Illustration by Adejonwo Kizito.
“You know my mom almost aborted me,” Love said out of the blues.
They had been driving for about twenty minutes in complete silence.
“Did I ever tell you that story?” She turned in her seat to face Ola.
“No,” he said.
“After five girls, she hoped the sixth would be a boy, but it was me. She told the doctor she wanted an abortion. But you know how abortion is illegal.” She made air quotes. “The doctor referred her to another but she got scared and told my dad who convinced her that a child is a child, boy or girl.” Her voice turned fierce as she spat, “You know what? It’s stupid how people insist on having sons, like boys are so special. We are all girls in my family and my sisters are some of the smartest people I know. We have two doctors, an engineer, a pharmacist, and a lawyer slash business woman. They are all successful. And then there’s me.” She flashed a huge grin. “I bet you when I do all my shit my mom wished she had that abortion.”
Ola smiled. He thought of his own mother, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. She would be so disappointed if she ever found out. “Ah Ola, you should have known better,” she would say, maybe even start crying.
“I’m such a disappointment to my mom,” Love was saying.
She sounded really deflated. It had been this way in the last two days: bursts of wry humour then tears and more tears. Ola glanced at her. She was looking out of the window. She wiped her left cheek with the back of her hand.
She whimpered, “My mom is always like, ‘Oh this child! You are so much trouble. You won’t kill me.’” She put her hands to her face as if to hide her despair, “I don’t want to be a disappointment, I swear.”
He felt the weight of her pain in his chest. Careful to keep an eye on the road, he reached out a hand and rubbed her knee. “You are not a disappointment. She loves you.”
Ola knew that much. Her mom called her every day and although they sometimes fought like rivals, he was certain they were both fond of each other.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell her…?” he started to say, but Love shook her head vigorously.
They were almost at the Sagamu turn-off from the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, but they were not going to Sagamu. They were going to Lagos and would drive straight on. Ola anticipated traffic at Berger. Thank God, it was not the last Friday of the month because if they had to get stuck at the Redeemed Camp, no thanks to the monthly revival or whatever, he would just die of depression.
She was staring out of the window again, watching the trees whip by. Her tears had ceased, it seemed. He started to squeeze her shoulder but she grabbed his hand and threw it off. He returned it to the steering wheel.
“So how did you find out?” he asked, determined to overlook whatever animosity she apparently was determined to throw at him.
“Find out what?”
“You know, that your mother wanted to…” He gestured with his right hand and gave her a look, choosing instead to say with his eyes what his lips found too heavy to blurt out.
Settling sideways in her seat, her back almost to the door, she fixed him with a knowing smile that was more sneer than harmless amusement.
“What?”
She shook her head, her lips spreading further into an evil smirk. Ola did not care. He was not going to say it.
Finally looking away from him, she said, in a flat, almost boring tone, “We were at this woman’s house to book a cake for my tenth birthday and maybe she thought I wouldn’t understand, but she said it right there in front of me.”
“Are you sure that was what she was talking about, or even referring to you?”
Love shrugged. She feigned a yawn and then started to fiddle with the radio. Since they were blazing through the expressway, most of what came out of the speaker was static which grated on Ola. He prayed for calm and that she would leave the radio alone.
As if in answer to his prayer, she snapped off the radio and slammed herself back into her seat. “Do you know what I hate most about being pregnant?”
“No.”
“The headache.The constant, horrible headache. There is no break except when I’m asleep and two seconds after I wake up. Those two seconds are like heaven; I tell myself, ‘Thank God, no headache,’ and then, boom! It’s back! With what feels like a boulder at the back of my throat. No matter how much I swallow, no matter how much I heave, that part of my throat stays blocked forever.” She threw her hands up in the air as if in frustration.
“We could always ask the doctor what you should take to make it stop.”
He felt her glare burn into the side of his face.
Undeterred, he continued, repeating for the hundredth time what he had been saying to her since she came to his dormitory yesterday evening and informed him not only of the pregnancy but also of her unwavering decision. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”
“No, I don’t have to. I want to. Imagine if I went home and told my mother I was pregnant.” She was using that voice he hated: the one that said, “You’re dumb, and I know because I’m way smarter than you.” It was this part of her that really annoyed him, and he had called her out on it many times. She never apologised for it though. “I’m who, I am. I’m smarter than most people. Take it or leave it, I won’t be bent or broken.” But it was also a part of her that he loved: the fact that they could have conversations or debates around contemporary social issues and veer into the philosophical or theoretical. He did not have to explain every nuanced ideology to her unlike with his past girlfriends.
“Remember how many JAMB exams it took before I gained admission into school?” she asked him.
“That’s because your parents wanted you to study Law, which you ended up not studying anyway.”
“Yeah… Isn’t it ironic? All that time wasted only to end up in a department none of us even knew existed.” She chuckled. “I remember my mom’s face when I informed her right before my first JAMB that I wished to study English at the university. ‘Is English even a course?’ she had sneered, Well, I guess after four years writing JAMB exams, she had to settle for Communication Language Arts. At least, that one made sense to her.”
“Seriously, you should stop worrying about your mother so much. She has so many good children; you can afford to be bad.” His ambitious attempt at a joke fell flat between them. He pulled his eyes away from her stern face and focused instead on the rugged road in front of them. “Anyway,” he persisted, “you are not exactly a disappointment. You are the top of your class and that is a good thing.”
“Exactly,” she cried, striking the dashboard with an open palm. “Since I got pregnant, it’s been difficult concentrating. Imagine if I carried this baby to full term…”
Ola flinched as Love suddenly threw herself back in her seat, thumping her head repeatedly against the headrest. She flung her head from side to side, striking her thighs with her fists.
“I have to come out with a first class. It’s just not possible not to.”
He clamped onto the steering wheel with both hands, fighting hard to ignore her tantrum. In that moment, he felt fragile enough to fall apart. A part of him feared, however, that instead of falling apart, he might just explode and shatter into a thousand pieces that would cut both of them really deeply, deep enough to destroy whatever hold on sanity she still had.
Confronted by his resolute stoic, she was soon reduced to huge heaves which he thought were pretty much overdone. Still, Ola concentrated on steering them safely to Lagos.
They were just passing the Redeemed Camp when, against his better instincts and in spite of the sustained calm in the car, he decided to try one more time to talk her out of what he was still convinced would be the biggest mistake of both their lives.
“What if you never get pregnant again?”
“You know Louisa, Sandra’s friend?” The sharp, condescending tone was back. “She has had eight abortions. Eight.”
“One didn’t solve the problem?”
She held her throat and made to throw up. Ola stilled, and almost immediately felt shame at the instinctive disgust that filled him at the thought of her vomiting in the car. He waited but it was apparently a false alarm.
Love struck her tummy. “I hate this!”
Alarmed, Ola put out a hand to protect her belly. “Hey.”
She knocked his hand away. “Focus on your driving. I want the baby to die, not me.”
He felt the bile rush up to the back of his throat, and for a brief instant was tempted to slam on the brakes and get it all over with –him, her, the baby. He pictured the Toyota spinning out of control, then somersaulting and crashing into the concrete divider.
His nose flared, and he counted to ten before asking, “What if we got married?”
“You have asked before and I said no,” she snapped, before mumbling under her breath, “It’s bad enough we are dating right now; you are a distraction as it is.”
But he heard her. And he forgave her immediately. It was her “condition” speaking, he told himself. Ola fought desperately to convince himself that all of her erratic behaviour so far was stemmed from her pregnancy and the dilemma it posed to her. He tried to muster his most convincing tone. “We can do it. We both will be through with school this year.”
“You are not the one having the headaches so it’s easy for you to say,” she grumped. “I can’t afford to fail.”
“What if you deferred your admission for one year?”
“Easy for you to say, Anyway, the session has started.”
“What about second semester? You could defer it, have the baby and come back and get your first class. You are that good.”
“No, I can’t wait. I want to be through with school this year. What if there is another ASUU lecturers’ strike? I have already spent five years studying a four-year course; I don’t want to make it six.”
“And I have spent seven years on a five-year engineering course. What does it matter?”
“Time. It’s slipping away.”
“You know it’s not about the time that passes because time will pass anyway. It’s about what you do with it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to spend this time being pregnant.”
Yesterday, they had argued over who had the right to say what should be done with the baby. She had won that fight. It was her body; she would do it anyway, with or without him, she had said. Ola had conceded, even proffering a good doctor he knew. Somewhere in his head, he had hoped to convince her to keep the child in the course of their trip to Lagos. There was still time enough; they had just gotten to Berger.
Love burst into another round of lament. “My mother will kill me.” She put her hands atop her head and swayed from side to side. “Not with her hands, but with her words. ‘You! Always you!’” She wagged a finger, imitating her mother.
“Did I tell you how I lost my virginity?”
The abrupt question threw Ola for a few seconds. He gaped and huhn-ed before responding stiltedly, “Yes, your mother caught you with the boy in your bedroom, blood on the bed. She reported you to the priest.” He snapped, “One day, you should just say, ‘Screw you’ to your mother. This is the woman that almost aborted you. Then, she reported you to a priest for losing your virginity. Did she report herself for attempted murder?”
Love’s laughter was shrill but welcoming considering the high tension Ola had been operating under all day. He allowed himself a tentative smile, making sure to beam it in her direction. At least right now, she sounded like her usual pre-pregnancy self again.
“You know the truth?” Love asked, her voice light. “It’s not really about my mother. It’s about me. I want to be perfect… Like my sisters.”
Ola caught her eyes. “Abortion is not one of the bus stops on the road to perfection.”
“Neither is fornication, I know. Do you know what our problem is? We are too Catholic. All this guilt.”
Maybe because it was around one in the afternoon, there was no traffic at Berger. They breezed through, but got unlucky at Ojota as Ola turned into Kudirat Abiola Way. There was the usual gridlock caused by the commercial buses going in and out of the bus park.
“You are sure this guy is good?” Love asked, “I still want to have children.”
“It’s Bayonle’s brother.”
“How did you find out about him? Have you ever used him?”
“The boys use him.”
“Even Bayonle?” She was shocked. “I wonder how it feels aborting your own nephew or niece.”
“Well, if you believe a child is not a child until it’s born, I guess it’s pretty easy.” “I don’t think that’s the argument. I think it is, ‘The foetus is just a bunch of cells until it is nine weeks or thereabouts.’ That is why I want to do it now. Next week will make it six weeks.”
“How can you be so sure? We have been at it since we resumed. It could be ten weeks or twelve. Isn’t there like a time limit?”
“I hate this headache.”
She had been doing that all day, evading his questions. There was another bout of traffic just before Allen. Ola manoeuvred the car to the shoulder of the road, where he parked. He turned in his seat and grasped both her hands.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded, willing her to hear the sincerity in his voice. “Let’s not do this. There are many reasons not to do this. What if something horrible happens to you? Are you seriously considering this because of a first class?”
“What if the child becomes a burden to me?” she said. “What if we break up and I’m stuck with her or him? What if I defer a semester and then I never go back? What if the child is born with some disease and then my mother rejects me and then we break up and I’m all alone? What if it has sickle cell disease? What if it’s born deformed?”
She had been sounding more and more like her up till now so he laughed at her last statement. It was her wont to be contrary for the sake of being contrary, and he had learnt to accept it as part of her playful side. “You know I am AA. That can’t happen even if you are SS. And about being deformed…”
But there was no humour in her eyes which held his steadily. They were wide with terror and as he watched, they filled with tears. She let her head drop even as she shook it from side to side, as if fighting to keep her emotions in check. Her hands were squeezing his so tightly that he felt she might just dislocate a joint.
“What is it?” he asked, a chilly sensation spreading from the top of his spine and down his back as she spoke
“I tried aborting it on my own before coming to you.”
“And…”
“You know Uzo?”
Uzo was a thug in her class. Ola knew for a fact that he was the head of one of the student cults on campus. He had never understood why Love was friends with him.
“Uzo suggested drinking hot gin. Then he said I should boil Guinness and drink. Then he suggested pouring lime juice in my vagina. Later, he gave me some abortion pills.”
Ola tried pulling his hands out of hers but she held on, forcing them into an awkward struggle.
“And why was Uzo suggesting all of these to you?” he demanded. “How come you told him about the pregnancy before you told me?”
With more effort he finally managed to snatch his hands away from her. Still, she reached out for him, tears flowing freely down her face.
“Please,” she begged in a choked whisper.
For a long moment, he regarded her with unbridled disgust. Then, he saw himself shoving her against the passenger door before leaning across her to open it. He unbuckled her seat belt and tried to push her out but she fought him. He got down and went over to her side. She had shut the door again, and locked it. He pulled at the door handle, banging against the rolled up glass. He did not care that he was causing a scene. People were gathering as she screamed and begged him…
With a deep inhale and a forceful exhale, Ola pulled out of the violent thoughts that engulfed his brain.
They were still in the car on the side of the road. Love was weeping noisily beside him, doubled over in her seat with her hands hiding her face. Despite the AC, she was sweating all over. He watched the drops of sweat around her hairline, on her temple, merge into each other and slide down the side of her face.
He started the car, and as he pulled into the now moving traffic, he said, “I get it now. I’d want an abortion too if I were having Uzo’s child.” He snorted. “The guy could not even afford to get you a proper one though. Boil Guinness!”
Love continued to cry into her hands.
Ola drove to Bayonle’s brother’s hospital which was just off Obafemi Awolowo Way. He drove in, parked the car and turned it off.
“I didn’t say it was Uzo’s,” he heard Love mumble. Her crying had eased to intermittent sniffling but she remained hunched over, her arms across her chest like she was hugging herself.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ola said, opening the car door. “Look at it this way. Now you can get that first class. No more distractions.”
Onyinye Muomah is a writer and media content producer based in Abuja. She is an alumni of the Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing workshop. Follow her on Instagram @theonyim
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