‘God should just have mercy on us,’ Iya Bolu sighed. ‘Abi, our children are going to grow up under military government?’
I sneezed when Linda got into the car. It was as if she had emptied two bottles of whatever perfume she was wearing that morning. Akin switched off the air-conditioning and wound down his window.
I handed Rotimi over to Linda when we arrived at the motor park.
‘Are you not bringing Rotimi with you?’ Iya Bolu said, slamming the car door shut and readjusting her wrapper.
I shook my head and waited while Akin opened the boot. He pulled out my travelling bag and led the way to the wooden shed where buses were parked. There were seven passengers waiting in the bus that was heading for Bauchi.
Akin gave my bag to the bus driver and then walked around the bus. He examined the tyres and peered at the steering wheel, pedals and gearshift. It was something he always did whenever he dropped me off at motor parks. I had found it amusing when we were dating, but that morning I wondered what his real motives were. I now viewed his simplest actions with suspicion, wondering if some grand deception was motivating them.
‘Linda and I will be on our way now,’ he said as I climbed into the bus.
‘Have a safe trip,’ I said, shifting so Iya Bolu could settle in beside me. Akin and I were civil when we were in public together; sometimes we even made an effort to appear friendly.
‘I will call you later tonight,’ he said. ‘Iya Bolu, you said it’s OK to call your brother’s house after seven p.m.?’
‘Yes, there is no problem. Just tell their maid who you want to speak to.’
‘All right then, have a safe journey.’
38
‘Will madam be joining you later, sir?’ The receptionist’s eyes judged me incapable of taking care of Rotimi without a woman’s assistance.
‘Can you get room service to send a bottle of wine to our room?’ I said. I’d spent hours in traffic after I got into Lagos around noon, and managed to arrive in time for the appointment with my urologist at LUTH – only to be informed that he’d been taken ill and wouldn’t be back at work until Thursday. I was in no mood to humour the receptionist with a response.
He nodded and picked up the phone.
I changed Rotimi’s nappy after we got into our room. As I soaked the soiled one in the bathroom sink, I made a mental note to ask Yejide if it was time to potty-train her.
I didn’t go down to the restaurant for dinner, but had some rice brought to the room instead. Rotimi didn’t want to be fed. She kept trying to wrestle the spoon from my hands. Before I surrendered it to her, she’d thrown a piece of meat on the floor in anger. I switched on the television after room service cleaned up the mess Rotimi had made, paced the floor and argued with the television about what the hell was going on in the country. On the bed Rotimi laughed, clapping as though I was putting on a show for her. After an hour of flipping through channels, hoping for some update from the military government about the elections, I switched off the set, feeling agitated.
Before Dotun lost his job, any time I was in Lagos, I stayed at his place in Surulere. As I watched Rotimi pull off her doll’s arm in the hotel room, I wished I was back there with him, disagreeing over the current state of the nation. I knew he’d have justified the military’s government’s refusal to release the election results; he was the kind of idiot who announced to anyone who cared to listen that the military was the best thing that had happened to the country. I missed him.
It was impossible not to think about him while I was in Lagos. We’d attended the University of Lagos together, shared a flat off campus during my final year. It was during that year that I told him I’d never had an erection. At first he laughed, but realising I was serious he scratched the back of his head and told me not to worry because it would happen when I met the right girl. And because he was Dotun, while we waited for the right woman to show up he paraded a series of girls through our flat during the day and dragged me to red light districts on Allen Avenue at night. He was the one who, even after I started treatment at a private clinic in Ikeja during my final semester at university, bought herbs and miracle drinks that purged me but did not harden my penis. Thanks to him, I must have watched every pornographic video that was available in Nigeria. I watched it all: men and women, men and men, women and women – nothing worked.
As I thought about my brother, I considered calling up his wife, Ajoke, to ask if I could visit their children while I was in town. I didn’t intend to ever respond to Dotun’s letter, but as Rotimi pulled my nose and laughed each time I yelped, I could no longer deny that I owed him something in spite of his affair with Yejide.
I called Bauchi instead, spoke with the housemaid who told me Iya Bolu and my wife had already gone to sleep.
On Tuesday morning, I bought a newspaper, searched its pages for news about when the election results would be released. The pages were filled with wild speculation, several theories and angry op-eds, but little information. There was no statement from the federal military government. It was becoming evident that the bogus court injunction that stayed further release of electoral results was serving their purpose in some way. High courts in Ibadan and Lagos had already issued counter-judgments and ordered the national electoral commission to release the rest of the results. I didn’t believe the bizarre drama that was playing out indicated that the military intended to hold on to power indefinitely. For some reason, I thought they were simply trying to push back the handover date by a few months and were delaying the result to achieve that.
I remember thinking, as I folded up the newspaper, that the situation would be resolved within a few weeks at the most. I assumed the military knew that it had become unpopular and would head back to the barracks before the year ran out. If someone had told me that morning that Nigeria would spend six more years under military dictatorship, I would have laughed.
After breakfast, I placed another call to Bauchi and spoke with Iya Bolu. She raised her voice when she told me Yejide was in the bathroom at the moment, giving me the impression that my wife was right there, but just didn’t want to speak to me. I wanted to talk to her. I’d assumed that because she was away she would want to talk, if only to hear how Rotimi was doing. I was planning to slip in a line about what I was doing in Lagos. I thought I was ready to discuss my condition with her, felt it would help that I wouldn’t have to look at her, figured she couldn’t walk out on me. The worst she could do was drop the phone. As I told Iya Bolu that I would call back before the end of the day, I felt I was ready to tell Yejide anything, even about my desperate visit to a traditional herbalist.
I had travelled to Ilara-Mokin to consult Baba Suke during a period I still consider as one of the worst I’ve lived through. At the time, Yejide was rubbishing all medical evidence to the contrary as she proclaimed to the world that she was pregnant.
I’d assumed that all herbalists were old men. But Baba Suke was young; he was probably in his twenties. He gave me a tar-black concoction to drink and charged five naira.
As I drove back to Ilesa, a movement started just above my groin. I parked by the roadside, wondering if the slow rumbling, the tightening and relaxing of my stomach muscles, meant the potion was working.
It was sudden. And until the stench filled the car, I couldn’t bear to believe it. I didn’t have a cure – just diarrhoea like I’d never had before. I sat dazed, the watery stool soaking through my jeans while cars sped by. The next month, I travelled to Lagos to see Dotun and didn’t say a word about Baba Suke as I begged him to come to Ilesa and get Yejide pregnant.
When I called Bauchi in the afternoon, the maid said Iya Bolu and Yejide had gone out. Even when Iya Bolu told me in the evening that Yejide was once again in the bathroom, I told myself that the fact that she stayed with me after confronting me meant something. Although she still wasn’t speaking to me and often walked out of the room if I tried to talk to her, I was grateful that she had remained in the house. My secret wa
s out and we were still under the same roof. That had to count for something. I planned to sit her down when we were back in Ilesa, ask her if we could begin again on fresh terms.
On Wednesday I woke up to the rumour that the presidential elections had been annulled. I don’t think I’d heard the word ‘annul’ used except in reference to marriage before that day. I’d definitely never heard a hotel waiter use it before then. By evening, the rumour had become news and a small crowd had gathered in the street, protesting without placards, burning tyres. A man stood in the middle of the road, holding his hands aloft like wings while other men set up barricades with large tree branches, scraps of metal, nails and broken bottles.
I turned away from the window to face my daughter. ‘This is impossible,’ I said, ‘impossible. These soldiers must be joking. Who do they think they are?’
She mimicked the word ‘impossible’, then threw her rattle in the air.
That night, I insisted on waiting on the phone until Yejide got out of the bathroom she seemed to be living in since she’d got to Bauchi.
‘So?’ she said when she came on the line.
‘Are you all right? People are really reacting to this annulment news here. Are things peaceful at your end?’
‘Yes.’
‘I just wanted to make sure you are fine. People were blocking the streets in Ikeja today, looks like they’ll be back tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be able to get out and see my urologist tomorrow.’
I tapped the phone’s rotary dial, hoping she’d noticed that I’d mentioned what I was doing in Lagos, wishing she’d acknowledge the last sentence with something – a sigh, a question, a hiss. I would have been grateful for any reaction.
‘Are you there?’ I asked after a while.
‘Anything else?’ she said.
‘Well, Rotimi is doing fine – she just fell asleep.’
‘Goodnight.’
The next morning, I woke up just before 8 and was surprised to find that Rotimi was still sound asleep. Since we’d arrived in Lagos, she’d taken to waking me up by kissing my chin while she drummed on my cheeks. Outside, a crowd was gathering – chanting, waving placards. Before noon, there were thousands of people on the street; the air was thick with fumes as several tyres were set ablaze. There was no point trying to get to the hospital.
Rotimi didn’t eat any of the beans I ordered for lunch, so I ordered some rice. She didn’t eat any of that either. When she climbed off my knee and lay on the floor, I knelt beside her, promising ice cream if she ate some food. But she didn’t try to sit up, smile or try to negotiate. She closed her eyes, then covered them with her left arm. I placed a palm against her forehead: it felt warm, like the beginnings of a fever. I lifted her off the floor, placed her on the bed. I had packed paracetamol syrup for the trip, along with other drugs, but because she shivered when I let her go, I decided it might be best to get her to a hospital straight away.
I went to a window and looked out into the street, wondering if the crowd would let me drive through if I just explained my daughter’s health condition. That was when I saw the soldiers. I was still at the window when the first gunshot was fired into the crowd. I fell on my face, crawled to the bed and pulled my daughter to the floor. Her eyes were shut and she was screaming. At first I thought it was the sound of the gunshots that was startling her, but when I touched her forehead it felt as though there was a furnace right under her skin.
39
As we got ready to sleep on our first night in Bauchi, Iya Bolu gave me a little lecture about how I needed to sit up and take care of Rotimi. She was in front of the dressing mirror, rubbing lotion into her neck and peering at a pimple that sat on her nose.
‘I have to tell you the truth, Iya Rotimi. This thing you are doing is not right. What did that child do to you? I’ve never seen you play with her, not once. Think of her Creator before you treat her like that now. See the way you carried her on your knees, far far from your body. It is not good-o. Is it because of this sickler thing? Ah, we can’t always tell how tomorrow will be by looking at today. Your own job as her mother is to take care of her. Leave it to God to decide if she will live or die. Don’t kill her in your mind yet. Don’t do that.’
‘Before you call the snail a weakling, tie your house to your back and carry it around for a week,’ I said. I found it strange that Iya Bolu, who had never watched any of her children stop breathing, thought she could tell me how to live my life. ‘Besides, when your daughters were her age, did you not leave them alone to crawl all over the passageway?’
She frowned and rubbed night lotion into her face. ‘You think you can shut me up by insulting me. All I know is that you need to stop punishing Rotimi for the death of . . . the others.’
‘Their names are Olamide and Sesan. And I’m not insulting you. Abi, you did not leave them in the passageway?’
Iya Bolu rose up and went to sit on her bed. ‘At least I fed them when they were hungry and held them when they cried. Iya Rotimi, I’m not trying to poke your wound with a stick. I’m just saying, she cannot have any other mother and, for now, she is the only child you have.’
I was not punishing Rotimi for anything. I simply did not believe that she would live long enough to remember anything I did or did not do. I believed it was a matter of time before she went the way of my other children and I was readying myself, adjusting myself to being without a child. Whenever I thought about it, all I hoped was that she would not suffer too much. I did not hold her too close because I was protecting myself from her. I had lost pieces of myself to Sesan and Olamide and I held myself back from Rotimi because I wanted to have something left when she was gone.
‘This one that you asked the maid to lie to your husband that we were already asleep, are you fighting with him?’
‘Even the tongue and the teeth cannot cohabit without fighting.’
‘Iya Rotimi, all these proverbs. Goodnight o jare.’ She turned her back to me and pulled the covers over her head.
On Thursday, I was alone with the maid in the house. Iya Bolu’s brother and his wife had left for work and Iya Bolu had gone to the market to do some shopping for her children. The bride-to-be, a lecturer at the University of Jos, was expected to arrive that evening. I was reading an old newspaper when the maid came to the room and told me that I had a call from Lagos.
‘I’ve told you to tell him I’m busy.’
‘He said he must speak to you, madam. He said your baby is sick.’
I put down the newspaper and went into the sitting room.
‘Yejide,’ Akin said after I picked up the phone. ‘Rotimi lost consciousness.’
I fell back into a chair. Before that day, I thought I was prepared, distant enough in emotion and location to take the news that Rotimi was dead or dying. But what do we know about ourselves? Do we ever really know what we will do in any situation until the situation presents itself? Since the day she was born, I had been getting myself ready for the worst but a lifetime was not enough to prepare me for the dizziness that hit me.
‘You have to get her to the hospital,’ I said.
‘They are shooting in the streets, Yejide. The soldiers are here. They are shooting, shooting people. She just stopped screaming all of a sudden. Then I . . . then I tried to wake her up, but she has not responded. But she is still breathing, she is still breathing.’
‘You have to get her to a hospital.’
‘Is there anything you know that I can do? Is there anything I can do now? Yejide? Yejide? Are you there? What am I supposed to do now?’
‘You have to get her to a hospital.’
‘Say something else. I’m sure they’ve killed people already; we could get shot. Is there anything I can do? Yejide? Do you know anything? Did they teach you any emergency procedure for Sesan? Yejide?’
I could see what was left of Rotimi’s life unfolding before me.
‘I am not coming back to you.’
‘What are you saying?’
�
�I am not coming back to Ilesa. I am not coming back to you.’
‘What are you saying? Look, I need to go. I will call you tonight to let you know if . . . if . . . to let you know.’
I sat in the strange sitting room, holding the receiver to my ear long after the line had gone dead. A good mother would wait for the inevitable phone call, go back to Ilesa and receive visitors, accept condolence messages as chief mourner, play her role as Rotimi’s mother even though she was gone. After I had done all that, only after that could I leave my husband. But I was tired and there was nothing left in Ilesa for me. The salon was there, but it was not enough to take me back into the same city where Akin lived. I could not bear the thought of driving past Wesley Guild Hospital one more time or seeing children dressed in the same school uniform Sesan had worn when he was alive. So I did what I really wanted to do.
I drank two glasses of water and then went into the room I was sharing with Iya Bolu. I took only my handbag. All the things I needed were in it: my cheque book, a pen, a notebook, all the cash I had taken to Bauchi, and my only photo of my mother. I left a note on Iya Bolu’s bed. I was sure her sister-in-law would read it and explain to her that I was not coming back.
I went into the street and flagged down a taxi that was going to the motor park. Tears clouded my vision as I got into the car and I almost stumbled. I admitted to myself then that I had failed and Rotimi too had taken a part of me. As I got out of the taxi and wiped my tears away so that I could see the signs indicating where each bus was heading, I knew that I would never forget Rotimi, I would never be able to erase her the way I wished I could.
I boarded a bus that was heading to Jos. Jos because I had heard it was the most beautiful city in Nigeria and I had always wanted to go there. It would take a while for me to realise that each of my children had given me as much as they took. My memories of them, bittersweet and constant, were as powerful as a physical presence. And because of that, as a bus bore me into the heart of a city I did not know, while my last child was dying in Lagos and the country was unravelling, I was not afraid because I was not alone.
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