The full-bearded bespectacled Minister with the heavy lisp who officiated at their wedding looked down from the high terrazzo-floored pulpit, into their eyes as he paraphrased the Bible: children were a blessing from the Almighty God. Even as they held back from chuckling at the way his large freckled tongue stuck out to the side when he said ‘blessing’, they believed the Minister.
‘Your brother is officiating, the one with the lisp,’ he joked when he found out that Father Isiaku was officiating. She spoke with a lisp too but her lips were far prettier when she spoke, he assured her each time he made fun of her. Father Isiaka wasn’t the one she hoped it would be, but it didn’t matter. She was just happy that the boring month-long marriage counselling classes had ended.
August was the month they met. The month of unpredictable showers when algae, sprouted from just a slimy green thing on the fence to something shrub-like that you could harvest. He always felt like using a spatula to scrape the growths off the walls and ground but could never bring himself to do it. She didn’t care. When he complained about the algae, she said, ‘Ah, there are worse things than this.’ She said this that first day in August, the day they met at a wedding reception. They were both looking for seats and had to sit outside near a fence that was green and slimy. He was irritated with both the fence and her for being dismissive about it. He wanted to tell her to shut up but she laughed so sweetly she melted the irritation from his heart. She spoke intelligently about a repeat of the global economic crisis and the many stock markets, the DOW, the NASDAQ, the FTSE. He loved the way she pronounced ‘FTSE’, delicately with a slight lisp, like she was scared of the letters falling off her tongue or a vowel sneaking its way in between T and S. He tried to think of something intelligent to say as she went on and on about financial issues---the only thing he knew well was literature, which he taught at the Polytechnic in town--but he had just finished a weeklong seminar in addition to his classes and was not in the mood to talk about literature. So he let her show mastery of her subject, sipping his Maltina and enjoying her lisp which he later told her he found rather sexy.
‘So where do you work?’ he asked, hoping that her answer wouldn’t make him feel ashamed of where he worked.
‘I am in the Accountant-General’s office. The new Ministry of Finance building on Ahmadu Bello Way.’
Civil servant, he thought. He didn’t feel so intimidated anymore.
‘I teach at the Federal Polytechnic. Language Department. I teach literature.’
‘Ah, nice. The campus on Ahmadu Bello?’
‘Yes at the other end, right after UMT. I mean the eating joint under the huge mango tree. We call it UMT for Under the Mango tree.’
‘Hmm. We call it UMT too. I thought we were the only ones who called it that. I eat there most days at lunch.’
‘Really? I do too. It’s funny I have never seen your face.’
‘I always sit on the right side behind the zinc building. I don’t like the front, it faces the main road.’
‘Oh, that’s why. I am always in front.’
They both resumed sipping their drinks which were no longer cold and they smiled knowing they would see each other again. He, to hear her sexy lisp and she, to see his fair slender face and broad smile which she later told him, made him look like her favourite Uncle.
Everyone said they were good together, so many times and so forcefully that it didn’t surprise anyone when six months after they started seeing each other, they got engaged and announced their wedding plans. Her friends thought she was lucky, especially Lami, noting that not many men around were as serious minded and straightforward as Usho. Her friends had taken it upon themselves to spy on him. Lami the chief spy never found anything. At first they thought it was only a matter of time, but then they got tired of looking for what they eventually agreed was not there.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t like children. She had gotten him to agree to have one child despite his initial insistence on having none. He would learn to love them when he saw them, Lami assured her; they were good for each other.
They had decided to have one child. It would not matter if it was a boy or a girl. They would love the child, save for University abroad, maybe London but preferably America, and make the child learn many languages especially Mandarin Chinese because China was going to take over the world in a few decades. Music lessons and sports would be a must. The child had to be successful; nothing would be left to chance. It was going to be a straightforward affair, this child business - it would bring untold joy.
Over the months he had stopped complaining about algae on walls, the forks in restaurants being on the wrong side and dead bulbs in halls that weren’t changed because he hated how it felt whenever she told him there were more important things than that.
‘Please, don’t trivialise the things that irritate me,’ he would say to her.
‘I am sorry, boo,’ she would always reply.
She would always do it again and so he learnt only to feel irritated and not say it.
She wondered if the growing mass in her tummy was a girl or a boy. She smiled and agreed with Usho when he said it didn’t matter. It mattered only, to save more and fast so that little one could start to live their dreams at 2. At 2 the whole world would be different again. She would have gotten her waist back and wear her size 32 jeans without love handles sticking out to gossip about her having had a baby. At two the Chinese tutor would start saying funny toneless Mandarin words into the child’s eager ears. When she had weaned the baby, Usho would no longer have to be scared of the tasteless milk her body made when his mouth ventured around her breasts. They would reach out for each other in the dark on the large bed like they had not done for the past six months and belong to each other again.
Her friend Lami always brought her glossy magazines about the latest fads in baby clothing and cut-outs of articles on infant care for new mothers. They had grown steadily in a pile on the glass table in the living room and now spread to the bedroom--by the dressing mirror, on the bedside stool and even in his side of the wardrobe. All photos of chubby, curly-haired, bright-eyed babies. She said to Lami that the girls seemed prettier. Lami agreed.
He didn’t complain about the magazines strewn around the house even though, however hard he tried to arrange them in one pile, he would always return to find them all over the living room, in the kitchen, on the bed and on the toilet floor. It was all to prepare for the coming baby he rationalised; he learnt to ignore the glint in many babies’ eyes, even though the thought of more than one baby in the house terrified him. Glossy magazine babies would be the closest he would come to more than one child in the house. At least he could stack them all into one heap at the end of the day.
‘Haba, can’t these guys keep their hands to themselves,’ Salama said angrily as she wriggled free from the shop owners who held her arm to show her their wares.
‘That’s the beauty of the market mana,’ Lami teased. ‘I prefer the market with all its madness to those boutiques. Whenever those boutique attendants give me one of those forced smiles I want to just smack her across the cheeks with the overpriced item I have bought. Here at least we can beat down the prices. No be de same tin all of dem dey sell?’
Salama agreed but still hated the way strangers touched her. They talked about names as they picked and dropped baby shawls and dresses weaving their way through the maze of tiny concrete shops and hordes of people.
‘I can’t stand all those lazy-lazy names. Faith, Blessing, John, Monday...’ Lami said as they stopped for Salama to rest a bit.
‘Ah, Lami, but your name means Thursday now. By your definition it’s also a lazy name.’
‘Exactly, my father named all of us lazy names.’
‘You are just a silly girl,’ she laughed. ‘I like Anya. The German Reverend Mother in the parish I grew up in, that was her name. She was old but had such sweet eyes. The woman made us all love church. She always had a sweet in one hand a Bible verse in the other.’
‘Anya? Hmm, what does it mean?’
‘Gaskiya, Lami I don’t know. I have to find out. I’ll just google it.’
‘What if it’s a boy?’
‘I really haven’t found a boy’s name I like. And between us I think it’s a girl. I can almost feel her.’
‘Ah, na wa for you o. You sound like you have had nine pregnancies. Just say you want it to be a girl.’
She sighed. Lami saw through her. Through the ‘it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or girl’ rhetoric. Through the thinly veiled sparkle in her eyes when she saw pink little Cinderella dresses in the shops. Sometimes she joked when a preacher would say only God could read the heart: ‘Only God and Lami’. This was why Salama loved her. Lami could just look into her eyes and know that something was wrong; she didn’t have to explain every intricate detail like she did with Usho. But this was also why sometimes she avoided Lami- Lami could tell when she was up to no good. Since they met in the first class of Accounting in University, there was no hiding from Lami.
Usho had learnt to let go of some of the order in his life. Before he married Salama, the plastic, yellow alarm clock was always faithful. He would get up at exactly 5.45, ride his stationary bike for fifteen minutes, pray at 6, make breakfast at 6.15 and watch international news until a quarter past seven when he would head out to work. The towels were always hung out after use, underwear dried in the washing machine, ironed and folded in the drawer. Shoes were left out to dry, and he would never eat in the bedroom, not even biscuits. Crumbs in the sheets were horrible.
He no longer used the alarm because it gave her migraines; he barely left the house before 8, endured the sight of damp satin underwear hanging in the bathroom and rolled over sweet wrappers in bed because she had sugar cravings at night. Still it was ok. She was already in her final trimester and it would all return to normal, he told himself. Mostly though, he missed her. When she wasn’t out shopping, at the salon with Lami, she was obsessively reading the glossy magazines chewing aya seeds and answering him in monosyllables when he asked a question.
He came back one evening and saw her in the bedroom, folding all the Cinderella dresses, dumping them into a black duffel bag which she never used.
‘Welcome,’ she mumbled without looking up.
‘What’s up, you rearranging?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘But you only arranged them last week now.’
She didn’t stop or answer him. He took off his jacket and opened his side of the wardrobe beside her to hang it. He turned to look at her face. She was gritting her teeth, breathing hard, doing the folding angrily.
‘I didn’t realise you had bought so many dresses,’ he said.
‘Leave it, will you!’ she screamed, dropped the bag and walked toward the bathroom.
‘What did I say?’ he said, before she slammed the bathroom door shut.
Confusion rocked his head as he sat on the bed wondering what he did or did not do. Then he heard her sobbing in the bathroom. He walked over and turned the bathroom door knob. It was locked from inside. He called out her name.
‘Leave me alone,’ she shouted.
‘Are you ok?’ he insisted.
She didn’t answer and just turned on the shower and the tap in the sink to drown out the sound of her sobbing. He sat on the bed after he realised he couldn’t talk her out of the bathroom. He held his head in his palms, wondering why she was acting strange.
Fifteen minutes later, he heard the toilet flush, the taps go off one after the other, and the bathroom door unlock. His eyes followed her as she walked straight to the bed and lay down on her side, facing the wall behind him. He didn’t know what to say.
‘I am sorry,’ she said.
‘What happened?’ he asked, turning around to face her.
‘I just feel a little overwhelmed, it’s nothing really.’
‘Is there anything you want me to do?’
‘No dear, its fine. You have been good. Don’t mind me. It’s all hormones.’
He felt a bit relaxed. He was going to go for a quick run but changed his mind, took a shower and just lay by her side, holding her hands, until he felt her grip loosen and heard her light snoring. It took him a long time to sleep. This was what his father always said, one should not try to understand everything a woman does, it is impossible to understand. It will all be better in the morning, he thought, before closing his eyes to psych himself to sleep.
It didn’t get better in the morning. Or the next morning. Her smile and playfulness didn’t return. She stopped reading the glossy magazines and he didn’t have to pick them from the floor and stack them by the bed anymore. She didn’t talk about her visits to the doctor, about the annoying sweaty women in the antenatal ward. She just said it was ok, when he asked. He was worried when she started telling Lami she didn’t feel like going out and when she slept off during her favourite TV series, Mad Men.
He was finishing a two-day conference in Port Harcourt when Lami called him. They were on their way to the hospital. They had been trying his phone for a few hours and Salama’s mother had already arrived from Kaduna. He would not wait for the dinner that night. He took a cab to the airport to get a late flight to Abuja.
He reached the airport just as boarding announcements were being made for the last flight to Abuja out of Port Harcourt. The plane was full and he couldn’t get on it, even though he offered to bribe the guys at the ticket stands. They didn’t care that his wife was about to give birth. One of them suggested that he take the bus if he was in such a rush. Lami and Salama’s mother thought a road trip at night was a bad idea and insisted that he come instead in the morning.
He decided not to go back to the hotel that night. He would wait at the airport and take the very first flight to Abuja. There were a few others at the airport lobby. A Ukrainian man sitting near him wouldn’t stop talking about his life: he had missed his flight because he had checked out of his hotel late- because he had wasted time packing; he was headed for Lagos; he had one grown up daughter who had given him twins for grandchildren, a boy and a girl; his daughter looked like his late wife. At first Usho spoke politely to the Ukrainian but eventually he got tired of the conversation and started answering with nods and sighs. At three in the morning just when he was beginning to doze off, Lami called to say Salama had given birth without complications- mother and child were in perfect health. It was a boy, she said, before he asked. He screamed in the airport lobby, waking the Ukrainian who had started snoring. He didn’t mind the man getting up and hugging him tightly in congratulations. He didn’t mind that the man resumed his prattle. Lami said he couldn’t speak to Salama because she was resting. He would be there, first thing in the morning, he said.
When the announcement for the 7.45 to Abuja was made, he said goodbye to the Ukrainian who said his name was Vladimir and that he was Russian before the Soviet Union split. Usho laughed and walked away. He slept through the flight and woke up only when the plane’s tires touched the tarmac. As he ran to get a cab, the roller on his medium sized bag bumped over the uneven parts of the floor and he decided to carry it by the handle instead. Salama was still sleeping when he called.
‘Don’t worry, the boy looks like you,’ Lami teased, when Usho said he couldn’t wait to get to the hospital.
‘Do you guys need anything?’
‘Nothing for now, except that I think I left my iPod around the wardrobe when I went to bring her things this morning. Do you have your keys? Can you pass through the house on your way to the hospital?’
‘Yes, no problem. Is Mama fine, comfortable?’
‘Yes. We are all fine.’
The bedroom was upside down when he entered. Bags overturned. Clothes on the ground and bed. He called Lami again to ask where she left the iPod and asked if they had a wrestling match in the room. She laughed and apologised, saying she was in a hurry to get back. His wife was awake she said, and gave Salama the phone.
‘Hey honey,’ he said.
‘Hey,’ she replied weakly.
‘I hear the baby looks like me eh?’
She managed a giggle.
‘I know you are tired, I am on my way yanzu. I’ll see you ko?’
‘Ok. Sai ka zo.’
He cleared the clothes from the bed, picking up veils and head ties, before realizing that Lami didn’t even tell him where the iPod was. As he tried to stuff the contents of the upside down black duffel bag back in, his hand felt a crumpled piece of paper. He took it out and opened it. It was from the hospital, dated three months before. Usho stared at the paper. He felt his body gradually weaken. The conversation they had the week before she locked herself in the bathroom came back to him, suddenly making sense.
‘You know it wouldn’t be such a horrible idea if the baby had a playmate. Ko?’
Usho sat up in bed, in disbelief, turning to look at her face. She was half smiling, like a child who had just broken a glass cup.
‘Babe, I hope you are joking, we have had this discussion a million times. The reason we are having one kid is because you want it. You know left to me we wouldn’t have any.’
‘Two kids won’t kill you, Usho. The girl will be bored.’
‘Salama, please don’t do this. And we don’t know it’s a girl.’
She forced a laugh.
‘Of course we don’t. Abeg o, this one you are getting all serious like this, I am only playing o. Haba, you sef.’
He heaved a sigh of relief and lay back down, changing the topic so they wouldn’t end up quarrelling.
It scared him now, knowing just why she changed after that. It was no joke what she said that night. If they were going to have one child, she wanted a girl. After the conversation, she secretly went to do an ultrasound to check the sex of the baby and was disappointed that it was a boy. Now he knew that she would want another baby.
He didn’t bother looking for the iPod. As he drove to the hospital, he saw it all his head. He would not raise the issue until she got better and left the hospital. They didn’t want the same things. Their outlook on life was too different for any more compromise. He knew. This was where the end began.
