By Yetunde Arebi

Though it had not come as a big surprise, still everyone was thoroughly miffed and disappointed when Toyin announced that she was pregnant. There was no doubt that she planned to keep the baby, otherwise, the announcement of the pregnancy would not have taken place. She would have found a solution to it, if she had truly considered it a problem and wanted it out.

But Toyin as I would later discover was very proud of her new condition as she asked me what I thought about her keeping the pregnancy. Before I could respond, she slipped it in that the baby was a free gift from God. Besides, it was what some women, older and more experienced than her were looking for and what some would pay dearly to have. What answer would I give other than affirm that she was on the right path?

But the truth was that Toyin was not in the position to be talking about a pregnancy in the first place, not to mention her superior position in all the unfolding drama. Toyin, at the time (about seven years ago) was just a SSS1 student. Tall, dark, well bosomed with all the right womanly curves, she’d seemed to grow up before her time when I met her about a year before the pregnancy brouhaha.

We had just moved to the area and her mother ran a retail shop right in front of their house adjacent to ours. One could not but notice Toyin and her family, no matter how much one may love to ignore them. Her mother, a very polite, slightly heavy figured woman made it her duty to exchange pleasantries with all the neighbours as they drove or walked past their shop.

I assumed this was her strategy for attracting customers to her shop as further down the road, she had a bigger and younger competitor. A look at the family and you will discover that all the children took after their mother, tall, dark complexioned and blessed with her good looks. Toyin’s father, though dark skinned, was the opposite. Short, slender, with a monstrous temper. He went off the handle often when his temper possessed him.

So, you might hear his voice ringing out in the early hours of the morning, arousing you from sleep or as late as imaginable. He never cared about the neighbours and many decent people would rather avoid him. I saw him as a frustrated man and this was confirmed over time by events and stories emanating from his household.

He was not happy with his wife and children and perhaps, what his entire life had become over the years. However, he did not know how to address the issues properly and so, everything continued to degenerate around him, before his very eyes. Together, the couple has four children, Toyin, the second born, two other girls and the last child, a little boy, less than 10 years of age.

Toyin’s father, also the only man fondly called Baba-landlord on the street was obviously quite advanced in age, much more than his wife. By the time we moved into the neighbourhood, the first girl, had been ‘married’ for a couple of years. Like history was repeating itself with Toyin, she too had gotten herself pregnant by a guy, whose family also owned a property in the neighbourhood and had moved in with him.

At less than 21, and without secondary school education, she already was saddled with two children. But she and the children appeared well taken care of as the ‘husband’ seemed level headed and doing well at his job. (I have no idea what) Toyin’s younger sister, Shade at less than 14 was already set in following in the footsteps of her sisters and would later drop out in JSS 3.

All were thoroughly enmeshed in the business of the loins that brought pleasures to the sexes. It was a pity to watch as their mother struggled with curtailing the excesses of her children as well as the explosive manner her husband handled them. It soon became clear that the family only lived together but was disintegrated perhaps, beyond redemption.

So, who got Toyin pregnant? We were not surprised. It was no other than her long time puppy love. A young secondary school boy, who had recently dropped out for obvious reasons too. Sunny lived with his father and younger brother who was in Primary school despite his advanced age at the time.

They lived in a rented room in the house right opposite Toyin’s house. Sunny was learning to become a bricklayer after their drunkard father had declared he could no longer support his education. Their mother had died several years back, I learnt. It was Toyin who had been supporting him for as long as anyone could remember. In fact, story had it that she’d once stolen her mother’s thrift savings to pay for their accumulated house rent some years back.

A development that had pitched the two families against each other, with Toyin’s parents banning their friendship. Unlike her older sister, Toyin had managed to get herself into a worse situation, pregnant for a jobless dropout with no roof over his head, nor inheritance (Sunny’s father is not a landlord) to look forward to. But her parents had no choice, obviously tired of schooling, the pregnancy was Toyin’s excuse to bail out.

She told all who cared to listen that the pregnancy was already past its first trimester and she could not therefore succumb to her parents’ wishes to terminate it. Toyin’s father went around like an enraged bull and wounded lion combined, disturbing the neighbourhood about the fresh twist in his fate and threatening all sorts of calamities for his wife and the erring youth.

Toyin stayed ‘put’ in her father’s house as she could not cross the road with her belongings into the room Sunny shared with his father and younger brother. And so they gave birth to their lovely daughter whose names are laced with the beautiful adjectives of love, faith and God’s will. But it would not be the typical happily ever after story after all.

Many of us neighbours were keenly interested in the unfolding events and trust me, I had predicted that the so called love story would end a disaster, especially for the boy if care was not taken. He had led himself into a trap that he might never be able to escape from if he does not relocate from the neighbourhood or even the state as soon as possible.

I told them that while he would be struggling to provide for the child, his girlfriend would move on with her life with the help of her parents. With time, I was proved right. Besides the fact that Toyin’s parents were against their daughter’s choice of a ‘husband’, Toyin was not also lacking in vision, desires and aspirations for her life. It soon became obvious to her that Sunny was not likely to ‘make it’ anytime soon.

Their fights over the welfare of the child had become almost a daily occurrence and Toyin’s parents were not ready to take full responsibility of their daughter’s love child. Sunny must provide them with the sum of N200 everyday for his child’s upkeep. So, Toyin got herself a job as a sales girl in one of the new super malls springing up all over the country.

She soon discovered that she had indeed short changed herself by limiting the tentacles of her sexual exploration to the arms of a no-good novice who in perhaps seven life times would not be able to give her the new life she now craved. When the child became of school age, with mother now firmly in charge, daily feeding allowance was increased to N500 to be paid by Sunny while Toyin paid school fees.

With time, Toyin forgot about the circumstance of her real life, that though not married, she had a legitimate relationship with the man who had fathered her child. She began bringing home her lovers who dropped her off in their flashy cars. Naturally, they were older, richer and more experienced and poor Sunny stood no chance at all. Sometimes, she would not return for several days and would offer no explanations.

The relationship died a natural death but the N500 daily levy continued. On such days that he could not come up with it, curses, hail and brimstone would be poured on him publicly. Sunny bore everything in silence and I fell in love with the dignity with which he carried himself.

But everything would come to a head late one evening. Obviously acting on information, three young ladies came calling as soon as Toyin returned from work. Their noise made me look out from my bedroom window as usual and within a few seconds, a large group of people had surrounded them. They accused Toyin of dating the boyfriend of one of them. They had come to teach her the lesson of her life they said.

She was fond of doing such they claimed and called her all manner of unprintable dirty names. Perhaps, feeling pity for her, poor Sunny felt he had to do something, so he stepped in and tried to ask questions. That did it! The girls appeared to have a dossier on Toyin and Sunny’s relationship and proceeded to reveal its content.

They called him names and told the whole gathering that he was the biggest fool they had ever come across. The child they gave to him was not his. He only came into the picture when the real father refused to accept paternity. He should stop wasting his time and use his N500 daily donation to better his life.

Though Toyin too refused to be shouted down, everyone had heard the important information, including Toyin’s parents. The girls were eventually driven away but the damage had already been done. The fallout of the event made the rounds for the next few days and a few months after, Sunny left for a job in Abuja and has since not returned. That is almost two years now. Toyin has abandoned the child with her parents and is said to be ‘married’ and living somewhere in Ikorodu.

Toyin’s father has continued to shout to the heavens anytime the demons come upon him. But the story is that he dug his own grave. Those who knew him in the neighbourhood some 25+ years back claim these people were not his original family. Toyin’s mum was just a little girl, who had barely completed her primary school education when he impregnated her.

He was an elderly man with a house of his own and children even older than her sister, brought Toyin’s mum and dumped her with him. Angered by his shameless action, his wife who already had a house of her own had left him, taking their three children with her. One of them we heard lives in the UK.

He’d been stuck with his little child bride who suddenly became a mother and then grandmother at barely 40+ years. Pray, what sort of upbringing can a primary school girl of about 12-14 years give as a mother? Our men can surely do better than this. Do have a wonderful weekend!