face forward. “By who?”
“My husband’s first wife. Since she came back to this country, I’ve not
had a moment’s peace of mind. I’m afraid my life may be in danger.
Yesterday, she hit me so hard that my nose bled.”
“Doesn’t she see you’re pregnant? Why was she acting cruelly?”
`“Oloye’s properties. She wanted to have everything,” Moyo lied smoothly.
“Please save me, save my unborn baby.” She paused as he scrawled a few
notes on a notepad. When he stopped writing, she reached into her bag and
brought out a white envelope containing five thousand naira in fifty-naira bills.
“This”—she handed it to him—“is for you. Please do something about
her.”
He slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket and came around the desk,
walking her to the door. “We’ll do our job.”


***

The next day, two uniformed policemen came for Yewande. They told
her she was invited to come down to their station to clarify some matters, and
they had come to escort her there. At the station Yewande was accused of
assault and battery and held in a cell the size of a closet. The seepage of
rainwater had imprinted a tapestry of deltas on the upper part of the wall
facing the door. Through the worn slits in the roof, sunlight fell into the room
forming pockets of shadows like dark polka dots on the concrete floor. At
night, she had a mat to lay on the floor and a lantern to illuminate the room
while an orchestra of mosquitoes played around her head.
After two days, Oloye Bab’s cousin, pimpled-face Toba, secured
Yewande’s bail. She looked filthy. The stink of the cell clung to her dark blue
embroidered caftan. She’d been humiliated and, as they drove back home, she
fantasized about the moment she would throw Moyo out of the house in
disgrace.


***

When Yewande returned home, she found Oloye Bab’s eldest brother
Chief Jaiye and some members of the extended family in the living room,
scolding Moyo for getting her arrested. But that wouldn’t pacify Yewande. “I
don’t want her here,” she insisted.
“I’m going nowhere,” Moyo said breezily.
“Wouldn’t you consider her pregnancy, Yewande?” Chief Jaiye asked.
He seemed to have an aversion to a razor as his dense gray sideburns and
beard looked like an overgrown lawn. “What about”—he gestured to Bosun
who was playing with a miniature train on the floor—“this little boy?”
Yewande shook her head. “Neither the pregnancy nor this boy is
Oloye’s. She and Oloye agreed she would never bear him children.”
“Bitch! Liar!” Moyo yelled. “We later changed our minds.”
Chief Jaiye shifted in his seat, his gaze flying back and forth between
Yewande and Moyo.
Yewande rushed upstairs, the aura of her fury trailing in her wake and
returned holding a manila envelope. “She should tell us who Taju was.”
Moyo’s heart pounded. Who had told her about Taju?
Yewande withdrew two papers from the envelope and held one out to
Chief Jaiye. “Please read this. It is our copy of the consent forms Oloye and I
signed when he had a vasectomy in Canada after I gave birth to Folahan.”
Toba took the document and read out.
September 13, 1978
I, Babatunde Agbeja, authorize Dr. Mark Bolt to perform a bilateral
vasectomy on me. I understand that this procedure is performed through a
small scrotal incision or punctures and a small portion of each vas is removed
and may or may not be sent for pathological…
Moyo’s cheeks burned, her heart slamming fiercer.
I understand that this procedure is being performed to achieve
permanent sterility, meaning I will be unable to father any further children
once my semen specimens are cleared of sperm and…
Oloye knew all the while that he couldn’t have fathered her son. She
once had asked him about the scar in the front of his scrotum. He had evaded
the question.
By signing the consent form, my wife and I acknowledge that I have
been fully informed and understand the risks and purpose of this procedure.
Therefore, I take responsibility for…
“Taju fathered her son, not Oloye. Her friend Sidikat confessed to
Oloye,” Yewande announced when Toba finished the reading.
Waves of shock surged through the room. Pupils widened.
Yewande told the family that Oloye had removed Moyo’s name from his
will after she told him she was pregnant again. “His lawyer will come to read
the will,” she said.
Moyo’s head spun. The floor seemed to quake under her feet. She
dashed out of the house, past the walkway, and past the gate. She lifted the
hem of her black akwa oche gown and ran down Babatunde Agbeja Road,
skipping potholes that once again occupied the road. Her heart raced with her
legs, her breathing belabored. Was she back to zero point? Her grief poured
out in tears, flooding her eyes. The wine Sidikat persuaded her to drink had
hurt her. She pressed on as if running away from her shame. A chaos of pain
unleashed itself on her. A few meters before the main road, she felt woozy and
missed her footing at another pothole. She stumbled, falling awkwardly onto
her back, feeling a bone-deep pain.
Passers-by rushed to her, but she didn’t see them, didn’t hear their voices
of concern. She sprawled on the ground with one arm across her face, writhing
in pain. She felt a hand slipping the arm from her face. The world swirled
around her. ■

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