Ever since their mother died, Grace has taken people a little less seriously, and she does not hide it. At thirty five, her friends tell her life should begin afresh. Some in her extended family openly question her claim to her mother’s last wish. She does not argue about it; she quietly simply affirms it. And she does so at opportune times, when others, not family members, are around her sister, Alice, the most vocal of her foes.
Alice appears to be the favourite of all in the family. Beatrice, Grace’s mother in fact recently told her children, Grace and her younger brother, Tom, that they would need Alice soon. At that time, Beatrice had suddenly contracted a mysterious disease and she was sometimes not quite lucid.
Beatrice died not long after, intestate. Family feuds over the bounties of the late leader of Ikotun’s market women soon ensued. At first, Tom was on the sidelines. But he soon wades in, on Alice’s side.
Initially, the reason for his stance was a mystery. To be sure, he does not agree with his sister on most issues, which is nothing new. Now he blames her for their mother’s death, which other family members support, her alleged connivance with Bose to label him a lecherous cheat they say, Beatrice termed betrayal and lamented staking much for to guarantee a fairytale betrothal.
The dynamics of market intercourse with its undercurrent of intrigue and power play being complex enough for trading marital vows between scions of oligarchic lineages to tax even the ordained may explain the perception of breach of trust built over generations being an illness harbinger. It seems that wedged between loyalty to her class and maternal instinct, Beatrice was patently beleaguered, and she succumbed.
It is true that Bose is pregnant, and her friends say for Tom. But he denies it. Bose, renowned for her virtue in the community, now straddles the labyrinth of market talk, venerated by some for impregnating a tight cordon, seen by others as vile. She has not been seen in public since Beatrice’s sudden death.
Alice is clearly piqued, by Grace, who has become increasingly vicious maligning her, and Tom, who unabashedly covets her, with his mother dead, and engagement terminated. She says their partnership is platonic, and he does not deny that, but neither does the gossip of it being salacious that his sister spreads.
He tells his closest friends that his mother meant he would need Alice for different reasons than Grace would. Soon everyone is talking about it, to his chagrin. Apparently, Tom does not consider Alice his sister. Indeed, he also says he knows who she really is, which he would reveal at the right time.
“Mom knew what she was doing,” he says, concluding a long story he tells Wura, his maternal aunt and the new family matriarch, who declares her support for him and Alice afterward. Everyone knows Beatrice loved her son, but as it turns out, not the extent to which she would go to show that love.
It is warm inside, the window pane too short to keep the intense sun rays at bay. So, he wheels his aunt out of the house in an improvised scooter. Often upbeat, her disability regardless, she listens with patent rapture to Tom under the baobab in the woods behind her home that historic afternoon.
Tom sprinkles his story with memories of his time playing with friends under the tree, when for a few years, Beatrice then an itinerant trader, left her children in Wura’s care, and returned with Alice.
Tom seems surprised at her aunt’s serenity given a story that may soon become a family scandal. He tells her how his mother conceded to the engagement for political reasons, and how she really wanted him to marry Alice, who in fact is not his younger sister. He says Beatrice told him just before she died that she heard a baby crying outside her rented home on one of her trading trips, that when she opened her door, the baby, wrapped in a blanket was right at her doorstep. Because Ojo, her husband died not long after she left on the trip, it was difficult to refute her claim on return home that she had Alice for him while she was away.
Wura decides to tell other family members what she just heard. Tom does not object, although advices she tells Alice first. Tom adds that he loves his sister, but would rather respect his mother’s last wish, to which he says Grace is privy, prompting Wura to opt to ask Grace if indeed, she is.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe you Tom,” she says, adding, “In fact, Beatrice had hinted to me many times who Alice really is.”The relief on Tom’s face is vivid. Wura says it would be easier to convince family members about her stance if Grace’s interpretation of her mother’s statement on her death bed regarding Alice coincided with Tom’s.
She calls a family meeting after conferring with Grace, who says she does not think her mother meant Alice should inherit all her belongings. That she instantly freaks out when she hears that her mother also meant Tom would need Alice as a wife is unlikely to surprise anyone present, as most of them, transfixed, only short of freaking out too, struggle to contain her.
Alice says nothing, at first. Then, and with Grace much calmer, says she knows who she is, and what Beatrice wanted for her and Tom. She also says Bose is not pregnant for Tom, although they had an affair; she says Bose told her so the previous day, and that she apologized for causing the family so much pain.
It must have been ominous that she then gets up to leave the meeting, not saying anything about the inheritance or an anticipated union with Tom. Some present may have thought she is displeased with Wura’s call for compromise on the inheritance issue, perhaps others that she feels ashamed that her status is now known to all. Tom though, seems to want to know for sure where matters stand.
“Will you marry me?” he asks Alice, everyone obviously surprised.
“No, Tom. I’m married.” She says her mother, Beatrice, blessed her union with Bill, before she died. She promises to introduce him to the family another day. For now, she concludes, “Bill is waiting outside to take me home.”
