I did not want to believe Dotun, but I could not resist the truth, could not deny his words out loud and look like a fool. Dotun kept apologising. I smiled and told him it was OK. He finally shut his mouth and retreated from the room with his head hung like a condemned criminal.
His words were like a blow to my head – they made me dizzy and disoriented. I mumbled them to myself, trying to piece his sentences together again. I tried to fit it into the picture I had of my marriage, of my relationship with Akin from the moment I laid my eyes on him. The past flipped itself open like a spooky family album, revealing one familiar picture after the other, highlighting the things standing in plain view, which I had never seen. Things I had refused to see.
25
I met Akin when I was in my penultimate year at the University of Ife. That night, I had gone to the Oduduwa Hall to watch a movie with some boy who paid for my ticket and bought suya for me to eat during the show. I was seeing this boy almost every day at that time.
I saw Akin in the ticket queue in front of us. He was smiling at something the girl with him had said; his lower lip was a deep pink that stood out against his brown skin. I felt like touching the lip to find out if he was wearing lipstick. A feeling came from some place deep in my stomach, some place that I had not known existed before that night.
Inside the hall I was a seat away from him. The girl he came with was seated in the chair between us but she did not exist that night, she was just thin air – even the chair she sat on did not exist. I could feel Akin’s presence beside me as though he was right next to me. I ate the suya, chewing chunk after peppery chunk of beef without pausing to drink from the bottle of soft drink my thoughtful date had brought along.
‘Wow, you are tough, eating all that pepper. My mouth would have been on fire by now,’ date boy had said.
I glanced at him just before the lights went out to signal the beginning of the movie, trying to remember who he was and why on earth he was talking to me. I tried to keep my eyes on the screen. It was impossible. My eyes were drawn to Akin like metal to a magnet; it was just not possible to resist the attraction. He was watching me too in the dim glow of the light from the screen. I tore my eyes away every time, afraid I would drown in his steady gaze. The movie finished too soon. I stood up and dragged myself after date boy, still struggling to remember his name, keeping my head down so I could steal a glance at Akin without turning my head.
Date boy was going to a lecture hall to spend the night studying. I reassured him that it would not be necessary for him to escort me to my room. He headed towards the Faculty of Arts and I went in the direction of Moremi Hall.
Akin had followed me. I felt his hand on my arm once my feet hit the pavement.
‘Do you need a ride?’ he asked.
‘You want to carry me on your back?’
He laughed. ‘That would be great. My car is parked in front of the hall. I can bring it here or we can go and pick it up together. But if you prefer to ride on my back, it belongs to you.’
‘No, thank you.’ I had been drooling over him all night, but my brains hadn’t fallen out of my mouth yet. It was past midnight and he could have been a kidnapper.
‘I’m Akinyele and everyone calls me Akin,’ he said.
My feet for some reason became rooted to the ground. ‘Yejide.’
He scratched his eyebrow. ‘Ye-ji-de. Lovely name.’
I was suddenly incapable of producing more than one word at a time. ‘Thanks.’
‘So, you noticed I couldn’t watch the movie because of you.’
‘You want me to give you a refund?’ Ah! My tongue was back.
He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t mind, not money sha, I’d like your room number. I want to see you again. Visit you.’
‘Will you be coming with your girlfriend?’
‘My? Oh, Bisade. She was my girlfriend, but it’s over now.’
I bent my head to hide a smile. ‘Since when?’
‘Since I saw you. Tonight.’
‘Does Bisade know this?’
He scratched the tip of his nose. ‘She’ll know soon.’
‘F101 Moremi. My room number.’ The words came out of my mouth of their own accord.
He rubbed his palms together and smiled. ‘Come with me to my car,’ he said.
I followed him to his car, the Volkswagen Beetle that would become mine after we got married. He held the door open while I got in.
‘You know what they say about a Yoruba man opening the door for his wife?’ he asked when he got in.
‘What?’
‘Well, when a Yoruba man opens the door for his wife, either the wife is new or the car is new.’
‘Oh,’ I said, like a moron.
‘F101,’ he said, switching off the car’s engine. We were in Moremi Hall’s car park.
I nodded, trying to tear my eyes away from his lips. I failed. Instead I felt my own lips part. The car was silent. I could hear myself breathing through my mouth. I could have removed his hand when it touched my chin, tilting my face until our eyes met, his eyes questioning, silently seeking permission. I did not remove his hand. His force field pulled me closer. His lips touched mine.
It was my first kiss.
Of course, I had swallowed saliva from the mouths of a few boys before then, had had my lips uncomfortably crushed, and wondered why there were so many people under the trees at different points on campus, mangling each other’s lips every night. I understood why when I felt Akin’s lips on mine. His lips stopped time. His tongue teased mine until it danced with his. When he drew back, I could not remember my name or anything else.
‘I’ll check on you tomorrow,’ he said.
I staggered out of the car and up the steps that led into Moremi Hall.
He showed up the next day, sat on my bed and leaned back until his head rested on the wooden panel that ran along the side of the wall. He looked at home, as comfortable as though he came every day and leaned back on my bed like that. I felt awkward. He said nothing, just looked at me with a smile dancing on his lips. I was overwhelmed with the urge to fill every silence with words. Silence to me was a void in the universe that could suck us all in. It was my assignment to block this deadly void with words and save the world. I told him about myself without him asking. He sat up, leaned forward and took in every word. I began to feel as though I was elucidating eternal truths.
Akin had the ability to listen to people, to focus his eyes and ears in a way that made you feel whatever you were saying was important, even crucial. It was 10 p.m. – too soon, but he had to leave the hostel along with other male visitors. As I walked him to his car, I realised that he had spent four hours in my room and I still did not know anything about him apart from his name. Yet somehow I felt as though I knew him.
I would learn later that Akin could keep himself neatly folded in while he drew out other people. He was the kind of person that many claimed as a dear friend. Many of those people did not even know him, but they never knew they did not know him. It made me feel special, this awareness that Akin never really allowed anyone to know him.
As we grew closer and he became the one who talked to me non-stop for four hours, I felt as though I was being ushered into the most exclusive club – a club that only Dotun and I were allowed into. I would not realise until much later that Akin could talk for hours without saying anything and with that skill he had managed to make me feel like part of the inner circle.
I told Akin about my plan. I made the plan the day I started secondary school. Iya Abike, my father’s youngest and favourite wife at the time, had looked me up and down in my new school uniform and told me that there was no need for me to go to school because I would end up a whore like my mother, pregnant by a man who would never marry her. None of the other wives said anything and I knew that Iya Abike, bolstered by her status as the favourite wife, had spoken for all of them, sure that she could get herself out of trouble with my father if I decided to report what she said. Until then I
had wanted to train to become a hairdresser with the local stylist after secondary school. I decided that minute that I would go to university, that I would stay a virgin until I got married and have the blood-stained white cloth sent as proof to my father on my wedding night. Even back then, it was a tradition that only a few people followed, but I was determined to go with the practice and shove it in my stepmothers’ faces when the time came. In my mind, the plan would be a declaration, a condition that I laid on the table for any man who wanted to be with me, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing. But with Akin, I pleaded. Although we had only kissed a couple of times before he asked me to be his girlfriend, I knew already that I was at the mercy of the pinkness of his mouth.
He agreed to wait.
The waiting was pointless. My father died shortly before our wedding. My stepmothers found an excuse not to attend the church ceremony, although they could not wriggle out of the traditional wedding since it was held in the family compound. When I went back home after the wedding reception to wait for a delegation from Akin’s family to come for me, the house was empty. There was no female relative to accompany me to Ilesa, no younger sibling to keep me company on my first night as a wife. It was as though I was not just an orphan; it was as if I had no relatives at all.
The night Dotun walked into my room without knocking, told me the things in plain view that I had been blind to, before leaving with his head hanging like that of a condemned criminal, I felt the loneliness of my wedding day again.
I woke Sesan up.
‘Tell me about school,’ I asked him.
‘Is it time for school, Momma?’ He was still drowsy.
‘No, I just need to talk to you.’ I needed to hear his voice, this person who was all mine, my son. I belonged to him in an unchangeable, irreplaceable way. I was his mother. I knew him, he could not betray me in the ways Akin had. He could not deceive me yet and, even if he did, I would always be his.
‘I want sleep.’
‘Sit here.’ I pulled him into my lap and hugged him tight.
‘Tell me, who is your friend in class?’
‘Lemme alone,’ he protested, wrestling himself from me with surprising force. He rolled over to the other end of the bed and dropped off to sleep.
Loneliness wrapped itself around me like a shroud.
26
The day that Yejide told me that Sesan had sickle-cell disease I was in a hotel room in Lagos, somewhere in Ikeja. I would have left for Ilesa immediately if I could have, but I still had business meetings scheduled for the next few days. I assumed, when Yejide said that Dr Bello wanted to see me once I returned to Ilesa, that he wanted to discuss treatment options. Didn’t know enough about the disease to be as scared as she sounded on the phone. I trusted in medical science, believing it could fix Sesan if I spent enough money. And I was ready to spend all I had.
I went to the hospital to meet with Dr Bello on the day I arrived in Ilesa. I didn’t even go home first, drove straight to the hospital once I got into town. He was just getting back from the clinic when I arrived at his office.
‘You don’t remember me?’ he asked as he unlocked the door to his office.
I tried to remember where we had met but I couldn’t. ‘No,’ I said, following him into the office, sitting in the chair he pointed to.
He removed his ward coat and slung it on the back of a chair. ‘I came to your bank for a loan last year; you were so helpful,’ he said. ‘You are sure you don’t remember?’
‘I’m sorry, but no,’ I said.
He rolled up his shirtsleeves. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK. Your madam told me that you were in Lagos. How was the trip?’
‘It was great, really good. Thanks for asking.’
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m guessing that your madam also told you that Sesan has sickle-cell disease?’
I nodded, waiting for him to tell me what could be done, to arm me with knowledge, give me a list of rules we would need to keep.
‘I will get straight to the point, sir. I think you need to have a discussion with your madam.’ He took off his glasses and began to clean the lenses with a handkerchief. ‘There were some . . . er . . . discrepancies in the results of the genotype test we conducted for your son.’
I moved forward in my seat, eager for him to go on, imagining for a brief beautiful moment that he’d discovered an error in the test results since Yejide had left his office, that he was about to tell me our son was healthy after all.
‘So, let me start by explaining how sickle-cell disease works. It’s an inherited disorder, and you need two parents who have at least one sickle-cell gene before a child can get it. So, for instance, your madam is AS, and that means she has the sickle-cell gene, but because she has just one of the genes, she doesn’t have the disease, but is a carrier. And that means she can pass on the gene to her children, but her children can only have the sickle-cell disease if the other parent, the man, is also a carrier. So you need two people with the AS genotype or one with the AS genotype and the other with the SS genotype before the possibility of even having a child who is SS arises. Does that make any sense?’
I nodded.
‘Now here is the discrepancy I was talking about. I took a look at your files after Sesan’s results came in from the lab and here is what I discovered: your madam is the only one with the AS genotype, sir. You are AA, which means that your child could never have sickle-cell disease. Sir, I am telling you this as a man to another man and because you were so helpful when I came in for that loan. You understand what I mean? So, I can tell you with all certainty that Sesan cannot be your son.’
My limbs went limp. I covered my face with my hands and prepared an expression to meet the doctor’s sympathetic gaze.
‘Do you mean this?’ I said. ‘Do you mean what you are saying? You mean that woman has been cheating on me? Are you serious? You mean this? Oh, my God! I’m going to kill her. I swear to God.’ I allowed my voice to rise to its highest pitch and pounded my fist on the doctor’s table.
‘Calm down, sir, you need to handle this like a man, OK? Please calm down. Be a man, sir. Be a man.’
I made sure I seemed angry enough to Dr Bello. Behaved the way I imagined a man would when discovering that a child wasn’t his. I punched a wall, yelled and slammed the door as I left the office.
But I knew Sesan was my son. I loved him. I was planning for his future, had bought shares in his name. I often thought of the day I’d buy him his first bottle of beer. Could hardly wait to teach him how to play table tennis at the sports club. I knew I was the one who would do all those things. Nobody else was going to do them. There are things scientific tests cannot show, things like the fact that paternity is more than sperm donation. I knew Sesan was my son. There was no test result that could change that.
Besides, I already knew that Dotun was the sperm donor. That was how I thought about what he did for me – sperm donation. I knew Dotun would never claim he was Sesan’s father, which is the reason I went to him when I eventually accepted the fact that I needed someone else to get my wife pregnant.
‘Brother mi? What is this thing you are saying?’ Dotun said after I laid out my plan.
‘You need to spend just a weekend. Next weekend, she’ll be ovulating.’
‘And Yejide? She agreed to this thing you are saying?’ He looked as if he was about to vomit all over the green rug on his sitting-room floor.
‘Yes.’ Truth is I hadn’t discussed it with Yejide, but I just wanted him to agree to the plan so I could go to bed and forget the discussion.
He got up, went to stand by a window, stared into a black night unlit by stars or streetlights. I couldn’t see his face clearly; the candle that stood on the centre table was burning out fast.
‘Brother Akin . . . with all due respect-o, but this thing you are saying is nonsense. What if? No. No, I can’t do it. I won’t. It’s wrong.’ He turned to face me when he said this, slashing the air with his hands the way he did when agitated.
‘I’m not asking you to rape her, damn it. Just once, get her pregnant and that’s it. I’ve told you my problem. Do you want me to beg?’
‘It is an abomination. She is your wife. Shit. Your wife, you want me to sleep with my brother’s wife? My elder brother’s wife? No, I can’t, there has to be another way.’
‘Dotun, you are the only person I can come to. You are the only brother I have. Do you want me to call a stranger?’
He hit several surfaces – his thigh, the wall, the blank television screen. His burst of conscience surprised me. I hadn’t expected him to jump at the idea, but somehow I’d never thought he’d be so torn, so afraid. But of what? Was he not Dotun?
‘So she gets pregnant. Won’t you want another child?’
‘If we arrange things well, one weekend will do for each child. All things being equal, three kids are OK.’
He looked me in the eye, searched my face and slumped into a chair. ‘You’ve thought about this. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.’ His voice accused me of many things.
‘I’m doing this for her.’
‘Even then, I can’t. Maybe an outsider would be better.’
Why did I tell him the story? Maybe a part of me knew that it was Yejide’s pain that could move him, had intuited in the hugs and gazes that lingered too long that if my brother had met her first, the story could have been different. Perhaps because I knew even then that what Dotun was afraid of, what he wouldn’t admit to himself, was that with Yejide it could never be just sex for him because a part of him had always wanted her.
I told him about the miracle baby: the call from the hospital, the antenatal nurse begging me to come and get my wife, told him about the day I went to the antenatal class, described the wounded look in Yejide’s eyes as I tried to escort her out of the class, the way she clung to a metal pole on the hospital corridor, not removing her hands to retie the wrapper that dropped as I tried to pull her away. I talked about it until he could see her in just her Ankara blouse and lace underskirt, the wrapper lying at her feet like a snake’s discarded skin. I told him how she stayed that way until the antenatal class was over and the pregnant women left for their homes, some slinking by her in hurried steps, others turning off to take another route as they approached her.
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