Janet stands still, like a stone figure; her face is terribly blank, eyes wide. Right here, my spines wobble within me, from a cold shiver. A two-month Pregnancy? The question probes my mind. Silence has crash-landed upon the room; like the one at the funeral of a young deceased. I can’t deny the fact that we had lot of raw affairs. But she would wash them with pills. I can’t remember vividly the last.... No. I think I can remember. Yes. Before she left, it was over two months when she started requesting me to always protect my sword before any battle. I shake my head. Then frame my jaw with my hand, smile, turning at the wall. In a matter of seconds, I turn back, sigh and face Adeola whose head has been dropped back. With a cool apologetic tone, I begin, “Baby, you should have told me this when Baba was here....I don’t know you’re carrying my baby. I’m so sorry. Two months, you call it?” She lifts her head. Her cloudy face is starting to brighten up. “Yes, two months,” She mutters, nodding. Then I bend over her, supporting my hand on the wall, “And you have confirmed from a doctor. He assured you that it’s only two months….” “Yes, I did,” she nods, innocently, again. I stand upright, turning back to look at Janet who seems completely lost; dummy-faced. I return my gaze on Adeola. “Get up from that place,” I say in a low, controlled voice. Looking at my face, her eyes glint with confusion. “I said get UP, now!” I boom as loud as a gunshot in the midnight, so that even Janet is rocked back on her feet. Adeola is standing slowly, trembling, “But, but, y...you….” “But what?” I bark, “But what? You think I’m stupid? You think I’m stupid like you?” Then I drop my voice to nearly a whisper, my breaths racing, I snarl, “for good three months in this room, Deola. For good three months, tell me. Did we have any raw affair? You must be sick in the head!” I point straight to the door. Janet is now standing aside, right behind me, “Now, use the door!” “But I didn’t meet any other man since I left!” She snaps, as if afraid I would beat the statement back to her mouth. “If I hear any word from you again, I swear, you will…” “Mathew, please take it easy,” Janet says from behind me. I turn to Janet, still pointing at the door. “Thank you….but please, ask her to leave gently,” I say in a calm voice. She rather wears a faint smile, as if to say she’s never in the best position to do that. Turning back at Adeola I discover she’s been shooting a fiery look at Janet. Certainly, she believes Janet is my current woman. Idiot! “For the last time…” But before I could finish my statement she has bent to carry her bag, proceeding to the doorway. Before opening the door she glares at Janet, then back to me. I hear Janet sigh heavily when she has left. I tilt my head, pocketing my hands. “So, can we get going?” she says after an awkward moment of silence. “Yeah,” I exhale. *** It has been an hour and 51 minutes’ drive from Lagos. Her new driver, a middle-aged man, also an Igbo, seems to have travelled far and wide. When I mentioned Oke-Are, Ibadan, he didn’t crumple his brows, going as far as listing all the villages and towns around it. The range rover jeep is presently climbing a mountain of red-dusted road leading to Oke-Are. The road is tarred, but awash by heaps and heaps of dust. Only occasionally do we come across the brownish blackness of tars, usually with bumps and pot holes. Beside me, Janet has been busy with her phone and whenever she raised her head she would call my attention to any interesting landscape. Like what she is doing now. “See, Mathew, that building, how classically beautiful….”she’s pointing at one castle-like building with rusted and ragged zinc; although unpainted, but looking as if smeared with dirty creamy paint. “Yeah, I wonder what age it is. Perhaps it was erected in the 30’s.” I remark, smiling. She is watching through her side window. She especially admires the architecture. She has expressed how unique they are, unlike her own town where the entire archaic buildings are bungalows. In a few minutes the vehicle is on Opo Street, pulling along a broad untarred road. The street is lined with mostly out-dated and semi-collapsed houses. I soon ask the driver to stop in front of a bungalow with faded orange paint. To the left is a shop packed with soft drink, a colossal pear tree in the middle. From here, forty feet or more, I can see Mama’s sister handling her customer a bottle of mountain-dew. That shop is a supplement for her salary in education. Her children would manage the place on week days. ajenifu-ja.blogspot/2015/01/the-tale-of-two-dying-stars-episode-9.html
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 10:17:29 +0000