Chapter Eight

Bisi faked a wide yawn and hoped she would stop talking. And hoped she would ask if she had eaten and maybe offer her something to eat and spare her those sermons. But she didn’t stop, and neither did she notice she was tired. 

She would like to digress the discussion or leave her room entirely but she hadn’t got a chance and she wouldn’t like to interrupt her or walk out on her. She would blame herself for even complaining. Because if she didn’t complain, would she have been this serious advising her as she did to her radio audience? 

“You don’t complain all the time for material comfort, Bisi. All of these are ephemeral and the joy it gives is transient; it doesn’t last,” she kept steady eye contact and Bisi had always been the one to look away. 

“I understand you have only one pair of shoes and they may wear off too quickly because of overuse, but have you thought of those that have no legs?”

Emelda had, maybe, unconsciously thought she was speaking to her radio audience and so when she used the word ‘ephemeral and transient’ she didn’t realize the effect it had on her. Bisi had looked at her with meanness, and then on the other end, there was something inexpressibly sad in her eyes.  

Emelda went on to suggest that she should focus on finishing school. That it would expose her to numerous opportunities. That she should stop obsessing over material possession. Bisi had dropped out of High School when her father divorced her mother.

The father was the only source of income in the family and it affected her badly. With little or no option left for her mother, she started selling bananas for her mother at Aroma Junction when she was fourteen. 

They lived in a boys’ quarter and were barely eating three times daily. But to her surprise, Bisi watched her Mum grow financially without a concrete source of income.

They quickly relocated to a better house. And men frequented their house. She saw her Mum with different big men that visited them; when some of them would be going, they had always left some special gifts for Bisi.

They bought her necklaces, bracelets, and those shiny materials she cherished. And that was how she fell in love with gifts. 

Before she met Emelda, she had watched the kind of lifestyle her Mum led. The Mummy who had caramel skin with a straight line marked above her eyebrow had been a good pleasure seeker and had always led a good extravagant lifestyle.

She maintained her body, wore gleaming clothes, and bought expensive moisturizer. With different body creams and all kinds of lipsticks and many other things. From time to time, she came home with roasted beef, sometimes with chicken, and other times, with ice cream with caramel sauce.

But even though she liked buying all these things, Bisi hardly got her share. And she would wonder if she truly was her mother. 

It was never meant to discourage her, from then on, she began to quest for success even in the wrong way. Having met with different men while hawking, it was so easy for her to blend and she didn’t feel guilty for making love to men, sometimes, in exchange for money. From the money, she made sure her wardrobe was taken care of. 

But just recently, her Mummy had been restricting her movement, threatening also to burn all those clothes she used to seduce men. All those clothes she didn’t know the source of. All those clothes, those below the age of majority shouldn’t wear.     

“Aunty, I am not thinking about school; and I am not going back to school anytime soon,” she said while displaying one of those involuntary actions.

No. it wasn’t involuntary, it was only subconscious. It had turned into a habit. When would she stop doing this…when would she stop licking her lips? Those faded pink lips, now in a freckled face. 

“Don’t conclude yet, Bisi. Okay? You are still young to think about anything else but education?” Emelda said, worried. She couldn’t believe someone at her age could be this resistant to education.

What kind of generation was this? She recoiled. 

Bisi had been waiting for her to drop her final word; she wanted to leave. Today was different. Today was riddled with boredom. She didn’t fry those plantain chips she usually did when she came back from work.

No fun. She didn’t see any movies – those romance movies she would be glued to and fantasizing about the kind of life she would like to live. None of those things had occurred today. Even her yellow drink, her Lucozade Boast…she didn’t see any in the refrigerator. What a bad day. 

And to make everything worse, it was a day Emelda had come back with an insane amount of energy and excitement. Maybe, just maybe, it was reserve energy she was supposed to exhaust during her work hours but didn’t.

And had carried it over. Because Bisi wouldn’t understand. She had been disturbing her ears… talking to her about life…her life…about the good life; her good life. None of which made sense to her.

How would she tell Emelda that she was desperate and ambitious in this life? And wouldn’t listen to her homely even when she pretended to. How would she tell her that she chose to visit her most times because it was also an opportunity to see Donald?

How would she tell her that she liked her not because of her intelligence but because of her niceness …because of the way she had always trusted and defended her from her Mum, who had sworn to make life miserable for her? 

How would she tell her that it would not be long before her effort to seduce Donald yield results and she, Emelda, would shrink into extinction?

How? How would she tell her that she should be smarter than she had appeared and take life head-on without mercy, without her pointless decorum and saintliness?

“Bisi,” Emelda called her. Had she dozed off?    

“Bisi”, Emelda called again. “Bisi!”  

The third call jolted her into consciousness. “Where have you been?” Emelda asked. 

“I am sorry, Donald” 

“What did you say?”

“I am sorry, Aunty. Just a brief loss of focus”

“No. But you just mentioned Donald. What about him? Is anything the matter?”

“It is a slip of tongue. Don’t mind me” Bisi said, yawning. 

“You must be hungry,” Emelda said and she would have replied are you just noticing it? 

“Aunty, you didn’t prepare for dinner?”

“Yes. I ate outside” 

“And my mother said she would not come back today”

“Where did she go?”

“She doesn’t always tell me her whereabouts”

“She didn’t leave anything for you to cook?”

“Yam. I cooked porridge in the morning. I ate it twice; it is finished”

“What is the time?” 

Bisi looked at the wall clock, it was half past 11:P.m and she exclaimed. “What, Aunty?” 

Emelda’s lips curled into a smile. She knew the clock wasn’t right when she asked her time. She knew her first reflex impulse would be to look up at the wall. Her smile degenerated into laughter when Bisi jokingly told her that she was wicked and had scared her.

She knew if truly it was 11:pm that she would go to bed with an empty stomach and that would be unbearable.

They walked downstairs to buy some bread but while they were coming back, Emelda looked at the innocent, pretty girl as if she had never seen her before…but what was she thinking? Why she would refuse education at her age? She found it difficult to imagine.

During their own time, she craved to study. She was lucky too to be trained by a Professor. It was after her mother died that things became overwhelmingly burdensome for her Daddy who was a drunk.

He had no other option than to farm his children out. She was to go to Professor’s house at Nsukka while her younger sister was to go to Enugu to stay with Uncle Jimmy, a trader.   

She wouldn’t be quick to judge Bisi because her life was a miracle. How everything turned around for her was beyond her comprehension. It was as if her mother’s death when she was only sixteen brought about good fortune in her life.

She had not been crazy with her studies until her Mum died and Prof, after some years, took her away to stay with them at the Staff Quarters at the University of Nigeria Nsukka where she would begin her higher education studies.

She was strictly guided by Prof himself. Except that Professor’s wife could be mean, she had good times staying with them. 

She could remember so vividly…everything. How she became passionate about her studies and aspired to become a lawyer because she had come into the den of a brilliant family. At the thought of this, she wouldn’t like to blame Bisi. She rather should look up to her mum to help her.

If she loved education, she would find a way to take her daughter through the process of raising a brilliant child that would have incredible passion to be great. She had come to believe that nurture, in other words, design, played a very significant role in her life much more than nature.

Prof had taken her as one of her daughters, instilling the right attitude in her and almost always pushing her for academic excellence. Trying all he could to prevent her from thinking about her mother or about the trauma she had been through all her life as a pauper. 

But some dark days came like a thief in the night and the saint turned to Satan. And the dove turned into a devil. The plant that blossomed withered. Prof became interested in her, unable to resist her, begging to sleep with her.

From persuasion to threat, and then to force. She battled it and sometimes gave in just to make sure she graduated; of course, he was the one paying the bills and other welfare, and any disobedience could amount to ejection from his house which equally meant she would drop out. She cried, cried until tears became her solace.

Looking back, did she have to sacrifice all this for education? Did she? She found herself locked between the devil and the red sea where either path was full of potential danger. And all that she could mutter was “morality will not stand in the way of survival”

She had spent her university days in pain even though she didn’t appear to be bitter about life and one would hardly notice as she always put on her smiling face. And hardly had she talked to anyone about what she was passing through.

About the devil incarnate she took as her father, whom most people called Prof Eziokwu – the professor of truth. What truth was he representing?  

When they came back, Emelda instructed her to make tea for the bread. She had stopped thinking about Bisi going back to school if she would have to pass through what she passed to get back to school.

But all the best, she meant well for her – she wanted her to have a good education. She wanted to distract her from the danger of men full of libido, from the danger of early marriage as she had become so desperately seeking. 

Bisi breathed heavily, her excitement fading into more wearisome fatigue. As though she had eaten too much. She carried herself to the setee where she rested for a few minutes before telling Emelda good night.

Emelda had become emotional and would regret thinking about her past at this time of the night. Especially about Prof and the death of her mother. She had become so pressed down mentally, with goose pimples that she didn’t seem to realize when Bisi took her leave. Or maybe, she had bid her good night with a half-smile, forced smile –the one that had come from a place of pain.