The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

by Lola Shoneyin

  I suppose it is Segi’s illness. She has not put on any weight and blood trickles from her nose relentlessly. I would never say so but her breath is foul, even when it is exhaled from her nostrils. It’s a stubborn, unpleasant smell. It hangs in my room at night and I can hardly breathe. It bitters the back of the throat and clings to the beddings as if the corpse of a small beast is buried there. It’s as if Segi is rotting from the inside out.

  She has hidden a small mirror under her pillow and she weeps every time she looks at it. A few days ago, she asked me to swear on my life that I wouldn’t tell Baba Segi about it. Perhaps a few weeks ago I would have obliged her, but now I can’t bring myself to swear on my life. Not for her, not now, not for anyone. I just said, “I swear,” and that was all there was to it.

  When she’s asleep, I can’t help but look at her. I feel like I know what troubles her. The illness has ravaged her and left her bare. She has lost control of her body yet she wouldn’t know what to do if she regained it. She knows the illness will do with her as it pleases, cease only when it decides to. It’s strange, but Segi makes me feel strong. When I’m in her presence, I feel a sturdiness within me. Her fear makes me feel like there is nothing more for me to be afraid of. She said an odd thing yesterday. She said, “Auntie, you are a victor.” I thought she was hallucinating. “Victor?” I asked, but she had drifted into one of her three-minute naps. She wakes from them a little agitated, asking questions like “Where are my wings?” I left the victor matter alone and did not return to it.

  Victor. Nobody has called me a victor before. Even as a name, it’s forceful, packed with hard, uncompromising consonants. It’s impossible to say it without snarling and baring your teeth. I liked that she’d said it, even if it was born of some abstract notion.

  She says the oddest things to her father too. Sometimes, she talks but no sounds come out of her mouth. Then when he tires and heads for the door, her voice returns. “Won’t you hear what I have to say, Father?” she asks. Baba Segi returns to her side and the wordless chatter begins again.

  “The doctors say it is to be expected,” he mutters, his voice heavy with gloom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  OUT

  IYA SEGI SAT CALMLY in the pickup but there was madness crawling beneath her skin. She had heard that people on the verge of traipsing naked into the streets often complained of a persistent march of ants all over their bodies. The truth was that it was Baba Segi’s joy that nibbled at her limbs, his smile, pure and trusting, like that of the lamb skipping to the slaughterhouse.

  The instructions had not been complicated: take this appointment card; wake up early on Wednesday morning; dress yourself and accompany me to the doctors; if they ask you any questions, keep nothing from them.

  Iya Segi had etched out her own plan. There would be no questions, only answers. She wouldn’t wait for the long rope of truth to be pulled from her; she would volunteer it willingly and without persuasion, even if it made Baba Segi force his head through the hospital walls. The truth, they say, cannot hide itself forever. Even if it conceals itself at the bottom of a well, one day, drought will reveal it. Bolanle’s barrenness had brought drought.

  Both doctors were waiting in the consultation room. Breaking the news to Baba Segi was a tricky task and Dr. Dibia wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. Did he just say it matter-of-factly? Bend his tone as if someone had died? Or was he to say it like Baba Segi should be grateful that he was born in the age of medical advancement? After all, he could have gone through his life not knowing.

  As Dr. Usman reached for the door handle, Dr. Dibia said he might learn something if he stayed and listened in. Dr. Usman smelled the fear behind his colleague’s arrogance so he retraced his steps to the examining table and folded his arms. He concealed a wry smile when Dr. Dibia poked his head out of the door to invite Baba Segi and Iya Segi in.

  “Doctors, this is my first wife. No man could have a better one.” His face shone with pride.

  “Very good. Mrs. Alao, thank you for coming. Please sit comfortably.” Dr. Dibia was slightly embarrassed by his patient’s effervescence. Things would have been so much easier if he had been in a more subdued mood. He decided to dive right in. “Mrs. Alao, I’m sure you are aware of the investigation we have been doing into the younger Mrs. Alao’s difficulties with conceiving.”

  “Mrs. Bolanle Alao,” Dr. Usman offered.

  Iya Segi carefully undid the knot in her head-tie and unraveled it to reveal a head of uneven, graying hair. Then she painstakingly folded the scarf into eight equal parts and laid it carefully on the doctor’s table so it jutted out no further than any of the books. With equal precision, she stood and dropped to her knees. The doctors looked at each other. Baba Segi’s cheerfulness dissolved into embarrassment.

  “My lord”—she turned to her husband—“words do not decide whether or not they will be uttered but our people say the day always comes when words themselves will have their say.” Her gaze returned to the doctors.

  Again, the doctors glanced at each other. Dr. Dibia sat back in his chair and sniffed, making his glasses slide down the bridge of his nose.

  “I know the reason why Bolanle has not conceived,” she continued, “and it is not one that a thousand doctors can cure. Yam cannot cook itself. It needs a careful hand that will slice it and expose it to raging heat.”

  Baba Segi gasped in confusion.

  “I am not quite sure I understand you.” Dr. Dibia wanted Iya Segi to spell things out for her husband.

  “That is because you are young and do not know the ways of the world. I was a young wife when I found myself in a cloud of sadness. I was childless and restless. Every time I saw a mother rocking a baby on her back, my nipples would itch to be suckled. My husband and I tried everything. He did not let my thighs rest but leaped between them every time dusk descended upon us. Even his mother was hungry for his seed to become fruit. Then, I had an idea. It was a sinful idea but I knew it would bring my sadness to an end. In fact, it was more than an idea; it promised to be a solution. If my husband did not have seed, then what harm could it do to seek it elsewhere?” She shrugged her shoulders. “So, I found seed and planted it in my belly.”

  Baba Segi turned his side to his wife and looked at her through one eye only. His arm was raised in defense as if to shield him from the odious suggestions hidden in her parables.

  “Are you saying your husband is not the biological father of your first child?” Dr. Dibia asked. Eureka!

  “Not my first, not my second.”

  Baba Segi ducked as if someone had taken a swing at his face. “Woe! It cannot be!”

  “And the other wives? What about their children?” Dr. Dibia asked. It might as well come out in one big gush; better that than in dribs and drabs.

  “I misled them. Perhaps if I had not shown the second one my way, this shame would have come out sooner. But you see, they were so desperate to be fruitful. They knew that my husband valued children above all things, so when I saw their desperation, I took pity on them and shared my secret. They also followed the same path.”

  Baba Segi whined like a dog caught wolfing down his master’s dinner.

  “So you are saying none of Mr. Alao’s children are his?”

  “Not one of them.” She reached out her hand to touch her husband but he leaped from it.

  Dr. Usman stood up straight. “Mrs. Alao, you have said quite enough. Thank you. Perhaps it is better that you head home now.” He could see that Baba Segi was set to explode.

  Iya Segi rose and left the room with peace in her eyes.

  Baba Segi’s head was bowed, bent right over like a dying branch before it offers its leaves to the next gust of wind. His tears hit the floor with a quiet splat.

  “Is there anything we can offer you, sir? A soft drink, perhaps?” Dr. Dibia asked.

  Dr. Usman mouthed the words “Let’s leave him” to his colleague and tiptoed out of the room. Dr. Dibia took all the sharp instr
uments from his table and hurried after him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  TAJU

  THE RICH HAVE FAT BELLIES. They swagger until the world swings to one side. They see more food and they lunge at it. They have a permanent hunger, you see. For the poor, it’s different. They’ve never known the taste of fullness, so they scramble for leftovers, not because they are hungry but because they want to know fullness, the contentment that makes the rich think the world is theirs.

  I like to speak in parables. I spend a few minutes of every day pondering the unequal balance of this world. Except most of the time, my parables are too complicated, too subtle, misleading even. I want to turn them around in my head but my boss returns and I must turn my mind to the road. I am not paid to be a thinker. I am a driver.

  I shouldn’t love this job like I do; every hair on my body should reject it after what happened to my brother. “The bus drove him to his death and you have set your palms on the same wheel,” my mother cries. She means it as a cautionary tale but I tell her I drive a pickup, not a bus.

  You see, Faruku—the brother she speaks of—was a son worth weeping for. His skin was so yellow that he should have been born at a time when the cold harmattan winds did not ruffle the sands. He wore his shirt open to his belly button and silver chains hung from his neck. Women sought to be with him; men thought him slick—a dandy. He thought he was slick too; he sported a wry smile and his tongue would grow taut and hover between his lips when he spoke to women.

  Like most young men did when they were reaching the age of wisdom, Faruku left our village to seek his fortune in Ibadan. Most of the men from Olugbon did the same: they worked or trained all week and only returned to the village on weekends to visit their families. Faruku showed he was our father’s son and did something special: he trained as a driver and before long, he got a job driving public buses for a well-known transport company. I won’t mention the name of this company because you are likely to know it. Everyone knows the owner.

  Sometimes he would drive his bus to our village and throw up the mud that had caked and set over the dust roads. He would show off the bus’s gleaming burgundy and dart carelessly through shrubs and trees. He loved this reckless fun and so did we. Along with the other children, I would run after the bus screaming with excitement while our mothers and fathers rushed to the door mouths to wave. It was hard not to want to be him with his shirt loose, flying like a sail, a matchstick fixed to the corner of his wry smile.

  The women couldn’t wait for him to return on Saturday morning. From Monday to Friday, they showered me with gifts in the hope that I would put in a good word for them. I took their gifts but said nothing. Faruku would make my mouth bleed if he thought I was overreaching myself again. From the day he caught me peeping through his keyhole, he reminded me regularly that I was only nine and he was twelve years older than me. I don’t hold any of his beatings against him. No. He didn’t knock my head against the hard mud walls to hurt my feelings; he did it to put me in my place. Whether it worked or not was a different matter, as peeping through his keyhole was already a habit. Faruku’s keyhole held many pleasures. If anything, I learned the workings of a woman’s body.

  Faruku could have any woman. They would chase him yet he’d make them feel that he was hot and sweaty from exertion. They wanted him and he obliged them, sporting his wry smile as they squatted over his body. I tell you, when a woman wants you, it is better to surrender and let her take you. Afterward, you will feel like a polished coin. Women couldn’t get enough of that yellow skin of his. They couldn’t rest until their breasts were pressed against it, their thighs wrapped around it, their toes curled upon it.

  On this particular weekend, Latundun hadn’t knocked on our front door like she’d done for the last three Saturdays. This was unusual as loose women tended to circulate more efficiently. Faruku kept going to the door to see if she’d arrived, but by afternoon he was restless. He gave me one naira and sent me to find her. “And if she doesn’t follow you straightaway, get on your knees and beg until she does or see what you’ll get!” he snapped as he weighed his balls. I put my slippers on and wondered what was so special about her. To me, she’d been no different from all others. A child simply couldn’t understand these things, you see.

  Latundun gave me her hand and let me drag her and her orange-peel smell into our home. Of course, she had no idea that I’d seen the droop of her breasts or her backside up. Thrice, to be exact. Those times were all I could think of when she touched my hair, fondled my neck and prodded my forehead, then she disappeared behind Faruku’s door. By the time I fit my eye into the keyhole, I was well and truly primed. I was shocked to see Latundun lying there like a slug. But then, as Faruku lifted himself from her, I glimpsed what it was that made men despise her when she went with other men. Curled between her thighs was a flawless snail. Her lips were beautifully defined halves encasing perfect pink. So lost was I in the wonder of the pulsating snail that I forgot to look out for Faruku. He flung the door open and found me standing there with my hand twitching in my shorts. He ignored Latundun’s protestation and kicked me until I was doubled over. I dared not cry out. If our father heard what I’d done, he would make us both sleep in the rain.

  A few months later, Faruku appeared through the corn in the backyard. He was shoeless, sweating from every pore. One arm was clearly broken and blood stained his fingertips. My mother called me into her room and told me to keep his arrival a secret. Her reason was simple: Faruku’s bus had driven him to his death. I thought she must be mad because I knew my brother was alive, albeit distressed. I’d heard him crying in his bedroom, seen him performing absolution as if his sins had to be scraped from his skin.

  The truth came later, weeks after the men in a gray Volvo had barged into our home, stripped Faruku naked and roasted him in full view of everyone in the village. It turned out that, after a night of heavy drinking, Faruku had nodded off at the wheel and driven a busload of passengers into a concrete electricity pole. He killed them all and fled the scene before the police arrived. He’d come home to share what time he had left with his family and his God; he must have known he was little more than a dead man praying.

  The men in the gray Volvo threw four worn tires over his head, sprinkled his hair with gasoline and set him alight. All that yellow skin that the women desired fried and sizzled in its own fat. Our mother watched and even when smoke stung her eyes, she just kept telling hysterical onlookers in her told-you-so voice that it was the bus that drove him to his death. Faruku’s head eventually stopped its manic nodding, at which point Mama’s strength failed her. She collapsed to the warm earth like an old linen cloth.

  We buried Faruku in the cornfields, but we did not mark the grave. It wasn’t a resting place anyone wanted to remember, but it was secretly comforting for Mama to know he was near. I cried until my eyes nearly dropped out of my head. Where were the police? Why was there no investigation, no newspaper articles? Do you know why? I’ll tell you: the rich own this world and the poor are nothing. My view of the world was altered greatly in those weeks. It was the women who surprised me the most. When Faruku was alive, they would not let me rest, but as soon as his body disappeared beneath the soil, they turned their affection to other men, and their younger brothers. It was as if his yellow skin had never existed. They avoided my eyes when they saw me, even Latundun. Women are such fickle creatures! They will eventually destroy this world with their slippery, slimy snails.

  I told myself that Faruku’s death would not be in vain and that I would become everything the world had denied him. Despite being known as younger-brother-of-the-murderer-driver, I wanted to become a driver too. I moved to Ibadan at the age of nineteen, a time when Latundun and her ilk were sprouting gray hairs and dragging callused heels around the village. I responded to a roadside advert and was employed by a man who was starting his own business with money he got from I don’t know where. What business is that of mine? As long as my salary is put in my
hand at the end of every month, nothing else concerns me.

  As soon as I saw my boss, I knew he thought of himself as a rich man. He talked like one, acted like one. He still does. In turn, I play my part as the driver, the poor driver, the driver whose belly will never know fullness. He has been good to me but therein lies my problem—I pity him. What do you expect after we have sat buttock to buttock nearly every day for going on eighteen years? I swear, the only thing worse than a rich man is one who seeks to be a good man.

  A few months after I started working for him, he told me his wife was having trouble conceiving but I said nothing. Days afterward, the wife too started talking to me about her problems. I didn’t say anything to her either but she started giving me gifts and making eyes at me. She told me she didn’t know anybody in Ibadan and she needed a friend. I told her to consider opening a shop alongside other women. Isn’t that the way women make friends and start their idle gossiping?

  Anyway, one day, my boss sent me home to collect a parcel he had left in her care. It was a hot afternoon and my mouth was dry. She was home when I arrived and she let me sit indoors. When she returned from her bedroom, she found me in her husband’s chair. I was a little frivolous in those days but what else would you expect from a young man who didn’t own an armchair? Instead of chiding me, she asked me to remain in the chair and laughed. Next thing I knew, she was sitting on top of me, riding me like a horse. I cannot say I resisted, but remember, my boss’s wife is not a woman of modest proportions. She pinned me down with the strength of three men. I thought maybe I should tell her to stop but she covered my mouth with her hand, or maybe I covered my own mouth. It all happened so long ago. I don’t remember things clearly now. All I know is that it was like stealing the fattest chicken breast from a rich man’s dining table.