Ulari and Her Idiot by N.F. Kenure

Oge is exasperated by her sister Ulari's decision to marry a beautiful but self-centred man.

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One time, my sister, Ulari, married an idiot. One time. She is remarried now, and this husband is no fool. This is not about the good one, Bayo, whom we all love - but after Ayo, we would have loved just about anybody.

Everyone knew Ayo was no good - even Ulari, but like many women, she was afraid of the big, bad monster that was coming for her; her forties loomed with a growling menace, and to escape its ignominious clutches, she decided to marry an ex-boyfriend. She had dated Ayo for three years, from two days after her nineteenth birthday till her twenty-second birthday. That night, as I let Ulari in through the kitchen, she whispered, 'It's over between us; he is going nowhere.'

She described the night in a monotonous whisper as we lay in bed together: The misogynistic remarks Ayo laughed at with his friends, his frenzied dancing and liberal drinking while she sat in a corner waiting for him to be done. As his brown Honda Civic zoomed across Third Mainland Bridge in the still of the witching hour, she told him she didn't want to be with him anymore. They had been together for three years, and there had been a lot of fun, but she'd come to realise they didn't have much in common.

Ayo began to cry and attempted to stop the car, but they were still on the bridge, so she asked him firmly to keep driving because she wasn't trying to get assaulted by agberos at three am. She said he begged, 'Please, don't leave me, Lari baby, please don't leave me.' When liquid-laugh spewed out of him, dribbling down his black silk shirt and into the tight coils on his chest, she whispered, 'Keep driving,' pretending not to see, hoping to preserve some of his dignity, even though it was too late. I probed, asking for details. I wanted to know how many buttons were undone on his shirt and synonyms for the smell of the regurgitated asun. Ulari shot a disappointed look in my direction, and I swallowed the cheer that threatened to bubble out.

She left Lagos immediately after their breakup for a master's degree at Rice University in Houston, where she remained after graduating. She came home intermittently, regaling us with stories that revealed the expansion of her world, primarily through job postings in different countries. She'd been seconded to Paris for two years, spent three in Vietnam, and had been in St. Petersburg for nine months. At her last visit four months ago, we spent the day celebrating my new job at Landmark Beach. Returning, we stopped to refuel at a Northwest fuel station in Obanikoro, and I spotted a well-known Honda Civic a few pumps away. I should have faced my front and minded my business. But calling out to Ayo had seemed harmless enough.

Later that night, when he called my line to speak to her, and she agreed to meet him for drinks at Yellow Chilli in GRA, I encouraged it. She was leaving for her real life in two days, and Ayo was always fun. I would know. I had bumped into him in a club or two over the years. He would introduce me to his friends as 'the sister of the one that got away.' He sent drinks to my friends and me, dazzling us with the latest dance steps. The victorious tug that now graced his lips used to be on mine. So, when Ulari returned from meeting him at Yellow Chilli, spouting absurdities about known devils versus strange angels, I just weak.

Ayo insisted that our family's reticence to their sudden engagement was only because he was Yoruba. He was, after all, a 'spec'. He would say this with a triumphant laugh as he tore into large chunks of meat originally reserved for our father, which Ulari decided was his due as her fiancé. He refused to eat at the dining table after their engagement was announced because he was 'no longer a guest' but our big brother, so Ulari would serve him in the living room. Every time Ulari joined him, he laughed at the way his fiancée rolled her eba in her palm like an 'omo Ibo'.

'You realise 'omo Ibo' is an offensive term?' I asked once.

'Ahn ahn! Which one is offensive again? You have come with this oyibo political correctness. Aren't you people Ibo?'

It took a second to recognise he was trying to bait me. The smirk that dragged at the corner of his lips belied triumph in a battle I had been ignorant of. Ayo was no intellectual. He spoke with an I-had-access-to-DStv and I-went-to-Unilag accent, a combination of bourgeois signals he never failed to announce ever so casually. He was just about smart enough to know how to sound smart, but he certainly understood the difference between Igbo and Ibo.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Ulari's eyes told me to leave well alone. My sister was desperate enough to be with this man, and I would not stand in her way.

If most of his red flags had been attenuated, she ought to have known he would make a terrible husband the day they drove to the Apapa port to pick up a new car she had imported from the US.

When the call came in that the car was ready for pickup, Ayo's body began to vibrate in excitement.

'Perfect timing! I will drive it to the church for our wedding,' he announced.

'What's wrong with your own car?' Zora, our youngest sister, asked cheekily.

'If I slap that your face,' Ayo threatened immediately.

When Ulari reacted with a sharp intake of breath, he forged a grin and tousled Zora's braids to reframe his statement as teasing.

'Babe, let's go. Get into the car now.'

'Can't we get it tomorrow? We will get to Apapa late,' Ulari said.

'All we have to do is get there before six.' He was already on his way out of the house, exposing a disregard for her apprehension.

Zora and I watched them get into his brown car, the same car in which she'd broken up with him twelve years ago.

Hours later, there was an unfamiliar and insistent car horn at the gate, then my phone rang. It was my brother-in-law-to-be.

'Come and open the gate! Tell your father to bring his car outside. Our new car has to be kept safe.' He hung up without waiting for a response.

I walked out after taking a few breaths to calm myself. It seemed that I was always inhaling with intent to recompose, as since the engagement, Ayo was never far off from our home. I picked up my father's car key without waking him up and gave it to Ayo. While he re-parked both cars, I looked around for Ulari.

'Where is my sister?'

'I don't know. She's coming,' he said, wiping the bonnet of the new car with the sleeve of his shirt, his teeth gleaming in the dark as he gazed at the vehicle like a proud father.

Ulari had not lived in Lagos for over a decade. The roads had most certainly not remained the same since she left. She had probably never been to Apapa because wetin concern her with Apapa before today? Even though she lived an intricate life beyond the scope of our not-quite-Ikeja imaginations, she had never driven in Lagos. And driving in Lagos, for the uninitiated, is comparable to driving a manual vehicle without some orientation.

I walked to the edge of the street, peering into the night for Ayo's jalopy. I called Ulari's phone number, even though I knew her line was not roaming. She did not have a Nigerian SIM in her phone because she insisted she didn't need one. She was always with someone and was fine with wifi.

Zora joined me.

'Will you believe he asked me what soup we have to eat? When I told him egusi, he said, "Again?"'

'So he is eating?' I asked.

There was no need for a response.

We walked back home, wondering aloud what our options were. What would we do if she didn't make it back? When would be the right time to wake up our parents and tell them?

'Please, get me another glass of water.' Ayo had unbuckled his belt and pushed away the table of food, leaning back into the sofa with a toothpick in his mouth - a veritable vision of unbotheredness. I ignored his polite enough request, walked past him, and headed for my bedroom. This wedding could not come fast enough. I needed him gone.

An hour later, I heard Ulari's voice. She sounded exhausted. I walked slowly into the kitchen, overhearing bits of details as she shared them with Zora.

'When I got to Anthony, I got confused. I wasn't sure which was my exit. I thought going straight ahead would lead me to Maryland, but I didn't recognise any landmarks. I parked the car and spoke to a man, and even after he explained the route, I knew I wouldn't find it. So he got into the car and drove it to Eko Hospital.'

I walked into the kitchen to see Zora's disbelieving, engorged eyes as she asked, 'You let a strange man get into the car? In this Lagos?' The last word of each question was drawn out and high-pitched.

My sister and her idiot were meant to be.

I walked past them to the kitchen sink and began to wash the dirty plates. Only after I was done did I realise they were Brother Ayo's.

Ulari is ten years older than I, but we have always been close. Our parents raised us without the age-based hierarchy in many homes around us. I looked up to her; she was smart, ambitious, and gave too much of herself. It was becoming more apparent with each day we spent with her fiancé that this marriage would mean letting her go in myriad unanticipated ways that I was only beginning to acknowledge as hurtful.

'What have I done wrong?' Ulari asked rather aggressively from behind me.

I put the last plate away and then attempted to leave the kitchen, but she stood her ground in the doorway.

'What is it? Say it! Say what's on your mind.'

'No. I don't have anything to say.' I replied calmly.

If any good had come of this soon-to-be union, it was my newfound zen state. Unlike my sister, my virtues were spread thin across time. Not telling Ayo to get out of our home was all I could afford, bolstered daily by our parents' injunctions.

'No! Tell me what I have done wrong,' she insisted.

What did she want from me? Did she want me to tell her that it was crazy to break up with someone because they had no real goals, and then to suddenly agree to marry them twelve years later, even though they had proven you right? Was I expected to tell her that marrying someone whose values did not align with ours as a family was foolish? He was constantly rude to us, her siblings. There was the hint that because we were all girls and much younger, we were beneath him. He walked into this house like he owned it. He was passively rude to our parents - never in their presence, of course, he was too suave for that. Wasn't she aware of all of these?

'Say what you want to say because I don't understand your problem.' Ulari insisted.

'You are the one with the problem, but that's your business,' I spat, bursting free.

I had no more breath in me to hold back. I had held my tongue for too long. 'Why did you let him drive the new car? Why didn't he know you would need navigation to drive in Lagos? He should have given you his phone so you could use Google Maps. He could have driven behind you and made sure you were together for the journey back. He didn't do any of that. And you think that's okay? That's the kind of person you are going to marry next week?' I was shouting, not caring if he could hear me from the living room.

'I can take care of myself. I got home, didn't I?' my sister asked.

'A stranger had to drive you halfway. You were very lucky! You know that, right? Right? This is Lagos! What if... What if...?'

There was no point in listing the things that could have happened. She knew all too well. Or didn't she?

'Oge,' she said my name with a softness that caused me to pause as it emptied me of the emotions that rattled my insides. 'I know him. He's not that bad. I'll be fine,' my sister said.

'Ngwanu,' I replied with a capitulating shrug.

---

The wedding ceremony was the stuff of fairytales. The kind with harried mothers bobbing about, extinguishing imagined calamities. The Arch Bishop Vining Memorial Hall had been transformed into an Instagram-worthy dream by the overpriced wedding planner and her curated vendors. Niyi's family was exuberant, while we, Ulari's, looked on sullen-faced in peach-hued, bejewelled, lace asoebi. Like most fabulists, Ayo was a big talker. To be fair, he was a raconteur. He spun the most amazing tales so that every time Ulari introduced him to a new extended family member or friend, they whispered in her ear, 'You have an amazing man here,' with an encouraging smile and a tight squeeze, glad that she had finally escaped the perdition that is spinsterhood. He was confident and charming. Most of all, he was beautiful to look at, and he knew it. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging a fact, so that never counted against him to me. He, indeed, was pleasing to take in: tall, broad-shouldered, and glistening with the even sheen of dark skin disrupted only by that one dimple in the middle of his left cheek.

The family's codeword for Ayo, behind our elder sister's back, of course, was Twinkle-toes. He moved lithe limbs with the grace of one who understood the importance of offering pleasure to his viewers. Beauty is a beguiling meal, and Ayo dished it out to his audience in copious amounts as he indulged this passion at their wedding reception, dancing literal circles around his bride to the delight of the guests. A beaming, almost ethereal creature, Ayo spent the night leaping and dipping as he shone in the spotlight he'd always craved. All the guests said how refreshing it was to have a groom so joyous.

When the reception hall's management gave me a warning that it was late and they needed to begin cleaning up, Mr Dancing-groom got upset that our family hadn't known to pay for the steep overnight package, while the exhausted bride slept on in the car.

Ulari moved into Ayo's family's house in Bode Thomas. And my family heaved a sigh of relief, eager for some peace and quiet. When Ulari began to complain almost immediately that Ayo was unavailable, emotionally and otherwise, and that he had no definite plans for a future together, no one was willing to lend her an ear. It was always clear that he was incapable of any depth - a beautiful but shallow vessel. We were glad to be rid of his presence, and she was sadly the infected organ we had to chop off.

Six months later, Ulari accepted a fellowship in Germany. She hadn't planned to accept it. She was supposed to stay in Nigeria for one year while she filed the paperwork for her husband's move to Houston with her. But in six months, she'd hardly seen Ayo, whose claim to business was that he was chasing 'high-level IT contracts'.

I drove to Bode Thomas to visit Ulari as she was leaving immediately. I found her cleaning. Pots on the stove tops bubbled with different broths, which she intended to stock in the large fridge and freezer. Ayo would lack for nothing for at least a few months of her absence. I bit my tongue when he asked us to 'keep the noise down over there,' as he typed away furiously on his laptop in the living room. If typing sternly was a skill, he had it down pat. He seemed to always be at it, banging away at the keys with nothing to show for it. Ayo was always about facades. His Instagram page, previously skeletal with pictures of him wearing unprescribed spectacles at conferences curated to emphasise a life of busyness, was now peppered with solicitous images and videos of him and his new wife. I took over from Ulari, frying fish for Ayo as she began to pack her bags hurriedly. I pretended to care that she wasn't yet pregnant, providing the expected appropriate sympathetic sounds like 'eya', and 'it is well,' as she wondered aloud if her decision to leave was the right thing to do. I said a silent prayer to cancel out the sex that was certain that night.

At 7pm, I announced it was time for me to join the laborious traffic home. Ulari walked out of the compound with me, escorting me to my car, or so I thought until she said quietly, 'I need to do something, and I want you to do it with me.'

'What now?' I asked, stopping in the middle of the street.

'I really want to be pregnant before I leave, and I'm in my fertile phase now.'

'Ulari! Abeg, abeg! What's all this?'

'No, listen. We haven't really had any sex since the wedding. You, of all people, know I only married him because I want a baby,' she said with pleading eyes.

My attempt to plug my ears with my fingers did not stop the words from reaching me.

'So what do you want me to do?' I asked.

'Viagra.'

'Huh?'

'I want to give him some Viagra. Without telling him.'

'Why?'

'He insists he doesn't need it and won't talk about it. Look, I don't have any time. I have to do something tonight. It's my last chance. I won't be back for a while.'

I looked at her. She was serious. Wasn't this a crime? Maybe in the abroad, but, here in Lagos, no one cared. I was almost certain our laws had not caught up with current socio-ethical contexts. As I stood in the noisy street, okadas whizzing past haphazardly, hawkers jostling for the attention of potential customers, only one thing was clear to me. I had underestimated Ulari's desperation.

Google Maps pointed me towards a pharmacy on Eric Moore Road. I walked into it briskly, two steps ahead of Ulari, taking charge of the situation, and asked for Viagra. The small, uninterested man behind the counter asked if I wanted a pack or just one tablet. I was unprepared for this question. You could buy just one pill? Na wa! I wasn't sure one tablet would do, but a pack would be too much.

'Can we buy just one sachet from a pack? Ulari asked, suddenly beside me.

The indifferent man pulled out one without responding, handing it to me as he called out the price.

Outside, I stared at my sister as she mouthed, 'Thank you.'

In all the years that separated us, she'd always felt like she was a part of me, a me before there was me - a prologue. But as I hugged her, and she clung to me, she felt so separate and unmoored. If I had only ignored Ayo at the fuel station all those months ago. My hubris is my sister's undoing.

When I woke up the next morning, there was a message from Ulari, delivered at about 3am.

'I didn't do it.'

The prayers I had pretended not to send out had worked.

---

One day, eighteen months later, my phone rang. Truecaller identified the unknown number as belonging to Iya Basira Ibadan. It was Ulari at the other end.

'Huh?' I said stupidly when I heard her voice. 'Where are you calling from?'

'I am at the airport. I borrowed a phone. I wanted to surprise everyone. I just landed. Her embarrassment was evident in her staccato explanation.

'O...kay?' I said slowly. Something was amiss.

'Em... well, Ayo is not here to pick me.'

'He no follow for the surprise?' An unfair accusation, maybe. He was, after all, her new family.

'No, he knew I was coming.'

'So... maybe wait small,' I said uncharitably.

'His phone is not available. Come and get me. Please.'

There was something in the 'please', a smallness that was disheartening. A deficiency that she did not deserve.

I was at the airport in less than fifteen minutes.

I had gone to the airport to pick up Ulari many times over the years. Each trip was an anticipated and exciting reunion that involved warm hugs and warmer tears. One sister or the other would brandish wraps of suya that were supposed to be a welcome surprise but were always expected for the car ride home. The ambience in the house would slowly become festive as other siblings returned home from school or work, staying up to talk well into the early morning hours. This time, when I pulled away from Murtala Muhammed Airport, instead of turning left towards home at the small toll like many times before, I went straight ahead towards Oshodi.

Ulari was exhausted and leaned back in the passenger seat with her eyes closed.

'I guess there's no suya party for me this time?'

'Surpriiiise!' I said, showing all my teeth in an expansive grin.

Under her breath, she said, 'That will teach me.'

I reached out and squeezed her arm.

The journey to her home in Bode Thomas would be longer than she was used to after a long flight. When I arrived, I shook her awake gently.

'We are here.'

We banged and shook the black wrought iron gate until we heard Baba Ayo's voice call out. 'Who wants to break my gate?'

'It's me, sir, Ulari. I am back, sir.' Ulari yelled back.

'Ahh! My daughter! Back? Nobody told me.' The old man pulled open the gate in disbelief and grabbed Ulari in a tight embrace before she could kneel to greet him.

'Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ahn ahn! What happened? I hope everything is okay?'

'Everything is fine, sir. I just arrived now.'

'Now? What do you mean now?' Baba asked.

'I am coming straight from the airport.'

'Ayo nko?' he asked, looking around for his son.

I stood to the side, watching this back and forth, managing to chip in my greeting when he finally looked my way.

Ulari shrugged in response.

'You are telling me Ayo knew you were coming back today, didn't tell anyone and wasn't at the airport to pick you up?'

'I spoke to him before I bought a ticket and he said he would be at the airport at eight am.' Ulari said, sidestepping an important part of his question.

We squeezed past the now-abandoned, brown Honda to the boy's quarters, technically Ulari's matrimonial home. It was a small two-bedroom that annexed the large six-bedroom house. Baba Ayo excused himself, murmuring something about looking for his phone.

The electricity was out, and the dark living room smelled rank. Ulari opened a window to let in some air, but it did nothing to dispel the miasma the room had acquired in her absence. Cobwebs blocked the path to the kitchen, and she walked through them with unseeing eyes.

'Ulari,' I called out after her, finally coming to after seconds of being stuck in place.

'I'm in the kitchen.'

I walked past the trail of billowing cobwebs, down the short hallway, into the tiny kitchen. I looked around it, my face upturned in disgust, wondering for the umpteenth time how my sister had landed here. There was something unsettling about her bearing as she stood in front of the now-open Samsung fridge with flies buzzing around her head. I pulled the door of the fridge wider to share her view, bracing myself for the expected unsettling sight of rotten food. However, I had failed to ready myself for the vapours that rudely asserted their right to be just as present, so that my assaulted head snapped away in self-defence. I looked back into the fridge, I had to see it. Ulari and I now side by side, then an unbridled laugh spurted out of me, disrupting the still lay of the room. The mounds of maggots in the black-spotted, mouldy fridge ignored me as they went about their day, drearily ambulating through once proud bowls of soups that Ulari had slaved over almost two years ago.

'Ulari?'

'Yes?'

I paused.

The silence lingered.

'I'm sorry, sis, but I have to leave.' I had changed my mind and my words.

'That's okay.' Again, her voice was slight, impoverished. I snipped the cord that threatened to keep me at her side because all of this was her choice. Besides, I had an appointment with an important client in Ikoyi.

'Please try Ayo's number again,' she said as she reached for a broom.

'It is still unavailable. I've sent him a text.'

I had to get back to work.

'Welcome home,' I said, trying really hard not to put an emphasis on the last word.

---

It was not yet 12pm, and the Lagos traffic towards the Island had dissipated. I was on Bourdillon in less than twenty minutes. The client took her time, ignoring me as she chatted on the phone, then intermittently and suddenly detailing her brief in my general direction. She spread her long, thin torso across a cream sofa stitched with delicate gold threads that I longed to feel. When her husband interrupted us, her disinterested eyes lit up, mirroring his, and I unexpectedly found her life appealing. She dismissed me at 4pm, and I hurriedly checked my phone as I got into my car. There was enough time to escape the end-of-day traffic. I could be home in about an hour. There were six missed calls from an unknown number. Truecaller was of no help as the number had no name tag. With some hesitation, I called it back as I zoomed down Bourdillon Road.

'Hey, it's me. I finally bought my own SIM.'

Again, it was Ulari at the other end of the line.

'Nice,' I said cheerfully.

'I'm home.'

'Oh, okay. I'll be home in about an hour. Don't leave before I get there.'

'No, you don't understand. I'm done with him. I'm home.'

The stifling silence that filled my car threatened to choke me. My fingers scrambled to find the buttons to open all the windows at once. I needed air.

'Why, Ulari?' I asked finally.

'After I cleaned the house, he came back and asked what he would eat, no apologies for forgetting to pick me up. I offered to buy some food, but he insisted on a home-cooked meal. I walked to Shoprite, cooked efo and rice, and when he was done eating, he smiled at me as he said, 'Now, let me put a baby in you.'

'Ehen?' I asked dismissively.

'What do you mean ehen? You don't think that's terrible?'

'I fail to see the problem. You want a child, don't you? That's why you married him.'

'I'll admit, that's the reason I've taken all of his crap. I've just been telling myself one child will make all of his nonsense worth it. But today, as he walked towards me, hands outstretched, I suddenly thought how sad it would be for any child to have this as their father.'

'You put an imaginary child over yourself? You no be person pikin too?'

I could hear the whirring of her thoughts in the silence that followed my reasoning.

Finally, she said, 'I thought I was taking care of myself. I know you think it's beneath me to be so desperate, but you haven't woken up every day for years and years alone. It's easy to be reminded what love is when you are surrounded by it. I haven't had that. I just wanted to reproduce what we have at home. I would pay any price for that. But when you left me today, I saw how much less I have now. How can I have less?'

The vibrant sounds of Lagos traffic at the Falomo roundabout filled the space between us.

'Thank you for not staying. I know you wanted to,' Ulari continued.

'I swear you are an idiot too,' I said.

'I know.'

At the traffic light on Alfred Rawene, I made a sudden right onto Glover Road. Glover Court suya is no longer what it once was, and this diversion could cost me an extra hour on the road, but the suya party tonight would be well worth it. As I parked my car, I looked in the mirror, trying on different smiles. What size would I put on the next time I see Ayo?