The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin Page A

would call me a traitor. They would eat my flesh and the blood from their lips. I think I will watch her a little longer. If fate says we will speak to each other, then one day we will.
    I have a secret. I have started weeding again. I do it when Baba Segi comes to lie with me. He doesn’t like it; he keeps clasping my hands high above my head to stop me but when he is in the throes of humping, I wiggle one arm out of his grip. I close my eyes and scrape the soil. I push aside the leaves; I prod the stem and pinch the bud. My mind goes to the meat seller so I pull slowly, very slowly. Then, quite unexpectedly, the plant is uprooted and pulsing at my fingertips. I do not open my eyes. I don’t want to see Baba Segi looking at me.

CHAPTER TEN
ROGUE
    I N THE TWO YEARS I’ve been living in Baba Segi’s house, he has never apologized for his mistakes. He makes peace his own way and it involves tattered brown envelopes bursting with fifty-naira notes, thrust beneath doors at dawn. I’d been ruffled by the red-thread incident and I could think of no better way to calm myself than to spend the day at Dugbe market. I walked the length of Dugbe market, then decided to visit the bric-a-brac stall around lunchtime. My intention was to buy something really ostentatious like a copper plate but when I got there, I found neither bell nor bell ringer.
    “You better keep walking,” a woman who stood with her back to me warned. “The police might be watching from afar to see who comes looking for him. Keep walking. We are talking about stolen property, you know?” The woman was unpacking cheap aluminum pans and cutting up card-board boxes with a giant pair of tailor’s scissors; she didn’t turn round to face me.
    I wondered if she was addressing someone else. “Sorry to disturb you but I am looking for the man who sells imported tableware.”
    “Move closer to my stall. Didn’t you hear me? He has been arrested. Yesterday, a rich man came to buy some plates. When he got to your friend’s stall, he immediately called the police. It turns out some of the plates on sale were his very own. Within minutes, your dish seller and his stolen wares were bundled behind the counter at the police station.”
    “You mean all the crockery was stolen? But he said they were imported by Italian merchants!”
    “Italian merchants?” The woman burst into laughter. She clutched her enormous breasts before doubling herself over, as if she feared gravity would lug them off her chest. When she sat up straight, there were tears streaming down her face. “My sister, you make me laugh! Did you expect him to say he got the plates from so and so’s house? Or maybe you expected him to give you the address they were stolen from. My dear, he confessed within minutes; he didn’t even wait for the sergeant’s third slap. Sister, the sun is high. Go your way. You are blocking my stall. Unless of course you want to buy pots. Mind you, these ones are made in Nigeria.”
    “No, thank you.” I shuffled along with the ebb of evening buyers. I felt like a stupid fool, but more than that I felt like an accomplice.
    I rushed home as soon as I could, wondering what to do with the bowls. Apart from the fact that their splendor now seemed iniquitous, they were evidence, stolen goods, and I knew I had to dispose of them.
    The bats were on their daily pilgrimage; the sky was awash with them. As a child, I’d always marveled at their fluidity, how, like dirty water, they poured onto the graying sky in organized chaos: a chosen few dropping to the flanks, floating awhile before rejoining the rest of the cloud.
    “Why do bats travel at dusk?” I once asked Mama.
    “Because they are witch birds. Witches fly at dusk.”
    This was not a satisfying answer for a nine-year-old. “But how can a bat be a witch?”
    “Because they hang upside down. If you hang upside down what will happen to you?”
    “Would I die?” I asked. The good beans dropped through my fingers