Chapter Eight
" You said the place is not far? They won't know me?" she asked.
"It is in Ijegun. We will just drive in. The Baba is almost blind self, and with this appearance who will know you? Have you been a social person?" Mama Sara said with a wide smile that lingered till she spoke.
"Okay, let's go."
She kicked the engine.
"The traffic is unusual…a Saturday!…well, many weddings taking place today."
"By an hour we could be there. By google, it's 123 km." she said, and pressing the pedal, she asked, " How did you know the place?"
"...been a long time," Mama Sara told her." We went there to find out something."
"Something that has no name?"
"It has but…am somebody who keeps an Oath. I promised the person my yes is my yes."
She was mute. Her lips tightened as she thought about her claim, about the affair she is starting with her mum's neighbor's child, Jackson, and whether to tell her or not to tell her.
" If I tell her, will she keep the secret as well? And why tell her?"
She conflicted in herself, fearing the saying that one's best friend could be her worst enemy tomorrow.
" Lati, sshh...this is a crucial affair, to be hidden in the third layer of the earth." she cautioned herself.
If there is a place far and dark known as the third layer of the earth, that is where this affair will be kept
Five past 10 am, she drove into the compound Mama Sara directed her to.
"Are you feeling somehow?" Mama Sara sensing the feeling on her face inquired.
"...sort of," she said.
" Is it not to come and get an answer and go?... and you'll see!"
It was a low-looking house deprived of any beauty they were to enter.
Her chain of teeth tightened as they lowered their height going in.
Inside, it was just a single room with a seer's insignia here and there. The walls were unplastered as with the outside.
The Baba in his seventies, with veins that drew maps on both sides of his face, threw cowries across the floor and interpreted the permutation as the seven cowries ran apart.
He smiled in his cheeks and shook his head.
"See your husband… see him with another woman," he said, pointing at two cowries coupled together.
"What did you do to him…?" he inquired from his deity.
He picked five cowries from the seven and cast them across the floor again.
He mumbled a sound of understanding and cleared his throat, knowing the meaning in the cowries positions." Nothing wrong with you." he announced as he looked up at Queen Lati. " You'll get a child," he gestured with a wave at a single cowry and another of less size, aloof.
Queen Lati prodded Mama Sara to ask him the question.
"Baba," Mama Sara asked," The husband does not near her…how will she get pregnant?"
" See her with a child…see..."
He re-cast the cowries, and the two cowries still ran apart and came together.
"Baba, I have no doubt, I have been here before."
The Baba though, he could not recall, seeing Mama Sara, assured them what he saw was like a gathering storm. The rain must come down after inducing fear.
"Mummy, did you understand anything?" asked Queen Lati.
"Your Highness, I think what he said was clear. You fear that King does not near you but now that we are certain nothing is wrong, it is time to pocket him when we get back and not nearing you'll be a thing of the past."
* * *
"Just send to my Whatsapp your picture and his," demanded Mama Sara.
"Hope the person won't know him?"
"Your Highness, don't worry, she is a very old woman. She'll pocket him for you."
"I know about them on Facebook."
"Some of those are fakes. You will be happy with this!" spoke Mama Sara, giving her assurance.
She took her baby and threw him up as she sent her picture and King's to Mama Sara's Whatsapp.
" Baby baby me, who will be the dad of the coming sibling?...huh? Tell me."
She danced around carrying him and stuffed his mouth with cake in the kitchen,"…the shepherd said I should treat you nicely like a real child. Hope I'm trying, huh?" she asked him, kissed him, laid him on the bed at the corner, and thought of what the Baba said.
He saw her with a child.
"Lati" she punched her fist, asking by who, by King or Jackson? " Lati, if I would know whom it is, I'll just hold him tight, come rain come shine. But I pray it will be King otherwise, hehe-hey," she laughed her laughter…yes, I'll shift the baby to King, period !"
* * *
"I am going to test him."
She went up to the five-bedroom apartment and King was indoors.
"Lati, I don't believe in all these, but a trial may convince me as sellers do say.
"King, how about the paternity of Abigail?" she was still after her question.
It was a crucial question. She was the one given the mandate. She knows where it is paining her.
Two years plus, no pregnancy, and the first Queen has only one daughter.
She looked hard at him.
" Lati, was it the wrong question?" she doubted herself.
"What are you instigating?" she asked herself.
"Yes?...as they don't want me to give them the child, don't blame me for any question I asked…they gave me a mandate and are bringing wives to my matrimonial home without waiting for the mandate to expire.
"King, tell me the paternity of Princess Abigail." She tested him with a half command.
Mama Sara told her not to fear, he will be like clay in her hand, but she has to start slowly.
" Listen because we are one flesh," King revealed what he had never revealed in his life. "Princess was in her mother when we married."
"King tell me the truth if you love me." She would have prickled her ears for what she heard but she held herself.
"Don't tell it even to your friend, Ruth."
"I won't." She was ready to swear anything, even knowing she will never keep to her Oath.
And who was Ruth? They were three, himself, Princess Yemi, and the last born, Ruth.
She and Princess were like dogs and cats while growing up. Even though she got married, she never agrees with her.
* * *
Back to her apartment, she shook her fist for being foolish and hasty."How did he marry the first Queen with a child in her?...these were questions I ought to have asked him, O Lord!" she cried.
She listened to the record again and forwarded it to Elder Mary.
She was the only one in the meeting when they reached the mandate that did not speak badly of her.
"Well, tomorrow, I will be commanding him," she said and went to the window and hung like a lioness gazing at a deer in the field.
"I'll buy him a phone," she said.
She signaled to him and he came in through the kitchen door.
"Baba wasn't specific. And Lati cannot be specific but my target remains my target…give King a child, an heir, whether he is the father or not. "Yes, Lati, I am justified, to prove to them that I am not infertile."
She uncorked a pomade and gave the bottle to Jackson.
"Massage me all over with it," she said. " Start from the toes."
She fell back on the bed, oozing air from a half-open mouth.
"Lati…Lati…grab him?
She panicked and her legs trembled and Jackson wondered why.
He resumed the good work he was doing, rubbing the ointment and massaging the toes hard, so the ointment will enter into the marrow.
"Remove my pant? God forbid…nearly can't kill a bird!"
She freed her leg, panting like an escapee from a carnivorous animal.
She is still going to meet King but Jackson features prominently in her calculation because he has the potential to impregnate her.
But hasn't it taken her so long to toast Jackson?
Or other things may disrupt her move?