Chapter III
III
As Eniiyi grew, Ebun watched her become more and more like Monife.
Her hair thickened, tightly coiled but softer than a cloud, her legs stretched long, her skin sucked up the light, she had begun to favour her left hand, her smile came often and easily, and she watched them all with increasingly curious eyes.
It was those eyes that gave Ebun the greatest discomfort.
They were starless and knowing. These were not the eyes of a three-year-old.
They had known sorrow, and even when they twinkled, the joy was tinged with restraint.
Monife had inserted herself back into their lives, and Ebun could only imagine it was so that her cousin could experience her unravelling up close.
She didn’t know what to do with this child that was hers but not hers. She found herself handing Eniiyi to her aunt more and more. She told herself it was her job that was keeping her from her daughter, that work was the reason she was so irritable. What would Monife think of Ebun’s motherhood?
One evening, late from work, she entered the Falodun home, dropped her keys and made her way to the west living room.
She figured it was the perfect room to escape to.
She had taken great pains to renovate it; she had always found it unnerving how little change took place in the Falodun house.
She had it repainted and paid a carpenter to build new chairs and a new sideboard in a more contemporary style.
But of course, for whatever reason, the mothers had decided this particular living room was where they would also relax.
As she walked into the room, she noted that her family had taken their usual places.
Her mother was watching a wrestling match and her aunt sat on the sofa reading a newspaper and chewing tobacco.
In the centre, on the floor, Eniiyi lay on her stomach intently drawing on the sheet before her, with her tongue sticking out.
Sango was beside her, one paw on the paper, gently snoring.
It was a charming scene. She almost didn’t want to disturb it.
Would they notice if she just went up to her bedroom?
She took a quiet step backwards, and her mother raised her head.
“Ebun. Kúl??.”
She’d missed her chance. “Yes, ma. ? káal??, Mum. ? káal??, Aunty.” She put on a smile, sat on the sofa and kicked off her heels, massaging her feet.
“Mummy!” Eniiyi shouted as she sprang up, disturbing the paper and the sleeping dog. She grabbed Ebun’s leg, hugging it, and gazed up beaming. Ebun looked away from Monife’s eyes.
“How are you, Eni?” she asked as she disentangled herself from the toddler, took off her blazer and laid it on the sofa.
Eniiyi wasted no time in telling Ebun everything that had happened in her day, which consisted of drinking juice, falling down, chasing the dog and finding ants.
She talked so fast, she ran out of breath.
Then Aunty Bunmi pointed to the paper on the floor.
“Let me see what you have drawn.”
“It’s not ready, Gamma.”
“It’s ready. Bring it.”
Ebun was barely paying attention to the exchange. But she did not miss her aunt say, “Don’t pass it to me with your left hand, Eniiyi. What have I told you?”
Ebun raised her head quickly and watched as Eniiyi switched the page from her left hand to her right. How many times had she seen her aunt correct Monife? How long had this been going on?
“You’re trying to change her dominant hand?”
“Before ńk??? I have told her, if she doesn’t improve, her in-laws will chase her from their house.”
“Aunty Bunmi, I hope you are joking.” It must have been something about the tone of her voice.
Bunmi opened her mouth and shut it again.
Unlike her aunt’s generation, Ebun didn’t consider the left hand to be unclean, and she certainly didn’t want them needlessly traumatising her daughter. “Let her use her left hand.”
“But—”
“But nothing. She is my daughter. And I don’t care what hand she uses to eat, what hand she uses to pass things, or what hand she uses to wipe her ass. I don’t want to hear you correcting her like that again.”
“Ebun. You can’t talk to your aunt in that manner,” her mother snapped.
Ebun dug her fingernails into her palm and took a steadying breath.
She muttered a curt apology that satisfied no one.
Eniiyi was looking from her mother to her grandmother in confusion.
Then she toddled over to her mother and offered her her drawing.
She was becoming a master at gauging the moods of the adults around her, and Ebun saw how she was eager to peace-keep where she could.
“Look, Mummy.”
Ebun collected the sheet from her. At first she couldn’t make out what it was she was looking at.
A circle with squiggly lines above it and a crooked shape below.
Beside it, a near-identical circle and crooked shape but no squiggly lines.
Thankfully, there were eyes in the circle and a crescent-shaped smile. She crouched down to Eniiyi’s level.
“And who is this?”
Eniiyi proudly tapped the squiggly-line figure. “This me!”
“And who is this next to you?”
“Also me.”
“There’s two of you?”
“Small me and big me.”
Ebun’s hands shook but she kept holding the paper.
Perhaps she was reading too much into it.
She had to be reading too much into it. She looked around.
Thankfully, the mothers hadn’t been listening.
They were still sulky after her outburst, talking to each other with their shoulders turned performatively away from her.
Ebun straightened up and her mother glanced at her.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You look—”
“I said I’m fine,” Ebun snapped, but that only increased her mother’s curiosity. She looked at the paper clutched in her hands.
“Let me see the drawing.”
Ebun tore up the drawing before she had truly decided to do so. Eniiyi began to cry.
“Ebun!” cried Kemi.
Ebun did not respond. She walked off, leaving the little pieces of paper in a pile on the floor.