Choices, A Selection of Shorts

By Sade Adeniran

In these eclectic mix of riveting short stories, Sade Adeniran the award-winning author of Imagine This, explores a selection of shorts that range from love at first sight in Tube Ride, to a chilling encounter with a painting, in The Painting. Some of the stories are steeped in sorrow, others put a smile on your face. Effervescent yet poignant, these stories are Sade’s gift to her readers which show the same emotional wisdom in Imagine This.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sade Adeniran
• Release date: Nov 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9780955545320

Sade Adeniran

Sade Adeniran has written for radio, theatre and film. Her self-published debut novel Imagine This, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. Sade is also a filmmaker, her first short film More Cake was made in 2013 and was adapted from a short story she wrote, called Martha Mauden & Co. Her second short film A Mother's Journey is the sequel to her book, Imagine This. She is currently adapting Imagine This into a feature animation.In her spare time, Sade produces short story podcasts, promoting African literature, writers and stories. SWoSSP can be downloaded for FREE, from iTunes, SoundCloud and Mixcloud.

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Dedication

For the friends who held me down and never let me give up.

Table of Contents

Choices

Title Page

Copyright page

Dedication

Graveyard of Dreams

Mrs. Bolanle Benson

A Judgement Call

Man of the House

The Day I Died

Tube Ride

Martha Mauden & Co

No Longer Alive

Fridge-a-Freeze

Tangled Web

Aloo Paratha and Pounded Yam

E Go Betta Oh

Generations: The Tale of the Three Folakes

The Painting

My Mother’s Stew

28 Days Notice

K.A.H

Choices

The Slap

Delivering Bad News

Outside of Liberty

About Sade Adeniran

Thanks

Graveyard of Dreams

I knew I was going to be late for work the moment I opened my eyes that morning. It was one of those mornings, when I questioned the very reason, I, Bisi Alatika was put on this earth. Why was I here? What was my purpose for being? Or as my sister Ola would say, ‘what is my portion oh?’ What has the Lord Jesus Christ our very own saviour, have for me on this very day. These thoughts ran through my head as I lay there, missing the crowing cock and the early morning call to prayer that I used to hear from the backyard of my father’s house in Surulere. That early, all I could hear was the hum of my fridge and through the paper walls; my neighbour, as he peed and flushed his toilet in the flat adjoining mine.

I missed home, every day the ache became deeper as I wished for a life that would never be. I closed my eyes and transported myself to Lagos and the bedroom I shared with my big sister Ola. Or as she would say, ‘this is my room you are my guest.’ Growing up, we fought like only sisters could, but I loved and looked up to her. She was seven years my senior and acted like she was my very own mother. When she did annoy me and I reported her to our mother, I was told in no uncertain terms ‘she is your senior sister, you must respect her.’ That of course gave my so-called senior sister carte blanche over me.

Not that it concerned me very much, she was the good sister who shared everything she had and more. She shone like a beacon and as the first child of my parents; she was also the favoured one, which meant they were more tolerant of my naughtiness. God showered my very own sister with all the very blessings of twenty people and more. Not only was she beautiful; she was the very one who was academically gifted, the one who was good to even cockroaches and mosquitoes. The one who would never disrespect her elders, and would do whatever our parents asked of her. She was the one with the bright glittering future as a high-flying lawyer. A paragon of virtue, apart from the very fact that she was a bossy autocrat who demanded my absolute obedience at all times.

Me on the other hand, my very own dreams were smaller in comparison to Ola’s shimmering future. Me, I wanted to dance, to lose myself in the music and feeling. A girlhood dream born of watching too many music videos in which I copied every step of the intricate choreography. I added some Alatika moves and before I knew it, I had won every dancing competition I entered. At school, a party was not a party unless my very presence had graced the dance floor with my moves. There was a joy in the movement of dance, an ebullience I have not experienced since I stopped. I miss those carefree days when all there was to worry about, was what to wear to the next party.

My parents encouraged the dancing until I told them it is what I wanted to study. ‘Is dancing going to pay your rent, put food on your table and clothe on your back?’ Was my mother’s response, as she threw her hands in the air and invoked our ancestors and beseeched God for my deliverance from the devil that was turning my head to iniquity. According to the gospel of mummy and daddy, women who chose dancing as a profession were nothing more than prostitutes. They believed if it was a respectable profession it would be taught in universities. I was fourteen years old when they tried to crush my dream, but I was not the good child who listened and complied. I was stubborn and knew what I wanted. It was to learn jazz, tap, ballet, Latin and travel the world and dance in music videos. Nothing they said would change my mind. But that was all before it happened. Afterwards, all our lives changed.

A forgotten memory rose like a helium filled balloon and I could feel the tears, but I refused to cry as I remembered how it once was. I took a deep breath and imagined the savoury aroma of spicy akara teasing my nose; it was a smell that woke me up every Saturday morning until it didn’t. One more thing mummy could not bear and another thing that always reminded me of the days before. Akara was Ola’s favourite thing to eat and if she had her way she would have it for breakfast lunch and dinner. But mummy would not let her, the compromise was we had akara every Saturday instead.

The alarm on my bedside table startled me and just like that, the memory went pop. I hit the snooze button and burrowed back under the covers, loathe to move a muscle as I tried to recapture yesterday’s memories. A futile effort, because everything had evaporated back into the mists of time. Everything that is, but her smile and her love for life. What would she make of her very own junior sister now?

I’d never done it before, but the spitting rain and grey clouds that gathered outside made me decide to call in sick. Maybe it was because winter was just around the corner, not that the sun had made much of an appearance during the summer. It had been cold, wet and windy. I had a new ailment and it was called the weather disease. The calendar on my phone told me I did not have any important client meetings. The ones I did have could be cancelled, so I sent Peregrine Marshall an email telling him not to expect me in chambers, I was taking the day off. A part of me wanted to send a very different email, but I was a coward. My courage left me on the day the car rolled over. The day I became the good daughter. How else could I ease the pain of my parents?

My stomach growled, I knew there was no food in the house, which meant a quick dash to the corner shop. I dragged my thin frame from under the covers, put on some sweats and a hoodie, grabbed the front door keys and made a mad dash across the street to Mr. Gupta’s for some bread and eggs. He hadn’t opened, so I decided to walk to the supermarket instead, I was hoping the crisp morning air would cull my doldrums. I cut through the cemetery attached to the church on my street, a route I normally avoided, but there was nothing normal that morning, in fact things had stopped being normal awhile back. My feet slowed to a stop as I spotted a woman who looked a little bit like Ola in the way she held herself. Of course I knew it wasn’t her, just another person who in between a blink, reminded me of the sister I missed terribly. The lady was bent over a grave, laying flowers on a fresh mound of dark brown earth. I watched her shoulders shake and wondered whom her tears were for; lover, friend, sister, brother, father, mother, husband, daughter or son. Whoever it was, I felt the pain screaming from her very pores and my lead filled legs refused to carry me any further. My breath came in rapid bursts and I fought the urge to scream with rage. My head felt light, my heavy body moved of its own accord and plopped itself on the grave of Ellen Yoke, beloved wife of Henry Yoke, born in 1852, died in 1901. My numb fingers traced her name and I wondered who else she had left behind to mourn her passing and remember her life. I wondered what footprints she had left behind for her loved ones to follow.

‘Are you alright love?’

The crying woman from the fresh grave had finished paying her respects and now stood in front of me. I must have looked like a vagabond in need of a wash and a hot meal because she dropped £2.00 beside me, which I picked up.

‘Get yourself something to eat,’ she said in a soft kind voice drenched in compassion, before floating off. If it hadn’t been for the money sitting in the palm of my hand, I would have thought I’d imagined the whole encounter. Of course up close, she looked nothing like Ola; the reason I’d stopped in the first place. She didn’t have Ola’s oval shaped head or her long natural hair, which she sometimes wore in braids. This lady had permed hair, a style Ola vehemently eschewed. What she did possess was my sister’s goodwill and kindness.

On the day it happened we were out celebrating my seventeenth birthday. I had passed all my A levels early, so my gift from my parents was a trip to London to visit my big sister, who was in the final month of her pupilage. She was on her way to becoming the high-flying barrister she had dreamed of. Mummy and I travelled from Lagos together, daddy as usual could not get away. He was in the middle of a big merger with a foreign bank. The plan was to spend a week in London before going on to New York. Mummy was going for shopping. I, of course was going for my secret audition. I had passed the pre-screening and had been invited to audition at the most prestigious dance school. The only person who knew was Ola, she was the one who helped me make my dance video. It was her who encouraged me to follow my dream. She was ‘My Small Mother.’ I sometimes called her by the acronym MSM, a term which delighted or annoyed her depending on my tone at the time of use.

‘This is your life, do not let mummy or daddy dictate how you live the rest of it.’ That was the advice she gave me on the day I sobbed my heart out because our parents had told me I could not be a dancer. So together we plotted and planned on how we would convince our parents on not only the respectability of dance as a worthy profession, but what it meant to me. How when I danced it made me feel free, there was a freedom of expression in the movement of my body. How my soul soared on invisible wings that temporarily removed any and every problem. It was not only my escape, it was also my voice and spoke words of meaning in what sometimes felt like a meaningless world.

MSM was, is a master tactician and strategist; she knew how to get what she wanted from our parents and from life. I often thought she would have made a great politician, she could have been the country’s first female president. But that was then, before our car rolled over on the way back from the amusement park. A high speed puncture, a loss of control and our lives changed forever.

The sky above changed to a darker smokey grey and the spitting rain turned into a steady drizzle. Early morning commuters hurried pass with heads down as the wind whipped hair, coats and snatched at umbrellas. A steaming cup of coffee was placed on the tombstone beside me by another well meaning passer-by who probably thought I needed it more than them. I lifted my face to the heavens and let the rain mingle with the tears streaming down my face. The knot in my stomach tightened further as I replayed the doctor’s words from that day.

‘She has suffered a severe diffuse axonal injury, if she survives the first operation to remove the clot and wakes from the induced coma, the chances are she will be severely impaired, so I want you to hope for the best and prepare for the hard slog ahead.’

Mummy of course collapsed, being a doctor herself she understood what a diffuse axonal injury was. The rest of us had to look it up online. In the early days we were full of hope, she was the golden child and God would surely not forsake her. It was not her portion to suffer such a calamity. My once-a-year-church going mother found God as she held vigils by her bedside and in church. The Pastor gave her holy water, which was meant to wake her once she drank from the cup. My mother did not question how it was possible for a comatose patient to sip from the cup of eternal life, none of us did. We just wanted her to get better and grabbed onto every thread of hope, blinded by our belief that she would wake up. Eight years later, my mother’s hope is steadfast, unwavering and certain. She clings to it with a fierceness born of desperation, because anything else will collapse her world. Me on the other hand, I have become the good daughter, the one who doesn’t rock the boat and does what her parents want. Dance school was no longer an option. Choosing law was my way of keeping my hope alive. When I visit I tell her about the life she’s missing. I told her about getting into law school, about graduating with a first, and about passing the Bar Professional Training Course and securing a pupilage in the same chambers she had.

I buried the dreams I had because a part of me believed if I lived the life she wanted, it would help ease the pain of the family. With one child in a coma, they would not cope with the disappointment of the other choosing dance as a profession. My mother is the big doctor, my father the powerful banker, MSM was to be the great lawyer and Bisi Alatika what is she? The almost magical dancer who would have brought joy to peoples lives. Maybe that is what I will have them write on my very own tombstone when it is my time to go.

I got up and said my farewell to Ellen Yoke. The knot inside tightened further as I left the graveyard with my broken dreams and unfulfilled promise. It might be too late for me to follow the dream I once had. Then again, maybe it isn’t and tomorrow I’ll find the courage and strength I need, to live the life I really want. For now I will go and tell my very own sister what a crazy morning I’ve had.

<<<<>>>>

(Published online on the Arterial Network 2015)

Mrs. Bolanle Benson

Mrs. Bolanle Benson’s eyes popped open as she heard the door gently close behind him. When he had awoken, he thought she was still asleep. Even before he removed the covers, she had felt his eyes roaming over her body and she fought hard to keep her breathing even as heat pooled in her lower limbs. He had leaned in, and like a blind man, his fingers had traced her features, gently mapping out her eyes, nose and lips. They had continued downwards, skimming over her breasts which were no longer pert and firm and moving on to her flaccid stomach with its multiple stretch marks. Just as her body was about to explode with a need that had kept them up half of the night, he stopped. Leaving her body yearning for a dose of his special alchemy. Although she was disappointed she knew he had to leave, they had agreed the night before that he would leave the hotel room first.

Mrs. Bolanle Benson rolled off the bed and stood in front of the wardrobe with it’s full length mirror and studied herself, trying to see herself through his eyes. What she saw was a sixty year old body which had long ago lost the ripeness of youth and she marvelled at her luck. A knock on the door pulled her out of her self-absorption and with a gasp of horror she realised she was going to be late.

‘I’ll be with you in a second,’ she shouted to her knocker as she grabbed a bathrobe.  Her face suffused with joy as she opened the door to her family.  Holding a silver platter with a card and a box from Cartier, her youngest son bowed deeply and winked at his mother who giggled like a fourteen year old girl.  She ignored the box and eagerly opened the card, tears falling from her eyes as she read the simple message. ‘To my darling wife, here’s to another forty years.’

A Judgement Call

Invisible tears charted a course down my cheeks. I only needed to hang on for a little while longer. I refused to cry in front of him. This is what I got for all the hard work and sleepless nights - fired. I watched Timothy Rednap’s thin cruel lips as he mouthed his excuses.

‘I think you’re a talented young lady who will go far…’ Blah, blah, blah. I was so talented and hardworking yet here we were. ‘It just isn’t working out, I can’t trust you to get on with things when I’m away,’ he droned on. I heard his words, but they didn’t make sense.

‘Could you please explain, I don’t understand?’ I bravely interrupted.

‘Well it’s come to my attention that you had a poor attendance record over the Christmas period.’ He peered at me over his gold frames. ‘Time you took without informing the office manager, I put in charge.’

I stared at him in shock.

‘But that’s a blatant lie, I was ill and called in sick. And instead of using sick days I took it from my annual leave.’

‘Yes you did.’ There was a pregnant pause, I eyed the antique letter opener on his desk and imagined a red stain on his crisp white shirt. ‘Well this is all irrelevant anyway; your work isn’t really up to standard. If I’m investing in something and it’s not showing a return, then at some point I have to make the decision to pull the plug. It’s a judgement call.’

I kept on telling myself that I wasn’t going to cry. There was a silver lining overhanging the murky cloud, all I had to do was squint hard enough to see it. But at that point in time, all I saw were the ringing tills as I spent money I didn’t have on Christmas presents. Black dots swam before my eyes and I made an effort to pull myself together. Cool, calm and collected was the image I aimed for. The British bulldog spirit in the face of adversity and the Nigerian braggadocio in the face of abject desperation was what I wished to portray. But all I could hear was the voice of my dead grandmother screaming in my ear, ‘Yemisi, cut your coat according to your small size, you cannot spend what you don’t have.’ My excuse, no such thing as a credit card in the rural village where I grew up.

My eyes swam back into focus and I realised that I’d been staring at Timothy for more than a minute without actually seeing him. I looked at him properly, dirty blond hair with piercing blue eyes and thin lips. Jennifer down in customer relations thought he was quite sexy, your typical Mills & Boon romantic lead - strong square jaw, tall and handsome - I guess it’s true when they say one man’s meat and all that.

‘Is that all?’ I asked without the quiver I could feel in my throat. I was proud of my delivery, I was truly westernised. What I really wanted to do was throw myself at his feet and beg for a second chance. A part of me wondered what would happen if I suddenly fell on my knees, threw my hands in the air and cried, ‘oga I beg you now.’

‘Yes well, the other thing is that it’s with immediate effect.’ His deep voice interrupted my wandering mind and my eyes focused back on him. His eyes wandered away from mine and concentrated instead on the antique letter opener.

‘What does that mean?’ I don’t know why I was prolonging the agony, I knew what he meant, but a perverse part of me wanted him to spell it out. Despite the pain I felt, I knew he was feeling very uncomfortable and I had no intention of making his job any easier.

‘You’ll get two weeks paid notice, even though you’re only entitled to one.’ Our eyes met over the rim of his frames and I wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. Instead, I got up gracefully and left. The question, ‘what am I going to do?’ Kept reverberating around my head. My heartbeat sped up, my breaths came faster and my jellied limbs could barely carry me back to my desk. It was 5:30pm on Monday, the first working day after the New Year. Jackie who I shared an office with, was just leaving.

‘See you tomorrow, Lola.’

‘I’m not in tomorrow.’

‘Of course, you’ve got your driving test, good luck and see you on Wednesday.’

‘Thanks, see you around.’ I didn’t have the strength to tell her I wouldn’t. I sat down with my head in my hands; I needed to think for a second. What was I going to do, how was I going to cope? The rent was due, my account was in the red, I had other responsibilities that I didn’t even want to think about and I had just been fired.

‘Hey Lola, are you ready?’ Asked Debra, my only work friend who occupied the doorway into my office.

I looked up and put my game face on. ‘Hey Debs, I’ve just got to pack some things and I’ll be outta here.’ I briefly wondered if I should tell her, but didn’t think I could cope with the pity. I started to clear out my desk while I contemplated the joys of unemployment and being in debt.

‘You seem awfully quiet, did you have a run in with His Nibs?’

‘You could say that.’ I responded.

‘What happened? Didn’t he like your idea for the integrated newsletter? I personally think it will pull in more customers and we don’t have to get an outside agency, everything can be done in-house. He’s so stuck in the 90s, new tech is an aberration as far as he’s concerned…’

Sensing something more was afoot she paused mid-flow and watched me as I piled the contents of my desk into a plastic bag. I looked up and saw realisation dawn on her.

‘Noooo he didn’t?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ was all I could manage to say. I opened my laptop and cleared my personal emails and copied my personal folders to a USB stick. I glanced across at Debs whose jaw was still on the ground.

‘He fired you?’ a statement, not a question.

‘Yep.’

‘Noooo, but why?’ I shrugged my shoulders, ‘so what you going to do?’

‘Stand on the street corner and hawk my wares, after all what’s the use of having a great body if you can’t use it?’ I quipped.

‘Well I’m glad you’ve still got your dark sense of humour.’

My strategy was working perfectly; don’t let them see you cry.

‘But seriously hon, what are you going to do about it? You can take him to an industrial tribunal, I’ll testify on your behalf.’

My heart contracted, courts, tribunals. No, the risk of being discovered was minimal, but it was still a risk.

‘I don’t have time for a tribunal; I’d rather just find another job.’ I smiled at her and hoped my eyes followed the curve of my lips. I must have convinced her because she let it go and instead started planning my leaving drinks. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a West End bar and pretend everything was all right with my world. What I wanted to do was to go home and scream with rage. But instead, I was the epitome of control.

Timothy Rednap’s shadow hovered in the doorway.

‘I was hoping you were still here.’ He said glancing briefly at Debs who glared back. My heart skidded, maybe it was a joke and he’d come to tell me I wasn’t fired after all.

‘Yes,’ I couldn’t quite disguise the eagerness of my tone and the hope in my voice.

‘Just that before you leave, I need the keys as well as your laptop,