friend,’ Iya Martha said.
‘Your daughter,’ Baba Lola said.
Iya Martha tapped Funmi on the back. ‘Oya, you go and greet your iyale.’
I shuddered when Iya Martha referred to me as Funmi’s iyale. The word crackled in my ears, iyale – first wife. It was a verdict that marked me as not woman enough for my husband.
Funmi came to sit beside me on the couch.
Baba Lola shook his head. ‘Funmi, kneel down. Twenty years after the train has started its journey, it will always meet the land ahead of it. Yejide is ahead of you in every way in this house.’
Funmi knelt down, placed her hands on my knees and smiled. My hands itched to slap the smile off her face.
I turned to look Akin in the eyes, hoping that somehow he was not part of the ambush. His gaze held mine in a silent plea. My already-stiff smile slipped. Rage closed its flaming hands around my heart. There was a pounding in my head, right between my eyes.
‘Akin, you knew this?’ I spoke in English, shutting out the two elders who spoke only Yoruba.
Akin said nothing; he scratched the bridge of his nose with a forefinger.
I looked around the room for something to focus on. The white lace curtains with blue trimmings, the grey couch, the matching rug that had a coffee stain that I had been trying to remove for over a year. The stain was too far off-centre to be covered by the table, too far from the edge to be concealed by the armchairs. Funmi wore a beige dress, the same shade as the coffee stain, the same shade as the blouse that I wore. Her hands were just below my knees, wrapped around my bare legs. I could not look past her hands, past the long billowy sleeves of her dress. I could not look at her face.
‘Yejide, pull her close.’
I was not sure who had just spoken. My head was hot, heating up, close to boiling point. Anyone could have said those words – Iya Martha, Baba Lola, God. I did not care.
I turned to my husband again. ‘Akin, you knew about this? You knew and could not tell me. You knew? You bloody bastard. After everything! You wretched bastard!’
Akin caught my hand before it landed on his cheek.
It was not the outrage in Iya Martha’s scream that stopped my words. It was the tender way Akin’s thumb stroked my palm. I looked away from his eyes.
‘What is she saying?’ Baba Lola asked the new wife for an interpretation.
‘Yejide, please,’ Akin squeezed my hand.
‘She says he is a bastard,’ Funmi translated in a whisper, as though the words were too hot and heavy for her mouth.
Iya Martha screamed and covered her face with her hands. I was not fooled by her display. I knew she was gloating inside. I was sure she would spend weeks repeating what she had seen to my father’s other wives.
‘You must not abuse your husband, this child. No matter how things appear, he is still your husband. What more do you want him to do for you? Is it not because of you that he has found a flat for Funmi to stay in when he has a big duplex right here?’ Iya Martha looked around the sitting room, spreading her palms to point out the big duplex in case I had missed her reference to the house for which I paid half of the rent every month. ‘You, this Yejide. You must be grateful to your husband.’
Iya Martha had stopped talking, but her mouth still hung open. If one moved close enough, that mouth oozed an unbearable stench, like stale urine. Baba Lola had chosen a seat that was a safe distance from her.
I knew I was supposed to kneel down, bow my head like a schoolgirl being punished and say I was sorry for insulting my husband and his mother in one breath. They would have accepted my excuses – I could have said it was the devil, the weather, or that my new braids were too tight, made my head ache and forced me to disrespect my husband in front of them. My whole body was clenched like an arthritic hand and I just could not force it to make shapes that it did not want to make. So for the first time, I ignored an in-law’s displeasure and stood up when I was expected to kneel. I felt taller as I rose to my full height.
‘I will prepare the food,’ I said, refusing to ask them again what they wanted to eat. Now that they had introduced Funmi, it was acceptable for Baba Lola and Iya Martha to have a meal. I was not ready to cook a separate meal for each person, so I served them what I wanted. I gave them bean pottage. I mixed the three-day-old beans I had been planning to throw in the bin with the freshly cooked pottage. Even though I was sure they would notice that the mixture tasted a little bad, I counted on the guilt Baba Lola was masking with outrage at my behaviour and the glee Iya Martha was hiding beneath her displays of dismay to keep them eating. In order to help the food down their throats, I knelt down to apologise to the two of them. Iya Martha smiled and said she would have refused to eat if I had gone on behaving like a street child. I apologised again and hugged the yellow woman for good measure; she smelled like coconut oil and vanilla. I drank from a bottle of malt as I watched them eat. I was disappointed that Akin refused to eat anything.
When they complained that they would have preferred pounded yam with vegetable stew and dry fish, I ignored Akin’s look. On some other day I would have gone back to the kitchen to pound yam. That afternoon, I wanted to tell them to get up and pound the yam if they really wanted pounded yam. I swallowed the words burning in my throat with gulps of malt and told them I could not pound because I had sprained my hand the day before.
‘But you didn’t say that when we first got here,’ Iya Martha scratched her chin. ‘You yourself offered to give us pounded yam.’
‘She must have forgotten about the sprain. She was really in pain yesterday. I even considered taking her to the hospital,’ Akin said, backing up my fairly obvious lie.
They shovelled the beans into their mouths like starving children, advising me to get the hand checked at the hospital. It was only Funmi who squeezed her mouth around the first mouthful of beans and looked at me with suspicion. Our eyes met and she smiled a wide red-rimmed smile.
After I cleared away the empty plates, Baba Lola explained that he had not been sure how long the visit would last, so he had not bothered to make any arrangements for the cab driver who had dropped them off to come back and pick them up. He assumed, the way relatives often do, that Akin would take responsibility for getting them back home.
Soon it was time for Akin to drop everyone off. As I saw them to his car, Akin jiggled his keys in his trouser pocket and asked if everyone was fine with the route he intended to take. He wanted to drop Baba Lola off on Ilaje Street and then drive Iya Martha all the way to Ife. I noticed that he did not say anything about where Funmi lived. After Iya Martha said the route my husband picked was the best option, Akin unlocked the car doors and got into the driver’s seat.
I stifled the urge to pull out Funmi’s jheri curls because she slipped into the front seat beside my husband and pushed the small cushion I always kept there to the floor. I clenched my fists as Akin drove away, leaving me alone in the cloud of dust he had raised.
‘What did you feed them?’ Akin shouted.
‘Bridegroom, welcome back,’ I said. I had just finished eating my dinner. I picked up the plates and headed for the kitchen.
‘You know they all have diarrhoea now? I had to park by a bush for them to shit. A bush!’
