1.

They said Mama Azeru left her husband. The words they used as they hopped this gossip from mouth to mouth were “disappeared,” “left.” Left, because, as they said, “her husband no chase am away.” Disappeared, because there was no drama. No scenes of a shattered and teary-eyed woman thrown out of the house by her husband. No steely woman, sated by her husband’s excesses and deaf to the “stay for your children” pleas. Nobody knew she left. Not husband, not nosy neighbors. One day we saw her, the next day we didn’t. And it was easy to notice her absence. Her shop by the entrance of our gateless compound was a hub for the compound women in the evenings. They, on plastic chairs and benches, gathered at its front to hawk, gist, and gossip. During the day, her shop was the compound children’s. The scrumptious, baked delights put on show in glass cases wheedled out of us whatever change we had. And because Mama Azeru doled out jara and freebies every now and then, we seethed at her shop.

We loved her. Not just because of the jaras or the freebies she let us have. Something about the warmth that swaddled us up every time her face widened in summery glow. And the softness of her. No edges, no spikes, no chafes. Nobody ever heard her raised voice or saw her face crumpled. Even on that day—the day we last saw her—the day she disappeared.

Ma heard from Iya Tayo that Mama Azeru left her husband. She told Pa this while we had dinner. I glued my eyes to the plate of food in front of me and listened. Ma would smack me if I peered at her while she shared grown-up gist with adults. It was as if what bothered her was the show of listening and not the listening itself. I could listen as long as I did it with stealth.

The first, second, and third night, Mama Azeru did not come back home. Papa Azeru called her many times. She was unreachable. By the fourth day, his family, her family, the neighbors knew she had left home. Papa Azeru was furious. Iya Tayo said both he and his brother had decided that they would chase her back to where she came from when she returned.

Everybody expected her to return. After all, a woman does not just up and leave her husband and her children. Only her husband, understandable; but her children also, no. They said this and shook their heads as the gossip went from here to there. The third week of Mama Azeru going away, Papa Azeru was no longer furious. He asked people to beg his wife to return since she would not speak with him, Ma told Pa.

Mama and Papa Azeru always fought. Fights that started and ended with the echoes of Papa Azeru’s abuse-soused voice, with the in-between’s of the rumblings of a scuffle. I first heard the words retard, whore from Papa Azeru’s mouth. I had just changed from school uniforms to mufti. The scraps and bits of Papa Azeru’s hollered words tugged at me and dragged me out, as it did the other children and adults. Outside, Papa Azeru spat abuses at Mama Azeru, who, bent over a basin of clothes, mopped up all of his vileness. It was how I remembered most of their fights. Mama Azeru quiet, Papa Azeru hollering, sometimes Papa Azeru hitting Mama Azeru. I never saw the hitting, though. I heard it, heard Ma and Pa talk about it at night, heard its details from Azeru. Ma, Pa, everyone talked about how badly Papa Azeru treated Mama Azeru.

“That sweet woman,” they would say. “Why that man they always beat and abuse am?” A hiss would follow. “Woman wey no get wahala.”

And then she left, and they turned their edges to her.

“Why she go leave her house and children? The man no pursue her. E no throw her things outside.”

“No matter wetin happen, she no suppose leave her family.”

“That man wahala too much sha.”

“Even though. She no suppose just disappear.”

It baffled me how they could know all the things I knew and still act like she had wrung straight wires into tangles. Maybe they did not know the things Azeru and Mezirim, Azeru’s kid brother, let fall off their tongue, best friend to best friend, when we played. The things that plastered horns on Papa Azeru, and grew wings out of Mama Azeru, and made Azeru say, “I hate my father sometimes.” Nights Azeru caught his mother, pursued out of the bedroom and curled up on the sofa, praying through muffled sobs; performances that featured slaps, punches, shoves, performed before Azeru and Mezirim. Maybe the unforgivable thing—leaving—Mama Azeru did, dwarfed these forgettable things, forgotten by the adults, done by Papa Azeru.

We heard Mama Azeru shout. It was months and months since we last saw her. She popped. Her fairness, which before had seemed veiled in drabs, was now all sheen. In Ma’s words to Pa at dinner later that day, “her body don come out.” Mama Azeru walked in with a man Ma said was her kid brother. Minutes passed, neighbors wore wondering on their faces, then we heard the shout, then it was quiet again. Mama Azeru left.

“Them say, she wan carry the children, but Papa Azeru no gree,” Iya Tayo told Ma the next day. They both sat on a bench. I was sketching on sand.

“I talk am,” Ma said and slapped her palms together. There was lithe in her voice, like a child excited she got an answer right.

“She for no comot like that. Now she can’t see her children. I pity am sha, but wetin she expect.”

Ma responded with a nod.

2.

They twisted their mouth the other way and said Mama Azeru loved her husband. It was a Sunday afternoon, a month after the day Mama Azeru returned to her husband’s house. The first week, they had observed her with suspicion masked on their faces, and with “Why now?” dripping from their mouth like water from a faulty faucet. Suspicion must have nagged Papa Azeru’s brother too, because he visited more frequently, and trailed her with his eyes, as if searching for a thing to confirm his suspicions.

She had been gone for almost a year. Papa Azeru had brought back a woman to his house and had given Mama Azeru’s shop to this woman. Now, Papa Azeru was sick and abandoned by the new woman, and Mama Azeru comes back?

They peddled different versions of this wariness the first week. By the second week, presumptions had sprouted out, some burying their roots deeper than the others. In the evenings, at dinner, Ma spilled each bean to Pa.

“Iya Tayo say Mama Azeru come back so that if something happen to Papa Azeru, her in-laws no go collect him property.”

“Oluchi talk say she dey suspect say Mama Azeru use juju send this sickness to Papa Azeru so that him new woman go leave am.”

“Ma Sorochi say na Mama Azeru children make her come back, because as their Papa don sick, nobody to take care of them.”

But because all they saw was a devoted wife and mother, they allowed these surmises whittle down into “she loves her husband,” and took her side. And all was well again. Mama Azeru had her shop back. Azeru said his father was nice now. He had expected his father to be as he always was. Glacial. With, as was history, only a thin film between Mama Azeru and that rattling coldness. But Papa Azeru called Mama Azeru, Obim, the Sunday she came back, and was, in Azeru’s words, “very nice” to her.

Papa Azeru was numb on one-half of his body. I had heard Ma say he had a partial stroke. I had no clue what she meant until the day I saw him taken to the hospital. Two men held him up by his sides and lugged him to the backseat of a car. The skin that robed the stroked half of his face resembled plastic just beginning to melt. An invisible weight heavied that half of his body so that while the other part moved it just dangled. That day, fascination had puffed what was an appropriate question out of my mind, and I asked Ma, outside, “Is this stroke?” And got a brash side eye in return.

We started to seethe at Mama Azeru’s shop again. Children at noon, women in the evenings. The drooping and the numbness that dogged Papa Azeru waned, and his legs learned to support his weight. Everybody said it was because Mama Azeru came back, that she was God-sent, that the stroke was punishment for Papa Azeru mistreating his wife, but that now they had reconciled, God was blessing him. Papa Azeru must have believed the same thing too, because he allowed himself to melt for her, like a husband fawning over a new wife.

We never saw Papa Azeru in his wife’s shop until after she left and came back. His charm, tendered unabashedly, with the smiles and compliments he beamed at his wife, coerced blushes and smiles out of her. They wore resembling patterns to church and occasions like Ma and Pa. Unlike Ma and Pa, they larked about openly. The spite that used to lace Azeru’s tone whenever he talked about his dad became glee. Before, Papa Azeru’s fathering had been flinty. Now, as if racing against himself, he spoiled Azeru and Mezirim. Toys. Treats. Shenanigans.

Adults blamed it on God.

“God don answer Mama Azeru prayer.”

“Na God o.”

“Thank God for her.”

It was months and the thing people were afraid would happen when Papa Azeru healed completely did not happen. He did not “go back to his old ways” after the stroke died out. First month, second, third, their new normal remained. Then…

3.

They slapped their palms together and shook their heads in disbelief. Their mouths opened up but only sighs sluiced out. This shocking thing began four months after Papa Azeru was completely well. The woman that had, in Mama Azeru’s absence, slept on her bed and sold in her shop was in our compound. That greyness just before the sun peaked still painted everything when the woman’s voice perforated walls and seeped into houses. Neighbors eavesdropped and watched with stealth. By the time I was ready for school, the gist was open secret. Papa Azeru had a son with the woman.

“Papa Azeru and him brother been dey hide am from Mama Azeru. Them been dey fear say Mama Azeru go comot again if she find out,” Iya Tayo told Ma. They sat on a bench just outside our window. “Dem rent house for her. Pay for everything, even dey send her money monthly.”

“Why she come dey shout na?” Ma asked. “Shey na she leave the man when am fall sick.”

Iya Tayo spread her hand, each palm facing upwards, like the unfurling of a flower. “I no know oh.”

“This thing na devil handwork. E wan scatter that family again.”

We held our breath—Papa Azeru and his children more intensely—and waited for Mama Azeru to disappear, but she remained. Things teetered into what we were used to before that morning happened. The woman, disappointed that her shenanigans did not rouse the chaos she had hoped for, allowed sleeping dogs lie. Papa Azeru raced harder against his past. God was fighting hard for Mama Azeru, was what people said.

With just the clothes that hugged their body, Mama Azeru left with her children. It was four months after that morning that was now smog in our memory. We saw Papa Azeru unravel. The initial days, all he did was investigate their whereabouts. A futile effort. The adults said he involved the police and contacted every family member and friend of Mama Azeru he knew.

Papa Azeru’s crumbling started with warm gulps of alcohol. One, another one, another, until that shattered within-thing that ached him in puzzling ways, was drowned, itself and the ache. He no longer left in the morning, in trim and crisp wear, and arrived in the evening. In the morning he slept off drowsiness, left in the evening, in shoddy clothes, and returned staggering and dazed. Lots of his days were spent in brothels visiting whores, Pa had told Ma. Different women flocked his house. They wore vivid colors on their faces, and skimps that clinched their body. Ma called them ashawo with the same loathing that smeared her voice when she talked about thieves, and drunks, and those sorts. His bones poked out of what had been supple, but was now drab. Then the women stopped coming. Those visits to bars were less and less frequent. Pa said Papa Azeru was broke. And it happened again—the stroke. Not the half of him. This time, it spread its claws to every muscle and glued him to his bed. Family members carted him away. For a while, I neither saw Papa Azeru nor heard about him.

It was Saturday. I played outside with the other children. Pa walked past us with dour pitched on his face. We chorused “Good afternoon” and Pa replied with a wave. From inside the house, Ma’s scream pierced the glee that tethered us, the children, together. I was inside the house the next moment, eyes stretched in panic, asking “Mummy, are you okay?” Ma and Pa said everything was fine. Later, I heard Papa Azeru was dead.

4.

They said Mama Azeru killed Papa Azeru. As they said this, they squeezed their face in disapproval, hugged themselves, whirled a hand around their head and snapped their fingers, and called her names: heartless, wicked, snake. Everybody agreed Papa Azeru did not deserve such cruelty, that the things he did were bad, but not that bad.

I went with Ma and Pa to Papa Azeru’s burial. Mama Azeru and her children, sided by police officers and somber and cladded in black, came too. Shocked stares tailed their every move. Then, as if possessed, Papa Azeru’s brother strode towards her, a machete in his hand. Men held him before he reached her.

“You witch. What are you doing here? Wetin you dey do here?” His voice drowned the all-around mumblings. “Get out of here. Comot for here before I kill you.”

Mama Azeru was quiet through it all. She curved each hand around her children’s shoulders and stayed still. Then she left. 

5.

They said many rumors about Mama Azeru: she was either in America or England or Canada with her children; she never forgave Papa Azeru, and came back only for her children; the money she used to travel was gotten from the ritual she used Papa Azeru for.