The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

by Lola Shoneyin

  Three times Mama tried to push herself off her seat but each time, she fell backward. Her eyes were set on Lara. When she became breathless, she launched into Papa as if her inability to lift herself was his fault. “Just listen to your pathetic self. What do you know about how to bring up a child? You call yourself a father but keep mute until all dignity is beyond us. If not for the mother who has slaved for them, where would they be today?” She snorted and shook her head in disgust.

  “Oh, dear! Poor Mama!” Like our mother, Lara had perfected her sarcasm. “Imagine!” she continued. “All that slaving wasted. And you thought you’d be able to dictate who I’d marry and how I’d live my life! Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t beg you to slave for me. You should have done that for Bolanle alone.”

  I could have cut Lara down to size. I could have called her a dunce and made her burst into angry tears, but instead I chose to be sensible—the one quality she despised in me. “Who is it that Lara wants to marry, Mama? And why are you so unhappy with him?”

  “Is it not a guitar player with knotted hair? He prances around in jeans that are torn at the knees and every time he comes here, the smell of cigarettes fills the entire house. And he speaks like those Jamaicans too—‘no, man,’ ‘yes, man.’ I had to ask him yesterday: is it that I look like a man to you? And what did he do? He laughed in my face.”

  Baba covered his mouth with his palm but his eyes bulged with amusement.

  “As it happens, Mama, his mother is Jamaican. Yes, he has knotted hair and smells of cigarettes. But you know what? I like him that way and I am the one who will have to live with him.” My sister scratched her belly.

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Mama, there is just one thing.” Everyone turned to listen to me. “And I want you to consider the implications of your words before you utter them. This child that Lara is carrying, what do you want her to do to it?”

  Baba, who was already putting on his shoes, stopped and sat upright. The room went so quiet that everyone heard the ticking of the wall clock. Mama looked away, sensing that she’d been cornered. Twice she made to open her mouth to speak but closed it again. It was as if the actual existence of a child, though unborn, had only then dawned on her. This wasn’t just another of Lara’s frivolities but a fetus that would one day speak, walk and laugh. And if I was indeed barren, this might be her only chance to carry a child born to her daughter. She’d sat there slicing the manhood from the father of what might be her only grandchild. She whimpered and looked from one face to the other. Even Lara could not endure the sight of Mama hitching her leg against the chair leg, like a dog scratching its belly; she crawled to Mama’s feet and buried her face in Mama’s lap. Mama didn’t say anything; she placed her hand on Lara’s head and brushed her hair back with her fingertips.

  When Lara returned to her seat, she looked at me and mouthed the words “thank you.” Baba brought the knuckles of both thumbs to his lips and closed his eyes. There was discomfiture at first but before long, we were talking. We talked about the scarcity of kerosene and how distressing the queues at the filling stations were. We all laughed when Baba described his frustration over the endless yelping of the neighbor’s puppy. He declared that he was plotting to kidnap it and dump it in a faraway village. Mama laughed so much that she held her forehead and quaked in her seat. It was a deep-belly laugh with a hum at the end of it. It was an unfamiliar sound yet I had heard it a long time ago, long before Baba developed a passion for Gordon’s. An image came to me of the four of us in the same room: Mama pregnant with Lara, Baba clapping his hands and me dancing around the room for their entertainment. A happy family.

  I looked at everyone’s lips and noted how their voices had suddenly become crisp, clear and melodious, no longer the muffled echoes my ears had become attuned to. That afternoon, I said good-bye without telling Mama about Segi’s illness or my hospital visit. I didn’t want to raise false hope. Things were still inconclusive and I knew there were challenges ahead. How to tell Baba Segi about the appointment, for instance. It didn’t seem the right time to bring up such things.

  As I started up the street, a familiar car screeched to a halt beside me. Segun was driving and his mother was in the front seat. They honked for the guard to swing the gates open. Even though she must have been nearing sixty, Segun’s mother’s skin glistened like the flesh of a pawpaw sliced open. Her nose was straight and her neck long and distinguished.

  “Aren’t you one of the Akanbi girls? What’s your name again?” she asked, pointing a slim finger at me. She spoke with her teeth clenched so it was only her lips that moved; she didn’t want to appear like she was making any real effort.

  Segun responded before I could. “Her name is Bolanle. Surely you remember?”

  His mother shot him a disapproving side glance. “How is your mother? Is she better?”

  “Much better. Thank you, Ma.” It was strange. I could look at her. I could speak to her. The panic wasn’t there. There was no stuttering and my voice came out exactly as I’d intended.

  “Good. What do you do now?” She examined her silver nail paint, clearly not interested. She was so rich, she didn’t need to do anything. She wanted to remind me of that.

  “Nothing at the moment but I am thinking of getting a job. If I can’t find the sort of thing I want, I’ll improve my prospects by going back to university for a master’s degree.”

  Both sets of eyes in the car widened, Segun’s from astonishment at my self-confidence, his mother’s from cynicism. Segun recovered first. “All the best then.” With that, he pushed the shift stick into first gear. His mother giggled and laughed all the way into their beautiful driveway.

  Her laughter rang in my ears long after she’d stopped mocking me and rubbishing my aspirations. But instead of feeling ridiculed, I felt strong and defiant. You weren’t laughing the night armed robbers told you to pull your ears and do frog jumps, I thought to myself.

  My mind immediately took me to that night when the gentle winds brought squalls of dust and everyone shut their windows anticipating rain. It was one of those nights when, even though it was cool, everyone looked forward to sleeping with a light cloth.

  Segun had asked that I come to his bedroom that night. He was whistling the tune to “Casanova,” which meant the coast was clear. If things looked risky, he whistled Anita Baker’s “Watch Your Step.”

  “That boy has evil in him. The way he whistles behind the wall is eerie. Maybe he’s communicating with ghosts in the spirit world.” My mother bent her ear in the direction of the whistling.

  I quickly ran to my bedroom so Mama wouldn’t catch my eye. I could keep secrets but I could never tell barefaced lies. It amazed me daily that she hadn’t smelled Segun on my skin or noticed how much weight I lost after the abortion. I’d tried hard to stop relating what had been scraped from my belly to the little humans that gurgled on their mothers’ backs. The relationship between the two haunted me.

  At the time, Segun was already in his third year at university and I was still waiting for my admission letter. He often brought girls home and holed them up in his room over weekends. His father liked this; he liked that his son was a virile ladies’ man. His mother, on the other hand, referred to his lady friends as whores. “What kind of daughter tells her parents she is going to university and then goes around sleeping in men’s houses. It’s disgraceful!” she would say, and mop sweat off her nose with an embroidered handkerchief.

  That night, I changed into my pajamas and jumped under my cover cloth with a Mills and Boon. I wanted everyone to think I had turned in early, knowing Lara would follow suit. She often copied me so it didn’t appear that she lacked initiative and common sense. I was her role model, then. If only she knew! Her footsteps came just after ten minutes, and she quickly mummified herself with her cover cloth, dead to the world.

  I sneaked out of our bedroom and stopped by my parents’ door. I listened for sounds but there was none except my father’s snoring.
No doubt Mama was sleeping with a pillow over her head. I unlocked the back door and tiptoed toward the drainage system at the back of the compound. I took a bucket with me to fool anyone who saw me slinking around; there were endless things a young woman could be using a bucket for, and luckily, a rendezvous with the landlord’s son wasn’t one of them.

  On our side of the fence, the concrete blocks weren’t planed or painted so I dug my toes into the ridges and climbed to the top. As I lowered myself on the other side, Segun’s guard dog licked my feet. I giggled as I landed on their manicured lawn.

  Segun’s door was open. He always kept it open for me. He was sitting shirtless on his bed, reading an old Time magazine. He flicked cigarette ash into an ashtray he’d balanced on his thigh. When he heard me come in, he put the magazine aside. “Are you staying the whole night?” he asked.

  “No, I left our kitchen door open. I don’t think I should risk it.”

  “You’re scared!”

  “And you’re not?” I folded my arms.

  He grunted and walked into his en suite bathroom. There was a coral bath in the corner and a matching toilet and bidet.

  “My father hasn’t come home yet. I can’t believe he is doing all this shit. Vincent saw him at the Cotton Club buying pizzas for two scantily dressed girls.” He pushed the bathroom door open with his big toe. “Does he ever stop to think how that looks? I could have been with Vincent. I could have been sitting down having a drink with my friends and we would all have seen my father traipse in with a girl on each sleeve.” He stopped talking when he started urinating and did not resume until he had shaken off the last drop.

  “Maybe he’s at a business meeting with his partners or something.” I didn’t like it when he was tetchy so I thought of things that would calm his nerves.

  “You could call it that,” he spluttered. “It is business for the girls and my father is obviously a willing partner.” He took up his toothbrush from the metal cup with a clang.

  His wit was greatly sharpened when he was irritable. I covered my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me chuckling. “He’ll be home soon. He always comes home.”

  “Yes, he does. Dead drunk. Last week, dawn found him in the driver’s seat. He had driven into the compound, locked himself in the car and slumped onto the steering wheel. The night guard was beside himself with worry, not knowing whether he was dead or alive or going to suffocate.” Segun brushed his teeth for a while and spat into the sink. “It is a miracle he can find his way home at night.”

  Segun always had the air conditioner on full blast, so by the time he had shaved, I was lying under the duvet. He snuggled in beside me and we lay there for several minutes. His mind was far away but I found the feel of his skin comforting; his body filled all the parts where mine caved in. If sex was the price I had to pay to be close to someone’s skin, it was fine by me. I waited. I knew he would speak soon. And when he did, it would be something about his father.

  “Here he comes now,” Segun said, springing up to turn off his air conditioner. He was still frozen on the spot, listening out, when we heard two muffled gunshots, one after the other. It was obvious that they came from nearby. Segun flew into the bathroom to get his dressing gown; I bolted, gripped with fear.

  “I’m going out there,” Segun announced, pulling on his jeans.

  “Don’t be a fool. We should hide.”

  “My father is out there!”

  “You think he wants you to get killed?”

  He thought for a minute and somehow my crazy logic made sense to him. He didn’t suspect that all I wanted was for him to stay with me.

  “Where shall we hide?” he asked.

  “Outside. Let’s hide outside in case they come in.”

  “No. They could be on their way here already. This is the only way if they can’t get through the front door. It’s bullet-proof.”

  “Let’s hide in the bathroom then. We can climb into the ceiling through the tiles.”

  I used his clasped fingers as a step, then Segun hoisted himself up after me and replaced the polystyrene tiles. There were hundreds of holes in them so we could see into the bathroom. Since the bathroom door was open, we could see into the bedroom too. Segun grimaced when he realized he’d left the lights on.

  The bedroom door lock was suddenly splintered by bullets and a short, stout man in a sleeveless football shirt kicked the door open with his foot. “Bring the idiot so he can lead us to the safe,” he snarled. Even though the bathroom door was wide open, he split it in half with bullets. Two men dressed in black denim dragged Segun’s father by the collar of his shirt. He could hardly walk. His face was swollen and he was bleeding profusely from a gash on his forehead. There was a dark circular stain on his trousers and blood trailed his every step. Segun covered his mouth with both palms; his eyes looked like they would drop out of his head.

  “Which way?” A fourth man slapped Segun’s father across the back of the head and pushed him in the direction of the veranda that led to the main building. Although I was just as frightened, I was captivated by the tears that rolled down Segun’s face. All the years I had known him, he’d never cried. Not even when took me to the nurse to abort the child he imagined was his. Even though he could see how terrified I was, he blamed me for not insisting that he go out to buy a condom. Not once did he comfort me or acknowledge the tragedy of the occasion.

  I REACHED OUT MY HAND to him but he pretended not to see it. He wished I wasn’t there. Not to save me from the terrible things I was seeing but because he was embarrassed that I, a common tenant, was witnessing such a personal family tragedy. It was at that moment that I realized that I meant very little to him. I might as well have been another dusty wooden lintel. I thought perhaps I wasn’t worthy of him.

  There was silence all around but we knew it wasn’t safe to come down from our hiding place. Segun developed cramps in his legs but he gritted his teeth. After what seemed like hours, Segun’s mother entered the room carrying a metal safe on her head. She was wearing a long nightdress and one of the men in black denim kept poking her buttocks with the point of a machete. She looked around the room and went toward the outside door. On her way back from depositing the safe in her husband’s new BMW, the armed robber asked her to pull at her ears and leap like a frog. She hopped as best as she could in turquoise silk, egged on by a rusty iron blade. She was crying and I could tell that her tears had nothing to do with the humiliation. She kept shuddering like something had shaken her to her core. I knew Segun’s father was dead but I didn’t say a thing.

  The robbers left at four A.M. with thousands of dollars in cash and trinkets they’d found in another safe cleverly tucked behind the picture of Segun’s grandmother. As soon as we heard two cars screeching up the road, Segun dislodged the tiles and jumped to the floor. He didn’t wait to help me to my feet; he just sprinted down the veranda to the main entrance.

  I crept out of the house and climbed back to my side of the fence. As I picked up my bucket and made for the well, I thought of the disaster I could have caused by leaving the door open. If the robbers had decided to go to our compound too, it would have been easy for them. I might as well have invited them into our home, not that we had anything of great value. I placed the bucket of water in the center of the kitchen floor and crawled into my bed. The entire house was quiet. If Mama asked me anything in the morning, I’d try to lie.

  I didn’t need to. By the time I woke up, the entire neighborhood was grief stricken. Every eye within the vicinity was bloodshot and there were cars parked all the way up our street. Like all the tenants, my parents went to the landlord’s house to register their condolences but they were not allowed into the property. The house was full of dignitaries and they didn’t want paupers dirtying their Persian rugs.

  I didn’t see Segun for days. On the day of the funeral I stood by our gate for hours so I could catch a glimpse of him. As the funeral cortege drove to the burial ground, he looked in my direction but looked straight
ahead when he saw me. Not a pursed lip or a raised eyebrow in acknowledgment of my vigil.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SEED

  THE TRAFFIC ON SANGO ROAD had slowed to intermittent jerking. “She seems happy and restful now,” Baba Segi continued to his driver. “The nightmares are gone; we have much to be grateful for.” He was determined to embrace optimism.

  Taju massaged the steering wheel each time they stopped and started. There was a funeral at the local cemetery and a few young men were gathered at the gates singing dirges. Brandy was downed by the mouthful and empty bottles dotted the ground around the cemetery gate. The men had black bands tied around their uncombed hair. One of them carried a framed picture of a young man with a neat part and a plastered smile. It bore all the pretention of a studio portrait; it must have been the third or fourth pose at least. A few moments later, a university van full of young women squeezed through the traffic and deposited its occupants at the mouth of the cemetery.

  Cars slowed and stared, their passengers’ eyes full of sympathy. They knew all too well that it was important to be slightly inebriated before entering the cemetery; a little something was needed to numb the mind and dull the senses. It was no secret that the cemetery was full. Every yard of earth had been disturbed, every foot unearthed. Nevertheless, coffins went in and gloved pallbearers came out, having deposited their burdens into three-foot graves.

  Corpses were forced into unsavory unions. Reckless men were laid to rest on chaste widows; children on top of elderly men; girls on top of women who were too young to be their mothers. Nature in its omniscience would not accept these copulations: the shallow graves were ravaged by dogs and what the dogs rejected, the heavy rains returned to the residential area on the other side of the road.