Frustration had spurred me in ’98.
If you don’t do something about it, I will. The words I uttered that spurred my mother to challenge my father when I returned home that May, words I would come to deeply regret; it was the only way to guarantee she would stand up for herself.
But before I spoke those words, I ate the sweet spicy jollof rice my mother made, savoury steam rising from the pile of grains on my plate.
‘Don’t choke yourself o,’ she said, laughing as I wolfed down the meal.
In the kitchen, she reminisced about her own time as a student, her face aglow with the memories. ‘In fact, Adaugo and Chinelo—’ she said, in the midst of conversation, then froze, realising her error.
She blamed herself for Aunty Chinelo’s death, for not doing something to prevent it, even though it had little to do with any inaction on her part. Childbirth took many. But Aunty Ada blamed my mother for some reason neither of them would share, and so she blamed herself.
But it was more than Aunty Chinelo’s death this time. I felt it in the way her frame trembled, in the trepidation I’d sensed the moment I walked through the door. I led my mother out of the kitchen, keeping my arm around her. When we were settled in one of the gold-threaded settees in our living room, I held my mother’s eyes and asked her again, ‘What happened? What did he do?’
Divorce was a cardinal sin; to deliberately seek to put asunder what He had joined together was to fault God himself. Marriage is till death do us part.
When the rumour first broke in July ’96 that one of the church’s women leaders, Sister Bolatito, was to divorce her husband, the adults were left stunned. They gathered at Aunty Ada’s to discuss it.
‘It’s not possible,’ Aunty Chinelo insisted, folding her arms.
‘She wouldn’t be the first or the last,’ Aunty Ada countered.
‘But she’s a church leader,’ Aunty Chinelo whispered as though imagining the fact itself made her co-guilty of the sin.
‘It’s probably a lie. She and her husband wore matching aso-ebi to church four Sundays ago,’ my mother said.
Aunty Ada stared at her. ‘Obianuju please be serious!’
‘Will her family allow it?’ Aunty Chinelo asked, looking between them for an answer.
‘She has her own money. It shouldn’t be much of a problem for her,’ my mother answered, sounding to me like she wished she could switch positions with Sister Bolatito. Sister Bolatito was from an influential family and had inherited several properties upon her father’s death; he’d left a will behind.
‘But what about the church? She’s a leader, she’s even a member of the Marriage Council,’ Aunty Chinelo insisted. ‘Do you think people will insist that they remove her from her positions?’
‘Why? Did she kill anyone?’ Aunty Ada said.
‘Don’t worry. Nothing will happen,’ my mother concluded.
‘Even when our parents are going the wrong way, we must encourage them to live godly lives,’ our Sunday school teacher said the very next Sunday, staring pointedly at Sister Bolatito’s daughter.
By August, the pastor had begun to receive conveniently anonymous messages and warnings of the church descending into the ways of the world, rewarding the fallen with leadership positions.
The climax came, befittingly, at a women’s general meeting; one that would end in a brawl. A group – seeking revenge for personal grievances – demanded Sister Bolatito’s immediate removal from her position. My mother returned home that day with a torn blouse, missing braids and lipstick smears. For years, the image would be imprinted in my subconscious; the ruin of my mother’s blouse, waving like miniature flags, a warning of what happened when women sought to leave their marriages.
The child looked just like him, my mother said, a tiny replica.
I stared at her, my mouth slightly open, my brain suspended by shock; at no point had it occurred to me that my father would go that far.
A son. My father had a son by a woman that was not my mother. And her people had come to demand that he marry her traditionally.
‘Divorce him,’ I said, and even I couldn’t believe the words that had come out of my mouth.
‘Divorce him,’ I repeated, shrugging off the instinctive guilt. ‘We can talk to Mama Bidemi’s son, he’s a lawyer, he can hel—’
My mother raised a palm, closed her eyes and shook her head rapidly. ‘Stop. Stop it.’
I held her gaze, unflinching. ‘If you don’t do something about it, I will.’
We were the reason my mother had stayed: I knew it, she knew it, we all knew it. ‘Think about your children,’ was how my grandmother chastised her. It wasn’t only that my father held the financial reins – he could afford to send us to the best schools, to feed and clothe us – but also what would happen when he passed. ‘Protect what belongs to your children.’
At my grandfather’s funeral in ’95, my mother had wept loudly, rolling herself in the dirt, muddying the ankara material she wore with his best picture printed on it. But at the meetings afterwards to discuss what little property he’d held that survived the war, she’d not bothered to participate.
‘Everything will go to your uncles,’ she’d explained when I asked. To my teenage mind, it had seemed unfair, heinous even, but she’d seemed unbothered, happy to let her brothers have it all − or perhaps I’d mistaken resignation for indifference.
‘Who are you planning to leave all this wealth you’re accumulating to?’ Elder Ijeagha, a distant relative, asked my father not too long after the funeral, gesturing at our ostentatious living room with his nose, his most prominent feature, which he couldn’t keep out of other people’s business. My mother was away and I was glad she couldn’t overhear their conversation. ‘You better find a son.’
My father said nothing.
If you don’t do something about it, I will. I threw down the gauntlet knowing my mother would have no option but to take it up.
The horn of my father’s Jeep made a distinct sound, a blaring that announced itself and the size of the vehicle that carried it. Given to extravagance, he acquired a new vehicle every year, sometimes he sold off a vehicle or two to create a balance, but annually, we memorised the sonance of a new horn. When the beep came, demanding at the gate, we hurried to alter ourselves; turning off the television, changing clothes, hiding in our rooms.
This time, when the blaring came, days later than expected, I felt excitement rather than trepidation. My skin prickled with anticipation, like a soldier eagerly awaiting war.
My father had a ritual: he returned from travel, he took a long shower, he ate, then he took a nap. Only after all this did the rest of his day begin, and that was usually when my mother approached him to discuss anything of importance.
I slept off watching the clock, waiting for the moment to arrive. In my sleep, an earthquake shook our sphere, seismic tremors running through the walls and foundation of our home leaving visceral cracks in the blocks until they gave way, collapsing in heaps of concrete, twisted metal and dust.
Voices pulled me from fitful sleep.
