Deola was lost in thought as they drove out of Murtala Mohammed International Airport. She sighed with relief as the quiet hum of the air conditioner created some welcome cool air, and watched the sun bounce off the skyscrapers as the car sped past the bridges and flyovers.
“It is good that you have come.” Her father smiled. “We may have our problems, but as long as you have a brain and are prepared to work hard, you will make it eventually.”
He turned into a road and suddenly the car shuddered to a halt as a bicycle shot out of a side street, almost colliding with them. “If you want to die, go and find someone else to kill you!” He leant out of the window and cursed the cyclist’s parentage. When the young man turned round, grinned then sped off, Deola knew she was back in Lagos.
Her mother began to update her about her cousins Bisola and Dele. “How are they?” Deola had a faint recollection of Bisola, a skinny dark girl who had laughed at her ‘funny’ accent when she had been a little girl, just back from England with her brother and her parents.
Her mother smiled. “It’s Doctor Bisola now. Dr Bisola Alade-Johnson. She has already had a boy and this little girl will just complete her family. Her husband is from a very prominent Lagos family. Dele is just a bank manager.”
OK o. So the family favourite had changed. That could happen in a Nigerian family. If you had the usual status symbols – money, marriage, children – you could get higher up the pecking order than a sibling who hadn’t attained these emblems of success.
“Yes,” her mother continued, “Dele isn’t married yet and he is the same age as you, but he is a man and can afford to waste time. Maybe while you are here you might meet someone nice?”
Like, seriously? Deola looked out of the window and kept quiet. Living with your parents when you were in your late teens was one thing, but attempting it in your late thirties was going to test every atom of her willpower.
Moving into the suburbs of Yaba on their way to Akoka she watched as children played on the streets and vendors displayed their wares for buyers. They rounded the corner, past the primary school, the church and down the road that she had travelled many times in teenage years. There were new houses on the street now. New people. New money. She saw the big leaves of the mango tree waving at her over the top of the dark red gate, and she remembered slamming that gate on the way out and walking away without looking back.
She soon realised that structurally things were more or less the same. Apart from a new lick of paint to replace the slightly worn homestead, Hope Lodge – as her father had optimistically decided to name the two storeyed home he had built for his young family on their return from England in the eighties – had not changed. Nor had her mother.
Her father, on the other hand, had less hair and less to say. He took his seat in the living room, and after asking a few questions about her journey, went back to watching a documentary on the new plasma TV.
As they settled down, her mother gave her another look. “Deola Akanke mi! How are you eh? I see you have put on a bit of weight. That’s good. Our men like their women with some meat on them.”
Two minutes back in the house after almost twenty years. Two blooming minutes … You could time the woman.
“Mama Rotimi, what is happening to the food?” her father asked.
“Heh. My husband, let me chat with my daughter small now. The food is being prepared. We are so happy to have her back but my mind will be fully at rest when she is settled down with a nice gentleman.”
Deola looked around her, wishing that her brother was around to deflect the tension.
“Is Rotimi at work?”
“Yes. Should be in later,” her mother replied. “Rest yourself. How was the journey?”
“It was OK, mum.” Deola looked around her as the maid went to get her a glass of water and she replied to her mother’s on-going questions about work and life in general. Keep it light, girl. Less info is better. Nothing too deep.
Where the sitting room used to be dimly lit, its walls were now painted cream, and that filled the mid-sized room with light. The black sofa set had been replaced by three large burgundy leather sofas forming a U shape, and a new coffee table – a glass one topped by a large vase full of hibiscuses and African roses. The large TV had been ditched for a new plasma one.
There were photo frames all over the wall, pictures of family and friends, along with several framed awards and certificates, and her father’s legal books on the shelf.
“So what will you eat?”
“I just want to sleep.”
Mrs Banjoko turned to her husband. “Baba Rotimi, she doesn’t want to eat, she just wants to sleep?”
“Leave her be if she doesn’t want to eat. It was a long journey.”
“All the food has been cooked … ”
“Aduke. Can we not keep the food in the fridge?” Deola could see her father sigh and put his hand on one side of his face as if he was in deep reflection. She took this as her cue to get up and yawn.
“Sit down and let’s gist!”
She hated it when her mother wanted to ‘gist’. It was over twenty years too late.
“Ba mi soro.” She patted the settee next to her. “Have you met anyone nice in London?”
“Aduke let the girl rest now,” her father said again. “She has just come.”
“Heeeeeh … Can I not even talk to my own daughter now?”
Her father cleared his throat, which from experience she realised meant he was about to make his final comment on a topic. “Deola, go and get some rest.”
Deola nodded, muttered her thanks and dragged her suitcase out of the room. As she made her way upstairs, she heard her parents speaking in heated whispers.
“Baba Rotimi, I hate it when you do that! Did we not decide that we were going to sit her down and find out what actually happened with the lawyer?”
“What happened with the lawyer is that they broke up. Why can you not accept that?”
“A whole lawyer … Eh? How could she let a solid person like that slip from her grasp?”
“The problem with you Nigerians is that you are in love with titles. Doctor this, barrister or chief that. Deola has more sense.”
Deola closed the door to her room.
She had grown up never feeling quite good enough.
Her mother had never ever said that to her but it was inferred – it was the looks, the comments, the suggestions. The comparisons. Everyone else’s daughter was studious, so intelligent. They didn’t get third or fourth position in class – they got first. They were so slim and pretty and she was just … not slim and pretty.
Then when she got older:
So and so studied Medicine and you want to just study Mass Communications?
Deola sighed, tossing and turning as her body tried to re-orientate itself with a new bed that now felt strange, like a new body trying to adjust itself to old clothes. She couldn’t wait to move out. No doubt that would be another battle to fight. Best left to a day her mother was in a slightly better mood. Otherwise it would be, “Why can’t you stay here, this is your house? You still have your old room.”
Why? Because she wasn’t a kid any more. Because the atmosphere and the memories were threatening to drown her.
The cock crowed as the city stretched its aching muscles and began to come to life, preparing itself for the new day. She lay there watching as the sun’s rays began to break through the sky.
The Comparison Game, as Deola called it, had started again as soon as she’d arrived back in Nigeria. She was always the loser in this game and now she was older, she couldn’t be bothered any more.
Now, Deola lay in her bed turning it over in her mind, and then she heard footsteps approaching her room. There was a knock on the door and then it opened. She rubbed her eyes and struggled up to see, but deep down she knew who it was going to be.
“Good morning, mum,” she said as her mother made her way into the bedroom and looked around.
“Morning, my daughter.” Mrs Banjoko took a seat on the bed and smiled.
Deola groaned inwardly. She knew what was coming.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. I had a good rest.”
“That’s good. It’s so nice to have you back with us.”
Deola knew that was her cue to say that she was happy to be back, but somehow the words caught, choked off somewhere between her brain and her tongue.
“So how are things generally?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Hmm. Do you know that a young person cannot comprehend life as an old person who has more experience?
“Mum, I don’t understand—”
Mrs Banjoko’s interrupting laugh held no joy. “I know you don’t understand, my child. That is why I decided to speak to you this morning, while the day is young. Deola Akanke – my only daughter, the second fruit of my womb – I know what my eyes saw when I was in the labour ward. My enemies will not use your case to poke fun of our family o. If you have a problem, you should be able to talk about it with me so we can see how we can help.”
“I don’t have a problem, Mum.”
“You don’t have a problem?” It was a statement more than a question from the look on her mother’s face.
“No.”
“So what happened with the lawyer?”
The two women silently contemplated each other while the question hung in the air. Deola was the first to speak, her voice calm and casual. “It didn’t work out between us, and we broke up.”
“You broke up? So what really happened? What did you do? Let us go and beg him eh? Let us talk to him. Have I not talked to him on the phone? He sounds so respectful. Give me his number … ”
“Mum, there is no point. Besides I would find that highly embarrassing.”
“Do you think I am not embarrassed over this? This was a man we were already calling your husband.” Mrs Banjoko was shaking her head. “The whole thing makes me feel ill to think of it. I’ve told all my friends that you are going to be married to a lawyer – what I am supposed to tell them now?”
“A lawyer is just a title like any other. It really is no big deal.”
“Well it is a big deal here in Nigeria.”
Deola could only agree. Sometimes the narrow-mindedness of Nigerian society was suffocating. “Well it’s a good job I don’t live in Nigeria.”
Silence. She looked at her mother, trying to gauge whether she could really understand that this inquisition about her former boyfriend was painful and pointless. Painful because although she had called it quits with him, unknown to her he was seeing someone else at the time. She had made the right decision.
She had heard enough, and jumped out of bed, flinging the bedclothes aside. “I don’t need help, mum. I’m single. It’s not a disease.”
The pity embedded in her mother’s eyes said it all. As far as she was concerned, her daughter needed help.
“So did you people fight?”
It was rude to sigh in front of an older person, unless you had not been trained well. Deola had been trained well, so she swallowed her sigh.
Her mother put up a hand. “OK. No more questions. Maybe you will come with me to see Pastor James for prayers.”
“Mum. I’m not really into all that.”
“Would I be a good mother if I just fold my hands and watch you clock 40 without a husband and family of your own?”
Deola stood by the window looking into the street that was gradually waking to life. Little children in their bright blue and white uniforms making their way to school. A woman walked on the side of the road balancing a tray with loaves of bread on her head.
“Mum, turning 40 without a husband is not the worst thing that could happen to a person, you know?”
“Sssh … Don’t say that out aloud. You don’t want bad spirits to hear you. Is that what you want for your life? No husband or children? Olorun maje.”
“Which spirits for goodness’ sake, mum?”
“Deola. Hmmm. You are a small girl. I will keep praying for you sha. That is a mother’s duty. No mother can be truly happy until she sees her daughter safely down the aisle. And another thing—”
What is it again abeg?
“What are we going to do about your hair?”
For goodness’ sake. “There is nothing wrong with my hair.”
“It is rough. Nobody leaves their hair out like that. Can you not wear one of those lovely weave-ons like all the other young ladies do?”
“It’s my own hair. I’ve tried processing it. It all fell out and I don’t want to do that to myself any more. Mum, this is me. After all, you left yours like that in all your old photos.”
“We wore wigs back then, Deola. I would never dream going out without one. It is not presentable.”
“This is 2017, mum. In England and in the States a lot of people wear their hair like this.”
“Hmm. How will you get married when your hair is looking like this, eh? Why are you young people so stubborn?”
Deola stood silently as her mother shook her head and left the room. She waited a moment, then picked up her toiletries and headed for the bathroom. That was the irony of it – all her mother was concerned with was seeing her safely down the aisle. What happened after that was her own problem.
She remembered Kunle’s duplicity and realised that it would have manifested after they married. Sooner or later he would revert to type. An affair when he couldn’t get his way, or if she was pregnant, or put on weight – and it would all be her fault. People would say she should have done everything she could to ensure the marriage worked. Really? The way she figured it, she had a narrow escape. She didn’t want to be in a marriage where the sole burden of it succeeding rested on her head, and if being dumb equalled getting married she was happy to remain the way she was for the time being. It was lonely sometimes but at least she knew she wasn’t pretending to herself because she wanted to keep a relationship.