'A Day's Dream' - My First Attempt at Creative Writing

Ifebuche turned again to stare at her very rounded backside in the mirror; who would’ve thought this would one day be hers. Whatever the reason was – good food or one of the perks of having regular sex- she was grateful for the outcome. She chuckled out, thinking how nice it would be for Ekeoma to see her now. He had thoughtlessly called her ike efere -plate buttocks- in front of his friends, some among whom she had hoped to get a chase. She had been a late bloomer and all her friends got all their body assets way before she did. She often didn’t like to be seen in their company by boys but that was almost always inevitable; they never seemed to forget her whenever there was an outing and she never seemed to muster enough courage to turn their offer down.

Never one to leave her confidence dented, she had given him a sharp retort that day, on how he’d never get kissed because of his bad breath. She had gone over-board and completely ruined her chances by adding that his friends were all too cowardly to tell him. It would be a pleasure to flaunt her well-rounded-no-more-plate buttocks just to see his reaction. She would then ask him if he eventually found a dentist who could endure his foul breath, long enough to give him medical attention.

Her mother had always tried to disperse her worries. First, it was about her not having breasts and buttocks as big as her friends. After that, it was about all of them getting married before her. She convinced her, that her pretty face would make any man forget how slim she was. How pretty was she that at 27 her mother was still consoling her while her friends were all married at either 22 or 23? Now at 30, she radiated happiness and looked more like her friends at 25. She hoped her daughter will be a late-bloomer like her; marriage was a lot more than she thought.

There was a knock and she hurried to see who it was. She had forgotten to tidy herself to meet Ndubisi at the door.

‘Welcome back dear, I didn’t hear you park the car’

‘What happened to my kiss?’

She kissed him then.

‘And speaking of the car, it’s still outside the gate; I need to pick up a friend to have dinner with us, after I’ve had my bath’

‘Are you joking?’

‘It’s just a social call. He’s an old friend who has been in London for the past 4 years and when you said we would have your special yam and stewed vegetables, I figured he could catch up from where he left with Nigerian food’.

‘This is why women should not marry generous men’

Ifebuche used the time she had to set the table and freshen up. No matter how social this call may sound, she’s certainly not appearing before a London-returnee, without every tiny detail in place. She must be the perfect hostess and the sexy wife.

She chose a knee-length, red and black flowered lycra gown that hugged her just enough to announce her good shape without crossing the indecent line. She packed her weave-on into a ponytail; leaving no doubts to the elegance of her neck and completed the look with a tiny set of gold ear rings. Her make-up was subtle; light pink lipstick with gloss to accentuate her natural full lips, matching blush and colourless mascara to increase her eye-brow volume. Ndubisi always said she looked better with less, ‘don’t hide your beauty under those colours’, was his favourite line. She had barely finished when they drove in. She picked up her one year old daughter and headed for the door.

Ndubisi introduced them to each other.

Ifebuche froze as she recognized the face. Edward had to stretch his hands before she remembered the right thing was to give him a hand-shake.

‘You are welcome, please come in’. She managed to move away from the entrance.

‘Eziaku say hello to Uncle Edward’. The little girl stretched out her arms towards her father.

Ndubisi took her and Ifebuche made a beeline for the kitchen.

He turned to his visitor, ‘Please make yourself comfortable’. He switched on the television and flipped to the sports channel.

Ifebuche served them wine and dashed back into the kitchen. After about twenty minutes, she called them to the table. She was eager to begin her inquisition soon after it.

‘Sweetheart, I assume you met Edward in London three years ago?’

‘Indeed’

‘Edward, are you from the east?’

‘I’m not going to play your games, Ifebuche’.

 Ndubisi’s already aroused suspicion, that they had known each other before then grew another inch.

‘I’m from Enugu state, Umuagu to be precise’.

Ndubisi snapped his head to look at her. ‘He is from your town!’

‘Yes dear, in fact we grew up together.

‘I knew it.’ He still managed to sound normal, hoping he had not made an awkward mistake of bringing an ex-boyfriend of his wife into their home.

‘We weren’t the best of pals, my friend. I had an ugly case of bad breath while growing up and your charming wife made a wedge out of it and drove it between me and my friends’.

‘If my memory serves me right, that was after you made sure the same people noticed my ike efere’.

Ndubisi relaxed. ‘You sound like children’

‘Oh we were then. It was terrible for me because I battled with inferiority complex until I could get rid of it. In retrospect, Ifebuche was painfully right; I was being endured'.

 Her buttocks could not be discussed because she was somebody’s wife, but it was obvious that they had both managed to get rid of their flaws. Ifebuche could not help laughing while she did the dishes. She was happy she had chosen that Lycra gown; after all it’s not every time that dreams come true in a day.

Being A Partner

Recently a friend shared a Facebook picture where a black (most probably Nigerian) father  was learning to bathe his newborn while his wife supervised. It was stated that they reside in Utah in the United States of America. The original owner of the picture complained about what ‘our women has turned us into’, referring to the fact that bathing a child is a chore strictly for the woman and inferred the man was being emasculated by doing it. I could not help wondering in which century he was trapped.

The continuous changes in the structure of the society that has necessitated the isolation of the  nuclear family cannot be ignored.  People in search of greener pastures have had to move so far away from their extended families that most times when you meet someone remotely close to you by reason of coming from the same town or village, you automatically become brothers just to feel that closeness to home again or even for the mere reason of having someone to exchange words in the dialect that is so unique to you in a place where people are easily lost in the crowd.  Some of us living in the diaspora know what it means to meet someone who speaks your language, the connection is automatic. But this is not the point here.

The consequential isolation creates an environment where the man is forced out of his traditionally recognised roles to help his partner meet up with tasks. In fact, it forces the couple to live that word ‘partner’ in the full sense of it. The woman steps up her game in contributing both financially and otherwise and the man also sees other roles he must play instead of crossing his feet to watch television programmes while the woman sweats it out, so he can live up to his head-of-the-family title.

Our African culture frowns at this but permit me to say that when we left our first homes and migrated to embrace new cultures and societies, clinging on to such things in order to answer just a name, hurts much more than it helps. The western society has already imbibed this as a tradition and I would say it is because the nuclear family isolation has been with them for a longer time.

A man helping to bathe his baby does not in any way rid him of his very cherished title, rather it opens a wider gate for him to show his strength and love in supporting his wife. Unfortunately in Africa we only feel he earns that title because he is the natural provider  and has the right to put the full stop to every decision.  The unwritten rule that was handed over to us insists that a woman and her new born be nurtured for at least three months before she is left to carry on by herself. For this,  a woman counts it as good fortune if her  mother or mother-in-law or even an aunt is close by when she delivers. We are the only ones who can  tell what we go through after child birth and a man who is alone with his wife in a foreign land without this form of help from their extended families, has a lot to learn in a very short while. He learns there is a reason those three months were traditionally instituted in the first place.

The bible reckons with us as ‘the weaker vessel’ and even though many  interpretations has been  given to that phrase,  it refers to our physical strength as compared to men’s own. ( All this modern bull shit about what a man can do, a woman can do better does not sit well with me, because I know men who split firewood to care for their families, I will dare a woman to go for it. I won’t try it myself). Having said that, I will rather look at the original owner of that picture (I do not want to use it here because I don’t know if the couple themselves even know what the man, who must be their friend to have obtained a picture of them in their house, has been up to with their picture) as ignorant. Women (living in isolated nuclear families) who are naturally the weaker vessels give birth and after a few days get up on their feet to continue the very tasking life of caring for a newborn, with episiotomy or caesarean stitches, sleeplessness and a strange form of weakness that descends on the person when she tries to do any little chore. (I stubbornly went out to buy fruits two days after I was discharged from the hospital. Two minutes walk away from my house and I could have fainted on the road). So, if that man feels that a man learning to help his wife is something to be ashamed of,  I can only hope that by a certain twist of fate he becomes pregnant, goes through labour so we can see if he agrees to get up from the bed after two weeks.

Pregnancy and labour and their effects on the woman’s body need be explained comprehensively to the still-ignorant men folk who are only interested in toting their titles around.

To the men who are rising up to the occasion daily, being  partners to their wives and supporting them with their greater physical strength, I pray God bless you real good!!!