The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (6 page)

“What are we going to do?” Iya Femi asked. She locked her fingers over the dome of her head. “We must do something quickly!”

“Have we not done enough already? I don’t think I want to be part of this anymore,” I said. I don’t know what came over me.

Iya Femi picked me up with her eyes and threw me to the floor.

Iya Segi shook her head and belched. “Listen to the fool who begs for crumbs from Bolanle’s table! The lickspittle! It is all right for you to say you do not want to be part of us, after you have benefitted from my wisdom all these years. Now you wish to remove yourself? Well, you can’t! You are bound to us. We are all bound together! And if you dare to open that stupid mouth of yours, I will ruin you myself. I will tell my husband things that will make him wring your neck in your sleep. Go! Take your small brain out of my sight. Imbecile!”

I left them in the sitting room so I don’t know what they are planning. I fear for Bolanle but I am a coward. I know I should show Bolanle the arm of friendship. I should not pretend she is a stranger when the other wives are around. I should tell her to be careful but I can’t. I am afraid of these women. I will just keep quiet and watch. What else can a shit packer do?

I
F
B
OLANLE HAD KNOWN
what lay in wait for her, perhaps she wouldn’t have ventured to spend so long in the market, wandering from stall to stall. Before she spotted the small crowd gathered in front of her home, she smelled Mama Elepa’s groundnuts burning. As Bolanle moved closer, she was sure she could make out Mama Elepa’s fragile frame on their veranda, bent over from decades of carting firewood. Most of the women she saw were standing with their hands clasped behind their backs. Some had their hands on their heads and were hopping from leg to leg as if their bladders held them hostage. Taju was leaning against a pillar scratching his chin.

Iya Segi’s voice was loudest. “Woe,” she yelled.

Iya Femi was screaming in tongues. Iya Tope had an arm around Segi but the arm was limp like a wet cloth. Segi’s eyes were red from weeping. Everyone looked around nervously.

“
She
wants to kill him!” Iya Segi pointed when Bolanle was within a few steps of the commotion.

“What did my father ever do to her? I am not married yet. She wants to kill my father with
juju
before he walks me down the aisle!” Segi flopped to the concrete floor and the spectators standing by rushed to her aid.

“Of what use is she? She cannot have children. Her womb is dead. She wants to kill our husband to save herself from shame. I am too young to be a widow,” Iya Femi added.

As soon as Bolanle stepped onto the concrete floor of the veranda, the crowd went quiet. The bystanders parted and created a path for her. When she got to the sitting room, Baba Segi was in his armchair. His arms were slung over the sides, his great legs stretched out in front of him like logs.

“Good evening, Baba Segi. Why have you not changed your clothes?” Bolanle asked.

“Where have you been?”

“It is not even six yet. I am here on time like I said I would be.”

“The question I am asking is: where have you been?” His voice was deep and hollow, like the aftermath of a drumbeat.

“So I can’t even leave the house now?” It was a daring response.

In a flash, Baba scrambled up the back of his seat and leaped into the air like a gorilla in flight. He landed bang in front of Bolanle and gripped her throat with both hands. He squeezed hard and shook her, pressing his thumbs on her windpipe. “Who are
you
asking questions? Do I look like a
fool? You said you were going to your father’s house. Taju has just come back from there. Nobody there has seen you today! Where have you been?”

“The market! I went to the market.” Her voice was hoarse from the pressure. “You can kill me, Baba Segi, but I only went to the market. Look at the bowl I bought.”

Baba Segi searched her face and thought how strange it was that there was no fear in it, just pain. He glanced to the side and saw the plastic bag a few inches from her open palm. He let his arms drop to his sides.

Bolanle collapsed onto the floor.

Akin made to run toward Bolanle but Iya Segi’s arm shot out from her side and held him in his tracks. His mother’s arm was steadfast so he bowed his head and ran down the road.

Iya Tope knelt beside Bolanle. With Baba Segi towering over them, she slapped Bolanle’s cheeks lightly. “Tell him, Bolanle. Tell him if you did it. Tell him. He will forgive you. We have all offended our husband before. He always forgives us. Confess to him.”

Bolanle spluttered and grabbed her throat. The dry weather had split her lips and a solitary droplet of blood trickled from one of the creases in them.

“Tope, bring me some water.” Iya Tope didn’t take her eyes off Bolanle until her daughter returned with half a plastic cup of warm, recently boiled water. Iya Tope sprinkled some on Bolanle’s face and placed the cup to her lips.

Bolanle looked up at the woman cradling her face in the crook of her arm. “Confess to what?”

Baba Segi marched to the stool beside his armchair and produced a see-through polyethylene bag. “This!” He spat, pinching the bag at the corner farthest away from what it contained. At the bottom of the bag, looking vaguely surprised by all the attention it was getting, was the head of a decomposed rodent, a large bush rat perhaps. “Tell me why I found this in my bedroom!”

There were bits of dried flesh stuck to it. Its mouth was bound together by red thread. A four-inch nail had been knocked into the crown of its head, shattering the skull at the point of entry, then driven all the way in until it protruded out of the rodent’s throat.

Bolanle’s face hardened. “How can I confess to something I know nothing about? Strangle me. Kill me. But first ask yourself if I would descend this low? Would I descend to this? Would I touch something so revolting? Do you really think I would go to a
babalawo,
let alone ask for something that would harm you? If I didn’t want to be with you, would I not just leave?”

Iya Segi was by the door. She saw the opening and jumped in. “Who can tell why she would do this, Baba Segi? She wants to kill you first and then leave. She is a destroyer of homes! Why didn’t she go to the abattoir if she was thirsty for blood? There is no blood for you here, Bolanle. There is no blood for you here.
Kruuk
.” She paused and turned to Iya Tope. “We have been suspicious for some months now, haven’t we, Iya Tope?”

Iya Tope looked up at the older wife. She opened her
mouth but no words came out. She tried again but her lips just opened and closed like a fish anticipating a maggot.

“Iya Segi, I have never desired blood in my life.” Bolanle felt tears welling up in her eyes but she blinked them back.

“Then why was
this
found in your bedroom?” Baba Segi’s voice was calmer now. He was beginning to see that things didn’t quite add up but he decided to see it through so he could observe her reactions. “Stand up and come and see for yourself.
I
will not touch it.” He sighed with relief when Bolanle crawled toward whatever it was that Baba Segi had pushed beneath a stool. In a small calabash, there was a spool of once-white thread half-immersed in a pool of blood.

“Unspeakable!” Bolanle hissed. She turned and looked up at Baba Segi. “Do you think so little of me?”

Baba Segi looked away but Iya Segi would not let it go. “Oh, it is unspeakable now you’ve been found out! Who would have known that all those times you left the house, you were visiting a
babalawo
? Who would have thought that a
graduate
would stoop to something so
unspeakable
?” Iya Segi pronounced the word “unspeakable” like she was swallowing a single ear of corn. A clucking started deep within her double chin.

Bolanle put one hand on the side of her neck and grimaced. She let her head roll round in a full circle before turning to her husband. She shook her head and coughed to clear her throat. “I have nothing to say, Baba Segi, except that I do not know where these things came from. There must be some mistake. I have never seen anything like this before.”

To the small crowd that had gathered in the sitting room, Bolanle said, “I say, I have never seen these things before in my life. Neither do I want to, ever again. Why would I want to kill my husband? If I become tired of my husband, there isn’t a policeman in the world that can force me to stay with him. I am here because I want to be here!” She exhaled long and meaningfully. “I have lived in his house for two years and I want to continue to stay if my husband will have me. Only today, we went to the doctor to see how I could bear his children. I do not want to die barren. How is it profitable for me to become a young widow? Why would I want
my
child or any of these young children to be fatherless?” Her hands reached to brush Femi’s head but he ducked.

Everyone looked on in sympathy and Segi wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. Iya Segi read the situation and stole into the crowd like a giant hen skulking to a secret stash of corn.

Just over his breath, Baba Segi said, “Bolanle, you can go to your room.”

To everyone’s surprise, Iya Femi catapulted herself toward him from the edge of the crowd. “Go to her room?” she shrieked. “Is it after she has killed us all that you will do the right thing? If this woman is allowed to sleep in this house, I will sleep outside with my sons. I will hold a night vigil and pray her out.” She bounced on the balls of her feet, her upstretched arms exposing clumps of armpit hair.

“Iya Femi, you can sleep in the gutter if you want to.” Baba Segi’s voice was calm but anger had returned to his eyes.
“That is where you came from. My sons were not born to sleep in the gutter so they cannot follow you. Iya Tope, take my sons to bed. This woman’s mouth will soon get what it deserves.”

“Anyone who touches my sons may not live to tell the tale!”

“Has this woman’s head scattered that she now scrubs my mouth? Have my words become so insignificant that they can now be contested?” He opened one of his hands to the crowd as if they would deposit the answers to his questions into his palm. “Iya Segi! Iya Segi!”

Perched on a crumbling concrete block by the side wall, Iya Segi remained still until several voices echoed her husband’s call. “I am here, my lord!”

“This house is a mess. Clean it!”

“Right away, my lord.”

Their voyeuristic thirsts quenched, everyone got the message and began to agitate for a speedy exit. The spectacle had been gratifying, the outcome glorious.

B
ABA
S
EGI COULDN’T BEAR
to stay at home that evening so he drove himself to Ayikara. “I could have killed her with my bare hands. My own wife! It was as if a wild beast from inside me wanted to suck blood from her throat.” Baba Segi didn’t want the three men in the far corner of the shack to hear him. It didn’t matter that there was an empty bottle of Teacher’s whiskey on the table in front of them or that the few phrases
they exchanged were slurred and incoherent. This was a matter Baba Segi did not want to discuss with strangers.

“And you say she did not fight back?”

“No, she was calm. What fight can a fly fight when it is in the clutches of a tarantula?” Baba Segi muttered and looked away.

“Calm is not the reaction of someone who has been caught red-fingered. Remind me. How did your other wives react to this discovery? You mentioned that—”

“That is what I don’t understand.” Baba Segi cut him short. “Apart from one of them who seemed as perplexed as I was, the other two were adamant that Bolanle had planted the
juju
. They were convinced that she was guilty.”

“Hmm.” Teacher smirked and nodded knowingly. “What are relations like between Bolanle and these other wives? There must be a reason why they were fighting tongue and nail for her to confess.”

“Well, in recent months, I myself have been hostile to the young woman but only because of this question of her barrenness. Her unwillingness to submit to my earlier solutions also hardened my heart. I have not been warm to her. It has always been hard for me to hide what is inside. I think perhaps my wives noticed this and copied me.”

“So they want you to send her away and you think it a reaction to
your
unhappiness.”

“I know they do. They said so in my presence, in
her
presence.”

“Why have they not attempted to mediate? From what
you’ve always said about your first wife, I had come to believe she was of a more agreeable temperament.”

“I would be lying if I said she wasn’t. That woman knows every thought that enters my head. She knows when I am thirsty and when my belly is full. She knows I have been disgruntled about Bolanle and I suspect she just wants to relieve me of my troubles.”

“But planting
juju
is excessive. Why use a hammer to swat an insect?” As if to illustrate his point, Teacher elegantly flicked a fly from his shot glass.

“It must have seemed reasonable to her given how displeased I’ve been. I agree with you though. It was as if Esu himself came to dine in my house yesterday evening. I tell you, I could have killed Bolanle.” Baba Segi folded his arms and shook his head.

“Listen, Baba Segi, perhaps you are partly to blame for what has happened. Your partiality is the cause of these problems. Women do not hesitate to become cannibals when they are hungry. That is why I have never kept one. Some people laugh about this behind my back but what they don’t know is this: he who does not have a head has no need for a cap.”

“Indeed.”

“But back to the trouble in your household: it is my belief that the solution lies with you. And I can tell you that her being educated is not helping matters either.” His finger rapped on the side of his glass.

“I don’t understand.”

Teacher took a sip from his whiskey and winced when
he swallowed. “What I mean is that she is different. It may well be that your other wives are slightly
uncomfortable
about this. They may think it gives her an edge.” Teacher chose his words carefully.

“What sort of edge? I do not sleep with any one more than the others!”

“It is more complicated than that. It could be that they are envious.”

“That, I can rule out.” Baba Segi was afraid that Teacher would suggest that he too was prone to such.

A smile tickled the corners of Teacher’s lips but he didn’t submit to it. “If you are sure that this is not the case then it all lies in your hands. Treat your wives equally. Blacken the kettle as you blacken the pots.”