Tell me, Esther, How can I help you?” Nana Oriedo asked the timid woman in front of her.
Esther Adegbola jerked into consciousness, as she looked at Nana with a gaze that shifted between adoration, fear, and envy. Nana could not decipher which was the dominant expression, but she knew the younger woman felt all three emotions at that moment.
Nana studied the younger woman. She was timid, but there was also a concealed strength within her that reared its head every once in a while. She was beautiful, although the scruffy jeans and battered sweater she was wearing took away some parts of that trait. She had been silent since she entered Nana’s living room that afternoon. She looked like someone who had a lot to get off her chest, and while Nana had somewhere she had to be in half an hour, she was not going to rush the timid woman into talking.
Nana subtly pushed the untouched glass of juice on the dining table towards Esther, who picked it up with a soft grateful smile, while murmuring a thank you. She took ginger sips of the juice, dropped the glass on the table, and stared with new found boldness into Nana’s unusual blue eyes.
“I want to know how to be like you, Nana Oriedo.” Her voice was soft, but firm.
Esther knew Nana was taken aback. She had tried to hide it, but that fleeting second of emotion was enough to tell Esther that she had shocked Nana. She was not surprised though. Her request was unusual; maybe not to a lot of persons, but she was sure Nana didn’t get such requests too often.
If only she was like Nana. If she was half as bold as Nana, she would have insisted she wanted to work, even after Jonah, her husband had reported her to their parents, and both parents had called her insolent.
Maybe she would have been bold enough to take those Masters’ classes. She had gotten a direct scholarship after all. Sadly, Jonah had said no. A woman had no need for more degrees, he had said. A woman would become to egoistic and proud, their parents had reiterated.
She might have said no or fought back, every time he slapped her or shouted at her like a kid for displeasing him. Their parents told her to stop trying his patience and be a better wife. They told her to always do what he wanted, and maybe she would stop getting slaps. That day never came though.
If she had Nana’s fierceness, she would have walked away when she realized he was keeping other side attractions. It’s a man’s right, their parents would say. Her mother would advise her to fast and pray, cook better meals, and be always available sexually, then he would stop straying. She hadn’t been like Nana, so she kept quiet and treated the STIs she randomly got whenever she could sneak away.
She had finally decided she wanted to be like Nana after the last incident the previous night. She was pregnant again, after a third miscarriage. He never lets her rest after a miscarriage, before making her try again. After what she had been told by friends and family alike, she knew it was the right thing to do, in order to secure her place in his home, but personally, she wanted to rest, heal, and get over each loss properly before trying again.
That night, he came home, asking her to please him the way he had seen in some of those secret videos on his phone. She was tired. She had spent the entire day laundering his clothes and making food for his friends that came over in the day. She wanted to rest, but he would not hear of it. She said no, but he wouldn’t take it. As she struggled, pleading with the unborn child in her belly, he kept stripping her. Even after realizing there was no lubrication after penetrating, he rode on like a donkey on a mission. When he was sated, he had laughed at her words when she mentioned rape. A man cannot rape his wife; he owns her, he had said.
Nana watched the young woman’s hands curl into fists as she appeared lost in thoughts, and she wondered what troubled her.
Esther knew it was time to be like Nana Oriedo. Since she was a teenager, parents; mothers especially, had made Nadia ‘Nana’ Oriedo, the perfect example of what any good girl should not be.
She sang in night clubs, she wore clothes that did not ‘glorify God’, she would not join girls to cook for the men in social gatherings, and refused to stop schooling after her first degree. She went as far as buying herself a car before getting married. She would never have a man, they said. What shock it was when Captain Philip Egbai came to ask for her hands in marriage. It would not last, they predicted. Nana had refused to change her name to her husband’s, citing that she had made a name for herself in the music industry, with her maiden name. They knew the captain helped her with chores. Nana had no child for the first five years. It came as a shock when Nana celebrated her tenth year anniversary with her husband.
Men spoke negatively about Nana. Nana’s agemates hated Nana. They all said she must be making her husband miserable. Esther wondered why the man was always smiling and never had side attractions like the other husbands that were not miserable. It was time to be like Nana.
Nana looked at the time, and decided she needed to know what the young woman truly wanted. Her initial answer was not something she understood. She had a better answer, did she not?
“Tell me, Esther, How can I help you?” Nana Oriedo asked the timid woman in front of her again.
