Episode 3

Last updated on May 19th, 2023 at 08:15 am

I needed a job. It had been so long since I made my own money. Also, I woke up every day feeling a little bit purposeless. I enjoyed being a mother, but I wanted more. I didn’t even know what. Dimeji had started trying to crawl, so he was grown enough to be kept in a crèche. I had to tell Jude first anyway. But I needed to touch up my CV and print my credentials. Maybe Jude could help me print them from work.

***

After NYSC, I had gotten a job in Lagos and the salary was decent at the time. I lived with Vic—my best friend and we both left the house daily. Those were fun times. Our salary was spent on ordering food, buying weaves, and sewing clothes for owambe. Vic’s mum had gotten her the house we stayed in and even though Vic earned a little more than I did, she still got monthly allowances from her mum and her rich grandparents.

Mummy was never fine with my decision to live in Lagos. She especially hated that I lived with Vic whom she disliked; she thought she was too carefree. After about six months of working in Lagos, I started planning to get my own space and that was when the trouble began. Mummy got to know and started complaining. At first, they were light complaints, until she changed tactics and started crying. Daddy did not have a problem with my decisions, but he hated his wife crying so he interfered. 

Mummy threw so much tantrum that even two of my older brothers, Bimbo and Dele got involved and started calling me to return back to Ikire. Sam tried talking to them, but they all ignored him, and in his usual style, he eventually stayed out of it. Mummy thought it was insane for a single lady to decide to live alone. She was convinced that Vic was going to ruin my life. Bimbo and Dele somehow got Vic’s social media handles and started messaging her to send me out. When she refused and replied rudely to them, they started threatening her.

I was really confused. Although I kept working, hoping the matter would die down with time, I knew my mum enough to know that once she got her focus on something, she had to see it through. I was going to work during this period when a strange number called me, only to find out that it was Mum’s pastor. He spoke to me for a while on the phone, telling me of the visions he had seen about me not making it in Lagos. He said I had to come home because my glory was to be unveiled at home.

For four months steadily, I was hounded and Vic was threatened. Eventually, Vic blocked my brothers who got so mad at this and ordered me home. They threatened to come to Lagos to pack my things back to Osun State. At this point, I knew they were serious. Mummy had even started falling sick because of the issue. I had to go home. Against Vic’s words, I resigned from my place of work, packed, and went back to Ikire on a weekend.

It was not long before I met Jude, and even though I did not really know him or like him yet, we went out a couple of times. I was bored and jobless at home, so hanging out with him a few times did not seem so bad. I couldn’t explain how he got mummy’s number and introduced himself to her. Mummy started another tantrum saying I should marry him. She told me he was a traditional man and such men were rare in this day and age. 

I went to the market one morning, came back and met some people in the sitting room with my parents. I had never seen them and I did not know how close they were enough for them to be sitting and even laughing with my parents. Mummy then introduced them to me as Jude’s parents and I felt my head wobble. I had never been that shocked in my life. I had gone out with Jude only about five times and then he met my mum and the next thing I was seeing his parents. I wanted to scream, however, I greeted them and went into the kitchen, taking deep breaths, I sat on the floor there.

After a while, mummy came into the kitchen asking what was wrong and why I greeted my in-laws like that.

“Mummy, I don’t know them, I barely know Jude.”

“You don’t have to know them; you are too young to decide this kind of thing on your own. As my only daughter, I have to be intentional about your life, please. I know Jude and while you have been doing shakara for him all this while, we have been talking and seeing each other. He is a very good man.”

“Really?”

“What is really? Please jare, come outside and sit with your in-laws. Don’t give them a bad impression of you. Oya, let’s go.”

I hesitated. This whole thing felt like a dream. 

“Lape, don’t let me roll you one hot slap o. Stand up! You are acting so spoilt.”

I went into the sitting room and greeted them again, Mummy came behind me and pushed me to sit. I fixed my stare on the TV, chewing my lips nervously. Soon, Jude came out. I did not even know he was around. He then went on one knee and brought out a ring. What!

“Say yes na…” I heard mummy’s voice sounding so far.

I heard murmurs of ‘she’s so happy.’ Happy? I had not thought of this before, but I knew I did not want it with Jude.

“Collect it now…” Jude’s father said, my own father sat down baring all his teeth. My mother was smiling but had a nervous look. Jude grabbed my hand and slid the ring down my finger and hugged me. It seemed like I was in a trance. 

“That was how I got proposed to,” I told Vic and she kept screaming, “Ahhh” like something got stuck in her mouth. I didn’t even know how or what to feel. So every weekend after the proposal, Jude would come to my house. After mummy called me from my room and insisted that I dressed nicely, she and dad would leave both of us in the sitting room. Jude would tell me about work and all, and I would just glare at him. Sometimes, he came with gifts, these gifts seemed to excite Mummy more than me and she would fawn over them.

He came one weekend and after serving him food upon mummy’s insistence, he went about gisting me about work as usual. “How old are you?” I had asked. 

He stopped talking and replied, “Oh! 28. But I would be 29 soon. What of you?”

“I am going to be 23 soon,” I said.

He then laughed and replied, “Small girl, so you are just big for your age. Anyway, it means you will be very okay to have my children. Abi?”

He kept laughing. He must have thought he was funny.