Ayanfe’s eyes, whenever she laughed, misted over. The tears would fill her eyelids as quickly and as suddenly as laughter rose from her belly, vibrated through her chest and burst from her mouth like a volcano. She would then swallow and blink rapidly, in between fits of laughter, in a futile attempt to hold back the tears, which would begin to trail down her cheeks freely like they had a mind of their own.
“Is…is…is…?” She was laughing now; her laughter reverberating through the living room, bouncing off its walls, tears racking her body so much that she was almost keeling over.
“Please…” Her husband, hesitating, looked on in confusion, torn between reaching for his wife who was standing in the middle of the room or remaining where he was seated, sandwiched between Uncle Fatai’s wife, a rather voluptuous woman with ample bosom which folded over her stomach, and Aunty Rolake whose thick, rounded hips seemed to stretch on for days.
“Is it for him…?” Ayanfe, her voice hoarse from laughter, stopped to point disdainfully at her husband who, like a lost puppy, his large ears suddenly bearing a resemblance to those of the senile dog in the next compound, sat with doleful brown eyes. “Is it for him that you all have made an appearance today in your Sunday best?”
Loud murmurs filled the room. Aunty Rolake snorted before muttering something rude under her breath. “Orisirisi!” Aunty Bolanle hissed, her disfigured front teeth, which she often hid behind her upper lip, making a surprise appearance. Uncle Fatai’s wife mumbled “Shior!” and dusted her palms together three times. Bosun, Ayanfe’s husband, looked down at his hands folded in his laps, as if searching for something, something only he could find.
Ayanfe’s lips twitched like she was about to say more but decided against it, biting her tongue and holding back the words taking shape in her head. She resumed her laughter, which rose to a near hysteria, and soon she was throwing her head back, slapping her thighs, stamping a foot on the floor, and clutching at her chest maniacally.
This went on for a while until Uncle Fatai, looking as puzzled and befuddled as he looked old and shrivelled in his seat, cleared his throat loudly, “Ahem! Our wife, what did we say that makes you laugh in this manner?”
Inhaling sharply, Ayanfe spat out her words like venom she couldn’t bear to keep in any longer, “It is what you did not say.” She had lost all respect for the man, and she was not about to hide it.
Looking even more puzzled, his eyes fatigued and worn, Uncle Fatai responded with a plastered-on smile, “Ah! What did we not say?”
She responded with a hard glare, her lips set in a firm, straight line. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? This visit, this inconvenience, this thing that felt little less than an invasion, invasion of her life, her time, her privacy, her home. This would explain why Bosun had looked almost nervous and fidgety earlier in the morning.
“In any case,” Uncle Fatai paused, clearing his throat again, louder this time, before swallowing an invisible lump and shifting uncomfortably behind the centre table, which had an assorted display of drinks that Bosun had served before she arrived. “We have not said anything. Not yet, but…”
“Oh, you have. When you all stepped into this house, one after the other, you said all there was to say,” she interrupted, letting her words roll off her tongue quickly, as she stared unblinking at the oldest man in the room.
There were more murmurs, which sounded like buzzing flies to her ears, but she ignored them all, the same way she had chosen to ignore the rumours. Rumours of Bosun’s black Toyota Avensis taking up a permanent spot in front of the female hostel on campus at the university where he lectured. Look at him! Not even attempting to be stealthy. In hushed tones, they talked. The rumours continued, raging on like an untamed fire. The girl who had moved in two houses down the street was pregnant and did not have a man to call hers. Hadn’t a neighbour caught Ayanfe’s husband sneaking into the girl’s flat on many a night during his regular walks? Shameless man! Bringing his philandering closer home and rubbing it in his wife’s face. Still in hushed tones, they talked. When the girl’s baby was born nine months later, neighbours wagged their tongues, unbridled. The pointed nose. The large ears. The big round eyes. Even the birthmark on the child’s left arm. The resemblance was uncanny.
“Can’t you see it?” Omolola, sitting at the narrow kitchen table, had asked Ayanfe without warning on one of her visits.
“See what?” she had responded, stirring the content of the pot on the gas burner, her back turned to the only friend she had made in the neighbourhood.
“You really cannot see it?” Omolola couldn’t hide her surprise.
“See what? Madam, what are you on about?” Ayanfe chuckled, as she scooped some soup with the cooking spoon onto her open palm, then blew at it before raising it to her lips.
“The resemblance. The resemblance between your husband and that boy. You really do not see it?”
“What boy?” Ayanfe licked her lips, savouring the taste of her soup. She scooped some more with the spoon, turned to her friend and said dismissively, “Taste this.”
One fine Saturday morning, Morenikeji, her housemaid, the eighteen-year-old she had only just employed, cornered her in the corridor on her way to the bathroom.
“What do you want?” Ayanfe had snapped at her, staring ahead at the bathroom door. Woken by an urgent need to pee, she was in no mood for gossip and was desperate to get to the bathroom.
The maid moved closer and, reducing her voice to a whisper, said, “It is true, Aunty, what people are saying. I saw that boy myself.”
Ayanfe had hissed and pushed past her. If it hadn’t taken her one year of doing all the chores herself before getting the maid, she would have ordered her to pack her things and leave immediately.
It was her way of dealing with things, with life. She refused to pay attention to anything outside her marriage. As long as Bosun confirmed nothing, the talks remained rumours and nothing more. They were happy together; it was all that mattered. They had even begun trying for a child again after taking a break last year. She could not afford to get carried away with side talks.
But that afternoon when she returned home from work to find Uncle Fatai’s old Sienna parked outside, she knew. When she met, in her living room, nine of her in-laws; from Bosun’s jobless youngest brother, who liked to leech on his family for everything, and Uncle Damilare’s wife, Bolanle, who was a good seven years younger but she had to call Aunty, according to some old Yoruba tradition, to Uncle Durotimi, Bosun’s older brother, and Uncle Fatai, the family patriarch who had taken on the role of father-in-law after the death of his brother, her husband’s father, she knew. When Bosun refused to meet her gaze each time she raised a questioning look at him, she knew. When she saw the boy, now a toddler who innocently took short wobbly steps towards her, looking exactly like Bosun, she knew. When she saw the boy’s mother, the girl who lived two houses down the street, dressed in an expensive bubu, which flowed down to the polished floor, seated in her living room with her in-laws, she knew. She didn’t need a soothsayer to tell her that the rumours were true. Or maybe she always knew and didn’t want to believe any of it. Now she hated herself for it, but it was this thing, this thing with the in-laws, that felt little less than an invasion, that she hated more.
***
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