***
I sat in my salon for most of the morning and the better part of the afternoon supervising the staff as they attended to my clientele. I was not doing badly for myself – you see, I run classy beauty parlor on Unity Street, just off Toyin Street in Ikeja. The business was doing well and I could hardly complain.
However, my entire line of thought was occupied by something else. Something that was recently implanted there – a great chasm in my heart that was threatening to tear it apart.
My mom just left and her visit had torn open an old wound. She brought memories of my past flooding back into my present….
***
When the sex romp with the Eskimos had found its way into the papers, it was inevitable that the news would reach the ears of my parents.
There was no way they could have missed my name in the papers. Not when dad was an avid reader of the dailies and mom that of the many array of magazines that they were to be found reading every morning at the breakfast table.
There were photos to authenticate the story. Some really candid shots of the most gruesome sex acts ever known to mankind…or womankind for that matter.
There was no way to deny it.
I must have been nuts on that night to do what I did. My usual tact and carefulness were thrown into the dust bin. Thankfully, only my name was mentioned in the tabloids, the papers discrete enough to block out the face of the “young lady who took on a band of four”; furthermore, it all happened during my last semester in school.
It was a careless act and it nearly ruined my life – nearly but not at a dire cost. There had been a great shouting match when my parents came back from Benin, which incidentally was the same day the story broke in the papers. They had not even bothered to call me, choosing to wait for the face-to-face showdown in the privacy of our home at Ajao estate. Very harsh words were thrown around, and for once in my life I lost my cool with them.
I could not understand why they were so mad. What was done was done and raging was the least way of dealing with the situation. I was a girl who had been inadvertently spoilt by her own parents. To my mind I believed I had been very much of a good girl and there was no reason they should blow their top. After all, for several years I kept my lifestyle away from them. What was it that they do not understand?
Voices had been raised, shouts and abuses hurled in all and every direction. At one point during the argument I had even been bold enough to tell parents without mincing words that it was my life to live as I want to. My dad had raged at me, what could a twenty year old know about living life? My mom’s eyes at that point had almost made me cry. She looked like a woman who had lost a child. My heart wrenched at seeing that look on her face. In an instant, the look was replaced by that of an enraged tigress. She screamed and wailed, then eventually she voiced her most dreaded fear.
“Who will want to marry you now? Not after this…no,” she was in tears, brandishing the copy of the paper in my face. It was like a weapon with which I had stabbed her. I could not understand her distress. How could marriage be an issue now?
“Oh Mom, please!” I retorted in hope that my anger will make her shunt that line of argument .
“Don’t give me that attitude young lady,” she snapped back. Her eyes had taken a different sheen, accentuated by the moistness still struggling to burst forth. “You should be remorseful and hope that someone who had not seen this will be willing to marry you.”
It was then that I really understood why they had been so mad. My market value, suitability to be married off, just took a plummet. Was that all they really worried about? It was infuriating that she could reduce my whole life to that singular moment at the altar; that moment when I will say “I do” to another man. I decided to put my foot down once and for all and make them realize I was old enough to take my destiny in my own hands.
I laughed in my mom’s face, my own contorted in the most bitchy manner I could conjure, “Mom, for every woman who wants, or is ready for marriage, there is a man willing to take her and make her his wife.”
Maybe, it was the way I laughed in my mom’s face or that I made such a statement that eventually made my dad go mental I would never know. Before the laugh had died out of my mouth he was landing slaps and blows on me. He beat me in a way I’d never believe possible of him. He didn’t just stop at beating me. He threw me out of his house that very day.
“When you find a responsible man willing to marry you, show him these pictures of you and see if he will still want to,” he spat as he threw a copy of the newspaper, with a shot depicting me kneeling between three fully distended cocks at me and slammed the door in my face.
The other girls were there for me and supported me. It was rough that last semester in school, but I survived and graduated. I graduated with a good grade all things considered, and decided to move on with my life.
However, what the incident did to the Eskimos though was worse. Even though their management team tried to quell the stories and re-brand the band’s image, nothing worked. The scandal caused a break up of the band, they also lost all the credibility they had in the public eye. All attempts to resuscitate the band fell flat as they were never received by the public and even the music industry. Doobi Loo made a valiant effort to go solo, but that also didn’t work out. No one wanted to touch him or his sisi. Not even with a long spoon.
Eventually, he traveled out of the country. We still kept in touch when we could and he was doing fine for himself. His music was beginning to pick up and from our last discussion, he was thinking of re-launching himself into the Nigerian music scene. I was really not mad at him for the fiasco that have caused so much pain. I understood we all had a share of the blame for what happened in that room. I was not mad that they had taken pictures of the act without my knowledge, they were stoned anyway. I have been stoned many times and knew all actions in the state were not to be held against the perpetrator acting under the influence.
So, we remained good friends and somewhere in our hearts we both held stronger feelings towards one another. Feelings that were stronger than we dared to admit. Behind the storm of the one night of carelessness was a calm that each of us understood. An electric current which we both knew we can never allow to connect again.
It might be catastrophic to allow it a second time.
But, all that was over three years ago. I moved into a flat at Ikeja G.R.A and started the beauty parlor immediately after graduation. I distanced myself as far away from my parents as I could. I also kept a low profile – no more parties, no more gang-banging and shit like that. It hurt what were said during our fight, but what hurt most was the fact that they treated me the way they did. So I closed them out of my life.
Until that morning when she came back.
***
In the time since I was thrown out of my parent’s house, I have only seen one of my parents once and that was my mom when she showed up at my beauty parlor this morning.
She came to see me and plead with me to go back to being her little angel and daddy’s princess. I listened stoically to all she said making no comment. I had outgrown being a princess…and I am by no means an angel. Sure, a lot of the guys I have met called me that…while I am either riding their manhood or they doing the riding, but I am more suited to being described as a devil in an angel’s garb.
She left after about thirty minutes of a strictly one way conversation. She left me seated where she met me, her eyes glistening with tears she mastered herself from shedding.
However, her visit struck a chord. Her words ringing loud and clear in my ears long after she was gone. It wasn’t difficult to understand why she was back. The marriage theme had surfaced again, and as much as it made me angry it still sprouted the beginning of a plan in my mind.
Maybe, I should find myself a man and settle down to marriage. That way I will make daddy eat his words – I was still mad at him for throwing me out of the house and for thinking I’d never find a man to marry. But, if I found myself a man they will both see they had blown the issue way out of proportion.
It was how my brain rationalized her visit, how my thoughts flowed before I decided to visit Goodies Superstore on Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way for some snack and groceries.
Because I needed to clear my head, I decided to walk and not bother any of the staff with the purchase. I’ll do it myself and maybe while I am at it I might pick up a kill or a man to marry.
Who knows what the future holds?
***
