AMID SECRETS - CHAPTER 30
*Nwanyieze’s POV*
I’m telling him tonight.
The mere thought of it makes my stomach churn and my eyes water. I’m tempted to just call things off with Maduka instead, but I know I can’t because that will ki|| me, and even before I’m done dying, Maduka would relentlessly pursue me until I finally confessed, leading us back to square one.
“You’ll ruin the curls,” Mama Uju chides me.
I release a lock of my hair and try to find something else to touch. Mama Uju is seated beside me, watching a Bollywood movie that I suspect she has seen before, because she keeps whispering to Adanna what will happen next.
I am too distracted to focus on the movie, because I’m waiting for the taxi Maduka has sent to pick me up, and I’m wondering how the events of tonight will play out. My hands move over the fabric of my dress, a simple, purple A-line dress with lilac silk butterfly sleeves I had made a while ago. I have worn heels, black straps and velvet. I made an attempt with make up; light foundation and a coat of pink lip gloss.
I feel overdressed, especially as I’m going to spill out all my secrets to someone I’ve fallen in love with.
Fallen in love with, you said.
“You look pretty, Sisi,” Adanna compliments me for the third time, raising her head from her mother’s belly to look at me.
“Thank you, Ada.”
My phone rings; a signal that my taxi has arrived. I get up quickly like a pin has pricked my buttock.
Mama Uju gets up, too, and puts an arm around me. “I know you’re anxious, nne. But you have to hide nothing from Maduka. He’s been so good to you, he has surprised even me. Wh@??ver happens, it was meant to happen. Life goes on.”
“I understand, Mama.”
I tell them my goodbyes and leave the flat. The taxi is a sleek black Audi, and the driver actually comes out, crisply greets me, and opens the door for me. I feel eyes on me; the neighbours hanging around the gate are staring. They call out greetings, compliment me, and I smile in return and yell out a few replies.
“Greet your fine bobo for me oh!”
“Buy somtin come back oh!”
“Ah! Omalicha!”
I have a Ç0ç?tail of neighbours: kind, helpful, nosey, the gossip mongers, those who will knock on your door at midnight asking for matches, those who will drop their children with you at any opportunity so they can run off to have fun, those who will steal your clothes from the public lines. Living with them is bearable; at least there are no armed robbers amongst us.
Everyone in the compound has heard of Maduka by now: the tall, handsome man with the deep voice who visits regularly or sends expensive-looking cars to come and pick me up. The one who sends gifts, the one who Adanna is clearly besotted with. I even heard that a few of them have thrown bets on if Maduka and I will get married or not.
The thought makes me laugh and shake my head in the car. The sky has darkened a bit, but it is still bright. People move in all directions; jumping on and off danfo buses, carrying trayfuls of wares, pushing wheelbarrows, crossing the expressways illegally and avoiding the VIO officers. Sometimes when I close my eyes, it’s like I can hear this city’s heartbeat.
My love for Lagos is so deep, I don’t think I’d want to live elsewhere. This is a place that I had immediately adapted to upon arrival three years ago, holding a small polyethylene bag with my belongings, rubber slippers on my feet, hair cropped short, body bruised, mind scarred forever. I had been eager to leave behind all I’d known. I had wanted a new life, and Lagos had given it to me although it wasn’t the best.
And things are looking up because of Maduka.
The car is right before Maduka’s gate in a short time, and I wonder if somehow it had flown while I was deep in my thoughts. I unfasten my seatbelt and raise my hand to open the door, but the driver says, “Madam, don’t.”
He steps out, briskly walks around the car, and opens it for me.
“Mr. Obiagu ordered that I do everything for you,” he says with a smile.
I smile back and shake my head, then thank him. With a cheerful goodbye, he gets into the car and drives off. Maduka must have greatly tipped him.
On my way to the front door, I stop to look at his plants. The hibiscus is still blooming, but the roses haven’t even started. I smile at his determination before knocking on the front door. He opens it after a few seconds. Maduka is dressed casually: a white Ralph Lauren shirt, brown slacks, and sandals. His injured arm is still in the cast that Adanna had designed for him. The aroma of delicious food also greets me. I fill my lungs with it and sigh.
Maduka grins, pulls me closer, and kisses me slowly. My tension temporarily melts away, dissolving like frost exposed to warmth.
“You are lovely,” he tells me, licking my lip gloss off his lips. “This tastes like bubble gum.” Then he moves his full brows up and down in a comical way, making me laugh.
“It’s bubble gum flavour, and thank you.”
“You’re always welcome, baby girl.”
“What are we doing tonight, Maduka?”
“Wh@??ver you want us to do.” At this, his grin returns, and I know he knows I’m thinking about earlier in the afternoon, when he had gone all seductive on me.
“I came to tell you something important, but it can wait.”
Worry creases his brow. “Is anything wrong?”
Oh, everything is wrong, my inner voice replies. I imagine a small replica of myself, sitting on my shoulder and filing her nails with a smirk on her face saying that.
“No, all is fine,” I lie hastily.
Warily, Maduka leads me to the dining table which he has set. I know I’ve suddenly placed him on edge, that he’s walking on eggshells but trying not to show it. He insists on serving me the chicken peppersoup and boiled yam that he has miraculously made despite his injury. The meal is delicious, and we make small talk over it, each dreading the discussion to come afterwards for different reasons.
I insist on clearing the table but he stubbornly follows me to the kitchen and leans on the island, watching me and knowing that I need that space, that I need to clear my head. Doing dishes is a stress buster for me. In fifteen minutes, we are back to his living room, seated on the sofa.
“Maduka, I’m not… I’m not who you think I am.”
He watches me from across the sofa, his gaze unwavering.
“I’m not as good as you think I am. I mean… I’m not…pure.”
“How?”
I had decided, earlier on, to start at the beginning of everything.
“My father–the man I thought was my father– segzually abused me.”
Taking a deep breath, I delve deep into the beginning of my story, from how I used to be a beloved daughter, to when the abuse started and continued for years before it was discovered, and how Mummy had blamed it on me. I had believed it was all my fault because she had said so, I had known I was a bad girl, that I must have done something to cause the abuse. I remember the sting of the thin bamboo stick on my skin, the violent way I had rolled down the stairs and landed with a broken arm and collarbone. And through it all, Daddy had stood behind her, watching silently.
The curses still ring in my ears, and the revelation: “I’m sure wherever your real mother is, this is also what she is doing!”
I had stayed on the floor after the fall, dazed more by that comment than the pain from the lashing and broken bones. Fifteen, and just finding out that my life as I had known it, had been a lie. Mama Uju, our neighbour then, had been banging on the front door, demanding to know what was going on. And Mummy had opened it and shoved me out, telling me to go and find my wh-_-re of a mother out there, telling me that she regretted ever adopting me.
I had gone into shock and woken up in a hospital, with a worried Mama Uju at my bedside.
_____
*Maduka’s POV*
Have you ever listened to a story, and felt so enraged not only because of what happened, but also because you are helpless and unable to do something about it? Because you were absent from the event?
Her eyes are distant, her voice is emotionless as she recounts her ordeal and I know that she is trying to place herself above the pain of her experience. Her hand rises more than once to massage her right collarbone, like it still hurts. She doesn’t look into my eyes, but over my shoulder.
“And then she called me a prostitute, like my mother,” she says, and that is when her eyes fill with tears and focus on me. The fluid makes them look bigger, the tiredness is visible in them, a sort of world-weariness settles on her face. She starts to shake visibly, and her glass of orange juice slips from her fingers to spill on her dress. Nwanyieze doesn’t seem to notice, because she covers her face with her hands, trying to regain her composure but failing woefully.
I can’t take it anymore, either. I get up and grab a hand towel from the dining table, then try to mop up most of the juice from her dress. She draws breath noisily from behind her hands, gets up, and runs out from the living room. I follow her, but she slams and locks the door of the guest toilet and I hear the sound of her retching, throwing up her last meal and sobbing miserably.
I wait outside for over ten minutes, listening to her turn on the faucet, splash water on her face, gargle it. Then silence.
“Please come out,” I plead. I feel equally terrible, that somehow I had allowed us to be separated, even when it was something I couldn’t avoid.
“You don’t think so highly of me anymore, do you?” she questions from the other side.
“Nothing has changed.”
If anything, it has shown me how scarred she is, and how I have to try harder to show her how much I love her. She placed her trust in people who were meant to protect and nurture her, and they failed her. I’m going to show her everyday, that she deserves everything I can offer and more. She will have to trust me, and I will live up to it.
“I’ll come out, and I’ll go home. I’m tired, Maduka. I’m really tired.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Not in this state.”
The door opens and there she stands, looking drained, her make up rinsed off. The front of her dress is wet and she smells faintly of vomit. But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter to me because I know that embracing her means embracing everything about her; the good, bad and ugly.
“I’m not leaving you,” I tell her.
She looks like she’s about to say something else, but I stop her with a hug.
“You’re taking a warm shower, and right now.”
She emerges from the bathroom thirty minutes later, smelling of my soap and wearing one of my shirts, which looks like a huge dress on her. Her hair is now in a puff, having been exposed to moisture and shrinking back to its natural, coily state. She gives me a weak smile, but seems to hold back, standing close to the bathroom door.
“Come here.”
She obeys, and comes to sit beside me on the bed. I place my hands on both sides of her face. The tears are gone, but there is a deep sadness in her eyes.
“What they did to you was a very wicked thing. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, no matter what.”
“But it happened.”
“It happened, but you survived. You made something out of it.”
A part of me wants to search for this family that had thrown her out when she needed them the most, find them and call them out, make them pay for what they did. The other part wishes to somehow delete the bad memories from her mind; but I know that the cracks we bear are what lets the light in. It is a gut-wrenching thought, that we have to suffer one way or the other to get to where we are, but some suffer worse than others.
Nwanyieze shrugs and looks away from me. I can sense her withdrawal again. She is receeding into her shell slowly. A light of understanding dawns on me and snippets of our past conversations ring in my ears.
“…if anything, I lost my innocence quite early.”
“I don’t have a soul mate.”
“I can’t make you happy for long.”
“My Daddy used to say-”
“Did you think this would make me see you differently?”
She presses her lips together and winces. She has drawn blood from the pressure. She looks very anxious, refusing to meet my gaze.
It is almost at the tip of my tongue to tell her that I also dread going back to my ancestral home, that I had impulsively taken a flight last year back to Imo State, driven to my village, and passed the home I was born in, too much of a coward to confront my past. The sight of the little bungalow had driven a knife of ice through my guts, and I had broken into a cold sweat and gripped my steering wheel so hard that my knuckle joints had hurt for the next hour.
But it’s her I’m most worried about, because if she isn’t alright, then I’m not alright, too. Without knowing it, Nwanyieze’s entrance and re-entrance into my life has changed literally everything. She is, in fact, the key, and falling in love with her after all these years has awakened something in me, a need to set things right for us.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She is still distant, but she opens her mouth to say, “I’m really tired.”
It’s just 6:30pm, but she puts herself underneath the covers of my bed and curls up into a ball.
“You’re going to eat something light. Wait.”
After some crackers and half a glass of water, Nwanyieze settles underneath the sheets. I don’t know if she wants me close now, with the way she’s acting, and I don’t care at the moment. I join her right there and gather her into my arms from behind, spooning her.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, her voice muffled by the pillow.
“Did I ever tell you, that I still remember the way home?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I can still picture my little room. And my mother’s vegetable garden. My father’s cassava farm.”
“Why don’t you go back, Maduka?”
“I’m sure no one will recognise me. Those who are still alive probably think I’m dead.”
I don’t want to tell her the worst of my fears.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to convince them. They’re your family, too.”
Family doesn’t ki|| family.
A soft, masculine laugh rings in my ears and I shake my head, try to get it out. I place my nose at Nwanyieze’s nape and inhale. My Irish Spring soap, her shampoo and hair oils and my clean cotton shirt make a soothing Ç0ç?tail of scents.
“You’re tense,” she observes.
“Yes, I am. This has been a rather emotionally unsettling evening.”
“I’m sorry I triggered your own troubles.”
“I’m glad I told you this. I’m glad we’re being open with each other.”
She doesn’t reply for over a minute. I become aware of how well she fits against me, of how warm and soft she feels and how content I am to be like this with her, our bodies and minds sharing this intimacy, this likeness in the darkness that has touched our lives.
“It’s going to be so difficult,” she finally whispers, her voice throaty and having this deep quality all of a sudden.
“What is?”
“Leaving you.”
I say nothing, waiting for her to continue. But she doesn’t, and when I hear the soft, slow sounds of her breathing, I know that Nwanyieze has fallen asleep in my arms.
I lie there, unable to shake off the feeling that something is amiss.