For a whole day I have been going crazy and these words from my husband, rather than restore my sanity, break me completely. *** We start arguing from our bedroom. I tell Maje that I know his mistress is pregnant, and that there is proof, but he keeps denying it. “There is no way she can be pregnant,” he says. “I haven’t seen her since we got married.” “Call her.” He is quiet.“Call her!” He dials a number and it rings, no one picks up. Then someone starts calling back but he ignores the call. “Pick up the phone, Maje.” I am screaming now. “Okay. I’ll confess, I’ll confess. I’m trying to help her out.” “Help her out with what? Is she pregnant, and why is it your responsibility to help her out?” “No, I have never cheated on you. I have never stepped out on you in this marriage. You need to calm down. I’m just trying to help her.” I remember a similar conversation we’d had two month before. I had found tickets to London for his mistress, from November of the previous year, in his inbox and asked him about it. He said she had reached out to him and asked him if he had a link to book a ticket, and he decided to ‘help her out.’ He was also in London at the time, for work. “Maje, a journalist is calling me saying that this girl is pregnant. Have you even spoken to her?” He continues to deny the story. And I lose it. I scream at him for what seems like hours, not caring that the neighbours can hear me. He remains calm all through, still denying. I feel crazy. Am I crazy? I’m jumping on the bed at this point, our bed covers and beddings pushed back. I start to shake all over. This cannot be happening to me; this is a dream, a horrible nightmare I cannot wait to wake from. I decide to call my pastor, to tell him what I heard and how Maje’s reaction makes me feel crazy; or maybe I need some prayers, anything to explain how I am feeling at this moment. My pastor has been seeing Maje and I before now for counselling. We have been having issues for months, Maje always in a sour mood, picking at every little thing I did. I’d found out in the course of our counselling that Maje had once written an email to me requesting a divorce but had deleted it, without sending, at our pastor’s request. So it does not make any sense now that he is denying something that will give him the freedom he wants. But then, this was classic Maje: never confess to any wrong even in the face of the truth. My pastor arrives, and I sit on the staircase while he talks to Maje in the living room. I can’t hear what they’re saying from where I am. They talk for a few minutes, and then my pastor calls me in. I walk into the living room, and with one look at my pastor I know all hell has broken loose. “Toke, I have to leave now,” my pastor says. “Your husband is going to talk to you. Please be open and listen to him.” He says his goodbyes and leaves. Maje heads upstairs to our bedroom. My older sister, Opeyemi, and two of my closest friends, Modele and Arese, come in at about the same time, full of questions I don’t have answers to. All I can do is cry. I leave them downstairs and go after Maje. “. . . first she said her sister saw her at the airport. Then she said she saw my car. Clearly, she’s just making things up. I don’t know what she’s talking about.” Maje’s voice stops me at the bedroom door. From the rest of his words I figure he is talking to his brother. I start screaming again as I enter the room. I take a bag and start filling it with things I need. I am not going to spend another night under the same roof with this man. My sister and friends must have heard us arguing again. They come into the room, and I ask Arese if I can move into her place. She refuses as she leads me downstairs. “This is your house,” she says. “If anyone has to move out it’s him and not you. You know I’d love for you to come to my house, but you cannot leave your home, not now, not ever, Toke. He is the one who will leave for you. You did not sleep with another man, or are you the one who’s pregnant? He is the one who’s committed an offence and he’s the one who should leave.” Now we’re all downstairs in the living room, Maje too. I am tired from all the tears and shouting. My sister is crying. “Maje, this girl has given you everything,” she says. “What more do you want? Our family was against her yet she stood her ground and she decided to marry you. We all didn’t think you were going to change and here we are 4 5 right now. What is going on? Someone I know told me that Anita is
pregnant and you are responsible.” Opeyemi is lying about someone having told her that Anita was
pregnant, but I do not point this out. I am desperate for the truth and willing to try anything that helps. Yet again, Maje denies all of it. I go on my knees in front of him, my voice as calm as I can make it. “Maje, you can’t keep lying. What is going on?” He walks away, leaving me there with my heart in my hands. I see him pacing, back and forth, like he is having a private conversation. Then all of a sudden, he walks back to the living room, looks straight into my eyes and says, “She’s pregnant.” I fall to the ground. My head narrowly misses the wall and the tears come again. I roll from the carpet to the cold floor, sobbing loudly. Even though a part of me already knows the truth, I cannot help but wish he had stuck to his story and it turned out to be a rumour or a misunderstanding. I had thought up all possible scenarios in my head that would make the story untrue: Maybe someone saw me with her and made this story up. I’ve been lying to her that I want to be with her and she’s trying to blackmail me. Anything but this. Modele is stunned; she doesn’t say a word. My sister is crying with me. Arese is calm. She stands in front of Maje. “All right, no problem. What can we do?” She turns to me to say, “Toke, shut up,” cutting off my screams of I am dead and I am finished. “Maje, what can we do?” Arese continues. “Can we call her? Where can we get the best doctors? What are our options?” “It’s too late.” “What do you mean it’s too late?” “She’s nine months pregnant, nearly full term.” *** How had I missed the signs? Maje and I had our problems but I had always felt they were the teething issues every marriage had, especially in its first years; a common getting-used-to-forever phase where both parties finally realize that it won’t be all sunny skies and long walks on the beach, but also a constant determination to see good even in bad and frustrating situations. And I really thought we had made it through the worst of it. I head upstairs to Maje, where he has gone after admitting the truth. My friends try to stop me but I tell them I need to talk to him. He is sitting on the table in our bedroom, his face closed off, no expression or emotion whatsoever. “What’s she having?” “A boy,” he says. “How long have you known?” “I’ve always known.” “Why, Maje, why?” Tears are streaming down my face again. “Where did I go wrong?” He is quiet for a moment. “It was what I thought I wanted,” he says finally. Everything comes together in my head. This is June; if she’s nine months pregnant, she took in November, when he was in London. Other scenes play back in my head, things that I’d dismissed when they happened. I ask him to leave. It is close to 11 pm on a Thursday night but I don’t care. He doesn’t leave immediately. He is hungry, he says, and asks the cook to make him dinner. We, my friends, my sister and I, sit in the living room downstairs while he eats in the upstairs one. He finishes his meal and leaves at about midnight. *** That night, I toss and turn, my heart racing, refusing to settle down. I remember the girl I was when I met Maje, and the years spent loving him. Iknow it won’t be long before the story breaks, and I cry some more. Just as I am about to surrender to sleep my alarm goes off. It is 4.15 am and I have to get ready to be on radio at 5 am.My dad was a brown man. His preference for all things brown, not his skin colour, is how I remember him – brown suits, brown seats in his car. That and his strictness. Mum was really pretty and petite. She was of the forehead gang, like me, and a big talker. I was born into a family of six, which seemed to be the desired middle-class family model in the 80s: four kids and two parents. I was the second child; my older sister was born exactly 12 months before me, and then my sister and brother after me. My mother had me at St. Nicholas Hospital, Onikan, in Lagos Island, although we lived at Medical Compound in Yaba. I don’t remember much of my early years. My first memories are of Abuja, where we moved after my dad was transferred. He was a civil servant at the Ministry of Works and my mother was a teacher. They were both from the same village, Idanre, where they had met. beginning “M emories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” – Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore 2 10 11 At the time we had a white Gallant saloon car. Dad would wake up very early every morning to wash it downstairs. Sometimes I’d watch as he washed and sang his favourite hymn. Day by day, dear Lord of thee three things I pray To see thee more clearly Love thee more dearly Follow thee more nearly Day by day He’d lift the wipers off the windshield and gently clean them before putting them down. He later bought a Peugeot 504, black with the expected brown seats, which became his car while my mum used the Gallant. My parents were industrious. Besides their regular jobs, they pursued other endeavours. Dad was taking classes after work so he could get a law degree. After he got the 504 he started coming home even later than usual. I remember once waking up around 3 am to the sound of someone entering the house. I checked and it was my dad; he had a face cap on. I asked why he was just coming home and he explained that he had driven his car as a taxi all night. He wore the cap to disguise himself. Of course, he sent me back to bed, but I remember praying for God to protect him as he went about while we slept. He eventually hired a driver to do the taxi bit so he could spend more time with us. Mum owned a shop in Garki, where she hired tailors to make and amend clothes. She also supplied drinks to a lot of the big hotels in Abuja at the time including the Hilton, Agura and Sheraton. Sometimes, after teaching at school she’d travel to Lagos overnight to buy goods and return the next day. We lived in Area 2 in Garki, on the third floor of a block of flats. Our neighbours were a motley mix: downstairs was a pastor, and beside him a family where the husband beat his wife every Saturday morning like clockwork. My parents would shut us inside the house so we wouldn’t hear. I remember riding my bicycle downstairs, between neighbours’ cars and around our block in Abuja where we spent our early childhood. Even riding that bicycle was a luxury as mum was very wary of her children mixing with kids or neighbours that she didn’t know well. There was this man who had a bald head, the first bald-headed person I had ever seen. I used to spit on his head from upstairs. He’d think it was water and would wipe it off and keep going. I was lucky my parents never caught me because I would have been in plenty of trouble. Both my parents were strict, my dad especially. ‘I’ll tell your daddy when he gets home’ was a sure way to get us to behave. The fear of daddy and his famous brown belt was indeed the beginning of wisdom. I remember the first time he disciplined me. I had struck a match inside our living room and ended up burning a bit of the carpet, leaving our help with no choice but to report me to my parents. As if that wasn’t enough to get him angry, I lied about it too. So little Toke ended up on her knees with her hands up as she got flogged with the most dreaded thing in the world then – dad’s belt! We got scared every time Dad took his belt off and rolled it up. It was his brand of discipline and it worked like magic. But the magic only lasted for short periods; I still got into trouble. One time I joined the cultural group in school without telling anyone, and we had to go to Eagle Square in Abuja to perform. It was some national event and several schools were taking part. We were dressed in this cultural outfit that had mirrors all over, and we had dots of calamine lotion all over our bodies. We were preparing to perform when someone yanked me from the group, yelling at my teachers. It was my dad. I didn’t know he was in the audience and had spotted me. Another time, there was palm wine in the fridge at home. I had never tasted palm wine before and decided to treat myself. As I took the bottle from the fridge it slipped from my hands and broke. No one at home at the time shouted at me; they felt sorry for me because they knew I was in for it. I got the belt that night, and the experience made me terrified of palm wine from then on. My mum was no slouch in the discipline department either, despite being the one we ran to for ‘saving’ from our dad. She was a no-nonsense person, never afraid to speak her mind. My results came in one time with a comment 12 13 from my teacher saying I talked too much. My mum went to school to see my teacher. And in front of my entire class she scolded and flogged me – not very hard, but enough to let the message sink it. Dad was an elder in church. He held himself to a much higher standard and that filtered down to us. We had morning devotions and prayer sessions at our house every day, and even though I don’t remember mum being very religious I know she wholeheartedly supported his direction. Even as young as we were then, we understood that dad wasn’t stern because he hated us. He was a generous man; he spent as much time with us as he could, making sure to drop us off at school every morning. It was our bonding time. I always sat in front, in the passenger seat. There was a policeman at a
junction we passed on the drive to school who was convinced that my dad had a habit of deep conversation with himself; I was so small the policeman couldn’t see me in the passenger seat. One morning on our usual drive, daddy stopped by and pulled the glass down so the man could meet me and see that he wasn’t mad, he was just deep in conversation with his daughter. Daddy enjoyed buying us gifts just because. He had a great sense of humour, and a smile that could light up a room. *** In the 80s and 90s, if a family didn’t have younger siblings of the parents living with them then they found helps to assist with house chores or babysitting. There were five of us kids at the time, including a cousin, and we were all young so my parents needed help. My cousin had lost her dad, my mother’s brother, Uncle Leye, and mum had brought her to live with us after the burial. She was his only child and was two or three years old at the time. This was before my brother was born. There were two young women helping mum around the house. They didn’t compare to Aunty Maria, who had been with us from as early as I could remember. She was a second mum in many ways. She helped us with our homework, picked us up from school and just took care of us. But she had to leave because she had been with us for a long time and had to settle down and begin her own family. Her departure brought Ruth and Grace. We didn’t like Ruth very much; she reported our every infraction to our parents. Grace was nicer. My mum needed two helps because things had gotten very busy for her with her business. Ruth and Grace used to take alternate weekends off. Unknown to my mum, a rivalry had developed between the two women and they stopped talking to each other. This was why one of them wasn’t aware when the gas cylinder developed a leak; because one failed to tell the other. 15 The most persistent memory from my childhood is of a smell: a smell of rubber, gas, charred flesh and burning clothes – a memory from the day that changed everything. *** We had just finished our morning devotion that Monday and I was lying on one of the brown chairs in our living room. My dad would ring a bell to wake us up and we would all assemble in the living room to pray, sing and listen to a Bible lesson. It always took me a while to get up from the chair to shower and get ready for school after devotion. I loved going to school but the process of waking up so early to commune with God before the day started was exhausting for me as a child so I had to take a rest first. Besides, it was still very early in the morning. loss “We had just finished our morning devotion that Monday and I was lying on one of the brown chairs in our living room. My dad would ring a bell to wake us up and we would all assemble in the living room to pray, sing and listen to a Bible lesson. It always took me a while to get up from the chair to shower and get ready for school after devotion. I loved going to school but the process of waking up so early to commune with God before the day started was exhausting for me as a child so I had to take a rest first. Besides, it was still very early in the morning. loss “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” – Thomas Campbell 3 16 17 Then I heard a loud bang. Thunder, I thought. Suddenly my dad was breaking down the front door and there was commotion everywhere. The key to the front door had been missing for some time so we had been taking the back door in and out, but here was my dad breaking down the front door. Then I was barefoot downstairs, watching as a crowd gathered. I must have gone into shock. I had no idea how I’d gotten downstairs, and I couldn’t find any of my siblings. There was a fire in our flat. The bang I had heard was the sound of the gas cylinder exploding. My mum had gotten the cylinder on Friday and brought it home only to discover a leak when it was turned on. She left instructions with Grace, who had been on duty that weekend, saying that the cylinder was not to be used and that she would return it on Monday. There was no way to contact the gas people before then. We had used a kerosene stove throughout the weekend. When the other help, Ruth, returned early that Monday morning, Grace didn’t pass the information because they weren’t talking. Ruth, unaware of the danger, had put on the gas cylinder and tried to light the cooker. She died in the first blast. Grace survived the first blast but later died in the hospital. My dad had come out of the building smelling of burning rubber, putting out the fire on his shorts as he tried to explain what had happened to a crowd that seemed to be getting bigger every minute. I could see his lips move but I couldn’t hear him because I didn’t leave my spot. It wasn’t bright yet, I took comfort in the dark. There was something I could taste in my mouth: it was Fear. Fear gripped me and I could barely move. I’m not sure my dad even saw me as he walked past me. In movies, you sometimes see a scene with someone burning from head to toe, screaming and trying to fight the flames. It happened right in front of me. Everyone ran back trying to figure out who it was and how to put out the flames, shouting advice from a safe distance. It took me a moment to realise that it was mum. I stood glued to the spot, watching her burn. Then she was rolling around in the sand trying to put out the flames in the most macabre dance I have ever seen. I heard someone mention pouring water on her to put out the fire but the group of people who had now moved closer to her advised against it as she was already in too much pain. The fire was eventually put out, my mum and dad were put in the back seat of our Peugeot car and a neighbour got into the driver’s seat. I went to stand by the car door and I saw both of them seated beside each other, and that smell hit me. Even after they were driven to the hospital I could still smell it. Meanwhile, people worked feverishly to keep the fire from spreading to other apartments. It was too late to save our apartment as well as the lifetime of memories and property my parents had worked for. My mum’s friend spotted me in the crowd and took me and my siblings to her house. We were already there before we realised that none of us had seen my baby brother and my cousin. *** My mum’s older sister, Big Mummy, and my mum were very close. Big Mummy visited us very often and was there for every major event in our lives. She and my mum would often speak on the phone after the nine o clock news and sometimes my mum would fall asleep still talking to her. It was Big Mummy who came to move the family to Lagos. My parents needed to be taken abroad for medical attention, but there were no international flights from Abuja at the time so we had to go to Lagos first. In Lagos, hospitals were on strike. Eko Hospital, where my parents were taken, was understaffed because of the strike, and doctors had to get my mum in a stable condition before any more travelling could be done as she was in far worse shape than my dad. I remember Big Mummy saying it had taken a while to identify my mum when she saw her in the hospital, because of the severity of her burns. Some of the medication administered to my parents had expired, and this made Big Mummy furious when she found out. The last time I was close to my mum was during the flight to Lagos. We were not allowed to sit with her or my dad or my baby brother, who was found in the flat by firemen when they turned up. He was not as badly burned as my parents, but the wounds were severe for a one-year-old. My cousin was also found, and we all travelled together to Lagos. 18 19 Big Mummy was our rock. She had five kids to take care of, besides making sure our parents were treated properly. My mum kept asking for her children, yet when my brother was brought into her room to see her she refused to look at him. She was burned all over and in a lot of pain. She died before she could be sent abroad. I hear the moment she passed was spiritual. Big Mummy always shares the story of how she kept shouting, “I can see Jesus, His face is like the sun”. She had been in too much pain, and the only thing that kept her sane was the same recital of ‘Thank You Jesus’. They had no idea she was passing on. Her voice grew faint as she said, “I can see Jesus, His face is like the sun”. And very quickly she was gone. *** My dad kept asking for his wife. Nobody was brave enough to tell him the truth. They eventually told him she had been taken abroad for treatment, as her case was critical, just to keep him calm. The day he died, it was unexpected. He had been responding to treatment and was lucid, having conversations with the people that came to visit him. He was lying quietly in bed one minute and the next he was agitated, calling my mum by name and asking her to open the door because he wanted to be with her. Present in his room at that time was a nurse who was born again, and she knew instantly that the door he was asking to be opened was no ordinary one. She asked for everyone to start praying and pleading with the unseen to keep the door shut, to prevent him from leaving. He kicked in the air like he was struggling to kick open that door and their voices grew even louder. “Dupe, please, don’t open the door,” they kept saying. “Dupe, remember your four children, close the door.” Their efforts were wasted. He passed away right before their eyes. *** When I was a child, Saturdays often found my family at one wedding or another. I was little bride at many of these weddings, and very often I didn’t know who the couple was. I remember Aunty Fadekemi, though; she and her husband attended our church. I was a little bride at their wedding and she came to thank my parents afterwards. I had to sit between my parents and I remember dad and mum teasing the new couple about children and when they were going to start having some. They were all just joking around. Then my dad turned to my mum and said, ‘You, can you survive without me?’ And she replied with, ‘No o. We’re dying together. If you go, I go!’ *** ‘Your parents have gone to heaven’ was how my uncles broke the news to us. I listened quietly, and then watched them leave as I took a bicycle, one of my cousin’s, for a ride, and I just rode around and around. I found myself riding to the back of Big Mummy’s huge compound, and my father’s mum was sprawled out on the grass, praying. ‘Yèmi Alice’, as she was called, was one of the first Christians in Idanre. She had also heard the news of my parents passing and there she was crying and rolling in the grass in prayer. I watched her for so long, without understanding what this meant. But inside of me I could feel it: our lives would not be the same again. *** My parents were buried side by side in Idanre, their hometown in Ondo State. My dad was 35 and my mum was a few months shy of 34. Their coffins were brown, with their names, Caleb Ifemayowa Makinwa and Modupe Monica Makinwa, inscribed in gold. We moved into Big Mummy’s house in Ikoyi. She was the eldest of our aunts and had sent herself to school and also taken care of her siblings’ education. Dad’s siblings were not very involved in our lives after his passing, but we were blessed to have family members who cared for us and tried to do 20 right by my parents. We were young, but death had scarred us, including my baby brother. While the rest of us mourned brown suits and a funny overprotective mum, he had to grow up without any memories of them. Yèmi Alice died soon after. She was never the same after my parents’ death. *** I was eight years old when mum and dad died. And life continued. Big Mummy became mummy. She was the sweetest woman but I knew better than to cross her. I couldn’t find closure. The tragedy that had befallen my family took on the form of a heavy cloak that hurt to carry around but that I couldn’t bear to take off for fear that I would fall apart without it. I had all these ‘adult’ questions but no one to ask. Where was God when that gas cylinder exploded? Dad had been active in the church and he wasn’t the type to act one way in public and another way at home. He had made sure we all took prayer, Bible and everything else seriously. So what was the purpose of religion if it could not even save its followers? We had just finished morning devotion when the tragedy hit. Where was the justice in that? Why did my dad follow suit after my mum passed, when he wasn’t terribly hurt like she was? Had he preferred to go with her rather than stay with us? Was I a burden to our extended family? Would we always be people to be pitied? How long would anything last before it was taken away from me? From being a bubbly, friendly child I became withdrawn and taciturn. From being the child who always came first in class, I went to the bottom of theclass. 23 growing pains “D eath leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – From an Irish headstone My older sister, Opeyemi, and I got into Federal Government Girls College (FGGC), Oyo at the same time. I had got a double promotion in primary school and it bumped me up into the same class as Opeyemi, and so we sat for the National Common Entrance Examinations together. The year my parents died, Opeyemi was going to be 10, in May. I remember going with my mum to buy her a gold ring – her first piece of expensive jewellery – for her birthday. I remember my parents had had plans to send Opeyemi to boarding school in England. My father’s brother lived there and had complained constantly of how difficult things were for him, but my dad had encouraged and supported him however he could. My father had wanted his brother there so that Opeyemi, upon arrival in the UK, would have someone to look out for her. O death, where is thy victory? After my parents’ death I became a difficult child, open with my siblings 4 24 25 but closed off to everyone else. I passed the Common Entrance exams only because of my sister. I was struggling and she would look behind and tell me the answers. I couldn’t remember things and I just didn’t care about school or grades anymore, but I had to go anyway. The plan had been for us to go to Queen’s College in Lagos, but we had a cousin at FGGC Oyo at the time who was a senior prefect so everyone thought it would be better for us to go where there would be someone to take care of us. The six years at FGGC Oyo passed in a blur for me. The only bright spot was my sister, Opeyemi. She would share her money and provisions and look out for me. She would come to my classroom every day. We were in the same year but in different classes. Sometimes we would just sit, not talking and just cry. She wasn’t much older but she became a mother hen, not just to me but to all my siblings. I watched her grow beyond her years, assuming responsibilities she didn’t ask for but gladly accepted. She worried about me a lot. Every night she would come by my dormitory before she went to hers, and I kept trying not to let her see me break down, even though I knew she broke down too. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t try to make any because I had become used to not getting close to anyone. I thought anyone I got close to would die. Besides, I didn’t want to share my story because I didn’t want to see pity in anyone’s eyes or have people treat me as if I was different from everyone else. Visiting days were the worst. Seeing other people with their families just reminded me of what was missing. Big Mummy always came to school, bringing goodies, but it was not the same. FGGC Oyo could have been a new start for me but I didn’t take it. I went through the motions, indifferent to everything. My schoolwork suffered but I scraped enough grades to pass and apply to university. *** ‘I will send you to an orphanage’ was a threat I got used to hearing from Big Mummy. Not like she really would, but I was a handful. Here was a woman who had trained her own siblings, her own kids, and a small fry like me was giving her trouble. My studies weren’t the only thing that suffered. I was rebellious; if there was something I wasn’t supposed to be doing I did it, no matter what anyone said. I acted like I didn’t care and made myself out to be worse than I was, and everyone bought it. I broke a bottle on someone’s head once because I was angry. Big Mummy was in shock when she heard the news, and all she could do was ask, “Where did I go wrong?” My behaviour was even more of a challenge when compared with my siblings’. They were good kids, not giving anyone any trouble, and here I was acting out enough for all of us. With my rebellion also came dealing with the opposite sex. I had transitioned from a little girl with feelings that needed to be sorted out to a teenager with even more feelings. I successfully avoided any deep female friendships, but guys were a different matter. I was a hopeless romantic – romance novels didn’t help much – and love, for me, meant finding the perfect guy and building a fairytale life with him. It seemed like the secret to wiping out the tragedy I had dealt with early in life was to fall hopelessly and powerfully in love. But then, love was long strolls on the beach, writing declarations of undying love and finishing each other’s sentences. My first crush happened when my parents were alive. His name was Sunday and he was the leader of our church choir. My sister and I were in the choir, courtesy of our dad, even though it was obvious that we didn’t possess any singing talent. It was one of his ways to get us more involved in church activities and keep us out of trouble. I was always excited to attend choir practice because of the huge crush I had on Sunday. I would go to bed at night and wish that he would be my husband sometime in the future. This crush didn’t last long, though. I stumbled upon him kissing a girl at the back of the church, and it broke my little heart. By this time, though, crushes had taken on the seriousness of wedding vows. I fell in love too quickly. A simple ‘hello’ from a guy I liked and he became my hero, complete with a pedestal and a cape. I scared quite a few young guys away with my intensity. I had a few crushes that didn’t really go anywhere, 26 before I met my first boyfriend. His name was Bidemi and he was a student at Lagos State University while I was just finishing secondary school. We met at Iponri Shopping Complex in Surulere, where his mum had a shop on the same strip as Big Mummy’s and I used to hang out there to while away the time before I gained admission into university. He was tall and very soft-spoken, with cute eyes and a dimple. He fell in love with me much sooner than I fell for him, but it felt safe so I was okay with it. He was the first guy to buy me expensive gifts when it wasn’t my birthday or Valentine’s Day. I really had no prior experience with a guy who wanted to do everything for me; he offered me money, came by every day and was just a stand-up guy in many ways. He was my first lover. We drifted apart after I gained admission into university and I went on to date other guys. *** University of Lagos was a whole new world for me. It meant newfound independence, and the truancy I had started in secondary school flourished. I had gotten admission to study English Language (Big Mummy thought I was studying Law and would find out in my second year that I wasn’t) but I never went to classes. I found a group of girls just like me to ‘enjoy’ life with. We were members of a party club called ENVEE. It was like a rave club: we would throw and attend parties. Every day of the week found us at some party or club. My studies suffered but I didn’t care. Then my third year results came out. I had gone to check the results on the notice board in school, and right beside my name, where my Grade Point was supposed to be was ‘Advised to Withdraw’. I wasn’t bothered at first. I started planning what I would do as a university dropout; travelling out of the country to start my life again was my favourite option. But I didn’t get a chance to put my plan into action. Big Mummy found out. A distant uncle was a professor in my faculty and was on the board that heard the cases of students advised to withdraw. When he heard my name, he called Big Mummy, that very night. I hadn’t told anyone at home what happened, not even my sisters. Big Mummy came to school the next day and she had to go before the board with me to beg. After hearing my story and how I had lost my parents very early, the board decided on humanitarian grounds to let me take the year again. That decision marked the turning point of my life. I got my act together and in two years went from having an almost non-existent GP to a second class lower which I graduated with. 29 Finally, I thought. He chose me! He has stepped up and he is finally ready to make us a priority. It was my wedding day. I was happy, yet I was waiting for something to happen. Maje had disappointed me three times before. We would pick a date to go to the wedding registry and he would call it off. The last time I was already getting dressed and he called that morning to say he wasn’t going to show up. We had discussed eloping but he’d never committed to any plan. So when he came back apologizing, I didn’t believe him. After the last disappointment, we were not speaking. I told him if he was a hundred percent certain about getting married, he would have to plan everything and I would show up. I was exhausted and I really didn’t think he would go through with it. The day before the wedding, my sister told me it would be a private registry love ‘‘In the flush of love’s light, we dare to b e brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Y et it is only love which sets us free.” – Maya Angelou 5 30 31 at the Moorhouse Hotel in Ikoyi. I had my dress and she had handled things for me, but a part of me was waiting for Maje to call and say it wasn’t going to happen. At our introduction ceremony (where both families officially meet and introduce themselves and plan the wedding), before we started the back and forth with the registry, my family had gone all out to prepare to receive his. I was dressed up when he called to tell me his family would not be coming. This was an hour to the ceremony. He ended up coming with two aunts. It was later I figured out that he had only told his family about the introduction that very morning. My family didn’t like this but they went with it. My dream wedding would have involved all of my family, friends, colleagues, and all the drama that comes with a Nigerian wedding. But I was too afraid to tell anyone about the wedding in case Maje disappointed me yet again. It wasn’t until we shared our first dance to John Legend’s ‘All of Me’ that I finally believed that it had happened. Then I relaxed and enjoyed Maje’s effort. Our wedding was a very private event. We had guests hand over their phones at the door. We were careful of the people working in the hotel so they wouldn’t figure out it was us. Most of our old friends who had been with us from the start were there. Some of them cried tears of joy at the wedding. They couldn’t believe that it was happening, that Maje had finally stepped up. We were going to be okay. Our marriage was the beginning of a new life; our story would inspire many people to believe in the power of love and commitment. We didn’t have a perfect story, but from now it was all going to be different. *** I was in my first year and the euphoria of university life was still fresh. It was the Christmas holidays and I was supposed to have left the hostel for home that Friday, but I decided to put my leaving off till Saturday. I was lying in bed, just lazing around, when my friend Amara came around, trying to convince me to go hang out or do something interesting. I didn’t want to go out that night and I tried using the fact that she wasn’t feeling well to dissuade her, but she was determined. I decided why not; it was Christmas after all. I got dressed. There was a Bachelor’s Eve party at the Boat Club in Ikoyi and someone had invited us. We didn’t know whose party it was but since we wanted to go out it was a good place to start. Four of us girls went there together and ran into a friend of ours, Ahmed. We stood with him exchanging pleasantries while he introduced us to a guy he was with. The Boat Club was packed and the bar was a nightmare, so I asked Ahmed if he could sort Amara and I out with a drink. I told him that she had only just recovered from malaria and needed a drink to take her medication. “I can do that.” It was the guy standing beside Ahmed. “I can get you a drink. What do you want?” I looked at him closely then. He was really dark, and handsome. “There you go,” I said to Amara. “This cute guy here will sort you out.” And they both walked off. An hour or so later I ran into Amara. “Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.” I had spent the time dancing and chatting with people I knew. I had not been looking for her or worried because I was so sure she was having a good time with the guy who wanted to buy her a drink. I said, “Oh, I thought you were with your guy who helped you get a drink.” “Very funny,” she said. “He kept talking about you throughout.” Apparently, he had told her he thought the sun shone from my behind. I laughed, thinking that was the corniest line I had ever heard. I didn’t pay her words any mind since she had lost the guy somewhere in the party and I was ready to hit another club. We couldn’t find our other friends so we left together for Bacchus Night Club, which was the ‘happening’ club. As we walked in I saw my boyfriend, Seun, with a girl. Seun and I had been dating on and off, and we’d had a fight so we hadn’t known each other’s plans for that night. I called Amara’s attention to him and ranted a bit while 32 33 we made our way to the dance floor. Soon enough, Seun saw. He walked up to me and started trying to have a conversation right there. I wasn’t paying him much attention; and then he said, over the loud music, “I think we should start seeing other people.” “What?” I yelled, refusing to believe what he had just said. He repeated himself and then backed away from me. He walked off to meet the girl he was with, who had been shooting daggers at me with her eyes the whole time. I just stood there, crying. Someone appeared beside me – male, dark skinned – asking if I was okay. I was crying so hard I couldn’t respond. The guy took me aside and got me something to drink. All the while he kept asking what was wrong and was I okay. I didn’t know where Amara had gone and I just wanted to leave and go home. I told the guy this and he walked me out of the club, got me to the cab that had brought me, and I went straight home without going back to school. I spent most of the next day in bed, sad and miserable. I could not believe I’d been dumped so unceremoniously at a night club, and in front of the girl I was being dumped for! The guy didn’t even have the decency to take me to a quiet corner and break the news over a drink… What was wrong with the men we had out there? As I pondered that question, my phone beeped with a new message. Even before I picked up the phone the face of the guy I’d met the night before flashed before my eyes. I had given him my number after he said he only wanted it so he could make sure I was alright. I had forgotten about him all day because I’d been too busy feeling sorry for myself. I read the text: Are you okay? You seemed pretty shaken up last night! I quickly typed a response, and before I knew it messages were flying back and forth. My broken heart was forgotten even as I started building a new romantic fantasy around this new guy I didn’t even know. There were no phone calls, just text messages. I told him why I had been crying and he told me he was crushing on me. He asked what my favorite food was and I told him it was peppered snails. His family owned a bank and he was working at the branch in Abuja while his brother worked in Lagos. He was in Lagos for the holidays and was staying at his parents’ house. It didn’t take very long before we found out we were practically neighbours; his family lived down the road from us in Victoria Island, where we had moved to a few years before. We talked about a lot of things, exchanging messages from about 1 pm till about 7 pm. We had stopped chatting and I was lying there mooning when the doorbell rang. Big Mummy called me from downstairs, and I went to meet her. She was holding a package that had been delivered. It was peppered snails. I was going back upstairs when I got a text message: Enjoy your peppered snails. Maje. That was how I learnt his name. *** The next day I woke up to a text message from Maje that read Hi. We spoke all through the day, learning everything we could about each other. He came by to see me at night and I went to sit with him in his car. We’d been cooking for Christmas at the house, and I was grating okra when he came, so I took the bowl of okra and the grater with me to his car and grated while we spoke. He asked me to hang out at the beach with him on Boxing Day and I said yes. I called a friend of mine, Gbemi – one of the four girls I had gone to the Boat Club with – and told her all that had happened before asking her to accompany me on the date. There was no way I would go to the beach alone with a guy I had just met. On Boxing Day Maje showed up at 1 pm to pick us up. The first thing Gbemi said when she saw him was, “He looks like Michael Power.” Maje did resemble the dashing character Michael Power from the Guinness adverts of the early 2000s. Tall, dark and handsome, and with a great body, Power was every girl’s dream. And Maje looked just like him, down to the shaved head. The trip to the beach was really long. First came the car ride, and then an hour-long ride on a speedboat from the Boat Club. This was a new 34 35 experience for me, riding on a speedboat and going to a private beach. After we had settled in, Gbemi asked Maje if she could make a call with his phone as her battery was dying. He said okay. What he didn’t know was that Gbemi and I had this thing where if either of us met a ‘potential’, the other would ask to use the person’s phone, and she would snoop and report her findings. ‘‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Gbemi told me afterwards. “There’s a girl who keeps calling him baby but I don’t think it’s anything serious.” After lunch, Maje asked if I wanted to go on a jet ski. I had never been on one and I told him so. I was terrified about falling and I had seen skilled drivers fall into the water. But I gave in after he persuaded me to give it a shot. “I’m scared,” I told him. “Trust me,” he said. “I’ll never let go of you.” I went on that ride with him, all the while turning his words around in my mind. Was there a hidden message, or was he just talking about the ride? After spending time at the beach, he asked if I wanted to go dancing and we did. Boxing Day was to be the first of many dates. We spent what was left of the holiday together. The day he left for Abuja, I had gone to school for some registration and I came home to flowers and a piece of jewelry I had admired once when we went to Mega Plaza together. Maje started visiting Lagos from Abuja every weekend, and we would spend time together. He was a romantic and the man of my dreams. He was mature; almost twice the minimum six-year age gap I had decided had to be between my man and I. He paid me a lot of attention. There would be a message from him and we would go to dinner or go dancing. We held hands everywhere we went; he would open doors, pull out chairs – a perfect gentleman. ‘Bambino’ was what he called me, and I would get weak at the knees. We spent the Easter weekend on the beach and it was magical. We would stay up all night, take walks on the beach and watch the sky full of stars, have breakfast listening to the sounds of the waves. We rode quad bikes and made plans about our future. Many times I fell asleep in his arms listening to Nora Jones’ ‘Come Away with Me’. It felt too good to be true, but it felt right. Up until this point, Maje had never tried to get physically intimate with me. I felt electrical waves each time our skins touched, and I wondered if he felt them too. I was sure he did. Or didn’t he? I was confused, wondering why he was taking his time. Did he not desire me at all? Maje visited one weekend in April, and we went out to dinner. It started raining just as we decided to leave. Maje was dropping me off when I blurted out the question that had been on my mind for weeks: was he attracted to me at all? He must have seen the look on my face as he politely asked me to come over to his. I quickly said yes and we drove in the rain to his parents’ house, where he stayed each weekend he came to town. The rain had gotten heavier, and we were trapped in the car; our bodies stayed warm as we kissed. At some point we decided to brave the rain and run for the house. Maje took off his shirt and gave it to me, to cover my hair so it wouldn’t get wet. It was the sweetest thing I had ever experienced. We were lying in bed together and he said, “Can I make love to you?” No one had ever done that and it blew me away. I said yes. 37 history “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.” – Mineko Iwasaki Maje and I had been together for four months and everything was perfect. My friends knew him and constantly teased me about him. Some complained that when he was around I acted like they didn’t exist. I was sitting with a couple of my friends at the quadrangle in front of the famous Moremi Hall chatting away when Maje’s name came up. I was about to respond when another girl sitting nearby turned and asked, “Which Maje?” “My boyfriend, Maje,” I replied, annoyed by her intrusion. She started to laugh and she said, “He lives in Abuja? He’s dark-skinned?” “Yes,” I said, wondering at the questions. “How is he your boyfriend? I know his girlfriend very well.” She told me Maje had been dating her friend, Hauwa, for five years. She went on to say that she had been in Abuja the weekend before and the couple was as ‘together’ as ever. 6 38 39 I didn’t know what to think. How could Maje possibly have a girlfriend when he spent so much time with me? He was always texting or calling me. What kind of girlfriend would be okay with her boyfriend spending so much time with someone else? I felt humiliated, and then angry and confused. My first urge was to call him and ask for an explanation, but I didn’t. Instead I waited for his next text and responded as coldly as I could. Then during our conversation I found the perfect opportunity to slip ‘maybe you should go and talk to your Abuja girlfriend’ in. He denied that he had another girlfriend; Hauwa was his ex. So why do people still think you’re together? I texted. He put it down to lies and rumours, but I wasn’t completely convinced so I stopped talking to him. When he visited Lagos that weekend I refused to see him. Then he brought me flowers and wrote me a letter explaining that he and Hauwa weren’t together, and it was me he wanted to be with. By the time he returned to Abuja we had made up. *** Maje’s childhood friend was turning thirty on May 9th and was having a party. It was the talk of the town, and I was looking forward to going with him. My cousin was also going to the party; the birthday boy was her ex. This cousin of mine had warned me, albeit indirectly – she said things to my sister – about Maje. I didn’t take her warnings seriously. I believed she was just being sour about my relationship with Maje because her relationship with his friend hadn’t worked out. The party was going to be on a Friday, but as the weekend drew close I began to get weird vibes from my boyfriend. He was less and less available, and even when we were together he was distant. My friends had been asking about our plans for the birthday party, but I couldn’t give them any answer because Maje hadn’t asked me to go with him. That weekend, Maje came into Lagos but didn’t come to see me. This was not like him, and I was worried and a little scared. I wasn’t myself all of that day, and by the next morning he called and said he wanted to see me. I felt a bit better but I knew something was wrong. He was surely going to ask me to go to the party with him, I hoped. I had taken my little cousins out to the park and Maje came to meet us there. After we’d exchanged hellos, I was shocked to hear him say he just came to tell me that he didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to come to the party as his ex was going to be there. “The same ex that you said is EX?” I said. “Is this not an opportunity to show off your new relationship? You don’t have any problem holding my hand and everybody knows you’re my man, so why this?” He didn’t want it to be awkward, he didn’t want to take away from the birthday boy’s night, and he didn’t want it to be about him. “What is awkward if you’re no longer with this girl? Why is she even coming?” They were all friends, they went to school together. And she had heard about me and he couldn’t predict what would happen if I showed up. He made it clear that if I insisted on showing up then I would be by myself and he wasn’t going to ‘be with me.’ I lay in bed crying as my cousin dressed up for the party. Apparently, she had told my sister that Maje wasn’t going to take me to the party, and now she kept going, “Didn’t I tell you, the guy is a nuisance,” to my sister as she prepared. I was even more upset that she would be attending her exboyfriend’s party, someone she was once involved with, and yet I was dating his friend and couldn’t attend. That night my phone didn’t stop ringing as friends kept calling from the party to find out where I was. By morning I had gotten the gist of the party: how Hauwa had come to mark her territory in Lagos. She and Maje had made their entrance together and had been all touchy-feely and kissing. All this I heard from my cousin’s friend who had been at the party, and from friends who called me afterwards to ask where I had been while my man was with someone else. Maje called for hours that day but I didn’t pick up. He returned to Abuja and I still refused to talk to him. The next weekend he came to Lagos and dropped off a six-page handwritten 40 41 letter at my house. It was overflowing with apologies and explanations: he and Hauwa hadn’t broken up by their own choice or because they had run out of love for each other; they’d broken up because her family was from the north and they wanted her to marry someone from there. The breakup had been difficult and emotional, and he didn’t want to be an asshole to her by flaunting me in her face as she was still heartbroken and hadn’t moved on. He had felt that having the two of us at the party would be a bit too much for him. I had nothing to worry about; he wasn’t interested in getting back together with Hauwa. By the time I had finished reading the letter, I had softened. This was an example of a guy, a perfect gentleman, who wasn’t being disrespectful to his ex; he cared about her feelings even though they were no longer together. We got back together, and Maje invited me to Abuja. I was so excited as I packed my bags. This would be my first time visiting him in Abuja, and I wanted so badly to get a taste of his life: the real Maje. But as I landed in Abuja my excitement turned into fear; I knew something was wrong. Maje wouldn’t come to meet me inside the airport; I had to take my luggage out to him at the car. We went to drop my bags off at his place. As I was putting away my things I saw all kinds of feminine items – earrings on the dresser, sanitary pads in the drawer. His explanation was that he had friends over for drinks at the weekend and people often left stuff behind; there was nothing to worry about. Dizzy from all of it, I doused my suspicion. As we headed off to the British Council bar I told myself, “Don’t start, Toke, just enjoy him. Give it a while; it’s all in your head…” Maje was supposed to be showing me his town. Abuja had to be different now; the last time I was there I was eight years old. I was thinking of going to the area where I had grown up when I noticed that Maje was walking miles ahead of me, like we were not together. It was so awkward. We walked into the bar and there was drama. A couple of ladies, there must have been about six of them, called out his name and immediately fell silent when they saw me. Maje was sweating profusely by this time and made no introductions, so I stood there feeling totally silly. We went to sit in a corner but things had gotten pretty tense at this time and he soon asked that we leave. As we walked outside I asked what all of that was about, and he brushed it aside. “Who were those girls? Why are you so nervous, Maje? Is everything all right?” “They are Hauwa’s friends,” he said, almost in a whisper. We fell silent in the car, and for the rest of the ride. He took me to an Indian restaurant for dinner, and had his friend and his girlfriend, who I knew, meet us there. His phone kept ringing, and he would go out to take the call and return after long minutes. I asked who it was and he said his mum. Before we made it to the main course he asked to be excused: his mum was calling again. Thirty minutes later, Maje hadn’t shown up. One hour, still no Maje. He wasn’t taking my calls. One hour became two. His car was still outside the restaurant but he had disappeared. At this point I told his friend that I wanted to go. I noticed his friend was trying to stall but I had had enough. I asked for Maje’s address; I just wanted to pick up my things and go back to Lagos. His friend didn’t drive us home; instead, he drove around Abuja aimlessly. When he got tired of my constant questions about where we were, he said he had to make a stop along the way to pick up something from someone. I knew something was off but Abuja was not my town anymore. I was at the mercy of Maje’s friend who was obviously trying to buy time for Maje. What was he really up to? At this point it was late. I had gotten to Abuja since 3 pm; I was angry and I was exhausted. Finally, the friend took me to the house and there Maje was. I told him I was leaving and he started to beg. I wasn’t having any of it at that point so I yelled. I started to cry out of frustration and I threw everything I could reach at him. When he saw that he wasn’t getting through to me he did what was typical – he flipped the script, talking about how, ‘when your man tells you he has issues he has issues’, and he stormed out of the house. I started to worry that I had pushed him too hard, and I cried some more. I felt my heart breaking, and it hurt; I didn’t know how to handle it. Why had 42 43 it all gone downhill? This was my love, my fairytale; was it over? Would he go back to Hauwa’s arms now? I had failed to keep him with me and now he was gone. I dialed Maje’s number over and over until my fingers ached; still he didn’t respond. I kept looking out the window to see if he was returning. That night he had a visitor. It was about 11 pm and I was standing on the balcony looking out for the lights of his car, his horn, anything. I saw her before she noticed me. I wondered who she was and why she was conversing with the gateman like they knew each other. He said something to her and she looked up, saw me and left. I couldn’t bring myself to ask the gateman who she was, but I suspected she was a regular at Maje’s house. That was when I started looking around. In the bedroom I found female shoes. I opened his wardrobe and found a bag; inside it was an ID card with the name Aisha. It was the same girl that had just left. I went into the next room and all her things had been thrown in there haphazardly. So apart from Hauwa, there was a live-in lover as well. I cried till the sun came up. Maje returned at 6 am and didn’t explain or apologise for the night before. I felt unwelcome and quietly packed my bag to return to Lagos. He wasn’t ready; there was just too much happening with him and I had to get away from this guy. The person he showed me on those weekend trips was not who he was. I was so upset with myself. I told myself it was for good. I couldn’t deal with him having other women in his life. *** When Maje began to apologise, he did it with everything. We had not spoken in a week, and deep down I was unhappy. I cried myself to sleep every night. One day he showed up at my house unexpectedly, looking sad. I fell for it; I was too weak when it came to him. Maje told me that it was me he wanted to be with, and that he just needed some time to sort through his issues. Aisha was an ex who didn’t have anywhere to go so he offered her a room. I didn’t completely understand it, but I was in love and my resistance wore down. Our relationship was less than six months old. At home, my family was beginning to notice how serious things were getting with Maje. My cousin had told me to stop seeing Maje but I refused. My cousin and I had a big fight and she asked me to leave her father’s house. Lucky for me her brother lived nearby, so I moved in with him. The next week, there were photos on Facebook of Maje at a wedding with Hauwa in Abuja. I asked him about it and his response was, “I can’t deal with all these questions. I need some time. I think we should take a break.” For three days straight I couldn’t eat or sleep. This was the man I had just gotten kicked out of home for. My heart was broken. School suffered even more than usual; I didn’t go for two weeks. Two months later Maje was back. He was sorry again and wanted to be in a relationship with me. He had completely broken it off with Hauwa. He chose me over everyone else. I took him back. Things went back to ‘normal’. For months I had Maje to myself. I was finally in the relationship I had signed up for. *** One day a friend of mine, Urena, called to ask if Maje and I were still together. She lived in Abuja and had a cousin staying with her at her house. This cousin had a friend over one evening. They were playing catch up when the friend started going on about a guy she had just met in Abuja; she was so into him and they had just started dating. His name was Maje. I asked what this girl’s name was and Urena promised to find out. She called me later and said they called her Pinky. When next Maje called I asked who Pinky was. He dismissed my question; he didn’t know what I was talking about. I let it go. Urena called a few days later to say that Pinky was staying at her friend’s house, where Maje would go to visit her. She added that Pinky was a nickname and not the girl’s real name. Her real name was Anita Solomon. I asked Maje about Anita when he called me that evening. “Oh, it’s some girl 44 45 who is obsessed with me,” he said. The phone was silent. I was not about to go through another phase of madness with him and I told him this. But we got back to our lives and things were really great. I had no reason to doubt or worry anymore. He loved me and we were growing in love, and that was all that mattered. Maje came to Lagos some time later and I had to go and drop something off at his house while he was out visiting a friend. I noticed a girl standing by the gate as I drove closer to the house. Immediately the gatemen saw me they went in and closed the gate, and the girl looked at me and walked off. I stopped at the gate, horning so the gatemen would come and take the package. When one of them came out I asked who the girl was and he told me she had the wrong address. Later that night, I ran into Maje at Club 11:45. I was shocked to see him there; we had been chatting the whole time even as I walked into the club. He’d told me he wasn’t going out that night, and I’d mentioned that I was out with friends but I hadn’t said where. I asked Maje what he was doing there and he asked me the same thing, and we started arguing. Then a girl came up to us. “Maj, don’t lose it,” she said. “Come with me.” I realised it was the same girl I had seen that afternoon. I turned to Maje and I asked, “Who is she?” as he said to her, “Get away from me; it’s none of your business.” She turned around and walked away. “Maje,” I said, “who is this person that has the nerve to stand between you and me?” He didn’t give a straight answer and we got into a fight. We left the club separately and I went home. The next morning Maje called trying to see me. I didn’t think I would hear from him anymore because I had slapped him in anger the night before. “Who was that girl?” I asked. “That’s that girl.” “Which girl?” “The girl I told you about. Her friends are always calling me to say she really likes me and has a crush on me. Her name is Anita.” “So that’s the Anita girl they say you’re dating.” “I’m not dating her. How can I date someone that is always saying, ‘can I come and see you? I’ll bring my friend that you think is cute’? ” I accepted Maje’s explanation and concluded that Anita was not important. So I’d be with Maje and she’d call, and I’d tell him, “The girl that has a crush on you is calling,” and it would be nothing. *** Maje travelled for three months and it took a toll on our relationship. The trip was supposed to have lasted for one month, but he wasn’t feeling well and kept putting off his return. By the time he got back, I wasn’t sure where we were because we had fought so many times. He called me when he arrived back in Lagos and we agreed to meet late the next day as he had something to do for his dad. The next day couldn’t come any faster; I had missed him so much, all I could think of was being in his arms. I decided to go see a movie with a friend at Silverbird Galleria. But the movie was late so we went to grab a bite at Barcelos. We walked into Barcelos and the first thing I saw was Maje sitting at a table with Anita. I grabbed a chair and joined them. My friend must have gone her way at some point but I don’t remember her leaving. “Is this the thing you had to do with your dad?” I asked Maje. He walked away and left me sitting with Anita. I turned to her: “Hi. Why do you keep showing up? What exactly is going on here?” She looked away and said nothing. Maje returned to the table and said, “Let’s go.” I wasn’t sure who he was referring to but I decided to sort it out once and for all. “Well, you and I are leaving and she is not coming with us.” I repeated myself as all three of us walk out of the galleria: “She’s not entering this car, Maje. You have to find another way for her.” We left her standing in the parking lot and I lit into Maje immediately. “You come into town and that’s the person you see first?” I said. “That’s the 46 47 person with you? What the hell is going on?” His response shocked me. “You’re the wife, she’s the girlfriend. It’s high time you started behaving like my wife; she’s just a girl.” I decided to respect myself as ‘the wife’ and not get into anything with Anita. We spent time together that evening and I didn’t talk about it again that day. It was obvious that Maje was dating both Anita and me; the signs were all there. I would talk to him about it and his response would either be that he had broken up with her or I was the most important one in his life. I got fed up from time to time and broke up with him, but a few weeks later he’d be back begging and saying it was over between him and Anita, and I’d take him back until the next incident. Maje had started spending more time in Lagos. His father’s bank had been taken over in a merger and his position was not secure. He had a lot of free time on his hands to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, and he hated the banking job anyway. His birthday was in a couple of days and I was determined to make it special. I spent my tuition fees on a huge birthday cake and broke my savings to take him to a really expensive restaurant in Victoria Island. It was a full evening with us two; I dressed up nice and so did he. This was a celebration of our love, our journey. The bad days were finally behind us, and as I looked across from him as he appreciated me and made promises to love me right for all the wrong he had done in the past, the evening couldn’t have been any better. We went back to his house and made love till we fell asleep. I woke up earlier than he did, and I stared at his beautiful face as he slept. I was counting my blessings when I heard his phone beep. My heart leapt into my mouth. As much as I loved Maje I had trust issues – and how could I not? He had let me down so many times that I didn’t know how to simply enjoy us. And so I reached for his phone and opened the message: I can’t wait to see you later. Are you looking forward to seeing me? Have you missed me? There was no name, but there was a thread of messages and it didn’t take long before I realised who it was: Anita. She was coming in to Lagos from Calabar where she lived; and from the exchange between both of them, Maje was very much her boyfriend. She knew of me but Maje had portrayed me as a crazy person; I was a joke to both of them. I asked myself why Maje was doing this to me. From Hauwa to Aisha and all the women in between, and now there was Anita. I put Maje’s phone right back where I found it and we had breakfast like nothing had happened. He dropped me off but asked if I had two thousand naira, he wanted to leave it at the gate for his cousin who was visiting. I gave him the money. I stupidly paid for Anita’s transport and I couldn’t speak up. I was in shock. Slowly, I had become a shadow of the confident girl I used to be. I lived in constant fear of losing Maje. ‘I’ll just accept it all,’ I told myself. I was tired of being heartbroken and I figured maybe if he got tired of seeing Anita he would stop. I allowed it to happen even as we drove away with my two thousand naira at his gate. I made a vow to act like I didn’t know Anita existed, and just enjoy the times he spent with me. *** Because Maje worked for his family now, his dad was always calling him for one thing or another. I had gotten used to this. We were together one day when he got a phone call. He said his dad needed him at home, and he left. Three days after, I couldn’t reach him. I called and called but he wouldn’t pick up. I sent messages asking where he was. I got no reply. By the time we finally spoke he explained that he’d had to fly to Abuja that day, and that his dad needed him to take care of some things. I wondered what could have happened but he didn’t tell me and I didn’t push further. A week later, during a phone conversation with my friend, Urena, she asked if Maje and I were still together, sounding a little surprised when I said I was waiting on him so we could to go to dinner. I told her we were still very much an item. “This is so weird,” she said. “Remember that girl I told you about? Anita? She had an accident on a bike and Maje flew to Calabar and was with her for 48 a whole week.” “What? He was in Calabar?” She said yes; her cousin who was friends with Anita had told her that Maje couldn’t possibly be with me because Maje had been at the hospital playing dutiful boyfriend at Anita’s side. This coincided with the days I couldn’t reach Maje. By the time I questioned him about it he lied and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. This was in addition to the fact that he had attended Anita’s graduation at University of Benin but hadn’t come for mine. It was clear where he was more invested in. My plans to share him weren’t working, and I couldn’t do this anymore. It was Christmas of 2007, five years after we first met, and I was fed up. So I gathered my dreams, made plans and left Nigeria, Maje and all the drama behind.
Toke is a strong woman!
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