Chapter 1-should I ? shouldn't I?

She wanted to be kind and so she refused to leave. She knew he loved her but found expressions of love difficult haven been raised an African man! African men do not show emotions! How many times had he told her his mother clipped him around the ears for crying when he was in pain? Too many times he reckoned and so he had shut that part of his feelings down. She understood his thoughts, could almost read them and knew that if she left, he would be devastated and would have to make a show of not caring, so she stayed. She hoped he would sense it and leave one day but knew that was not likely to happen either. He loves her. Twisted as it sounds to anyone listening, she knew and understood and so she stayed. It did not help that they had no children. That is something unforgivable in these parts. You could not get away with 2 cardinal sins as a married woman in these parts, barrenness and promiscuity. You are expected to be able to produce children on cue 9months after marriage or be labeled promiscuous and if there ever appeared reason to suspect you of promiscuity, it is an ok thing for you to be stoned. This is regardless of what your husband does. He could be copulating with your sister from your birth mother and flaunting it in your face and it would not be filed under extreme provocation and would not be tenable as a reason for your actions, you would still be stoned by men as well as women!

She’d wanted to be his girl so bad; she had approached him and asked him some irrelevant question. To draw his attention towards her person as she understood that she was not striking in looks but she knew she was engaging. Anyone who looked at her closely and had a conversation with her was bound to be hooked and she was banking on that.  He looked and was hooked as she predicted. His level of attraction was not normal and that should have alerted her to the wrongness of this relationship but she reveled in his attention and enjoyed it.

Never had anyone paid her any mind other than her brothers. She had grown up as the last child of 6 and an only girl and so it had taken a lot of shouting by her mother to make her understand that she is female. She always assumed she was male like her brothers and even when the day of reckoning came as a child and she discovered she was missing a vital anatomical part, she still assumed she was a special male child. She resented her father asking her to stop standing in that way that made it seem like she had a load on the back of her neck because she was trying to hide breasts that got her stares from the opposite sex. She hated cooking which her mother insisted she help with because she would have to cook for her ‘husband’ someday soon. Her brothers frequently giggled that such a one would be very unfortunate until she applied herself to cooking so well that even they begged their mother to stop cooking so she could take over those duties. They made up stories about how Mama needed to rest her legs becos of her varicose veins and she pretty much took over the cooking but she made their lives hell for doing that to her by asking for all kinds of ingredients for the meals she wanted to make them. The toads they got had to be egg-filled, as the snails, the eggs had to be freshly laid and even when they returned with a whole squirrel, she complained that it was male and had a smell, could they go and get her a female? She would giggle after they left becos they were unaware they were being punished and she was never going to tell them.

Her imagination made cooking easy and even when she moved to the city to attend the university, she knew the best ingredients with which to make the best soups to go with mounds of fufu and amala that she ate and fed her two brothers who were on the same campus with her. She still made them pay even though they were still blissfully unaware, they also loved her so much, they were blind to her other side. She had made a deal with them where she made them at least 4meals a week and they paid her with almost half their feeding allowance. She guessed they preferred her cooking to anything else becos it reminded them of home. She could not understand how they never reasoned that she fed them cheap food and kept coming back for more.

She drew her mind back to her husband and former friend; there was nothing friendly about their relationship nowadays. He came home very late, she waited up to make sure she performed the one duty he demanded of her for him, feeding him and she retired to the bed they shared and laid in there praying furiously that he would reach for her till sleep claimed her tired mind and body. She would awake later in the night becos of the sensation of being stared at to peek at him from under her long lashes to see him staring at her with longing but seemingly berating himself and quickly turning away and pretending to be asleep when she pretended to stir. This could be a great soap opera on television if it was not her nightmare. On nights when it was particularly hard, she would pretend to roll over and bump into him on his side of the bed and sometimes even felt his erection screaming for her but she knew it was time for him to either claim her which would mean he had overcome his ego or let her go which would mean he no longer loved her. Either way, it was his turn to play his hand, she was all played out. There was no way she was chasing after him one more time. Much as she loved him, she needed to be needed.

She awoke and stirred slowly, opening her eyes in that way that she had perfected to appear to still be asleep and looked around to ascertain if he had left early again today. Yes! His brief bag was gone and the used towel lay on the chaise that was against the wall in their room.  She arose and stretched and touched her belly, looking down at it as if to cradle a baby in her palm. She wanted to carry his baby so bad and she knew that he was aware of that. It was his way of punishing her for being able to stop chasing him when she knew he loved her for chasing after him. Convoluted sick reasoning but they understood each other well. She listened for the sounds of their home, the clock that ticked in the living room, the thermostat on the refridgerator and the hum of the freezer. There were no strange sounds and she stood and walked into the bathroom. She loved this room the most of all the rooms in this house. It was her haven, she had spared no expense when it came to it when the builder had asked what she wanted to spend. She realized that she wanted to be able to retire there and so she had made it very cosy and comfy. She remembered with a wry smile the number of times he had walked in here and the things they had gotten up to in happier times. He knew her well enough to know that when she went in there, she was not necessarily using the toilet. She may be reading, writing or sitting on the floor, thinking. She did her best thinking there. He would come in and ask what she was doing when he could see plainly what it was and she would look up at him and just that was enough to stir his loins and cause blood to rush to his manhood and she would smile languidly shaking her head at how very easy it was to arouse him and he would reach for her and slowly undress her till she begged him to end her pain but those times seemed like centuries ago now. She stepped into the shower and even though she wanted the luxury of a bath, made do and got clean and stepped out so as to get ready. She had a doctor’s appointment and even though she knew it would achieve nothing, she did not want to be late. When your mother-in-law is your gynaecologist and you have no children, you show up and on time when an appointment is made for you. This is so that you do not appear like an unwilling wife but sharing the details of their sex life is something she had refused to do even with Gbenga’s mum. He could tell her that particular ‘tales by moonlight’ by himself, he was the husband, let him explain to her why he could not make her pregnant. She had already been more than gracious by submitting herself for all manner of tests and analysis, she drew the line at gore and that’s what sharing details of her sex life with his mum would be for her. This way, it remained a comedy, she knowing what she did and her using all the science she knew to attempt to explain it to her when she knew. She was enjoying the show even though she wasn’t.

She arrived at the clinic five minutes before her appointment and arranged her features accordingly before stepping down from her car. She knew now not to show emotion becos it got Mummy worried and she launched into a counseling session that would rival any Pentecostal Pastor which added to her mirth and threatened to cause her to burst out laughing which could prove very dangerous becos there was no doubt in her mind that Gbenga’s mum would have her committed in a nanosecond. It would happen so fast there would be no way to explain that she had been pretending and so she looked the right mix of somber and resigned as she stepped into the mouth of the lion’s den.

She bumped into Gbenga as she did and cursed her timing. He seemed startled to see her and almost recoiled from touching her. She looked up at him and he swore under his breath. She tried never to come to his work place especially since he worked there with his very accomplished mother. He surprisingly took her arm and pulled her along towards his mother’s consulting room without a word. He pulled her in, shut the door behind her and drew her into his arms. He kissed her like he used to even though she still detected a trace of anger beneath the passion and she stood unwilling to respond wondering what kind of sick joke he was playing on her. She wondered if his mum had been able to get through to him about the expediency of having a child who would inherit the vast wealth that the family sat atop.  Whatever it was, she was not looking a gift horse in the mouth, she opened up to him and heard his sharply indrawn breath as he explored her mouth with his tongue and sucked on her lips, she loved the taste of his mouth and it was easy to receive his kiss. He seemed to be pulling on her blouse, trying to reach her bare flesh and even though she could have helped him tear off the blouse, she remembered in time that she had to leave the building after this interlude and didn’t want to leave dressed shabbily or semi-nude so she restrained herself. Only she pressed the full length of her body into his and felt him lose his grip on whatever held him back. In one swift motion, he scooped her up and unclipped her bra at the same time, hungry lips met taut flesh and her own hands refused to keep still. Setting her on the examination table, she found him like a homing device and cupped him and heard the breath leave his body in one huge gasp. He held her hand behind her as he drove into her without any warning and they both cried out and swallowed each other’s cries upon remembering where they were. Their ascent and peak was quick, a testament to their self-induced fast, well, his anyway. And as they clung to each other, the room door opened and his mum walked in. Without missing a beat, she took in the situation and turned her back, ‘I realize I told you to get on with the job of procreating but I did not mean immediately and certainly not in my consulting room!’ With her comment, Tolani crashed to earth and felt her face burn with severe embarrassment. He had been following Mummy’s orders? She should have known.

She made to get up and her MIL said, ‘Tolani, stay, I have to examine you anyway’. She felt rather than heard Gbenga glare at his mum as he dressed and left, mumbling under his breath, she stayed put, wishing the ground would swallow her or at least open and create a gulf between her and this place and situation.  She had been bested again; he had only been doing as asked by his mum? What gall? She hoped fervently that she would conceive from this one act as much as she hoped it would not happen. She wanted them to have a chance at resolving their issues before she had children. She also wished to have a gift to remember him by when all this is over for she realized it would be only a matter of time before that happens.

Mummy G (as she called Gbenga’s mum) approached her and hugged her, looking intently into her face and sighing (which was usually prelude to a heart-to-heart talk) and she seriously could not handle one right now so she cried, sobs that racked her entire body and made Mummy G attempt to embrace and comfort her instead of launching into the heart to heart she had been about to. In her head she was laughing hysterically and shaking her head at how good an actress these people were turning her into. She now had learnt how to cry when she felt like laughing and generally carry on in the most dubious fashion, even though she had come into this life without guile, oh well, so be it! Mummy G eventually examined her and let her leave in peace and she knew it was with disappointment that she admitted that once again, she had failed to conceive since the last check-up. She wished she could have made her understand that the lovemaking she had walked in on was the first since the last time she had been here and such miracles were truly uncommon, but that would have been disrespectful to her dear darling husband.

She exited the hospital building and opened her car door in one movement and was surprised to find Gbenga leaning against her car. He was leaning against the driver door and so she had no way of getting into the car and still he said nothing. She stood before him determined to do and say nothing till he spoke or did something. He reached out his hand, wordlessly asking for her car keys and she gave them to him. He got in the driver’s seat and reached and opened the door for her and she went around and got in. What is this pantomime life we are now living sef? She thought in her head?