The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (21 page)

T
HE RICH HAVE FAT BELLIES
. They swagger until the world swings to one side. They see more food and they lunge at it. They have a permanent hunger, you see. For the poor, it’s different. They’ve never known the taste of fullness, so they scramble for leftovers, not because they are hungry but because they want to know fullness, the contentment that makes the rich think the world is theirs.

I like to speak in parables. I spend a few minutes of every day pondering the unequal balance of this world. Except most of the time, my parables are too complicated, too subtle, misleading even. I want to turn them around in my head but my boss returns and I must turn my mind to the road. I am not paid to be a thinker. I am a driver.

I shouldn’t love this job like I do; every hair on my body should reject it after what happened to my brother. “The bus drove him to his death and you have set your palms on the
same wheel,” my mother cries. She means it as a cautionary tale but I tell her I drive a pickup, not a bus.

You see, Faruku—the brother she speaks of—was a son worth weeping for. His skin was so yellow that he should have been born at a time when the cold harmattan winds did not ruffle the sands. He wore his shirt open to his belly button and silver chains hung from his neck. Women sought to be with him; men thought him slick—a dandy. He thought he was slick too; he sported a wry smile and his tongue would grow taut and hover between his lips when he spoke to women.

Like most young men did when they were reaching the age of wisdom, Faruku left our village to seek his fortune in Ibadan. Most of the men from Olugbon did the same: they worked or trained all week and only returned to the village on weekends to visit their families. Faruku showed he was our father’s son and did something special: he trained as a driver and before long, he got a job driving public buses for a well-known transport company. I won’t mention the name of this company because you are likely to know it. Everyone knows the owner.

Sometimes he would drive his bus to our village and throw up the mud that had caked and set over the dust roads. He would show off the bus’s gleaming burgundy and dart carelessly through shrubs and trees. He loved this reckless fun and so did we. Along with the other children, I would run after the bus screaming with excitement while our mothers and fathers rushed to the door mouths to wave. It was hard
not to want to
be
him with his shirt loose, flying like a sail, a matchstick fixed to the corner of his wry smile.

The women couldn’t wait for him to return on Saturday morning. From Monday to Friday, they showered me with gifts in the hope that I would put in a good word for them. I took their gifts but said nothing. Faruku would make my mouth bleed if he thought I was overreaching myself again. From the day he caught me peeping through his keyhole, he reminded me regularly that I was only nine and he was twelve years older than me. I don’t hold any of his beatings against him. No. He didn’t knock my head against the hard mud walls to hurt my feelings; he did it to put me in my place. Whether it worked or not was a different matter, as peeping through his keyhole was already a habit. Faruku’s keyhole held many pleasures. If anything, I learned the workings of a woman’s body.

Faruku could have any woman. They would chase him yet he’d make them feel that he was hot and sweaty from exertion. They wanted him and he obliged them, sporting his wry smile as they squatted over his body. I tell you, when a woman wants you, it is better to surrender and let her take you. Afterward, you will feel like a polished coin. Women couldn’t get enough of that yellow skin of his. They couldn’t rest until their breasts were pressed against it, their thighs wrapped around it, their toes curled upon it.

On this particular weekend, Latundun hadn’t knocked on our front door like she’d done for the last three Saturdays. This was unusual as loose women tended to circulate
more efficiently. Faruku kept going to the door to see if she’d arrived, but by afternoon he was restless. He gave me one naira and sent me to find her. “And if she doesn’t follow you straightaway, get on your knees and beg until she does or see what you’ll get!” he snapped as he weighed his balls. I put my slippers on and wondered what was so special about her. To me, she’d been no different from all others. A child simply couldn’t understand these things, you see.

Latundun gave me her hand and let me drag her and her orange-peel smell into our home. Of course, she had no idea that I’d seen the droop of her breasts or her backside up. Thrice, to be exact. Those times were all I could think of when she touched my hair, fondled my neck and prodded my forehead, then she disappeared behind Faruku’s door. By the time I fit my eye into the keyhole, I was well and truly primed. I was shocked to see Latundun lying there like a slug. But then, as Faruku lifted himself from her, I glimpsed what it was that made men despise her when she went with other men. Curled between her thighs was a flawless snail. Her lips were beautifully defined halves encasing perfect pink. So lost was I in the wonder of the pulsating snail that I forgot to look out for Faruku. He flung the door open and found me standing there with my hand twitching in my shorts. He ignored Latundun’s protestation and kicked me until I was doubled over. I dared not cry out. If our father heard what I’d done, he would make us both sleep in the rain.

A few months later, Faruku appeared through the corn in the backyard. He was shoeless, sweating from every pore.
One arm was clearly broken and blood stained his fingertips. My mother called me into her room and told me to keep his arrival a secret. Her reason was simple: Faruku’s bus had driven him to his death. I thought she must be mad because I knew my brother was alive, albeit distressed. I’d heard him crying in his bedroom, seen him performing absolution as if his sins had to be scraped from his skin.

The truth came later, weeks after the men in a gray Volvo had barged into our home, stripped Faruku naked and roasted him in full view of everyone in the village. It turned out that, after a night of heavy drinking, Faruku had nodded off at the wheel and driven a busload of passengers into a concrete electricity pole. He killed them all and fled the scene before the police arrived. He’d come home to share what time he had left with his family and his God; he must have known he was little more than a dead man praying.

The men in the gray Volvo threw four worn tires over his head, sprinkled his hair with gasoline and set him alight. All that yellow skin that the women desired fried and sizzled in its own fat. Our mother watched and even when smoke stung her eyes, she just kept telling hysterical onlookers in her told-you-so voice that it was the bus that drove him to his death. Faruku’s head eventually stopped its manic nodding, at which point Mama’s strength failed her. She collapsed to the warm earth like an old linen cloth.

We buried Faruku in the cornfields, but we did not mark the grave. It wasn’t a resting place anyone wanted to remember, but it was secretly comforting for Mama to know he was
near. I cried until my eyes nearly dropped out of my head. Where were the police? Why was there no investigation, no newspaper articles? Do you know why? I’ll tell you: the rich own this world and the poor are nothing. My view of the world was altered greatly in those weeks. It was the women who surprised me the most. When Faruku was alive, they would not let me rest, but as soon as his body disappeared beneath the soil, they turned their affection to other men, and their younger brothers. It was as if his yellow skin had never existed. They avoided my eyes when they saw me, even Latundun. Women are such fickle creatures! They will eventually destroy this world with their slippery, slimy snails.

I told myself that Faruku’s death would not be in vain and that I would become everything the world had denied him. Despite being known as younger-brother-of-the-murderer-driver, I wanted to become a driver too. I moved to Ibadan at the age of nineteen, a time when Latundun and her ilk were sprouting gray hairs and dragging callused heels around the village. I responded to a roadside advert and was employed by a man who was starting his own business with money he got from I don’t know where. What business is that of mine? As long as my salary is put in my hand at the end of every month, nothing else concerns me.

As soon as I saw my boss, I knew he thought of himself as a rich man. He talked like one, acted like one. He still does. In turn, I play my part as the driver, the poor driver, the driver whose belly will never know fullness. He has been good to me but therein lies my problem—I pity him. What do you
expect after we have sat buttock to buttock nearly every day for going on eighteen years? I swear, the only thing worse than a rich man is one who seeks to be a good man.

A few months after I started working for him, he told me his wife was having trouble conceiving but I said nothing. Days afterward, the wife too started talking to me about her problems. I didn’t say anything to her either but she started giving me gifts and making eyes at me. She told me she didn’t know anybody in Ibadan and she needed a friend. I told her to consider opening a shop alongside other women. Isn’t that the way women make friends and start their idle gossiping?

Anyway, one day, my boss sent me home to collect a parcel he had left in her care. It was a hot afternoon and my mouth was dry. She was home when I arrived and she let me sit indoors. When she returned from her bedroom, she found me in her husband’s chair. I was a little frivolous in those days but what else would you expect from a young man who didn’t own an armchair? Instead of chiding me, she asked me to remain in the chair and laughed. Next thing I knew, she was sitting on top of me, riding me like a horse. I cannot say I resisted, but remember, my boss’s wife is not a woman of modest proportions. She pinned me down with the strength of three men. I thought maybe I should tell her to stop but she covered my mouth with her hand, or maybe
I
covered my own mouth. It all happened so long ago. I don’t remember things clearly now. All I know is that it was like stealing the fattest chicken breast from a rich man’s dining table.

After that, whenever my boss sent me to his home on
various errands, I found myself sitting in that armchair being ridden like a new saddle. I don’t know what I liked more, the fan above our heads, my boss’s armchair or the riding I received in it. Within a few months, her belly swelled like a boil. Boils are very painful. Even after they have burst, they itch and itch.

I don’t know whether the child, Segi, is mine. Only a mother knows who the father of her child is. All I know is that two years later, I found myself in the chair again. I swear, I should have been born a horse. I sometimes imagined that my boss’s wife was Latundun. Ha! Even now, when I stop at a beer shack to eat snail, I fork it and nibble gently, as a small tribute. Don’t mock me, please.

Iya Femi asks me to deliver messages to a man in Bodija. The rich and their surplus! I didn’t even have to ask before Tunde stuffed my hand with money. Iya Femi couldn’t have felt worse than me when Tunde traveled. It was as if my own brother died. My boss is not that generous. After he gives me my salary, he removes his eyes until the next month. He doesn’t know that I eat freely from his kitchen. I eat his beef, his tripe, his kidney, his liver, his tongue—all the things that my wife’s pots dream of but never cook. My children think it is terrifying when stew is not riddled with small strips of cowhide. Maybe it is better that they do not taste what their mouths will never be accustomed to.

Iya Segi’s second child was a boy. He does not resemble his father. Sometimes, when I look at him and close my eyes, I think my young son will grow up and look like him. If you
think I care about that it means you have not heard a word I have said! What would I do with Baba Segi’s son when I can barely feed the ones I have? My life is simple and I want to keep it that way. The lot of poor men is to get what they can and go, quietly.

Judge me if you want to. Call me disloyal! I think I have acted as honorably as a poor man could. If you can’t accept that, I leave you to your mischievous thoughts. When I tire of this job, I will leave. There are always adverts for good drivers. Like I said, my life is simple and I want to keep it that way.

T
AJU HEARD THE SOUND
of vomiting but only realized the source of it when Baba Segi staggered to the open door of the pickup. His breakfast had formed a colorful bib on his gleaming white shirt. “Take me to Teacher!” he ordered. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been weeping blood.

A few minutes before, Taju had seen Iya Segi leaving the building. Her feet were all over the place like an inebriated dancer’s; she blew her nose into the head scarf she clutched. Taju’s first instinct was to hide but he resisted and walked toward her. “Iya Segi! Are you not going back with us?” he asked.

“No, I am going home by myself, Taju. My husband knows.” Her shame was complete; the mere sight of Taju made her filthy.

“Your husband knows what?”

“That his children are not his children.”

“Did you mention my name?”

Iya Segi stopped in her tracks and jerked her head backward. “Have you taken leave of your senses? I have one foot in my husband’s house and one foot out of it and all you can ask is whether or not I mentioned your name?” She resumed her usual matriarchal tone. “I told my husband about his children. How does that concern you?”

“I’m sorry if I appear thoughtless but I also have a family to feed. I work in your household, so if there is something that could bring my employment to an end, is it not right that I should be warned? My boss has been good to me.” He knew she knew what he was talking about and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of thinking he thought she didn’t.

“Perhaps you do not understand me, Taju. The question of whether or not you will be relieved of your duties is between you and your boss.”

“I was just thinking that—”

“No, Taju. Don’t think. Face your driving. That is your job, is it not?” Iya Segi swung her whole body round and stormed off in the direction of the hospital gates.

Taju scratched his scalp with his toothpick and headed back to the pickup. He felt exposed, like the skin of his stomach had been chafed away by the breeze. His innards were an unpleasant spectacle and he knew straightaway that it was not a sight he could live with.

“S
IR, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT
?” Taju inquired as Baba Segi collapsed himself into the window seat.

“Just drive!”

Taju waited for the wind to fill his collar. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” He cleared his throat nervously. “I have to travel to Olugbon. My mother has taken ill; my relatives say there is death in her eyes.”

“When are you going?” Baba Segi didn’t look his way. He remembered that he’d given Taju money for his mother’s funeral two years before.

“I can’t say. I received the message this morning.”

“I take it you want your salary early then?” So Taju was leaving.

“Any financial assistance would be greatly appreciated, sir.”

They say when one god is aggrieved he invites other gods to join him in seeking vengeance. Baba Segi felt as if ten winds were whirling in his head. He felt the force of wrath and wondered what he had done to make the gods smite him. “Just take me to Teacher. I will pay you when we get there, if you want.”

“Thank you, sir.” There was no gratitude in his voice, just disquiet. He mulled over Iya Segi’s confession. Only a fool asks who struck a match when he sees billows of smoke on his rooftop. Iya Segi had brought an end to an eighteen-year companionship. He glanced at his boss, sitting there, stinking of vomit, but he did not feel any guilt. There was fear but no guilt. Baba Segi was twice his height and thrice his weight.
He had seen him handle Bolanle; they didn’t call him a leopard because he had spots.

In silence, they drove. Baba Segi ignored the flies that were drawn to the stench of his garments. Ordinarily, he would have slapped them off, but today he sat still and let them feed on him. Baba Segi was practicing being dead. He took intermittent deep breaths and wondered if life could drain from him if he drew one deep enough.

When Baba Segi put the money in Taju’s hand, he clutched his driver’s small fingers and looked deep into his face. Taju flinched and pulled away but Baba Segi didn’t relinquish his fingertips. “Will you not give me my keys before you go?” He was completely unaware that Taju’s bladder was brimming. He took the keys and gave Taju his hand back. “Go well,” he urged.

“Thank you, sir.” Taju did not look back but marched across the road with long, swift strides.

Baba Segi returned to Teacher’s shack, wishing that his thick legs would buckle under him. He saw the ugliness of his surroundings: the bowed buildings; the shattered planks held together by moisture rising from festering gutters; the uneven roads that sighed dust clouds every time a car upset their calm. “No! This is not the place,” he repeated to himself.

There was a woman outside Teacher’s shack. Her thighs were bandaged in a micromini denim skirt and her breasts bound in a fuchsia boob tube that matched her lipstick. Any other day, Baba Segi would have made a snide comment about the rigidity with which she paced. “Can you breathe all
right?” he might have asked, feigning concern. Or he might have said, “If I didn’t have a home full of wives and children, I would make you my bride.” It would have been said with a trivial, superior air, of course. To this, the woman would have replied, “Is it the way I walk you are interested in or the way I fuck?” Or she might have responded to his condescension with a loud hiss that would pursue him all the way to his destination. Ayikara women were desperate but they spat in the face of insolence. Today, Baba Segi’s eyes were dim with melancholy; his wit would not be roused. He sniffed past the woman and bowed into Teacher’s shack.

The small space was full of men eager to drink the afternoon away. Many of them were already well on their way. The night guards defied sleep. They leaned their staffs on the wooden walls and dipped their fingers into their glasses to remove dead insects. Some had made guzzling whiskey their purpose for the day, as it had been the day before, and the day before that. They were all huddled together on low stools playing checkers and laughing at unrelated anecdotes. Baba Segi was irritated by their disregard for life’s many tragedies. Angry beads of sweat collected at his brow, careered through the furrows and formed tears at the tip of his nose. Teacher rose and beckoned to him.

“My life is ruined.” Baba Segi wiped his forehead with his palm. “I feel like I am in a pit of quicksand. All is dark, Teacher. All is dark.”

“Where there is hope, there is life.” Teacher absorbed his tale with compassion and contentment. A sense of com
radeship brewed within him; it was comforting to hear that another man had been stripped of his manhood. If
he
could live in the knowledge that his penis would never prise apart a woman’s lips, why couldn’t Baba Segi live with his predicament? At least he could soften a woman with his hardness.

“Where is the hope?”

“There is a rainbow at the mouth of every tunnel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hmm.” Teacher got up and refilled the glass that Baba Segi had emptied. “What I will say to you will seem like the words of a madman, but you must consider them.” He cast his shimmering eyes on Baba Segi’s face and murmured, “It is time for you to let the deceivers who have brought bastards into your home return to their father’s homes.”

Baba Segi clasped his hands together and bunched them under his chin. His head became heavy quite suddenly. “Just send them away like one shoos chickens?”

“It is the only honorable thing to do.” Teacher continued, his eyes widening at the thought of Baba Segi frequenting his shack and spending his money there. “As you spread your mat in this life, so you must lie on it.” He paused. “Unless”—he pointed at Baba Segi until his fingertip was within an inch of his nose—“you want a home full of children that are yours in name alone.”

“A curse! That would be a curse!” The thought disturbed Baba Segi greatly.

Teacher raised his hands in triumph. “Listen to me. When the missionaries left me behind, the thing that made me bitter
est was that I had taken them to be my fathers. They plucked me from my father’s home when I was a young boy and made me feel like I was their own. But when the time came for them to return to their country, they abandoned me here, like a cockerel casts the shells of groundnuts aside.” He sipped his whiskey and looked dismally at the clouds of smoke that blew upward from half-parted lips and partly extinguished cigarette butts. “For three years I despaired, unable to accept my lot. Orphans are miserable people, you know?” The rooftop of the next building caught his eye. “It was not until I returned to my blood father that my misery was washed away. What I am trying to say is that your father will always be your father, even when life forces you to find a father in strangers.”

“Are you saying that my children will one day seek their true fathers? That all I have been is a temporary caretaker?” Baba Segi spat the last few words out as if they’d burned his tongue.

“Indeed, my friend. You have been no more than a doorkeeper. The day those children can open doors themselves, they will depart and you will be left with nothing but your loss.”

Baba Segi nodded. “Teacher, your wisdom humbles me.”

“Don’t say that, Baba…er…my friend. Pride makes men tumble before they fall.” Mission accomplished, Teacher took a satisfying slug of his brew and scratched his chin.