Everything Good Will Come (46 page)

The women arrived late for the first day of the meeting. Lagos was recovering from another petrol shortage and public transport had just resumed. Some sat on the edge of their seats; others as if this were their first opportunity to sit. One pregnant woman asked to put her feet up. There were seventeen of us now: wives, mothers, sisters of journalists.

We appointed a treasurer and a secretary. I took my place in the middle of the room and announced that those who had something to say should speak; those who had come to listen, should. The surprise visitor was Peter Mukoro's wife. The one who had exposed him to the tabloids. She asked us not to call her Aunty, Madam, or any of that nonsense. Her name was Clara, Clara Mukoro.

The others were quick to tire of Clara and her trouble. I tried to retaliate with kindness. One day, she said, “You. Don't you ever get angry?” I answered, “If we both are angry, Aunty Clara, where will we get?”

Clara and I soon became close, enough for me to ask why she would fight for a man who had humiliated her. She had a square-shaped face with eyes I only expected to see on a woman from the Far East, and whenever she talked, she narrowed them.

“I knew Peter from primary school,” she told me. “My father was headmaster of our school, Peter was in my class. He helped me with my school books. I was there when his father's farm was ruined. I was there the day Peter turned down the scholarship. When he left for Lagos, I left with him. My father disowned me. It was Peter who supported me through university. That is the Peter I remember, not the Peter running around like a little boy in a sweet shop. He is still the father of my children. Besides, if anyone should be locking Peter up, it should be me.”

We would write letters to our president, asking for the release of our relations, whether or not he read them. We would not stop until our relations were freed. There were other campaign groups like ours, and they often appeared in the press. Some were petitioning for the release of women journalists. We gained strength from their voices. The threat of state security agents hung over us, but surprisingly, they never came.

If we didn't try, we would never have known.

If we didn't try, we would never have known, I still say.

I was born in the year of my country's independence, and saw how it raged against itself. Freedom was never intended to be sweet. It was a responsibility from the onset, for a people, a person, to fight for, and to hold on to. In my new life, this meant that there were bills to pay alone; memories to rock and lay to rest; regrets to snatch and return; tears, which always did clear my eyes.

These days, I stretched. I spread my legs wide on my sofa, flung my arms wide over the back. I lay like animal hide on my bed, face up, face down. Niyi was so tall, I'd always thought he deserved more space. The shrinkage I experienced was never worth it. He came to see Yimika almost every day, and nearly always left slamming my front door which made me miss him less and less. But I didn't blame him. He was fighting as though we were vying for the same cylinder of air: the more I breathed, the less there was for him. I did not sit too long with his family members either, not even my brothers-in-law. It wasn't out of ill-will: I had little energy for that. But I knew that given half the chance, they would confuse me with their advice, and nothing would be left of my original thought.

One morning I found an old picture of my mother and me. She was carrying me and I was about six months old wearing a dress with puffy sleeves. She was wearing a mini dress and her legs were as skinny as mine. My mother once said she whispered words of guidance into my ear, when I was born. She never told me what she said. She said that I had remembered. I whispered into my daughter's ear like that, in my mother's house. I told her, “I love you. You have nothing to do but remember.”

Sheri wouldn't stop nagging me about feeding her later that day. “This child is hungry! This child needs to eat right now!”

“You're driving me crazy,” I finally told her. “She's my baby.”

I was running around trying to prepare a feeding bottle. Yimika screamed loud enough to put us both in a state of panic. Sheri rocked her. It was no mistake that the smallest, weakest person in the room was in control.

“All you did was push,” Sheri said.

“No praise for a mother.”

“Someone mothered you.”

“I praise my mother. I praise her from when I suffered labor pains.”

“Stop exaggerating. You had only seven hours labor. Feed my child, please.”

“Your child didn't want to be born, and I don't blame her. You hear me? I don't blame you, my baby. All you did was arrive here on earth. Henceforth a state of confusion. Can't even get milk on time.”

“What confusion? She will know what there is to know. Hurry up with this bottle.”

“Shit, I can't do the cap!”

When people speak of turning points in their lives it makes me wonder. I can't think of one moment that made me an advocate for women prisoners in my country. Before this, I had opportunities to take action, only to end up behaving in ways I was accustomed, courting the same old frustrations because I was sure of what I would feel: wronged, helpless, stuck in a day when I was fourteen years old. Here it is: changes came after I made them, each one small. I walked up a stair. Easy. I took off a head tie. Very easy. I packed a suitcase, carried it downstairs, put it in my car. When situations became trickier, my tasks became smaller. My husband asked why I was leaving him. “I have to,” I replied. Three words; I could say them. “What kind of woman are you?” Not a word. “Wouldn't you have tried to stop me too?” he asked. Probably, but he wouldn't have had to leave me to do what he wanted. My old neighbor from Sunrise Estate, Busola, a smile for her when she confided, “Everyone is talking about you. They say you left for no reason. He never beat you, never chased. I know he's moody, but he went to work for God's sake. What would you do married to a lazy bugger like mine?” And Sheri had this to say: “You wait. You just wait. Your father will ask when he's out, ‘Why did you leave your husband?'”

My husband, our home and small suburban community like a busybody extended family, I had these reasons to stay. But I was lucky to have survived what I believed I wouldn't, the smell of my mother's death. I couldn't remain as I was before, otherwise my memory of her would have been in vain, and my survival would certainly be pointless. Anyone who experienced such a trauma would understand. The aftermath could be a reincarnation. One life was gone and I could either mourn it or begin the next. How terrifying and how sublime to behave like a god with the power to revive myself. This was the option I chose.

It would be another two months before I heard from my father. He had been in detention for ten months and our country was at the center of an international uproar over the hanging of nine environmental activists from the Niger Delta, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International were protesting their murders. Our government remained unrepentant meanwhile. I was beginning to despair. One family in our campaign was facing eviction; another had welcomed a new child without their father.

That afternoon, Shalewa from next door had been with me, helping to watch Yimika. I was tidying my mother's living room, relieved that Yimika had finally fallen asleep when my mobile phone rang. I dashed for it, but it was too late. Yimika began to cry again. I picked her up then reached for the phone.

“Enitan?”

It was my father.

“Daddy? Daddy, is that you?”

His voice cracked. “I'm out!”

Tears filled my eyes.

“They released me today. Mukoro and the others. I thought I must call you first. Is that the baby? Is it a boy or a girl? This one cries like a fog horn. How is everyone, your husband, your mother? Fatai? You must bring the baby over. Where are you? I have so much to tell you. Enitan? Enitan, you're not talking. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I said.

I wiped the tears from my eyes.

“Where are you?” he said. “What my eyes have seen, I will never be the same again.”

“Me too,” I said.

I had to tell someone. Sheri was the first person I thought of. It was a humid afternoon. My back was wet with sweat and my windscreen heavy with dust and dried gnat legs. The sun burned through it.

My brother told me, once we began to talk freely, how he saw people's insides before he saw anything else. If he met a smoker, he saw their black lungs. If he met a woman with a huge chest, while his friends were getting cross-eyed, he could see the yellow fat deposits under her skin. Whenever he saw children, he saw their hearts, pink. I thought it was a strange view he had of the world. He said he did not have an imagination. He did not dream either, and had a hard time understanding women, though he grew up in a house full of them. But he loved cars. Once when he asked how I was feeling, and I said that I felt as if someone had tailgated me for miles, driving me off course. Suddenly I lost them, now I was lost myself, but I was finding my way home, small by small. He said he understood.

My heart was bubbling. I needed to stop; the traffic was too slow. Nearing the junction of a residential road, I pulled over. A couple of “All right-sirs” who had been sitting on a bench thought I needed their assistance to park. They began to direct me with conflicting hand signals. “To the left. Right. Yes, yes, reverse, reverse, slowly, slowly. Halt.”

They seemed to be swatting flies. I acted as if they were invisible. I had no money to give. A driver behind pressed on his horn. I wound down and saw he was driving one of those private transport vans we called
danfos
.

“What?” I shouted. “Can't somebody be happy in peace?”

He pressed on his horn again. I checked my mirror. He would have to wait. I wriggled in my seat. The first song that came to me was a Yoruba one: Never dance the
palongo
. It can make you go crazy.

I sang the words aloud. The van crawled to the side of my car. I could see the passengers inside. Their faces were shiny with sweat. The driver spread his fingers. “Get out of my way!”

I stepped out of my car and began to sing to him.

“Never dance the
palongo
. It can make you go crazy.”

The passengers clapped their hands in disgust. “Sistah what's wrong with you?” “Behaving like this?” “On a hot afternoon.” “Grown woman like you.” “Acting like a child.”

I raised my hand in a fist. “Our men are free,” I said.

The van driver blinked. “What? What is she saying?”

Someone relayed my message. “Our men are too free with women.”

“Nothing good will come to you!” the van driver said.

“Tell him,” I said. “Tell him,
a da
. It will be good. Everything good will come to me.”

She repeated my message, but the driver seemed to have heard. He hopped out of his van.

“Maybe she's mad,” someone offered.

One man simply hung his head. Yet another delay.

“Are you mad?” the driver asked. “You're mocking me? Is your head correct? I said move your vehicle out of my way.”

My hands went up. I wriggled lower, and sang again.

“Never dance the
palongo
. It can make you go crazy.”

The “All right-sirs” stood with their mouths open. The van driver looked me up and down.

“You must be a very stupid woman,” he said.

“Was,” I said.

“Maybe you didn't hear me,” he said, flexing his arms.

I heard him. I danced the
palongo
, fearing nothing for my sanity, or common sense. I added a few foreign steps to disorientate the discontented so-and-so: flamenco, can-can,
Irish dancing from side to side. Nothing could take my joy away from me. The sun sent her blessings. My sweat baptized me.