She tells him he drives like a woman and he says nothing and she says no, make that an illiterate woman and still he says nothing and he turns on the trafficator and makes a left and then they are on Saint Andrews street and all the while her face is in her palm in exasperation and still he has said nothing and he slows down for a waif in mismatched rain boots to cross the road and begins to hum Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and his voice is a clear soprano that pitches almost impossibly high at ‘teach me some melodious sonnet/sung by flaming tongues above’ and it is at this point that she breaks and tells him he disgusts her and it is funny because she did not say this when to her chagrin he gave the tenants another three months’ grace or when he allowed himself get swindled by his nephew again or when he put on that apron she absolutely detested and served her dinner while her in-laws beamed and said what a lucky woman she was and she smiled even though what she wanted to do was throw the steaming soup at him so he could scream, his stubby black-as-night fingers clutching his face.
He stops singing to stare at her for a long moment and she is worried they will hit the car in front but then he trains his eyes on the road again and smiles and he is about to say something but then she thinks she might as well get finished with it and so she tells him she is cheating on him with Folusho and Amaechi and Mr Ijoba from work– the one whose shoes he admired at her firm’s end of the year party– but almost immediately she wishes she hadn’t told him, not cheated, mind you- because she has watched movies and read books where men on the spur of the moment decide to kill themselves and their cheating partners and she trains her eyes on him but apart from his gripping of the steering tighter there is no change in him and her heart beats hard in her chest and she hopes that maybe he will park the car and hit her several times or maybe he will turn the car around and file for a divorce but he is still silent and an eternity passes before he shakes his head and pulls up beside the fertility clinic and looks at her head.
‘That is not the way to tie a pashmina,’ he says, and touches the gold-brown tassels that graze her shoulders and she shudders and stammers ‘w-what do you mean?’ and his serious face relaxes as a line of mirth appears on it and he says ‘don’t mind me, there really is no perfect way to tie a pashmina.’
He flips open the sun visor and tells her to redo her lipstick and requests that he be the one to turn the fancy chime-box at Dr Gbolahan’s office today because the vibration gives a certain thrill to his soul.
Chantelle Makenwa Chiwetalu submits ‘the words do not yet exist’ on every bio. It is deep-seeming but manifestly lazy, and that suits her just fine.