Mama was sitting on the verandah, her legs throbbing with resentment. She had displaced her Sunday dress with a knotted threadbare wrapper around her waist and she wore a thick, onion-coloured jersey over it. Even though she was grey-haired, her beauty had not faded because she nursed her skin so well just as she was skilled. You would think she lately clocked thirty while she was in her early fifties. Most of the unsatisfied men singly plodded to her and sought to have a secret affair with her, but Mama's face winced them all away. Her steadfastness made these men nickname her a beautiful monster.
Where Mama sat, a tray of rice balanced on her lap. She was blowing out the husks in rice. Then she placed the tray on a tall table behind her, where the bleating goats could not climb, and hastened to the backyard to fetch some sticks from a huge bundle of firewood. The sticks were too big to start a fire so she split them into pieces by placing the sharp edge of the cutlass on the raised foot of the stick, swatting a strong wood against the other edge of the cutlass until it was pulled to the middle of the firewood. Then, she would use her hands to drag the cutlasses firewood apart. She repeated the action until there were enough pieces of stick on the ground. She helped herself to the kitchen to build a fire in between the tripod. She measured out a lid of kerosene and sprinkled it amid the tripod where the sticks had been perfectly arranged and lit a stick of matchbox. There came a flame of fire as soon as she did that. She waited to observe the fire. As the ember was about to die out, she knelt and blew it with her breath until the ember was again full, making this pa-pa-pa-pa like a wheezed lorry. Then she placed a big pot, that contained some amount of neat water, on the fire. The pot stained her palms with soot, and the smoke from the fire raced to her eyeballs, making her eyes tearful. She sneezed and coughed. When the cough was weakened, she neatly washed the rice and poured them into the pot. Having covered the pot, she walked to the passage and sat on a bench. Her eyes were furious and bitter. She crossed her legs and sighed.
When Adigun came in later that late afternoon, he trembled like a seedling blown by great winds and felt regretful. He was conscious of the trouble that was smiling at a corner, the same trouble whose mission was to strike at him. The least he did was to helplessly lay on the ground, begging for Mama's forgiveness, from a few steps away.
But Mama neither uttered a word nor looked at him. Instead, she furtively glared at the handsome smokers who sat three buildings away. They were on the wooden, long benches outside the building because the sky was no longer pregnant with sunlight. Each man had two bottles of beer on the floor. And since the power supply was still stable across the district, the music was turned on while the men were listening and tapping their fingers on their knees and shuffling their feet on the floor in response to the sharp, tuneful music pounding from the building.
Mama wished the men were polite; she wished they had surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ like the teaching priest earlier said on the marbled altar, and she disliked the awful manners the men were drinking ale, smoking and puffing smokes of cigarettes, laughing loosely and gossiping among themselves.
In a moment, she sensed that something was burning in the kitchen, so she quickly staved off her look and hastened to scan what was on the fire. She had a taste and then confirmed that the food was well-done. She picked up a rag, subtly folded it into two and brought down the hot pot. Adigun stared at her, and he unconsciously saw tears rolling down his cheeks. It was so because he felt heartless and reproachable. He had disappointed his mother. He was certain her silence was full of grief toward him. He did not foresee her doing the cooking. It was sinful to allow elderly people to stress themselves when the young existed. At such intervals, Adigun yearned to tell Mama to get out of the kitchen for him, but he was unfit since he knew that her spirit was raging with anger. When Mama was done, she went in, leaving the door ajar for him to amble in at will.
'Ha! Adigun, why have you done this to your mother?" He blamed himself as he rose from the ground. He limped to the verandah, his feet scattering the stones and the gravels clashing in small echoes. He settled against the wall. This time around, he was no longer thinking of Aduke, but his mother. And so deep was he in his thinking when a nap sneaked into him. He did not snore because the doze was not as restful as the rest of the previous days. Mama came out minutes later to check on him. She tapped him on the shoulder. Adigun opened his eyes so wide and trembled, his own heart beating rapidly.
"Your meal is served and kept in your room. Go in and eat. Don't let ulcer catch you," Mama said to him slowly. Her action came up to Adigun like a dream. He defined the action as trying to catch a thief with good bait. But Adigun was ready to welcome the danger that might soon surface.
For a moment, he reasoned whether or not to eat now, for there was guilt in his mind. Having tasted nothing since morning, he exhausted the meal. Some familiar footsteps were drawing towards him. He half stood up and then sat down again as a hand parted the curtain of his room. It was his mother who entered with a chair in her hand.
"Adigun, It takes a lifetime to build an enduring friendship but only a moment of lying to weaken it. Lying is the talent of some people. They lie about anything and everything," Mama began as she slowly sat on the chair. Adigun twitched. The smart side of him whispered to him not to trust the gentility in Mama's voice, and to hope for the worst.
"Where did you go from the church?"
Panic blew into him and rendered him breathless. it was like when in a soccer match, a prolific scorer, having dribbled the ball past all opponents, sets himself ready for a certain goal while his supporters and his detractors alike hold their breath. To Adigun, Mama might have performed a questioning about his earlier outing and his association outside the house. yet he searched deeply through his mind for an idea with which to smartly vindicate himself like the erstwhile rat-chase case, but he was unable to think straight as the look on her face was serious like she had been fed with pieces of news.
As Adigun braced himself, a faint bang came in from the door. Mama knew it must be an enlightened mind that would have done so, the villagers were not used to knocking on the door before they leapt into another person's parlour, let alone the entrance door. She walked to the doorway and met a young man near the threshold. Mama beamed a smile. The young man, whose name was Ayo, was about twenty-eight. He slung a raven bag across his shoulder and a black pen held in his hand. He was employed barely two years earlier by a committee to visit each member every Sunday evening for the weekend contribution. Mama fell in the category of the few participants. Like all members, she contributed a note of fifty nairas, which was a huge amount of money in the early sixties. The participants were just a group of twelve. And by 1970, the population was already large.
"Excuse me, please," Mama told Ayo as she walked back into her room to get a thing. She came back only a minute later with a card that looked as red as blood. It was the record card in which the young man would place a tick each time a currency note was given to him by any member of the club.
"Thanks for coming. Stay safe," Mama said as Ayo was prepared to go.
"You are welcome, ma'am" he pulled the bicycle he parked against Mama's building down the road before he climbed up on it. He had set out to visit another member two streets away, his bicycle's bells ringing.
Adigun's heart fluttered when his mother returned to meet him in the room. He deemed it fit to open up as he thought how bad it was to be playing a hide and seek game around an old woman. He believed in the saying that you may have your secret hidden for now, but the cat would be let out of the bag someday. It was a superstition among the people. Now, Adigun was willing to stop beating around the bush, but he was not certain of how Mama would react.
"It is you I am talking to," Mama roared, her patience leaving her mind quickly. The way she spoke those words, the way she spat them out so fast, was enough to jolt Adigun to confession. And he did.
"Who is Aduke?" Mama's eyes looked surprised, scratching her thigh where a mosquito had bitten her, her nose protruding as the anger in her grew escalated, "have you been womanising around, you this boy, even on Sundays. Have you become a casanova this soon?" She stopped to tap her forehead in agitation. In a second, she resumed, "hope your penis will not disappear like Baba Ade's, the popular womaniser. You had better repent, you had better have sense and embrace your studies squarely" She blasted, rapidly sprang and took off to her room in wrath.