other women at the market, and just continue. He saw himself building a family of hard workers, pulling themselves up in the world, but the absence of a child was obstructing this vision. Everywhere the walls were decked with posters and advertisements about family planning, trying to convince people to slow down on having children, and here they were struggling to have even one. It was humiliating.
Once, after they’d quarreled about it, Chisom had thrown her hands up.
“Every time it’s me going to a doctor. Ah-ahn! I don tire. You sef, why don’t you go and see if the problem is with you?”
Ebenezer had recoiled in shock. Before he could even reply, she turned over in their bed and pulled her wrapper to cover her, pretending to fall asleep. He sat there for a few minutes, and by the time he thought of something to say, it seemed childish to wake her up, so he went to sleep, too. When he mentioned the conversation to one of his brothers a few days later, his brother laughed.
“Shey I told you?” he said. “Na so she dey blame you because say her womb dey dry. You see wetin you don start?” He went and told the rest of the family, and from there everyone got involved in condemning Chisom and telling Ebenezer what a useless wife he had.
Chisom stopped speaking to her husband because of it, and they started to move around each other like strangers. Ebenezer missed her, but he didn’t feel he should apologize for talking to his own family members about his marital problems. Chisom thought that, if he already knew how they felt about her, why would he tell them and give them more ammunition against her? So a silence grew up between them, and Ebenezer was too proud to break it.
He started to look more at other women—not with intent, just a lazy wondering, about what kind of wives they would have been, what it would be like if he’d married one of them and had some children. There was an Abiriba woman who ran a small food stall across the junction from where he worked. Everyone called her Mama Ben and she made the best beans Ebenezer had ever tasted. She had maybe four or five children, he wasn’t sure, and she was still pretty: very clear skin, a nice smile, and she dressed well. Ebenezer wondered what it would be like if he was her husband, with all these children and his wife with a business of her own, just like he always wanted.
He started going to Mama Ben’s food stall more and more, sitting at the round plastic table with cardboard folded under one leg to balance it. She always welcomed him with a smile, like she did with every customer, and while it was tempting to believe that the smile she gave him was different, special, Ebenezer knew it wasn’t. Still, it was nice to sit there, drink Pepsi, and talk with her other customers. Mama Ben looked at him as if he didn’t have that scar on his face, and the only other woman who had done that was Chisom. Ebenezer would stay at the food stall until it was late, keeping an eye out across the road in case a customer stopped by, and then he would wander home filled with goodwill and contentment. He ignored his wife’s silence and went to sleep with the memory of Mama Ben’s smile in his head.
One evening, when her other customers were gone, he offered to help her out with something in the kitchen, which gave him an excuse to get her alone. There, in a back corner, he plied her with sweet nonsense words and she giggled and he kissed the side of her sweaty neck. She tasted like salt. That night, he reached out in the dark of his bed and tugged at Chisom’s hip and she gave in to him, but he wasn’t thinking of her, not for any of the time. In fact, it was only with effort that he managed to say her name at one point, and then only because he didn’t know Mama Ben’s given name, and what else could you call out when you were in bed, really?
Chisom still slept as far away from him on the mattress as she could get, even after they’d had sex. The next morning she didn’t speak to him, and this time Ebenezer didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about