CHARACTERS
GLORY
MONDAY (Glory’s Husband)
SCENE. – One of those nasty one-room face-me-I-face-yous on the underside of town. The room is as narrow and tight as a coffin, with just as much personality. It is almost midnight and the silence is funereal. There is no light and the room is lit by the torch of a phone. (MONDAY is seated on the edge of the mattress pulling off his shoes – the smell fills the small room as if his feet are corpses. GLORY, who had been lying on her side facing away from him, turns around and sits up, her back against the wall. She stares at her husband’s sorry profile contemplatively.)
GLORY: I have an announcement.
(When MONDAY doesn’t stop what he is doing, she clears her throat.)
GLORY: Did you hear what I said?
MONDAY (sighs tiredly): Yes; you have an announcement. Abi do you need a microphone to announce it?
GLORY: No, I need you to listen. Because you have become too used to not listening to me.
MONDAY (still not turning around): Madam, I am listening, with my ears.
GLORY: I need more than your ears; I need your attention – oju loro wa – so I need you to look at me, because it is an important announcement…
(MONDAY, with a sigh of resignation, half turns so that he is facing the wall supporting her back; she can see more of his face now, enough to catch his reactions. She draws herself up so that her back is straight against the wall. She lets the heaviness of the silence sit between them for a moment.)
GLORY: I am pregnant.
(MONDAY glances at her and looks away, his head bowed. When he raises his head, there is a wistful smile on his face.)
MONDAY: I have a counter-announcement of my own…
GLORY (bemused): What is that?
MONDAY: I have been sacked.
(The silence goes on for too long. MONDAY looks up to her face, as if looking for something, or as if making sure she’s still there.)
MONDAY (gives sardonic snort): Announcement has canceled announcement, abi?
GLORY (visibly irritated): You think this is funny?
MONDAY (still smiling): My dear, when good news jam bad news, what can you do but try to rescue the humour from it.
GLORY (folds arms): Go ahead and laugh then.
MONDAY: See, when overtake don overtake overtake, na to dey laugh yoursef remain o.
GLORY: What did you do?
MONDAY (stops smiling): What?
GLORY: What did you do that made them sack you?
MONDAY: What did I do? Oh, I was unfortunate to be a member of the lower class and when they start their downsizing they always start from under, from the bottom of the company, as if it is the size of we the small men that is the problem of the organization; but the oga-ogas at the top are still there pocketing fat-fat salaries, fatter than a whole country.
GLORY: So, they sacked you because they’re downsizing.
MONDAY: They sacked us because we’re small dispensable men that don’t mean anything to them… But their official statement, laced with the usual big-big big-man oyinbo, is that by the end of this year, they’ll be withdrawing from Nigeria and going back to their home country because of insecurity, economic instability, high inflation, rising operating costs, unreliable power supply, infrastructure deficit, should I continue, because the list is long from here to heaven… So, this pregnancy matter is just a good thing at a bad time, you see…
GLORY: But I’m working…
MONDAY (laughs): You call teaching in a public school in this country ‘work’? Abi why do you think your reward is in heaven? Please, it is charity you’redoing. That your salary that does not have power to carry even half mouth not to talk of three.
GLORY: Your salary was not any better.
MONDAY: Well, that’s why I didn’t go and get pregnant.
GLORY: And did I impregnate myself, ehn?
MONDAY (softens slightly): See, I’m not blaming you for anything. But child matter in this economy is not a small thing, it is not for poor people, at all. Have you seen the price of pampers, of baby food – with the way children eat and shit like three thousand times a day! The cost of antenatal is there o, with postnatal, and even the delivery itself. Everything is money!
GLORY (quietly): But money is not everything. Everything is not about money, money, money every time, sometimes you just have to live your life; if you’re thinking about money too much you will not do anything in this life.
MONDAY: So, what do you want us to do?
GLORY: Nothing. Let’s just live.
MONDAY (shakes bowed head): Life is not like that. It is not.
GLORY: Life is what you make it, what you make of it.
MONDAY: That is why you shouldn’t make mistakes.
GLORY (touches her stomach gently): Are you saying this pregnancy is a mistake?
MONDAY (looks in her eyes): I’m saying that the child will be a mistake, in this economy…
GLORY (hurt look): What exactly are you saying?
MONDAY: We can’t have this child. Not on these pennies in our pockets.
GLORY (quietly): Say it with your full mouth, Monday.
MONDAY (turns face away): We have to get rid of it.
(GLORY flinches, catches her breath; a sob escapes her mouth.)
GLORY: “We”? You’re not the one carrying it, I am.
MONDAY (averting his eyes): I’m sorry… It is Nigeria.
GLORY: No. It is you. You are the murderer.
MONDAY (turns around sharply, eyes wide): Murderer?! Murderer?! Wow. The thing is not even anything yet! Is it even a foetus yet?
GLORY: Whatever it is, it is not a thing, and I am not going to kill it.
MONDAY: Don’t be dramatic. “Kill”? Come on. It is simple abortion, girls do it every day, everywhere, anyhow.
GLORY (firmly): Well, I am not a girl and Iam not doing it.
MONDAY (sighs): So, what are you going to do? You would rather bring a child into this world to come and suffer? Isn’t that worse than abortion?
GLORY (laughs and shakes head): Do you even realize that what you’re asking me to do is illegal in this country, a crime?
MONDAY (waves it away): Please abeg, how many people do you know that have gone to jail because of abortion? With all the other bigger crimes that people are committing all over the place, you think police cares about what a woman does with her unborn child? It is just there in the law to be there as part of the law! It doesn’t mean anything to anybody!
GLORY: Ohhhh. It doesn’t mean anything abi? What of the dangers? The fatal complications that can arise.
MONDAY (draws closer to her): Nooooo, see, that one depends on who does it. It is all these quacks that cause complications and rubbish. I will take you to a very good doctor that there will be no problem.
(He tries to hold her arm but she shrugs his hand off angrily.)
GLORY (sternly): Please don’t touch me.
MONDAY (pulls away from her): You know, I’m kind of disappointed in you… So, all that pro-choice nonsense you have been doing all these years is just for show, it is just mouth, just feminist performance…
GLORY: I want a child, that is my choice, and I am entitled to it. I want a child of my own, so in this case I am pro-life, pro my baby’s life, and I’m not going to allow anybody take it from me, or take the power of that choice from me either. Besides, this is not a question of body autonomy; you’re asking me to do it, it is not my decision, so don’t try to blackmail me with politics of the body.
MONDAY (puts hands up in surrender): It just sounds very contradictory to me, that’s all. Looks like a case of shifting ideologies for convenience, if you ask me.
GLORY: I don’t care what you call it or what it looks like to you, it is my baby and my baby is not going to be made into an ideological battleground… Even though I realize that you have assumed your present position as a result of desperation, but it is still amusing, considering that one of your strongest arguments against my pro-choice stance used to be the question of morality and religion; what would God say to you asking me to commit an abortion now? Or isn’t it God who gives children as a gift anymore?
MONDAY (tiredly): It is a curse for poor people. He gives it to them to punish them, for being poor. I don’t want to fall into that trap.
GLORY (sadly): A man that sees a child as punishment shouldn’t be a father.
MONDAY: And I’m trying not to be, but you’re not helping.
GLORY: I’m not killing this one, Monday.
(They sit in what seems like mournful silence for a long time. Then MONDAY stirs and moves closer to her. She starts and draws an inch away. He stops.)
MONDAY: Listen to me: I have an idea. I have heard everything you have said and I agree with you. It is too much of a risk, medically and legally… But I have a proposition, one that will benefit all parties involved.
GLORY: It sounds ominous already.
MONDAY: It is not.
GLORY: What is it?
MONDAY: Since you insist on having the baby, have it.
GLORY: I should thank you for the magnanimity.
MONDAY: Have the baby. And we’ll sell it.
(There’s a brief silence, then GLORY explodes in a proper fit of rage; she lands two quick successive slaps on MONDAY’S head, and she picks up the phone providing light and flings it in his general direction but misses his face by an inch and the phone hits the wall behind him and scatters, throwing the room into darkness. MONDAY has managed to find her flailing arms in the darkness and gathered them to himself to steady her. After a while, she stops struggling. He is whispering something in her face until she is completely still and he lets go of her and lights a candle. He considers her face quietly for a moment and backs away from her before he starts talking again.)
MONDAY: See, just listen to me. Listen to what I have to say before you go mad. Hear me. You don’t have to agree, but please just listen.
(She leans back against the wall and folds her arms across her chest.)
GLORY: I’m listening.
MONDAY: Thank you. Why were we considering abortion? Because we are poor. Because we cannot afford to raise a child. But instead of committing such a sin or crime, why not have the child and then… give him the opportunity of a better life…
GLORY (laughs): By selling him.
MONDAY: Don’t look at it like that.
GLORY: What other way is there to look at it? Are you not going to get paid for giving your child “an opportunity for a better life”?
MONDAY: We will use that money to better our own lives! Think about it! Think of how much our lives will change, and our child gets to live a better life too – it’s a win-win situation.
GLORY: You know that that is also a crime as well, right?
MONDAY: People are doing it everywhere these days! It is the least of the government’s problem, I swear, they don’t care! Baby factories is a booming industry now! See, we can make as much as three million if it is a boy. Imagine how much that kind of money can do for us, for you! We can never be poor again. And the good thing is that we can even have another child and we will have enough money to take care of it then! It makes such economic sense!
GLORY: Hmm. I see that you have done all the math in your head. Clever boy. And what if we can’t have another child?
MONDAY: No, we will! Is it not you that said that it is God that gives children? He will give us another one, and more.
GLORY: And what if he doesn’t? What are you going to do with your three million, buy a child?
MONDAY: Come on, where is your faith?
GLORY: Where is your conscience? Have you, in your excitement, even given a moment’s thought to what might become the fate of this child that you’re so eager to sell off? What will happen to him? Will he be groomed to become a terrorist? Or become a sex slave? Or forced to work in a sweatshop or some mine somewhere. Ehn?
MONDAY: No now, it is not that bad. They’re usually adopted by families that can’t have children. So, we’re actually also doing a good deed, helping others.
GLORY (smiling): We are, abi? We are. You know, I’m curious, how do you know so much about all this?
MONDAY: I have a friend who is a social worker, he has been doing this runs since.
GLORY: Runs. Children, human beings. Runs.
MONDAY: You’re taking it too seriously. Many people give birth to children that they don’t have the means to care for. This guy provides services that helps them, in which everybody wins, the initial parents, the adopting parents, the child…
GLORY: Not my child, sorry.
MONDAY (sinister smile): Your child. You know very well that a child is the man’s in our culture. So, if you insist on having it, I will do what I want with my child.
GLORY: You will? Something that is forming inside my body, that I am going to carry in my body for months. Are you going to snatch it out of me?
MONDAY: Even that body that you speak of, according to religion and custom, it belongs to me, your husband, as does whatever comes forth from it, and I will do whatever I want with it.
GLORY: And selling it is what you want to do.
MONDAY: It is what must be done, what is economically expedient, in light of our shabby financial state.
GLORY (sighs): I am tired. All of this has been too much all at once; can we sleep on it and reconsider it in the morning?
MONDAY (tone of finality): There’s nothing to reconsider. The consideration has been made.
GLORY: Can we sleep then? This is just one night; we have nine months in front of us… Goodnight.
(She returns to her original position, laying on her side, facing the wall. She shuts her eyes, but does not sleep. MONDAY does not know this; buoyed by his hard-won victory and the thoughts of what he’ll do with all the money coming to him, he slips into a slumber of sweet dreams.
When he wakes up in the morning, the space where his wife had lain is still warm; he knows what has happened.)
****
Photo: Nitin Kumar Unsplash