The tears were gone by the time Dotun stepped out of the room – shirtless, beads of sweat around his collarbone like a melting necklace. All I had left was the rage that was choking me.
‘She’s in the bathroom,’ he said as he shut the door behind him. ‘You said you were going to the club. Brother mi, are you OK?’
I turned around then, dashed down the stairs, drove off before Yejide could realise I was back in the house. I spent the rest of the day driving around town, returning home when it was almost midnight.
Yejide was still awake when I entered our bedroom. I remember thinking as she came to me and put her arms around me that it was the first time I wanted to hurt her, to make her feel pain. My hands shook when I touched her hair. I’d always felt I didn’t deserve Yejide, and that day as I opened the bedroom windows to let in some fresh air, I knew I would never become the kind of man who deserved to have her.
The next evening, Dotun went back to Yejide upstairs as planned. I drove to Ijesa Sports Club, tried to eat catfish pepper soup. When I got back home, Yejide was in bed, curled up, blubbering about something I couldn’t make out. I took off my shirt and singlet, held her while she cried and talked about how she’d been so sure she’d been pregnant that first time. I felt it kick, she said. And though all I could think about as I kissed her face was how Dotun had been in that same bed with her earlier that day, I managed to reassure her, told her it was a matter of time before she really conceived.
That was all it took to have Olamide – one weekend. The master plan was to have four children: two boys, two girls. Once every other year, Dotun was supposed to spend a weekend with us, get my wife pregnant, and go back to Lagos. I always assumed I was the instigator, the one who decided when it was time for them to go into a room and make babies. After Rotimi was conceived, I decided that it would be cruel to bring another child into the world when it was possible that he or she would go through the kind of pain Sesan had endured. I told Dotun that our arrangement was over. And I never thought that I would return home one day to find him thrusting into my wife without my permission.
When I walked in on the two of them the rage that had stayed coiled around my throat since that first Saturday stirred again, tightening its hold. My eyes met Yejide’s and I felt ashamed. The eyes that had once looked at me as though I was all she had in the world now stared at me with contempt. She glared at me as if I was an insect she would like to crush. She made no move to stop Dotun, just turned her head. I realised that while I’d thought my brother and I would trade places once in a while, truth was that from that first Saturday he’d occupied vistas I’d never even glimpsed.
I waited until Dotun rolled off her and saw me. He leapt off the bed. I took off my jacket, took my time, folded it, then placed it on the bed. There was no ready weapon within reach, no pestle, no sharp knife waiting for me to grab. I marched towards Dotun, armed with the only weapons I really needed – my raging anger, my clenched fists.
‘Bros Akin . . . wait, wait, Bros Akin . . . don’t let the devil use you, Egbon mi . . . please, don’t be . . . wait . . . the devil’s tool . . .’ Dotun screamed, wrapping a bed sheet around his torso.
I laughed, the sound clawing its way out of me, scratching my throat. ‘Devil’s tool? Me? You bastard.’ I punched his mouth, his nose, his eyes. I felt his skin give way, heard his bones crack and saw blood flow from his nose. The pounding in my head intensified each time I rammed my fist into Dotun’s face. He kept backing away from me, until he tripped on the sheet he’d used to cover himself. He fell, hit his head against Yejide’s bedside table on his way down, knocking her lamp over. He landed on his back and the bed sheet unwrapped itself from his body.
I knelt over his bare belly and punched – his neck, his chest, the hands that tried to ward me off. There was blood on my hands – his blood, my blood. The blood seeped into the rug on the floor, spreading into a map-like stain that would never wash out.
‘I trusted you!’ I got off him, kicked his chest until there was a bleeding gash below his nipple. He coughed blood on to the rug. Blood and a tooth; the tooth shone in the small red pool. He tried to say something, then coughed and spluttered more blood.
It enraged me, the still-moist, limp penis between his legs. I thought of where the penis had just been and a lifetime of rage heated up my head. The images of him with Yejide that I’d spent my waking hours fighting for years, pictures that dragged me down in dreams each time my head hit a pillow, broke loose from the cage of denial I’d constructed for them.
I knelt between Dotun’s spread-eagled legs, grabbed his limp penis and twisted it. His scream would have deafened me if I’d heard it, but the sound of my head exploding shut out everything else.
There were soft hands on my shoulders, pulling me back. I kept twisting, twisting.
‘For God’s sake, Akin. Don’t kill him, please.’ Yejide was on her knees beside me, still naked.
I took my hands off Dotun. ‘Shut up, you whore.’
‘Me? Akin, me – a whore? A dog will eat your mouth for saying that.’ Her voice was angry, not pleading.
I reached for the knocked-over lamp, yanked its cord out of the socket.
‘What are you doing?’ Yejide’s voice was shrill with panic. ‘Akin, Akin?’
I lifted the lamp with both hands.
Yejide wrapped her hands around my chest, tried to pull me off Dotun. ‘Akin? Akinyele, I beg you in the name of God, don’t let the devil use you.’
Dotun tried to sit up, covering his eyes with his hands. I hit him on the chin with the lamp, knocked him back to the ground. Yejide said something, but all I could hear was the pounding in my head, the sound of glass cracking. I smashed the lampshade against his head, shattered its glass panels and low-watt bulbs against his scalp until he was still.
I got up, cradling what was left of the lamp against my chest.
‘You have killed your brother,’ Yejide whispered behind me. ‘You’ve murdered your own mother’s son.’
And I hoped she was right.
33
During the next couple of weeks, Yejide spent her mornings in the hospital with my brother. She stopped talking to me, would just leave my breakfast on the dining table as though she was leaving food out for a dog, then tie Rotimi to her back and head to the hospital.
I wished Dotun were dead, that he’d never been born.
But this is a lie. What I wished was that I was dead, that I’d never been born. I brought Dotun into our home, invited him, cajoled him, threatened him, did everything I could to convince him. Never imagined that I would ever in seven lifetimes have to see my brother thrusting into my wife, grunting like a pig as he came. As I factored unforeseen circumstances into my plan, I’d left out the things that would ruin it: sickle cell, Dotun losing his job, and all the mess of love and life that only shows up as you go along.
The day after my fight with Dotun, Moomi showed up in my office just before lunchtime. She didn’t respond to my greetings, didn’t take a seat, she came straight to my side of the desk and leaned over my chair.
‘You were both inside me,’ she cried, slapping her belly. ‘The two of you sucked these breasts that are on my chest. Was my breast milk not sweet? Is that the root of wickedness in your heart? Was my breast milk sour? Akin, answer me. Can you not hear me? Are you now deaf?’
She was so sure there was an explanation, that there was something I would say to help her understand what had happened. I could sense that she would take anything I said to her in that moment, anything at all, and shape it to suit herself. Shape it into a reason that explained it all. All she needed was an answer, any answer.
I didn’t say a word.
‘You want to kill me,’ she said, grabbing my shirt at the collar with both hands. ‘Make me understand why my own sons will try to kill each other. Tell me right now as I stand here!’
I could see her heart breaking, but what was I to say? The truth? I knew it would have finished her. This truth.
She left with a promise never to speak to me until I explained why I’d tried to kill her precious son. I knew she would keep her promise. My mother could hate as fiercely as she loved.
I worked until I was almost too tired to drive home. Stumbled into the house when the lights were already out and Yejide was asleep. But Rotimi was still awake and her eyes latched on to me the moment I walked into the dimly lit room. I stood by her cot, listened to her soft babble, let her wrap her little fingers around my thumb. In her eyes, I was brand new, forgiven, unstained. I waited until she drifted off to sleep before I climbed into bed.
And though I was worn out, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at my wife and wondered if the rage pounding in my brains would ever be intense enough to make me smash a lamp into her head. I hated myself because I watched her delicate face until I fell asleep, etching each feature into my mind in case she was not there when I woke up.
During the following weeks, I kept expecting her to leave me. It seemed to me that it was the only thing left to be done. Some nights I traced her lips with a finger and whispered I’m sorry into the silent space between us.
I hated myself for this too.
On the day Dotun was to be discharged, Yejide spoke to me for the first time in over a month. She gave me his hospital bill. I wrote a cheque. That evening, she moved out of our bedroom.
‘I am staying because of my child. If not, if not, if not, ehn . . .’ She let the threat hang unspoken, like a dark cloud between us.
‘You bloody . . . bloody . . . did my brother behind my back. You are the unfaithful wife.’ I trembled when I said this, kept my fists in my pockets, fought the urge to plant them in her smug face, because if I started I would never stop.
‘You would have preferred it in front of you? Under your careful supervision? You are a cheat, a betrayer and the biggest liar in heaven, hell and on earth,’ she spat at my feet, entered her new room, slammed the door.
I let the rage loose, punched the closed door until my skin bruised and bled. And even then, I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.
Yejide didn’t lock the door. There was no click, no key turning on the other side. It occurred to me that I could just turn the knob and go in, face her. Ask her what she knew, what Dotun had told her about me while they were cavorting. I didn’t have to stand alone in the corridor, speaking with my fists to a wooden door that wouldn’t answer, lifting my shoulders so I could wipe sweat off my face with my shirt-sleeve. Not tears. Sweat.
34
When my father-in-law invited Akin and me to a family meeting, I knew before we arrived in Ayeso that Moomi was the one who must have pushed him to call the so-called emergency meeting. I held Rotimi in front of me like a shield as we entered the sitting room and sat beside each other on a brown couch. The couch was small and for the first time since he’d caught Dotun on top of me, Akin and I sat right next to each other – we were so close I could feel him breathing. Dotun was already there, seated beside his father, when we arrived. I had not seen him since he had been discharged from the hospital.
Moomi was the first to speak: ‘My sons are here to explain why they fought, why they could not bring whatever disagreement they had to the family to settle. They are here to explain why they want to disgrace our family and make us the topic of gossip in the marketplace.’
‘No, stop there. You mean to you, Amope. They have disgraced you. The whole world knows my name is a good name in Ijesaland,’ Akin’s father said.
‘It is that way now, Baba? Now they are my sons? Useless man, of course they are my sons, since you never spent a kobo on them. I paid the school fees, bought uniforms and when they graduated from the university you just showed up for the pictures. But now again they have become my sons?’
‘Are they not your sons? Did you steal them from the hospital?’ Akin’s father wagged a finger in Moomi’s face. ‘Ha! That is what you are here to tell us, that you stole them from a ward, abi?’ He laughed at his own joke.
Moomi hissed. ‘But this is not your fault. It is the children of the orange tree that cause clubs and stones to be thrown at their mother. Foolish children, explain yourselves – explain. Speak the words that are lodged in your mouth.’ She glared at Akin, then at me, waving her arthritic hands at us like oversized claws.
Dotun cleared his throat. His left hand was still in a sling, there was a bandage around his head and one side of his face was covered in tiny stitches.
‘We had an argument about money,’ Dotun said.
Beside me, Akin’s body relaxed with what I imagined was a sigh of relief. I should have been listening and committing the story Dotun was telling to memory. I should have mastered every detail to retell to relatives who were bound to quiz me later on, with expressions of concern, eager for gossip to down with their pounded yam at family gatherings. But by then I no longer cared about what Akin’s family thought. I was letting go already, even though I did not know it yet. So I rocked Rotimi and fiddled with her necklace, pressing my thumb against the hard edges of the crucifix that lay beneath her blouse. I did listen when Akin began to speak. I was amazed by how easily he plugged the holes in his brother’s story. It was as if they had rehearsed the lies over and over.
‘The money was not mine. I borrowed it from the bank. After all I did, after all my sacrifices for him, how could Dotun gamble it away?’ Akin said, slapping his knee.
‘Brother mi, I did not gamble. It was a business that went bad. It was supposed to bring in more than enough money to pay off the loan, but many things went wrong.’ Dotun did not look in our direction as he spoke, his head was bent down and he seemed to be starring at the crisscross patterns on the blue linoleum that covered the floor.
‘It was not a business; if you were not so stupid you would have known they were fraudsters. Wouldn’t we all be rich if money doublers really existed?’
‘Money is a tiny thing,’ Akin’s father said, tapping Dotun on the shoulder.
Akin and Dotun kept weaving the strands of their lies until their story was as strong as a rope of truth.
‘You must not allow money to come between you. You have the same blood in your veins. What example do you want to leave for your children if you allow money to divide you?’ my father-in-law said when his sons were quiet.
Moomi snorted and shook her head, but her husband ignored her and kept talking.
‘You must reconcile, apologise to each other.’ The old man leaned forward in his seat and gestured with his hands. ‘Unity – every family must have unity. Have you forgotten? A single broomstick is useless, but when you put it in a bunch, what does it do?’
‘It sweeps the house until it is clean,’ Akin said.
‘So you understand what I have been trying to say?’ my father-in-law said.
Dotun touched the side of his face that was half covered with stitches. ‘I am sorry, Brother mi, don’t be angry with me. I will find a way to get the money back for you.’
Akin coughed. ‘It was the devil that used me, Dotun. That anger, I don’t know where it came from.’
‘It is over.’ My father-in-law turned to face Moomi. ‘Iya Akin, are you at peace now? I told you Yejide had nothing to do with it. She cannot come between them for any reason. How can you even imagine she would be involved in such a thing?’
‘All I know,’ Moomi said, standing up and coming to stand in front of Akin and me. ‘All I know is this: anything that is done in the deep darkness will one day be talked about in the marketplace.’
I looked down at Rotimi and saw that she had fished out the crucifix from beneath her blouse and was now sucking on it. I removed it from her mouth, careful not to hurt her gums.
Moomi leaned towards me. ‘You can never cover the truth. Just as nobody can cover the sun’s rays with his hands, you can never cover the truth.’
Whenever I went into the salon, the first thing I did was hand Rotimi over to Iya Bolu. It was Iya Bolu who tied Rotimi to her back if she cried and followed her around the pass
ageway after she started crawling. She was the one who noticed when her first tooth emerged and cheered on the day she clung to the leg of a stool to hoist herself up.
‘Why are you behaving like this?’ Iya Bolu said, picking Rotimi up when she began to cry.
‘Behaving how?’ I rinsed out a batch of rollers and put them in a colander.
‘You did not even glance at her when I told you that she stood up. Is it not your business?’ She patted Rotimi’s back and rocked her.
I gave her the feeding bottle into which I had expressed breast milk in the morning. ‘Maybe she is hungry.’
‘You, this woman. I have told you that this child is too old for just breast milk. Why are you behaving as if your ears have been nailed shut? Rotimi, sorry o jare, manage her breast milk, don’t mind your mother, just manage it this time.’
I was grateful for the silence when Rotimi began to suckle from the bottle’s teat. The sun was already setting and I had developed an ache around my knees and ankles from standing throughout the day. I reached for my purse and counted out some change for the two girls who had stayed behind to help with cleaning up. After the girls slung their handbags over their shoulders and left, I sat beneath a dryer and lowered the hood. Iya Bolu was still speaking to me, but from under the dryer it sounded as if she was speaking from a far-off place, another room, another world. Her words did not seem so important while I stayed beneath the dryer, they were not things I needed to think about or respond to in any way. I shut my eyes to heighten the effect of being far from everything, of being alone.
Stay With Me Page 17