THE JUNIOR WIFE

I

By Portia Tewogbade

Garnett and Ruth

After seven nights of darkness, the electricity returned before dawn that day. With the return of power came lights and noise from radios, televisions, and appliances that woke the people of Kaduna Nigeria, including two families who lived in the Queen Victoria Hotel on a back street in the city. The families gathered in a small knot under the hotel's security light, near a half-dead cashew tree. On the branches of the tree, silent and watchful vultures waited for their breadkfast of garbage from the hotel's kitchen while no one in the families looked up.       

The baby, who had screamed about being awakened so early in the morning, was quiet as his father, Femi Fadipe, rocked him gently. Everyone else looked restless or anxious. As the cool air nipped their bare arms, the two little girls tried to wrap themselves in the voluminous folds of a robe that cascaded from the shoulders of their father, Kayode Adewale, to the tips of his sandaled feet. Kayode ignored his daughters and vigorously rubbed his teeth with a chewing stick while they struggled with his clothing like it was a bed sheet. His wife stood beside him. A narrowly-built woman who appeared taller than she was because she was cut so close to the bone, Garnett was a lady, having in all aspects of her speech and deportment what is known as proper manners. But that morning she was forgetting herself and was in quite an agitated state. She twisted her red lips as she smoothed out invisible wrinkles in her dress and patted thick, black curls that framed her longish face. When she was not straightening her dress or her hair, she was drawing on a cigarette and tapping her foot on the hard-packed earth. Every now and then she remarked to no one in particular that the steward, God-dey, was really taking his time with the car.

Her husband worked his chewing stick silently, but Femi, the man with the baby, cleared his throat. The sound, like someone with a bad cold, encouraged Garnett to keep talking. Between recharging draws on her cigarette, she worried aloud. What if God-dey wrecked their car? What if he hit somebody? Why would anyone in his right mind give an expensive car like that to a bush boy to drive? Garnett was talkative when stressed and that morning, she was talking more than usual in a voice that was high pitched and whiney.  

Kayode stepped closer to the road and stood with his back to her. Blacker than midnight and so tall it was as though he was standing on stilts, Kayode looked like a fierce god in his white robe. Each of side of his face was marked with three bold slashes, his stance was wide enough to cover a good-size patch of earth, and his chin was lifted high above the others as if everything within his sight belonged to him. He stopped listening to Garnett, because they had been married long enough for him to know she would never be happy and the more he loved her and gave her what he thought she needed, the more miserable she would become. That he knew this and loved her in spite of it was as much a wonder to him as it was to anyone who knew them. He clamped down hard on the chewing stick and gazed across the road at women with enormous bundles of yams, carrots, okra, and tomatoes on their heads as they made their way to the Central Market. Many had sleepy babies swaddled on their backs. Like morning ghosts, they walked on the dirt path beside the road and stirred up rusty mud that settled into red stockings on their oiled legs. They looked almost as drowsy as their infants, but one called out a greeting of "Na kwa na," to the tall man on the other side of the road.  Kayode was a proud member of the Yoruba tribe and a man who considered Hausa market women unworthy of his attention, so he did not return her greeting.  

In the faint light of dawn, the market woman's full breasts and round rump moved up and down as she walked. Garnett was watching Kayode, whose head was turned in the woman's direction. "Kayode," she said, loud enough to get his attention. He did not respond, so she said his name louder and he turned his head toward her. "Don't you think they're like dancers in a Broadway show? Their choreography is perfect," she said.

Kayode looked at the market women, paused in his chewing stick ministrations as though pondering her question, and said, over his shoulder, "That's not choreography and you're not back in New York. There's not a damn thing glamorous about carrying ten pounds of yams on your head. Dancers, my ass." He spat slivers of chewing stick on the ground.

"Are you two at it again?" Femi asked as he threw the wide sleeve of his robe over his shoulder. He had the round, pleasant face and easy smile of a man satisfied with his life. His shirt, trousers and the robe that covered them were made of lavender and pink brocade and he wore the colors as easily as he wore his black-rimmed glasses. 

"I was trying to be nice," Garnett said, remembering that Kayode's mother had sold tomatoes and peppers in the Central Market.

"Maybe that's the problem. Try doing something you know how to do," Kayode said and spat out some more chewing stick.

Garnett pressed her lips together. It wouldn't do any good to answer him unless she wanted to start another argument.

The car arrived in the yard at great speed and stopped abruptly in front of them. The fourteen-year-old steward, God-dey, tooted the horn loudly for the benefit of the market women and anyone else within a kilometer of the Queen Victoria Hotel, just in case they wanted to know who was driving the big Mercedes. God-dey, Pidgin English for "There Is God," was a name so blasphemous to Garnett that she despised him for it. But Kayode pitied the boy for his tough life and let him drive the car around the yard, just to see him grinning as he sat behind the wheel. Wearing shorts at least two sizes too big, the steward was as skinny as a spider and just as skittish. He jumped from the driver's seat and prostrated himself before Kayode.            

Femi eased into the front passenger seat with his son, who was big for his age and beginning to feel heavy. His name was Tunji, but Femi called him "Dada," the traditional name for a child born with a tangle of wild dreadlocks. When he turned a year old, the hairy vines on his head would be clipped, but until then, they would protect him from the anger of ancestors who might want to call him back home.  

God-dey kept his eyes on the ground and his hands clasped behind his back as he said, "Greetings, Oga. Make you take tea before your journey?" He kept his bony backside turned to Garnett and the children, because custom said he could ignore them.      

"No tea this morning, God-dey. And don't call me master," Kayode said and grabbed the car keys from him.      

"Yessuh, Oga." God-dey replied. He took a filthy cloth from his pocket and  wiped the windshield, leaving a greasy streak. 

Kayode shook his head at the grinning boy. "That'll do, God-dey. The car looks fine." He handed him a folded fifty kobo note, enough to buy a breakfast of dried cassava soaked in water and a handful of peanuts.

"Tank you, Oga."  The steward put the cloth and money in his pocket.            

Kayode considered telling him again not to call him master, thought better of it, and gently pushed his daughters toward the car. The girls, who had been pressing their hands against their lips to hold back laughter at God-dey's antics, fell giggling onto the back seat.         

Garnett walked around the car for a quick inspection. She had the strut of the New York lingerie model she had been and her slender legs complemented the car's elegant lines. She stopped and, with the bottom of her silk dress, rubbed the greasy streak on the windshield until it was gone. Then she leaned against the car and leisurely took a pack of cigarettes out of a small leather handbag that dangled from her shoulder.        

Giving her a sidelong glance, the steward said, "No problem with auto, Oga?"      

"It's fine, God-dey," Kayode said. "Now move out of the way. We have to go." The edge in his voice was a warning for Garnett.      

With a furtive glance at her, the steward bowed from the waist to Kayode and ran toward the hotel's outdoor bar. 

"Stop stalling," Kayode said as Garnett lit a cigarette. "You can't smoke in the car. I've told you that a thousand times."      

"I just need to finish this one."      

"Well finish it then."  

Garnett took a quick puff and flicked the cigarette to the ground. She looked up from grinding it in the sand. Ruth was standing on the veranda. She was a splendid sight, decked out in a white cotton blouse, a purple cloth wrapped around her hips, and a matching cloth on her head

"You made it," Garnett called to her.

Ruth waved, fluttering her hand like a bird's wing. "I was having trouble tying my gele, oh!" she sang and touched the head wrap. Ruth was from St. Kitts but her dress and speech were those of a woman who had lived her whole life in Nigeria. She spoke a mixture of Pidgin and Standard English and frequently punctuated her sentences with "oh!" or "fah!" like the women who sold her peppers in the central market.

"Late as usual, but thank God, she came," Garnett said under her breath as she took a seat beside her daughters in the car.

"She kept us waiting out here for that?" Kayode said, spitting out the last bit of his chewing stick. "The woman must think she's going to the Sultan's palace, look at all that crap she's got on. Femi, tell your wife to hurry up."

Ruth pretended she hadn't heard him and remained perched on the stoop, the shiny purple cloth creating sensational reflections of deep blues, red and gold against her coppery skin in the sunlight. She was full breasted, with skin as soft as moss and legs that were short but shapely. A slight smile on her moist lips and a light in her almond eyes said she was enjoying the attention she was getting as she took her time gliding down the stairs. On the ground, she adjusted her gele and tightened the wrapper around her waist before sashaying across the yard.

Kayode sat behind the wheel of the car and slammed the door shut. Mumbling under his breath about women, he started the engine, which came to life with a smooth hum.

"Ruth, will you come on? Let's go!" Femi yelled but his eyes betrayed him. They held a certain softness that was always there when he looked at her. 

Ruth replied, "I'm coming, oh!" Bending over to get in the car, she had difficulty managing the towering arrangement of cloth on her head and had to hold on to it. She removed the cloth, still tied elaborately like a fine hat, placed it on her lap and after patting her braided hair, leaned back with a sigh.

Kayode turned the car away from the hotel and onto Benue Road, a commercial street in the heart of Kaduna. It was June, the middle of the rainy season, and everything was still wet from a downpour the night before. As Kayode drove along, they passed lorries bearing brightly painted slogans, "Do Well and God Will Bless You, Tofi" "Lagos by Air," and "No Naira, No Chop," and loaded down with workers for the  textile mills and manufacturing plants in the city. Traffic was light because it was early, but at each roundabout impatient drivers created a honking din.

Garnett shut her eyes and would have closed her ears had it been possible. She had had enough of the city with its open drains of fetid waste water, smoke from cooking fires, and a sweaty odor that hung in the air, except during the dry season when cool northern breezes brought relief. Two school boys walking along the road stepped absent-mindedly into the car's path and Kayode laid on his horn. Garnett's eyelids flew open in time to see the children jump across a drain to a muddy patch on the other side. A night guard or maybe it was a soldier, cycling his way home from duty, cut in front of the car and Kayode slammed on the brakes and cursed. She felt like cursing with him. The cyclist was an idiot.

The Moslem call to prayer sounded and Kayode jerked the car onto the city's main thoroughfare, Ahmadu Bello Road. Although she would not admit it, Garnett loved Ahmadu Bello, a wide expanse of large trees, stately hotels, office buildings, and grand old colonial homes still winning the fight against decay. It reminded her of the better end of Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Ahmadu Bello Road, named after one of Nigeria's northern heroes, was grandfatherly quiet, compared to the clamor they had left on Benue. She looked out of the window and smiled as they passed businesses belonging to the city's big men, mostly Lebanese and Indian immigrants and a few Nigerians nurtured by schools in England and membership in prominent families.  

Kayode turned again, this time down a muddy avenue and toward the industrial side of the city, which was inhabited by fabric mills, manufacturing plants, and an oil refinery that polluted the air with abandonment. On each side of the road were trees,  leafy limb forming a canopy over their heads, and a carpet of gigantic yam vegetation  stretching out farther out than Garnett could see.

As the car hit muddy potholes, Garnett wrinkled her nose, something she was in the habit of doing when she was worried. The car was going to need another washing. 

They rolled toward half a dozen anorexic looking cows mowing down clumps of grass on the shoulders of the road. The animals were followed by a small boy, carrying a wooden staff and dressed in a dirty piece of cloth knotted like a toga on one of his shoulders. The sun beat his back and the car's tires churned mud into his face.  Brown and hungry looking, looking neither to his left nor his right, the boy marched, like a small calf, behind the cows .  

This is all he's going to know for the rest of his life, Garnett thought. He'll follow the rump of some cow until he drops dead. That staff he's carrying and the way his shoulders slump make him look like an old man already.  She ran her hand across the car's soft leather seat. It was smooth, cool, and reassuring.  Kayode hadn't wanted to buy the Mercedes, calling it showy, asking why she had to have the biggest model, telling her that shipping such a car from New York to Nigeria was foolhardy, not worth what they would have to pay the customs boys to claim it. It was the only time she had succeeded against his stubbornness. The thought of not having the car and walking along the same road as the shepherd boy made her press deeper into her seat.      

She had planned to be sick that morning, but changed her mind when her children getting dressed interrupted her sleep. She sat up in bed, lit her first cigarette of the day, and groaned when nine-year-old Melanie in the adjoining bedroom screamed at her sister to stand still while she combed her hair. Bending her knee under the sheet, Garnett moved her hand up to the softness between her thighs. Stickiness there told her she wouldn't have to worry for twenty-eight more days. When she dragged herself out of bed and into the little alcove that served as their bathroom and kitchen, Kayode was already shaving over the sink. Holding a tiny mirror in one hand and an old razor in the other, he was tugging through the bush on his chin. Blood oozed in maroon rivulets on his dark face. He moved the razor around the three scars that lay on each of his cheeks like branches to his ancestral tree, tribal marks. To other people, especially those seeing them for the first time, they were a frightful sight, but Garnett had been drawn to them from the beginning. As she reached around him for a small plastic container of water to brush her teeth, her forearm grazed his cheek. She closed her eyes as she felt the swell of the marks against her bare skin. Frowning, Kayode took the water, poured a generous amount in the sink, and splashed his face before he gave the almost empty container back to her.