Miracle in a Man: Part 2

When Frank returned from work that evening, he kissed Uche on the cheek. He tucked his socks into his shoes, waving off as he always did Uche’s offer to do it for him. Ifunaya descended the stairs and curtseyed in greeting, and Uche watched her husband’s arms spread wide open. 

Ifunaya entered his embrace. 

Uche felt as if a veil had fallen from her eyes. She found for the first time a falter in Ifunaya’s steps. She found that her smile did not touch her eyes. Her arms did not fly around Frank’s waist unlike in the early days when his face appeared behind their door on Saturday mornings, when he took them to Shoprite, to the cinemas, to the amusement park.

On the way home from one of such outings – just he and Uche this time, Frank had excused himself from the car to answer a call. Uche had licked her teeth and checked her breath. She had taken off her underwear and bunched up her skirt. 

Frank returned from his call, and picked up her bra from his seat. “Uche,” he said. 

“I am not fertile now,” she said. 

He stroked her cheek. “You are precious, Uche,” he told her softly. “I want to do right by you.”  

Obiageli had laughed when Uche relayed the incident to her. “Oh. You are not joking,” she said, taking in Uche’s unamused expression. “Sorry, but it is still funny. You know, in the way that such a thing can be funny. It is as rare as hen’s teeth but maybe he is a virgin. Frank looks like a shy man.” 

And when Uche had called Obiageli to confess that Frank had never made love to her, not while they had courted and not while they had been married for two months now, Obiageli had been silent for a long while. But for the cackle of static in the background, Uche would have assumed she had hung up. 

“Uche,” Obiageli eventually said. “That man is working very hard. Is that a lie?” 

“It is not a lie.”

“Come, is it not from your mouth I heard it that he has bought your mother land in Idumeje?”  

“It is from my mouth.”

“You have to be patient with these things you know. That man is your Lord, and his house is your altar.” Obiageli sighed. “And I am seeing you every time on Facebook, Uchenna. Look at you. Husband’s House has given you a big stomach. They only like the breasts and the bumbum to be big.” 

The next day after the call, Uche filled the kitchen cupboard with slimming teas in an array of sizes and colours. She laced up her Converse and jogged down the streets before the crack of dawn and sometimes when the sun was sinking into the horizon too, when the sky was ablaze with streaks of purple and red and orange. Once, Frank ran into her on his way back from the office. “Taking a jog?” he asked through his wound-down window. Uche felt dirty as he stared at the treacherous sweat patches in her armpits, at the folds in her belly that her shirt had clung to.

“No, I forgot something at the supermarket,” she lied, “So I said let me go back fast.”

A week later, Frank bought her a Toyota Corolla that greeted her nose with the smell of lush leather. In the middle of thanking him, Ifunaya’s Grandma burst into raucous tears, startling everyone including Frank who removed the phone off loudspeaker. When he hung up, he shook his head and said in a fondly amused tone, “That woman.” Uche smiled and looked into his face. She looked at his perfectly full eyebrows, his plump red lips that she had dreamed of in the nights that preceded her wedding. And as she thanked him again – with arms wrapped around his waist, breathing in the top notes of his expensive cologne – it occurred to her that Obiageli had been right. This man was her Lord. He was her saviour. Uche knew then that she would never leave him. 

Now, she watched as Ifunaya, after detangling from Frank’s embrace, set the table. Over a dinner of jollof rice, creamy coleslaw and peppered chicken, Frank asked Ifunaya about her day. There was a gleam in his eyes when he spoke to Ifunaya that Uche realised was not there when Frank spoke to her. 

Ifunaya picked the green peas from her salad. She looked at Uche. Uche smiled tightly, and Ifunaya answered, “School is okay.” She told Frank some more about cantankerous boys, about unrelenting teachers. 

Frank did not turn his face from Ifunaya as he listened. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and Uche allowed herself a small smile too. Maybe she had imagined all that Ifunaya told her this afternoon. Maybe Ifunaya had imagined all that happened in her bedroom. Maybe she had lied. Little girls lied. And the slight limp in Ifunaya’s gait as she cleared the table, had to be a result of her recent over-participation in school sports. 

*

Uche soaked herself in the bathtub after dinner. She closed her eyes and buried her face in the scented warm water for what felt like a small eternity. When she came up for air, the clatter of cutlery had ceased. Ifunaya must be done in the kitchen and retiring to her bedroom.

Frank would be coming up too. He liked to join Ifunaya as she tidied the kitchen for the night. “We want her to sleep early so she wakes early,” he’d say to Uche, who would smile and nod and say, “Yes, four hands are better than two.”

On the creak of the door, Uche drained the bathtub. She towelled herself dry. She thrust her body upon Frank, and held up her bottle of moisturising oil. “Please, help me rub my back,” she said.  

Frank’s hands on her skin were devastatingly soft. A tingle shot up Uche’s spine. She sharply inhaled, leaning into him. Her nipples hardened.

“Done,” Frank said. He peeled his hands from her skin. He placed the bottle in her palm and pressed a kiss to her cheek. He picked up his book and lay in the corner of their bed where Uche joined him in a red underwear that had read, Spicy Woman! on its tag. 

Frank flipped to the next page of his novel. He soon fell asleep. But when night was dark and dead as sin and Uche’s eyelids were drooping close, she felt him slip out of bed. She heard the creak and groan of doors and hinges. She heard the loud silence, a silent whimper, and soft, rhythmic grunts.

Uche shut her eyes when Frank returned a half hour later. But he must have known she was awake. After a silence Uche thought would stretch into the morning, she heard him say, “I want to adopt Ifunaya. I want her to take my name.” He sighed. “I want us to be a real family,” he added. “I want her to call me dad.”

Uche turned to Frank. He was smiling, hands clasped behind his head. She took in his veiny arms, these strong arms that she imagined wrapping tightly around her waist when she pulled down her curtains and locked the door and arched off the bed when he was at work and Ifunaya was at school, and she realised she was not angry at him. 

She was angry at Ifunaya for inheriting Grandma’s fair skin. She was angry at herself for allowing Ifunaya to strut around the house without a bra, in those paper-thin pyjama shirts that her pubescent nipples poked through. She wanted to gasp for air, hot and burning and nearly trembling with rage because this was all her daughter ever did. Chase men from her. Take men from her.

“I’ll take care of her.” Frank’s hand snaked through the heap of sheets and duvet. Uche sighed and leaned into his touch as he cupped her cheek. “I’ll take care of you,” he said.

“But why?” 

“It’s what I want.” He drew his hand away, and a steel cold replaced the soothing warmth his touch had brought to her face. 

Tears welled up in Uche’s eyes.

“Please, don’t cry,” Frank begged.

Both of them lay side by side, staring at the ceiling. Then, Uche wiped her eyes and reached into his boxer briefs. “Please, Frank.” She took him in her hand, and stroked. “I will let you put it anywhere.”

“I know,” Frank answered. And gently, he nudged her away. 

“What about me, eh Frank? What about me?” She sounded loose, unclean, asking of her own needs like some whore, and she knew it. But she also knew that she would explode. She would combust and die if she went one more week without a man’s touch.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I am really sorry.” Frank closed his eyes and turned away.

Tomorrow, he would present her a diamond necklace that would brilliantly catch the light in her Facebook photos. She’d bury her nose in the velvet box until she was pressed for air. She’d jut her chin as the oily boutique attendant fawned over her Jimmy Choo shoes and Burberry scarf; her Burberry scarf with which she would dry her eyes when she cried in her car. A week later, Uche would toss some Durex and a pack of Paracetamol into Ifunaya’s drawer. She would slip her hand between her thighs some nights, as Frank groaned and grunted from across the corridor. A few months, a year, two years later, Ifunaya would no longer pick the peas from her salad, nor look at Uche before she answered Frank. 

But now, Uche caressed the tangled mat of hair on Frank’s undulating chest, and wept. She drifted into sleep too.