People like to talk about letting things go, sharing self-righteous stories of letting go as if it were as simple as loosening your grip on something tangible and walking away. As far as Ekeleoseye was concerned, such people were pretenders. She would never understand what good letting go of something would do if the thing was bound to happen again. She churned over this thought as she drove to the supermarket to do her weekly shopping, exactly one week after she had asked Oche to leave her house.
It had been one week since she decided that she could no longer stomach the way he never cleared the dish rack before adding wet plates, or the way he dragged his feet when he walked around the house, or left empty bottles of water lying around, and above all, a rapidly progressing smoking habit she simply could not abide. She’d never considered these habits a problem before, or maybe she’d deluded herself into thinking she could live with them, but the singular act of his gaze lingering on a waitress for longer than she deemed necessary on one of their dates burst the dam open, and everything she held in came rushing out.
Her older sister, Ese, tried to plead on his behalf, and perhaps she might have reconsidered. But his parting words as she marched him out of her three-bedroom duplex in the heart of Surulere will forever echo in her mind, rubbing salt into an already open wound.
As she skimmed the soap aisle to determine which detergent would work best to remove the ketchup stain Oche left on her favourite blue and yellow bedsheet—the one he said was the perfect backdrop for her smooth dark skin—she remembered how he turned to where she stood a few steps from the front door to watch him leave and yelled, ‘EK, tell me this, if I’m truly beneath you and I’m as terrible as you’ve painted me out to be, then what does everything we’ve shared, and all the time we spent together really say about you?’ Her eyes widened, and her arms, which stood akimbo, fell to her side. Satisfied with the reaction he got from her, he made his way out and shut the gate behind him.
She still couldn’t believe it. That a perpetually down-on-his-luck man, who was helpless like a cockroach on its back and unable to get back on his feet without support from another person, dared to speak to her in that manner was incredulous—even after all her support, tolerance, and defence against his family. She vowed that day to flay him with the worst her tongue could spew if she ever had the misfortune of setting her eyes on him again.
*****
When Ekeleoseye was four, her mother travelled to Ekpoma to support a bereaved friend. It was the first time her mother had been away from her for more than a day, and upon her return, she promised to bring treats for Ekeleoseye and her two older siblings.
Her mother came home with gifts of bread, biscuits, fruits and eka igai—a brittle snack made with garri, palm oil, salt and pepper. This would be the first time Ekeleoseye would have it because her mother believed that up until then, her teeth weren’t strong enough to bite into or chew the snack. The children were each given their portions in a clear cellophane bag to eat at will. Her siblings finished theirs that same day, but unbeknownst to her mother, her youngest, with the carefree innocence of a child, kept her cellophane bag under her bed to save it for a special time.
Three weeks later, on a particularly sunny afternoon, Ekeleoseye, fixated on a blue plastic cup, was rolling it around different rooms in their home. When she got to the children’s room, the cup rolled underneath her bed, and when she crawled towards the bed to retrieve it, she spotted the bag of eka igai right under the headboard. She pushed the cup away and stretched her right hand to pull the bag out. She giggled as she pulled it out, revelling in her discovery like she’d found a long-lost treasure. She got back on her feet with the bag in her right hand. It looked different, but she wasn’t sure at first.
She remembered the bag’s contents having an orange-brown hue, but what she had in her hand looked grey-green. She shook, pressed, and turned the bag this way and that, but the colour remained the same. Looking closer at it, she saw hints of the colour she remembered in between the mould, and it was then that it registered to her child’s mind that it had gone bad. With this newfound awareness, she uttered a loud, piercing cry that reverberated throughout the house.
‘What is it! What happened?’ her mother yelled as she ran into the room. Her daughter’s scream only grew louder with the question. She pulled her child close to examine her body for injuries when she noticed the small bag she held firmly to.
‘What is this? Is this what is making you cry?’ She tried to take the bag, but Ekeleoseye resisted. ‘Open your hand, na! Let me see,’ she held her wrist with one hand and spread her fingers out with the other.
‘Osenobulua mhen! Is this what I think it is? Where did you keep this thing since?’ She wiped her wet cheeks with her palm and rubbed her back in an attempt to soothe her.
‘Oya, sorry, sorry. This one has spoilt, but don’t worry, I’ll buy another one for you,’ she cooed, but Ekeleoseye balled her hands into fists and cried even harder. ‘If you don’t let the spoilt one in your hand go, how will you get another one, ehn?’ She lifted her and walked towards the door to take her out of the room when her first daughter, Ese, walked in.
‘Ine, ah, why is Oseye crying? Aunty Augusta is around, and she said I should call you.’
‘Obu, I’m coming. Wait first.’ She paused on her way out of the room and thrust the cellophane bag into Ese’s hand, ‘please throw this thing away for me outside and wash your hand after.’
She met her sister in the living room with a frown.
‘Ahn ahn Modesta, wetin do your pikin?’ Augusta asked.
‘No mind am.’ Modesta replied as she bounced Ekeleoseye, whose wailing had turned into muffled sobs on her hip. ‘You remember that time I went to Ekpoma?’
Augusta stood up from the single brown armchair in the room to take the child from her sister. ‘Yes, about a month or so ago.’
‘Exactly. When I came back, I brought eka igai for these children and this your baby hid her own somewhere till today.’ Modesta wiped the beads of sweat forming around her hairline and sat opposite Augusta in the two-seater. ‘Now she’s crying and doesn’t want to stop because she has seen that it has spoilt.’
With Ekeleoseye’s chin in her right hand, she turned her head left and right, looked into her eyes for a few seconds, and sighed.
Modesta’s eyebrows shot up with concern. ‘What is it?’
Augusta sat down and placed the child on her thighs. ‘She’s going to have problems.’
‘Which problems? What do you mean?’
‘I know you don’t want to hear it, and I’m not very sure, but I’ve seen something in her that has given me a bad feeling.’
‘Uwe gboo vae!’
‘Don’t tell me that I’ve come again. I know what I’ve seen.’
‘But this is my problem with you. Everything is a bad omen. I’ve begged you to follow me to church and leave all these superstitious things behind, but you won’t listen.’ Modesta grabbed her daughter from Augusta and wiped the tears still streaming down her face with her palm.
‘Okay, okay, calm down. I won’t bring this sort of thing up again. I came here to discuss something important, and I don’t want us to fight, so let’s move on,’ her sister offered contritely.
‘Better. Now, do you want something to drink?’
*****
Ekeleoseye heard Monoyo’s laugh before she first laid eyes on him. She was at a colleague’s sister’s wedding reception, wondering the best time to leave, when she heard a howl from the opposite side of the hall. It was loud enough that even the music booming from the speakers in the hall couldn’t stifle it. She and some other guests instinctively turned their heads in the direction of the sound, but only their eyes met.
Monoyo’s laugh stood out for the next five months as one of her favourite things about him. He had the kind of laugh that pulls you in and makes you a part of the joke, even when you aren’t sure what the gag is. He was an easygoing, effervescent man whose personality sharply contrasted with her neurotic tendencies, and Monoyo’s jocularity was a salve for her frequent irritability and self-consciousness. In the middle of the most mundane things like laundry or preparing a meal, she would often catch herself reminiscing about a joke they’ve shared or his endless wisecracks about his friends. Ekeleoseye’s relationship with Monoyo both softened her and gave her the mettle to accept the ebbs and flows of life.
They were at another wedding party a few days after their fifth month together. Ekeleoseye had balked at the thought of sharing a chunk of her Saturday with her colleagues who would be in attendance since it was the wedding of one of their own, but Monoyo managed to convince her that showing up would make her appear more affable to her subordinates. She almost changed her mind the day before the event, but she quickly remembered her promise to socialise more often, especially because Monoyo enjoyed doing it.
Yet, as she struggled to find the right position to squat over the public toilet at the event centre such that her pee wouldn’t soak her dress, run down her leg or hit the rim of the bowl, she regretted her decision a little bit. Monoyo stood waiting for her at the entrance, and she wished he could come into the stall to help her bunch the train on her aṣọ ẹbí up properly so she could focus on aiming. When that battle was fought and won, they made their way to their seats. On the way, a young woman who appeared to be in her late thirties approached them with her eyes on Monoyo.
‘Father Daniel!’ she shrieked. Her eyes widened as she moved closer to them and took in Monoyo’s presence.
‘Father Daniel from Saint Catherine’s,’ she added, her eyes still glued to him.
Monoyo shook his head and stepped back, ‘Uhm, I’m sorry, but I think you’re mistaken.’
‘Yes, I think you’re mistaking him for someone else,’ Ekeleoseye added impatiently.
‘Uhm, yo-you’re right, my mistake,’ the woman replied and stepped out of Monoyo’s way. He took Ekeleoseye’s arm and made his way back to their seats. Ekeleoseye turned back to get a final glimpse of the woman. The bewilderment etched on the face of the woman as she watched them leave made her stomach turn.
For the rest of the event, Ekeleoseye couldn’t get the look on the woman’s face out of her mind. She had picked him out of a sufficiently lit hall and seemed so sure of herself, but she called him “Father Daniel”—“Father” as in priest? Monoyo laughed it off and joked that he probably had one of those faces, and it wasn’t the first time he was confused for someone else. She wanted to wholeheartedly accept it as a simple misunderstanding, but she couldn’t get the look on the woman’s face out of her mind.
Monoyo had pleaded to stay for the afterparty, and she was too distracted by her thoughts to argue. Two cocktails from the open bar had done nothing for her nerves, so she walked outside the hall for fresh air while Monoyo danced up a storm with her colleagues. She was temporarily distracted by loud chatter and the drunken gaits of the guests as they made their way out of the hall until she heard a familiar voice from behind.
‘Hey, excuse me.’ She turned to meet the face of the woman who had accosted them earlier. Now, it seemed this woman was going out of her way to irritate her.
‘Oh, you, what do you want?’ she sighed.
The woman jerked her head, taken aback by her acerbity. ‘ See, I’m not looking for your trouble. I didn’t even think I’d see you again, but now that you’re here, let me just say that I know I came out of nowhere earlier, but I was really sure I’d seen the right person.’
‘What do you mean by the right person?’ Ekeleoseye replied with a sneer.
‘Look, I used to live and work in Liberia some years back, and I’m ninety-five per cent sure that the man you were with earlier is a priest from the parish I used to attend. He looks slightly different with the beard, but I’m very sure.’
Ekeleoseye shifted her weight between her legs, and the woman went on.
‘I don’t know how you know him or how you guys met, but that’s what I know. You guys come across as intimate, so I just wanted to tell you this, you know, woman to woman.’
A voice from afar interrupted them, ‘Mirabel! Mirabel! Let’s go now!’
‘I’m coming!’ the woman who she now knew as Mirabel shouted back. ‘Anyway, I have to go now. Take care.’
‘Please wait…I’m sorry about earlier. Can you give me your number if that’s okay? I’d like to speak more about this if you’re up for it.’
‘Hmm,’ Mirabel eyed her suspiciously for a few seconds. ‘Okay, I’ll call my number out. Where’s your phone?’
*****
It’d been a week since Ekeleoseye spoke to the woman from the wedding, and every morning since then, she’d woken up with her fingernails dug into her palm. On one such morning, as she examined the crescent-shaped markings and rubbed her fingers over the grooves in her palm until they disappeared, she thought about her sister’s position on the matter. Ese agreed with her on the subject of things not adding up. However, she also believed that he didn’t intentionally set out to deceive her. The idea of him being a priest in a former life was funny, albeit odd, but ultimately not harmful to her or their relationship. After all, how did one bring up such an unusual part of one’s past? And this is where they differed.
To Ekeleoseye, it was an indicator of something sinister. A deliberate omission made with the intent to swindle her emotionally and obscure the truth of what he is—a crafty liar and a depraved man. She’d already imagined a plethora of scenarios in the future where she’d made a fatal personal decision or gotten herself into trouble because she wrongly assumed he was safe and honest. To her, Ese had a sickeningly positive outlook on people and life. She was an eternal optimist who felt the need to give every single person the benefit of the doubt even when they didn’t deserve it. Ekeleoseye often wondered how her sister, who was intelligent and analytical when it came to her work, always managed to fail to apply logic or even basic common sense in her dealings with people.
Ekeleoseye’s best example of her sister’s naivete and its associated dangers was an incident during one of their years in secondary school. Ese, a senior, was a star student. She was the type of student that is often referred to as an all-rounder—she scored the highest marks in her class, she was any teacher’s first choice for a school representative for external events and competitions, she was popular, she excelled in sports and participated in every social event. Ekeleoseye, on the other hand, was a junior, and while she also scored high marks in most subjects, she was shy and feeble and had fewer friends.
While her sister often spent her free time at school in the company of her friends, she preferred to spend her free time alone, away from the noise of her teachers, fellow students and everything in between. She had a shaded spot equipped with a wooden bench behind the school hall she favoured and would retreat there at every opportunity.
One day, she was in the middle of a daydream at her spot when she heard footfalls from the hall, followed by murmurs. The voices sounded like they belonged to students and not any of the maintenance staff or teachers, so she stilled herself and waited for them to leave until she unexpectedly heard her sister’s name. Curious, she tiptoed to one of the open windows close to her and peeped into the hall.
She saw Ade, a classmate Ese claimed was one of her closest friends, whom she detested, surrounded by three of their other classmates. With a mix of horror and vindication, she overheard Ade whinge about how she’d had enough of Ese besting her at everything and boasting about it and how her wings needed to be clipped. The three girls agreed that she deserved a hard lesson in humility, and their plan of action was formed.
Being the closest to her, Ade would slip one of her notebooks into her desk locker and claim it’d been stolen. A search party they’d create would lead them straight to her, and the case would be escalated to their class teacher. She watched them cackle as they fantasised about the ocean of shame “Ese The Star” would drown in after being revealed as a petty thief. She knew they would complete their plan just before dinner when all their classmates moved to the dining hall. Risking being punished for moving to the dining hall late when she heard the bell for their meal-time, she waited in her class and estimated how long Ade would take to plant the notebook. After enough time had passed, she snuck into Ese’s class, searched her locker, removed Ade’s notebook from the bottom, and placed it at the bottom of her locker. She was able to slink into the dining hall unnoticed.
After dinner, she sprinted to Ese’s table and pulled her aside to warn her. Ese dismissed her report as one of her conspiracy theories and swore that Ade, whom she loved like a sister, could never do such a thing to her. But sure enough, when Ade’s plan played out and failed spectacularly, Ese begged her sister for weeks before she forgave her. But she never forgot and decided that her sister’s penance would be a reminder of the event every chance she got. And Ekeleoseye found another moment to raise it on their phone call about Monoyo.
‘Yes, yes, yes. I agree. My judgement could’ve been better then, and I’ve apologised for that and many other things for years. But you can’t seriously think that he kept this from you so that he could use it to hurt you?’
‘Then what else could it be? How or why could he not tell me this when we met?’
Ese sighed loudly as she’d done a million times in conversation with her sister, especially when she knew she wouldn’t succeed at getting her to see things from a different perspective.
‘Look, try to understand me. I definitely think you should ask him about it to see what he has to say first, and if he comes clean, then you can work through it and decide how to move forward together.’
‘Work through what? I’m telling you that there’s nothing to work through!’
‘Hmm, alright then. I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for you.’
Ekeleoseye wanted to be more measured in her approach to the matter. She tried to entertain the possibility that she was blowing it out of proportion, but it was like a bad toothache that couldn’t be ignored. The only solution was a surgical extraction.
So when Monoyo explained that he truly was in a seminary at one point in his life and thought he would end up as a priest, but he became disillusioned with religion about three years in and quit, that he had very little to his name and used what he had left to move to Liberia where he pretended to be a priest in a small parish but only for a short while and just so he could have a place to sleep and food to eat; that the priesthood was all he knew at that point and he needed some time to figure out his next move; that he never expected to be confronted with this part of his past, at least not this soon and he would have told her about it down the line, she barely listened to a word he said.
He pleaded that he only lied that one time because he was familiar with her tendency to inflate things and was worried about her reaction. The lie had been eating at him, and even though he didn’t plan to come clean this way, he was glad it was off his chest. But she couldn’t be moved, and she asked never to see him again.
*****
Modesta had never admitted it to anyone, much less her sister, but she often found herself reflecting on the prognosis Augusta had shared about Ekeleoseye when she was just four. She had thought about it only a few times for a few years after that because Ekeleoseye was still young and spent every minute with her, and a big part of her choosing not to share her thoughts with anyone was a fear of breathing life into the notion. Still, when her daughter began to bud into a young adult, she saw some signs she couldn’t deny or pray away.
Parents aren’t supposed to have favourites, and another thing Modesta never admitted was that Ekeleoseye was hers—for one thing, she bore the closest resemblance to her out of her children, but that wasn’t the true source of her endearment. Her husband spent very little time at home, and while she understood that this was due to the nature of his job, what time he had at home, he spent with their son or his friends. Modesta never asked for much from her husband. One could even argue that she never really asked for anything, but she always argued that the least he could do was feign equal interest in their children.
Once, a few days after he returned home from a two-month stint, Ekeleoseye had just learned to walk, and in those days, she darted everywhere in their house. Modesta guessed that Ekeleoseye was fascinated by her father’s rare presence and felt a natural pull towards him, so she walked with her slightly bowed legs to where he sat reading a newspaper with one leg over the other and tugged on his trousers—a sign that she wanted to be carried, but he shooed her away repeatedly, and when the child wouldn’t leave, he barked at his wife to take their trembling daughter away.
Ese had a whole world she had built for herself, which she spent her time exploring, and there was no end to that for her, something she’d undoubtedly gotten from her father. So all she had to herself was Ekeleoseye.
Ekeleoseye was the one she held when she cried, and as a child, whenever she cried, her daughter would place her tiny palms over her eyes until she stopped sobbing. Ekeleoseye was the one who heard her rants about the frequency of her father’s absence and what she’d determined was a general lack of effort. Ekeleoseye was there when she asked Augusta if her decisions over her one life were a mistake. Ekeleoseye was the one who saw how she’d often sit at the edge of her bed and stare at the wall, visualising not a different life but a life where things were just a bit different.
Maybe it was all the time they spent together, or maybe because she had carried her daughter through the crests and valleys of her life, but she quietly maintained that she knew her daughter best and maybe sometimes even better than herself. She knew her heart, which could be both fierce and warm. She could predict her changing moods. She knew the pleasures she enjoyed and was optimistic that given an option between two similar things, she’d know the one her child would go for with utmost certainty.
But even with her confidence in her knowledge of her daughter, she’d never been able to pinpoint how or where her distrust for people emerged from. Her ruthless commitment to impractical order puzzled and scared her. On several occasions over the thirty-three years that followed Augusta’s declaration over Ekeleoseye’s life, she asked herself if this kink in her otherwise perfect child was what she saw then.
*****
Ekeleoseye woke with a start. It was a rainy June Saturday, and the fusion of the dark clouds, the pitter-patter of the raindrops and the cool breeze carrying the smell of wet earth had lulled her into an involuntary nap. She looked at the time on her phone and saw that she still had a few minutes till her weekly 4 pm call with her mother. She couldn’t recall when the routine began, but she knew her mother took great comfort in them, so she indulged her even though sometimes she did so grudgingly.
Most of the calls involved them trading stories about the minutiae of the previous week, but the ones she dreaded, and she had a suspicion today’s would be one, were the calls where her mother tried to sway her resolve on an issue or reprimand her, typically after receiving a second-hand account from Ese. She barely had enough time to mentally prepare before her phone lit up with her mother’s name on the screen.
‘Ine, hello,’ she answered flatly.
‘Oseye, bodiaye?’
‘I’m fine, mummy, and you?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I just finished cooking, and I’m so tired, but I wanted to speak with you today.’
‘Oh, okay. What did you cook today?’ She knew her mother was looking for an in, and she didn’t want to give her one.
‘Hmm. Leave that one first. What happened with your cousin?’
‘Which cousin, mummy?’
‘Oseye, you know which cousin I’m talking about. I heard that you almost got your cousin arrested, and the entire thing caused a scene. Is this true?’
‘Mummy, if you already know what happened, I don’t think we need to have this conversation. Can we talk about something else?’ She got up from her bed and began to slowly pace around her bedroom.
‘Oseye, if the person that slept inside the house says that he can see the spirit, then what will the person that slept outside sayyyy?’ Modesta dragged the last word as she often did when she had to speak while exasperated. Ekeleoseye stayed silent and waited for her to go on.
‘Adonye was only with you for four days, just four days, because of her interview in Lagos, but you still found a way to create a problem with her! How could you accuse her of stealing your necklace, or was it a bracelet? Her parents have been calling me, and I’ve been apologising nonstop on your behalf!’
‘It-it was a small mistake, mummy. I don’t even know how it happened. At the time, it seemed like the most logical conclusion because this was something I saw every day, and by the time I found the bracelet at the office, I couldn’t take back what had happened.’
‘You’re telling me you don’t know what happened? Oseye, I’ve always asked you this, and you’ve never given me a good answer, but why do you always believe the worst of people? I’m not like this, and neither is your father, so where did this come from? Whose hands…what thing shaped you this way?’
‘I don’t know, mummy. I don’t know.’
THE END