Taiye

1984
Eríayọ̀ (Erí) and Idris Awóṣakin prepared as best as they could for the arrival of their first child whom they hoped would be a boy. In the last months of the pregnancy, Erí took to tracing the dark line that ran from her taut and extended navel to her waist with anointing oil. She would place two fingers on the crisscross opening of the Goya bottle, tip it to the side and draw a cross across her belly, muttering prayers in her wake.

While his wife grew life in her body, Idris transformed a corner of the sparse parlor into a nursery. He designated it “Junior’s corner” and made multiple trips to the Railway market in Agege to furnish the space. It took him several trips trawling through the crude open disorganized market and haggling with sharp-eyed traders before he settled on a small white crib, a purple plastic baby tub, and a small sturdy wood cabinet. The seller’s dour countenance after the sale assured Idris that he had bargained well.

He bought other accoutrements not on their baby list: beeping, flashing, gyrating toys, an expensive nappy bag they did not need, and a shawl he knew Erí would love. It was made from a soft, off-white wool material patterned with merry looking farm animals.

The week before the baby was due, Oyíndà, Erí’s mother, arrived from Ẹdẹ bearing her handbag and a big Ghana-must-go, which she handled with surprising ease. She had been to her daughter’s place once but remembered it was a bungalow on Pẹ̀rọ̀ street that housed eight room-and-parlors with four on either side of a narrow passage. Erí’s flat was closest to the outdoor bathroom and the shared cooking area; it was not unusual to go from smelling someone’s cooking to enduring a waft of stale air from the pit latrine.

“Ẹkú ilé níbí o,” Oyíndà announced, entering the parlor without knocking. “Maámí!” Erí cried. She was on the couch watching TV and made to jump and run to her mother. “Rọra rọra,” Oyíndà laughed. She placed her bags on the floor and hugged her daughter tightly. “Eríayọ̀.” She held her daughter at arms’ length and studied her critically. Satisfied with what she saw, she guided her back to the sofa.

Erí was her only living child. Her other children – four boys – passed away years before Erí’s birth, taken by strange illnesses and unexplained accidents. Oyíndà laid the blame for the deaths of her sons at the doorstep of her senior wives; wicked, jealous vipers that they had been. They had failed to produce sons for their husband, and when Oyíndà in the first year of marriage did what had not been done by bearing a son, they ate him up. One after the other, her sons marched to the drums of death, never living long enough to meet a sibling. Erí came later in life, unplanned but she stayed.

“I brought you plenty palm oil and yam,” Oyíndà announced as she turned back to her Ghana-must-go. She dragged the bag to the sofa and one after the other, before Erí’s appreciative gaze, she revealed tubers of yams, a large bottle of palm oil, dried fish, okra, and a few bottles of Goya oil.

“What about irú?” Erí asked.

“Don’t you trust me? Irú wà.” She paused, suddenly remembering her son-in-law. “Where is Idris?” she asked, looking towards the bedroom as though there was a chance she could have missed him. “He’s not back from work yet,” Erí replied. “He should be here any minute.”

“Toh. Have you made dinner yet? Let me cook some of this okra for you.” Erí smiled a fond smile at her mother at the mention of okra, remembering early evenings of eating eba and okra in her mother’s kitchen while still in her school uniform. “No ma. Idris is the one cooking these days. The kerosene smoke irritates me too much.”

“Toh,” was Oyíndà’s response. She took the items she needed, confirmed the niceties of the shared kitchen, and made her way outside. Within an hour, mother and daughter were eating okra and eba in front of the tv, gossiping about Erí’s stepmothers and stepsiblings whom she never saw or spoke to.

“Have you been praying like I told you?” Oyíndà’s asked. “Yes ma.”

“And the anointing oil?”

“Every night. All my night gowns are anointed at this point.”

“Good,” Oyíndà said with satisfaction. “I brought more bottles for you. I took them to camp and got them specially blessed by GO.”

Idris arrived to find his wife and mother-in-law going through some of the baby items Oyíndà bought for the baby. “Mummy! We were not expecting you till Saturday!” Oyíndà laughed heartily. “Don’t mind me jere. My spirit was not at rest throughout last week. I asked myself, what am I doing that I cannot come earlier? Abi?”

“Even your daughter’s spirit has not been at rest” Idris teased. “She has not let me rest because of you.” He gestured at his stained mechanic overalls, “Let me wash up and join you.”

“Take your time ọkọ mí. Well done. When you’re ready there’s eba and okra for you.”

“Thank you ma.” He washed up, served himself and sat to eat. He listened to mother and daughter chat about people back home in Ẹdẹ, Eri’s teaching job and the neighbors, before finally, the conversation turned to him.

“Are any of your sisters coming?” Oyíndà asked. “Not until after the baby ma,” he replied. He pointed to “Junior’s corner” where a large white assembled crib stood next to a small heap of unopened baby items. “They sent lots of baby things.” And they had. His eldest sister Seki had sent most of what they needed for the baby. A brand new crib that took up a lot of space and had been complicated to set up, a baby carrier, three full cartons of pampers, baby bottles, shawls, napkins, bibs and clothes. The clean, brand new look and smell of the items made his Railway bargains look shabby and dirty.

“I just wish she sent them earlier,” he complained to Erí when the gifts arrived. “Everybody knows that you buy baby things months ahead so she knows we would have bought these things already. She did this on purpose.” Erí gave the appropriate responses, understanding that his ire went beyond the timing of the gifts.

Idris and his sister did not get along. There was a seven year gap between them that was not helped by their conflicting personalities. Seki, the oldest child, and daughter of the Awóṣakin household had escaped the poverty she grew up in through grit and years of hard work. She now owned a large store in Iyana Itire where she sold office equipment. She did not believe that luck played a part in her fortune, and tacitly blamed people – her siblings included – for their lack of enterprise.

Oyíndà stood to inspect the items, oblivious to the mild tension in the room as she cooed over the gifts. “These are very quality items. Your sisters did well. When are they coming?” she asked again. “After the baby is born,” he repeated. “Everyone will come for the naming ceremony.”
“Toh.”
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Táiyẹ́ and Kẹ́hìndẹ́ Awóṣakin, a girl and a boy, were born on August 24^th, 1984, to the surprise of their parents and the medical staff at Orile Agege general hospital. “Twins?” Idris asked incredulous at the news. Oyíndà looked from the nurse to her son-in-law, “íbejì? Is that what she said? Erí bíbejì?”

“Yes ma,” the nurse replied. “A boy and a girl. The girl came first.” Oyíndà squealed, hugged the nurse, hugged her son-in-law, and began singing and dancing, holding the ends of her wrapper in her hands. “Eleda mi mo dupe!” The nurse, in an uncharacteristic show of kindness waited for her to finish dancing before leading them to mother and babies.

“They are harbingers of wealth and good luck,” Oyíndà said to the new parents as Táiyẹ́ was placed in her hands. “You will never regret their existence.”

1991

Erí lost her teaching job on a Tuesday. That morning, for some reason, she wore her favorite office outfit – a red pleated skirt and a blue blouse. “Esa rora,” Idris teased when she swirled her skirt this way and that for him.

“You look fine, mummy,” Taiye quipped.

“Thank you my dear. Are you people ready?” she asked, picking up her bag. “Yes!” The twins chorused. “Taiye, go and rinse your plate. Kenny? where’s your lunch box? You people do this every morning. Let’s go!”

There was a few minutes of dashing and grabbing for possessions before mother and children headed out. The twins attended the same school Erí taught in, benefitting from the teachers’ discount offered by the proprietress. At the school gate, the twins hurried ahead of their mother to their classroom, keen to distance themselves from “Mrs. Awóṣakin, the Math teacher.”

That Tuesday morning, when Erí entered her classroom, she found a note cellotaped to her attendance register, asking her to see the proprietress immediately. Her first thought was that she was getting fire. She dismissed it immediately with a prayer. It could be any number of things: she could be getting assigned to another class, getting another salary reduction or worse, getting additional subjects to teach. Five teachers had been dismissed in the last month alone.

The proprietress was kind. She explained that she could no longer afford two Math teachers for the entire school. Unfortunately, the other Math teacher was her daughter-in-law. “I promise you Mrs. Awóṣakin,” she said. “Once things turn around, you will be the first person I will reinstate. As it is, enrolment is down almost 30%. Parents are withdrawing their children every week. I am afraid I might have to close the school if things don’t get better. You can keep paying what you have been paying for your children’s fees.”

Erí went back to her classroom in a daze. Thankfully, there were only a few students in class, jabbering to each other. She ignored their greetings and made her way to her desk where the attendance register sat with the offending note. Beside it was her worn copy of Macmillan Mathematics. She was supposed to be teaching fractions today. Listlessly, she carried her handbag, and walked to the twins’ classroom. She informed them they would be going home by themselves at closing time as she had somewhere to be. She brushed off their many questions and left for home.

She spent the entirety of her walk home cursing the government and praying for a miracle. They were owing the landlord a year’s rent; most of their money went to paying the children’s school fees and buying food for the family. They had substituted everything that could be substituted for cheaper options. Kerosene, rice, proteins, clothes, detergent, mosquito repellant. Their electricity had been disconnected weeks ago. There was nothing else, nowhere else they could realistically cut back on. The twins hadn’t eaten eggs for almost two months!

Idris’ auto workshop was the first to feel the hardship sweeping the country. Fewer people could afford to repair their cars talk less of buying second hand or new ones. On more than one occasion, they had had to borrow money from Seki to put food on the table. Even the twins knew things were bad. They stopped having cornflakes for breakfast and noticed the absence of proteins from their lunch box.

Erí got home, changed out of her clothes, and made herself pap and akara. She made the akara from scratch, peeling the beans with vigor. She added dried fish to the batter and fried it in palm oil, not caring that it was her last batch of oil. She put two heaping tablespoons of milk in the pap to make sure each spoon of pap she swallowed had dollops of powdered milk on it. She ate slowly. After eating, she prayed and slept.

That night, after the twins slept, Erí narrated the latest woe to her husband over a dim light of a candle. The starkness of their reality suddenly seemed overwhelming. “Let us send Táiyẹ́ to Auntie Seki,” Idris said quietly. He had been mulling over the idea for months as he watched their fortunes change and his children grow thinner. They weren’t hungry thank God, but they were not eating well.

Erí began crying silently. “Has it reached that point?” She looked in the direction of her sleeping children. The loves of her life. Supposed bringers of good fortune. “Why Táiyẹ́?” she asked in a dull tone. Idris knew that the question meant she was amenable to the idea but was testing it for resilience. Were they willing to let their child go? And to a relative they were not particularly close to?

“Aunty Seki has only girls; it will be easier for Táiyẹ́ to adjust.” This was true. It was also true that if Seki had had boys, he would still have picked Táiyẹ́ to go. He did not want his son away from him. “Did you already talk to her?” Erí asked.

“Yes.”

“I see.”

He took her hands into his, “I would not suggest this if I didn’t think she would be fine. Aunty will treat her like her own child. It will only be for one year till I figure something out. I promise.”

A few weeks later, Seki came in her Peugeot 504 to pick her niece. Táiyẹ́ would not return to her family for seven years.