Free On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe Page A

had enough money to ensure that.
    When Efe was shown in by a maid, husband and wife were eating a supper of
eba
and
egusi
soup. The not-so-old wife had just dunked a lump of
eba
into the communal soup bowl when the maid said, “Somebody to see
oga.
” The wife brought out the lump, raising her head at the same time to see the somebody. She took a look at the bundle of cream and blue asleep in Efe’s arms and gave a half smile. Titus said nothing, and neither invited Efe to sit. She sat anyway, sinking into the nearest couch. Now she was here, faced with a Titus who gave no sign of recognition, her throat dried up and she felt the urge to cough. The baby woke up and started to cry, and she shushed him. “Hush, hush. Don’t cry.” She cradled the baby into quietness and said, before she lost her courage, “I brought your baby, Titus.”
    Titus concentrated on his
eba
, extracting a fish bone that had attached itself to the lump he was about to throw down his throat. It was as if he had not heard her, as if she were not even there. It was his wife who washed her hands in the basin of water beside her, dried her hands on her wrapper, and stood up without her bones creaking,
krak krak
. She walked over to Efe and planted herself before the younger girl. “You.” She pointed a finger at the girl. “You come into my house and accuse my husband of fathering your baby. How dare you? Eh? How. Dare. You?” Her voice was soft, and the half smile of before stayed on her lips, so that Efe thought perhaps it was no smile at all but something else. A sneer. Or something worse.
    “Useless girl.
Ashawo
. May a thousand fleas invade your pubic hair. Useless goat. Shameless whore,
ashawo
. Just take a look at yourself. Small girl like you, what were you doing with man? At your age, what were you doing spreading your legs for a man, eh? Which girl from a good home goes around sleeping with a man who is oldenough to be her father, eh? Answer me, you useless idiot. I see you can’t talk anymore. You have gone dumb,
abi
? And you have the guts to show your face. You were not afraid to come into my home with that
thing
in your hands, eh? You were not scared to ring my doorbell and show your face, eh? Now I am going to shut my eyes, and before I open them, I want both you and that bastard of yours out of my home.”
    Even without looking at Titus, Efe knew that he was still eating. She could hear him smacking his lips as he sucked bone marrow. She got up and slowly walked out.
    Lucky Ikponwosa would never see his father again.
    What Efe had not known, for who would tell her, was that she was the sixth woman in as many years to come to Titus with an offspring from an affair. And all six the wife had dismissed in more or less the same way, marching them to the door with orders never to return, asking the house help to bolt the door behind them.
    From the day she married Titus and caught him looking at her chief bridesmaid with a glint in his eye, she had known that he had a roving eye. As long as women swayed their hips at him, he would go to them, a drooling dog in heat. It was not his fault; it was just the way he was created. She could live with it. He could have his women. Have their children, even. She had no problem with that. What she had a problem with, though, was the women turning up with their children and expecting him to take care of them.
    Titus, this is your baby. I’m not looking for marriage, just for you to help with upkeep
.
    Titus, here is your son. He needs to know his father
.
    Titus, this. Titus, that. Well, she was having none of that.
    When she met Titus, he was just finishing his apprenticeship to a car parts salesman with a shop in Ladipo, but his heart was not in spare parts. He complained that there was no joy in it, but the parts man was one of the wealthiest men from his village, and to havemade the money he made, he must have business knowledge enough to spare. It was that—the knowledge of how to make