Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Family Life,
Domestic Fiction,
Cultural Heritage,
Families,
Nigeria,
Wives,
Polygamy,
Families - Nigeria,
Polygamy - Nigeria,
Wives - Nigeria
Bolanle’s face. She had clearly been extra careful in applying her makeup. Her eyebrows were penciled in so they were symmetrical, not like the slapdash jagged lines Iya Femi sketched on her face. She had lined her lips with burgundy and used the tip of her pinkie to apply a sheer coat of gold to their fullness. Her skirt suit was well cut but two years without soft-scoop ice cream had made the waistband a little roomy. Her toes were edged into a pair of fuchsia slip-ons. Baba’s hands shot upward as if the pink stripes were hot iron rods. Without another word, he stood up straight and marched to his bedroom. Iya Tope too returned to her bedroom. Iya Femi rushed after Segi; she wanted to knowevery detail. Bolanle just smoothed back her hair and smiled.
At six o’clock, Taju rapped on the metal door frame. Bolanle had fallen asleep again. The rapping grew louder until Iya Femi barged in from the kitchen making as much noise as she could with the keys. “I don’t know how some people sleep like they are dead!” She tightened her wrapper over her bosom. “Let me open the door for you, Mr. Taju. Some people do not know that you are a baale-ile, head of your own household.”
“Thank you, Iya Femi. Good morning. I hope you woke well.”
“Let us just say that we woke and leave it at that.” She shot a sweeping side glance in Bolanle’s direction. “What about you?” The padlock came off and then the chain.
“Who would see your face and not wake well anyway?” Taju lowered his voice to a whisper and hummed his appreciation of her bare skin, glistening from the morning humidity.
“Mr. Taju, one would think you had not just prised your body from your wife’s embrace. Anyway, it is good that you have come on time. I think Baba Segi wants to leave early this morning.” They both laughed and Iya Femi walked back into the sitting room with Taju close behind her.
Taju had only ever been late once, about a year before, when he’d arrived with his shirt slung over his left shoulder and nail marks across his forehead. Ejecting a toothpick from between his teeth and pushing it into his Afro, he claimed that he’d beaten his wife senseless for letting his only son suck on a coin. This happened about a week after a male senatorslapped a female colleague. The slap had resonated through all the quiet meeting rooms of the senate building and into the heart of every man on the street. It seemed to awaken a loosely fettered beast. Of course, the male senator blamed the devil for his actions and the two senators were soon seen embracing on national television. The same could not be said for the man on the street. Men were slapping their womenfolk as if it had become a national sport. At every street corner, disgruntled wives swung suitcases onto their heads, hoping to be persuaded to return home. At the marketplace, the Igbo fabric merchants tugged women roughly by the sleeve. Peeved taxi drivers prodded the heads of mothers who bargained with them; young girls were assaulted and stripped naked in the streets. Even in the labor wards baby girls were frowned upon by their fathers. Taju too was inspired to throw his best punch.
When Baba Segi finally summoned Bolanle, she was fast asleep, dreaming of Segun, a boy from her past. It was the same dream she always had. He was standing in the middle of a busy dance floor beckoning to her. She’d start making her way toward him but then he’d reach into his breast pocket and throw a fist full of small golden nuggets high into the air. Suddenly, all the women in the disco would abandon their partners for Segun’s side and Bolanle would then be left standing there, unable to make out his physique underneath the mountain of miniskirts and low-cut tops.
“We must be there by six fifty!” Baba Segi opened the door slightly, rammed his words in and disappeared.
Before Bolanle could finish fastening the buckles on her sandals, she heard the front door slam shut. Baba Segi was