Okwuanya's article: TO COOK OR NOT TO COOK

There is this story I will implore you all to read because it is about you and me. If it starts to sound funny, laugh and then keep reading. If it starts to make you cry, Dear, grab a kerchief; we have to be ready to take the good with the bad for even the roses have thorns in them. If it starts to piss you off, please breath in and out and count to a hundred and if you really want to know who the story is about, then look in the mirror. I do not particularly feel like subscribing to any literary norms or intentionally stretching to incorporate literary devices on this one because truth makes no accommodations for Soyinka’s unique grandiloquence or Achebe’s traditional witticism.
To ensure that I stay on the path of truth, I will tell the story just as I was told. Dear Egbuna, If I lie call me out though I doubt in truth if you even exist, for the tales you told could find its way into stand-up slapsticks of Basketmouth or the SundayS-unday sermons of the suited Preachers and frankly you spoke only to me, how do I even convince Chikaodiri that I am telling the truth?
Did you not tell me Egbuna that you consider yourself an old school Igbo man mindful of traditions and customs of the land and a beneficiary of the patriarchal system especially since it was the same custom that granted you ownership of your late brother’s houses and cars and his three shops in the Onitsha Main Market. You did tell me you pitied his widow and two daughters so much that you started training the daughters in school and placed his widow on a salary of N30,000 which was a little above the measly minimum wage and you could recall that I told you as much. It could barely feed a very miserly bachelor for a month.
However, in all sincerity, you told me that you had quite a thing for ladies who refuses to be bent and Akwamma came highly recommended in that regard. She is a beautiful woman, fair of skin and of smile, graceful like a gazelle and blessed with a body as lithe as a cat’s. Like a cat, she was unsubmissive and would not allow her back to touch either the ground or the bed as you wooed her for four long years, a time long enough for a green apprentice to learn a new trade or craft and establish his own. Yet, like you told me, the alarm bells were already going off in your head during the five year relationship. Akwamma was not the typical traditional girl and was feisty as a default. She was more educated than you were then with her master’s degree trumping your Bachelor’s degree which you paid your way to using your late brother’s wealth. She knew more isms than you and called you a chauvinist, a masochist and egotist, words which you had not learnt in school. The worst of it all was that you saw her cradling most of Chimamanda Adichie’s novels. It was your fault that those books did not trip an alarm in your head because to the patriarchal traditionalists like you, Adichie’s and her works were walking threats, as deadly as a ticking bomb strapped on the chest of a bushy-bearded man.
They did say that love is blind, thus I can totally understand that her ample bosom and her rotund waist had blinded you to the real threat she poses to whatever you believed. You can, if you were honest, remember me telling you that you were on a collision course with the love of your life; the beautiful brilliant Akwamma, a woman with so many isms to her surname; a walking paradox who espouses even before you the principles of feminism but cannot disavow the gains that came with patriarchism. One of those instances was when you told me that she insisted that you take her shopping with her three friends where they bought almost all the clothes in the boutique and afterwards insisted that you drag herself and her two friends to dinner in a fancy restaurant, comfortably left the bills for you after belching and later suggested a movie at GENESYS. This she did despite being a banker with five zeroes to her salary.

I joked later after that your ordeal that you had spent enough in that single spree to pay her bride price but you shushed me by reminding me that Akwamma is from Imo state, that part of Igbo land where bride price includes a thick cover notebook of lists ranging from what the groom will buy for the father, the mother, the grandfather and the grandmother, the great grandfather and the great grandmother, the ancestors who are entitled to their own shares through libations, the Umunna – The kindred that would claim to have taken care of the lady you now want to marry, protecting her from foes and dangers, real or imagined; she may have been stricken with Enyi Ure; you see, if she was not under their physical-cum-spiritual protection. Then the lists will include the entitlements of the Umuada whose own requirements must be provided to the letter down to the 25cl bottle of coke which is almost extinct, giving them less than they asked for is considered an insult, giving them more than that is considered an assault, thus one is expected to measure and weigh the list meticulously. However, it is almost impossible for one to exceed the requirements of the Umuada because their lists often adds more items on the day of the ceremony.

It is a befuddling paradox of humongous proportions then that it is that same part of Imo state that seem to have the highest number of feminists. You cannot live with them and you simply cannot live without them. They are the proverbial “ozu nwa ada” which one can neither lift nor drop. It did not also help the fragile mentalities of many a man that they are considered the most beautiful of maidens. The sight of one may be enough to make iced-heart melt. My good friend Egbuna, before you showed me your beautiful Akwamma and even before you described her to me, I have met a beau like her from the same state but not from the same community. Her clear brown beautiful eyes are windows to a very kind soul and was merely another piece in her entire assortment of radiance that included soft pink lips, high cheekbones and a nose that looked like a master sculptor’s masterpiece. Her body is also a dream, lithe and athletic and her skin a brilliant yellow like that of a ripening pawpaw. Like you, Dear Friend, I worry like every other man how this exquisiteness would affect her bride price. It is a shame that I have no plot of land to sell in my village because if Akwamma would cost You, Egbuna, a plot of land, Chikaodiri would probably cost double.

Egbuna, I may not have told you this but do you know that it took you two hours to recant the list of what you had bought for the woman that later became your wife; a list that was as long as a Catholic Litany.

However, Amen at last. You married her at Amen. But then like Amen is an end, every end is a new beginning. The new beginning is actually an introduction of palaver because right from the day one, the paths between a traditional patriarchal Igbo man who insists on starting every gathering with breaking of kolanuts and pouring of libations which is usually gin and a beautiful yet confused feminist with expansive academic qualifications was always going to be a collision course.

For Akwamma did not want to submit to anyone while you Egbuna wanted the woman whose only response to when your ‘jump!’ is ‘how high’? She does not want to be your ‘oriaku’, a housewife who will welcome you when you come home, help you remove your apparels, run your bath while she sets the dinner out for you in your very own special porcelain plates, massage you gently while you eat and asks you about your day. The woman would afterwards wait for you bedside without dresses and be under you while you heave and ho.

What she wanted to be is her own ‘okpata aku’ not even ‘odozi aku’. She cannot cook dinner obviously because she closes from work later than you do. She is a top level banker whose earning power matches if not dwarves yours. You see, you need to serve her dinner from time to time with an apron tied around your neck and like you told me in your totally embarrassing drunken haze during Chijioke’s birthday three years after your fruitless marriage, Akwamma does not like being under you, she wants to be on top of you bouncing, moaning and…erm. You get the picture now. You also told me then, Egbuna, that her fruitlessness was not barrenness. She has a career to run and can only settle to give birth to her two kids during a four year period after her promotion. If you cannot wait, you can adopt a kid. That was what you told me she said.
Yet you told me that you have never hit her.

Na man you be.

I know that I was the one that convinced you that raising your hand on a woman or your voice on a woman is a sign of weakness and not a strength. I reinforced that with an instant on when Chikaodiri made me mad and after failing to muster enough cohesion to articulate intelligible response, I took my phone, pushed it into airplane mode and took a long walk while playing Toni Braxton’s ‘Unbreak My Heart’. I know that the coupe de grace of that story was when I told you that Chikaodiri came looking for me after an hour and her call was the first that came in when I deactivated the airplane mode. You cheered when I told you that she apologized.

I am not trying to compare Akwamma with Chikaodiri. You and I both know that Chikaodiri is a better woman in both beauty, brains, character and carriage.
You disagree Egbuna?

Then go and write your own story.

However, the encounter that encapsulated your entire relationship was not the series of teary tales you told me over bottles of boredom but the one I witnessed during that fateful sleepover.
I had traveled down from Abuja to spend a weekend with you after an invitation from your wife, the invitation which you endorsed. I was upstairs in the guest room when it started watching CNN. In all honesty, I heard her voice before I heard your response. So you earned some credits, you were not the incendiary spark.

“How do you mean food stuffs? Aren’t you the man of the house?” I was shocked to hear the phrase ‘The Man of the House’ from a professed feminists with more than a score of published articles on different aspects of feminism from genital mutilation to domestic violence. She attends countless seminars and workshops where she speaks to adoring young girls who are thrilled by her extravagant lifestyle and her corporate success. She rides a Range Rover Evoque which Egbuna had told me he bought for her upon request for her birthday.
“Akwamma…I am yet to understand what you want.” I heard you sigh in exasperation and then in my room, I must confess that I turned down the volume of the television shutting off Quest Means Business for an even bigger business going on downstairs.

“Are you not ashamed? Other men buy food stuffs and keep at home. How much is it really?” I resisted the urge to open the door of the guest room in a bid to improve my auditory reception of the epiphany that was happening downstairs in the sitting room.
“So I will buy food stuffs and Chinelo will cook it for me and then we eat together then?”
“Exactly. Where will I find time to cook?” I could hear her footsteps clicking against the tiled floors of the house and then she said something unintelligible but I heard ‘drink’ then a fizzing sound as she opened whatever it is that she was drinking.

My Dear Friend, I started feeling partly guilty for witnessing this part of your life and wondered within myself whether the better move for me would be to grab my toiletries, feign an important call that I must deal with and head to a hotel. Interfering may seem rude and non-interference may be considered heartless and even diabolical. However, I thought at last that you had set this thing up for me, to validate your tales of woe.

“Am going to shower and then go out for dinner. You wanna join me?” I could hear her ask you.
“In the bathroom or for dinner?”
“For the dinner of course or do you want to rape me?”

“So you have been serious all this while that I can only have sex with you only when you feel like it?”

“Yes Darling, if it is not consensual then it is rape.”
“Do you know that I have not touched you for over three weeks now?”

“Yes I know and I have not touched you either. Sex isn’t food, I assure you that you can live without it.” I could hear her walk away while you spoke.

“What if I seek this sexual satisfaction outside?”

“Typical man. You keep singing this hymn. Don’t dare do that and give me some STD. Its infidelity and I am not surprised. It is in your nature to obey your third leg.”

I waited for you to respond to that but you did not. I was worried and disappointed that you chose to walk away. I was utterly disappointed for the first time in my life that someone took my advice.

“Don’t even try it. That is infidelity. Talk to me first if it ever comes to that” I could hear a door open and close. I presumed it’s the door to her room. You have separate rooms. You told me earlier.

Her phone rang. Beyonce’s “Who run the world” started playing. I started to imagine Beyonce saying these things to Jayz then stopped. I could not imagine Jayz walking away from all of these things without releasing a dissing rap song at the very least or imagine Beyonce being such a tool.

“Honey can you help me get that?”

I could hear her shout from her room.
You did not respond but took the call and muttered something I could not hear.

“Alright you can join me in the shower before you rape the waitress in the Restaurant where you are going to give me a treat.”

“I think I will have to pass.”

“On the shower?”

“On both.”

“Chinelo!” I heard you call the maid; a beautiful, ebony girl with a low cut hair who had taken my bag when I came in.
“Sir” She answered from somewhere that may have been the kitchen.

“I dey boil yam for kitchen Pounded yam and Egusi soup fit ready before you and madam go commot.”

“I am not leaving with Madam. I am eating out. You can cook for her if she wants.”

“Ok Sir.” She spoke with an elaborate curtsey

“Please…I thought you heard us arguing about the lack of food in this house. Where did this one you are cooking come from?”

“Sir na that pocket money wey you dey give me. I just carry small money from there buy egusi and okporoko and goat meat.” How did she know that goat meat was your favorite and your wife does not know? I asked myself rhetorically.

Then I heard footsteps climbing the stairs towards me. I quickly slid under the covers and snuggled into the pillow pushing my face away from the door. That must have been how people feel when they see their parents nakedness. I did not want you to know then that I have heard everything.

“I still think she is an amazing woman.” Was the first thing you said when you knocked and entered the guest room.

I felt then that I was walking a tight rope. Yes or No was not the answer. It is rude to not complement a man’s wife in his own house but it is also rude to not commiserate with a friend in misery.
You could see me pretend to stretch and feign a yawn before you cut me off.

“Tochukwu. I bukwanu Nna Mbe.” A sentence implying that I am as crafty as the tortoise of the Igbo folk tales.

“What do you mean?”

“You mean that you did not hear the Biafran war that was just about to start downstairs?”

“I was not really listening.”

“I have been taking your advice. It has not helped.”

I did not talk. Nothing I said would ever be right.

“You know that the height of walking away is the final walking away?” You said, uncovering the blanket I used to cover myself to find me fully clothed

“It is a divorce.”

“But you love her.” I said then, limply, hardly believing it myself.

“I can live with a feminist but I do not know what this one is.”

I agreed with him but was not vocal about it. One cannot be a feminist and demand equal footing with men and quickly shield herself with the patriarchal garb that places the critical responsibilities at the plate of the man. It is not fair for her to make you a man when it comes to protecting her, paying bills and making you make the tough decisions but when it suits her she becomes feminist armed with the biggest grammars in the world.

“My Chikaodiri is a feminist too but she still cooks my meals and I get her bills. Sometimes we alternate and we call that a treat. I invented that walking away option but I don’t know if it will work for everybody. However, hitting a lady is not an option. It is all kinds of wrong.”

My suggestion was not made in a vacuum. My lecturer with a Doctorate degree, at the height of his imbroglio with his wife rented another apartment and furnished it and tagged it “Sanctuary.”
“Tochukwu, bring those answer scripts to the sanctuary.” When I hear those words, I knew that I am taking those papers to the house he rented. The house that his wife does not know. Of course, they divorced two years later in my final year.

“See…we are going out for dinner and some drinks. Remind me to get something for Chinelo. She is nice.”

I looked at him squarely in the face and could see him struggling with a decision. His journey towards divorce has already started and he does not even know it.

It is a puzzling shame that the physically abusive marriages lasts the longest.

What is in that sort of abuse that ties couples together?

Am sorry Egbuna, but perhaps your wife Akwamma had read too many books and in the process does not understand that feminists are independent and will get their own bills and buy their own cars and as a matter of pride cook their own meals.

Maybe there is another ism she is subscribing too. Possibly a bastardized version of feminism; one that you and I do not know and hence why I am writing this long boring story that you probably told me not to tell anyone.

I know you still love Akwamma and love will always find a way, However, I will not be surprised if Chinelo, the Maid will be the one extending the invitation to visit to me five years on.
It could get downhill pretty fast.