…Continues from last week
Bukky came to Ulari’s room and sat down at her reading table. Ulari lay on her bed reading an exercise book with the inscription Mus. 415. Bukky sat for a while, she was uncharacteristically quiet.
Ulari said nothing too. She had never been one to start a conversation. Bukky often teased her that she had a heavy tongue. The new wallpaper on her friend’s wall and the gleaming polished floor caught Bukky’s eye. She wondered when her friend’s corner was cleaned and who cleaned it. Ulari wasn’t one for such fussiness.
“Are you seeing J behind my back?” Bukky asked her friend suddenly.
Ulari raised her head, her eyes mirroring surprise. “No, why do you ask?” she asked. Her voice was soft and cool like the voice of one declining a glass of water.
“Nothing, just a feeling,” Bukky said in a defensive tone almost ashamed.
Ulari returned to her reading. That was what was maddeningly annoying about Ulari, her…her…Bukky sought word for it but could not find, she settled for the word weakness. Why, every other girl would be offended and flare up at being asked such a question, but not Ulari. She just continued reading as if nothing offensive had been said looking like a defenceless baby doll. After a while, Bukky spoke again.
“Soki told me in the class that there was this cute guy who came to see you in your room one night. I thought it was J. Who was it?”
“It was J,” Ulari replied. “But he also went to your room. He stopped by briefly here and we had nothing to talk about so he left.”
Bukky became thoroughly ashamed. Nonetheless, remembering what happened one of the times they went out with J and his friends: Pastor and Mrs. Marfi, she doubted again.
Remembering how Bisi loved visiting the conveniences of Five Star Hotels and ritzy restaurants to see if they have smart toilets that open on your approach and flush and close when you finish your business, Bukky’s mind fished out a particular day. So this certain day she and Bisi went to look at the convenience of where J took them to, and his friends stepped out of the restaurant area to do phone counselling leaving Jamin and Ulari at their table only to return to what looked like a quarrel. Ulari looked mad while Jamin looked very sorry. Well, no one was able to drag anything out of Ulari.
While playful Bukky forgot this incident, serious Bisi did not. Although she didn’t tell Bukky about walking into Ulari’s room one night at an unholy hour and seeing the plain clothes soldier seated in her corner. It was as if she was hit by a scud missile. And it was as if Bisi had stopped an argument between the two. It was just like the first time.
Yet, there was a third time. Pastor and Mrs. Marfi who had become constant companions of J, had accompanied them to have dinner at Sheraton and Towers and on the way back, J requested that since they would be passing the Ikeja cantonment where he resided, why wouldn’t they stopped by his house so that the girls would know where he lived. Honestly, by this time, Bisi was getting tired of Jamin, but Bukky read her friends a poem written by Ben Jonson titled To Celia and this convicted Bisi.
Come my Celia, let us prove;
While we may, the sports of love;
Time will not be hours forever:
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his goods in vain.
Suns that set may rise again;
But if once we lose this light,
‘Tis with us perpetual night.
Bisi smote to her heart had sought the counsel of the catechist’s wife on the matter. The clergy man’s wife cautioned that they were young women ripe for nuptials and therefore should give room for interested young men to befriend them. Young women she said do not marry people who drop from the sky, but gentlemen who live among them. So, Bisi mellowed down and began to entertain Benjamin Torkular; once or twice, affording him smiles, even including him in conversations: all these in the name of ‘young women making themselves amiable.’
While Bukky had no clue of all Bisi’s findings, especially, not the finding of what transpired the day they stopped by Jamin’s house on their way from Sheraton, what ruffled Bukky’s feathers, was the day, Jamin came to take them out for dinner and Ulari was not there.
At J’s enquiry of where Ulari went to, Bukky had told him. The two girls did not miss the expression on his face.
“With the VC to do what?” J asked like one whose heart sank into the pit of his stomach.
“To wine, dine and to sway to the music of the masked one,” Bukky had replied laughing.
J did not laugh. His face tightened.
“I thought you girls were Christians?” he asked.
“And now we’re not?” Bukky fired at him.
He said nothing. That Bisi had added that Ulari went the VC and his wife did not help matters. They went out. And J was quiet throughout dinner and hardly touched his food muttering inaudibly in an attempt to be sociable.
Bukky thought that it was after that night that Bisi made up her mind to visit her at almost midnight in her room the day her roommates were out. That night Bisi had begun out of the blues …” So, do you care for J, as in are you in love with him?”
Although her friend, most times, Bisi irritated Bukky. “I know what ‘care’ for someone means,” Bukky said rolling her eyes. And before Bisi repeated the question, Bukky answered it. “And no, why do you ask?”
“I just want to know since he hasn’t said his mission and he keeps inviting us out. I begin to wonder if…if…never mind.”
Bukky groaned silently. She wasn’t a fan of Bisi and her ways. They were friends because Ulari was there. She was the sane one. She intervenes when Bisi tried to carry the sisters’ leader thing too far. Bisi was a control freak and Ulari loved to be told what to do. She always found a way of persuading Bukky to obey leadership.
“If what?” Bukky asked trying not to sound offensive because why on earth, would a friend be talking to her friend and stop midway?
Bisi shrugged. Bukky fixed her eyes on her. Bisi was a pretty girl with bulging eyeballs and cloven eyelids and chiselled features; her skin was ebony black. She turned heads. But Bukky often wondered if ever she would allow a guy get physical with her. The girl had a frozen gaze: her eyes could congeal fire, literarily.
“Remember Bro. Francis said that every guy hanging around a babe must have a mission and say it. But, J’s not said anything and he’s been coming around for a while now.”
Bukky got up and went to her cupboard and began to bring out tea things. She brought out two pink and cream mugs, two bags of Lipton tea which she dropped in the mugs then she added sugar in one before pouring hot water from a steel flask. Bisi preferred sugarless tea.
“Have you checked with your heart and found out that you have no feelings for him?” Bisi persisted.
Bukky took a long drink from her mug. The water wasn’t hot. Bisi watched her. Bukky’s dimples were no where to be found. Her cheeks were dimple free and pensive.
“If he asks me to marry him,” Bukky began, “I’d probably say yes, but, that wouldn’t be because I’m in love with him. I think he’s cute and nice and probably rich, but there’s something I can’t put my finger on about him.”
Bisi waited as her friend frowned and her eyes seemed to consider something.
“He seems to hold me at arm’s length. I…I …don’t think he wants a relationship.”
Bisi pounced on that. “We’re taught that the person must be interested in a commitment relationship,” she pointed out.
Bukky nodded.
“Does it bother you?”
Bukky’s dimples swiftly returned. She smiled and wrinkled her nose. “Not in the least,” she said. “I’d really love to marry a Yoruba guy since none of my siblings married a Yoruba.”
“My momsy said that a girl should pray asking God point blank if a guy who’s hanging around her is her husband. Have you prayed?” Bisi asked.
“Nope,” said Bukky throwing her head back and draining her cup of tea. Bisi declined the biscuits and she threw them back into her cupboard and closed it checking herself in the mirror on her wardrobe door. She returned to her bed and grabbed one of her two pillows for support and then continued, “I don’t think I will, ever! I prefer Yoruba guys. And you can hardly say he’s hanging around me. He’s hanging around us.”
Bukky missed the triumphant look that swiftly appeared in Bisi’s eyes. “Nobody wants him,” Bisi declared with a smirk. “I’m not moved by his looks. For all I care, he could be buck-toothed and knock-kneed…”
“And cross-eyed,” Bukky finished and the two friends laughed.
Bisi’s sigh was inaudible. Her face shone with satisfaction. ‘Damn J!’ she thought.
Bisi was in error about J, but she was not the only one in error about him. Ulari was also in error about the DMI soldier. She presumed that J desired her for marriage.
So, alone in her room, she examined reasons why it might not be possible. First reason, J came for Bukky; second reason, Ulari didn’t want to marry so early in life. She would be 23 next birthday. She wanted to make a mark in her generation, find herself before getting swallowed up inside a marriage.
Then, her parents, they would kill her. What about her friends? Bukky would kill her and Bisi would hate her. Ulari had never been so distressed. Her mind was so much in turmoil that it conjured up her paternal grandma in her sleep.
And she was saying to her, ‘A girl must not assume that a man wants to marry her until he says so. And marriage proposal is in question form so a girl can say yes or no.’ Ulari woke up in cold sweat.
Ever since she saw the ‘holy’ her mother had warned her not to near a man. She said that that was how a certain person in her lineage got pregnant out of wedlock. And in the Igbo cultural setting, pregnancy out of wedlock is the worst thing that can happen not only to a girl, but to her entire family. In her family, there was already a history of pregnancy out of wedlock and Ulari and her siblings grew up with the fear of contamination.
To be continued …
Culled from The Girls Are Not To Blame by Lechi Eke
