Then I was on the road again. The moment my feet touched tarmac, I wanted to run back into the bush. The road felt so exposed, with no place to hide. But there were too many people pouring out of the bush into the road. If I didn’t move, I would have been knocked over. I kept running. Took a while before I realised I was back on campus. I ran to Moremi car park, where I’d left my car under an almond tree.
I was in the car before I remembered Yejide. Panic seized me by the throat. Where was she? She had been standing right beside me, holding a wet cardboard placard over her head. I tried to remember if she had been wearing jeans. I wondered if she was the one I leapt over in the bush. In that instant, I could not remember if she had an afro or not. The car park was in chaos, students were running around, into Moremi, further down. I didn’t know where to start looking for her.
Then she was there beside me, rapping on the car window. I’d never been so happy to see another human being, wanted to strap her in the seat next to me, live with her in the car forever, never let her out of my sight again. I settled for hugging her until I could feel the rapid beat of her heart as though it was mine. Neither of us said anything. I couldn’t speak, though my throat was clogged with words, clogged with emotions that paralysed my vocal chords. Even now I think I should have said something, told her how I couldn’t stand to lose her, how the thought of it had almost made me lose my mind moments before, how I wanted to bind myself to her, so that she could be safe, so I could go with her everywhere she went.
I said nothing until the next day, when we learned that three students had died in the protest.
‘Marry me now,’ I said. ‘Life is short, why should we wait until you finish your degree? I’ll give you my car, you can drive from Ilesa; you can even stay in the hostel if you want. But let’s tell your father that we are ready.’
I knew she would say yes, because it was the right moment. At any other time, she would have insisted that she didn’t want to be a married student. But that day in June, she held my hand and nodded.
I dreamed about the dead students a lot in the first year of our marriage. I used to see them lying in an endless row on the tarmac, all dressed in tight blue jeans. Yejide was always standing at the other end of the bodies. I would try to get to her, but there were too many bodies in my way.
12
Two weeks before the armed robbers wrote us a letter, a new salon was set up right beside mine. The owner was Iya Bolu, a fat illiterate who belched in between her words. If she said good morning to you, you got an accurate idea of what she had eaten for breakfast, along with a spray of spit that followed every word she spoke. Children spilled out of her salon like water from a fountain and littered the passageway that we shared. They were all over the place – crawling, sitting or lying about. They were all little girls with dirty hair. The oldest was about ten and the youngest about four – six daughters in six years. I disliked the woman so much in the first week after she arrived that, in a wild moment, I considered moving my salon to another location.
Iya Bolu was always shouting at her daughters. And the few customers she had went home with more spittle in their hair than setting lotion. She had about two customers each day and sometimes none at all. As much as she tried to lure my customers by greeting them with too many words and very wide smiles, the spittle fountain that was her mouth must have put them off. She was soon spending a lot of time in my salon. She would come in shortly before noon so that she could listen to the midday news on my radio. The radio was not just old, it had become temperamental. Sometimes, to get clear reception, Iya Bolu would need to stand beside it and hold the antenna. Once the news was over, she’d settle in a chair that squeaked under her weight and dispense unsolicited styling advice.
It was Iya Bolu who brought me the letter her family had received from the armed robbers. Her family lived on our estate and every family in the estate had received a letter from the thieves. She asked me to read her letter to her after the customers and stylists had left.
The letter was in the same format as the one addressed to us; only the address and salutation were different.
Dear Mr and Mrs Adio,
We greet you in the name of the Gun.
We write to inform you that we will visit your family before the end of this year.
Prepare a package for us. We accept a minimum amount of a thousand naira. We will give you time to gather this money. We will write you again to tell you the specific date of our visit.
‘Is that all?’ Iya Bolu asked.
‘Yes.’
She frowned. ‘I must think about this matter. Where do they want us to find that kind of money? It’s enough to buy a car.’
‘I am sure it is a joke. It is just a stupid prank, jare,’ I said.
This was long before that kind of thing became a regular occurrence. I could not imagine then that one day in Nigeria thieves would be bold enough to write letters so that victims could prepare for their attacks, that one day they would sit in living rooms after raping women and children and ask people to prepare pounded yam and egusi stew while they watched movies on VCRs that they would soon disconnect and cart away.
Only a few people like Iya Bolu believed the letter was real. I attributed this to her lack of formal education. I didn’t think much about the first letter. I didn’t even show it to Akin. There were other things on my mind. After Funmi moved in, I began seeing a psychiatrist on Wednesdays. I’d never heard of pseudocyesis until then and though it sounded to me like a made-up word, I went for my appointment every week and my body began to revert gradually to its normal size.
I took to walking to and from work because my psychiatrist recommended exercise. I actually found it calming to walk the short distance, away from Funmi and back to her. I tried to focus on my salon, but it was hard not to notice the changes she was making in the sitting room. She moved the chairs around and placed a vase of plastic flowers on the centre table. I did my best to avoid running into her and spent most of my time upstairs. Akin was busy at work and usually came in after I was fast asleep, but during the weekends he wanted to talk about how my treatment was going. To make him happy, I assured him that I no longer had days or even moments when I believed I was pregnant.
Iya Bolu became a permanent fixture in my salon. She slept through the working hours, snoring through her open mouth while her daughters roamed around, getting up only to stand by the radio when the news came on.
When we got the follow-up letters from the armed robbers, the days began to speed along like a video cassette on fast-forward. These letters were different from the initial ones. They were not identical notes that a bored teenager could have cooked up. They were personalised, addressed to each family by people who had to have been watching us, studying us, and perhaps living amongst us.
The robbers congratulated the Agunbiades on the birth of their twin daughters. They congratulated the Ojos on the brand new Peugeot 504 station wagon they had just bought, consoled the Fatolas on the loss of their chieftaincy title and advised the Adios (Iya Bolu’s family) to consider family planning. They promised to show up within three weeks, advised everyone not to move out of the estate and promised to hunt us down if we dared move. They knew so much about us that we believed they would find us if we tried to run away from the estate. Our hearts stopped beating and began to thump loud rhythms. We jumped when rats scurried by and stopped taking evening strolls. Even children were less noisy.
The estate committee employed a group of hunters to guard the estate. There had been no estate committee before the threats. We were all so educated and modern in our individual duplexes, honking hello when we drove by each other in town. We visited when it was necessary, for naming ceremonies, birthdays and the occasional funeral. But we did not send pounded yam and egusi stew in enamel bowls to each other at Christmas or distribute fried ram at Ileya. Instead, we wished each other ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Ramadan Kareem’ without leaving our porches and waved as we got into our cars or
went into our houses.
Yet, once the second set of letters from the thieves arrived, an estate committee was formed. Everyone in the estate joined. The first official meeting was rowdy but we managed to agree to employ five policemen and a group of hunters to join the security guards. We also decided to pay three naira per household as security due. Akin and Mr Adio were dispatched to Ayeso police station immediately to request that policemen be sent down to us.
The committee got a letter the next day from the robbers. They wrote that the police were on their payroll. We laughed at this and nodded in agreement at the committee meeting when Mr Fatola (ex-Chief Fatola) said we had outwitted the robbers and their last letter was evidence to that effect. The policemen resumed duty within the next week. The sight of policemen with automatic pistols and hunters with Dane guns patrolling the estate reassured us and we soon forgot about the letters.
Then Iya Bolu called a ‘women of the estate’ meeting.
It was the first time I had entered Iya Bolu’s home. I was surprised to discover that it was so clean and tidy. From what I saw of Iya Bolu at the salon, I had expected her sitting room to stink of caked urine and be littered with used nappies. Instead it smelled tangy and fresh, like lime. I could tell from the way the other women looked around that they had expected something similar. None of her children surfaced throughout the meeting. I kept wondering if she had hidden them in a room or in a shoe cupboard.
Iya Bolu started the meeting once the last woman was seated. ‘We must be ready for the thieves. These people rape, they rape children. We must be armed with sanitary pads.’ Her eyes opened wider with each word until they looked like they might pop out and roll under a chair.
‘With sanitary pads? Do they put bullets in them now?’ Mrs Fatola said, shaking her head.
One person laughed, then another, and soon we were all laughing except Iya Bolu, who looked as if she might begin to cry.
‘Shut your mouths!’ Iya Bolu screamed. ‘I have six daughters, do you know what that means? The oldest one is already growing breasts. Some of you have daughters too, daughters already seeing their monthly things. Anything can happen with those thieves, and what about you yourselves, how many of your husbands will take a bullet rather than have a group of robbers rape you? I am sure they are finding a way to hide in the ceiling.’
‘There are no thieves coming, we have policemen,’ Mrs Ojo said. She had studied in England for a year and she always spoke in a fake British accent, even when she was speaking in Yoruba.
‘Yes, there is no need to scare ourselves over nothing,’ I said.
Mrs Fatola applauded. Nobody else joined in the applause.
Iya Bolu hissed. ‘Let me say my own. Soak the sanitary pads in red wine or liquid from boiled Zobo leaves. Wear it every night in case these people come, so that if they come they will think you are seeing your monthly thing.’
‘Is this woman crazy? Even if she is right, all the women in a whole estate menstruating at the same time? Who would believe that?’ Mrs Ojo said in English with her strangled British accent.
Mrs Fatola shook her head and got up.
‘It’s her illiteracy – an impoverished mind, I must say,’ Mrs Ojo said.
‘I don’t have time for this. I need to get to work,’ Mrs Fatola said.
‘What are they saying?’ Iya Bolu asked me.
‘That there is nothing to worry about, just relax,’ I said to her in Yoruba. ‘We have the police.’
‘Tell me, did the police help Dele Giwa?’ Iya Bolu asked.
Mrs Fatola fell into her chair as though pushed back by the weight of Iya Bolu’s words. The room was quiet and Mrs Ojo glanced about as though afraid there was a secret service agent listening in on our conversation.
In the months after Dele Giwa had been assassinated, rooms would fall silent with fear whenever his name was mentioned. It did not matter that none of the women in Iya Bolu’s sitting room was editor-in-chief of a news magazine, Giwa’s fate still felt like something that could befall any of us because the bomb that killed him was delivered to his home in a parcel. Receiving a parcel was such an innocuous everyday thing, and we could all imagine sitting at a desk in our home to cut one open. And though I could not imagine my parcel with a sticker that bore the Nigerian coat of arms and the inscription From the office of the C-in-C, I knew that if, like Giwa’s son, I had received similar packages in the past for my father from the Head of State, I would not hesitate to take it to him in his study. When Giwa, who was with a colleague, received the parcel, he said This must be from the President, and opened it after his son left the study. He died in a hospital later that day, though his injured colleague survived.
‘To be honest,’ Mrs Fatola said, ‘I ask the housemaid to open our letters now, even the ones from these so-called robbers.’
I had taken no precautions with the letters my family received. When Dele Giwa was killed, I was busy spending my time indoors, conserving my energy so I would be strong enough to push when the baby came. I was paying no attention to the news. By the time I returned to work, Giwa’s death had taught Nigeria to be afraid of her leaders. But probably because I learnt about the events in retrospect, I was not terrified enough to stop opening my own letters.
At the salon, Iya Bolu pestered me for the wording of my family’s letter. She went around asking all the women for the details of their letters, then sat in my salon trying to figure out what the robbers might want from each family. She seemed to care about protecting us all from what she saw as impending doom. She really cared.
I told her the details of the letter addressed to Akin and me. The robbers told us not to leave the estate for Funmi’s flat in an attempt to avoid them.
‘How come they know your rival’s house? I tell you, they are real, they are going to come,’ Iya Bolu said.
The woman was so scared, sometimes I was touched by her concern; at other times her fears irritated me. Didn’t she see policemen standing guard in the estate?
13
My husband’s brother was one of those men who won an argument because he could yell louder and longer than everyone else, even if his view was stupid. He also had a way of twisting his neck around as far as it could go in the heat of an argument. It gave the impression that he might strangle himself to death if his audience did not agree with him. Most people eventually did. I always thought they let him have his say and his way because they did not want to be responsible for his death.
I did not like my brother-in-law, but then I was married to Akin and Dotun came as part of the package. Whenever Dotun came to visit, I was glad that he lived in Lagos and his visits were spaced out enough to give me breathing room. He was always telling all sorts of strange jokes that were not funny at all. He laughed so loudly, too loudly, at his own mirthless jokes. It was tiring to be around him; I always had to laugh at things that were not funny. I also had to figure out when I was supposed to laugh, as his jokes had no detectable punchline. He was not a man to be taken seriously, amidst all that laughter, he made many promises – promises he would never keep.
Dotun had promised us a child once; he’d said he would send one of his sons to live with us until I conceived. When he said it, I went on my knees and thanked him. Moomi had suggested months before that I look for a child, a toddler who could live with me until I conceived. She’d said that children have a way of calling other children into the world. Having a foster child’s voice around me constantly would call up my own children; hurry them along into the world. The only problem was that I had no full siblings and I hadn’t spoken to my half-siblings in years. I had no relative who would entrust me with their child. I forgot about the idea until Dotun somehow got to hear about it and promised to send his youngest son.
The boy’s name was Layi: he was two years old at the time. I furnished a room for him upstairs. I bought toys, picture books, drawing books and colouring pencils. I waited. The items in the room became dusty. I waited, dusted each toy and each book with
a soft cloth. I asked Akin to call his brother and follow up. The items gathered more dust. Akin told me that Dotun had changed his mind. I packed up all the toys and gave them away.
Yet I was glad when Dotun showed up on our doorstep one Saturday morning just as the sun was coming out of hiding after a downpour. Funmi had travelled to visit relatives and Akin kept following me around the house, asking for details about my treatment in the hospital. It was as though he knew that there was still a part of me that did not totally believe that the doctors were right. That morning, he had managed to question me until I screamed at him that it was possible that everyone was wrong and I was right.
‘You need to tell your doctor what you are really thinking,’ he’d said. ‘Stop saying what you think he wants to hear.’
I was happy to see Dotun because I felt he would distract Akin. They enjoyed each other’s company and spent hours on the phone arguing about sports, politics and the weather. Sometimes, when Akin thought I was not listening, I overheard them discussing which was better, a busty woman or one with a really round ass. I assumed that with Dotun around, Akin would ease off the pressure he was putting on me.
‘I’m here-o,’ Dotun yelled when I opened the door. He pushed me aside to lunge at his brother. They embraced, and then Dotun stepped back and bowed. ‘Brother mi.’
Akin was so tall that he always had to bend before passing through a doorway. His skin was bronze-brown and in the sun it took on a glossy sheen. Dotun was the same height as my husband, but he was fair complexioned and lean, with cheeks that looked as if they had been hollowed out. I knelt down to greet him. We were the same age, but because he was my in-law I was expected to treat him as though he was older than me. I believed he was a typical oniranu, a totally irresponsible man, but I gave him due respect every time he came around.
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