You’re Not Tired II

Ronke, Okah and Praise were lawyers, and friends. Ronke was gentle, Okah was loud, and Praise was annoying. They worked in a small firm in Kaduna. “Why Kaduna?” Their parents had each asked. “Are you looking for a Hausa husband?” No. Just the hefty salary of seventy thousand Naira that they would not find in Bayelsa where they had studied together.

 “Abeg off that TV,” Okah snapped, jabbing at her scalp through her month-old weave-on with a chewed up pen. 

It was a headline from Lagos: “Shots fired at a small gathering. Three dead.” In the background, a very drunk, very dark man: “You see it now? After God, fear women. They can lie! Eh! No be im wey talk say e no fit die? No be im wey done die now? As for me, I jus dey find something hol’ bele.” The dark drunk staggered from his place under a mango tree and into a nearby gutter. Pan out. Back to the TV presenter.

“For those of you who are just joining us, welcome to the Funbi Awolowo Show,” the presenter was obviously bleaching, her knuckles would tell anyone who bothered to listen. Her weave was an awful plate of spaghetti-like black curls, overbrushed at in the past but surely unbrushed today. She spoke in the typical, custard-like Nigerian-British-American accent. Praise lowered the volume of the TV.

“So,” Praise said in a low voice, “I have something to tell you. It’s about Mike.” Silence. “Mike from HR.”

“Better keep quiet and finish that report.” Ronke snapped.

“Calm down,” Praise whined.

“Praise how many times will we tell you to leave that man alone for his wife?” Okah added, “I don’t want to hear any of your stories abeg. Do your work.”

It had grown chilly in their small conference room, the white Samsung AC blowing a grey, likely harmful midst onto the ugly wooden table. Ronke and Okah were sitting opposite Praise. The room was neat, except for Ronke’s wig and shoes lying around somewhere.

“Okah you are not my mother, please. No dey shout for me.” Praise had grown irritable.

“When you will not hear word” Okah snapped.

A quick silence. Okah turned to Praise:

“Unless you done carry bele for am, I no wan hear anything from your mouth until closing.”

Praise paused, smiled. And then she fought her smile, swallowed it really.

“Praise?” Ronke looked at her seriously.

Praise smiled again, her excitement bursting through her cheap grey work dress. Her friends caught on very quickly. Indeed, she was pregnant. And not for her husband who taught mathematics to Primary 5 students in a local public school. But for the uglier, taller director of HR in their office. 

Ronke picked up her wig and got up. “You be mumu,” she said to Praise, “Praise, look at me. You be idiot. You no dey hear word. And the thing wey pain me pass—you no even know the kin’ wahala you done enter.” 

“Ronke? What is making you angry like this?” Okah asked.

“I get work wey I wan finish. As for you, Praise. I know what I am saying. Listen. Stay away from that man.” Ronke left.

Mike promoted Praise, she told the girls the next day. Praise would pack her bags and leave her stupid husband: “He’s ugly. And poor. He is too black and his penis looks like garden egg.” What that meant, Ronke did not know. She did know Praise was a fool, and she told her so. And that was that.

Ronke would soon find out that she too was pregnant—by her own husband, unlike Praise. She would ask for a salary raise—approach a familiar face in HR. Like a lizard, Mike would fling out his red tongue from his flat lips and ask, “what is wrong with your husband that you are the one fending for your child?” He could give her the money, but he would not use his hand to undermine another man’s authority as the breadwinner. No. And obviously Ronke would spend the extra income on “face pancake and roasted yam.” Again, that was that. 

Six months would pass. Ronke was heavily pregnant, almost rolling through the market that afternoon. Stockfish, coker fish, palm oil, two plantains and fifty Naira pap. Ronke went to see Iya Sikirat, the only Yoruba woman selling foodstuff in the market. “Abi you wan commot the bele?” Iya Sikirat asked when she read her list. Ronke, shook off the insult, “Please collect this five thousand. Hold the money wey remain.” Iya Sikirat sent her daughter to buy the foodstuff, and Sikirat knelt to receive the money and elegantly straddled down the street.

13-year-old Sikirat disappeared into the folds between sweaty hawkers and other shoppers, young and old. Huge piles of groundnuts and cashews on a young boy’s head, another pulling a very small, very stubborn goat blunt-horned down the street. The boy tugged, the goat pulled back firmly, then charged towards the boy and knocked him off his feet. The boy’s father emerged from his stand and picked him up in one hand, and the goat in the other. He walked fast, so Ronke for the first time could see the woman standing behind him. It was Praise.

Praise was wearing a huge studded ankara dress and leather sandals. She was a very bold fool, walking down the path to Iya Sikirat’s shop with her arms at akimbo. The old friends greeted each other, Praise as if she was doing Ronke a favour. Praise had come to buy a box of Indomie, and of course to boast about her new life with her illegitimate husband. Other than her slight bump, she had not changed. Iya Sikirat did not like Praise, but had become well acquainted with her money.

“See as you done full like this. Sit down. Sikirat will soon come back. She will help you carry the Indomie” Iya Sikirat said to Praise.

Praise was in a hurry. Her husband would soon come home and blah blah. Iya Sikirat looked at Praise’s dress as she spoke. It was big, too big for this thin pregnant woman who—come to think of it—did not look pregnant at all. Talkatives spent all their children’s nutrients on running their mouths, they could never fill their maternity dresses. Praise bent down to pick up the box, and like all big dresses, this one willingly betrayed her nakedness of swollen breasts and bruised skin. Scars from older wounds, which—Ronke would know—were still quite new. A spot of blood on her lower abdomen. Ronke, taken with compassion for her friend, opened her mouth to speak. Iya Sikirat softly grabbed Ronke’s hand and smiled a pitiful smile. Ronke smiled back. Before they could look back at Praise, she had gone. And again, that was that.

Iya Sikirat put on her radio after Praise had left. The host reminded them of the gathering in Lagos, now six months ago. She paused, her silence followed by a young girl’s voice:

“When they tell you to keep shut, that nothing will change, that this is our way, remember that we are two hundred thousand in number today.”