By OluTimehin Kukoyi

In the first instance, the child was not even his. I mean, there might’ve been an argument to be made for the fact of his having contributed something to its conception, maybe. But I had been legally married at the time, and the man's furtive spurts into my treacherous womb only happened because my even more treacherous husband was, as usual, off somewhere being a traitor, as always. 

In any case, no one goes about asking, have you been naked with anyone other than your husband? when you have a child in your husband’s house. That would be rude. Everybody knows: the father of the child is the one under whose roof it is named. Who the mother has been naked with is a minor detail generally taken for granted or, if she is careless, whispered about. But whispers don’t change a surname.

So no, the child wasn’t his. More to the point, he had never even wanted it, not that his wanting it might’ve impacted things one way or another. But he’d never had the vaguest interest in the child. Not even when he realised there might be something to gain from claiming it; some profit to be gleaned from fattening those whispers and making pointing fingers of them. Someone out somewhere they were perhaps not supposed to be, had seen something they were perhaps not supposed to see. The child had come out looking a bit different than it was supposed to look—maybe. Still, mere whispers have never changed a surname. The child was mine, I had named the father, and no fingers had been sharply unfurled in objection. That was that.

That was that, no questions asked. Until one day the man woke up and, having looked about, decided that even if he hadn’t managed to do anything at all with his life, he had perhaps managed to father a child that was sometimes whispered about. By that time the roof over the heads of the child, its siblings and myself was entirely mine: one can only be expected to put up with a traitorous husband for so long. Of course, to hear that husband tell it, I was the traitor. Still, no matter how much people may argue, everybody knows: the chicken came before the egg.

In any case, the child, its siblings and myself were living under a roof not quite as grand as we might have been accustomed to in times past, but it was ours—I paid for it myself, mostly, with a little help here and there—and we had established a nice rhythm. People had since found other things to whisper about; the rhythms of other people’s lives, for instance. Then one day this man woke up—at 5 or 6 pm, as had become his wont as his dissipation deepened—and decided to check if the shoes of a father might make him taller.

He showed up at my door as the last of mealtime cleanup was being done, without so much as a passing mention of his intention to appear. He invited himself under my roof in much the same manner as he had invited his seed into my womb all those years prior, and started to talk as if there was anyone present interested in the things coming out of his mouth. I have come to see you. It has been too long since we talked properly. We never had cause to fight, what happened? Every time I see you, you are more beautiful.

He was wearing what seemed to be his favourite—more likely his only—collared shirt. It was the one he almost invariably had on whenever I caught sight of him in town. The fact that most men did not bother to buy collared shirts made his singular specimen the more conspicuous. It was very easy to laugh at his transparent poverty in a world where collared shirts—in the plural—indicated at least one pocketful of purposeless currency; cash to be freely spent; money that leaves the hand without first passing through the mind. Sometimes when I was out and bored I, too, laughed. It was very easy. 

When he appeared that night in his lone collared shirt, my nose sighed to me that he had not cleaned himself properly in a few days. His eyes and teeth were the same soft shade of yellow, with drops of saliva stretching and breaking between his lips at every other word. The first form of the whispers that had trailed us came back to me; that this is what the child ostensibly looked like. I stepped back instinctively, repulsed by my own half-decade old impulses.

Won’t you sit down? It was late; only the older children could be heard scrabbling about as they fought sleep. There is some food still; I will tell this girl to get you some. My growing irritation at his sudden appearance was what it was, but the idea of not feeding someone  sitting under my roof was something else entirely. The plate came, more heaping than I would have preferred, and he smiled at it, filling the room with his unintelligible talk as he filled his belly with my unintended generosity. Had I heard this, did I know that. The words were sometimes accompanied on their way out of his mouth by tiny morsels, the more tenacious of them hanging on to his lips until he wiped them with the back of his hand, then wiped the back of his hand on his sturdy-looking shorts. I looked away. Even with people I wanted to see, this kind of talk—this kind of chewing—disgusted me.

What is it you have come for? He stopped mid-laugh at whatever unsolicited and badly crafted joke he was telling, with a look of annoyance at being interrupted. Can’t I come to see you? I looked back at him. For what? I felt the muscles of my face arranging themselves in the same order as when the child considered itself capable of outsmarting me. I have only come to make peace, there is too much history between us for things to continue like this. 

I called the girl to take away his plate. She was very sharp, that one; in a few years she would think she was wiser than me, we would have a big fight, I would beat her up and she would leave. And then one day she would come back with a baby or a man or both, she would kneel, I would pick her up and hug her, and her family would call me mama. But for now she was helpful and respectful, and we liked each other in an uncomplicated way. I saw his soft yellow gaze take on a sheen as sharp as the girl, the oil around his lips and on his character congealing; ugly. I stood up.

Is that all? The yolk of his eyes swivelled back to me. How is the child? I bristled, adjusting the cloth around my waist. Asleep. I did not bother to ask which one. He might have thought me stupid, or childish, or interested in a useless back and forth as if we did not both know the inconvenient details other people would have needed their heads bashed in for daring to ask about. He sighed and sat back. Don’t you think it is time for the child to know its father? I wondered vaguely whether the girl was behind me, behind the door, gathering ammunition for the fight that awaited us. The child has always known its father. He sat up. That is interesting. I don’t think the child and I have ever been introduced.

The steady rhythm of my life swelled to a cacophony between my temples; my chest started to shrink to the size of my throat. I have always been quick to hit people, quicker even to tell them how they remind me of the domestic animals everybody knows must be abused into good behaviour. But the children were asleep and I had no desire to revive the whispers linking me to the man, especially not in his dilapidated condition. I walked to the door. It is late. I must wake early. He shuffled his feet and I noticed his toenails; perfectly shaped, the dark, fleshy pink of them blackened with grime, the skin around them scabby and dry. His slippers were thin and tired, worn almost to the ground at the heel.

I have not come to make any trouble. I only heard that you and your husband are no more and thought perhaps there was a chance for… I stared at him, keeping my face as empty as his plate now was, holding the weak, wavering yellow of his eyes until he laughed uncomfortably. He said my name once, the sound full of appeasement and a grudging admiration. He wiped his mouth. He shuffled his feet. Let the girl bring me some water. I clicked my tongue in the back of my throat: that conversation was over. 

I called the girl, and she materialised from wherever she had been eavesdropping, hovering near me, her edges sharper than ever. My friend! He said it the way teenage girls back for the holidays from their different schools say it, drawing out the sound with an undertone of happy familiarity. The girl looked at me with a question on her face. I looked back at her with the answer on mine, and she went to fetch the water that no one had directly asked her for. Drink your water. I have something to do inside.

In the room I looked at the child, trying to remember how it had come about. It was true the child didn’t look like it should have, but it didn’t look like that man either. I rested my fingers on the face, the collarbone, the taut, gleaming belly. I looked at the toenails; perfectly shaped, a dark, fleshy pink speckled with dirt from disobedient play, the skin of the feet supple and tight. The child sighed and squirmed, complaining incoherently about some vexation or other carried over into the night, to be retrieved the next morning and nursed back to life. 

I pulled back the child's top lip and smiled at the small space left by a chipped tooth that had finally fallen out. The child turned its head and folded itself smaller than it already was, the suspicious features of its face settling deeper into sleep. I adjusted the cloth at my waist and remembered that the last time my traitorous husband had snuck over in the dead of night to untie it, he had somehow forgotten to leave the old marital grievances that had festered under his roof behind. He had not enjoyed being reminded that I had removed myself from under that roof because there was no more space for me or my children with so many swollen grudges filling the house, and so the slippers I had just bought him remained untouched.

I adjusted the cloth and went back out to the man. His soft yellow eyes were closed, the thick locks on his head hanging down to his jaw. With his shoulders rounded like that, his cheekbones angled to the light, his grimy, oval fingernails resting on the sturdy fabric of his shorts, I remembered why I had been willing to risk whispers trailing a child of mine everywhere. I went back in for the slippers and dropped them on the floor beside him. These should fit you fine. He raised his head and smiled, drawing out my name in the same way he had drawn out the frieeeeeend he had directed at the girl. 

He put his feet in the shoes, flexing his filthy feet. Bring me a bag to put them in. He had no thanks to offer, but I hadn’t really expected any. It was late and the girl had disappeared, so I went for the bag myself. Put them in the bag for me. I felt my face contract sharply, the muscles of my neck and jaw articulating to pull my head back in disdainful disbelief. Your hands are not broken, Osemai. I walked to the door and stepped outside it, deeply irritated by the insulting results of my foolish sentimentality. When he eventually passed me, his shoulders and jaw tight with misdirected anger, his feet slap-slapping loudly against his slippers, they were the same thin, tired ones he had come to my house in.

I went back inside, the slapping sound of his dirty feet fading into the distance like the whispers he had followed here to me and the child. The girl knocked on my door and made herself small beside it. That man followed me to the kitchen when you were inside. He tried to touch me. I sighed, the exasperation of the whole night unfurling in my stomach and souring the back of my throat. What did you do? The girl filled out, her sharp edges glinting. I held the grinding stone near his blockus and told him that if not for you I would have used it. My laughter surprised even me; the child shifted and complained. The girl filled out even more. He is a foolish man. I angled my head at her and she shrank a bit, wondering if she had gone too far. The new slippers were still on the floor where he had left them, dust-free on the parts where his feet had been. This girl, it is late. I’m going to sleep.

OluTimehin (@olukukoyi) is a writer.

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