Chapter I
I
The first three months of being a mother were a blur.
Kemi was exactly the type of grandma that Ebun had predicted—she would swing by in the morning, dance with the baby in her arms, blow her darling several kisses, then disappear with one of several wealthy suitors into Lagos society.
She was caught up in a quest to ensnare a fourth husband and/or a secondary income for their household.
She was a fifty-three-year-old mother of four, but thanks to the joint efforts of Spandex and Wonderbra, her waist was tiny, her breasts still perky.
She rarely raised her voice, she laughed often and freely, and she knew better than to argue with a man.
When the average man fantasised about who his wife would be, Ebun was certain it was her mother that their imagination conjured up.
Kemi’s latest target was a twice-divorced second son of a multimillionaire.
He had not done much with the privilege he had been born with, but he was the favoured child and so he wanted for nothing, which meant he would be more than happy to share his fortune with the woman of his dreams. And all the best to them.
The real threat to Ebun’s peace was Aunty Bunmi, who was by far the more hands-on of the two sisters.
She had given the baby her first bath—furiously chewing tobacco leaves while slathering palm oil all over Eniiyi’s body, then proceeding to give her a far more vigorous wash than Ebun thought necessary considering the child was only a couple of days old.
Eniiyi’s cries set her teeth on edge, but she resisted the urge to snatch her from her aunt’s arms.
But it didn’t end with the bath. Aunty Bunmi wanted to involve herself in every decision Ebun made.
She wanted Eniiyi dressed in “feminine” colours and would huff and puff if Ebun did not comply.
She would come into Ebun’s room at all hours to check on the baby.
And she was constantly correcting the way Ebun carried her child, nursed her child, loved her child.
Ebun wanted to be kind, she really did. Aunty Bunmi had lost her daughter and Eniiyi was a way for her to distract herself, but her patience was wearing thin.
The previous week, perhaps she had taken a beat longer than she should have done to respond to Eniiyi’s cries, but when she arrived in her room, she was surprised to see Aunty Bunmi sitting on the bed, holding the baby and feeding her formula.
“I thought I told you I wanted to wait to introduce her to the bottle…”
“Eh. You did. But you are always so tired. This way, we can all feed her. And the pressure won’t be only on you.”
“Did I complain about the pressure?”
“Yesterday, you fell asleep standing up.” That was beside the point.
“How long have you been doing this? How long have you been giving her formula?”
“I can’t watch her suffer. You want me to just look at Moti starving and not do anything?”
“Her name is Eniiyi. And yes, I want you to listen to—”
“Your mother and I have done this before. You should listen to our advice.”
Ebun turned and walked out of her room. It was either that or say something she would regret.
And then, one day, just when Ebun thought the only way to get her baby back from her aunt would be to wrench her from her arms, Bunmi learnt that three prefects in her school had been caught cheating on an exam.
Punishments would need to be meted out, new prefects selected, parents soothed—the school needed its headmistress.
And though she would never admit it, the headmistress needed her school.
The crisis pulled her away from her niece and the baby she insisted on calling Motitunde.
So Ebun and Eniiyi were finally left to their own devices.
If one didn’t count Sango (and she preferred not to count him), who had made a habit of following her around.
There was no love lost between Ebun and the massive canine; he was always looking at her with those beady eyes, as though he knew her secrets and judged her accordingly.
She told him to shoo, to get lost, to go, but he was deaf to her commands.
There was no separating him from Eniiyi.
Still, disregarding Sango, she was free to mother her child as she chose.
Only there was so very little choosing involved.
She moved from task to task as if in a haze—lifting the baby to her breast, praying there was enough milk, changing nappy after nappy, reminding herself to eat and then dozing off with the child in her arms. She wondered why she had thought she could do this alone.
The weight of the responsibility she had given herself began to feel crippling.
She needed sleep. She was so very tired.
Monife would have mothered with ease—loving had come so naturally to her.
Not so Ebun, who had always weighed what a person gave her, offered to her, before offering anything of herself.
Her nipples were sore, her body unfamiliar and the tears of her child set her on edge.
Sango nudged her. She needed to pick up the howling infant; her cries were beginning to sound desperate.
She lifted the baby, baffled by how loud the sound was that rose from the tiny body.
She rocked her back and forth, up and down, until the screaming quietened to little mewls.
She and Eniiyi (and Sango) made their way to the kitchen.
She was hungry. It was possible she had had some bread earlier, but it was also possible that “earlier” was yesterday.
The kitchen tiles were hot under her bare feet.
She opened a cupboard, dragging out a pan with one hand as she cradled the baby with the other.
With one hand she diced the plantain, poured oil in a pan and lit the stove.
She let the oil heat up and then began to drop the plantain slices into the pan.
If she hadn’t been sleep-deprived, she would have anticipated what happened next—the hot oil spitting from the pan, the scalding glob flying through the air and landing on Eniiyi’s thigh, the subsequent heart-wrenching cry.
For a moment, time stilled. Then she shook herself and rushed to the sink, turning on the tap and holding Eniiyi’s leg under the flow of cold water.
She stared at the layers of skin peeling off to reveal raw flesh underneath.
Was she doing the wrong thing? If anything, her baby’s cries had increased.
“Kí ló dé?” Kemi appeared, back from a date, and Eniiyi was scooped out of her arms. “Bring Vaseline, and a bandage from that kit in my room.”
Ebun followed her mother’s instructions. When she had gotten the items, she found Kemi and Eniiyi in the living room.
“Oya, breastfeed her.”
She hesitated. Was the newborn even safe with her?
But she wasn’t given a chance to protest; the baby was already in her arms. Eniiyi latched on greedily, as though her mother’s nipple was a pain-reliever; and Kemi was free to attend to the leg.
Ebun watched as her mother crouched and began to paste Vaseline on Eniiyi’s thigh, so it was hard to miss when she stilled, with a finger resting on the burn mark.
“What’s the matter?” Ebun asked as Kemi scanned the wound, a sense of dread creeping onto her shoulders like a cat, digging its claws into her skin. “What is it?”
“This burn, the shape of it…”
The shape…pampas grass. She gritted her teeth. She had seen the shape before. She had seen it so many times before. Monife had harboured no shame when it came to being naked. Ebun had seen her cousin’s body far more than she desired. She let out small breaths through her teeth.
“It looks like—”
“Mo’s was bigger,” she pointed out, but the words sounded far away. She cleared her throat.
“Still, you have to admit—”
“Mum. The scars are different.” And that was that. She would not entertain anything more on the subject.