The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (18 page)

When Lara returned to her seat, she looked at me and mouthed the words “thank you.” Baba brought the knuckles of both thumbs to his lips and closed his eyes. There was discomfiture at first but before long, we were talking. We talked about the scarcity of kerosene and how distressing the queues at the filling stations were. We all laughed when Baba described his frustration over the endless yelping of the neighbor’s puppy. He declared that he was plotting to kidnap it and dump it in a faraway village. Mama laughed so much that she held her forehead and quaked in her seat. It was a deep-belly laugh with a hum at the end of it. It was an unfamiliar sound yet I had heard it a long time ago, long before Baba developed a passion for Gordon’s. An image came to me of the four of us
in the same room: Mama pregnant with Lara, Baba clapping his hands and me dancing around the room for their entertainment. A happy family.

I looked at everyone’s lips and noted how their voices had suddenly become crisp, clear and melodious, no longer the muffled echoes my ears had become attuned to. That afternoon, I said good-bye without telling Mama about Segi’s illness or my hospital visit. I didn’t want to raise false hope. Things were still inconclusive and I knew there were challenges ahead. How to tell Baba Segi about the appointment, for instance. It didn’t seem the right time to bring up such things.

As I started up the street, a familiar car screeched to a halt beside me. Segun was driving and his mother was in the front seat. They honked for the guard to swing the gates open. Even though she must have been nearing sixty, Segun’s mother’s skin glistened like the flesh of a pawpaw sliced open. Her nose was straight and her neck long and distinguished.

“Aren’t you one of the Akanbi girls? What’s your name again?” she asked, pointing a slim finger at me. She spoke with her teeth clenched so it was only her lips that moved; she didn’t want to appear like she was making any real effort.

Segun responded before I could. “Her name is Bolanle. Surely you remember?”

His mother shot him a disapproving side glance. “How is your mother? Is she better?”

“Much better. Thank you, Ma.” It was strange. I could look at her. I could speak to her. The panic wasn’t there. There was
no stuttering and my voice came out exactly as I’d intended.

“Good. What do you do now?” She examined her silver nail paint, clearly not interested.
She
was so rich, she didn’t need to do anything. She wanted to remind me of that.

“Nothing at the moment but I am thinking of getting a job. If I can’t find the sort of thing I want, I’ll improve my prospects by going back to university for a master’s degree.”

Both sets of eyes in the car widened, Segun’s from astonishment at my self-confidence, his mother’s from cynicism. Segun recovered first. “All the best then.” With that, he pushed the shift stick into first gear. His mother giggled and laughed all the way into their beautiful driveway.

Her laughter rang in my ears long after she’d stopped mocking me and rubbishing my aspirations. But instead of feeling ridiculed, I felt strong and defiant. You weren’t laughing the night armed robbers told you to pull your ears and do frog jumps, I thought to myself.

My mind immediately took me to that night when the gentle winds brought squalls of dust and everyone shut their windows anticipating rain. It was one of those nights when, even though it was cool, everyone looked forward to sleeping with a light cloth.

Segun had asked that I come to his bedroom that night. He was whistling the tune to “Casanova,” which meant the coast was clear. If things looked risky, he whistled Anita Baker’s “Watch Your Step.”

“That boy has evil in him. The way he whistles behind the wall is eerie. Maybe he’s communicating with ghosts in
the spirit world.” My mother bent her ear in the direction of the whistling.

I quickly ran to my bedroom so Mama wouldn’t catch my eye. I could keep secrets but I could never tell barefaced lies. It amazed me daily that she hadn’t smelled Segun on my skin or noticed how much weight I lost after the abortion. I’d tried hard to stop relating what had been scraped from my belly to the little humans that gurgled on their mothers’ backs. The relationship between the two haunted me.

At the time, Segun was already in his third year at university and I was still waiting for my admission letter. He often brought girls home and holed them up in his room over weekends. His father liked this; he liked that his son was a virile ladies’ man. His mother, on the other hand, referred to his lady friends as whores. “What kind of daughter tells her parents she is going to university and then goes around sleeping in men’s houses. It’s disgraceful!” she would say, and mop sweat off her nose with an embroidered handkerchief.

That night, I changed into my pajamas and jumped under my cover cloth with a Mills and Boon. I wanted everyone to think I had turned in early, knowing Lara would follow suit. She often copied me so it didn’t appear that she lacked initiative and common sense. I was her role model, then. If only she knew! Her footsteps came just after ten minutes, and she quickly mummified herself with her cover cloth, dead to the world.

I sneaked out of our bedroom and stopped by my parents’ door. I listened for sounds but there was none except my
father’s snoring. No doubt Mama was sleeping with a pillow over her head. I unlocked the back door and tiptoed toward the drainage system at the back of the compound. I took a bucket with me to fool anyone who saw me slinking around; there were endless things a young woman could be using a bucket for, and luckily, a rendezvous with the landlord’s son wasn’t one of them.

On our side of the fence, the concrete blocks weren’t planed or painted so I dug my toes into the ridges and climbed to the top. As I lowered myself on the other side, Segun’s guard dog licked my feet. I giggled as I landed on their manicured lawn.

Segun’s door was open. He always kept it open for me. He was sitting shirtless on his bed, reading an old
Time
magazine. He flicked cigarette ash into an ashtray he’d balanced on his thigh. When he heard me come in, he put the magazine aside. “Are you staying the whole night?” he asked.

“No, I left our kitchen door open. I don’t think I should risk it.”

“You’re scared!”

“And you’re not?” I folded my arms.

He grunted and walked into his en suite bathroom. There was a coral bath in the corner and a matching toilet and bidet.

“My father hasn’t come home yet. I can’t believe he is doing all this shit. Vincent saw him at the Cotton Club buying pizzas for two scantily dressed girls.” He pushed the bathroom door open with his big toe. “Does he ever stop to think how that looks?
I
could have been with Vincent.
I
could have
been sitting down having a drink with
my
friends and we would all have seen my father traipse in with a girl on each sleeve.” He stopped talking when he started urinating and did not resume until he had shaken off the last drop.

“Maybe he’s at a business meeting with his partners or something.” I didn’t like it when he was tetchy so I thought of things that would calm his nerves.

“You could call it that,” he spluttered. “It is
business
for the girls and my father is obviously a willing
partner
.” He took up his toothbrush from the metal cup with a clang.

His wit was greatly sharpened when he was irritable. I covered my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me chuckling. “He’ll be home soon. He always comes home.”

“Yes, he does. Dead drunk. Last week, dawn found him in the driver’s seat. He had driven into the compound, locked himself in the car and slumped onto the steering wheel. The night guard was beside himself with worry, not knowing whether he was dead or alive or going to suffocate.” Segun brushed his teeth for a while and spat into the sink. “It is a miracle he can find his way home at night.”

Segun always had the air conditioner on full blast, so by the time he had shaved, I was lying under the duvet. He snuggled in beside me and we lay there for several minutes. His mind was far away but I found the feel of his skin comforting; his body filled all the parts where mine caved in. If sex was the price I had to pay to be close to someone’s skin, it was fine by me. I waited. I knew he would speak soon. And when he did, it would be something about his father.

“Here he comes now,” Segun said, springing up to turn off his air conditioner. He was still frozen on the spot, listening out, when we heard two muffled gunshots, one after the other. It was obvious that they came from nearby. Segun flew into the bathroom to get his dressing gown; I bolted, gripped with fear.

“I’m going out there,” Segun announced, pulling on his jeans.

“Don’t be a fool. We should hide.”

“My
father
is out there!”

“You think he wants you to get killed?”

He thought for a minute and somehow my crazy logic made sense to him. He didn’t suspect that all I wanted was for him to stay with me.

“Where shall we hide?” he asked.

“Outside. Let’s hide outside in case they come in.”

“No. They could be on their way here already. This is the only way if they can’t get through the front door. It’s bullet-proof.”

“Let’s hide in the bathroom then. We can climb into the ceiling through the tiles.”

I used his clasped fingers as a step, then Segun hoisted himself up after me and replaced the polystyrene tiles. There were hundreds of holes in them so we could see into the bathroom. Since the bathroom door was open, we could see into the bedroom too. Segun grimaced when he realized he’d left the lights on.

The bedroom door lock was suddenly splintered by bullets and a short, stout man in a sleeveless football shirt kicked the door open with his foot. “Bring the idiot so he can lead us to the safe,” he snarled. Even though the bathroom door was wide open, he split it in half with bullets. Two men dressed in black denim dragged Segun’s father by the collar of his shirt. He could hardly walk. His face was swollen and he was bleeding profusely from a gash on his forehead. There was a dark circular stain on his trousers and blood trailed his every step. Segun covered his mouth with both palms; his eyes looked like they would drop out of his head.

“Which way?” A fourth man slapped Segun’s father across the back of the head and pushed him in the direction of the veranda that led to the main building. Although I was just as frightened, I was captivated by the tears that rolled down Segun’s face. All the years I had known him, he’d never cried. Not even when took me to the nurse to abort the child he imagined was his. Even though he could see how terrified I was, he blamed me for not insisting that he go out to buy a condom. Not once did he comfort me or acknowledge the tragedy of the occasion.

I
REACHED OUT MY HAND
to him but he pretended not to see it. He wished I wasn’t there. Not to save me from the terrible things I was seeing but because he was embarrassed that I, a common tenant, was witnessing such a personal family trag
edy. It was at that moment that I realized that I meant very little to him. I might as well have been another dusty wooden lintel. I thought perhaps I wasn’t worthy of him.

There was silence all around but we knew it wasn’t safe to come down from our hiding place. Segun developed cramps in his legs but he gritted his teeth. After what seemed like hours, Segun’s mother entered the room carrying a metal safe on her head. She was wearing a long nightdress and one of the men in black denim kept poking her buttocks with the point of a machete. She looked around the room and went toward the outside door. On her way back from depositing the safe in her husband’s new BMW, the armed robber asked her to pull at her ears and leap like a frog. She hopped as best as she could in turquoise silk, egged on by a rusty iron blade. She was crying and I could tell that her tears had nothing to do with the humiliation. She kept shuddering like something had shaken her to her core. I knew Segun’s father was dead but I didn’t say a thing.

The robbers left at four
A.M
. with thousands of dollars in cash and trinkets they’d found in another safe cleverly tucked behind the picture of Segun’s grandmother. As soon as we heard two cars screeching up the road, Segun dislodged the tiles and jumped to the floor. He didn’t wait to help me to my feet; he just sprinted down the veranda to the main entrance.

I crept out of the house and climbed back to my side of the fence. As I picked up my bucket and made for the well, I thought of the disaster I could have caused by leaving the door open. If the robbers had decided to go to our compound
too, it would have been easy for them. I might as well have invited them into our home, not that we had anything of great value. I placed the bucket of water in the center of the kitchen floor and crawled into my bed. The entire house was quiet. If Mama asked me anything in the morning, I’d try to lie.

I didn’t need to. By the time I woke up, the entire neighborhood was grief stricken. Every eye within the vicinity was bloodshot and there were cars parked all the way up our street. Like all the tenants, my parents went to the landlord’s house to register their condolences but they were not allowed into the property. The house was full of dignitaries and they didn’t want paupers dirtying their Persian rugs.

I didn’t see Segun for days. On the day of the funeral I stood by our gate for hours so I could catch a glimpse of him. As the funeral cortege drove to the burial ground, he looked in my direction but looked straight ahead when he saw me. Not a pursed lip or a raised eyebrow in acknowledgment of my vigil.

T
HE TRAFFIC ON
S
ANGO
R
OAD
had slowed to intermittent jerking. “She seems happy and restful now,” Baba Segi continued to his driver. “The nightmares are gone; we have much to be grateful for.” He was determined to embrace optimism.

Taju massaged the steering wheel each time they stopped and started. There was a funeral at the local cemetery and a few young men were gathered at the gates singing dirges. Brandy was downed by the mouthful and empty bottles dotted the ground around the cemetery gate. The men had black bands tied around their uncombed hair. One of them carried a framed picture of a young man with a neat part and a plastered smile. It bore all the pretention of a studio portrait; it must have been the third or fourth pose at least. A few moments later, a university van full of young women
squeezed through the traffic and deposited its occupants at the mouth of the cemetery.

Cars slowed and stared, their passengers’ eyes full of sympathy. They knew all too well that it was important to be slightly inebriated before entering the cemetery; a little something was needed to numb the mind and dull the senses. It was no secret that the cemetery was full. Every yard of earth had been disturbed, every foot unearthed. Nevertheless, coffins went in and gloved pallbearers came out, having deposited their burdens into three-foot graves.

Corpses were forced into unsavory unions. Reckless men were laid to rest on chaste widows; children on top of elderly men; girls on top of women who were too young to be their mothers. Nature in its omniscience would not accept these copulations: the shallow graves were ravaged by dogs and what the dogs rejected, the heavy rains returned to the residential area on the other side of the road.

As Taju drove past the cemetery gates, the clouds gathered into fists. Baba Segi, who had stopped to gape at the mourners, spat out of the window. “So it is the specialist who wants to see me?”

“Yes,” Bolanle said.

“Now, that is a man who has sense in his head. He understands that a woman must have a master that she submits to. Unlike that imbecile we saw the other day, he clearly understands the significance of a husband!”

Bolanle decided it was better to leave things vague. It had
been hard enough summoning the courage to invite him. In fact, the telling was only made possible by Baba Segi’s late-night visit to his daughter.

“Is she sleeping through the night now?” he’d asked as he swung the bedroom door open.

Bolanle was wiping beads of sweat from Segi’s forehead. “Speak quietly, please; she has only just fallen asleep.”

Baba Segi lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is she sleeping through the night now?”

“No. She wakes up every few hours, when the pain is unbearable.”

“Is the medicine not working?” He reached out to touch his daughter’s head but snatched back his hand, afraid he would upset her slumber. “Perhaps we should take her back to the hospital.” He looked to Bolanle for an answer.

“You could, but you yourself said that the doctors predicted her recovery might be slow. Speaking of which, Dr. Dibia has asked to see you. He’s the doctor I saw when I went for my appointment at UCH. He said it’s important that he speaks to you.” It went down perfectly.

“So you went for the appointment?” He hadn’t expected that she would take the initiative.

“Yes, and I took the results of the tests. He said it was important to see you. Tomorrow, in fact.”

“But why didn’t you tell me before?”

“What sense does it make to treat ringworm when the body is consumed with leprosy? Segi’s condition has overtaken all our minds.”

Baba Segi exhaled deeply. “You are right. Well, if the doctor calls, then I must answer.
All
the diseases of the body must be treated.” He tiptoed toward the door.

“The appointment is at ten thirty.”

“May we wake well!”

A few half truths, a few untold truths, and the deed was done.

Dr. Dibia was not in a hospitable mood; when Baba Segi and Bolanle walked into his consultation room. He was digging the lid of his pen into his ear, as if something had jumped in when he wasn’t looking, just to annoy him.

“Good morning, Doctor.” Baba Segi hoped to impose his high spirits upon him.

“Please sit. I take it you are Mr. Alao?” He looked at the clean pen top with disgust and threw it in the bin.

“Yes.
I
am the husband.” He drew his hands to his bosom. “And
this
is the wife who cannot conceive.” He pointed two forefingers at Bolanle as if there was a slight chance that the doctor might mistake one for the other.

“Good, good. Now that I know who’s who, let me tell you why you are here. Now, in order to arrive at a conclusive prognosis about your wife’s inability to conceive, it’s important that couples hoping to become parents are examined together. We’ve already administered some tests on Mrs. Alao, so now you need to do some initial tests too. This will help us determine how we might overcome the difficulties.” He avoided using the word “problems.”

“I hope you’re not insinuating that
I
might be the cause of
these difficulties.” Baba Segi glanced at Bolanle, then moved his face as close to the doctor’s as the table would allow. “Listen, Doctor, I have many children. I have sons; I have daughters. The only thing God has not blessed me with is twins. Mind you, there is still time. So, tell me.” He paused. “Are the tests you want to do on me not a waste of time?”

Dr. Dibia reclined into his seat and took off his glasses. He looked intently at Baba Segi while his glasses swung from his finger like the wand of a metronome. “Mr. Alao, did you see that queue out there?”

“Yes. There are many people waiting outside the door.”

“Good. Do you know why they are there?”

“Is it not to see you?” Baba Segi didn’t know where he was going but he was suspicious all the same.

“Indeed they are. But they are also there because they have a common belief.”

Baba Segi opened his mouth to talk but the doctor raised a solitary finger and stopped him before he started. “They believe that I know what I am doing. They
believe
that I don’t just sit here making things up. They
believe
that when I ask them to do something, it is because
I
believe it is for their own good. After all, I did not drag them here from their homes, did I?”

“Well—”

“There are no wells, no buts, no arguments, no questioning of my understanding of obstetrics and gynecology.” He turned to Bolanle. “Mrs. Alao, if
you
seek a solution, perhaps you can advise your husband. A sperm count has to be done. This involves us taking a sample of your husband’s sperm and
examining it in a lab. The hospital labs are open until twelve. The sooner the sample is taken, the better.” He scrawled on a yellow form and handed it to her, together with a small transparent container. His whole manner made it clear that he’d appointed her as the go-between.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“And how is the head?”

“Much better.” She patted her scarf discreetly and flashed the doctor an embarrassed grin.

The harmattan winds had been brutal the year before and the walls were smeared with a film of warm terra-cotta. The windows were so high that even the exceptionally tall Baba Segi couldn’t survey the hospital grounds. But then, like the room, they’d been glossed over with dull, off-white paint. A twenty-inch TV/video combo sat on a mobile stand; there was a large tub of Vaseline on a shelf beneath it.

Baba Segi held his penis in his hand as if it was a hefty bill he had not expected to pay. His eyes were on the man in the video who was dipping his tongue into a woman’s pubis. He was both surprised and disgusted that his member responded to what looked alarmingly like taboo. As his member grew in his hand, he squeezed hard to admonish it. But the swelling didn’t stop, so
he
didn’t stop squeezing. He watched the blond woman gag on her partner’s penis.

“Unthinkable!” Baba Segi’s mouth filled with saliva. He looked from his penis to the small container. He examined his testicles and gave them a gentle prod, hoping that something would make its way out but there was nothing but a clear
trickle. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he zipped up his trousers and unlocked the door. Bolanle was still sitting on a bench at the end of the corridor, her chin pressed into the crook of her palm. A nurse sitting nearby blew gum bubbles as she thumbed her way through a pile of forms.

“Sister!” Baba Segi called, decidedly opting for the less awkward conversation. Bolanle looked up but Baba Segi pointed to the nurse and motioned for her to come over.

“Can I help you, sir?” The nurse cautiously held the door open with her foot.

“I can’t do this! There is only one way a man should shed body water, and that is the way I have done it all my life. I don’t understand how to do it like this. I don’t even know how to hold it!”

“Sir, it’s easier than you think.” The nurse wondered how it was that men, with all their talk of conquering women, had not mastered the art of pleasuring themselves? You’d think women were their dustbins. “Did you watch the video? It helps.”

“I couldn’t bear it. How can anyone respond to that filth?” He inhaled sharply and suppressed his urge to spit.

“Then maybe it will help if you see how it’s done first.” She wedged the door open with a metal Coke top and marched toward the TV. She stopped the video and pressed rewind. “All you have to do is copy everything the man in the video does. Try not to think too much about what you are doing. Let your mind go to…yes…let your mind go to that young wife of yours. Imagine you are with her.”

Silence.

She pressed play and the video started. The nurse averted her eyes and made to leave the room but before she closed the door, she turned and said, “Mr. Alao, there is some Vaseline under the TV. Some men say it happens quicker when they use it.” As the nurse walked back to her desk, she popped a small pink bubble with a click of her tongue.

The Vaseline was full of holes where it had been poked by desperate fingers. Baba Segi scooped a little less than a handful and smeared it over the fat flap of flesh that floundered at his groin. There was a naked Chinese man in the video and as he watched a woman dancing around a pole, he grabbed his penis and stroked it. Baba Segi followed suit. When the woman at the pole approached him, he pointed his penis in her direction and massaged firmly. Baba Segi too pointed his penis in her direction and mimicked the man’s movements. Before long, Baba Segi’s toes began to curl. He felt like he was lying on a mattress on wheels that was zooming down a steep hill. The wild and wonderful buildup to the orgasm made him shudder.

The man in the video told the woman to kneel down before him, at which point the expression on his face changed and he became enraged. He thrust his member into his half-open fist and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Baba Segi would have emulated him had his own eyes been open. He had dreamed up his own fantasy: Bolanle naked, on her knees, begging for his seed. As the man in the video erupted all over the dancer’s face, Baba Segi, who had never had the need to
aim, added his own splodge to the far wall while the container lay patiently beneath his testicles.

As his breathing returned to normal, he looked around, not knowing what to do. If it is seed they want, they will get it, he said to himself. He waited for coordination to return to his fingers and then used the rim of the container to scrape the last dribbles of semen from the tip of his penis. He secured the lid and sat back down. What would Teacher say if he saw me here, heaving like a pursued duiker? What would Taju say if he heard that I, Chief Alao, was filling a plastic container with my body water? What would Iya Segi say if she saw me whipping myself? One by one, the looks of disappointment on the faces of family, friends and employees tormented him. When he’d worked his way through everyone, he straightened his clothes with moist palms and fled the room, the video, the dancer and the memory of what he had done there.

Just outside, Bolanle was pacing the corridor. “Is it done?” she asked, more concerned about the sperm sample than the patches that had merged into one at his crotch.

“I have done the best I can do.” Baba Segi couldn’t look her in the eye; his fantasy clung to the walls of his mind and embarrassed him.

When they returned to Dr. Dibia’s consultation room, Bolanle knew there was something going on. The bubble-blowing nurse had rushed the results back to the doctor in a sealed envelope. But rather than invite his patients in, Dr. Dibia scurried out, open envelope in hand, forcing his arms into the twisted sleeves of his lab coat.

A few minutes later, he returned with the better-groomed Dr. Usman in tow. It was the look that Dr. Usman gave her that gave it away. He may not even have known that a look had passed between them. All he’d meant to do was glance at her but he squinted and rearranged his lips so they formed a straighter line. It was definitely a look, a sympathetic one.

Back in Dr. Dibia’s consultation room, the debate on Baba Segi’s fate was well under way.

“I think telling him would put the women in his household at risk. She came in with a nasty gash on the back of her head last week.”

“But we don’t know
he
did that. I didn’t pick up on any domestic violence. He seemed more possessive than aggressive. You know? More of a lover than a fighter?”

“As far as
he’s
concerned, it’s his wife who’s got serious problems. It would have been a different matter if he had low sperm count, but there’s nothing! Not a solitary sperm swimming around!”

“Probably had mumps in his teens. I’ll bet any money he’s never had a vaccination in his life.”

Dr. Dibia rapped the table with the tips of all eight fingers. He wasn’t interested in Dr. Usman’s betting; he wanted to know where to go from where he was. “This just doesn’t add up. I think I’m going to need to talk to his other wives.”

“Yep, that makes sense. Just say it’s part of the investigation. He can’t argue with that.”