The Baby Is Mine

Quick Reads

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838952570

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle's house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib.At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby's cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby's cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth? 'Braithwaite excels at narrative voice, morally compromised characters and original, subversive plots... Part drama, part thriller, it is a gripping distillation of Braithwaite's distinctive brand of comic domestic noir.' Evening Standard

Chapter One

I was living with Mide (she of the wide hips and kinky hair) when we heard the news. The Nigerian government wanted us to join the world and go into lockdown. So we did. We stayed home.

I didn’t mind. Mide had a beautiful flat in Ikoyi looking over the Lagoon. She had large French windows, so light was always streaming in and bouncing off her many mirrors. We fell into a routine. She liked to cook for me, I liked letting her. We would eat and then we would part for a few hours to check our emails and join Zoom meetings, before coming together again in the evenings. We were happy.

So I wasn’t expecting to be woken up at one in the morning, by a phone glowing just two inches from my face. Had she been holding it there till I woke up, or had she called my name?

‘What is this?’ she asked. Her words were half cry, half bark, so I knew something was wrong. I squinted at the bright light. The phone in her hand was mine, and it was open on a WhatsApp chat from a week ago. How had I forgotten to delete it?

‘You went through my phone?’ I asked. I didn’t know what else to say. I was still rubbing the sleep from my eyes, still trying to work out how she knew my password.

‘I did. And I’m glad I did, because you are a liar and a cheat!’

She dropped the phone beside me and leapt from our bed. I scooped up my phone, deleted the messages and photos, and scrambled after her.

‘I can explain,’ I told her. I couldn’t. I said all the things you were supposed to say – It meant nothing. It was a mistake. It had happened before things got serious between us. But my words were only making her angrier.

‘They warned me about you, but I didn’t listen,’ she said as she flung open the wardrobe and began dragging out my shirts and trousers.

‘Haters. All of them. Babe, we can work through this. Every relationship has its ups and downs.’

She laughed. ‘You are incredible, Bambi, really. One of a kind. But I’m not the one you are going to make a fool of. I want you out of my house!’

This was starting to look serious. I tried a different approach. ‘Babe, calm down. I can’t even go anywhere right now. We are on lockdown, remember?’

I only just managed to dodge one of my shoes. I decided that maybe a little space was best. I gathered my clothes and stuffed them into a bag, promising her I would call. She reacted by unlocking the front door and holding it open. I got into my car and backed out of her driveway for the first time in two weeks.

The question now was, where would I go? Mide didn’t leave me with enough time to work that out, so I was just driving up and down empty streets. I tried to call Uche, who I had shared a flat with before I moved in with Mide. But he didn’t pick up, and in any case, he had already told me someone had taken my room. My sister would have been the easiest option, but she and her family hadn’t made it back from their holiday before Nigeria closed its borders. So they were forced to extend their stay in an Airbnb, spending money they hadn’t planned on spending. I might have called her anyway, for a little bit of comfort, but she would only snort at the mess I had landed myself in.

‘It serves you right,’ she would say. ‘Maybe this will teach you to keep it in your pants.’

Even though I had told her, time and time again, that a man was not meant to be tied to only one woman. It went against the laws of nature itself. And who was I to argue with nature?

Chapter Two

My grandfather’s house was one of the few left on Awolowo Road. He had bought it just before the civil war and left the property to Uncle Folu in his will.

I hadn’t been to the house in a while, but it was only a ten-minute drive from Mide’s flat and I knew where they kept a spare key. I imagined it would be empty – Uncle Folu was the first person I knew to die from the virus, and I didn’t think my aunt would stay in the house on her own. And since she had a newborn baby, it was far more likely that she would have gone to stay with a relative. I would hang out at the old bungalow till the lockdown was over.

There was no gateman to open the gate for me, so I lifted the bolts myself and pushed the old creaking gates, until the gap was wide enough. I drove the car in and turned the engine off. Nothing stirred, except the large palm trees that hid the bungalow from view. I walked round to the back of the house, skipping over the mangoes that had ripened long ago and fallen to the ground. They were starting to rot. I lifted the mat in front of the kitchen door, and picked up the silver key. I went into the kitchen.

The house was in darkness. I flicked the light switch but nothing happened – there was no electricity. I used the torch from my phone to search the drawers till I found a candle and a box of matches. Without electricity, I wouldn’t be able to charge my phone, so I didn’t want to waste the battery.

I warmed the bottom of the candle with the flame from the match, so it melted a little and would stick to a saucer. That way I could carry it without having the wax drip onto my skin.

A door shut and I almost dropped the candle. But unless the old bungalow had ghosts now, it was safe to say my aunt was home. I should have called ahead. I lit the candle and went out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the dining room. I was heading to the heart of the house.

Suddenly the door to the guest bathroom opened and startled me, forcing me to take a couple of steps back. Aunty Bidemi popped out. She squeaked in terror when she saw me. I lifted the candle a little, so she could get a proper look at my face.

‘It’s me, Aunty.’

‘Bambi?’

‘The one and only.’

I could make her out as the light flickered – her short frame, large hips and the long wig glued to her head – so unlike Mide’s natural sexy afro.

‘Why are you here? Haven’t you heard about the lockdown?’ Aunty Bidemi asked, squinting at me.

‘The lease for my place had come to an end, and the landlord was being unreasonable. You know how people are these days ...’

She didn’t respond for a moment, a moment in which I worried that I would soon be back in my car. As I looked at her, I noticed her wig was skewed slightly to the left, and it probably hadn’t been combed in weeks. It was straw-like and tangled in places. Her grief was heavy on her still. I tried to remember if I had called her to tell her that I was sorry for her loss.

‘Well, maybe it is a good thing you are here,’ she sighed. She opened the living-room door, I followed her in.

The room was softly lit by a battery-powered lantern. The walls were covered with pictures of children and grandchildren that my grandfather had collected. Above the TV was the picture of me after my graduation, hanging over the one of my sister. The old-world sofas were covered with large cloths, so they wouldn’t gather dust, and so was the piano. And there was a woman in the room. Even though she had her back to us, I could tell who she was by the shape of her hips and her long strong legs. Esohe turned and our eyes met. I was confused. I had never expected to see the two women in the same room.

‘Bambi, this is Esohe,’ said Aunty Bidemi.

Should I admit that I knew her?

I cleared my throat. ‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

We stood there, with our little sources of light revealing our dull faces. I was tempted to blow my candle out, in case my face gave away my thoughts. Seeing Esohe, here, when my aunt was also in the house, was strange. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I could ask none of them without revealing too much. And I did not want to be thrown out of two houses in one day.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Aunty Bidemi. ‘Esohe, get Bambi some food.’

Esohe put her hands on her bony hips and pressed her lips together. She was wearing a T-shirt and leggings, which was a sharp contrast to Aunty Bidemi’s shapeless bubu. ‘I’m tired.’

Aunty Bidemi massaged the lines in her forehead and stretched her lips into a smile. It was a gesture I knew from my angry teen years. I could guess her next words.

‘I’m not asking for too much, am I?’

Esohe shrugged. ‘I’ll go and prepare it. But you cannot treat me like I’m the house girl.’

She passed by me. She smelt of mango and mint. I felt my muscles tense. I decided against following her. I turned back to find Aunty Bidemi staring at me, as if trying to read my mind. She smiled.

‘Come, come and see the baby, Bambi.’

It was then that I noticed the cot.

Chapter Three

Aunty Bidemi was smiling at me, waiting for me to look into the cot and make goo-goo sounds. I went up to the cot and peered in.

The baby looked like a baked potato.

I wanted to be able to say it was cute, but I couldn’t work out if it was a boy or a girl. They had dressed it in white, which did not help. It was awake and it reached for me with its tiny fingers.

‘Congratulations, Aunty. E ku ewu omo.’ I told her in Yoruba, congratulating her on surviving the risks that came with childbirth. I had meant to call her and Uncle Folu when I got news of the baby; but I hadn’t gotten round to it. Still, I knew how long she had tried for a child, and I was happy for her.

She turned to me, blinked and then smiled. Aunty Bidemi had a sweet smile – her lips would push her cheeks up, her cheeks would flatten her eyes, so that they became near slits. It was good to see that, even after all she had been through, she could still smile.

‘E se o,’ she replied. ‘Do you want to carry him?’

A boy then. She didn’t give me a chance to refuse. She scooped him up, and passed him over to me. I had just enough time to put down the candle and twist my arms into an awkward hammock. He stared at me. It appeared he knew I was a stranger. His white T-shirt had written across it – My father is a hero – which I found incredibly sad.

‘His name is Remi,’ she told me, even though I hadn’t asked. ‘He likes you.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Does he look like Folu?’

I looked for my uncle in his face, but I couldn’t see anything about him that was familiar to me. His hair was pitch black and curly, slicked onto his head. He tugged at the thin silver chain that dangled from my neck. He clearly had no clue how expensive that chain was. I gently lifted it free from his fingers and handed him over to his mum.

‘He is very cute,’ I told her and she gave me a wobbly smile. Was she going to cry? I grabbed my...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-one
• Chapter Twenty-two
• Chapter Twenty-three
• Chapter Twenty-four
• Chapter Twenty-five
• Chapter Twenty-six
• Chapter Twenty-seven
• Chapter Twenty-eight
• Acknowledgments