‘I have to totally give up working at the clinic for that? Isn’t being a doctor commendable enough? I’m literally saving lives!’
From Soye’s perplexed expression, I could tell he’d expected me to give in easily. ‘Eriife, we both committed to making sacrifices when we started on this journey. Why the sudden change in behaviour?’
I pushed out of my seat and said, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m no longer the naive girl you married, Soye. I didn’t realise you expected me to lay down my life as a stairwell to your ambitions.’
My father called me the next day. I watched his number on my screen for several seconds before it shrunk to a missed call bubble. I missed his calls more often since his remarriage five years ago.
His new wife looked nothing like my mother. Perhaps if she had, it would have been easier to forgive, to understand his decision to finally move on. But to see him with a woman who was so unlike her, a woman from his tribe, approved by his mother, made the sore of my mother’s passing fester even more. I’d been conspicuously absent on their wedding day and my siblings had called until my phone’s battery ran out. My brother, who was a year younger, had sent a text that said: ‘You’re so childish. Grow up!’
‘Never allow a woman to disrespect you,’ was what my grandmother – my father’s mother – used to say. As children, my brother had annoyed me by breaking an expensive porcelain doll my mother had bought me. He’d shattered it into hued pieces that decorated my bedroom floor. I’d charged at him, spurred by fury boiling like lava, and landed a slap across his face.
He let out a loud wail and my grandmother rushed out of her bedroom to examine the finger-shaped welts rising on his skin. Then she went into her room again; when she returned, she held a long thin stick. She handed it to my brother and said, ‘Beat her. Beat her now! Never allow a girl or woman to disrespect you.’
My screams alerted my father and he stepped out of his study; my mother had gone to the market that morning. He’d collected the stick from my brother and pulled him aside, then he’d asked his mother ‘why?’ in a tone that sounded more like a plea than a reprimand. He was soft-spoken and gentle, a man not given to conflict and who never seemed to comprehend how others could muster the strength for it.
It was the same way he reacted on the days she taunted and harassed my mother about having only one son, pushed her to try for more children even though the doctor had warned of the consequences. What if something were to happen to my brother? What would our family do then?
Hypertensive cardiomegaly. I’d overheard my mother and Aunty Uju discussing it, arguing about it. My mother was trying for another child and Aunty Uju kept crying that she was sick. My father talked of moving countries but my mother was reluctant to leave my grandmother alone, reluctant to see my father lose the ground he’d gained at his workplace, to become a second-class citizen. It was how she was – selfless, always thinking of others.
My father’s text came in: ‘I called to check on you. I miss you. I’m sorry.’
34
Juggernaut
Chandeliers dangled from the ceiling like upturned lit wedding cakes, casting the hotel ballroom in an iridescent glow. Voices hummed, barely taking note of the keynote speaker, a seasoned expert on girl child issues in the country. In the past, I’d avoided such gatherings, but with Soye’s insistence that I play the role of a political spouse more, I’d decided to attend.
‘WOMEN IN POLITICS: How We Can Play A Bigger Role,’ the banners mounted on the stage and outside the hall announced, but as I’d expected, it had turned into a social gathering of political wives eager to make the next connection.
At my table were four other women, one of whom was Chief Mrs Abisola Aluko, a woman considered by many to be a political juggernaut, the power behind her husband. A descendant of a moneyed royal bloodline and married to old Brazilian settler Lagos money, her father had served a minister during the First Republic, her father-in-law was the largest shareholder in one of the country’s largest oil companies, her late mother a former iyal’oja of Lagos, and her husband a sitting senator.
Famously religious, she only ever appeared in public in glittering scarves tied in a turban, and was a deaconess in her church, attending vigil services and chairing women’s groups. In the past, we’d crossed paths at social gatherings but had never been formally introduced.
‘You’re Soye’s wife, right?’ she asked me now, raising a perfectly arched brow. She was clothed in gold – it was around her neck, wrists and swinging from her ears – a fine carat gold that looked specially handcrafted.
‘Yes, ma,’ I said, surprised she knew who I was. I extended a hand, suddenly feeling nervous; her gaze gave an impression of omniscience, like she could read the thoughts I was yet to have. ‘I’m Eriife Adebowale.’
She eyed my hand. ‘No need for that, my dear, we all know each other here one way or the other. You just don’t attend enough of our meetings. Or am I wrong, Enitan?’
The woman beside her, a local government chairman’s wife, leaned in. ‘Yes of course, I know Mrs Adebowale and she knows me. We all know each other. How’s the clinic doing?’
‘Very fine, we thank God,’ I said and nodded in Enitan’s direction.
‘It’s good to see you take an interest in our activities outside election season, my dear,’ Mrs Aluko said. ‘From what I hear, you’re a better politician than your husband.’
I chewed on a corner of my lip and tried to smile. ‘Thank you, ma, I won’t say I’m a better politician but I try my best.’
‘No need to be modest, and I’m not asking, I’m telling. You would do well to be more active. We need more level-headed people in our midst.’
Hassana, the woman to my right, shoved her iPad on the table and pointed at the bright screen. She adjusted the hijab draped around her hair and shoulders. ‘Have you all seen this?’ she asked. Her husband, a Northerner, was a member of the House of Representatives.
On the screen was a picture of a sitting senator knelt before Onomavwe, his hands clasped in a pleading gesture. ‘Are they not agemates? What rubbish,’ Hassana said.
‘It’s not about age, my dear,’ Mrs Aluko said, ‘it’s about power.’ She sounded like she knew what it meant to wield that magnitude of power.
‘Senator Anaborhi must have offended him,’ Enitan observed. ‘You know he’s planning to run for governor of the state come next elections, he cannot afford to be in Onomavwe’s bad books.’
‘An ex-convict?’ Hassana said.
‘No need to be so self-righteous, we all have our own dirty laundry, including your husband,’ Mrs Aluko replied. And I thought she must be good friends with Onomavwe.
Hassana bristled and pulled her iPad from the table. Mrs Aluko didn’t bat an eyelid in her direction; she was accustomed to this – putting others in their place.
Saratu, the woman seated opposite me, joined the conversation. Her birth name was Sarah, a Christian from Uromi, Edo state, but together with her husband, they’d both taken to adopting the Arabic versions of their names and dressed only in jalabiyas and kaftans to blend with the Northern sect in power. She wore a hijab, and whenever she was greeted, she responded with ‘as-salamu alaykum’. Political Islam, Soye called it. Beliefs easily traded like wares, attires transformed, tongues twisted, on the altar of power.
‘Did you hear that Hauwa Bintu lost her seat in the Senate?’ Saratu said.
‘It’s all over the news; it’s rather hard to miss it,’ Mrs Aluko drolled. She sounded bored and I wondered what it took to ignite her interest – she’d seen everything.
‘She was the only female senator from the North, you know. That means the women in the senate are less than ten, out of one hundred and nine? That’s poor,’ Enitan said.
‘I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing,’ Hassana commented. ‘Wasn’t she accused of corruption? That’s why she lost her seat; she lost it to a young vibrant man from her village.’
‘Haven’t most of them been accused of corruption?’ I said, surprising myself. I hadn’t intended to make a comment.
Hassana stared at me like I’d grown a second head. ‘What do you mean?’
I dusted imaginary lint from my skirt. ‘Let’s be honest. Many House of Assembly members have been accused of corruption, many of whom we know. If we’re going by that, why haven’t they lost their seats? Why is she being held to a different standard than the rest of them? Does being a woman automatically make her an angel? Women can be corrupt too; we’re human beings.’
