by Sefi Atta
“He can’t do that.”
“Why not?” she said. “He took everything else under native law as my father’s rightful heir. Why would the house be different?”
“Whose name is the property in, now?” I asked.
“My father’s.”
“Did he leave a will?”
“No.”
What place did the law really have in family matters? At law school I’d learned those indigenous set of codes collectively called native law and custom. They existed before we adopted civil law, before we became a nation with a constitution, and they established individual rights under inheritance and marriage. A man could marry only one wife under civil law, but he could bring another woman into his home under native law. It was polygamy, not bigamy. If he pleased, he could beat up his wife, throw her out, with or without her children and leave her with nothing. His relations might plead with him to show her mercy, but she had no claim over his property. If he died, under some native customs, his son would inherit his estate instead of his widow. Sometimes, a widow couldn’t inherit land at all. Even with the progressive customs, widows inherited according to how many children they had, and sons could have double the rights of daughters.
The courts determined how to share a man’s estate, according to how he lived his life: the traditional or “civil” way. In reality, his relations could come into his house, “drive his wife comot” and sit on her front porch threatening to put a hex on her if she dared to challenge them. Of course there were exceptions; women who fought in and out of the law courts and they nearly always won.
“There are steps you can take,” I said. “But the most important thing is to find a good lawyer.”
“Your father’s a good lawyer,” she said. “Can I ask him?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted Sheri to ask my father about this. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to ask my father about anything, especially as he had not settled the matter with my mother.
“Yes,” I said, since I’d opened my mouth.
“Thank you, my sister,” she said.
As she drove off, I turned to the street seller who had finished peeling her orange. A complete spiral of green orange skin bounced off the edge of her pen knife. The infant on her back had his mouth wide open.
“Mor’ing,” she said.
“Good morning,” I said.
They began with Peace, the events following Sheri’s visit to my father’s office. They began and ended with Peace. She brought the magazine to the office one afternoon and announced, “Come see, our client Mr. Mukoro in a love triangle.”
We gathered round her desk. It was a copy of Weekend People, a gossip magazine. Peace bought it monthly and I borrowed it each time. Sometimes Sheri appeared as a former Miss Nigeria, “Veteran Beauty Queen Steps Out” and such. On the front page of this issue, was a photograph of a woman with a head tie. The camera had caught her sneer. The headline read “Mukoro is a hypocrite.”
The woman was Peter Mukoro’s wife. They had been married for 22 years and he had recently taken a second wife. Peace improvised her way through the woman’s allegations of affairs, adding gasps and squeals. The highlight of the interview was the story of how Peter Mukoro came home with a bald patch in his pubic hair. His lover had helped herself to a sample while he was asleep. The proceeds went to a medicine man to brew a potion to ensnare him. Alabi kept laughing, Dagogo pretended to be above it all, but he was stapling the same sets of papers together. I had to show it to my father.
“I don’t want to read it,” he said.
Then he read the whole page.
“Can you believe it?” I said.
He looked bored as he pushed the magazine toward me.
“The woman disgraced herself.”
“Him,” I said.
“Only herself,” he said. “She has nothing better to do, going to the papers with this nonsense.”
“He goes to the papers,” I said, “For everything. He calls himself a social critic.”
“It’s not the same,” my father interrupted. “This is a private matter.”
“Oh,” I said, taking the magazine.
“What is ‘Oh’? You have something to say?”
I shook my head.
“Speak your mind now,” he said “Since you’ve already come in here.”
“I don’t think it’s a private matter,” I said. “A social crusader practicing bigamy. I think it is good that people are being told.”
“By Weekend People?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s good they consider the story newsworthy. And really, I don’t know why we continue to follow native law anyway, when civil law is in existence. It has no moral grounding, no design except to oppress women... ”
My father laughed. “Who’s oppressed? Are you oppressed?”
“I didn’t say me, but yes, in a way.”
“How?”
“I’m part of this... ”
“This what?”
“This group, treated as chattel.”
“Let’s not get hysterical.”
“Show me one case,” I said. “Just one, of a woman having two husbands, a fifty-year-old woman marrying a twelve-year- old boy. We have women judges, and a woman can’t legally post bail. I’m a lawyer. If I were married, I would need my husband’s consent to get a new passport. He would be entitled to discipline me with a slap or two, so long as he doesn’t cause me grievous bodily harm.”
“You’ve made your point,” he said. “Your grandmother was married off at fourteen, into a household with two other wives, and she had to prove she was worthy of her dowry by cooking better. I’m not sure what your gripe is. I made sure you had a good education, encouraged you to fulfill your career goals... ”
“Can you change our culture for me?” I asked.
“What?”
I had not meant to be hysterical. I came in to laugh. Now my heart rate was rising, and I wasn’t even sure why and my argument was a mess.
“Can you change the culture?”
My father placed his hands together, still looking bored. “We know there are problems with native law and custom, but these things are changing... ”
“How do we know? The women don’t come to court, and when they come, it’s men like you who conspire... ”
“Me? Conspire?”
“Yes, all of you, conspiring.”
He laughed. “When did I conspire? I can’t believe I spent money sending you to school. This would be endearing, if you weren’t getting old.”
“I’m not old.”
“Accusing me of conspiring. You are not oppressed; you are spoiled. Very. At your age, I’d bought my house already, I’d started my practice. I was supporting my parents. Yes. Not the other way around.”
At his age there was less competition for lawyers. At his age there wasn’t an economic recession in our country. It was easier to be a kingpin, and most professionals from his generation were. They substituted the colonialists’ sir-and- madamism for theirs, stood by while military men led us into a black hole. Now, we their children were dependent on them. I didn’t say any of this.
“Why won’t you take me seriously,” I grumbled. “Even as a professional. For three years I was respected, paid well. I come back home, you treat me like an idiot, pay me nothing... ”
My father stopped laughing. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
“It’s lunch time,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair. “Get Dagogo in here before you disappear for lunch. And stop reading trash.”
“It’s not trash,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “And I hope you’re not using an article in Weekend People as a springboard for discussing the plight of women in this country.”
“Why not?”
“You shouldn’t even be discussing the plight of women at all, since you’ve done nothing but discuss it. How many women do you know anyway, in your sheltered life?”
I felt my heart racing, unnecessarily, an
d told myself I must never argue with him again, not over this. It was a stupid article, anyway.
“Discussion is a start,” I said, steadying my voice.
“Get Dagogo in here,” he said.
At his door I said, “I think Peter Mukoro is a hypocrite, too,” and quickly stepped out.
The others welcomed me with glances. I knew I had to say something. I handed the magazine back to Peace and said, “Men like Mr. Mukoro should be... ”
“Should be what?” Mrs. Kazeem asked, looking me up and down.
“Sued,” I said.
They all laughed.
“So sue the lawyer who is representing you,” Mrs. Kazeem said. “Sue the judge hearing your case. Sue the driver who carries you from court to your house after your case has been dismissed. Then, when you get home, sue your landlord.”
“Sue everybody,” Dagogo said.
“Sue God,” Alabi said.
Peace clicked her gum and sighed.
“Welcome home,” Mrs. Kazeem said.
“Kukuruku,” people say in my country, whenever they imitate a rooster’s crow. Kukuruku. Some might say a rooster sounds more like cock-a-doodle-doo, even though roosters all over the world make the same sound.
It wasn’t that I no longer belonged, that I’d become a stranger. Being overseas never changed what I instinctively knew before I left. What had changed was other people’s tolerance for me. I was old; too old to be deceiving myself.
Sheri took my advice and began to cater for more social functions. As she predicted, her uncle did take her family to court over possession of their home and my father agreed to represent them. The day she called to tell me, I could do no work. I’d been trying to get my father to sign the transfer letter to my mother for weeks. “All I need is five minutes of your time,” I kept saying, but he said he had no time.
I tried again.
“Have no time,” he said.
I hovered by his desk. “It’s just a signature.”
“Have to read it first,” he said.
“Why?”
“You’re asking me this? You’re... asking me this?”
I waited for him to calm down. “Can I leave it here, until you’re ready?”
“No,” he said. “I have enough papers here.”
I retrieved the letter from his table.
“Sheri says you’re going to take their case.”
“Who?” He looked up.
“My friend, Sheri Bakare. She called today to say you’re going to take their case.”
“Yes, Miss Bakare.”
“Are you?” I asked.
“Am I what?”
“Going to take the case?”
“Yes I am.”
“Do they have a chance?”
“There’s nothing to prove. Their uncle doesn’t have a chance. He swindled them out of their inheritance. The children and the wives, they own that house.”
“Under native law?” I asked.
“You should know this. They share his estate amongst his children, according to how the man lived his life.”
“Not according to how the wives wish to live theirs?”
“Wives are not always in agreement. These women just happen to be. They want to incorporate and transfer the property to the company.”
“They do?”
“What do you think? They’re Lagos women. They were trading before you were born. Give them the options and they will do what they have to.”
I peered at his papers. “Are you really that busy?”
“Why?” he asked.
“If you’re busy, why are you taking a case like theirs?”
He put his pen down.
“I take whatever case I want, Enitan, and at least your friend is a respectful girl, unlike some.”
It was like trying to trap a tadpole. I reproached myself, but the next time Sheri came to the office, I watched her as closely as the other women did. She came to my desk before stepping into my father’s office. She stayed ten minutes in there and came out.
“He’s so nice,” she said. “He’s not charging us anything. Can you believe it?”
“Let’s hope he’s doing it out of kindness,” I said.
My father never did pro bono work. He too came out of his room smiling. He never smiled in the office. If you do such a thing, I thought, chase my friend, you will never forget what I have to say to you and after that, I will have nothing left to say to you.
It wasn’t improbable, he with a younger woman; Sheri with an older man. There were men in Lagos who chased their daughter’s friends. You called them Uncle and curtseyed before them. There were women in Lagos who would chase their best friend’s father for money.
Sheri smiled. “Why else would he do that for us?”
“He alone knows what he does,” I said, “and why.”
As a child, I knew that he strayed. I chose not to think about it. These days, when he brought women home, I treated them like any of his friends. It was hard to discern if he was interested in one or the other. I did not care to know. I discovered that after one of his clients, a married woman, started visiting him regularly. I thought her visits were work-related, until I met him at the airport after a trip abroad and saw her there. My father was a tricky man, I thought. Tricky enough to warrant an ambush. One afternoon, I arrived home early hoping to catch him. I found him in the living room with Peter Mukoro.
“Hello,” I said, deliberately fixing my gaze on my father alone.
I couldn’t bear my finger nails scratching a blackboard, the tips of my teeth running along cotton cloth. Peter Mukoro’s mocking looks, I couldn’t bear them either. He was stroking his mustache and watching me.
“You’re back?” my father said.
“Yes,” I said, heading straight for my room.
“Enitan,” my father called after me.
“Yes,” I said.
“You can’t see Mr. Mukoro sitting here?”
“I can see him.”
I knew I was in trouble. I almost welcomed it. My father came to my room after Peter Mukoro left.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “Frowning all over the place and I’ve been very patient with you. Whatever you think is bothering you, never, ever again do that in my presence.”
“I don’t like him,” I said.
“I don’t care if you like him.”
“Why won’t you sign the transfer letter?” I said. “One minute you’re helping someone else. Sheri, this... awful man.”
“What has he ever done to you?”
“Sign the letter.”
“When I am ready.”
“Do it. Now.”
My father stepped back. “You think we’re equals? You think we’re equals now? I treat you like an adult and you repay me this way? Your mother always said I was lax with you. But that will change. If you can’t respect me in my house, you’re 25 now, go wherever you want.”
“Sign the letter.”
“I won’t tell you again. This has nothing to do with you. I’ve given you a choice. You either do as I say, or you leave this house.”
He left me staring at my door. Leave my friend alone! I wanted to shout.
It was there; an old anxiety. But I was too old to be playing child and he was too old to be playing parent. If we forced the old ways upon ourselves now, we were liable to come to blows.
Sheri was counting old naira notes into separate piles on the desk in her office when I arrived. She licked her thumb and dealt them like cards. “One minute,” she said.
“Take your time,” I said.
It had taken me most of my lunch break to drive, but the anxiety was out of control. It was keeping me up at night. I wanted it to stop.
There were two stacks of boxes in the corner of the room: Peak milk, Titus sardines, Tate and Lyle sugar. A portrait of her stepmothers and another of her father alone. A pile of old mustard colored curtains were folded under the window. The green mosquito screen had ripped in two
places. Dust. Everywhere. Sheri could not bear the mess, I was sure. She finished and flopped back in her chair.
“How come you’re here today?”
“I came to see you,” I said.
“Did you see the people outside? Did you see them?”
“I saw them.”
“We’re making money.”
“I know.”
There was a large lunch time crowd. They would have to wait for seats and their cutlery would not be clean or dry. Some would cut fried meat with spoons. If they complained, the cooks would ignore them. They had the same expression as cooks in the best food spots in Harlem, Bahia, Kingston: Do not bother me. The people came regardless. The food was good: black-eye peas, fresh fish, rice, vegetable stews with cow foot, intestines, lungs, and all manners of innards because in this part of the world we wasted no meat.
Sheri’s nails galloped over the table.
“I’d better get back to work,” I said.
“But you’ve just come,” she said.
“Lunch-break over.”
She laughed. “Why did you bother?”
“I was passing. I wanted to see your face.”
If we didn’t share our childhood, would I like her? Sheri was rude and vain. Sheri had always been rude and vain, except that as a child it was endearing. And whatever she said, it was clear that she did not think much of herself. She liked rich men. Yes, she did. In Lagos we used the word “like” this way. You liked to stare, you liked to criticize, you liked to make appointments and not keep them. There was an assumption, bad English aside, that if you did something often, you liked it.
If you do that, I thought, chase my father, I will have nothing to say to you. It would be sufficient, more than sufficient, to know that you think so little of yourself.
“You’ve seen my face,” she said in Yoruba.
“It’s the same face,” I said.
We walked together to my car. Outside, the lunch-time traffic blocked the road. Someone leaned on a car horn. The sun was fierce. I shielded my eyes.
“Has my father been here?” I asked.
“No.”