Happy New Year folks!
So sorry this is late but you know what they say, better late than never eh?
Here’s a piece that is closer to fact than any of my previous works on this blog. In fact, I had to wait several months to get permission to publish this. It’s a fascinating tale and I know it’ll be worth the wait.
Enjoy!
Chioma
I ran into Dipo at a function after several years of not being in touch. I had seen him mount the podium to receive an award and met with him after the event. “Chioma!!!” he had screamed my name with so much excitement and given me a big bear hug. “It’s been like what? Seven years?” he asked and I nodded with a reminiscent smile.
Dipo and I attended to same university in the northern part of Nigeria. In our first year, we had taken a Drama course together where we both played the role of a married couple in a local theatre production. Dipo was a charming fellow and the bond we formed during the production stayed with us throughout our time in school. While in school, Dipo took up music production and before he graduated, became the most sought after producer in the state. Although, we were in different departments, we always found time once a week to play catch up at the cafeteria. Well, that was until he started dating Inyang in his final year.
“So… I can see the music business is doing great” I said pointing at his award as he walked me to his car. “Well, we can’t complain,” he said modestly. “And, Oh my! Is that a wedding band?” I asked reaching for his left had to reveal the shiny gold ring. “You didn’t even tell me!” I continued playfully hitting him in the shoulder. He seemed to blush as he said “No, babes, it’s no biggie”. I refused to accept that “No biggie? Who calls saying ‘I do’ to life imprisonment ‘No biggie’enh?” He laughed and put my head in a head lock “You never change sha,” he said. “But seriously, Sweetie,” I continued when I could release myself from his grip, “It was Inyang right?” “No…!” he replied sharply as if it was strange for me to have asked in the first place, “I married my queen; Bella and we have a baby girl together”. “Wow!”I exclaimed excitedly, “I’m so happy for you! But, wait, what happened between you and Inyang? I thought…?” I cut my statement short when I noticed him shaking his head sadly. “Babes…Inyang’s story is a very long story”
Dipo had met Inyang during his third year in school. I recalled the first time he talked about her at one of our lunch dates. “Babes! If you see this girl! Omo yen dun gan!” he said excitedly. He went on to vividly describe Inyang in such detail, it felt as if I had known her all my life. “Come on, let’s meet her! She seems like a wonderful person” I had said, trying to share in his excitement. “Just chill, Babes, ti eye ba ti ko si panpe, ma je k’omo!”
The next time I saw Dipo was two months later. After all efforts to reach him on the phone had been met with a dismissive “Babes, I’m in the studio. I will call you back.”He was driving his old Cherokee jeep through the school’s main gate when I cited him and flagged him down. When he pulled up close to me I saw there was a pretty girl sitting in the passenger seat. I had no doubt that it was Inyang. “My love, you have abandoned me!” I said when he wound down the glass. He laughed and started explaining how hectic work had been for him over the last few months. “And that’s why you can’t manage a simple Hello every now and then, come on now…” I had been saying when suddenly Inyang looked sternly at him and said “Baby, we’re late!” It felt as if someone had slapped me across the face as I couldn’t imagine the call for such attitude. “Well, a good morning to you, madam” I said to her, trying hard to cover the sarcastic undertone in my voice. To my surprise, Inyang looked me straight in the eyes and blurted “Good Morning to you too!” “Haba, Inyang, be nice to Chioma now,” Dipo had interjected almost sounding like he was pleading with her royal rudeness. She had turned sharply to him and retorted “Dipo! I said we are late! Can we go now?” I was too mad to speak but that quickly from anger to disbelief as I watched Dipo put the car in drive and slowly move away from me.
I smiled as I recalled several similar incidents that followed that one. Dipo slowly became I ghost of himself as he ignored all his friends on Inyang’s account. He ate, drank and breathed Inyang so much that if she sneezed, he would catch a cold. By the time we were in our final year, my friends and I had concluded that it was either he had a few lose screws in his head or Inyang was truly a super lover. I was not surprised when I heard that he had proposed to her on the Valentine’s Day of our final year during an award ceremony. “So what happened to you guys? I mean, it was quite obvious you two were going to settle down together,” I asked, genuinely interested. Dipo shook his head sadly and said in a voice that almost didn’t sound like his, “Chioma, dat one na very long tori.”
A few days after our chanced meeting at the event, I managed to track Dipo down to his new studio on the Island. The thing was, ever since he mentioned Inyang, my journalistic persona took over and I knew I wasn’t going to stop until I got the whole tale out of him. When we had gotten the pleasantries out of the way, I went on to ask him about what really happened to his relationship with Inyang and this was the story I got.
*
After we graduated from school, he moved back to Lagos and rented an apartment with Inyang. He went into the music business full-time while Inyang took up fashion designing classes. It was pretty rough for them the first few months as breaking into the Lagos music scene proved to be more difficult than he imagined. But with perseverance and hardwork, the money started coming in. The real trouble started when he bought a new car and surprised Inyang, expecting her to be happy for him. Instead she was angry that he hadn’t used the money to fulfill his promise of marrying her. It took a few days of pleading to get her to ride in the new car. But the fights didn’t stop there; in fact, they now took a whole new dimension. She made it a duty to pick fights with everyone from his studio employees to his mother. And the proverbial stroke that broke the camel’s back was the one he learned that she had physically assaulted his mother. He had come one to find his mother sitting at the door entrance and lamenting about her ordeal in the hands of his “wife”. He did everything in his power to get this mother to go back into the house and that included promising her that Inyang would leave his house the very next day. Eventually, Inyang had apologized that night and promised she would never do such a thing again.
The next day, he got a call from Inyang saying she wasn’t feeling very well and thus was going to the hospital. In the evening of that day, he got the biggest news of his life when she announced that she was three weeks with his child. At first, he had mixed feelings about it since he had been contemplating ending the relationship but the thought of having his very own child seemed good enough. He decided to accept Inyang and his unborn child and took his mother to see her parents in Akwa Ibom state for a proper introduction.
But the situation with Inyang did not change. It seemed as though as her pregnancy grew and became more obvious, her attitude towards everyone got worse. His mother eventually moved out of his house and swore not to come back until the child was born. All his friends and partners avoided his residence like a plague for fear of getting into a fight with Inyang. He too became fed up of the relationship and threatened that he would accept the baby but could no longer get married to her.
Tragedy struck when she was about seven months pregnant. He was working in the studio when she called him screaming that she was having pains in her abdomen. He had asked her if she could wait for him to hurry home and take her to the hospital but she declined saying that she had already called a nurse who worked that the hospital she was registered to come and take her. He became so worried after the phone call that he could no longer work. He left the studio a half hour later and drove home as fast as he could. When he arrived about an hour after the phone call, he knocked on the front door and Inyang came down the stairs to answer the door. When she opened the door, he saw that she had been crying and when he asked what was wrong, she raised up her gown to reveal that she was wearing blood stained panties with a sanitary pad. She started crying again saying “We lost the baby, Dipo, we lost the baby.” He was angry, sad, upset and frustrated all at the same time. But he knew that the first thing was to calm her and that was exactly what he did.
A few hours later when he was able to get her to sleep, he went into the bathroom to tend to his own broken heart. He had been crying silently for a few minutes when he decided to call his mother with the news. To his surprise, his usually over-emotional mother listened patiently as he related his experience that sad day. When he was done, she asked him, “So she went to the hospital this morning and when you came back, she came down the stairs to answer the door for you?” “Yes?” he had replied almost upset that his mother was dwelling on the flimsy details instead of the fact that he just lost his baby. Her next question had come as a complete shock to him, “She ori e pe sha?” He was so mad that he started yelling on the phone about how his mother doesn’t wasn’t his to be happy. But to all that she had simply replied, “Go and ask your wife what really happened to your baby.”
A few days after that unfortunate incident, he had come down with a cold, and unlike him, he felt the need to visit the hospital for treatment. When he got there, he became curious since that was the same hospital where Inyang had been attending her ante natal appointments. Since the miscarriage, he had had a lot of questions but he didn’t want to burden the grief-stricken Inyang with details of her ordeal. He had requested for her file when the nurse who had taken Inyang to the hospital that day appeared and began counseling him on getting through his current situation. He patiently listened to her as she preached on about how God was going to bless him with another child. He then assured her that he was fine but he only wanted to see Inyang’s file. She suddenly became hostile saying that it was against company policy for patients to see their files. He immediately knew something was fishy so he raised an alarm and threatened fire and brimstone if he wasn’t allowed to see the file. In the commotion, the hospital MD came out to calm the situation and personally handed him Inyang’s file saying that there was nothing wrong with him requesting for his wife’s medical information. To his surprise, the only information that the file contained was the first time he brought Inyang to the hospital to be treated for malaria fever over a year ago. He was still in shock when his phone ran with a call from Inyang demanding to know what he was doing at the hospital at that time. He had simply told her that if she wanted to stay alive, she should pack her things and leave his house before he got back.
When he returned home that evening, Inyang was packed and gone but she left a note begging for his forgiveness as she had only done what she did because she loved him. The next day, her mother had called him pleading with him to take his wife back. He had calmly listened to her before he threw her a few questions of his own;
“Was she ever pregnant?”
“If she wasn’t, how does one explain the morning sickness, weight gain and of course her swollen belly?”
“If she was, how did the pregnancy magically disappear without his knowledge since they both lived in the same house the whole time?”
He said that her mother became silent. As silent as I was when he finished this shocking tale.
