We Have Chosen for You

1.

Present Day

            On my wedding day, my skin twitches as my fiancé’s hands encircle mine. I superimpose another man’s hands over his. Pastor Jide, the officiating minister, bellows, “If anyone has any objection to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace!” I am gradually becoming a master at superimposing another man’s image over the man standing across from me. Superimposition is the technique that made the month leading up to our wedding bearable.

My fiancé’s grip loosens slightly as Pastor Jide bellows again at the congregation, “If anyone has any objection to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace!”

Eyes scan the room as if waiting for someone to emerge. A side-chick, perhaps. My fiancé has many of them.Or so I heard, over the years while I was in the comfort of my apartment in Philadelphia, listening to my younger sister brief me on his unending league of women over the phone. An indirect warning of what was to come. In Nollywood movies, this is the part of the script where one of these women would emerge.

Pastor Jide repeats his question for the third time as if giving me another chance to save myself. There is momentary silence as eyes scan the room again. Time is ticking, and my breasts aren’t the only part of me that feels suffocated. My throat is tight, fear thick in my belly as the reality of what I’m getting into further dawns on me.

Flashes of unending women. Days of slaving away to meet my fiancé’s needs while he carries on with his reckless ways. Long nights of pining for another man while my fiancé’s hands canvass my body. Months of enduring his occasional outbursts of anger. Years of unhappiness. Pastor Jide is on the verge of moving on. I expel a flurry of words, startling him and the rest of the church.

“Me, sir! Me!” I shout in a tone that doesn’t sound like mine. My hands are free from my fiancé’s.

Eyes stare at me in confusion. Pastor Jide’s glasses slide down the bridge of his shiny nose as he steps closer to me, seeking clarification.

“Moji, what is it?” he asks.

“I object to this marriage,” I repeat firmly.

“Moji, are you okay?” asks my fiancé, reaching for me. Spots of red dot the white of his eyes. His anger is under tight wraps, absent for the congregation to see.

I ignore him and turn to the front pew where my parents and his are seated. Adorned in exquisite, purple, Ankara material. “The most expensive,” my mother-in-law-to-be had said two months ago, dismissing my mother’s choice of an alternative fabric. Now, a deep frown mars her face while her husband, seated beside her, erupts loud, guttural sounds of shock.

My mother is approaching me, her movements frantic and her expression troubled. My father remains seated. His hands cover his face in shame. Amina, my chief bridesmaid is at my side asking what’s wrong. Her perfume makes my throat clench. My dress feels tighter, and my scalp itchy beneath my wig. The urge to yank off the wavy Brazilian hair that cascades down my back and shoulders is strong. Anger rises from its pit as my fiancé’s mother’s rhetorical question earlier that day comes back to me. “I hope you’re not planning to wear your natural hair out on your wedding day?”

I need space. Air. Freedom. I push past Amina, past my mother, past the rest of the congregation, and run out of the church. Once outside, I wrench the wig off my head then reach behind me to pull at my zipper, ignoring the stares of hawkers and photographers waiting for the congregation to disperse. I take deep breaths, basking in the weightlessness that now envelopes my body.

2.

I learned from my mother to look for signs. Although I trusted my gut in some cases, the signs were more convincing. When it rained the night of my grandmother’s burial, thirteen years ago, my mother thought it a sign that she grieved leaving us. When my older brother died from complications from AIDS, my mother lamented that his habit of truancy during his secondary school days had been a sign, an early warning of the promiscuous behaviour that would lead to his demise.

Like my mother, I searched for signs; in my phone calls with my sister and during the sparse FaceTime video calls with my husband-to-be, analyzing his dismissive sentences and blatant arrogance. I looked for them when he flew from Nigeria and showed up at my doorstep in Philadelphia, holding a 30-carat ring.

The signs were there, but I pushed them to the back of my mind. I scoured the cosmetics shelves of one of the duty-free shops at the Dubai International Airport, trying to figure out the right shade of foundation that would match my younger sister’s ebony skin. My limbs were weary from the ten-hour flight and my head ached.

I had just made up my mind on the shade when the bell rang. A man in a striped shirt and white face cap walked purposefully towards the perfume aisle. I dropped the foundation, a 360 Maybelline, on the shelf and scrubbed at my eyes. Perhaps, my weariness had diminished my eyesight, and I could no longer see clearly.

The man canvassed the aisle before he made a choice. I took tentative steps away from the cosmetics aisle, watching him closely. The heat in the shop must have gotten to him because he pulled off his face cap, revealing the entirety of his face. I stopped when he tilted his body in my direction, searching for another item.

A bear-like beard shadowed his jaw and obscured his lips. I shifted my eyes from his beard to his head, expecting to see yellowish-brown dreadlocks because once upon a time, he used to have them; long locks that wrestled furiously with the wind as we ran after the university shuttle. His face was familiar.

I followed him as he headed towards the cashier, my heart racing. I tried to speak. I was still in shock.

“Ifeanyi.” A name I hadn’t said in years should have felt foreign in my mouth, but it didn’t. He turned sharply, surprised. His beard parted slightly, revealing his lips.

 “Moji,” he uttered.

We stood, transfixed in that moment, neither of us sure what to do next. I never imagined that I would run into my first love during a layover, my wedding only a month away.

3.

When you haven’t seen someone in five years, you become aware of minor changes in them. Often, it’s their physique, but you are also conscious of other things, their demeanor, and their words, for example. Apart from Ifeanyi’s severed ties with his dreadlocks, it seemed like the years had lessened his volubility. I also noticed that his eyes now carried a conspicuous weight.

I wondered if I was responsible for the weight in his eyes as the shuttle transported us from the airport to Copthorne Airport Hotel where we would be staying. We were both headed to Nigeria. Me for my wedding. Him for – well, I hadn’t asked what the purpose of his trip was.

Ifeanyi and I had met at an interest meeting organized by the African Students’ Association at our college. He had been at the entrance that day, in charge of convincing new students to join the club. He was chosen for this task because he was a persuasion expert. His voice, a deep timbre, was all I needed to sign up, and though he couldn’t quite say my name right in his American accent, I thought he was easy on the eyes.

“You mean you and Amina are still very close?” Ifeanyi asked when Amina, one of my best friends, came up in our conversation which was peppered with recollections of old friends and our college days. We teased our way around the frays and edges of the subjects that could dredge up the pain, neither of us pushing too far as we selectively reminisced about the things that drew laughter alone.

“Yes,” I replied, “she got a job in Philly after we graduated. I did as well, so it was easy to keep in touch.”

I didn’t mention that Amina was my chief bridesmaid, and she would be in Nigeria in two weeks. I hadn’t mentioned my forthcoming wedding. He nodded.  The shuttle came to an abrupt stop in front of our hotel. He looked at me as if analyzing my features, placing them next to the girl he used to know intimately.

The movements of passengers exiting the shuttle disrupted the moment. From a distance, I watched Ifeanyi hoist our luggage from the trunk onto his shoulders. The aroma of freshly cooked food swirled around us as we walked into the reception where a long line had formed at the front desk. We stood behind an elderly couple, waiting our turn.

“So…what do you do?” I asked. A grin broke across his face at my question.

“What do you think I do?” he inquired, the lines around his mouth crinkling in that playful way of his.

His question wasn’t a difficult one. Working for the UN had been one of his goals. It was one of the first things we talked about when we took a class on the HIV/AIDS pandemic during my freshman year. His passion for social and medical justice was palpable, and when he spoke fervently about his interests, it stoked a fire in me.

“You work for the UN,” I replied.

“Yes. I currently work at the headquarters in New York,” he said. “I’ve been there for about two years.”

Although I was pleased with this news, knowing that he had been about an hour away from me all these years unsettled me. I wanted to ask why he had left school so suddenly without informing me. Back then, it hurt that I had been the last to know about his transfer to another college. A mutual friend of ours told me that Ifeanyi had done it to be closer to his family.

 I wondered if thoughts of me had ever crossed his mind and if he had attempted to contact me in the past. Was it my place to ask him the questions in my head? After all, I was the one that severed our relationship on a crowded train platform at the 40^th street station. The same train we rode three times a week during our time as volunteers at Philadelphia FIGHT.

Our friendship had been forged and built during those train rides. Our relationship began here too. It was ironic that our love had ended right where it started, amidst the heat of sweaty bodies exhausted from the day’s activities. The line surged forward, and we moved to the spot the elderly couple had been.

“What about you? You’re getting your Ph.D.?” Ifeanyi asked, cocking his head to look at me.

He must have assumed that, like him, I had seen my goal through. I thought of the deferral request I had sent to the departmental head of the Community Health and Prevention doctorate program at Temple University six months ago. I had gotten an acceptance email a week before my fiancé’s surprise visit. I sent the deferral request a month later.

“N-no. Not at the moment.”

My answer must have been tinted with regret because something that looked like pity settled across Ifeanyi’s eyes. It unnerved me, so I quickly added, “But I’ve been working for this non-profit in Philly. Great place. Great people.”

I turned away from him then so that I wouldn’t give more away. I couldn’t tell him that I had given something up, yet again, for a man I barely knew, that I had given something up, yet again, for my family.

4.

For years, my father worked as a driver, chauffeuring the Big Men³ of Lagos. He lived off tips from them and my mother, a trader at Ado Market, brought in a meager income that sometimes compensated for the little my father made from his work.

On rare occasions, wishes and hopes were their staples, and they allowed themselves to escape to another world where their options were infinite. They looked at my siblings and me with hope, envisioning the presidents and doctors and engineers we would become and waiting for us to release them from their suffering.

It was a responsibility I never imagined would take away my ability to choose. Perhaps, if I had known this, I wouldn’t have burdened them with my longing to travel outside of Nigeria for college. But to them, it had been an opening, a chance for them to escape from their suffering. What could be more groundbreaking than a daughter who schooled abroad? A daughter who brought in dollars upon dollars? Of course, I learned, years later, that the American Dream itself was a myth.

My parents had seen renewed hope in me. My brother had temporarily crushed their dreams, his death a glaring reminder of the unfortunate consequence of not having the luxury of choice. With not enough money to pay for antiretroviral medication, they had been forced to part with him, watched as he took his last breath on a bare mattress at LUTH⁴ after weeks of scrambling to find a bed for him.

It was then I also made a vow to break away from the absence of choice, to disentangle myself from its hold. I had thought of schooling abroad as my escape, but it came at a price disguised in the form of a full scholarship from an anonymous donor known only to my parents. At the time, I didn’t think much of the donor. I could already see myself on the plane, bound for my future, without suffering and worry. 

5.

            I found out about my fiancé while on a WhatsApp video call with my mother during my sophomore year of college. It was one of those days when the wintery weather resurrected feelings of homesickness, and I reached for my phone, yearning for home.

A week before that, Ifeanyi had met my mother via WhatsApp. It was an unplanned introduction that resulted in a minor quarrel between Ifeanyi and me at the cafeteria. I had kept our six-month-old relationship away from my parents, not wanting to give them the impression that I wasn’t focusing on school. Ifeanyi thought I overreacted. 

            “He’s just a friend, Maami⁵,” I lied when my mother asked why Ifeanyi had kissed me on my cheek, her face a mass of wrinkled concern and disappointment.

            “Ah. A ‘friend’ doesn’t kiss somebody like that o,” she insisted, her eyes shooting lasers into mine through the phone. We moved on to other subjects, but I could tell she was still upset about the incident. For a week, she didn’t answer my calls and texts. When she eventually responded, she was cold on the phone.

            “Moji, you can’t date that boy o⁶,” she said abruptly.

I scrambled to find another lie, unprepared for her statement.

            “A ti m’oko fun e⁷,” she said in Yoruba as if the language switch might better convey her words and minimize their impact on me.

            “Oko⁸?” I repeated. The word felt bitter and uncomfortable in my mouth.

            “Beeni⁹. Chief Ade’s son,” she answered, compelling me to recall our Local Government Chairman. A rich, heavy-set man who had visited our house six months before my departure.

What followed during the video call were outbursts of anger and feeble attempts from my mother to pacify me, assuring me that Chief Ade’s son was a good man and that he would take care of me. I remembered the day Chief Ade visited. My parents’ hushed tones and their occasional glances in my direction as they talked with him in the living room.

I hadn’t thought much of Chief Ade’s visit, but it warmed my parents’ hearts because he was a respected man in our city, and they regarded his visit as an honor, a harbinger of good things to come.

I negotiated with my parents. My mother first, then my father because he would be harder to convince. I told them I would earn enough to repay the money they owed as soon as I finished school, but they insisted they couldn’t break their promise, and that their reputation was at stake.

 I blamed them, and then I blamed myself when guilt took over. They only wanted my dreams to come true. And theirs as well. Still, I negotiated till my father visited Chief Ade at his residence and told him that he and my mother had changed their minds.

6.

            During dinner, I struggled to eat the orange-colored rice I had served myself at the buffet.  I and other Nigerians, international students had referred to the rice served to us in small portions during our college days as orange-colored rice, because it lacked the tastiness of jollof rice. Ifeanyi and I had come down for dinner shortly after placing our luggage in our respective rooms. On our way down, we did as we had done on the shuttle, taking turns resurrecting memories, our laughter carrying across the dining room and colliding with the chatter of other travelers.

“So… are you visiting your parents?” Ifeanyi asked once we had come down from our nostalgic high.

I forced a spoonful of rice down my throat, the lightness between us dissipating into nothingness. In its stead was the weight of the heavier memories we had teased our way around. The night ahead was long, and even our extensive collection of lighter memories wouldn’t last five hours.

“Sort of,” I replied, “I’m getting married.”

I dragged my eyes slowly from my plate to his face so I could gauge his reaction. His hand hung in mid-air over his food, his spoon inches away. He was staring at my fingers. My eyes glanced there also.

“Oh,” I blurted out. “My engagement ring is a little tight. That’s why I don’t have it on.”

He had a slight grimace.

“When are you getting married?” he asked.

“In a month,” I said. “Amina is my chief bridesmaid. She’ll be in Nigeria in two weeks.”

I ignored my food, not trusting my stomach to tolerate any more of it. Ifeanyi moved through his with speed, shoving spoonful after spoonful of rice into his mouth. It was a typical response of his whenever he received news that didn’t sit well with him.

“Did you come to love him?” he asked abruptly.

“What do you…”

“That day on the train. You told me you would come to love him. You sounded very certain.”

Ifeanyi’s eyes were now on me, staring. I held his gaze, willing my heart to quit fluttering. My brain tried to string words together, but it failed. What response would I give?

“I remember what I said,” I replied, my tone tinged with anger.

I knew this was Ifeanyi calling out my logic once more. To him, none of it had made any sense. There was a way out. It was simple. Repay my fiancé’s father and get out of the deal my parents had made with him. Back then, Ifeanyi threw around options. Starting a gofundme account, asking his parents to shoulder some of the cost of repayment, getting a lawyer – after all, this was practically a case of child marriage. Except I wasn’t a child.

Ifeanyi believed there was a solution to everything. When I told him about the area boys¹⁰who had attacked my father on his way back from Chief Ade’s house, he said I should call the police. But what do you do when your fiancé’s father has the police under his thumb? To this, Ifeanyi had no response, but it didn’t stop him from asking that I rethink my decision, from asking if he could talk to my parents, drum some sense into them, plead with them even.

“Did you even try?” he asked me now. His plate was empty, and his hand hovered over his glass of orange juice. Anger simmered to the surface of my chest.

“Of course, I tried. Do you think I want to marry someone I don’t love? Do you think I want to marry a stranger?” I demanded, my voice filled with emotions.

Things in the dining room had slowed to a lazy murmur. Ifeanyi steered his plate to the side and leaned over. He reached for my face, and I waited in anticipation for his skin on mine.

“Will you be happy?” he asked when I closed my eyes.

Tears burned the back of my eyes at his question. I wove a response, the thread weak.

“I will try to be happy.”

7.

            We parted ways at Muritala Mohammed Airport. Ifeanyi disappeared through the crowd, chatting with his cousin that had come to pick him up. The cacophony of voices offering to sell recharge cards and asking if I needed help transporting my luggage swirled around me. Once Ifeanyi was no longer in sight, I searched the crowd for my sister, waiting to see a face I hadn’t seen in years except on FaceTime.

            When I reached for my phone to call my sister, I paused momentarily. I stared at Ifeanyi’s contact on my phone. He had given me his number before we parted ways, his hand lingering over mine when he handed my phone to me. A silent request. A final attempt to save me from what was to come, to resurrect what used to be. Another opportunity for me to make a choice.

            As I waited for my sister, I thought of Ifeanyi’s eyes, of how the weight in them now made sense. He had experienced a loss that left him broken. His mother had passed the year before after battling breast cancer, and his trip to Nigeria was to commemorate her first death anniversary.

            She had just come out of an abusive marriage to his father, a decision Ifeanyi said had taken her fifteen years to make because she thought of him, of her family, of her friends, and thought of everyone else first except herself. The diagnosis had come three months after the divorce was finalized, shattering her moment of happiness. When Ifeanyi said these words to me, I knew it was for me.

8.

Present Day

            Cameras flash in my face as I run towards the Benz that brought me to the church. Amina is screaming my name, her shoes click-clacking against the concrete as she runs after me. The wind whistles in my ears as I dash through the parking lot. When I stop in front of the car, I realize I don’t have the keys. Amina arrives shortly, breath pumping in her chest.

            “Moji, what happened? Why did you leave like that?” she asks, her chest heaving. In the distance, I see my parents and my fiance’s parents exiting the church.  I don’t have time for a response.

            “The keys. Where are they?” I ask. For a few seconds, Amina looks lost.

 “The driver should have them,” she says. “Oh! Wait; he gave them to me right before we entered.” She starts digging through her sequined purse but stops suddenly.

“Wait…why do you need the keys?” she asks.

“Amina, just give them to me. I’ll explain later!”

As she hands them to me, I spot my parents and fiancé’s parents marching through the parking lot, closer and closer. I can see my fiancé trailing behind, his hands trembling. Once in the car, I put the key in the ignition. Amina slips into the passenger seat, startling me.

“I’m coming with you,” she says. “I don’t know what this madness is.” She eyes me warily.

Before I pull out of the parking lot, I grab my purse from the backseat and pull out my phone. I hand it to Amina.

“Call Ifeanyi,” I say. Fists pound furiously against the windows. They’ve closed in on us.

“Ifeanyi?” Amina repeats as the car jerks forward, nearly knocking my fiance down.

“Yes. Search for him in my contacts.” Her face a confused mass, Amina scrolls through my phonebook. My heart beats erratically when the line begins to ring. When it connects, Ifeanyi’s voice comes through the phone, raising the hairs on my skin.

“Hello? Moji? I didn’t think you’d call. Shouldn’t you be…”

“Where are you?” I cut in. I swerve the car into the lane next to me, eliciting curses from a danfo¹¹ driver.

“I’m at Ikeji City Mall. I’m trying to see a movie with my cousin.”

“Okay, I’m coming. I’m coming to you. I should be there in about thirty minutes. Please, wait for me.”

“I will,” Ifeanyi tells me.

I hear the smile in his voice, and a smile settles across my face. I increase the car’s speed.

TRANSLATION INDEX

1. Ankara: A type of traditional Nigerian attire.
2. Face-me-I-Face-You: A term for a specific type of residential real estate in Nigeria, where a group of one or two-room apartments have their entrances facing each other along a walkway, which leads to the main entrance of the building that consists of the apartments, it is commonly used by low-income residents because of its affordability.
3. Big Men: A term sometimes used to refer to old (not always), wealthy men.
4. LUTH: Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Lagos College of Medicine.
5. Maami: My mother in the Yoruba Language.
6. O: A form of exclamation commonly used by Nigerians.
7. A ti m’oko fun e: We have chosen a husband for you in the Yoruba Language.
8. Oko: Husband in the Yoruba Language.
9. Beeni: ‘Yes’ in the Yoruba Language.
10. Area Boys: A term used to refer to thugs in Nigeria.
11. Danfo: A commercial bus used to transport people in Nigeria.

Oreoluwa Oladimeji is a recent graduate of the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Originally from Nigeria, she enjoys penning down her thoughts in the form of stories and will be starting medical school in the fall. She was a semifinalist in the Tulip Tree New Writers Story 2019 contest and has been published in African Writer, MeetCute Press, Raising Mothers, Please See Me, The Kalahari Review, The Meadow, Shotgun Honey, and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. Her work is forthcoming in, Bridge: The Bluffton University Literary Journal.