The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (2 page)

At the sound of a familiar melody, the children jostled for space in front of the TV and sang along to the theme tune of
Afowofa,
their favorite soap opera:

Like all good soap operas, it ended on a cliff-hanger that sent all the children into a frenzy of cushion slapping and teeth kissing. Baba Segi chuckled. “Tope, Motun, Afolake, Femi, Kole,” he summoned, “come and share the tripe your father left on his plate for you.”

The children assembled at his feet and tore at the tripe until they’d all wrenched a piece for themselves. Kole swallowed his portion in one piece and started hankering for his sister’s.

“Iya Femi, Kole is as thin as an old man’s cane. Why are you not feeding my son?” There was far too much concern in Baba Segi’s voice for anyone to take him seriously.

“I feed him but the food disappears as soon as it reaches his belly. That boy would eat this entire house if you let him.”

“Then cook him this house. And when he has eaten that, serve him the neighbor’s too. My children must eat their fill.
It won’t do for them to look like beggars when their father works so hard to keep the skin of their bellies taut. My Kole must grow big and strong so he can marry many wives and bear many children. Is that not so, Kole?”

“Yes, Baba. I want to be just like you!”

Everyone laughed at Kole’s precociousness so no one heard Iya Femi whisper, “God forbid,” under her breath.

Desperate to return to the center of attention, Baba Segi leaned onto one buttock and let out an explosive fart. The children looked at each other and giggled. Iya Segi, deadpan, inched toward him and asked if he needed some cold water to calm his stomach. Iya Tope stared unblinking at the TV while Iya Femi pinched her nostrils and turned her lips down at the corners. Bolanle, who had been wishing away Baba Segi’s visit that night, shifted a little closer to Iya Tope’s seat. Iya Tope saw her and moved to the center of her seat, as if to make room for her. Iya Femi sneered at the gesture from across the room.

Only Baba Segi’s armchair faced the TV directly; his wives (except Bolanle, who hadn’t earned her right to an armchair) kept their seats at the angle their husband insisted on. Baba Segi liked to observe their every facial expression: how widely they smiled at comedy sketches, how many tears they shed when they were gripped by agonizing dramas. The wives, knowing they were being watched, stared at the screen, never swiveling to look Baba Segi smack in the face.

As the show came to an end, everyone prepared them
selves for the last ritual of the evening: the communal watching of the seven o’clock news. Before the newscaster even opened her mouth, it was obvious that she was a little off balance. She blinked in quick succession and a lump moved up and down her throat as she spoke:

A forty-year-old man named by the police as James Jerome has been detained after the plastic bag he was carrying was found to contain what medical experts have identified as three pre-term fetuses.

In April, the police launched a nationwide appeal for any information on the spate of ritual murderers. In the last year alone, the bodies of eighteen women have been recovered, all with fatal wounds to their pelvic region. The police are confident that Mr. Jerome’s arrest will lead to the arraignment of the entire gang. Mr. Jerome used to work at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, as a mortuary attendant.

Halfway into her final paragraph, a short clip of James Jerome on a bench, handcuffed and dabbing a head wound, appeared on the screen. He didn’t look at all remorseful, just annoyed with himself. Arranged on a piece of white cloth before him were three bloodstained fetuses, all head with scrawny little bodies. They seemed to come alive each time a strong wind lifted flakes of dry blood.

Iya Segi yanked her head-tie off her head and flung it across the room yelling, “Why? Why kill innocent children?” Iya Tope gripped her belly as if she were experiencing labor pains and Iya Femi, who proclaimed Jesus as her lord and savior, didn’t sound at all like a believer. She pointed at the spot
where James Jerome’s face had been and cursed. “May you not miss your way to hell! May sleep possess you on the day Mercy is passing! May you leave your front door open on the day Death is on the prowl!”

The children huddled closer together and concluded that the news had induced maternal madness. Their father sat transfixed. Not caring that they might anger their mothers, the children looked to Bolanle with pleading eyes. Bolanle’s lips trembled and a steady stream of tears trickled down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she got up and she fled the room.

Baba Segi felt his stomach growling and made to grab the bowl of hand-wash water. He missed the bowl completely and covered the cream-colored rug with his undigested supper. Iya Segi and Iya Tope ran to his side and fluttered around him like harried hens. They lifted Baba Segi by his arms and guided him to his bedroom, leaving Iya Femi to salvage the rug with soapy water and Dettol. They left him dozing under a light sheet.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, B
ABA
S
EGI
staggered down the wide corridor that the wives’ bedrooms were cut from. Like he always did, he caressed Iya Segi’s door on the right, touched the knob on Iya Tope’s door on the left. He listened for voices at Iya Femi’s door and finally paused at the threshold of Bolanle’s door. He didn’t knock; he just pushed the door open with his toe and brightened the room with the corridor light.

He wanted to see how much Bolanle had prepared herself for him. He wanted to know if she had covered her nakedness with a cloth, like the other wives did, or if she was wearing those accursed pajamas. His eyes caught the pink sleeves so he let out a short, sharp breath through flared nostrils. He often wondered why a woman would want to go to bed dressed like a man but he never mentioned it lest he appeared uncivilized.

Bolanle sat up in bed. Pretending to be startled, she rubbed her eyes and turned to acknowledge the looming silhouette by her bedroom door. Baba Segi’s large gait was curled inward like a boxing glove. He reached for the door frame and rapped it with his fingernails. “Where did you read that a wife should leave the room when her husband is ailing?” he asked, as if Bolanle’s education meant her every action was dictated by a manual. He didn’t come in or close the door. He wanted every ghost that stalked the corridor to bear witness to her unseemliness.

“Like everyone else, I was sickened by what I saw.” She threw her feet over the side of her bed and tightened a wrapper over her pajama top.

“What do you know about what you saw? A woman cannot know the weight of a child until she has carried one in her womb.”

Bolanle was determined to deny him the pleasure of hurting her feelings. She lifted the bowl from her bedside table and pushed it toward his face so he got a full view of the rich,
oxblood clay. Baba Segi glanced at the bowl and winced. Bolanle threw a handful of nuts into her mouth to conceal her satisfaction.

Baba Segi marched to her side and flopped onto the bed. “Tonight, I have come to
talk,
Bolanle.” His weight made the sprung mattress uneven. “Yes, I have come to talk about the matter that threatens to turn us into enemies.”

“I am listening, Baba Segi. I do not want to be your enemy,” Bolanle said, relieved that sex wasn’t in the cards.

“Your barrenness brings shame upon me. And I am sure that you are saddened by it as well. Every time I have suggested that we consult herbalists and prophets, you have called them con men and rubbished their powers. Well…” He inhaled deeply and raised his eyebrows. “I have thought long and hard about it and I think we should go to the hospital to talk to a doctor.” He paused, expecting Bolanle to reject his proposal, but she just stared ahead, mindlessly throwing nuts into her mouth. “Tomorrow at six
A.M
., then.” With this, he hoisted himself onto his feet using the bedpost for support and prayed that morning would wake them well.

I
DIDN’T JUST HAPPEN
upon this room; I dreamed of the pale green walls before I arrived. Now the built-in wardrobe is mine and so is the ceiling fan. My window looks over a backyard with patchy but neatly trimmed grass. Damp clothes flap in the evening breeze and perfume the air with detergent. On the back wall, an iron drum is darkened from burned refuse. A tap juts from the grass and a weathered concrete slab lies beneath it. It is not a perfect view but it is mine. There are no flowers or trees, no fields, no rolling hills; just a vegetable patch where Iya Femi cultivates Jos peppers. I know that smell well. My mother used to cut them into fried eggs whenever she fell pregnant. The aroma from the frying pan would keep the rest of us on the cusp of a sneeze. Then one day, as Mama sat in the front yard wrinkling her nose, the babies would leak down her leg. Who could blame them? Maybe they heard her relentless nagging and decided that it was better to be born
unformed. I must have covered my ears when I was in her womb, or perhaps she was quieter then.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t only come here to get away from my mother; I came to get away from the feeling of filth that followed me. If I stayed at home, I knew the day would come when Mama would come to my room and find pools of blood at my wrists.

After everything happened, I tried hard to continue being myself but I slowly disappeared. I
became
Bolanle, the soiled, damaged woman. Except that was hard too because Mama kept trying to make me do all the things the old Bolanle would have done. Don’t you think you should get a job, Bolanle? Won’t you apply for this bank job in the newspapers, Bolanle? Didn’t you see the handsome boy that was looking at you, Bolanle! How could I tell her that I had failed to preserve my dignity? I was too ashamed to let her see the fickle shell I’d become. Inevitably, it became unbearable. The more she pushed, the more I resisted. I didn’t want a job! I didn’t want a white wedding! I just wanted the war between who I used to be and who I’d become to end. I didn’t want to fight anymore.

Somehow, it all made perfect sense when I met Baba Segi. At last, I would be able to empty myself of my sorrow. I would be with a man who accepted me, one who didn’t ask questions or find my quietness unsettling. I knew Baba Segi wouldn’t be like younger men who demanded explanations for the faraway look in my eye. Baba Segi was content when I said nothing.

So, yes. I chose this home. Not for the monthly allowance, not for the lace skirt suits, and not for the coral bracelets. Those things mean nothing to me. I chose this family to regain my life, to heal in anonymity. And when you choose a family, you stay with them. You stay with your husband even when your friends call him a polygamist ogre. You stay with him when your mother says he’s an overfed orangutan. You look at him in another light and see a large but kindly, generous soul.

After I first met him, I told my sister, Lara, that I’d found the perfect man for me. “You want to marry a polygamist and be part of a big, ugly family? Mama will go crazy! When will you tell her?” she cackled. She knew that for once it would be me on the receiving end of Mama’s exasperation. Soon, I said.

Mama’s reaction was predictable. She listened impatiently to my intentions and then said she would like to claw out the eyes of this man who had misled me. Just to hear him wail, she added. When she saw that I was unmoved, she tried her unique brand of persuasion. Your future will be futile and uninteresting, she said. Polygamy is for gold diggers and bush dwellers, not educated children brought up in a good Christian home. I thought this was funny because we’d never been churchgoers. Mama said it was shameful for a woman to go to church without her husband and Daddy said Sundays were supposed to be days of rest, as the Bible itself stipulated. By the time Mama was wailing about me embarrassing my bloodline, I was daydreaming about the peace I would have in my husband’s house.

The day Baba Segi came to collect me, I scanned the bedroom I’d shared with my sister for twenty-one years: the powdery fadedness of the aquamarine walls; the window with missing louvers and rusted frames; Lara’s waist beads, hanging from a nail above her bed; the small bookcase displaying my collection of Mills and Boon novels. I would miss the comforting tales of syrupy romance that I immersed myself in. I knew I couldn’t take them all so I picked out six. Lara snorted in her sleep and I wondered what my nights would be like without the constancy of her breathing or her sleep talking. She fought Mama constantly in her nightmares. Whatever courtesies held her back during the day were discarded at nighttime.

It didn’t bother me that I wouldn’t have a tiered wedding cake, confetti, a veil or a highfalutin sermon from a practiced priest. I didn’t expect any nuggets of wisdom from my mother, echoes of “look after our daughter” from my father, and certainly no mad dash for a final car-side embrace from Lara. Since I’d announced my departure date, Lara had withdrawn from me, as if I was a deserter. Every time she walked out of our bedroom, she would shut the door firmly, not slamming it, as I knew she’d have wanted to.

After a brief vote of thanks, Baba Segi waited in the pickup with his driver. I put my bags in the back and sat next to him. I must have looked uncertain as the vehicle picked up speed because Baba Segi turned to me with sympathy in his eyes. “Everyone is prepared for your arrival. Tonight you will sleep in your own bedroom.” He ran his knuckles along my thigh.
The driver’s eyes followed so I lay my knee flush against the car seat. I knew there was something I wouldn’t like about that Taju fellow.

We dipped and dove along the rain-ravaged roads, jolted from side to side until we paused behind a battered blue Mercedes at Agbowo Junction. My insides felt as if they had been stirred with a heavy wooden spoon. While we waited for the traffic warden to wave us through, bread sellers descended on the pickup. Little fingers force-fed the car through the half-open window on the passenger side. I recoiled and leaned heavily on Baba Segi. Every hand clutched a clear polyethylene bag containing a loaf of bread and a bright-colored rectangular label:
GOD’S WILL BREAD. JESUS’S BODY BREAD. HOME OF GODLINESS BREAD. MY DAY OF MIRACLE BREAD. ALTAR OF MERCY BREAD
.

“Give my new wife one loaf each!” Baba Segi said.

The loaves dropped onto my lap and the tang of fermented dough rose to my nostrils. I resisted the urge to shake them onto the foot mat. If Baba Segi had known me better, he’d have realized how much I detested bread, the way it clogged up the throat and hardened the belly. I wondered how much my new family would like it when I appeared, arms laden with warm constipation. Baba Segi pushed twenty-naira notes into the children’s palms and nodded Taju back onto the road.

“There are many things in this life to find joy in, so you mustn’t be downcast. Give some thought to your husband.”

I forced a smile.

Motorcycles darted through the traffic and pumped fad
ing clouds of smoke into our faces. Baba Segi fanned his nostrils and belched. I looked away so I wouldn’t embarrass him. He wasn’t the most sophisticated man but there was time. He wasn’t so old that he couldn’t change. I told myself I would devote time to teaching him good manners.

“We’ll be home soon.” Baba Segi took my left hand into both of his and leaned forward, eagerly setting his eyes on the road ahead like a child.

“I am eager to meet my new family,” I said, but the words came out flat and feeble.

Taju smirked and cast me a mocking side glance. I was right: I didn’t like him.

“
I
am eager for my body to meet yours,” Baba Segi whispered.

After a few more minutes of hand stroking, we turned into a short driveway. There was a tarpaulin sheet draped over four wooden poles. Three girls were playing ten/ten at the gate. They were dressed in smocks cut from the same cheap, checkered fabric. Wisps of braided hair met atop their heads like clasped fingers. As soon as they spotted the pickup approaching, they jumped into the air and cheered. Before long, more children had joined in the father-has-returned chant. An older boy appeared and pulled them out of harm’s way.

The children couldn’t hide their disappointment when they saw me but Baba Segi didn’t appear to notice. He puffed out his chest and told the children to welcome their new auntie. The girls curtsied brusquely and the boys did hurried half bows.

“Baba Segi, they are the very image of you,” I said to him.

“Who will leopard cubs resemble if not the leopard? Let us go indoors and meet the mother-of-the-home and my other wives.” He slid a tinted glass door aside and there they were, his wives, lined up in a row, caught in the act of satisfying their curiosity.

I lowered myself onto my knees and greeted them. Only the one wearing dowdy clothes bothered to open her mouth to return the greeting. Then she glanced quickly at the other wives. The large one rolled onto her toes and gave me a hair-to-shoe examination. I guessed that she was the mother-of-the-home. She stood tall, hands on hips. The wife with crimson lipstick wore three gold bangles that jingled at her wrist. I’d never seen such a contrast in skin color. She might as well have been a zebra. While her forearms had a naturally deep hue, her knuckles were a sandy yellow. Purple veins rippled as she attacked a blackhead on her chin. She hummed a distant response to my greeting. They would need lessons in etiquette too.

I perched on a stool while the wives sat in large armchairs. The children shuffled around the room and whispered among themselves. To ease the uncomfortable silence, I told the wife with two-tone skin how gorgeous her skirt and blouse were. The fabric was 100 percent linen, embroidered with small violets. Even the buttons were shaped like flower buds.

“Uneducated women wear good things too,” she retorted.

I’d have to start by showing them how to take compliments gracefully.

To take my mind off the awkwardness, I looked outside through the tinted glass doors. At that moment, a blazing sun ray struck the darkened glass and filtered into the room through a small chip. The chip broke the beam with its jagged edges and scattered embers all over the room. One landed on my foot like a fallen firefly. Then the sun crept behind a cloud and everything dissolved into hot air. But the chip remained, secretly concealing its radiance behind the small crack, shaped like the tick of a tentative hand. I took it as a sign. I was home.

“Will you women gape at my new wife until I starve to death?” Baba Segi asked.

“Not in this lifetime, my lord.” The eldest wife, Iya Segi, moved quickly for one so generously proportioned. The floor shuddered with her every step. The other wives scurried after her.

L
OOKING BACK, NOW THAT TWO YEARS
have passed, I realize how naïve I was to expect a warmer welcome. I was foolish to think I would just be an insignificant addition when, in reality, I was coming to take away from them. With my arrival, 2.33 nights with Baba Segi became 1.75. His affections, already thinly divided, now had to be spread among four instead of three.

The women have not changed. Iya Tope is still cordial,
even kind when I am alone in the house with her. She doesn’t say much except when she’s talking about hair. Her eyeballs bounce around in their sockets and she uses her fingers to draw the hairstyles in thin air. I often ask her about hairstyles, just to hear a friendly voice that belongs to another grown woman.

The other two are a different story: they still have not forgiven me for the affection Baba Segi has for me. Iya Segi and Iya Femi shout, hiss and spit. They sweep the floor, all the time singing satirical songs to ridicule me. But it’s not their fault that they are so uncouth. Living with them has taught me the value of education, of enlightenment. I have seen the dark side of illiteracy. So deep-seated is their disdain for my university degree that they smear my books with palm oil and hide them under the kitchen cupboards. I have often found missing pages from my novels in the dustbin, the words scribbled over with charcoal.

It is not as if I haven’t tried. I offered to teach the wives to read. Iya Tope was keen to learn but then I found Iya Femi tearing up sheets from the exercise books to line the kitchen cupboards. When I reminded her why I’d bought them, she said I could crawl into the cabinets and teach the insects if I still wanted them to serve that purpose. I have tried to help the children too. I told them to assemble in the dining room so I could read to them. Only Iya Tope’s daughters turned up the first day. The next morning, Iya Segi told me not to be in a hurry, that I should wait until I have my own children if I was so eager to become a teacher. Such is the extent to which they
conceal their yearning for enlightenment. They try to throw me off by making as if their coarseness is a thing of pride but I see through the subterfuge. I will not give up on them. I will bring light to their darkness.

The children follow the examples that their mothers set them. Iya Femi’s sons will not sit on a chair I have vacated. When I walk past them in the corridor, they turn to the wall and flatten themselves against it. No matter how many times I offer them sweets, they still treat me as if I have a contagious disease. I can only wonder what their mother has filled their young ears with. Iya Tope’s girls are polite but distant. Sometimes, they bring my meals to my bedroom door. I know their footsteps. They shuffle around the house together, arm in arm like conjoined triplets.

Iya Segi has two children. The eldest, Segi, is fifteen. She is a dutiful sister to her siblings but I think she is afraid that I have come to take her place. I see her anger when I offer to help the other children with homework. She does not speak to me but I often see her shadow by the door. It is a wonder that she has not told Iya Segi that Akin, her brother, comes to my room when he needs help with his homework. Akin is my favorite. He knocks before he enters my room. He comes to help me if I have heavy bags. As he does with all the other wives, he greets me before I greet him. I have told him he was born with decorum. When he asks what decorum means, I tell him to look it up in the dictionary. He does and thanks me the next day.