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

into the bad beans pile.
    “Of course you would. But they wouldn’t. They can sleep upside down because they have evil powers. Stop talking and sort the beans, Bolanle. We have to finish quickly. The landlord’s wife wants us to grind them as well.” She whispered, “It’s her husband’s birthday party tomorrow.”
    “Can we go? I want to see the cake. Lara found some in a plastic bag last year.”
    “Did she eat it?” Mama’s hands stopped moving and crept to her waist. Her jaw stopped too, which was a bad sign because she never completely swallowed her bitter kola. She always swirled a diminishing nugget around her mouth.
    “No. Yes.” I knew I’d said too much. Mama forbade us from scavenging.
    “Will you children never learn?” Mama turned to her left and then her right as if she was addressing an invisible audience. “Look at me sitting here sorting beans! Do you think I don’t have better things to do? I agreed to pick these stupid beans to secure the roof over your head, so Madam will not tell her husband that I am unhelpful, so her children will not see my children carrying their belongings out on their heads like wretches after they’ve served us a notice.”
    “I know, Mama.”
    She wasn’t finished. She tucked her hair into the black hairnet and pulled her right earlobe in my direction to indicate that I should open my ears to their full capacity. “I don’t want to see you going there begging for food. If your father wants to go there, lick their bottoms and beg for beer, let him. I am not bringing my children up to be beggars. I am working myself to death because I want you and that glutton sister of yours to own houses and cars. I am bringing you up to be able-bodied women who will fight for prosperity and win. No one enjoys success if they do not work hard for it.”
    “I hear you, Mama.”
    She still wasn’t finished. “Will the taste of cake improve your lot in life? Is it nourishing?” Mama also asked ridiculous rhetorical questions when she was annoyed. The problem was that they required contrite monosyllabic answers.
    Mama lifted her hips off the stool. I knew there was more trouble to come from the look on her face. Her features hadbecome pinched and distorted with anger. “Let me go and find that Lara. She will hear it from me today. Why must she follow her long throat wherever it beckons? And was she not supposed to help us sort these stupid beans? Where is she now? Lara! Omolara!” she bellowed.
    A few moments later, I heard Lara screaming. Mama had yanked her from the mattress she was curled up on, pulled her outside by her ear, all the time slapping her over her head. A slap for every syllable. “You are a la-zy girl. Who will mar-ry a glut-ton like you? Why is it al-ways you? Why can’t you be like your sis-ter?”
    Through tears, she glared at me, her large seven-year-old eyes full of malice. I could only stare back; my eyes were also brimming with tears. Lara did not speak to me for three weeks. When I entered a room, she walked out. When we were forced to sit together, she made sure our legs didn’t brush against each other. It took six balls of akara to appease her. And even then, when I handed them to her, she just wolfed them down without saying so much as thank you.
    As soon as I got home, I ran to my bedroom and pulled on a pair of worn jeans. I forced my arm under my bed and pulled out an old cardboard box. Then, one by one, I knelt before my stack of crockery and crushed them against each other. The Long Honeymoon tried to flee my fingers when I groped under the bed for it; I threw it in the box. I gathered all the mementos I’d kept over the years: the single earring that Segun, the landlord’s son, had given me when I turned eighteen. Just wear it like a pendant, he said. In went the hairpieceBaba Segi said looked like a horse’s tail. All the love letters I’d written to myself were the sort I’d have liked to receive. I tore up every one and