olaitan oladipo

Baba Gberule

Excerpt

For Baba, the results were inconclusive, as was the prescription: go home and make amends. Baba Gberule had gone to Osogbo Central that morning with stomach pains no different than the ones he experienced the year prior. And the year before that. Pressing the flat of his hand against Baba’s abdomen, the doctor felt for the firm mass that had multiplied year over year in size, Baba Gberule uneasy with each indent to flesh. Without a scan of some sort, which the patient refused, or a blood test, which the patient refused, the annual check-in and check-out was complete. Make amends. Baba dropped the hem of his agbada, straightening the fabric with the impassivity of a barrister approaching the bench. In the case of Gberule v. Doctors Fagbenle, Nwankwo and so on, the court rules in favor of the patient’s right to herbal medicines, ignorance as bliss, and the power of prayer. Baba was not the first of his kind. In every village—be it north of the Niger or east of Enugu—there was at least one man, stately and stern, a man with a paunch of swallow and ogbono soup, who took his anti-malaria pill but not his blood pressure medication. A man whose baba nla begot baba nla begot this is how things are to be done. Because. When you have a disease, it is not really a disease, but an ailment. Something that finds its own way out of your system. Something that takes shea butter balm and castor oil and ground this and soaked that. Something that requires repentance, he thought. 

After greeting his wife with a kiss to the forehead, her temples warm from the morning heat, Baba closed the door to his study and wrote the names of the individuals impeding his recovery. The house boy, for example, who had received two hard slaps to the back of the head several weeks ago for reasons Baba could no longer remember and who, all but concussed, had avoided Baba since. A few extra naira and a Sabbath day off might alleviate this tension. There was also the colleague at The International School of Law for whom Baba had submitted a discourteous review full of academia-assuaged bias that had everything to do with the man’s affinity for Manchester United (over the country’s Super Eagles) and very little to do with his ability to teach civil litigation. Too late to rescind the review in question, Baba could invite the Adenowos for dinner. Ila asepo with fufu and extra meat. In total, the list numbered seven—including two pesky employees at the supermarket who had pinched his change and really owed him an apology rather than the other way around, his wife’s acquaintance on whose appearance he had made unsavory remarks, and another young man he could only recognize if and when they came face-to-face while walking to the local pub. Baba leaned forward, relieving the gas from his body with discretion and a weighted sigh, the ceiling fan circling overhead. And then there was Tunde, his son.

There was no one reason why Baba and his firstborn son of five sons did not speak. No discernable moment when voices raised or tempers flared. No disagreement—respect between men paramount in the Gberule household—that one might point to and say yes, why yes, it all makes sense. If it were so simple, Baba would address it. For his own sake. Simply, Tunde stopped coming home when he finished secondary school, skipping birthdays and holidays the way one skips Ecclesiastes or the book of Revelation. Everything is meaningless. The way one skips the coming attractions at the start of the film before shuffling to an empty seat, hands full with popcorn and Pepsi. And, as culture would have it, without an eldest child in the house, the four other brothers succumbed to frivolity. Without the pacesetter by which each child after child is to compare oneself, the Gberule boys became unruly. Tossing angular stones at passersby. Inching from the second story window and out to the function of the week that week and every week. In those days, Baba was home enough. Home enough to see how Tunde’s not being home was where his problems began.

After a heavy breakfast of yam porridge that caused the silver of his belt to press into his navel, Baba and his wife went together to Tunde’s flat in Ibadan—a one-and-a-half-hour drive that took three because of traffic. It had been five aching weeks of discomfort since the doctor’s visit, the pain escalating from moderate to severe, from severe to very severe. Baba had carefully made his way through The List, even adding a few names for good measure, though his symptoms were now impossible to conceal. He did not want to see Tunde, not like this. Not doubled over and clasping at the waist. If Tunde wanted to see his father, he too could make the one-and-a-half-turned-three-hour drive back to his father’s home. In truth, Baba had been too proud to call his son. And being that fathers did not bend to children, but carried on as if all was forgiven and forgotten—every smack to the backside, palm, and forehead a mere chimera—he had decided to leave the matter be. Aches and all. He would sooner collapse than kneel at Tunde’s feet, surrendering his self-regard as one regretfully surrenders their final dollar to the church collection plate. But, it had been his wife’s suggestion. His wife, slender to his stout, tender to his callous, had written Tunde’s home address on a torn sheet of stationery engraved —Chief Oladele Gberule LL.B, BL. Nothing more was to be said of it.

The driver pulled into a gated lot and stepped out of the vehicle, opening the door first for Baba, who had lurched with every crack in the crick-cracked road, and then for Baba’s wife. Baba wore his statesman’s best, this being a formal occasion: a peace offering. The wide sleeves of his loose robe enlarged his already large frame and broadened his shoulders; his fila sat crooked atop his gray hair. For a man of seventy-six, still practicing and teaching law despite the school’s insistence on the contrary, for a man with something like a rock in his stomach, Baba was commanding. And handsome. He was of the generation where one need only a gold watch and a chevron mustache to be a ladies’ man. All five of his sons took after him in this, handsome. Baba knocked on the door. No answer. Baba knocked again. Forcefully. He looked at his wife, who had arranged the visit. Tunde was expecting them. When his mother had called, as she did from time to time, and said, your father would like to speak with you, Tunde had not asked questions. Tunde had waited on the other end of the line to hear his father’s voice. Instead, his mother carried on. Your address is the same, abi? We’ll be there tomorrow. Tunde was expecting them. It did not matter that this—this visit—was unexpected. It did not matter if tomorrow was a bad day or a busy day. Because when family shows up at the door, knocks once then twice, carries a case of Guinness and an oily tray of puff puff, when family shows up at the door. You have to let them in.

About the Author

Born in Middlesbrough, UK, and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, olaitan oladipo is a diasporic writer influenced by her family’s roots in Osogbo, Nigeria. olaitan holds BA degrees in Modern Culture & Media and Africana Studies from Brown University. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Fiction.