My name is Sisi Demurin. Yes. ‘Sisi’ is what is on my birth certificate. Mummy never explained. I had two other names. Sandra; which I felt was deceiving cos I didn’t look like one and then Agbeke. Now who’ll bear that? I am my mother’s only child and the fifth from the seventeen my father produced. I am now twenty-something years old and this is my story…
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“Ewo lo kan mi gan?” I said to myself. It didn’t take another minute before I knew how it concerned me.
“Iya Idera!” She screamed with a voice that was naturally loud even when talking. “Iya Idera! E wa gbo nkan o!”
Come and hear what? I wondered almost going berserk. It took a while for me to orient myself with my environment. The new house I just moved into and the super-crazy neighbours. I had rolled from the bed to the rug, and my leg had hit the table. It was nothing fanciful. Yes, a one-room affair but I planned to make it look presentable. I had cable, a TV and a DVD player. The pant-less children that roamed the compound had smiled at me while I was packing my stuff from the truck into my room while the women had remained outside, frowning because of my 42” colour TV. No one had volunteered to help. Shior!
I rolled back on the mattress which lay close to the wall and heaved for a while. Of course there was no light. I picked my phone, wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off. It was only five o’clock! These women were screaming at 5am! I pulled out the net, pushed the hook off the window and stretched out my neck. Mama Joy was one of the lousiest women I have ever met. While I had come to check the house, she had pulled me aside to discourage me on taking the room, saying the previous occupant had been a witch. It wasn’t my first time in Lagos but getting an apartment for myself in Lagos was the smartest thing I’ve been able to do besides squatting or remaining an occupant in our Oke Agbo home in Ijebu Igbo. Dad was old, and my mother, my link to him, was late. He never bothered if I had stones for breakfast or sticks for lunch, never cared to throw a ‘Bawo ni?’ at me, no matter how insincere. Strangers I met in the market sef were a lot friendlier. He had three more wives, even before my mum died. Not that I was that close to her too. She was too gullible and unreasonable to let dad ruin her.
She said she had never known dad with a job, yet she was too blinded with love she didn’t see him as the lazy thing he was. She took care of the family, bought him clothes, and fed us. The house sef was her inheritance from her industrious father.
“Sisi, you better carry your face inside because if hot water touches you, I’m not there oh.”
Mama Joy, the twenty-something year old rival of Mama Tunde advised.
Hot? This house I moved into was one mad house.
I stuck my head back in and pulled the window shut just in time because the crashing of buckets filled the air. It was always war at the backyard every morning, I had noticed, that was why I filled in my containers at midnight. No one dared came to my door step, let alone step foot in my room. I was not my mum. I had sworn I wasn’t going to let people take me for granted.
Maami had taught me all I needed to know. Sad she had to die the way she did. Full of regrets, but she caused it. She spoilt my dad and showed him the way to her safe. He had one afternoon emptied it and went to Iseyin to ask for the Oba’s daughter’s hand in marriage. Sho tan! All for a man!
Thank God she had small sense to keep some expensive jewellery. And two warehouses on Oba Adeboye Road. I was sixteen and though I hadn’t gained admission yet I lied that I was on the merit list of Unilag. Mum was so happy, daddy was mad! I lied because I needed a way out. I knew I was going to write the next JAMB but in the meantime, Eno, my friend had got jobs for us as cleaners in a financial institution.
“I thought I got OOU forms for you.” Daddy had said disappointed.
“But I passed JAMB naw! I frowned.
“Gbenu soun!” He had yelled. The man knew. He knew that whenever I’m not home, mummy didn’t participate in home duties like he’d have loved. Most times, she went for days to her sister at Funmodara. And the other wives were useless and penniless.
She took ill when I actually gained the proper admission at eighteen. On her bed at the hospital, she had given me a lot of advice.
Oh so she knew all this and still did mumu for daddy, abi?
Then she directed me to Mummy Tayo, her sister. That one gave me a bag of jewellery I later discovered were ‘correct’ gold. Then there was the building under development at Ago, she wanted to use as a student hostel and then two warehouses, three actually, she gave her sister the third. There were all mine. She left the house for her husband. I sold most of the gold, saved the money and gave some to my aunty to oversee the finishing of the hostel and rushed down back to Lag.
Daddy swore I be coming home during holidays and was always pestering my life, threatening to come to Unilag in search of me. Story! He wasn’t that old or illiterate o. In fact, he was so good-looking, that dad of mine. Wore nice, clean clothes you just believed this was a rich man. Wash!
For some years, the hostel in Ago-Iwoye was still under construction. They said prayers had to be done before we could continue building. I just wished the warehouses were in Lagos where I could rent them out for proper fees. I knew it was a gradual process. I had enough to get a self-contained apartment. But I had to calm down. I wasn’t in the hostel anymore. I didn’t want to be loud. So I maintained the house with its quarrelsome neighbours.
Light came on! A dupe o! I dashed to charge my phone, wondering what to do before the day breaks. The uproar at the backyard was still on and I could hear one call the other’s child a ‘bournvita baby’ as that is what is always being put into the infant’s feeding bottle. *confused* and the other was quick to retort that her husband was jobless and just left the home every morning for the ‘Baba Ijebu lotto stand’ playing two shots. Kai!
I do not presently have a boyfriend. The last one had lots of us in his life. He said the quickest one to get pregnant would be the luckiest so I just left.
Anyway, Eno and I were in 3oo level already. We were both not high on cash and we needed a way out. She hadn’t moved in with me because the landlord had initially asked and I said I was going to be living alone. But the plan was that she moved in later. Eno was way louder than I was and her lifestyle was a bit weird but she was a good person. We were supposed to visit an aunty of hers and so I was getting prepared. She had lured me for hours into coming but I had my reservations. I was very much light-skinned and I was easily spotted, which I didn’t like. If I wasn’t sure of where I was going and it was avoidable, I liked to pass. But Eno was hearing none of it and so I did all I wanted and waited.
She came in at about 4pm. All smily and bubbly.
“Ready?”
“Since.”
I turned the bolt, our shoes clattering on the cemented floor of the passage.
“Sisi, na go be that?” it was Mama Joy.
“No. Na come.” Eno whispered. “Nosy.”
“Yes. Bye bye.” I quickly said.
“Okay, buy something o.”
I stepped outside and there was the car. It was a Murano. Big, black and shiny. At this time, my neighbours were spying wide-eyed. Then the door came open and down came a very tall, handsome man in the very smart attire of the Nigerian Navy. Oh my! He smiled and proceeded towards us. I turned back and my foolish neighbours were smiling too. We moved to his car, the driver, dressed very smartly alighted and ushered us in. The leather seats were very comforting. The car made a slow hissing sound driving out of my streets to a destination unknown.
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© Oyster Finney
Pearls & Oysters 