not come, but I want you to know that this bitterness can be one of the things causing the barrenness-o. Goodbye, Ma.’
She was smiling as she rose to her feet and turned to leave.
I stood up and grabbed the back of her dress. ‘You! This wretched . . . this evil egbere. Who are you calling barren?’
I was not prepared for the confrontation. Even my insult was off the mark. Funmi did not look like the mythical egbere. She was not short; she was not carrying a mat or weeping incessantly. In fact, when she turned to face me, she was smiling. I was surrounded by customers and stylists before I could land the first slap on her cheek.
‘Leave her alone,’ the women said. ‘Let her go.’ They pulled my hands from Funmi’s dress and pushed me until I was back in my seat. ‘My dear sister, please calm down. Just take it easy.’
5
I bought new mugs.
‘You know why I don’t like white mugs?’ Akin said at breakfast.
‘Please enlighten me,’ I said.
‘You can always see the coffee stains too clearly.’
‘Really?’
He pulled at his tie and frowned. ‘You sound angry. Is something wrong?’
I spread more margarine on my toast, stirred my coffee and clenched my jaw. I was prepared to keep my mouth shut about why I was upset until Akin asked me why at least five times. But he did not even give me a chance to sulk.
‘I don’t like these white mugs.’ He held a finger up and paused to drink some water. ‘Where are the old ones?’
‘I broke them.’
His mouth formed an Oh that it did not expel and he took another bite of toast. I could see that he assumed I had simply knocked the mugs over by mistake or dropped them as I was putting them away. There was no reason for him to think that I had slammed each hibiscus-red mug against the kitchen wall as the cuckoo clock in the sitting room chimed at midnight. He could never have imagined that I had swept the broken pieces into a dustpan, put them in a small mortar and pounded them until I was sweating from every pore and wondering if I had lost my mind.
‘You know the internal auditors from the headquarters were in the office yesterday, we were so busy with them. I forgot to send someone to look at that roof. Today I’ll –’
‘Your wife came to my salon yesterday.’
‘Funmi?’
‘Who else?’ I leaned forward in my chair. ‘Or do you have another wife that I don’t know about?’ It was an idea I had not been able to shake since Funmi had left my salon the previous day, the possibility that there could have been other wives out there – in Ilesa, in any other city – other women that he could love, other women who made him less mine.
Akin covered one half of his face with a hand. ‘Yejide, I’ve explained my agreement with Funmi to you. You shouldn’t let her bother you.’
‘She said you are taking good care of her.’ My words did not carry the power that I wanted them to, because I could not find any of the anger and disdain I had directed at Funmi the previous day. I wanted to be angry with him so I kept speaking; trying with my words to reach past what I really felt to the anger I was supposed to feel. ‘What does that mean? Explain to me what “good care” means.’
‘Sweetie . . .’
‘Hold it. Just hold it there. Please don’t sweetie me again this morning.’ But I did want him to call me sweetie again, only me and no one else. I wanted him to reach across the table, hold my hand and tell me we would be all right. And I still believed then that he would know what to do and what to say just because he was Akin.
‘Yejide –’
‘Where were you yesterday night? I waited until well past midnight for you to come home. Where did you go?’
‘The sports club.’
‘Ehen? Sports club? You must think I’m a fool. When do they close at the sports club? Tell me, when?’
He sighed and glanced at his watch. ‘You want to start policing me?’
‘You said nothing would happen between you and that girl.’
He grabbed his jacket and stood up. ‘I need to get to work.’
‘You are deceiving me, abi?’ I followed him to the door, grappling for words to tell him I did not really want to fight with him, to explain that I was afraid that he would leave me and I would be all alone in the world again. ‘Akin, God will deceive you, I promise you. God will deceive you the way you are deceiving me.’
He shut the door and I watched him through the glass panes. He was all wrong. Instead of holding his briefcase in his hand, he gripped it to his side with his left arm so that his body tilted a little to the left, and he looked as though he was about to double over. His jacket was not slung over a shoulder but clutched in his right hand; the edge of a sleeve touched the ground and slid down the porch steps and through the grass as he walked towards his black Peugeot.
I turned away as he put the car into reverse. His coffee mug was still full, not one drop had left the cup. I sat in his chair, finished my toast and his and drank up his coffee. Then I tidied up the dining table and took the dirty dishes to the kitchen. I washed up and took care to make sure there was no coffee stain left in the mugs.
I did not feel like going to work because I was not ready for another confrontation with Funmi. It was clear to me that she would not stop showing up at the salon simply because I said so. I knew that women like Funmi, the kind of women who chose to be second, third or seventh wives, never backed down easily, ever. I had watched them arrive and evolve in my father’s house, all those different mothers who were not mine, they always came in with a strategy hidden under their wrappers, they were never as stupid or as agreeable as they first seemed. And it was Iya Martha who was always caught unawares, stunned, without a strategy or a plan of her own.
It was becoming obvious that I had been a fool to believe for one second that Akin had Funmi under control. So I decided to take the day off to think things through. I stopped by the salon for a few minutes to give instructions to Debby, the most senior stylist in training. Then I took a taxi to Odo-Iro to get Silas, the mechanic who usually repaired my Beetle.
Silas was surprised to see that I had come to his shop alone and asked after Akin. Throughout the drive to my place he kept telling me in different ways that he would prefer to discuss the repairs with Akin before he did anything.
I cooked while he worked on the Beetle and offered him lunch when he was done. He washed his hands outside and ate the yam pottage quickly. I sat and watched him as he ate. I talked to him and he stared at me, grunting now and then, but mostly he just stared at me with a look of wonder as though he did not know what he could say in reply to my non-stop chatter. When he stood up to leave, I counted out the amount he had charged and gave the bills to him, then I followed him to his car, still talking as he drove off.
I sat on the porch calling out greetings to neighbours who passed by until Debby came to give me an account of the money that
