You and I are seated under the agbalumo tree. The silence hangs like a cobweb between us and we talk only with our eyes. I see the rage in yours. Not the kind of rage that makes a person foam at the mouth, hairs standing like a cat about to strike. No, it is the type that makes you swallow saliva, waiting and searching for the fleshiest spot to bite. There are so many things I want to tell you but my throat feels as if a ball of cotton wool is stuck in it.
I waited for you.
Even when the letters stopped coming, I still waited. I kept my hope alive, dragging out the carton under the bed every night to reread all your letters. The tears rolled off my face and dotted the paper like the small circles dotting your ‘i’s.
“It’s for our good, Tinuke. I have to go and hustle,” you’d assured me that night, your eyes shining brightly in the candlelight. You’d gotten your visa to Scotland that day and you bubbled with happiness. Your mother clasped her hands on her chest and then waved them in the air in jubilation.
“My pikin dey go London. Ah! Oluwa E ma seun o, thank you Lord.”
You’d looked on amused. You’d corrected her several times that London wasn’t the same as Scotland but she never listened.
I became the wife of Londoner and Iya Risi who sold yams across the street started to hike her prices when I went to her stall. They all thought you were already sending gbemu home and I was just being stingy.
Your mother was nice at first, very nice. She would cook and clean before I got back from my salon, welcoming me with “iyawo mi, my wife.” But as the days stretched into months and months into years, she became grumpy. She complained that the house was too quiet.
“A house without children is like a fallow farmland,” she’d grumbled.
I wondered if it was my fault that I did not get pregnant in the eight months of our marriage before you travelled.
You’d promised that morning at the airport, in that endearing tone that always weakened my legs. “I will send for you soon, Atinuke mi owon.”
I missed you most at night, when I ached for warmth, your warmth. I tossed until the sheets were rumpled, and then put the pillow between my legs. During the day, I ignored the ache and immersed myself in braiding and perming hair, to forget.
Time became divided into two – the period you were here and after you left. When a customer complimented my ankara blouse and skirt and asked when I bought it, I said, “It was a year after my husband left.”
The woman had seen the perfect opening to pry and so she pressed on –
“And when is that husband of yours sending for you? He fit don marry oyinbo o.”
My heart skipped out of beat and the comb in my hand fell. I pressed my lips tightly and closed my ears to her nonsense talk. Amebo oshi, she’s only envious of me.
It had been five long years since you left and I pined for you. That was why one day, when the man from the post office parked his okada outside the house, I flew out and shouted in his face – “Where is it? Where is it?”
The man had looked confused, “Where is what?” he asked. Before he realised that I was pointing at the letter in his hands.
Six months! Only one hundred and eighty days and you, Temidayo would be back. The other parts of the letter where you wrote about the hard times – the streets you swept and the toilets you cleaned, did not matter to me. I just wanted my husband back, money or no money.
I was so happy that morning that I did not go to open my salon. I started cleaning the house, making everything perfect for you even though your arrival was still afar. Your brother arrived that evening to visit Mama. He said the house was too dull for him that we should go out and flenjo. I thought, what the hell, I wanted to celebrate your homecoming. So, we went to Sweet n Hot, that nightclub on the Island.
You’d often teased me about my soft belly that couldn’t hold alcohol. And that night, I drank three bottles of Baileys, lost in its ice-creamish taste. At midnight, we left the club and headed home. My legs buckled under me and I fell on the steps. That was my last memory.
I woke with a blinding headache the next morning. When I saw Deji beside me on the bed, I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. If Mama had heard, she paid no heed. The gown I wore was bundled around my waist. I shook Deji and he responded with a drunken grunt. His zipper was open. When he finally roused, we avoided each other’s eyes.
“Nothing happened. If it did, I would have remembered,” he mumbled as he left.
I became numb. I drifted with the wind, stepping nimbly around the house. Then, I began to get fat. I was eating too much, I thought and decided to start a diet. Mama chuckled when she saw me eating only vegetables and water.
“The baby is surely a boy. I can feel it in my bones, walahi!”
“Baby? What baby?” Alarmed, I clutched at my stomach and in that moment it hit me hard.
“Whether he is fathered by my older or younger son he is still my grandchild,” Mama said calmly and left me staring after her.
I wanted to run and hide before you came but Mama stopped me. She said my baby was not a bastard. “He shall be the aarole of Odejimi’s family.”
I die several times when I remember the laughter dying in your eyeballs as you came in from the airport and my protruded belly greeted you. You’d gone inside Mama’s room and stayed there for hours while I paced restlessly on the veranda. Through the door, I heard your animal cries of pain and anger and Mama’s hushed voice pacifying you.
You came out, eyes bloodshot, Mama on your heels. “Go and talk with your husband,” she said, pushing you towards me.
Now, under the tree we sit, our eyes doing all the talking while our tongues lay heavy in our mouths. You clear your throat and I look up expectantly.
“When is it due?”
It? I do not understand for a moment until I realise you are referring to the baby.
“March,” I answer.
The child will arrive with the early rains, wetting the parched earth. Your hand stretches over the distance between us and covers mine.
Yes, the rains will water our love again.
Tags: Family, Flash Fiction, Love, Nigerian Literature, Scandal
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