The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

by Lola Shoneyin

  “So I can’t even leave the house now?” It was a daring response.

  In a flash, Baba scrambled up the back of his seat and leaped into the air like a gorilla in flight. He landed bang in front of Bolanle and gripped her throat with both hands. He squeezed hard and shook her, pressing his thumbs on her windpipe. “Who are you asking questions? Do I look like a fool? You said you were going to your father’s house. Taju has just come back from there. Nobody there has seen you today! Where have you been?”

  “The market! I went to the market.” Her voice was hoarse from the pressure. “You can kill me, Baba Segi, but I only went to the market. Look at the bowl I bought.”

  Baba Segi searched her face and thought how strange it was that there was no fear in it, just pain. He glanced to the side and saw the plastic bag a few inches from her open palm. He let his arms drop to his sides.

  Bolanle collapsed onto the floor.

  Akin made to run toward Bolanle but Iya Segi’s arm shot out from her side and held him in his tracks. His mother’s arm was steadfast so he bowed his head and ran down the road.

  Iya Tope knelt beside Bolanle. With Baba Segi towering over them, she slapped Bolanle’s cheeks lightly. “Tell him, Bolanle. Tell him if you did it. Tell him. He will forgive you. We have all offended our husband before. He always forgives us. Confess to him.”

  Bolanle spluttered and grabbed her throat. The dry weather had split her lips and a solitary droplet of blood trickled from one of the creases in them.

  “Tope, bring me some water.” Iya Tope didn’t take her eyes off Bolanle until her daughter returned with half a plastic cup of warm, recently boiled water. Iya Tope sprinkled some on Bolanle’s face and placed the cup to her lips.

  Bolanle looked up at the woman cradling her face in the crook of her arm. “Confess to what?”

  Baba Segi marched to the stool beside his armchair and produced a see-through polyethylene bag. “This!” He spat, pinching the bag at the corner farthest away from what it contained. At the bottom of the bag, looking vaguely surprised by all the attention it was getting, was the head of a decomposed rodent, a large bush rat perhaps. “Tell me why I found this in my bedroom!”

  There were bits of dried flesh stuck to it. Its mouth was bound together by red thread. A four-inch nail had been knocked into the crown of its head, shattering the skull at the point of entry, then driven all the way in until it protruded out of the rodent’s throat.

  Bolanle’s face hardened. “How can I confess to something I know nothing about? Strangle me. Kill me. But first ask yourself if I would descend this low? Would I descend to this? Would I touch something so revolting? Do you really think I would go to a babalawo, let alone ask for something that would harm you? If I didn’t want to be with you, would I not just leave?”

  Iya Segi was by the door. She saw the opening and jumped in. “Who can tell why she would do this, Baba Segi? She wants to kill you first and then leave. She is a destroyer of homes! Why didn’t she go to the abattoir if she was thirsty for blood? There is no blood for you here, Bolanle. There is no blood for you here. Kruuk.” She paused and turned to Iya Tope. “We have been suspicious for some months now, haven’t we, Iya Tope?”

  Iya Tope looked up at the older wife. She opened her mouth but no words came out. She tried again but her lips just opened and closed like a fish anticipating a maggot.

  “Iya Segi, I have never desired blood in my life.” Bolanle felt tears welling up in her eyes but she blinked them back.

  “Then why was this found in your bedroom?” Baba Segi’s voice was calmer now. He was beginning to see that things didn’t quite add up but he decided to see it through so he could observe her reactions. “Stand up and come and see for yourself. I will not touch it.” He sighed with relief when Bolanle crawled toward whatever it was that Baba Segi had pushed beneath a stool. In a small calabash, there was a spool of once-white thread half-immersed in a pool of blood.

  “Unspeakable!” Bolanle hissed. She turned and looked up at Baba Segi. “Do you think so little of me?”

  Baba Segi looked away but Iya Segi would not let it go. “Oh, it is unspeakable now you’ve been found out! Who would have known that all those times you left the house, you were visiting a babalawo? Who would have thought that a graduate would stoop to something so unspeakable?” Iya Segi pronounced the word “unspeakable” like she was swallowing a single ear of corn. A clucking started deep within her double chin.

  Bolanle put one hand on the side of her neck and grimaced. She let her head roll round in a full circle before turning to her husband. She shook her head and coughed to clear her throat. “I have nothing to say, Baba Segi, except that I do not know where these things came from. There must be some mistake. I have never seen anything like this before.”

  To the small crowd that had gathered in the sitting room, Bolanle said, “I say, I have never seen these things before in my life. Neither do I want to, ever again. Why would I want to kill my husband? If I become tired of my husband, there isn’t a policeman in the world that can force me to stay with him. I am here because I want to be here!” She exhaled long and meaningfully. “I have lived in his house for two years and I want to continue to stay if my husband will have me. Only today, we went to the doctor to see how I could bear his children. I do not want to die barren. How is it profitable for me to become a young widow? Why would I want my child or any of these young children to be fatherless?” Her hands reached to brush Femi’s head but he ducked.

  Everyone looked on in sympathy and Segi wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. Iya Segi read the situation and stole into the crowd like a giant hen skulking to a secret stash of corn.

  Just over his breath, Baba Segi said, “Bolanle, you can go to your room.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Iya Femi catapulted herself toward him from the edge of the crowd. “Go to her room?” she shrieked. “Is it after she has killed us all that you will do the right thing? If this woman is allowed to sleep in this house, I will sleep outside with my sons. I will hold a night vigil and pray her out.” She bounced on the balls of her feet, her upstretched arms exposing clumps of armpit hair.

  “Iya Femi, you can sleep in the gutter if you want to.” Baba Segi’s voice was calm but anger had returned to his eyes. “That is where you came from. My sons were not born to sleep in the gutter so they cannot follow you. Iya Tope, take my sons to bed. This woman’s mouth will soon get what it deserves.”

  “Anyone who touches my sons may not live to tell the tale!”

  “Has this woman’s head scattered that she now scrubs my mouth? Have my words become so insignificant that they can now be contested?” He opened one of his hands to the crowd as if they would deposit the answers to his questions into his palm. “Iya Segi! Iya Segi!”

  Perched on a crumbling concrete block by the side wall, Iya Segi remained still until several voices echoed her husband’s call. “I am here, my lord!”

  “This house is a mess. Clean it!”

  “Right away, my lord.”

  Their voyeuristic thirsts quenched, everyone got the message and began to agitate for a speedy exit. The spectacle had been gratifying, the outcome glorious.

  BABA SEGI COULDN’T BEAR to stay at home that evening so he drove himself to Ayikara. “I could have killed her with my bare hands. My own wife! It was as if a wild beast from inside me wanted to suck blood from her throat.” Baba Segi didn’t want the three men in the far corner of the shack to hear him. It didn’t matter that there was an empty bottle of Teacher’s whiskey on the table in front of them or that the few phrases they exchanged were slurred and incoherent. This was a matter Baba Segi did not want to discuss with strangers.

  “And you say she did not fight back?”

  “No, she was calm. What fight can a fly fight when it is in the clutches of a tarantula?” Baba Segi muttered and looked away.

  “Calm is not the reaction of someone who has been caught red-fingered. Remind me. How did your othe
r wives react to this discovery? You mentioned that—”

  “That is what I don’t understand.” Baba Segi cut him short. “Apart from one of them who seemed as perplexed as I was, the other two were adamant that Bolanle had planted the juju. They were convinced that she was guilty.”

  “Hmm.” Teacher smirked and nodded knowingly. “What are relations like between Bolanle and these other wives? There must be a reason why they were fighting tongue and nail for her to confess.”

  “Well, in recent months, I myself have been hostile to the young woman but only because of this question of her barrenness. Her unwillingness to submit to my earlier solutions also hardened my heart. I have not been warm to her. It has always been hard for me to hide what is inside. I think perhaps my wives noticed this and copied me.”

  “So they want you to send her away and you think it a reaction to your unhappiness.”

  “I know they do. They said so in my presence, in her presence.”

  “Why have they not attempted to mediate? From what you’ve always said about your first wife, I had come to believe she was of a more agreeable temperament.”

  “I would be lying if I said she wasn’t. That woman knows every thought that enters my head. She knows when I am thirsty and when my belly is full. She knows I have been disgruntled about Bolanle and I suspect she just wants to relieve me of my troubles.”

  “But planting juju is excessive. Why use a hammer to swat an insect?” As if to illustrate his point, Teacher elegantly flicked a fly from his shot glass.

  “It must have seemed reasonable to her given how displeased I’ve been. I agree with you though. It was as if Esu himself came to dine in my house yesterday evening. I tell you, I could have killed Bolanle.” Baba Segi folded his arms and shook his head.

  “Listen, Baba Segi, perhaps you are partly to blame for what has happened. Your partiality is the cause of these problems. Women do not hesitate to become cannibals when they are hungry. That is why I have never kept one. Some people laugh about this behind my back but what they don’t know is this: he who does not have a head has no need for a cap.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But back to the trouble in your household: it is my belief that the solution lies with you. And I can tell you that her being educated is not helping matters either.” His finger rapped on the side of his glass.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Teacher took a sip from his whiskey and winced when he swallowed. “What I mean is that she is different. It may well be that your other wives are slightly uncomfortable about this. They may think it gives her an edge.” Teacher chose his words carefully.

  “What sort of edge? I do not sleep with any one more than the others!”

  “It is more complicated than that. It could be that they are envious.”

  “That, I can rule out.” Baba Segi was afraid that Teacher would suggest that he too was prone to such.

  A smile tickled the corners of Teacher’s lips but he didn’t submit to it. “If you are sure that this is not the case then it all lies in your hands. Treat your wives equally. Blacken the kettle as you blacken the pots.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  QUEEN

  WHEN A PLAN DOES not go right, you plot again. One day you will get it right. One day you will be able to damage the person who hurts you so completely that they will never be able to recover. I have told Iya Segi this on several occasions. I keep telling her that we need to find a permanent solution but she does not have wisdom. She says we should continue to humiliate Bolanle until she runs away. “Let us cut her feathers,” she says.

  Well, the bird has shown that she can fly without feathers. I knew we should have gone for her throat. We should have bled her into a hole in the earth!

  Yes, I said finally. I have suffered too much in my life to let that rat spoil it all for me. So what if she is a graduate? When we stand before God on the last day, will He ask whether we went to university? No! But He will want to know if we were as wise as serpents because that’s what the Bible says we should be.

  If we let Bolanle ruin us, then we would all have failed before God. I reject failure in Jesus’s name. I will not fail. The prophets in my church have seen that this rat has an evil spirit. I can’t say God has not revealed it to me too. He shows Himself to all who serve Him in spirit and in truth. I’m glad Iya Segi has come round to my thinking. She has now seen that we need to do something. Now that Baba Segi has decided to take the rat to the hospital, time is short.

  When Bolanle first arrived, I scrubbed Bolanle’s tongue with bitter leaf! Ha! I made her understand who was in charge of this house. I showed the sting of hot peppers. If she comes to this world again, she will run if she hears the name Iya Femi.

  Let me tell you one of the things I did. Laughter kills me when I think of it. I don’t think she had been with us for a year when Baba Segi asked me to make aso ebi for the entire household. The neighbor’s birthday was in two weeks time and he wanted us all dressed in the same fabric from top to bottom. “I want you all to look like queens,” he said. I looked at him and wondered why, if he wanted wives that looked like queens, he married a woman like a toad and a scrawny rabbit that nibbles at Bolanle’s burrow.

  And that Bolanle! Is that his idea of a queen? Being a graduate does not make you beautiful. I know true beauty. And it is in pale yellow skin. I was born darker than this but I use expensive creams to make my natural beauty shine. I take my nails to a proper nail studio. I buy good makeup, unlike that Bolanle, who wanders around with her face as haggard as a sack. Ha! Queens indeed!

  Anyway, on the day I went to collect the clothes, I came out of the house and heard Bantu’s “No More No Vernacular” screaming from giant speakers on the neighbor’s fence. I danced into the pickup, leaving the entire family waiting in the sitting room.

  The tailor’s store was only twenty minutes away but I stopped at a few places. By the time I got home, even my sons were sweating from anticipation. I rushed into the sitting room, arms laden, and surrendered the pile of clothes to the stool by Iya Segi’s feet. The witch sniffed the air around me. She must have picked up the scent on my thighs.

  I heard Baba Segi’s voice. “I was waiting for the tailor to put finishing touches to your clothes,” I said. “Would you have preferred it if I came home without them? It is wonderful that we will all be dressed the same!”

  Ha! Sometimes I wish I could pat myself on the back. My cunning knows no bounds!

  For a few moments, Iya Segi stared at the outfits. The children couldn’t conceal their impatience. “Mama, the clothes!” Akin pretended to cough as he spoke so his mother wouldn’t think him wayward.

  Iya Segi cocked her head with interest before reaching for the pile and placing it on her lap. The witch touched all the clothes before anyone, as if she wanted to render them secondhand. She fingered the plastic buttons and touched the threading before giving each outfit to its respective owner. One by one, everyone stepped forward to collect their outfit. Iya Segi told Iya Tope to drop Bolanle’s clothes by her bedroom door. She said everyone should return to the sitting room in thirty minutes so we could set off to the party.

  I got dressed quickly and headed to the sitting room so I could see everyone come in. Iya Segi caught me in the corridor as she came out of the bathroom. She ran her eyes over my outfit. “Such beautiful gold thread! Such fine sequins!” she said. Her throat was thick with fury.

  “The tailor said he ran out of sequins when he started to sew yours. He said the girl who sold them to him was in confinement. But if you want, let us exchange. I’ll wear yours and you can wear mine.” I even started to unzip my blouse at the side. Ha! She would be lucky if she could fit just one of her breasts into my entire blouse. She hissed and turned into her bedroom.

  Baba Segi joined me soon after to inspect us the way he always did. As the children walked in, he looked with pride at the parade of red stars against royal blue. He nodded as his eyes went from face to face.


  Iya Segi soon waddled in. Her dress resembled a pillowcase with long sleeves and a ruffled collar that extended all the way up to her ears. That neck of hers is an embarrassment. If she always wore clothes with high collars, maybe she would eat less. Maybe she’d stop grunting like a pig when she eats.

  Iya Tope, for her part, looked no different from her three daughters. Did she not behave like them? Was she any cleverer than they were? I told the tailor to sew the skirt two sizes too big, and her blouse baggy and without darts. The neck gaped and slid off one of her shoulders. As usual, she didn’t say anything; she was more concerned about Bolanle, who had just emerged from her bedroom.

  Bolanle’s outfit looked like it had been knocked together by a roguish hand. To be honest, I sewed it myself. I watched the tailor on a few occasions and made the skirt from the discolored ends that he did away with. Instead of the square meter that the rest of the wives received as headgear, Bolanle’s head was bound by a bright purple strip of cloth about eight inches wide. I don’t even remember where the cloth came from. Her face was bland as if there wasn’t a single thought in her head. Who knows what the lizard was thinking! Everyone stared at her. Iya Tope drew her palm to her lips but Iya Segi’s eyes began to twinkle. Ha! I knew she would like it!

  My husband finally asked me to stand up. You can trust me. I gave him the queen he asked for. My skirt was fitted and the slit rode just above my knee. My blouse was adorned with crystals and the darts shaped my figure and lifted my breasts. I was well accessorized too: matching court shoes and bag; coral beads on my wrists; and a large, gold crucifix around my neck. It was a good day.

  Back to the present problem: Iya Segi and I decided to meet on our own after the rat head incident.

  “That stupid Iya Tope ruined it all!” I said.

  “Let us thank the gods that she did not tell Bolanle beforehand. I thought she would drag Bolanle to her bedroom to breastfeed her! Iya Tope’s foolishness could start a village war. The only chance we had was to be united. Now see how Bolanle marches about the house gloating.” The stone in Iya Segi’s throat was traveling up and down like a man’s. “Iya Tope is like the demon who accused the gnomes of mischief. He woke up to find his sword inside his own belly and there was nothing he could do! Nothing! He lay in the forest with his blood clotting at his side, too weak to stand, too frail to shout.”