Continues from last week…
Prof. (Mrs) Steffi Olarenwaju (PhD), that’s what the name plaque on her office table read. It was to the intent that people who visited her office would understand that she wasn’t a Prof without an earned doctorate. O, yes, you could earn a professorship without a doctorate.
Steffi was an accomplished woman: a Fellow of this, and a Fellow of that; one of the Top Three Leading Women in Global Environmental Studies. She was three times HOD of Department of Geography, and now the dean of their faculty.
Steffi, a descendant of Brazilian immigrants to Lagos believed in enhancements. At 55, she stood straight, tall and svelte, greatly helped by different enhancements. Her muscles were toned, thanks to the gym – three times a week. Her firm upstanding breasts and flat stomach were, thanks to enhancements. Several spa times spent on skin exfoliation, massaging, hot steams, and many more had left Mrs. Steffi Olanrenwaju looking like a picture out of the French Vogue.
The rings on her wedding finger rose from the foundation of her finger to the knuckle. She was very married, and not just to any man, but to the honourable vice chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof. Steve Olarenwaju.
Steffi believed in the lipstick – to enhance beauty where nature denied it. She was of no particular religion unlike her husband, Steve, a staunch Catholic. Steffi believed in the possibility of everything, if people would make the required effort.
She had met Steve in Soho, at a place called Holly Jah and Chicken. They read poetry and played some jazzy reggae tunes. When the Rastafarians sang and played, the lights were dimmed and shy people got up and danced, often under the influence of weed. Steffi was on the rebound and was feeling sorry for herself and had accepted and sucked on a joint someone offered her and she had danced, ‘Have mercy on a good man, we pray Jah Lord!’ Someone had pulled a chair close to her and greeted in Yoruba. She turned and stared into the fresh face of an innocent man.
“I liked the way you danced.” His voice was polished and he looked clean.
“I can’t dance,” she laughed.
“Oh, yes, you can.”
“I can’t. Everybody says so.”
“I liked it. I can’t dance either. I’m Steve and I’m from Lagos, Nigeria.”
She laughed. “Is there another Lagos?”
“Oh, yes. Lagos, Portugal, only it’s pronounced Laagoos.”
They laughed. She loved well-travelled people.
“Steffi is my name. Lagosian-Brazillian.” She laughed.
“I’m in NYU.” Her eyes went round.
“Me too. Only I’m on my way out. Postgraduate studies.”
What a coincidence: coming from the same place on earth, reading in the same school, meeting faraway from school where they both went to find happiness. Someone stood him up the previous day. He said he used to be an altar boy. Swore he’d never take advantage of her and had approached her on their wedding night as a curious virgin – gazing and touching and being so grateful to Mother Mary. It was like a joke. She fell for him. He was different from all those who had abused her. Sometimes, she felt like she never deserved him.
Steffi was a woman of many passions; a good person, but strangely, top on her priority for the past four years was to discredit Ulari. It was unbelievable that a little chit of a girl who was not up to half her age could ruffle her feathers so.
Four years ago, Steffi had returned from Switzerland from a meeting of World Meteorologists to discuss Global Warming and the Green Revolution, to the issue of Ulari. The girl was a one name brand. Everybody was talking about her. Incidentally, her ‘indiscrete’ ‘unthinking,’ ‘tactless’ (these were names she often called Steve in moments of cold rage, under her breath) husband, Steve, totally enamoured by her, had included her name in the school’s major ceremonies: the matriculation and the convocation programmes of that year, to sing the National Anthem. To add salt to the injury, he had entertained her openly at the squash centre!
From idle talks, Steffi had picked that Ulari’s rendition of the National Anthem was the best anyone ever heard, which was absolute nonsense! Idle talk also said the girl was a drop dead beauty. However, she was spared the speculation that her husband was dating her. Steffi knew this the way women know things. People had seen her in his company with the ‘eccentric’ head of Music Department, Prof. Samson Akpabio whom Steffi could not stand. To top it all, Steffi found a disturbing article carefully outlined by her secretary in the The Kampus News which read: ‘…no one would miss the senate building (the best architectural edifice on campus) if it disappeared, but if Ulari did, it would be a campus calamity!’
When Steffi met Ulari, she almost fainted. No one should be that stunning; it was offensive! Steffi was a wise woman. She invited her to her house. And they had a strange conversation.
Over two glasses of chilled zobo and ginger drink, Seffi shot questions at the girl.
“Are those your eyes?”
Ulari looked around. “Where, ma?”
“I mean, you’re not wearing contact lenses.”
Ulari shook her head.
“What about your lashes?”
“They are okay, ma”
“Are they real?”
“Yes, ma.”
Steffi stared at her over the rim of her glass and unconvinced, she said, “But you certainly dropped some liquid into your eyes to make them shimmer and sparkle.”
“No, ma!” It was a protest. Ulari’s tone was slightly raised.
Steffi scratched the back of her neck and got up. She took her drink to the kitchen and paced the floor to calm down. When she reemerged from the kitchen to where she was entertaining her guest, she had made a decision. She would not confront her husband about the girl; she would befriend her.
Unknown to Steffi, her reaction was the exact reaction of her husband’s friend, the professor of music when he met Ulari. What made the Akwa Ibom state indigene invite Ulari to his office was her JAMB score: 335. Who scored that in JAMB? Akpabio suspected foul play and decided to invite the student to sit in his office and write a test.
When Ulari arrived at his office, Akpabio was flabbergasted. Putting the test aside, he fired questions at her about her looks. He hated everything artificial which was the bone of contention between him and his friend, Olarenwaju’s wife. To the music Prof, that woman was too plastic. He knew also that Steffi was repulsed of him because she considered him crude. Akpabio wasn’t a man particular about what was in vogue or colours that matched.
At the end of the questions which he figured out that the timid eastern girl answered truthfully, Akpabio sat with her in his office and she wrote the test and FAILED NOTHING. Akpabio made her to sing and she did. That same day, he told his friend the VC about her. He invited her to his office at the senate building and later her name appeared in the Matriculation and Convocation programmes.
Although not a woman given to paying attention to the grapevine – talks of idle half-educated dimwits, Steffi was recently made deliriously happy by the same medium – the grapevine! Her secretary, a discrete tactful colourless woman who wore a permanent turban-like gear around her small skull for religious reasons, had placed on her table a copy of The Kampus News. Its headline read: A Soldier and a CU Girl @ One in Town.
Without mentioning names, the story narrated a rendezvous between a very tall mannequin-like girl with a café-au lait complexion spotted with a soldier in what could be nothing else but a date at One in Town restaurant by the school’s first gate. The story said the couple was in a private room for over three hours.
It was a detailed story written after ‘thorough investigation.’ The girl in question was a member of a ‘gang’ of three who were said to be at loggerheads at the moment because of ‘a soldier’, as it was reported that one of them stole the soldier from one of them! Very juicy indeed.
A cat who found cream could not possibly be happier than Mrs Olarenwaju that morning. She sailed through the day reliving when she would tell her husband what was going on.
Ulari had given her much headache. It took her a while to pinpoint what really irked her about the ‘mulatto’ (although her husband often protested that she wasn’t a mulatto), no, it wasn’t her looks. It was the issue of her virginity. This forcefully brought back the issue of her childhood with certain displeasure.
Steffi could not recall when she was a virgin. Growing up unsupervised and unguided, she had crossed the Rubicon. She could hardly recall at what age in her life when the abuse of her body started: by her uncles, cousins, primary school teachers, headmaster, matron’s husband, etc. As she grew up, she was public dish to all and sundry: schoolmates, girlfriends’ boyfriends, casual acquaintances, and with everyone who asked. And did they ask? Steffi hated men. And she had no education from her upbringing to guide her.
Her childhood shamed her. No one knew, not even Steve, to what extent she was abused and misused and with her consent! That was why she hated Ulari and her pals: girls who knew what to do – who had sound sexual education – ‘girls who know how to possess their vessels in sanctification and honour’ as Bisi put it to her.
Like a special dish, Steffi prepared how she would serve the news to her husband. Her pet peeve had been how highly her husband esteemed Ulari. All day, all night, Steffi cooked the dish. She decided the talk would be in the morning. It was her help’s day off. That day was usually Steffi’s best day – she used it as score-settling day in her marriage. All the accumulated piques during the week got usually settled on that day. Meanwhile, Steve feared that day. He did many things to buy peace at home for that day, including buy jewels, shoes and bags to match, wrist watches, wigs, lingerie, etc. They often soften but never obliterate the questions.
Breakfast was at the kitchen dinning table inside the Lagoon Front Lodge of the VC. Steven was already seated at the small table of four which was for their family of four: his wife, himself and their two daughters. The girls were away at Yale and Oxford respectively – their choices, no parental interference. Steven’s mind was filled with thoughts of them this morning.
Steffi chopped and blanched vegetables for sandwiches. Her husband admired the food on the work surface of her kitchen. The diverse colours displayed watered his mouth. There were the cut boiled eggs with the white circling the yellow yoke on one side, the rings of very red tomatoes, already blanched beside them, then the purplish rings of onions by them followed by the cucumbers and the heap of Jos lettuce. He watched how expertly Steffi loaded slices of bread and covered them with other slices. Soon, she had his tray over with a mug of freshly brewed black coffee and an apple.
“How was the meeting of the VCs?” she asked.
“So, so.” Pause. “I wonder if our little girls are seeing anyone serious.”
An alarm went off in Steffi’s head. “Have they told you of any special men in their lives?” Steve was gazing straight beyond his wife, beyond the kitchen windows, at the black waters of the lagoon. Most mornings the water turned a metallic grey colour. Now, the black iron netting was slid out of the way to let in salubrious air from the lagoon of the Atlantic. Steve could see one or two canoes moving languidly on the water, with half clad fishermen paddling or trying to throw nets. Above them, on the Third Mainland Bridge, vehicles moved at a breakneck speed like toy cars on a race course.
Steffi sat down with her own tray bearing raw vegetables, bran, and green tea and freshly pressed orange juice.
“Honey,” Steffi said, her voice kind. “These girls are young. We must be patient with them.” Her mind dashed swiftly to her grandma who harangued her to hell about bringing a good man home when she was growing up. Thankfully by the time she met Steve, it was not on Nigerian soil and when they returned, she was safely tucked into the earth. Steffi sipped her green tea waiting for the right time to break the Ulari story, not happy to start the day with her angels.
“I’d hate to see my girls sleeping with men who have no intention to make life commitment with them.” Steve’s words attacked Steffi’s appetite. She chewed her healthy bread filled with avocado and it tasted like straw. What’s wrong with the man this morning? She said nothing.
“It isn’t a good social behaviour for girls to sleep around before marriage.” That’s it! Steffi glared at him.
“Sleep around before marriage? What on earth does that mean, Steve? This is the 21st century.”
“That’s what’s wrong. This thing carries a lot of side effects… (before she could ask what thing, he continued,) like unwanted pregnancies, diseases, heartbreak…”
“Steve!” Steffi’s voice was raised to the tone one used for a mentally unstable person. “This is the 21st Century, pregnancies don’t happen unless the individual wants them to, and there’s the condom – so available, so cheap, as long as you dispose them properly in order not to harm the environment. Really, there’s no other way to prove who you want to settle down with except by that ‘thing’ as you call it. Who have you been talking to? I hope not that overgrown mulatto you call your friend? You may think she’s the quintessential church girl, but I heard talk she’s already sleeping with someone, a soldier.”
Steve winced visibly. This maddened his missus. Bile rose within her to hurt Ulari verbally.
“Ulari is not sleeping with… (Paused) heck! What do I care? I think we should be more concerned with our own children. Your hypotheses of protective measures do not cover heartbreak. How do you protect your daughters from heartbreak?” Steve charged like a crazed man.
Steffi stood up. “I get offended by your myopic perception of things, Steve. If one’s heart is destined to be broken, it’d be broken. That’s part of living in the world. Marriage doesn’t guarantee immunity from heartbreak; marriages do break down.” Steffi’s eyes had dropped some warmth and so had her voice.
Their faces darkened. What demon possessed Steve that morning, he had no clue. But, he was determined to discuss his girls in line with proper raising.
“That’s when the two people involved in it allow it to. Marriage is honourable.”
Livid with rage, Steffi picked her tray and opening the backdoor, moved to the patio where the weak morning sun had laid its dull golden ray. Being piqued, Steffi smarted for days. And that she wasn’t able to gloat over Steve with the Kampus News story about Ulari made her sore.
Later that weekend, when Akpabio joked with Steve about Ulari having the kind of looks that could stir normal men, Steve asked icily who the abnormal men were. When Akpabio said they were the abnormal men, Steve relaxed saying that they were truly the normal men while randy men, rakes and lechers were the abnormal men. He now went on to share with his friend how at the meeting of the VCs, they agreed to pass a law that would prohibit ‘aristos,’ especially those in government: legislators, ministers, governors, sugar daddies from coming to university campuses to pick up girls for orgies and personal entertainments. Steve said he was toying with the idea of suggesting that one of the requirements to enter the university in Nigeria should be that one should be a virgin. Steve had never seen Akpabio smile so broadly.
To be continued next week…
Culled from The Girls Are Not To Blame by Lechi Eke