I do not know why I have such a fancy for this little café. Gbenga sat as he fantasized about dark coffee with hot brown bread curved with crispy edges, served at Tea n’ Crumbs. His daydream cut short, Gbenga! Gbenga! He jumped and ran towards her voice. Getting to the kitchen, he was met with the sting from her favorite vegetable soup—his worst. “What's wrong, why did you call me like that?”. I miss you, the kitchen was so lonely, she replied. Gbenga turned to make an obvious face looking towards his seven-year-old daughter in the corner, suggesting the child's company was enough. He sighs, takes a deep breath, pulls out his phone, and plays True love by Wizkid. He gravitates towards her almost like skates on ice, grabs her waist, and begins to slowly dance.
Gbenga is a Nigerian Yoruba man who spent a good part of his life abroad, and as a result, isn't marinated in his culture; he was more in tune with the western culture. After his education abroad, he moved back to Nigeria where he started his career as a writer and investigative journalist, unfortunately, the literary industry in Nigeria was a bit insular and controlled tightly by politicians.
He got a newspaper job as an editor, a typical 9 to 5 where he met his wife, a client who came to advertise her business. Ogechi was a young entrepreneur trying to grow her business. She drew Gbenga's attention with the vanilla-like fragrance of her perfume, as she walked past him. Gbenga fell in love with her at first sniff, he was enthralled. It was like a rose growing in his ugwu leaf garden—a great flower, a strange environment.
Moving forward, she became a frequent client, eventually, Gbenga started handling writing adverts for her. It was his opportunity to get close and bet you he did. He asked for her number, they went on a date…...next two, and the rest is history. They got married and within two years they had their first daughter. It brought incredible joy to Gbenga as he experienced the feeling of being a father for the first time.
After giving birth, Ogechi put on weight, but Gbenga didn't pay much attention to it. He felt it was post-pregnancy weight, but little did he know that his wife developed quite an appetite during her pregnancy, and her cravings continued for months after the pregnancy. She began waking up in the middle of the night and used checking on their daughter as an excuse to fry chicken in the middle of the night—this was just the beginning.
Gbenga who was a sound sleeper—you could literally kidnap him in his sleep—never noticed, not even the smell of fried chicken could stop his Odin sleep. As time went on Gbenga only noticed that his wife's body mass had grown because he had to pay for all her new clothes, she was growing faster than their little daughter which left him bewildered. As an easy-going person, he tried to lay his complaints about her weight as gently as possible. He approached uphill via the old health route, “Hey babe, don't you think we should have some fruits for dinner, it's really healthy”. She would decline with strong intent and go on to load her plate with bovine protein covered in stew.
Gbenga's patience began to run out, so did his gentle demeanor and attitude towards his wife's weight issue, “keep on eating oh, keep eating till you burst”, she would counter by pulling the body shame card, “ it is my body, and I choose what to do to it”. Surprisingly, Gbenga still found his wife sexy and was still attracted to her. But, what irritated him the most was that he would always meet her mouth stuffed, always working, jaws grinding, hands licking—it was always food—a lot of food—plenty of food—she didn’t think of anything else but her stomach.
His irritation festered and grew, it swelled like yeast each day. This irritation made him grow apart from his wife and would spend most of his time at Tea n’ Crumbs writing. It was so bad that he ate at different locations from his wife. On good days, he would sit with his daughter and share a plate with her just so he could avoid that incessant chewing and gnashing of teeth.
Gbenga was the dream man of every woman that has fallen in love in Lagos—a Yoruba man that doesn't cheat. He didn't seek the attention of someone new as he was a person that loved to keep to himself and rarely opened up to people. It was a Sunday afternoon, he was at the café drinking coffee with some fiber-active biscuits lashing away at his keyboards. Until the nosey manager decided to be nosey. He noticed the regularity of Gbenga on weekends, Sundays mostly—Sundays in Nigeria are synonymous with family time or church meetings. This puzzled the manager, and in his unwarranted curiosity was propelled towards Gbenga. He approached, apologized for stopping his writing, then proceeded to ask, “sorry sir oh, don't be offended sha, I just wan ask abeg are you married?”—it is the audacity for me.
Gbenga with a struggling puzzled face, “yes I am”. The manager, almost in a way to salvage his foolishness, said he had to ask because he was always here on Sunday's.
Gbenga laughed it off and smiled continuously which orchestrated a weird vibe. Connecting obvious dots, the manager apologized again and left. This left Gbenga in a foul mood, he stopped his writing and went home reluctantly.
Getting home he heard the warm loud voice of his daughter, daddy oyoyo!—a typical greeting by children in Nigeria. He hugged her and carried her inside—the only pleasant thing about coming home. As he got inside, he was surprised to see his wife sitting pretty, no food, there was no smell of anything cooking, this turned him on severely, and immediately in his dopaminergic state decided to harvest the situation. He told her to dress up for a date, she was in awe because this was like a shooting star.
They went out that evening to a restaurant where they ordered jollof rice and peppered turkey. As they ate in such a light mood, they began to discuss. Ogechi initiated the conversation saying, “after some thinking, I have decided to reduce the way I eat. I don’t know what came over me all these years, I am ready to….” Before she could finish Gbenga in his joy, cut her short and said “than..k you” shakingly, almost as if he was about to burst into tears. It was a pleasant evening, they drove home and picked up their daughter from their neighbor’s. Getting home, Gbenga fagged out, hit the showers, and went straight to bed as the next day was Monday. While his wife who had a rather lazy day was still full of life, put her little girl to sleep and stayed in the sitting room watching TV.
Browsing through channels, everything on was boring, as she surfed through, her mind drifted to the dinner she had earlier on, images of the juicy meat and the smell of the well-seasoned rice made her mouth water. She could recall every detail; the thyme, the neatly cubed carrots, the rings of onions, the perfectly fried tomatoes fused with rice. She remembered the promise she made earlier on to stop the needless eating. She screamed into the pillow and chewed it in anguish. She went to the freezer, took out some crackers, and munched on them, but, truly, ever so truly she knew deep down; she would not be able to sleep until she eats something less dry and crunchy, but more chewy and juicy. It was close to midnight when ogechi finally decided to cook up something. She got up, brought out some marinated chicken, chopped it, and started frying. The guilt in her heart made her afraid of what would happen if her husband caught her late that night, so she lowered the flames and tried to fry the chicken silently—hush little chick.
Gbenga got up and followed the smell of the chicken, he found himself at a restaurant eating with his wife, nobody else was in the restaurant, just the two of them. As they talked she ate and also fed him with pieces of meat but what caught his attention was the color of the meat, it was black, wet, and messy red. He then turned his gaze to his smiling wife, she asked “what’s wrong baby?”. He looked at her and then downwards, his sight lit up and tears gathered in his eyes as he saw that a chunk of flesh had been missing from his thighs, looking back up he saw his wife's mouth all bloody. As she reached back into his thighs to dig in, he woke up, with a disgusting choke in his throat.
He tried to tap Ogechi to tell her about his dream when he found that she was not by his side, his anxiety spiked up—what could be wrong, where is she—his first instinct was to check the bathroom to see if she had fallen but the bathroom was dry. Petrified from the horrible nightmare he didn't think to call out her name. He decided to go downstairs, as he was descending, he saw her in the sitting room which calmed him down, but his moment was cut short. He stopped his descent and watched her as she ate and devoured different parts of the poor chicken whole. This scene broke his heart, the heartache made him feel like a teenager again—a teenager that had been played. He quietly climbed back up to his bed and a sincere tear dropped from his eye, he wished he had not woken up, he wished not to wake up again. As he drifted into a deep sleep all he could think about was the hate and anger in his heart—his now black heart.
After witnessing that horrid event, Gbenga became numb. Numb to everything. The light that once shone in his eyes diminished even the beautiful voice of his daughter couldn't put a smile on his face, ironically he was a living zombie. Ogechi noticed it but the guilt in her heart would not let her dare ask what the matter was, as she feared it might be what she dreaded the most, that he had caught her in one of her midnight adventures with the frying pan, the oil and the chicken—indeed she was right.
One evening Gbenga took his daughter to his neighbor's, and was alone with his thoughts, he too wasn't happy with his state and the state of his marriage. As the head of the house, he wanted to straighten things out with his wife, he was tired of being the wet blanket in the house. So he waited for her to come back from her store, as evening drew close he prepared dinner for the house. He prepared his wife's favorite, jollof rice and lots of chicken—emphasis on lots of chicken. As soon as she got home she was surprised to see Gbenga in the kitchen. She was a bit worried and tried to take the cooking utensils from him as she felt bad that he was doing the cooking. He shrugged her off with his shoulder saying “let me don't worry about it” with a smile on his face. She was anxious and she began to sweat because it was strange, and usually, from her experience, strange things come with bad news. He dished out food for the both of them on separate plates, poured red wine and they both sat at the kitchen dining table.
He began to talk in a light tone, as he spoke, Ogechi couldn't focus on a thing, her heartbeat was deafening she could hear it pounding her chest like a beast crying to get out. She was worried as hell, she asked herself—why is he smiling? What is he thinking? Should I be worried? Lost in her mind, Gbenga touched her hands to bring her back to earth. He leaned forward, “babe don't worry it's all good”, she let out a sigh of relief. She started eating and they talked about how each other's day went. Halfway through her dish, she began munching the chicken like a wolf through sheep. This triggered Gbenga, almost in a PTSD kind of way, he tried not to focus on her chewing, but all he could hear was the cracking sounds of bones, the sucking of teeth, and the grinding sound of her jaws. The medley of these sounds snapped something in his mind and he became so angry, but just then, while she was pulling the flesh of the bones of the chicken, the sauce squirted into her eye, she let out a loud cry. He quickly snapped out of his rage and rushed her to the sink to wash her eyes. While she was washing her eyes, he noticed the knife he had left on the counter, a rush of adrenaline hit him as the anger in his mind flashed a sequence of horrific scenes in his head.
He picked up the knife still, and assisted Ogechi to sit down, handed her a towel, and went back to his side of the dining room holding the big kitchen knife as though he wanted to slice the biggest bread of his life. As Ogechi wiped her eyes, her sight became blurry because of the particles of pepper, but after all her experience in the kitchen, she could tell that he was holding a knife—shivers went down her spine and in resonance, goosebumps arose.
She tried to stand up and Gbenga gently said, “please sit down”, she insisted, “I need to go wash my eyes in the bathroom”. Gbenga said once again, “please sit down”, she still tried to get up and he shouted, “sit down!”. She was shocked because this was the first time she had seen him so angry and focused, her hands started trembling. She conjured the courage to ask, “what are you going to do with the knife?”.
He took some time to reflect and then he answered, “depending on how I feel after we talk, will determine if you will come out of this conversation alive”—no suspense, no hesitation, no lead, just a plain direct threat. As she heard those words, memories of her life played in her head, she couldn't even swallow her saliva, her appetite gone, disappeared into thin air.
“I am going, to be honest with you, I hate the way you eat, I hate the fact you eat like you are going to die”. She tried to reply, but when she looked at Gbenga's distant eyes, her tongue became heavy. He grabbed the glass of wine on the table, took a big gulp that emptied it, and continued “oh yes! Before I forget, I need you to know that I really...really..really hate your vegetable soup……They remind me somehow, disgustingly, of mushrooms”.
Brother! Having the end in mind is trait of success that you own. Keep writing , you'll soar!