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The whispers will reach you by the eleventh hour of sunrise. 

It’s a busy Oja Oba market day. Your face is slick with sweat from standing in the scorching sun; and in between telling off tight-fisted men bargaining for the cheapest price of garri and fending off boys who think snatching cassava grains from your tray and throwing it in their mouth before running away is fun, you have no time for gossip and small talk.

But Àmọpé doesn’t take your frown as disinterest when she comes bearing the news. “Iya ‘Mọlará,” she pants, “have you not heard?” 

You regard her with raised eyebrows. You know Àmọpé. The entire town knows Àmọpé. Be it whose husband is fooling around with another’s wife, or whose marriage is about to end over a salty pot of soup, Àmọpé’s wealth of gossip has no bounds. On any other day, you’d have spared a listening ear—after all, Àmọpé has proven useful over time, passing on the machinations of your fellow market women before their evil plots over you came to fruition—but not today. Today, you’re busy. 

Yet, you know the only way to get rid of the woman is to indulge her. So, with half your attention on the lookout for the boys stealing your garri, you ask, “What is it this time, Àmọpé?” 

Àmọpé hops from one foot to another. Her expression is tight with worry, it almost frightens you. When she leansin to attempt a proper whisper, a shiver runs down your back. Àmọpé never whispers. 

“It’s Baba Àlàmú,” she says. “They said he fell from a palm wine tree in his farm. He broke his back and…and…”

You shoot her a glare. “And what? Tell me.”

“Iya ‘Mọlará,” she cries at last, “Baba Àlàmú has gone the way of his ancestors!” 

You hear this—that your husband of twenty-one sun years has passed—but you will not shed a single tear. Surely, your breath hitches, and for the briefest of moments, it feels as though someone has taken an axe to your chest. But the tears don’t come. Not at first. Instead, all you think is: 

What a stupid, cowardly way to die. 

*

When you arrive home, the mourners are the first you see, a small crowd in front of the brick bungalow Baba Àlàmú wouldn’t stop telling anyone who cared to listen that he built at the young age of twenty-five. The age the gods smiled down on him and blessed his farm with a bountiful harvest. Usually, when he told this story, he told an alternate version. One in which your involvement in building the house is almost non-existent, as though your money, blood, andsweat are not the very foundations the house stands upon.

You’ve stopped taking offence when he tells this version. You stopped caring about a lot of things a long time ago.

The mourners ambush you with condolences. Grief is clear in their long-drawn faces, in the slow rise and fall of their chests as they heave heavy sighs. You want to chase them away with a stick, a tree branch, anything. But instead, you slither through the multitude of “E pele o” and “May we never experience this again” skillfully, avoiding eye contact,until you’re inside the house. 

There’s a quieter scene in the living room. Baba Àlàmú is lying on a mat in the center of the room, a tie-dyed fabric drawn up to his chest. Wiry and scrawny, he looks indeed like someone death has dealt with. You almost pity him.

Olóríẹbí, Baba Àlàmú’s eldest uncle and only living relation, is on the bug-infested one-seater, folding and unfolding his arms. Làbákẹ, Baba Àlàmú’s second wife, is on the longer chair, her body rocking back and forth so much that you wonder if she had caught giri overnight. But the tears leaking from her bloodshot eyes tell you it’s no cold.Làbákẹ’s teenage boys, Àlàmú and Ìshọlá, are at her feet, their faces forlorn.

The air in the room is sated with melancholy and the aching familiarity of loss, suffocating as it presses down you. Yet, you don’t allow the tears come.

Your husband had died long ago. He had died when he brought home Làbákẹ, your friend of many years, to become your rival. He had died the night he asked you to move into the mud hut behind the house so he and his new bride could have the bedroom. But that was not even what broke the camel’s back.

Your daughter, Ọmọlará, is kneeling beside Baba Àlàmú. As if provoked by your arrival, she bursts into a loud wail, shaking the dead man’s shoulders. A strong urge to cross the room and slap some sense into her overtakes you. Why are you crying, you silly child? you want to yell in her face. You don’t. Instead, you take a seat and let Ọmọlará’s voice anchor your thoughts from drifting.

Olóríẹbí shuffles to his feet. “Now that we’re all here, we can proceed with burying him.” 

As custom demands, the deceased should be buried before the first starlight appears in the sky. Hence, the burial proceedings happen fast. Two muscular men from the crowd outside enter the room and Baba Àlàmú’s is whisked to the backyard where he’s laid into the ditch he had been digging for weeks to prepare manure for his farm. The irony isn’t lost on you.

Tears flow, loud and messy wails rent the air, but you remain a shigidi through it all—a statue with no feelings.You’re thankful when the last heap of sand is thrown over the grave, just as the sky turns the shade of pear fruit.

Later, when the mourners are long gone, everyone converges in the living room. A kerosene lamp has been set where Baba Àlàmú once laid, the weak golden-yellow light casting more shadows than illumination. Silence stretches the expanse of the room. Time seems to hold still.

“Baba Àlàmú lived a good life,” Olóríẹbí says, his voice cracking with old age. “The gods blessed him with beautiful wives, healthy children, and a farm that produced more than his belly could contain. He certainly didn’t deserve to go this way. Which is why we shall honor him with a funeral. A befitting one to send him off properly. Do you hear me, Làbákẹ?” 

Làbákẹ nods her approval and Olóríẹbí turns to you. You want to dismiss his suggestion at first. But you think: in a town where men meet their ends on battlefields, Baba Àlàmú had taken the coward’s way out. His death will soil your name, mark you as the wife of a man who fell from a tree and broke his back. He had already caused you shame in his lifetime; you refuse to let him continue in death. With a grand funeral, you can make people forget his undignified exit. Funerals are for the living, after all. The dead have no use of them. And so, you agree.

*

When the tears finally come, it’s near midnight and you’re browsing through folders of memories in your mind. You’re thinking of a time long past. A time before the children. Before Làbákẹ. A time when Baba Àlàmú was Kòkúmọ, the dashing palm wine tapper you snuck out on evening strolls with, his bicycle the third company between you two as you ambled down fields with blooming willows, the wind in your hair, the coconut-brown of his skin agleam in the golden sunlight; Kòkúmọ the first man you kissed under a starry night sky. The time when you were just Sẹgílọlá, daughter of Adeoti, the one as beautiful as blue beads; the most sought-after maiden in all of your town.

It was a time of love and reckless youthfulness—both insanities that drove you to marry Kòkúmọ despite yourfather’s skepticism. You loved him, and so had he. But love, you’ve come to realize, is a fickle thing that sometimes cannot stand the test of time.

It began the night after your wedding, when family and friends had gathered outside your new home waiting for your husband to emerge with a crimson-stained white sheet. It was then that Kòkúmọ discovered he couldn’t enter you. That what was meant to be your opening was impenetrable no matter how hard he tried. Puzzled, he’d asked if you had known any man before him. In tears, you told him no. But you also told him something else. You told him of the time you were ten and your father’s brother had forced himself on you. You told him how, afterward, this was the image that crossed your mind whenever a man approached you. It was how you found out your womanhood had clamped shut. You’d thought it to be a protection back then. It would go away when the right man comes along. Except it never did. 

You remember how Kòkúmọ́ held you to his chest that night, your tears wetting his shoulder. How he whispered that it was fine and he still loved you anyway. How you both feigned sleep while those waiting outside knocked and knocked until most of them got tired and an unexpected rain chased away the rest.

Then he brought home Làbákẹ five years later and became Baba Àlàmú. A part of you forgave that. After all, a household without a successor was on its way to perishing. What you could never forgive him for was telling Làbákẹ you had a “spirit husband” who locked your womanhood. You can’t tell if this was the specific way he had divulged your secret to his new bride, but it was what Làbákẹ screamed at you in a fit of rage when you had your first brawl over who should have Kòkúmọ for the night.

“What use do you have of him anyway?”  she’d spat at you. “It’s not like your spirit husband has released your woman part.”

Something in you broke that night. Something irreparable.

You remember all these and cry ugly tears in the privacy of your hut. You cry because, despite the hate you harbor for Baba Àlàmú, you loved Kòkúmọ. You cry for all there was and all there could have been.

Ọmọlará wraps her arms around you, trying to steady your rocking body. You stare at her through glassy eyes—this child, the blessing that made you a mother. No, she isn’t your birthdaughter. She’s your sister’s, but Ráyọọlá had died during childbirth and Ọmọlará became yours.

You were happy for some time—you, Kòkúmọ, and the child the gods gifted you. You were contented snuggling in your husband’s arms night after night, his skin warm against yours, his breath fanning your neck; an intimacy far dearer to you than sex itself.

Perhaps it is these fond memories, the first you’ve allowed yourself to indulge in many years, that thaw your heart and make you want to send Kòkúmọ off on a proper note. And of course, because Làbákẹ will also be participating in the funeral ceremony, this is yet another competition in your ever-ongoing rivalry. You must outdo whatever Làbákẹ is planning; show her that you are, after all, your husband’s first wife.

*

Seven sunsets after Baba Àlàmú passed, the backyard of your house is transformed into a noisy cooking ground.

Your friends from the market sit in clusters of twos and threes, plucking ewedu leaves from their stalks and washing peppers, chatting about a war in the neighboring town and its chances of spilling into yours. You shoo them into silence as you walk past. Three big koko-irin pots sit on adógàn stoves, the wood underneath them ablaze, making the gbẹgìrì and ẹfọ riro and boiling water for àmàlá bubble non-stop. Some distance away, two men fell the cow you purchased to the ground, ready to begin the butcher at your order. You’ve only paid half the cow’s price to Ọdẹkúnlé, the cattleman. This funeral has brought on some unintended debts.

You dispel the thought. You’ve done the right thing to avoid being put to shame. Làbákẹ had also bought a big cow and the front yard is filled with cooks she hired to prepare the most exquisite dishes for tomorrow. Why should you do any less? Why should you be subject of the town’s gossip? Tomorrow, Ọmọlará will go around with bowls for the gueststo drop cowries in and you’ll have enough to settle the debts. Everything will be fine.

In the morning, the aroma of freshly cooked food perfumes the air. You watch your compound begin to fill, guests arriving in throngs, people who have come from far and near to celebrate the life your husband lived.

A band of local performers takes their place on the makeshift stage, gangan hanging off their shoulders. They start with Kòkúmọ’s oriki but somehow, Làbákẹ’s name makes it into the praise poem.

Làbákẹ waltzes around in a royal blue aṣọ-òkè, and you can swear she’s enjoying soaking in attention as the newly widowed wife. You snort and join her at the high table reserved for family members. She pushes you aside to take the front seat.

You’re about to retaliate when a bang cracks through the air. The live band pauses their performance; the women bearing steaming platters of amala halt in their tracks; an awful silence blankets the compound. 

There comes another bang. This time louder and nearer. Your heart skips. Faintly, you sniff a whiff of gunpowder.

The compound door bursts open and the town crier races in, shouting, “War! War! Soldiers from Ọyọ—” 

Pandemonium breaks loose. Tables topple, chairs knock over, and you watch plates of àmàlá and the cow meat you took on credit roll in the sand as everyone takes off, sprinting in this direction and that. You’re standing in shock through it all, until someone yanks you by the arm and screams in your face, “Woman, are you mad? Get out of here.” 

It is then you stagger towards the house.

This is how Baba Àlàmú’s grand funeral ends, even before it begins.

*

Two dawns later, you’re awoken by a noise at your door. “Woman, where are you?” the voice outside thunders. You recognize it as Ọdẹkúnlé’s. “Come out here and pay my money now!”

Fear and dread bloom in your chest. What will you do now that shame has come knocking on your door? “Tell him I’m not home,” you instruct Ọmọlará as you slink away through the backdoor, into the storage shed behind the house. 

Once inside, you bolt the door shut and sigh. You can hear the muted voice of Ọmọlará relaying your words to Ọdẹkúnlé, the man calling her a liar and threatening to not leave without his pay. Your chest deflates. What mess have you gotten yourself into? 

A stirring behind startles you. You spin around and almost trip over something. Peering into the gloom, you realize it’s a person. Làbákẹ. Your pulse races. What is she doing in the shed at this hour? 

Ọdẹkúnlé is still shouting outside. Embarrassment courses through your veins as you both listen to his voice. You plead with Làbákẹ with your eyes. Please, don’t expose me. 

Làbákẹ doesn’t say a word. Her eyes seem to be pleading with you too. You don’t understand, until you hear a distant, feminine voice in the house saying, “Iya Àlàmú! Where are you? Làbákẹ, you better come out with my money now.”

You burst into laughter. Làbákẹ clamps a palm over your mouth. “Do you want them to find us?” she hisses, low-voiced.

“You took credit for the funeral, too.” You’re still laughing. You don’t know why but you can’t stop. It’s all too ridiculous.

She looks away. “At least I had reasons to. I loved our husband. You didn’t care about him.” 

“I do!” you fire back, humor all but gone from your tone. “Or I did, rather. Before he betrayed me”—your voice falters—”before he told you my condition.”

She peers at you. “What condition?”

You draw closer to study Làbákẹ in the dark. Her face is a mask of confusion. “Don’t play pretend with me. He told you my secret, what you called a spirit husband.”

Làbákẹ’s eyes widen. “He never told me such—”

“Liar!” 

“I’m telling you the truth. The spirit husband? I made it up. I know you couldn’t conceive. That’s why a man who loves you as much as Kòkúmọ did would take a second wife. And you know the myth about spirit husbands locking up women’s wombs. I only said that to make you hate me.” She stares at you more intently, searching for something. “Did you think he told me that?” 

No, no, no. This can’t be true. Kòkúmọ́ betrayed you. Làbákẹ is talking nonsense. 

“Gods,” Làbákẹ exclaims, “I made you hate him, didn’t I? I made you into this. I’m such a terrible person.” 

You stare at the woman before you with incredulity, grappling to hold onto the reins of what you’ve known to be true all these years, but the more Làbákẹ talks, the more your perception of the truth crumbles.

“It just felt easier, you know?” she continues, tears rolling down her cheeks now, a silver line against the midnight black of her skin. “It felt easier sharing your husband when you hate me. I was your friend, yet I married him. I craved what was yours. And you were pleasant to me, still. It made me sick. I wanted you to turn against me, not him. It has taken this long but now I know, Sẹgílọlá. I never should have come between you. Will you ever forgive me?”

The silence that follows Làbákẹ’s words is palpable. You hold each other’s gazes, she awaiting a response, you unbelieving of reality. 

Then you laugh—a burst of sound so harsh and humorless it startles even you. Làbákẹ flinches. She must think you have lost your mind. 

You laugh harder, unable to control the sound. All those years of hating Kòkúmọ́, of shutting him out when he reached for you, until he no longer did so—it couldn’t be for nothing. It couldn’t be for this.

After his supposed betrayal, you had donned an armor of bitterness; bitter at the man you love, a slow poison that calcified your heart until this very moment.

You laugh because you cannot reconcile with this damning reality. That while you had made Kòkúmọ́ out to be the villain in your love story, you were no better to have assumed the worst of him. To have punished him severely for it.

Your laughter morphs into coughs and before long, you’re crying. Loudly. Unbecomingly. 

The tears come unrestrained, spilling from a place of hurt and anguish deep within you. 

If only you could unspool the yarn of time and go back to that night you turned a cold shoulder on Kòkúmọ́ when he asked why you had been silent all evening long. If only you could…

Your chest hurts, your heart is in a thousand fragments, and you know if you continue this way, you may attract attention from the house, but you cannot stop. The tears do not stop.

“You took him from me,” you hiss at Làbákẹ, seething, but your anger is mostly self-directed. “You ruined us.” 

Làbákẹ takes you in her arms. You struggle to break free, hitting her in the chest as you cry, “You caused everything!” until your punches grow weak and you begin to dry heave.

“I know,” she cries, “I’m sorry.”

She places your head on her bosom, and for some unknown reasons, you stay. Fatigue tugs at your bones. For so long, you have surrounded yourself with walls, hardened yourself till you were no more than a rock, impenetrable, never with a crack of vulnerability. Now that the walls are gone, you feel so spent—so tired. You close your eyes, wishing for peace, for love; for the sturdy arms of Kòkúmọ́ and his calming breath on your neck. For the first time in years, you long for him. Tears prickle the back of your eyelids.

You stay in each other arms, crying silent sobs. Until Ọdẹkúnlé’s voice booming, “Come out, woman, I know you’re home!” sends you both jolting apart. 

Despite yourself, you chuckle. It truly is all too ridiculous—you and Làbákẹ, nestled together in this dark shed, two women whose shared feeling of guilt has managed to blur off other negativities, however momentarily; both of you waiting to emerge into the light of the day as different versions of who you once were, awaiting a chance to atone for your wrongs. 

Atonement. Forgiveness. You wonder if the former could lead to the latter. If one could ever atone for wronging the dead, and if the dead were ever generous with their forgiveness.

You vow to find a way to make up for the lost years, the time you spent away from  the man you loved most. You have to. But first, you have debts from the funeral to settle.