if to tell her what was to come at any moment. Bola was
obsessed with her toy boy. He was no longer the boy she met two years earlier,
he was now the king (literally, some things you got to clarify) and she the
toy. He virtually controlled her everyday life. He was the one the accountants
bowed to, he was the one the whole family took orders from, as the queen was in
a steady trance. People claimed he used juju
on her. It suited her just fine - she didn’t give a twenty-five kobo coin worth
of care what he used on her, she was loving it. The family couldn’t care less,
the boy brought in even better ideas and they were getting richer off it. Some
of the family big guns were even more comfortable dealing with a man even if he
was barely twenty-two. They were sick and tired of the queen floating about in
her high born chariot. The introduction of Tega suited everyone just fine. Matter
of fact, it suited some part of the family more and wouldn’t you like to know
why? I bet you do!
Tega grew up on the outskirts of Warri in a little town
called Oha where the best thing to ever happen to them was the local airport
15kilometers away. Everyone minded everyone’s business and called their neighbors
brothers and sisters. His parent were poor farmers and Tega was their only
child. At an early age, Tega knew the power he had on the opposite sex because
of his looks and his awkward smile. At age fourteen, a Youth Corper sent to the
village to teach raped him and from then on he understood what he had to do to
get out of that one muddy road town. He left home when he was seventeen to the
city. He worked odd jobs and charmed his way into the beds of married women in
the city. His day job was a front as the boy was a gigolo and way good at it
like every other thing he put his mind and awkward smile in. His encounter with
Mrs. Bola Akanji was his finest conquest ever but he wasn’t satisfied. He
wanted more.
Now the story takes an awful turn - wasn’t this supposed to
be a love story? You may ask, but hang in here and listen.
Tega had never been with a girl his age. They bore him and
had nothing to offer him. Emotionally and financially they were a total waste
of time, but as he worked on his new catch he met a girl and fell madly in
love. I’m talking psychopathic obsession. He knew he could never have her, the
queen wouldn’t hear of it and the girl wouldn’t contemplate it either. He might
have been the gods’ gift to women but Omawunmi, the only daughter of Mrs.
Akanji, was the one girl out of his reach.
Yes
Omawunmi had grown into a beautiful Yoruba demon. Her beauty caused trouble
everywhere. Men wanted to sleep with her at first sight, boys drooled over her
and women were uncomfortable with her around their husbands. Girls despised her
beauty, as the sixteen year old girl oozed sex appeal without making any effort
and worst of all she kept to herself and out of the reach of the vultures of
the world. The “twenty year old virgin” was her nick name in the university she
attended. Her virginity made everyone want her more. Lecturers in her department left her alone for fear of her mother and boys
where too damn scared to approach her. She lived a sad and lonely life.
It all happened very fast one Christmas period like a
well-rehearsed Nollywood drama. Bola was two months pregnant unknown to her. She
wanted to visit her parents in Ekiti state and asked Tega to accompany her. They
stayed in her own hotel in the capital city and took the thirty minute trip
through the dusty roads to her parents in the village. The meeting was normal -
kola was broken and traditional dry gin and money was given to Bola’s parents
by Tega. The parents couldn’t care less who their daughter slept with, she had
removed their family name from obscurity and into the lime light. She was the
goose that laid the golden eggs. They accepted the drink and kola from Tega. The
money was used to wedge the kola according to tradition. It was a small amount
compared to what he was worth, a mere two hundred and fifty naira.
They
were to stay a week but Tega soon had to rush back to Warri. “Issues came up”,
he said as he kissed Bola goodbye. Issues beyond his control had come up,
issues that messed everything up. Bola came back two weeks later on the first
week of the new year and the first thing she noticed when she entered the
family mansion was their seventy year old butler who knew the family history
more than her or any other person alive in the family, called her by name “Bola.”
She dismissed the slight and floated into the mansion. “Poor old Ose, he is
probably going senile”, she thought, and made a mental note to relieve him of
his duties before he started calling her “my pikin”.
She entered the mansion and everything look normal, except
for one tiny detail. It was a Monday morning, her flight landed by 9am and the
kitchen staff knew she was coming. They always slaughtered a fat cow on Monday
so she should have been smelling roasted cow all over the place. She should have
been seeing trays of beef pepper soup and yam being prepared in the traditional
Niger-Deltan way. It was a must and they knew better than to make such error.
As
she strode through the staircase of the thirty room mansion to her room
upstairs at the west wing, she wondered what had happened. “Someone failed to
deliver the cow, the cooks were sick or worse still someone died”, she said to herself
and continued to wonder if it was the pregnancy she found out this morning that
was making her so edgy. She had taken a quick urine test and had booked
appointment at Mooreland Hospital for the next day. It was more of a formality,
she damn well knew she was pregnant.
Someone called her
from the room just before the mouth of the staircase; she guessed the location
as she could feel the hum of the noisy air conditioner operating in the
conference room. “Bola we need you in the conference hall now”.
The
alarms went off in her head. To you that might sound like a simple request but
there was everything wrong with that statement. Firstly it was a command, no
one gave her commands, not in this house anyway. Secondly, for the second time someone
had called her by name. Something was terribly wrong. Ose hadn’t made a mistake
after all. It could only mean one thing; things had gone terribly wrong and
life as she knew it would never be the same again. Her first thoughts were of Tega. She prayed to whatever gods
protected lovers to keep him safe for her.
“Where is Tega?”, she asked. Her voice could not masquerade
her fears. “Where is Tega, I want to see him right now”, she stood still at the
stairs no more floating, her feet were planted on the ground stronger than
concrete. Her longtime rival came out of the conference hall smoking a Cuban
cigar that hung awkwardly on his lips. Oluwole Akanji aka Olu Billions, her
late husband’s immediate younger brother, was smiling. He had waited for this
moment for a life time and he couldn’t wait a minute more.
“Bola
it’s either you walk down here right now or so help me God I will personally
drag you from your high heavens down to earth.” His voice sounded comical but
there was no joke in it. The steady hum of the air conditioner could still be
heard in the background like a badly produced movie. The queen was scared. In
that room could be an ambush, in that room could be anything and worst of all Tega was missing. She walked down
dreamily to the room as her brother in-law caressed her shoulder lightly and
whispered into her ears
“It’s time your highness”
She gave him the “don’t touch me look” and entered the badly
lit room. It had been lit like that because of the occasion to add some sick
kind of essence to it. As she walked in they began to raise the blinds one by
one and light burst into the room exposing the faces of the people in the room.
They were all seated around a glass table that spanned the length of the room,
everyone with a different expression on their face.
The
only time the family gathered in such numbers was during monthly financial
reports, and even then some were always absent, content with anything the Queen
handed down to them. She saw her late husband’s first cousin, the quiet Mrs.
Tolu, who had never stepped a foot in the building since Bola became Queen, she
was supposed to be in Moscow. Seated beside Mrs. Tolu were the Owerri twins,
nicknamed so because their mum her late husband’s aunt married an Owerri man. They too had
come for the meeting dressed in suits looking like lawyers who had just lost a
court case. As she walked down to her seat at the head of the table, she
silently scanned the room for Tega hoping he was alive and well. Beside the
Owerri twins was a pregnant lady, the light didn’t shine much on the lady as
she kept her head in the shadows. Bola paid little attention to her because she
hadn’t seen her before. She just assumed the woman was one of the wives in the
family.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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