Back and Forth

January 1943

“This is where you’ll stay,” the first wife said as they approached the house. Adaeze had lived with their husband for the first month of her marriage but now it was time for her to have her own place. She put down the load she was carrying on her head and looked around the place.

“It’s nice.”

“Yes, it is,” she replied, walking further into the house. “Those are the bedrooms over there and your kitchen is here,” she continued, walking through the house. “Oh, what is this?” she asked, walking through a side door. Adaeze followed her. “I didn’t know there was another room here,” she commented.

Adaeze looked at the tiny, windowless room. “It’s probably just a place for storage,” she said.

“Well, I don’t have one in my house,” a voice filled with thinly veiled venom said from behind.

Adaeze sighed as she turned around to look at the second wife. This type of hostility was what she’d hoped to avoid when she’d told her parents that she didn’t want to marry the Chief. But, of course, he was rich and they pointed out that she was lucky that he was even interested in her. To top it off, he was known to be a very nice man so there was no logical reason to reject him. Maybe it wasn’t logical, but for as long as she’d remembered, she enjoyed going to her friend, Chigozie’s house because even though the rest of the village snickered behind her father’s back for not being rich enough to have multiple wives, she loved how relatively peaceful her family was. The tension created by wives constantly competing with one another was absent and because all the children shared the same mother, and as a result, they all seemed to trust one another. She’d secretly hoped for a life like that.

After giving the house one last look over, the first wife said, “Okay, good. Nnenna, let’s leave Adaeze to get used to her place.”

“Oh, let me come with you - I still have to bring over the rest of my things.”

The first wife nodded. “Nnenna, go and help her carry her things.”

September 1985

With her back on the bed, Linda let the tears fall freely from her eyes.

The nurse dabbed her face with a damp towel. “Don’t worry Ma, the pain will soon stop. When the doctor returns, you can start pushing again.”

She nodded at the lady even though she knew the pain she felt was far deeper than labor pains could ever be.

She really believed that God was some kind of a comedian – and not a good one at that. Raised in polygamous home, she’d learnt about competition at an early age so while in school, she worked so hard that even though she wasn’t encouraged by her teachers, she was in direct competition with the boys -constantly coming first in most subjects. Luckily for her, at the time, the Nigerian government rewarded hard work, so she was able to win a scholarship to study Medicine at Imperial College in London.

She wouldn’t have minded living in England for the rest of her life but in her second year at university, she fell in love with a Nigerian who was adamant about returning home. So armed with her degree, she followed him.

After a few years, she decided that the glass ceiling at the Teaching Hospitals was too low so against the advice of most people, she started her own practice. And unlike they’d all predicted, it flourished.

Her life had been unfolding like a fairy tale till she gave birth to her second child. She knew that her husband wanted to have a son but she also knew that the man she married would love a daughter just as much and when he walked into the hospital holding Nkem in his arms, she pretended not to notice the slight disappointment on his face.

Three pregnancies later, his attitude towards her had taken a 180 degree turn. Suddenly, nothing she did was ever right, nothing she said made any sense and he’d now begun to pay more attention to his mother’s advice about taking a second wife.

A successful woman who’d been brought up to be strong and independent shouldn’t, at almost 40, be lying in a hospital bed praying that the baby that came out of her would have a penis, right?

The nurse dabbed her head again. “Just hold on a bit more, okay? The doctor is coming right now. You will soon meet your child,” she said, smiling down at her.

Linda turned her face away. If she had her way, the child wouldn’t come at all because she felt… no, she knew that her child’s birth would change everything forever.

May 2006

Kelechi checked her make-up before she stepped out of the car. Who would have thought that in the twenty-first century, a college educated Nigerian girl would willingly choose to be in arranged marriage? However, instead of parents choosing their children’s spouses, it was the girls clamoring to marry men who permanently resided abroad.

Not that growing up she’d thought she’d ever need a ticket out of town considering that her mother was a successful doctor and her father a successful lawyer. But something happened along the way and before she knew it, she and her sisters were living with their mother while her father lived with his second wife. Then slowly but surely, her mother’s business started to suffer and her father started complaining that his other daughters were young so he didn’t have any money for his first family. So after four years of studying at LUTH and two years of joblessness, she decided that Nigeria didn’t really hold any promise for her.

She smiled at her mother’s sister then followed her towards the house. It’s not that she didn’t believe in love but her parents had been in love once and seeing how it turned out, she really didn’t want any part of that. And what of her and Tunji? They’d been together since her days at Unilag but after helping him land a job with a family friend, he left her for his boss’s daughter. What was one to do? Marriage wasn’t about love, right? It was just something that one did when they reached a certain age… in certain respects, it was just part of the cycle of life. There really was no need to make a big deal out of it, right?

She knew her mother would be disappointed to discover that her third daughter was planning to rely on a man for her financial future but after two years of pounding the pavement, she was sick and tired of trying to do it on her own. It wasn’t fair that someone as smart as she was had to go through so much shit just to get a job. Heck, she didn’t even have to be a doctor – any job that paid well enough and didn’t require her to perform special ‘favors’ for the boss would suffice.

She felt her hands shake as her aunt pressed the doorbell. She thought about the life she could be leading in America; one with little corruption, one without all the jagajaga of Nigerian life, one where the sky was the limit. She knew that once she got there, she’d finally be able to feel that her life made sense. As the door opened, she took a deep breath and smiled at the lady at the other side of the door – it was show time.