The septuagenarian, Jemirioke, tiptoed over books to arrive at the window frame against which she rested her walking cane in the poorly lit space. Then she tied back the window curtains, letting in light into Amoke’s room.
“It’s past three, in the afternoon. You, sure, got used to laying on your back, haven’t you? Probably dreaming of a future if there is any to be had.”
She didn’t turn around but stayed looking out at Butata, the little boy, playing with worms after the rains, in the yard.
Grandma wrapped the ends of the shawl around her hands, and drew it both ways about her shoulders, as if she was scratching a dermal ailment. Then casually wrapped the ends about her neck.
Amoke covered her face with both hands trying to adjust to the intrusion of bright light and the intimidating presence of her unsmiling grandmother.
“I just feel tired, all the time.” Amoke said.
Grandma rested her back on the window frame, akimbo over Amoke, and with her walking cane tapped on some of the books which litter Amoke’s room.
“Did you find a solution from these books?”
Amoke fidgeted with the beads around her neck. She didn’t respond. She rolled her eyes and turned away to face the wall.
Jemirioke walked into the middle of the room towards Amoke’s bed.
“Just that you know, nothing you did escaped me. Now, you’re a twist. Life is teaching you a hard lesson. I’ve given you the benefit of my wisdom on the matter.”
“Twist? I wish for a man who loves me no matter, and that you would leave me alone.” “You are complicit and it’s no longer about you.”
Jemirioke turned aside, scattered the chessboard pieces on the reading table nearby with her cane.
“Your mother, Olapeju, might have been a perpetual underdog, with her choice of a foreigner over a native, but she was never deterred by odds stacked against her.”
Amoke palmed the seeds of beads around her neck, a gift from her late mother. “But I am her daughter.”
Jemirioke dropped her gentle and protective gaze as she reached the door of Amoke’s room.
Amoke shivered, folded into a fetal position still not moving from the bed. She drew the cover over her head. Speaking from beneath it.
“I don’t know if I can do those things you asked of me, grandma.”
“In that case, you have until the end of this week to resolve this or find yourself another town to live in.”
“But you’re the only family I’ve got!” “That won’t be for long.” Grandma said.
Jemirioke’s thin lips pressed tightly together. Almost at the door, she re-tied her wrapper, trailed her old eyes on the little ten-year-old playing outside and shouted.
“Butata, I think it is about time you come in and eat something. Meet me in the kitchen.”
About an hour later, Amoke strolled into the kitchen where Butata was finishing up his meal. Amoke’s washed hair was bundled under a white towel, her face dotted by make- up in progress, and her shapely body rhythms under a loose booboo gown. Her feet dragged a pair of slippers making slapping noises as she sashayed across the dining room towards the pantry.
Her grandma slowly marched with her cane on her way out the kitchen without meeting her gaze. Twice, she sniffed at the freshness of Amoke’s perfume which hung in the air.
She sighed deeply before she resumed her favorite song, which left a trail loaded with meaning.
Dandogo kii she ewu omode, (some heavy gowns are not meant for the young) Bi oju ko ponni bi osu, a kii he ohun pupa bii ide. (unless one endures hardship, one doesn’t reap great benefits)
Amoke followed her to the door, stopping herself by holding on to the doorposts as she spoke into the corridor.
“But my mother left me when I was sixteen.”
“Ask the Supreme why he took her away. I tried and got no answers.” Grandma said.
Amoke walked over to Butata and ruffled his hair. Her coffee-dark skin, a legacy of her father, Brazilian-native trader, who built this house for her mother and since returned across the ocean never to return.
“Butata, I need a favor. Can you run an errand for me?”
“Can it wait until I finish my food? Grandma won’t be happy unless I finish what’s on my plate.”
“Tell me about it. She is not happy, period. But I feel you.”
Amoke sat at the dining table across from Butata. She took time to add more beads to the ends of her twisted braids. She painted her lips and shaded darker her brows with a pencil.
Amoke watched Butata walk out of the house with her message. She rose, paced, and scratched under her chin.
“Like grandma pointed out. Ewa Ikurere o ni tan, awo eni o le she, awo rere tan. (who says the beauty of tasty beans lasts forever? The company of those who can make things work, I no longer have. Let’s face it, the company of my true doer is gone.)
She checked her face in the small mirror hanging in the pantry.
“Apparently, at 28, my charm is no longer infallible. I had it coming in spades. It is time to face it.”
Amoke ironed the creases out of her new Ankara dress. In the hallway, she stared at the half-length mirror, adjusting her underwear, corset, and headgear for comfort. “How annoying? Grandma is always right. It is not just about me anymore. I’ve got to do what I must.”
She looked down and rubbed her belly.
Amoke stepped into the street, looked in both directions, then turned southwards, heading for the Lovers’ Hill.
“Of all the women in this town and all the bedrooms with windows, he climbed into mine. That ought to mean something.”
The foundry featured two huge bellows under a partially bricked shed. Butata entered, prostrated, and muttered a greeting to the patrons and no one else. Shyly, he paced in but made no eye contact with Chief Alade or any of the six customers, some were hugging different farm implements between their legs, sitting on two benches across from Olaoluwa and his father. Both blacksmiths were working the different rims.
The clatter and pounding didn’t appear to interrupt the idle chatter of waiting customers. Butata approached the corner of the foundry where Olaoluwa operated the second rim. He was pounding on a buckboard wheel with a hammer. The boy stood far from the fired rim until he doused part of the wheel in the half-brim water tank on his right.
Olaoluwa straightened, checked, and rebalanced the wheel with a few more hammers. He handed the wheel back to a customer, took his payment, and stuck the money into his back pocket.
He walked over to Butata in the corner where he waited, bent over and listened to the boy’s whispering.
Olaoluwa walked behind Butata to the door, who pointed south but headed north.
After the little boy left, Olaoluwa’s six-foot frame and strong brawny arms occupied the double doors for a silent minute. His face seemed marked between concentration and indifference. With his backhand, he wiped his narrowed sweaty brows, defining the borders of his forehead, and the grease off his hands on the backside of his jeans trousers.
He stepped out of the foundry door, following in the direction Butata pointed. The waiting customers complained. Chief Alade was amongst them.
“Where are you going?” “We need service here.” “I’ve waited forever.”
Fehinti, Olaoluwa’s father, trotted from his blacksmith rim to watch his son depart. Chief Alade walked closely behind him. Chief Alade prompted Fehinti with the horsetail whisk urging him to say something.
“Olaoluwa, stop, return to your work this minute or never come back.” Fehinti said. “You know where he is going, don’t you?” Chief Alade asked.
Fehinti dropped his hands in surrender.
“Who am I deceiving? Without him these doors won’t stay open much longer. He does most of the ornamental works.”
“Nevertheless, you own this foundry.”
“What can I do about it? You can see he is determined to go off …”
“Fehinti, there’s history with that family. You must prevent this happening, twice.” Fehinti scoffed and wiped his sweaty brow with a backhand.
“Twice? No, this is the third time.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“I know what I’m saying. Let’s leave it at that.”
Chief Alade adjusted his fez cap, red beads around his left hand, and feather, shrugging his shoulders to adjust the heavy gown (aso-oke) into place.
“The more reason you should put your foot down and hard.”
“One wants to do right but will the children of these days let you?”
“You ought to be glad you didn’t marry Olapeju. I feel sure she was cursed hence she died early.”
“Now, now, Alade, I won’t go that far.” “How far would you go?”
Fehinti continued to watch his son walk down the street. “I don’t know what to do…”
“You know what our town custom says, don’t you?” “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“And if it does…?”
“It is dusk. He’ll be back soon. Maybe, it is simply a matter of an unpaid debt…” “Maybe? I was told she sells insurance to anyone who would listen. Kabiyesi (king) bought a policy from her. She collects money from him every month. What a scammer that girl is?”
On Lovers’ Hill, crows swarmed the landscape and departed from sight. “I hate harmattan.” Olaoluwa said.
He wiped his brow, with his hands tucked in his apron pocket, took a deep breath, and watched the steam of his breath before him. He smiled and resumed walking.
Wearing a parsley pattern native wrapper, Amoke paced not-too-far ahead of Olaoluwa, shaking her shapely backside.
But she wasn’t slowing down. Ahead of him, she beat at the yellow leaves, weak boughs in her way, with the backhand, she broke twigs but never stopped climbing.
“Your brother said you wanted to see me. Well, here I am. If you’ll slow…” Olaoluwa said.
He trampled under feet dried fallen leaves. Another dry leaf got stuck in his left sandal. He stooped, removed it, and replaced his sandal.
“Damn.”
Amoke moved between scattered shrubs in the beaten footpath ahead of her. The dying sun revealed her wrinkled pretty face. She turned her face forward and resumed her walk. She wiped at a buzzing bee fluttering beside her head.
“Wait for me…” Olaoluwa said.
She half spun, didn’t stop but leveled a squint of her dark eyes at him and continued, keeping her steady pace.
He grinned.
“You’re playing hard-to-get. I like it. Where do we stop?”
He quickened his pace to reduce the distance. She was not letting up. He got caught in a spider’s web.
“…Or… is something wrong? I should have known it. That look on your face is not like come-and-do, is it?”
She paused, scoffed, and continued her ascent looking up at the sky.
The sound of rapid waters on the other side of this hill reminded her of the time of day. The dusk was before them. The sun was swiftly replaced by fiery clouds in the sky. She slowed her pace and paused a couple of steps ahead by the last few shrubs trying to keep their dowdy yellow leaves which struggled against the harmattan cold. She peeled moss off the bark of a tree, where she stopped. She dropped her shoulders and stared at the fiery cloud.
Olaoluwa, who almost caught up, panted in relief.
“In this wood, everything about us looks like skeletons of the dead.”
Some creature rustled in the distance. A squirrel jumped noisily from a nearby tree limb to grab a dried nut off the ground. It looked in their direction and scurried away. “You might as well have taken me to the cemetery of ghosts. Look around. You are the only robust thing in this landscape. This no longer looks like the place we met last Summer.”
She breathed heavily and when he was a step behind her and about to hug her, she spun about.
“I still have memories of those happy days. Do you know that?” Olaoluwa asked.
He caught up with Amoke, who was retying her wrapper. In that embrace, she faced him, falling right into his arms. With a glint in his eyes, he smiled and slowly planted a kiss on her smoking hot red lips.
“What was that? It was neither warm nor cold.”
She stared back into his eyes but didn’t respond. He dropped his hands tracing her arms. She gently pulled away. She turned her head to the side.
“Are you going to stop giving me the silent treatment?” She turned and resumed walking.
He followed and grabbed her hand from behind.
“I can’t ever resist you. I left my busy shop with customers to be here. Your brother said to be quick about it. I think they, down there, can wait.”
She scoffed.
“That assumes you know what you really want, doesn’t it?” Amoke said.
He realized she hadn’t moved. The native blouse revealed her smooth coffee-skin shoulders. Silence enveloped them. Some honking geese nosily flew above to break the silence. Whitish droppings landed on his nose which he cleaned profusely with his apron. “Damned birds.”
Amoke chuckled, covered her bright set of teeth with her hands, and blinked straight in his face.
“Maybe I deserved that but what is this…?” Olaoluwa asked.
He fingered her beads, adjusted her blouse to cover her shoulder, and took a step back to study her face. She avoided his gaze. He took another step backward, spun on his heel, looked around them, and back at her. He searched for meaning to her countenance. His voice was deliberate, calm, and deep.
“Maybe this is not…” “Olaoluwa, do you love me?”
“What kind of, of, of, question is that?” “Olaoluwa, do you love me?”
“I, I, I don’t know what we are talking about here!” “For the third time, Olaoluwa, do you love me?”
“Of course…of course, I do. Must I make a hallelujah song out of it each day?” Amoke tilted her face looking away, mushed her lips, and rolled her eyes.
“I get it, I get it, you feel shy but wish to make love here and now.”
She shook her head and slowly looked at her stomach, rubbed it, then slowly met his gaze.
“Oh, no, no, no… Amoke. It can’t be…”
She stepped forward, shoved him back, and slapped his chest twice. She shook her head again and looked away.
“I thought so. I’ve been a fool…” Amoke said.
He moved slowly towards her, held her arms, and quickly withdrew his hands.
“It isn’t that. You’re too beautiful to marry a blacksmith, too beautiful to even live in this our small town, and too intelligent to have me for a husband.”
He bit his finger, shook it free from his mouth, cuffed a fist, and breathed deeply, watching her shut her eyes, disappointed.
“You didn’t think about that each time you laid together with…” “You buried your husband only two years ago. Isn’t it too early…?”
She shot him a look like a dagger stabbing his heart.
“Yet, several times, you climbed through my window at dark. Each night, you clamped your anvil and hammered eagerly with passion, as if…”
“You were the best ore, buried, and needed to be unearthed and shaped into something glittering for the world to see…”
The fiery clouds shifted. They were replaced with dark clouds above them. She seemed aware of it and looked up. He heard her sniffle.
“The glistening shimmering you shaped is this…”
Amoke pointed at her stomach and body, then squared her shoulders.
“…except now, there is this, a bump you didn’t figure in your design…. Is that it?” She bent her face to look upwards from under his chin.
He managed a wryly smile at the corner of his lips, lowered his gaze in conceit, and strutted farther from her in akimbo. He appeared to enjoy the intellectual banter, which diminished the gravity of the situation. Amoke was piqued. Her brows were raised and so was the tone of her voice.
“Was that ore, you talked about, a cheap conquest for a great craftsman or for a desperate ore monger?”
“You’re right, the ore monger was desperate but the craftsman, as you called it, probably is proud of how beautiful the ore turned out. If you think…”
When he turned around, Amoke lowered into her backside, buried her head into her hands, clasped her hands over her knees, and rested her back into a tree stem. Her legs folded into a squat under her.
“I see now that I was nothing to you but a cruel joke…”
“Well, I can’t tell my father that I would marry you just yet. You’re an orphan and seller of imagined losses. We know that this town custom gatekeepers will shame us both for carrying on too quickly. They might even say, after your last husband was hardly cold in the grave…”
She rose to meet his gaze with a cold stare he hadn’t seen before but he took another step away. He bit into his cuffed fists and shook his hand again.
“You mean, your brother?”
Olaoluwa coughed, choked, and bent over. “I know, I know, must you remind me?”
He scratched his thick head of hair, stubbles on his chin, and stripped from his neck his blacksmith apron.
“That too. Admitted, at first, it was a good cover to be seen together. No one suspected…but a baby, a marriage…I doubt….isn’t there something against…?”
“If you felt guilt, it didn’t seem to stop you making a twist of me.” He dropped his face.
He strutted in the opposite direction and held two branches of shrubs looking north and realized that they were at the precipice. The river flowed almost a thousand feet below. It was gushing faster away from this present dilemma. He turned, surprised, and shivered. She nodded at the look on his face, his eyebrows raised and gently moved his head from side to side.
“No, no, no, you didn’t…You, you, you came here to …” “Not return….”
He shook his head and ran the few steps to cover the distance between them. She had moved a few steps farther away. She looked determined to end it all.
Olaoluwa launched forward, tripped on a fastened root, and fell on his face. He must have passed out.
A few moments later, he awoke, shaking free his head and spitting out dirt.
He was clutched at the stubborn weeds which grew evergreen where food won’t. On all four, he crept slowly to the edge to see if her body was floating away, in the river down below.
Slowly, he brought himself to his knees and sobbed.
“Amoke, why? I didn’t doubt our love. I would have married you. We could have found a way. Damn crazy traditions. Damn the gossiping market women, who figure my brother deserved your beauty more than I do! I have always loved you. Amoke, oh, please, come back to me! I will do right by you.”
The dark clouds rushed deeper over him. From behind him came an unmistakable windless voice. Amoke nodded and clapped.
“Was that for when you pushed me over the cliff edge or to wipe clean your conscience?” Olaoluwa rolled on the ground, rose, and staggered backwards to clasp Amoke’s arms.
“Not so, I was thinking of my future wife and my unborn child.”
Back on his knees, he smiled with relief and continued broken, in muffled sobs between stutters.
“….whether those down this hill like or lump it. Let’s go and speak to my father!”
She kneeled before him, tears burrowed her cheeks, and returned to his arms. He pressed against her waiting lips, and they parted. He rose, threw his arm around her waist, and together they sang happily down the hill.
Later that evening, Amoke returned to Jemirioke’s house.
“The moon is full. It sent with it a guard waiting in the distance, I see.” “Shall I make your favorite drink, grandma?”
Amoke turned up the wick on the lantern hanging over the lamp post. “Well, did it work, like I told you?”
Amoke winked at her, navigated behind her rocking chair. “I hate to say it, but you were right, again.”
Inside, Amoke checked on Butata, her brother, sleeping in his room and went to her room to pack.
On the porch, the septuagenarian rocked in her cane chair, and smiled, sipping her
drink.
“Since the beginning of time, men haven’t changed. They make of women twists.” “Unless, as you say, women turn them with imagined losses, grandma.” “Although Fehinti won’t admit, his bitterness too probably is now led to rest.”
“Fehinti, the blacksmith? He asked me to move in, tonight. He’ll appease the deities, come morning.”
“Happily, twisted and turned.”
Amoke, with a night bag under her arm, joined Olaoluwa, who waited outside in the moonlight.
Cash Aiye-ko-ooto
In over 115 works, Nigerian American, Aiye-ko-ooto, Cash Onadele Aiye-ko-ooto’s oeuvre spans several creative genres. He wrote and produced The Noble Warrior staged in theatres in Abeokuta and Lagos. 2019 4-part ethnographic fiction drama titled 'Blood of Freedom'. Additional works followed, 55+ children youth and adult stories, screenplays, novels, novellas, children / youth short stories, and collections of novellas. Before fiction were poems. 52 anthologies of poetry, he famously cataloged as 'Odo-Alamo Series'. He is a prolific writer, a culture-aware philosopher, poet, and playwright. Cash is 62 and lives in Lagos and Texas, USA with wife and business partner, Denise Marie. The Yoruba native brings indigenous Juju voice to storytelling. Aiyeko-ooto built the world's largest library of individual poetry work. The solid enrichment of his volumes in songs, ethnographic plays, and stories with literary devices make them appropriate for entertainment and teaching of literature to secondary and tertiary institutions. His ambition is to contribute to development of youth and creative arts in Nigeria. Cash, an Architect, graduated from UI, (BSc, MSc) 1987, University of Nottingham, UK (MBA) 1993. He walks, writes, and mentors writers. He accepts international bookings for Readings, Public Speaking, and Poetry.