The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin Page B

cloth on my body.”
    My hand flew to my mouth. Nakedness was never a good thing.
    “Now that we are all lying with our heads in the same direction, we must work together to blow this cloud away! These educated types have thin skins; they are like pigeons. If we poke her with a stick, she will fly away and leave our home in peace.”
    The first thing Iya Segi did was to talk to Baba Segi about Bolanle’s armchair. Baba Segi had broken his rule for Bolanle. The tradition was that the comfort of an armchair had to be earned, which meant that unless you were pregnant with edema, breastfeeding or watching over toddlers, you were not entitled to one. To impress his new wife, Baba Segi spent thirty minutes in the dimly lit storeroom dusting, slapping and wiping before finally pushing another armchair into the living room.
    Iya Segi and Iya Femi shook with anger when she satamong us. I asked myself: what is in a chair? Is it not just to sit down? Did she not have a chair in her father’s house? But Baba Segi soon started to grumble about the flatness of Bolanle’s belly and Iya Segi seized this opportunity to advise him that comfort made the female form complacent. She reminded him that she would know because she was a woman. Bolanle’s armchair was returned to the store the next day. When Bolanle came into the living room, Iya Femi could not contain her mischievous smile and offered her a cushion. Baba Segi avoided Bolanle’s eyes the entire evening.
    The second evil thing that Iya Segi did was banish Bolanle’s friends from our house. After Yemisi and other friends visited for the third time, Iya Segi told our husband that they were bad role models for the daughters in the family, especially her daughter, Segi, who was at an impressionable age. Baba Segi jumped at the notion as if he had been looking for a reason to keep Bolanle to himself. He told Bolanle that he didn’t want unmarried women near his doorstep. Bolanle received Baba Segi’s instructions without a word. She never once looked at our husband with annoyance in her eyes. She just said she had things to buy at the market and quietly slipped out of the house.
     
    I YA S EGI WAS WRONG ABOUT the skin of educated types. The more those two poked Bolanle, the more mercy her eyes showed, the more her hands opened to the children. I have never known anyone like Bolanle before. Even after twoyears of their wickedness, she still greets them every morning. What more do they want?
    Just two weeks ago, my stomach was as hard as a fresh drum. For four days, I had not relieved myself. The more I ate, the harder my stomach became. Iya Segi saw me that morning but she did not ask me about the pain that drew tears from my eyes. She looked away and walked past me. Iya Femi saw my bloodshot eyes too but she just hissed, like she always does, as if I was an animal by the roadside. If not for Bolanle, maybe my stomach would have split open that day. She waited for the other wives to leave the house and came to knock on my door. She said she had seen that I was walking around like a woman pregnant with a grown man. I told her what was bothering me and she ran to the kitchen to fetch three glasses of water. She told me to drink them and wait for her.
    I don’t know where she went, but soon after she ran back with a shopping bag. The two tablets she gave me chased me to the toilet. I thought I would find my intestines on the floor. I sat there for a whole hour, but when I finished I felt like a human being again.
     
    I T DID NOT SURPRISE ME when Iya Segi called a meeting on the morning that Baba Segi took Bolanle to the hospital. “That Bolanle is a troublemaker,” she said. “She will destroy our home. She will expose our private parts to the wind. She will reveal our secret. She will bring woe.” Bolanle always tied Iya Segi’s tongue in a knot.
    “What are we going to do?” Iya Femi asked. She locked her fingers over the dome of her head. “We must do something