Wole had been outside the midwife’s hut, unable to sit down out of worry and fright. His eyes fixed on the floor, hands clasped at his back, he was pacing to and fro like someone who was looking for a lost gem.
Silentntly, he prayed no evil befalls his beloved wife and unborn child. Suddenly, Iyaagbebi called out to him. In great anxiety, he scuttled like someone who’s being chased by a crazy dog. He met Iyaagbebi at the door of the hut, looking somehow worried. She tried to smile but it’s showing all over her; things were not completely alright. Wole was trying hard to avoid looking into her eyes balls, but anxiety could allow him. He could not wait to hear the breaking news…
"Your wife has given birth to a bouncing baby girl!’’
"Wonderful! What a great new! Yes! Yes!’’ Wole shouted, punching the air, limping up. He could not contain his joy. He prostrated flat before Iyaagbebi. "Thank you very much wise one. May your days be long in the practice of your ancestors’ medicine.’’
"Ase o, my son,’’ Iyaagbebi replied with a blank face. Gradually, smiles varnished from her partially wrinkled face, having the looks of a smoothly cemented wall, sprinkled with pebbles. "Let us give thanks to Olodumare, the maker of everything, but…’’ her speech suddenly trailed off.
"Why ‘but’ in this good news, wise one?’’ Wole abruptly stopped jubilating. He sensed danger was looming, his body vibrating with the fear of the unknown. "Now, may I check my wife and baby on the bed?’’
"You see, Adewole,’’ Iyaagbebi held Wole by the wrists emotionally, "you just have to be a strong man. We tried all our best but unfortunately, the pot got broken, though the water did not spill…’’
"The pot did what, wise one?’’ Wole wished he was hearing that in a dream. He pinched himself to be rest assured he was not having a nightmare.
"We lost your wife, Adewole, but luckily your baby is alive,’’ Iyaagbebi said, holding Wole’s hands tightly, with all the strength she could muster. "You just have to be a strong man. Your new baby needs that.’’
Which strong man? Is there any strong man in the face of an unforeseen calamity or sudden sorrow? Wole wanted to throw himself up and landed on the rugged mud floor but Iyaagbebi was strong enough to shelve him from doing such harm to himself. Afterwards, Wole sat besides Alake and the baby on the bed, and almost wept his eyes out.
"How do you want me to raise a new born baby alone? This is not what we planned, Alake. We planned to train our children together, get rich together, grow old together, died together...’’ with tears making spiral lines on his eyes, and his body shuddering for too much sorrow, Wole could not stop lamenting.
Iyaagbebi tried to console and calm him down. "My son, you see, weeping or being sorrowful can’t lessen any pain. They’ll only sink your heart and make you tired and ill. It’s the wills of the highest of the god, Olodumare that must be done. He owns us and would do anything he pleases with us any time that suits him. Nobody can question his authority. He takes whomever he wills away and keeps who he wills alive…’’
In the evening, some villagers conveyed the sad news of Alake’s death to her family in Ladele. To everybody’s greatest amazement, none of her family members showed up in her burial which was carried out in the next day at the backyard of Wole’s hut.
"We warned her not to marry that pauper but she would not listen, thus we have nothing to do with her corpse. We had given her to Adewole, alive or dead.’’ Gboye had said bluntly. However, all Aweni’s effort to reach-out to Rolake before and after her death came to naught. Gboye had warned her severely, he even threatened to divorce her if she adamantly contacted her daughter, dead or alive. Aweni did not want to lose everything she had laboured for over the years in Gboye’s house; so she had decided not to visit Awoye at all before or after Alake’s death. Perhaps, she had warned her enough but would not listen. After all, she had other children, obedient ones, she would care about.
Iyaagbebi was the one who nursed the baby till the eighth day when she was christened. Wole had invited few well wishers among the villagers and named the baby in tiny ceremony. It was a joyful sadness situation for him. He had named the baby Morolake, meaning: I’ve found a wealth to pamper.
All the names of the newly born babies have certain meanings and reasons in Awoye.
"Lack of wealth had made me lost Alake," Woke had said when asked by a villager how he came about the name. "Had it been I was wealthy the maternity would have given her a befitting ante-natal and post-natal care which might have saved her life. Therefore, Rolake is now the wealth I did not have and I would care for her with my entire life."
After the naming ceremony, some of the well-wishers helped Wole to plead with Iyaagbebi to be like a grandmother to Rolake, to help raise her. What can a man do with a newly born baby? How would he feed and bath her? It is the primary assignment of the mothers not the fathers to nurse the newly born babies. Iyaagbebi agreed to nurse Rolake with a certain amount of money as ransom and for her feeding. Wole agreed to pay. He also begged Iyaagbebi to raise the baby for six years after which he would come and take her to be registered in the school. Rolake was to be fed with cow milk as supplement for her mother’s breast milk till she grows milk teeth, strong enough to ground solid foods. Before her death, Alake had planned with Wole to give their unborn child or children, befitting education no matter the circumstances. Since they were not opportune to be educated, they had wanted their unborn children to be very lettered.
After six years, Wole went to bring Rolake to his custody. She had become so grown up, prettier and clever than her age. If not for physical maturity differences, anyone would mistake her for Alake on a first glance. Each time Wole saw Rolake, he used to feel as if the Creator, Olodumare, had replaced a bigger Alake with a smaller one.
Rolake was attending the Community Primary School at Bamibola, a neighboring village. Besides being a punctual and polite pupil, Rolake was a very brilliant and neat. These attracted her to most her teachers. Her mates of them admired her too. Those who didn’t admire her did so out of personal jealousy or her lack of interests in making them close friends. They perceived that as arrogance, borne out of her brilliancy. But it was not so. Like her father, Rolake grew to become a thinking, austere young girl.
Even her fellow classmates and Awoye’s indigenes, Kunle the son of Chief Alade and Lola the daughter of Chief Ashamo, weren’t her bosom friends. Like her father, she hardly visited or received visitors.
"They would not let someone concentrate on his life and work,’’ Wole would grumble and reject anyone who tried to have closer ties with him. He did not think there would be a day when a friend would be seriously needed—a good friend precisely.
Awoye people had nicknamed Wole at his back as "a lone wolf" who deliberately abhors having close ties with anyone. However, some thought his childhood days as an orphan had psychologically affected his brain, making him an isolated man. Many said his undying love for Alake, some said stinginess, and others said Rolake’s school fees had kept him from marrying another wife.
On his way from his farm one hot afternoon, Wole had over-heard three men talking about him, while playing Ayo Olopon game and drinking palm-wine at the village square.
"How could a young, able-bodied man like Adewole stays for long without a wife to soothe him on weary, cold nights?’’ The first man asked the others, sipping from a calabash mug of palm-wine.
"Yes, he ought to get a wife, a wife who will bear him many children…male children precisely,’’ second man said, in sympathetic voice, worry lines showing on his fore-head.
"Yes, male children who will raise children to his lineage…children who will bear his name and make him live forever,’’ volunteered the third man in a clownish tone. "Not the lone girl child he hangs around his neck all about like a chieftaincy rolls of beads, that will soon fly away like bird to bear another man’s name.’’
The men all burst out laughing.
"Yes, you’re right.’’ The first man nodded, sipping from his mug again. ‘’Or doesn’t he know that he who has dies but leaving children who bear his name, is not dead but lives forever?’’
"The girl child can even bring illegal pregnancy shame to him later,’’ said the second man, "it’s common for girl children to get illegal pregnancies these days. It’s a big shame for their parents…’’
When Wole suddenly showed up from the back of a hut where he was hidden, eavesdropping on the men, the men stopped talking. They felt somehow ashamed of themselves for gossiping a fellow man. In the village, men who gossiped were taken to be effeminate men, so it’s shameless act. Only the women, shameless women who were idle and lazy were known for carrying gossip all around the village.
Wole did not get crossed or depressed or quarrel with the villagers who gossiped him. Cheerfully, he just greeted them and went his way silently. Almost all his philosophies about life were distinct from theirs.
"What are the main essences of having a wife,’’ Wole had reasoned with himself aloud when he got to his hut that day, "is it not to act as a companion, bear a child and do chores? Rolake has filled all these vacuums. She is my child, my companion and my helper. Besides, I do not want to hurt my beloved wife’s spirit by marrying another wife who might maltreat the only child she had left behind, the only left symbol of our love.” He sighed deeply and concluded, "well, they are free to say whatever they like; they own their tongues and it’s a free world; let them throw their tongues about as they wish. I will always turn deaf ears to them.’’
Though the tongue is one of the smallest organs of the body, yet it’s said to be the most powerful. Unexpectedly, it could change what the strongest mind had decreed over a long period. Would the tongues of the gossips change Wole’s mind later? Would he able to follow his perceptions about a new wife to the end? How would Rolake cope with a step-mother if it happened that Wole finally changed his mind and decided to get one for her? Those are the questions left for the future answer.