Segun was in the sitting room overcome in two parts.
The physical and mental exhaustion induced by the rigors of maintaining two jobs a day was the first part. He was a teacher at both a public secondary school and an evening private coaching centre. His work schedule was usually rounded off by six o' clock.
The other part of the exhaustion was emotional. He was fuming at the reception his wife threw at him.
It was his first day out to work after their wedding. AY had answered his homecoming compliments from the bedroom. She would not bother coming out. And when he endured it and composed himself to demand his right of food, the mistress's response shocked him the more. Without apology she threw instructions at him,
‘Get to the kitchen and check the blue warmer, the wraps of Eba are there. Help yourself to the soup. I really need this sleep so badly.'
His little remaining strength drained from him instantly. He dropped into one of the three armchairs – the one closest to the main door. With head lolled forward and propped on the arms, he fumed in silence like a bottled acid.
'I have a wife, home since morning. Thanks to her leave. Yet no set table. Not even a warm welcome to rub off the day's demand. Sleep has engaged her in a more important assignment. Imagine! I should go to the kitchen and dish out my food myself! My own self! What does she take me for? Her child? Naughty girl.
The devastation had taken a toll on him for two hours already. Lassitude now drowned him in the sofa anger had floored.
It was a quarter past eight. AY was having a sweet sleep on her matrimonial bed. She turned her side unconsciously. Her sleeping lips moved and muttered some undecipherable words for a long second before they were sealed again – a strange reflex for an adult, much less a female adult. Certainly, she was in the middle of some dream.
Back in the sitting room, Segun was still lying on the couch. He was lost in thought, oblivious of the darkness that had crept into the room. Visibility was difficult but then his sight was not here but there, in the mind. The silhouette of shapes and figures in the room, imposed by the protracted power cut of Power Holdings, the Nigerian electricity authority, cried for illumination from a lantern at the very least. Segun's mind was too preoccupied. Out of mind. Out of sight.
‘Tolu was right.’
He was thinking about the torrents of thoughts that always bedevilled him and sapped his strength dry whenever he was in a sulk.
Just then AY walked into the sitting room quietly and carefully. With her right hand she scrambled for the way until the hand came to rest on the arched back of the two-seater. Her hands ran the arch through its length until she got to the far end of the sofa, opposite the kitchen door. She did not bother to call out to her husband. The absence of the lantern light had its usual conclusion; her man had either slept off on the rug or in one of the sofas.
In the kitchen, she located a box of matches and the lantern. She struck four sticks successively and failed. Each time, the reddish brown spark substance produced flame but the attached uncooperative stem stifled it almost immediately.
‘Ah! Niger! Nothing is of quality again. Gone are the days of the popular and effective triple-picture match boxes,' she breathed her frustration.
She was lucky on the fifth attempt. Quickly she suspended the transparent glass globe with the side-lever and torched the lantern's wick with the flame. The globe released. The flame regulated. Something told her to check the blue polystyrene food container. Her eyes popped when she saw the three wraps of eba, a food made from boiled and creamed grains of cassava, intact.
She instantly knew she was in for trouble. What has she done wrong. She started some self-probe.
For some five minutes, her legs would not agree with her heart on presenting herself at the sitting room for the obvious subpoena. Her eyes surveyed the kitchen aimlessly but vigorously, like the proverbial ear-cut thief. At last she summoned up the courage and advanced towards the sofa-and-electronic-gadgetry room, albeit slowly.
The light led the way she sluggishly followed. Then she lowered her eyes on the sofa for three. There lay her beloved. He turned in a reflex towards the infiltrating light and his eyes looked horrible when AY zoomed in on them. She has jumped into the river already, fearing the cold now is useless. Though the grim face was highly repellent she drew closer and closer to it. Then she did what she never in her wildest dream thought she would do: she sank to her knees before her cross partner. Her tender hands seduced him to forgive while her mouth quickly laid out her reason.
‘Sweetheart, I'm very sorry. It was not intentional. I was having some headache. So, I took Panadol and a nap to help me up.'
Segun was floored. His seething was stilled instantly, like the soup in an aluminium pot. One pleasant thought made a mockery of him.
‘Women, so powerful! What is it they want they won't get!'
He got up, sat up, helped her up and tendered a complementary apology.
‘I'm sorry too. We are still learning to understand each other. But it cannot go without saying that communication builds a strong home. I wouldn't have felt offended if you had included a sentence or two about your headache in your welcoming words. I would have even forgotten about the food, come around to the bedroom and stroke your hair. And the anointing in my hand would have cast off the intruding headache.'
She beamed. ‘I'm sorry sweetheart. I will take note. But it's not too late for the stroking.' She feigned an headache, ‘I'm still feeling the headache.'
The now love-drunken husband readjusted his posture, like a pastor swinging his shoulders to feel a newly-given designer suit.
‘Makaru ma tarasmiku!' the man of God was in the spirit as his hands descended on the pick-and-drop braids.
AY responded promptly like one being delivered; she wriggled and jerked from head to waist.
‘Ah! Man of God, I feel like falling!.'
‘Maskarururi! Fall! Fall! Fall!'
He tipped her head and she fell, like a pack of Whot cards, on his lap.
‘You are an unusual deliveree; you should fall on your back and not forwards. The presence of your head on my lap is tempting. Get up and let me re-deliver you! Looska!'
How they both laughed at the well-acted home-grown drama.
AY eventually served the eba with okra soup. They ate their fill amidst teasing and pulling of legs. The drama then proceeded to the bedroom. It was a night to remember.
