Babangida referred to himself, and came to be referred to, not just as Head of State but as President, as if the coup counted as an election. On the whole, things appeared to go on as usual and, like the rest of the country, my husband and I went back to our usual routine.
Most weekdays, Akin and I ate breakfast together. It was usually boiled eggs, toast and lots of coffee. We liked our coffee the same way, in red mugs that matched the little flowers on the place mats, without milk and with two cubes of sugar each. At breakfast, we discussed our plans for the day ahead. We talked about getting someone to fix the leaking roof in the bathroom, discussed the men Babangida had appointed to the National Council of Ministers, considered assassinating the neighbour’s dog who would not quit yelping during the night, and debated whether the new margarine we were trying out was too oily. We did not discuss Funmi; we did not even mention her name by mistake. After the meal, we would carry the plates together to the kitchen and leave them in the sink to be cleaned later. Then we would wash our hands, share a kiss and go back into the sitting room. There, Akin would pick up his jacket, sling it over a shoulder and leave for work. I would go upstairs to shower and then head for my salon, and so we continued, days sliding into weeks, weeks into a month, as though it was still just the two of us in the marriage.
Then one day, after Akin had left for work, I went back upstairs to have my bath and discovered that a section of the roof had collapsed. It was raining that morning and the pressure of the gathering rainwater must have finally pushed through the already soggy asbestos and ripped the leaky square open in the middle so that water poured through it into the bathtub. I tried to find a way to bathe in that tub anyway because I had never used any of the other bathrooms in the house since we had got married. But the rain would not stop and the torn asbestos was located just so that I could not fit myself into any corner of my own bathtub without getting hit by the rainwater or bits of wood and scraps of metal that were making their way into the tub along with the water.
After I called Akin’s office and left a message with his secretary about the roof, for the very first time I had to have my bath in the guest bathroom down the hallway. And there, in a space that was unfamiliar, I considered the possibility that I might end up having to take many showers in that tiny shower stall if Funmi decided to start coming over and insisted on spending her nights in the master bedroom. I rinsed off the soapsuds and went back to the master bedroom – my bedroom – to get dressed for work. When I checked on the state of the bathroom before going downstairs, the damage had not got any worse and the water was still flowing directly into the tub.
By the time I unfurled my umbrella and dashed for the car, the downpour had become torrential; the wind was strong and it tried its best to wrestle the umbrella from me. My shoes were wet by the time I got into the car. I took them off and put on the flat slippers that I used for driving. When I turned my key in the ignition, I got nothing, just a useless click. I tried again and again without any luck.
I had never had a problem with my faithful blue Beetle since Akin gave it to me after we got married. He took it in for servicing regularly and checked the oil and whatever else every week. The rain was still pouring outside and there was no use walking to my salon, even though it wasn’t too far from the estate. The wind had already snapped several branches off the trees in our neighbour’s front yard and it would have wrecked my umbrella within minutes. So I sat in the car, watching more branches struggle against the wind until they were broken and fell to the ground, still lush and green.
Funmi broke into my thoughts in moments like that, in the moments that did not submit themselves to my routine. And the idea that I too had become one of those women who would eventually be declared too old to accompany her husband to parties would flutter into my mind. But even then, I could trap those thoughts and keep them caged in a corner of my mind, in a place where they could not spread their wings and take over my life.
That morning, I brought out a notepad from my bag and began to write down the list of new items that I needed in the salon. I drew up a budget for my planned expansion for more salons. There was no point in thinking about Funmi; Akin had assured me that she would not be a problem and nothing had happened yet to prove him wrong. But I did not tell any of my friends about Funmi. When I spoke with Sophia or Chimdi on the phone, it was about my business, their babies and Akin’s promotion at work. Chimdi was an unmarried mother and Sophia was a third wife. I did not think either of them could give me any useful advice about my situation.
A roof that had caved in and a car that would not start – if her day had begun like that, Iya Martha would have gone back to her room and spent the day behind locked doors and shut windows because the universe was trying to tell her something. The universe was always trying to tell that woman something. I was not Iya Martha, so when the rain slowed to a drizzle, I turned the key in the ignition one last time and got out of the car in my slippers. With my handbag slung over my shoulder, umbrella in one hand and wet shoes in the other, I walked to work.
My salon held the warmth of several women. Women who sat in the cushioned chairs and submitted themselves to the mercies and ministries of the wooden comb, the hooded hairdryer, to my hands and the hands of the stylists I was training. Women who quietly read a book, women who called me ‘my dear sister’, women who made loud jokes that still had me laughing days later. I loved the place – the combs, the curlers and the mirrors on every wall.
I started making money from hairdressing during my first year at the University of Ife. Like most female freshers, I lived in Mozambique Hall. Every evening for the first week after I moved into the hostel, I went from room to room, telling the other girls that I could plait their hair for half the price they would pay to regular hairdressers. All I had was a small wooden comb, and while I lived at the university the only other thing I invested in was a plastic chair for my customers to sit in. That chair was the first thing I packed when I moved to Moremi Hall in my second year. I did not earn enough to buy a dryer, but by my third year I was making enough money for my upkeep. And whenever Iya Martha decided to withhold the monthly allowance my father routed through her, I did not go hungry.
I moved to Ilesa after my wedding and though I drove to Ife for classes on weekdays, it was impossible to continue the hairdressing business as before. For a while I wasn’t making any money. Not that I needed to: apart from the housekeeping stipend, Akin gave me a generous personal allowance. But I missed hairdressing and did not like knowing that if for some reason Akin stopped giving me money, I would not even be able to afford a packet of chewing gum.
For the first few months of our marriage, Akin’s sister Arinola was the only woman whose hair I wove. She often offered to pay me, but I refused her money. She didn’t like elaborate styles and always asked me to weave her hair into the classic suku. Weaving her tresses into straight lines that stopped in the middle of her head bored me after a while. So I persuaded her to let me spend ten hours plaiting her hair into a thousand tiny braids. Within a week, Arinola’s colleagues at the College of Education were begging her to introduce them to her hairdresser.
Initially, I attended to the growing stream of women beneath a cashew tree in our backyard. But Akin soon found a salon space that he told me would be perfect. I was reluctant about opening up a real salon because I knew I would only be able to work there over the weekends until I got my degree. Akin convinced me to take a look at the place he’d found, and once I stepped into that room, I could see that it would really be perfect. I tried to contain my excitement by telling him it was not sensible to spend money on a place that would be closed for five days a week. He saw through me and a few hours later we held hands in the landlord’s living room as he negotiated the rent.
I was still using that salon space when he married Funmi. And that morning, although I arrived later than usual because of the rain and the trouble with my car, I was still the first in the salon. None of my apprentices was in sight when I unlocked the doors. They usually came in earlier to set up shop for the day, but even as I switched on the lights, the pitter-patter of rain picked up speed until it sounded like a hundred hooves were pounding on the roof. There was
