Page 84 of Cursed Daughters
“You nk?´?”
It was Aunty Kemi’s turn to laugh. “Bunmi, abeg. I am in my fifties. But even if I wanted to have a fifth child, how is that your business? Abi, wetin be all this?”
“Somebody in this house is pregnant.”
“Maybe it is Mama G,” offeredMo.
“It is not MamaG.”
“I am not pregnant o,” insisted Mama G from her post.
“How do we know?” Mo continued. “We should have her take a test.” This was what her life had come to—looking for little ways to rile her mother. She had no man, no job and no hobby. This was her guilty pleasure. She twisted to her right in order to wink at her cousin, but Ebun was staring at the floor. She looked tense. Mo’s smile began to slip.
“Monife, Mama G does not belong to this household,” was her mother’s reply. Mo did not bother to respond. She could not take her eyes off her cousin, who had started to feel her intense gaze and was slowly lifting her head. Bunmi noticed the movement and turned her attention to her niece.
“Is it you?”
Ebun did not answer for a beat. She was no doubt weighing the pros and cons of lying. But she paused for a moment too long, and Aunty Kemi sucked in her breath.
“Ebun?” she asked.
“She is the one,” announced Mama G. Mo squashed the urge to throw a pillow at the woman’s grinning face.
“I’m…” began Ebun, but then she gave up. She looked ahead, not meeting anyone’s eye. Kemi stood up and walked into her daughter’s line of sight.
“How can this be?” she cried. “You have not even brought any man to this house!” Mo appreciated her aunt’s confusion. She hadn’t even known her cousin was having sex. Ebun always gave off such a puritanical air. Her baby cousin was pregnant, and she was leaving Mo behind.
“Who is the father?” asked Bunmi.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Are you okay at all, what do you mean you don’t want to talk? You will give us a name.”
“He isn’t a part of this,” Ebun responded quietly.
Kemi was scratching her scalp vigorously and dancing on her feet. “This girl wants to killme.”
“When did you find out?” asked Mo. Because she had thought they were close. Once upon a time, theyhadbeen close. But Ebun had chosen to carry this weight on her own.
Ebun shrugged. “Maybe three weeks ago…”
“Three weeks!” was Kemi’s cry. And Mo recalled Ebun’s sudden aversion to perfume, and how easily fatigued she had become.“Three weeks! Is this not something you should mention?! So…so if Mama G had not said anything, you would have announced the baby at the…at the naming ceremony?!”
“I am trying to decide what to do!”
“This is not the sort of thing you deal with on your own,” said Bunmi in a rare show of calmness. “We are your family.”
But Ebun was unmoved. It was as though she had long concluded that the women before her were in no position to help her.
—
What followed was a series of arguments—some long and loud, others short, urgent and pleading. There were threats made, tantrums thrown; but in the face of it all, Ebun was a wall—impenetrable and unmoving. What was her plan here? She made no mention of the pregnancy, wouldn’t go to see a doctor, wouldn’t take the vitamins her mother bought by the bucketload. She continued her routine as normal—she went to work, came home, had dinner with them, before retiring for the night. In this way, the weeks passed and they learnt nothing new.
The sound of her cousin throwing up her guts interrupted the flow of music in Mo’s room. Mo considered ignoring it; Ebun certainly wouldn’t thank her for showing up to offer support. But the vomiting was loud and dramatic, and Mo was the only one at home. She turned off Brandy’s crooning voice and headed to Ebun’s room, which had previously belonged to Great-Aunty Toke, who had had a collection of cat-shaped belongings that she had not been able to take with her to her temporary marital home, or her grave. Ebun had long since disposed of said items and her room was stark by comparison; but she was not there. So Mo headed to the bathroom that her cousin and aunt shared and found Ebun sitting by the toilet bowl. Ebun was twenty now, but there was something in the way she was curled up that reminded Mo of Ebun at eleven. How pitiful that little girl had been.
Mo had so many questions: Who was the man that had been able to crack Ebun’s shield? Was it love Ebun had felt? Or unrestrained lust? How had it ended? Had the curse forced its grimy tendrils into an otherwise harmonic relationship? But she knew better than to voice her thoughts. If you asked Ebun a single question about the life blooming inside of her, her face became as stone and she would withdraw at the first opportunity.
Ebun noticed Mo and raised her upper body. She was poised again, and whatever openness there may have been moments before was gone. Her eyes were now shuttered. It hurt Mo that her mere presence put her cousin on the defensive.
