Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya
Banana fell on Shukura but everybody in Dolamu Street, Ayedotun, knew it wasn’t because Waheed Mecho was in love with her. This story happened in 2019. The exact day the banana fell on her eh, it was one of those mushy-mushy days in February, Valentine’s Day to be precise, sky gray with temptation, konji (sex drive) being such a bastard and, well, a straight man had got to do what a straight man had got to do.
So I was in the kitchen that day in 2019, humming the latest Tope Alabi feature, mixing eggs for my late breakfast, when they brought the news. It was hotter than gas cooker. I was shook!
“Shukura done carry belle!”
The salt cup fell from my hand. Tope Alabi flew away from my mouth. I almost burnt my eggs.
“Chei! This girl! Pregnant?”
Kia! I turned off the gas. I covered the eggs with a pot lid. Not that I like gossip. I like to mind my own business in this town because I have quite a lot on my own table. But Basit was the one who brought the news. And if Basit gives you hot gist, even if you are already dying, you will pause your death and run out to the end of the story. For the five minutes that he spent narrating the news, I was just looking at him ni. My mouth was also looking.
Afterward, I went to my room and put on my blue shirt, never forgetting to add my ileke, as the amiable Baálè of Dolamu Street.
We went out to Aunty Shukura’s house. She was not there. A child washing her uniform outside the house told us she was at Waheed Mecho’s place.
“Her mother nko?” we asked.
“She have go out.”
“Where did she go?”
The child shook her head, she did not know where she go.
We imagined that Mama Shukura had gone to a babalawo’s house to procure a charm to punish Waheed Mecho for doing that thing to her daughter, and was now flouncing back to catch us in the crossfire. The little girl wringing out her socks appeared ill-ready to provide more information about where Mama Shukura could have go. We left her alone. I made a mental note to find the child’s parents later and ask them what kind of teacher was teaching their daughter English Language. Hoi!
We rushed to Waheed Mecho’s place at No. 24 and, believe you me, the crowd that had assembled there was enough to fill two stadiums. Ayedotun is not so large and pregnancy rumors in this place spread like gasoline fire. Shukura’s mother was conspicuously absent. I joined the crowd. They noticed me of course. They hailed me. Called my praise names. They brought a bench. I sat down, a paramount judge. I adjusted my beads and arranged my collar. I asked the people pressing against me to shift, their body odor was dangerous.
I called for silence and assessed my surroundings. That it was Saturday gave grace to many. Teenage girls were on ground to learn from Shukura’s fate. Mothers of teenage girls were also on standby to make sure Shukura’s fate was well absorbed by their daughters, lest a day come when they would have to be twisting ears and kicking out bastard pregnancies. Some men were around, determined to support Waheed Mecho to the highest fellow-man kingdom. From their tense unyielding demeanor, I sensed the impending toughness of my presiding and the proceedings of this makeshift customary court. But I adjusted my beads again and couldn’t care less.
I turned to the plaintiff, and the accused.
Shukura was holding the front of Waheed’s stained workshop clothes in a vise grip. Her legs were twerking (oh if legs could twerk), and she was weeping. Vowing that Waheed’s lies would eat up his intestines. That his useless penis would quench. He would never prosper, useless man. He had disgraced her and he would always find disgrace. Waheed had this stupid smirk on his face and as Shukura rocked him, he swung like a pendulum and called us as witnesses—“Can you see her roughening up my clothes? Can you see her choking me? CAN YOU HEAR HER CURSING ME?” (all of these of course were articulated in unprintable English)—and then he swore to punch her to Medina if she did not leave him alone. Shukura shrieked and called him the son of a hundred fathers if he did not hit and kill her. Her tears drew awkward lines down her full-cheeked face and an Awww of sympathy from the crowd—the female part of the crowd o—followed by a few loud tsk-tsks from you-know-where.
I raised my hand for silence again and asked Aunty Shukura, “How did it happen?”
She burst into sobbing and I wanted to slap and pet her at the same time. I was supposed to say, Stop crying, pull yourself together, but I said, “Leave his shirt,” and she did.
We waited for her story.
She finally marshalled enough composure to tell it. She said she was sitting jejely ni o, minding her mother’s stall, not even thinking of the smallest pregnancy o, when Boda Waheed Mecho came to buy sugar and paracetamol (the phrase sugar and paracetamol left a bitter squeeze on my face here. These people are crazy sha, the way they buy things here, ahn ahn!). He should have just bought sugar and paracetamol and left o. But no, he had to wait and be saying, “Shukura Baby, lemme caress your body. Baby, lemme press your body. We need to re-work the body. Your body, it needs my touching.”
“Haaaa!” we said, and turned to Boda Waheed Mecho, who looked as if he wanted to enter the ground. “Boda Waheed Mecho, re-work the body? Is Aunty Shukura a faulty vehicle ni?”
I faced Shukura.
“Aunty Shukura, what did you now say?” I asked, adjusting my ileke, stiffening, expecting her to cry again.
But Aunty Shukura did not cry. She only said that she said nothing, that she was just smiling because, of course, Waheed Mecho had got to be kidding her. Could he buy her hair extensions? Bone straight nko? He would just die ni. Could he even pay for her JAMB form?
“Then how did it now happen?” somebody asked shrilly from the crowd. Apparently a severely piqued mother.
I told Basit to tell the woman to calm down and let us hear.
“Continue, Aunty Shukura.”
And then came along Valentine’s Day, which was an unnecessarily windy Wednesday. She had gone to Waheed Mecho’s house down the street to charge her phone. Just to charge her phone ni o. Simple charging and she did not know when she landed in Waheed’s bed. Men are terrible. They don’t have heaven. Their place in hell is going to be very special if care is not taken.
A resounding Amen ran through the female side of the crowd, punctuated with their handclaps, and remonstrating hisses from the men.
“Wahala be like Valentine penis!”
I held up my hand. “Aunty Shukura, may I ask you why you couldn’t charge your phone in your own house?”
Instead of replying, Shukura burst into fresh tears, and as my mouth sagged open, Basit leaned over and whispered into my ear—
“You don’t know this, but NEPA cut our line here for seven weeks until we begged somebody at their branch office and they sent someone to come and help us tie it back. Other streets had light. You just returned from school at the time, that’s why you didn’t know.”
I closed my mouth, only to open it again. “Oookay o. Well, well. May I ask you, Aunty Shukura, why out of all the houses in the next street, out of all the people you know in the next street that run generators, it was only Boda Waheed Mecho’s house that could accommodate you and your phone charger!”
Aunty Shukura blinked back tears and glared at me. “Is that the issue here, Ayo? This man pushed me into his bed and forced himself on me. And you are asking me gutter-dotty!”
I sighed. She was right. Even if she had stood astride him and twerked for four hours, Waheed should have cautioned his meat from misbehaving. What if she was his sister nko?
Well, Shukura wasn’t his sister.
“Boda Waheed Mecho is not even rich,” I complained. Since his father died last year from a snakebite in his farm, his stepmother, a struggling hopeful pepper seller in Awolowo Market, and his old purblind grandfather, have been his only support.
The crowd murmured in agreement.
“Waheed Mecho is not even the owner of the mechanic workshop. He is just working there. How much is his salary gan na?”
We did the math and another heavy sigh swept through the crowd.
“Parreric.”
“Penis doesn’t have brain sha!”
Aunty Shukura began crying again, whining that she had been used, deceived and dumped, yada yada yada.
I told her to stop that silliness at once.
The army defence of men that had come to support Waheed started grumbling that no matter how poor a man was, he was still a man. They faced Shukura squarely: “Who used whom? But you enjoyed it abi you did not enjoy it?”
I lost some of my composure and screamed for silence. I sternly reprimanded the contemptuous defenders. “The issue here is not even the sex, I yelled at them, it is the HOW of the sex and the cheating after the sex. Waheed is saying that he is not the owner of the pregnancy. Hian!”
The men erupted and almost bit my head off—
“Ask her ni. After that day, did she go anywhere else to charge her phone ooooo?”
“Help us ask her o.”
I wanted to laugh–yell. Did these guys know how huge a metaphor the word charging here was? W.M. (Waheed Mecho is such a long name!) obviously cheated this Babe. He rolled with the happening boys. His love sweet pass shitto, he often swore. He would ogle at girls passing by the Mecho shop, and make catcalls at them, even if he was meant to be under a car, twisting sense into that car. I imagined that he himself was a faulty car. If not, why was he doing all that rubbish when his mates were busy getting sense? Somebody needed to get under him and bang some sense into his skull!
But of course, before I pronounced judgment, I had to hear his side of the Valentine’s Day saga. After all, in law, they say, You have two ears, so hear both sides. Or something like that.
His English, kai! Unletterable! My brain almost crashed!
In short, he had nothing tenable to say. Just that he did it only once. Just once ni o. And why was Shukura wearing a short tight black skirt that evening, anyway?
Imagine.
I asked Shukura what steps she had taken on the matter.
“This Babe na correct Babe, I swear.”
After she fainted two Juma’ats ago and her mother took her to the clinic and the doctor said nearly two months gone and W.M. had baulked the level, Shukura’s next port of call was W.M.’s family house in Soyindo to report the matter to his grandfather and step-mom. They were not surprised one bit. It was not the first time, they told her. But she was lucky, they added. They liked her. She got no problems. They knew their black sheep, and how to tether him. They told her to calm down and play along. They would take care of the pregnancy. Her only role was to make sure nothing happened to the baby. Another thing, she must torment W.M. with the reality of what he had done. Hence the public embarrassment she’d been dishing him.
“I have chosen to have this baby. It will not affect my schooling. His family has met my mother and they’ve talked. This yeye man is going nowhere. He will marry me and he will be a father to his child. Fàkátí!”
We sagged our mouths.
I wanted to ask, Do you really want to marry him? But I shut up o. Instead, I screamed—
“Shukura issa bae. Clap for her!
That is how correct babes yuss to do.”
The crowd: “Unku W.M., you think you can use man power and cheat a girl abi?”
I banged my imaginary gavel. End of discussion. No more tattletales.
I brushed my buttocks and stood. Amidst hailing. Ayo, Ayo. The Chief Judge. The Powerful Arbitrator. See as he clear the case sam-sam! Correct Boy!
Ha! I covered my face shyly.
Somebody handed me a pair of fancy glasses. I threw the thing on my face. Wallahi, it was made for me ni.
I burst into words.
“It’s not easy, my people. This case is the hardest I’ve cracked in the last half a decade o jare.”
I walked off, Basit right behind me.
“When did all this rubbish start gan na in this place?” I asked him. Unto small wind blow like this, na to warm body?
“Ha. Many things done chele, Ayo. Wait until you hear the story of Janet.”
Suddenly, it was like my ear was paining me, so I asked, “Which Janet?”
“Janet na. Pastor’s daughter. The pastor of St—”
“Janet? A teenager, a teenage pregnancy?” I fainted.
Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya is Yorùbá and Nigerian. He won first-place in the bicontinental 2022 Arts Lounge & French Embassy Competition and the 2024 AprilCentaur Network Prize for Short Story. Enit’ayanfe received his BA in English Education from Obafemi Awolowo University. He has works in places like The Muse Journal, Brittle Paper, Isele, The Shallow Tales Review, Afritondo and Kalahari Review. He spends his time laughing, listening, dreaming and daring.
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Featured photo by Darkshade Photos (Pexels)
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