The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

by Lola Shoneyin

  I reasoned that Mama would be glad we wouldn’t have to speak to each other too. She never visited me at Baba Segi’s house, but every so often a nameless visitor would drop off a branch of awin—bait to get me back home to wait for God to show me my true husband. At least she still remembered how much I loved awin.

  When I reached the T-junction, everything seemed smaller. The road seemed narrower and the tar was eroded by flooding. When Segun’s father was alive, he would tar it every January, but since his death, his wife had warned the tenants that if they couldn’t contribute funds to arrest the deterioration, they’d better be content with parking their cars at the junction and forget her road was there.

  My parents lived in one of eight two-bedroom bungalows on a small plot of land. A tall fence separated the tenants from the landlords, who occupied a sprawling multilevel structure surrounded by horticultural splendor. Every member of Segun’s family, sisters included, had their own little suite within the building. Only Segun’s had a door that opened onto the gardens. Everyone else used the magnificent awning that spooned people in and out of the main door.

  I walked through the gate to the bungalows and was immediately struck by the weeds that had grown around the section of fence that my parents’ bungalow leaned against. Given that Mama cleaned religiously for fear of being associated with dirt, I was surprised to see bits of paper strewn around our doorway. Mama would not have let that pass when I was living at home; she would have called me into her room and made known her disgust that I was going the way of my father’s shameless siblings.

  I could hear my heart thumping when I knocked on the door. I’d already started searching my bag for a notepad and pen with one hand when I heard a voice from within. I pushed the door open and followed the aroma of boiled okra to the kitchen. I stepped quietly through the sitting room, avoiding a pile of stale, unwashed clothes to find Mama straddling a low stool in the living room.

  “Bolanle?”

  “Yes, Mama.” I was taken aback as she had her back to me. I didn’t think my name would jump to her lips so readily.

  “A mother never forgets her daughter’s footsteps.” She was sifting elubo into a wide-mouthed basin. “I sent for you as soon as it happened.”

  “As soon as what happened?” I moved closer to her and knelt to embrace her. When she turned to face me, I flung handbag and birthday present in opposite directions. It looked as if one side of her face had first been doused with oil, then set alight. From her left brow to her chin, every feature drooped like melting plastic. Her left eye was weeping, her left nostril running. There was a line of saliva dribbling down the left corner of her mouth. “Mama!” I spluttered as tears gathered in my eyes.

  “The doctors say it is Bell’s palsy or perhaps a very mild stroke. Calm down. Is this not my voice that you’re hearing? I am not dead. At least not yet.” Her voice was the same but an octave higher. Her words seemed to spill from the corner of her mouth with a slight slur.

  I tried to swallow but my mouth was suddenly dry. I feared she would hear me forcing a gulp. Mama let out a long breath and droplets of spit flew from her lips. “I sent your sister to you but she said she would rather drown than stop at your husband’s house.” She must have seen the shock on my face. “Your sister is not what she used to be. No, that is a lie; she is exactly what she used to be.” She tried to stand but her left thigh shuddered and shook. “There is no room for me in her mind; it’s just one man after the other. We do not know which one it is at any given time.” She sighed. “She too says she’s found herself a husband.”

  It may not have been an intended poniard but it hurt all the same. “Mama, when did this happen?”

  “Just six days ago. I was slaving at work as I have always done—a mother must continue to do her duty to her children—when suddenly, I realized I couldn’t hear what my colleagues were saying. I could see their mouths moving but I couldn’t hear their voices. The last thing I felt was the cold tiles I have been begging my boss to change. He could at least use some of the government money he embezzles to make his surroundings pleasing to the eye. His home must be just as dirty. Anyway, when I came to, I found myself in a bed at UCH. They said I should stay but I threatened to jump off the balcony if they did not let me return home.” She looked around and shook her head. “Just look how Lara has been living; the house looks like it has been taken over by harlots. You know how lazy she is! Well, I have gathered all the dirty clothes together for her to deal with. She thought I would die in the hospital but Eledumare did not permit it. She is stuck with me!” She motioned for us to sit on the cane armchairs. “The doctor said my blood pressure was exceptionally high. What does he expect? My life has been unsettled, in recent years.” Another barb.

  “Everyone chooses their path in life, Mama.” I couldn’t let that one go, no matter how much her face had dissolved.

  She tried to raise her eyebrows but only the right one responded. She was surprised at my audacity, I could tell. I held out my hand to help her to a chair but she wouldn’t take it; she preferred to limp on ahead. I sat opposite her, nervous as hell. Mama had always unnerved me. When I was in primary school, the journey home from school at the end of term was torture. I counted each step to make it take as long as possible, knowing that I had Mama to contend with. She would usher me into the house as if I was a visitor and ask me to kneel half an arm’s length away so she wouldn’t have to stretch if the need arose for her to slap me. After half an hour of waiting for her to digest every number and analyze every word written on the report, she would fold it up and look at me intensely. The words that followed tore me apart. Because there was maybe one subject I hadn’t topped the class in, Mama would look at me over her glasses and tell me I wasn’t her child. “My child comes first in everything,” she’d say, “because I didn’t raise a dullard.” The one time that I protested that I had at least come first in everything else, she dug her nails into the back of my ears and twisted my earlobes until they burned. After that, she sat me down and asked me to write her a letter explaining why I had failed to beat the boy, whose father was English, in English literature. Both ears burning, I tried to work out what to write given she’d insisted that the only acceptable explanation was that the boy had two heads. While waiting for my letter, she would move on to Lara and whip her for her consistent, all-round failure. Then she would ask why Lara couldn’t be more like me. Lara soon learned to doctor her report cards. I never had the guts. I was the long sufferer. I wanted to be perfect for Mama. It was on nights like those that I prayed for my father to come home early, but it was as if he knew what awaited him at home. When he did return after midnight, he would be too drunk to save us from Mama’s madness.

  BEFORE MAMA FLOPPED ONTO THE cushions on the cane armchair, she did what looked like a jig: left turn, foot forward, arms akimbo, arms down, flop. The cushions broke her fall and she patted them in gratitude. They were the same ones she’d made for her New Year ritual in 1992, nine years before. I was sixteen, and well into the second year of lifelessness. Mama liked to change at least one thing in our home; she said a new year wasn’t truly new unless you made it new by buying a new water jug or new curtains. Every Christmas, she troubled my father for money and he always gave in in the end. That year, however, my father had spent all his money replenishing his supply of gin. We all saw the cartons in the hallway but Mama kept asking all the same. On the twenty-third of December, Mama dragged me and Lara around Dugbe market and begged every fabric seller to pity her and her children by giving us their off-cuts for Christmas dresses. Mama had instructed us not to wear shoes and to put on the shabbiest dress we had. Lara almost died of shame and kept saying she needed the toilet. It didn’t bother me at all because my dress reflected the way I felt. My tattered hemming captured my innermost feelings accurately. I stood by Mama and together we trawled the entire market until, at last, we bundled the rags onto our laps and took a taxi home.

  From the moment we opened the front door,
Mama decided she wasn’t sleeping and neither were we. She made us cut along her unsteady lines with a rusty pair of scissors while she carefully threaded the old sewing machine she’d dragged out of storage. And while she swayed over the needle, she told us to stand behind her and watch while she thought up ridiculous chores to send us on. One by one, she sewed the silk to the taffeta, the polyester to the wool, the cotton to the velvet, until she plumped eight patchwork cushions and set them into their cane frames. Lara, who I’d thought was slumbering on her feet, burst into tears. She was always better at expressing herself; I just stood there praying for my father to come home and wipe the smug look off Mama’s face. He swaggered in at one A.M. He didn’t look drunk, just mellow. So mellow that he patted my head without asking why I was up so late. He had a soft smile on his face and his eyes had a glossy film.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Mama pointed at one of the armchairs.

  Baba noticed the difference right away but still he settled himself in his seat without commenting on the shambles Mama had turned our living room into.

  “The cushions look very interesting.”

  Interesting? I thought. Not enchanting, provocative, affecting, alluring, striking, arresting, captivating, intriguing, enthralling, entrancing or riveting. What was interesting was that, for someone who loved words, “interesting” was the best he could come up with.

  “I will never be able to bring my friends home again!” Lara yelled, startling everyone. I just stood there listening to my father hum happily to himself. Mama rolled her head back. I couldn’t tell if she was hiding tears or resting. You could never tell with Mama.

  “THE OKRA SMELLS AS IF it is cooked. Won’t you help your poor mother? Or have you come to rejoice over my misfortune?” Her voice returned me to the present.

  I dashed to the kitchen before she finished so her words hit the back of my head and fell to the floor. It wouldn’t surprise me if she were making hideous faces behind my back so she could feel a sense of victory.

  “Hmm,” she exhaled when I returned to my seat. “Maybe God has decided that it is time to relieve me of my sadness. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” The song oozed from her lopsided mouth; it lacked melody and sincerity. She’d never been a churchgoer. Mama used God at her own convenience.

  “God wouldn’t take you without letting you see your children’s children. That’s what all mothers pray for, isn’t it?” It was all I could think to say.

  “Oh, really? Tell me, is it the one from that buffoon you call a husband that I should look forward to? Because if it is those ones you speak of, I pray that God keeps them in his bosom.”

  All the air inside me escaped through my mouth.

  “How could you expect me to look forward to such grandchildren? Have you never paused to wonder how my heart stopped when you brought a married man to visit me? Or how long the dagger he dipped into my throat was when he told us that you had been courting for months? Under my roof, Bolanle! Under my roof! My house was burning and I didn’t smell the smoke!”

  “I should’ve told you earlier, Mama.” I didn’t want to upset her. I thought, given her illness, she might be inspired to forgive me.

  “And now your sister has followed the path you opened for her. What is left for me to live for? You know, I want God to take me so I can look him in the eye and ask why he gave me such wicked children.”

  “Mama, I do not want to quarrel.”

  “Even if we lie to each other every week, there will come a day when we must look each other in the eye and speak the truth. Bolanle, you are the biggest disappointment the world has seen. You are ruined! Damaged! Destroyed!”

  This time, she aimed well. She hit me in a soft spot. So painful was it that I raised my palms to my face and pressed out tears like pus from a wound.

  She hadn’t finished yet. She stopped to catch her breath and continued. “Has it been so hard for you and your sister to honor me? All I wanted was for you both to do well. But no! You want your mother to die of sadness. Let me tell you, Bolanle, I don’t just sit here; I beg God daily to forgive my sins, even though I don’t know what they could be. I have asked myself a million times: what evil sins have I committed to bring curses upon myself? But hear this: a child who says her mother will not have rest will also be ravaged by insomnia. There is a punishment for wickedness and we will all stand before our maker one day!” Mama leaned her head back into the headrest.

  My tears pleased her enormously.

  “And now she cries. She cries but she doesn’t think to redeem herself. She cries but she will return to her copulation. Of what use are such tears when—”

  “Mama, stop! Please! Stop!”

  “Stop what? Does the truth deafen your ears?”

  “I know I failed you but there is so much you didn’t know.”

  “The truth has never said that it should not be uttered. Hear the truth now and repent. Reward your mother for all the hard work she did for you! Other than that, there is nothing more to know!”

  The chipped skirting board caught my eye. There was a crack in the wall above it and a row of ants headed toward a piece of bread lying by the fridge door. I held on to the frame of the cane chair. The stuffing from the cushions brushed against the back of my hand. “I was raped, Mama! Did you know that? I was raped when I was fifteen years old.” I’d never shouted at my mother but I heard a strident tone I’d never dared use before.

  “Raped? This is not a time to tell wicked lies. Such a thing could not have happened to my child.”

  I took a moment to collect myself, knowing she was watching me, daring me to talk without first retracting my words. “You are right, Mama, I am ruined, damaged, destroyed. I am all those things you ever said. My life was wrecked and I didn’t know how to fix it. I still don’t know.”

  “No!” She jerked her head from side to side. Her voice fizzled into a whisper. “You couldn’t have been raped. No daughter of mine could have been raped. That is not the way I brought you up.”

  “No one brings their daughter up to be raped.” I closed my eyes and told her what happened. There was no point sparing her the details; it was time she heard them. When I reached the part where the stranger put a pillow over my head, Mama snatched her scarf from her head and began to rock slowly in her seat. I didn’t stop; I wanted my mother to hear it all. I didn’t want to carry it alone anymore.

  Tear after tear rolled down one eye alone. “Why didn’t you tell me so I could seek out this beast and cut out his insides?”

  “I wanted to be your perfect daughter. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  “Hush, child, what mother can hate the child she labored to bring to the world? Ah! The blood that runs through my veins is full of sorrow.” She paused to wipe her tears with her wrapper. “Was I so distant? Was I so deaf? Ah! This world and its violent surprises!”

  It wasn’t the time to answer those questions. I wasn’t going to give her the chance to justify her behavior. I wanted to tell her about me. “Mama, you were living with an empty shell. Everything was scraped out of me. I was inside out.”

  “Is this why you allowed yourself to be seduced by that buffoon?” Distraught though she was, Mama couldn’t cast aside her anger over my marriage. I didn’t expect her to; it wasn’t her style. She had to win.

  “I wasn’t seduced. That buffoon was prepared to take me as I was. He didn’t ask me any questions. Neither did he know a past he could compare my present with. I was lost and didn’t want to do anything with my life. He was prepared to take me like that. All he wanted was for me to be his wife. Imagine how appealing that was to me!”

  Apart from the business with Segun and the abortion, which was best not mentioned, I told her everything. I told her about the wives and the rodent skull. I told her I was seeing a doctor because I hadn’t been able to conceive. Mama listened and nodded her head, all the time observing my face: the tiny crow’s-feet at the corner of my eyes, th
e shallow creases on the skin around my mouth. When I was finished, she asked me if I was hungry. She looked more sympathetic than I had ever seen her, but even so, the words “I told you so” were written all over her face. Only a fool would have expected reparation. Mama didn’t do things that way.

  Before I left, I soaked all the dirty laundry. I made some eba and when I sat down to dish the food into separate bowls, Mama insisted that we eat out of the same one. When I returned to the sitting room after washing the dirty dishes, Mama was snoring quietly, so I looked into my old bedroom. It was a complete mess. Why did I expect different? I wasn’t there to clean up after Lara anymore.

  The cardboard boxes in which I’d carefully folded my old clothes had been ripped open. Some of the contents were strewn around the room, others stuffed back in. She’d given the beautiful women on the Mills and Boon novels mustaches. One of my old diaries lay under the bed. Lara would have pushed it there. Perhaps she did that so Mama wouldn’t find it. It was carelessly hidden all the same. Thank goodness I had given the people in it the names of trees. I picked it up and put it in my bag; I’d throw it in the bin on my way out. Before I left, Mama gave me a firm one-armed embrace. It was awkward because I couldn’t remember that she ever held me with tenderness. There always seemed to be pain involved when she touched me, so the feel of her arm on my back, the warmth of her cheek against mine, was memorable in its own way.

  WHEN I RETURNED TO BABA SEGI’S house that evening, I noted that it was that lovely phase of dusk when the sky filled with orange clouds as if a paintbrush had been rinsed in it. There was a looseness about my stride. At university, my friends had joked that I walked upright, to curb the tiniest provocative waggle. It’s true. I sucked my buttocks in and clinched my knees together, but for a different reason. I reasoned that if I strengthened my thigh muscles, it would make it difficult for anyone to force my legs apart like they did in my dreams. That evening, I let my arms dangle at my sides. I set my hips free and my neck sought the source of every sound, the way children did until their mothers slapped the backs of their heads into the direction they were going in. I saw the night guard approaching and greeted him before he got to me. He smiled but it disappeared all too quickly and a scrawny hand scratched a bald head. He was probably baffled by my lack of poise; I was normally so well pulled together.