I lived in a small village in Saki with my drunken father, sickly mother and headstrong younger twin brothers. I was a farmer, trader, primary school teacher and breadwinner of my family. I had a craving for a university education, but my meagre savings could not afford it.
My parents were poor-everybody in my village was poor, including my childhood friend, Ayo, who happened to be my lover, secret lover, because nobody knew about our romantic affair. The secrecy of our relationship was what made it enticing, and I could not imagine what would happen if our parents and church found out about it. We loved each other so much that I could not imagine any misfortune happening to us. Ayo was my shadow. I could not live without him. Any threat to our relationship was a threat to our lives.
Though I was eighteen and Ayo was twenty-two, we savoured the love we shared out of mundane rustic life and respect. We were fond of each other while growing up to the point everybody called us ọkọ-tìyàwó, husband and wife. He was my prince charming, and I was his princess, and our bucolic castle was our hearts cemented by love. After all these years, we had come to understand each other without words or glance. How else could I explain young, country love?
Over time my mother’s sickness worsened and, since my father was wallowing in debts, there was no money for her treatment. Coincidentally, Niyi, a Lagos-based lawyer came and sought my hand in marriage, and my family immediately accepted him because of his money. But I did not like him. It was Ayo I loved and wanted to marry.
The next day I met Ayo and we talked about it, but there was nothing he could do. He was young, poor and alone in this. The only person he had was his widowed mother who was oblivious our affair. He loved me, and wished he could marry me, but there was nothing he could do because my family, money and tradition were involved. Though he was furious at my suitor and thought of breaking his skull for stealing me from him, he thought he was the right person that would take care of me and my family, and send me to the university too. I understood his love and concern for me, but I was angry with him for saying that.
“I didn’t ask for any of that,” I said “At least, not from him.”
“This may sound absurd, but a lot of girls could kill just to have your suitor.”
“I would prefer to kill my suitor just to have you,” I blurted.
The idea of eloping came up, but we had no place to run to. The thought of fighting back came up too, but we could not fight them. We only talked, argued and cursed for hours, and departed with tears and broken hearts.
Five minutes after I left Ayo, I got home and met my parents, aunt and uncle in the sitting room laughing as they drank one of the exotic liquor Niyi brought the last time he visited. Their deafening laughter escalated the fury in my heart. It had been two years since I saw my aunt and uncle, and was not surprised they had resurfaced because a rich man had proposed to me.
“Ah, that’s my girl!” Uncle Akin exclaimed. “Isn’t she fortunate?!”
“Of course she is,” Aunty Titi flashed her brown teeth. “I can’t wait to carry her child, our grandchild.”
“I don’t like him!” I almost shouted. “And I don’t want to marry him, either.”
My father, mother, aunt and uncle were angry with me. They were already counting their losses. They showered abuses on me. It was frustrating to enjoy luxury in one week and then faced with the danger of relapsing back to penury in no time.
Neglecting their abuses, I went to my room. From my room, I could hear my father, aunt and uncle yelling at each other-either the liquor or I was the reason they were bickering.
Thirty minutes later, my mother walked into my room. She had experienced her own marital ups and downs, and would not allow me to go through what she had gone through. She had always wanted the best for me, and when Niyi showed up, she knew he was the right man for me.
“Please, accept Niyi,” my mother pleaded. “First, for your sake. Second, for us. We’re not selling you out, my child. We’ll never do that. I hope you understand why you’ve to marry Niyi.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want to marry him.”
“Kí ló dé gan-an?” my mother, in dismay, asked in Yoruba. “But why?”
“Because I’m pregnant for Ayo,” I answered.
“Ẹ gbà mí o! ọlá tì pa mí o!” my mother cried. “Somebody help me o! Shola has killed me o!”
Sadly, it turned out that there was nothing I could do. I loved Ayo, and it was him I wanted to marry. I never thought anything could cleave us apart. I never thought of a day like this. Finally, I was persuaded to marry Niyi, and since Ayo did not know about the pregnancy, I willed it to Niyi, as my mother advised me.
Eleven years later, on a rainy Thursday morning, I woke with a pregnancy and a headache. Though I was weak, I braved the flood and the traffic from Lekki where I lived to University of Lagos where I taught African literature. I studied at Lagos, Liverpool and Ibadan.
I was the facilitator of a three-day undergraduate writers’ workshop, and the theme of our short story exercise today was: the good old days. Seated among the workshop attendees was my only child, my ten-year-old daughter, Olaitan. She just finished primary school, and my students were happy to have her around.
The good old days? I racked my brain. Where should I begin?
Suddenly, my mind raced back to our small village in Saki.
Niyi and I had been married for eleven years, and he had proven to be a gentle, kind-hearted man my mother envisaged him to be. Though we were happily married, we had been childless until last week when my doctor told me I was pregnant. The pregnancy meant two children for me but one for Niyi, and only my late mother and I knew this.
Niyi thought Olaitan was his. He loved her. She always told him he was the sweetest dad in the world, and he truly was, but not by blood. I could not imagine what the truth would do to my daughter, husband and Ayo, and I would rather die with the secret than to shatter lives with it.
Ayo…
A woman never forgets a man that occupies her heart for so long, my mother would say. Though I was married to Niyi, Ayo had fossilized himself in my heart. Niyi was our end, yet our beginning. We viewed our break up from two perspectives: hurt, and what it did to us on one hand, and self-discovery, and what it meant to us on the other hand.
Ayo was now married with a three-year-old girl. I adored his daughter, but envied his wife. His daughter reminded me of our childhood frolics, but his wife reminded me of the castle in his heart where I was once his queen.
People thought I named my daughter Olaitan after my middle name, but it was after Ayo’s, to remind me of him. Though Olaitan was my carbon copy, she had Ayo’s unmistakable searching brown eyes and gentle spirit. Olaitan was automatically fond of him, and they looked naturally perfect around each other. She called him Uncle Ayo. He’s your real father! I had always been tempted to say.
Last Easter evening when Olaitan and I visited Ayo, we sat on our favourite childhood bench savouring cocoa beans as nature entertained us. The sky was bright, the sun was merciful, the birds sang Easter carols and the flowers we planted together as children waved at us. I had described the scenery as a haven sweeter than heaven, and Ayo had agreed.
The milieu used to be our right time, place and mood to talk and embrace till we crashed on the bench. There were a lot of history and memories here I did not know which one to relish first, but the one that quickly came to my mind was that magnificent mid-June evening we had our last intercourse, that evening Olaitan was conceived.
I had smiled and, without words or glance, knew Ayo was smiling too. The longing for each other was still there, but we could not exploit it anymore, not only because we were married to different people now, but also because our daughter was seated between us. As a product of our rustic genes, Olaitan mirrored our love and friendship, hurts and regrets that encompassed the best and worst of memories, all unforgettable.
Kingsley Alumona read Geology at the University of Nigeria and is currently doing a master’s degree in Applied Geophysics at the University of Ibadan. His works have appeared in Kalahari Review, The Tribune and The Sun newspapers.
