Men and Their Eyes [a Play]

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SCENE FOUR2

[THE XYLOPHONE IS SOUNDED]3

TAILOR IS IN HIS SHOP WORKING, EMMA SITS ON THE BENCH. EKA MMA, MAMA SAM’S CUSTOMER, WALKS INTO THE VERANDA.4

EKA MMA: Good morning, Tailor and Emma.5

TAILOR: Good morning, Nne. Ah, you are shining this morning o!6

EMMA: Just what I was about to say without bothering to answer her greeting.7

EKA MMA: I’ve come again – you two won’t let me rest. Me and stockfish, I don’t know which looks dryer and drab and you both say I’m shining. Please, is Mama Sam at home?8

EMMA: Women! They’d never throw one word of praise to the men dying to make them live.9

TAILOR: Please, tell them o!10

EKA MMA: [LAUGHS] Who is dying to make me live? My husband? Then you don’t really know him. Left to him he doesn’t care if you look like something crawling out of a dingy hole.11

TAILOR: Then how comes you’re looking fine like this?12

EKA MMA: Please, you two leave me alone. [EKA MMA CLAPS HER HANDS:] Pam! Pam! Is Mama Sam at home?13

MAMA SAM: [HOLLERS WITHIN:] Yes o. Please sit on the bench I’m coming. But you didn’t come early as planned?14

EKA MMA: That was the wish, my sister. But you know with full-time housewives like us it isn’t easy. Once it’s cock-a-doodle-doo you’re up getting the home ready for the day – husband for work, children for schools and if there’s anyone not yet of school age, you look after its needs too. Then you take care of yourself to make sure when your husband, especially one with such roving eyes as mine, is back and after eating he can still manage to find something captivating enough to make him stay put in the house.15

MAMA SAM: [JOINS OTHERS OUTSIDE.] Oh, my sister. What thankless role we play. If only men were asked to pay for all we do in the house then they would sure know our worth.16

EKA MMA: They know but are always pretending, playing down our importance. They fear to praise us because they think if they start doing it we will get big-headed.17

EMMA: But we are praising you.18

EKA MMA: Leave me alone, Emma. Are you my husband?19

TAILOR: Do you want to tell me he has not being doing it?20

EKA MMA: Then you don’t know my husband! I say one word of praise. If you see him come back now he’d be tightening that his ugly face. [EMMA AND TAILOR LAUGH HEARTILY.]21

TAILOR: You’re saying all these things because he is not here. Didn’t you see the face before you married him?22

EKA MMA: Marry who? Does my family know him as a son-in-law?23

EMMA: [LAUGHS AGAIN.] I say women! You have three big kids for someone and you say he’s not your husband?24

EKA MMA: That’s just the problem. When that rogue had been tumbling over our backyard, wouldn’t let me walk freely in the streets and would even follow me down to the streams to help me fetch water, I said: ‘Oh! This is the real thing for me!’ There was no day he would return from sawing without buying me things. My parents warned me again and again of the dangers I was courting, my senior brother beat me on several occasions. It was Kem Kem or no one else. Then Kem Kem, as you men are fond of saying, scored a goal and I moved in without him paying the bride-price. He scored two more and then suddenly changed. The new wrapper has turned to an old rag. Kem Kem is now playing away matches only to come home and tighten his face for me.25

MAMA SAM: My sister, men!26

EKA MMA: My problem is I didn’t listen to my family; I would’ve long dumped him.27

MAMA SAM: What of the children?28

EKA MMA: Are they no fatherless kids all over the place who are doing very well with their mums? My sister, just do my hair.29

MAMA SAM: No, I won’t agree with you there. It’s better for children to grow up in a home they know the two parents still agree. Every home has its own hole – it could be on the roof, the wall or the floor; someone always manages to close it.30

EKA MMA: If you close it all the time and the other partner keeps opening it, so what do you do?31

MAMA SAM: In the case of your husband he’s young and this job of a sawing machine operator he’s doing brings him good money too. So he’s enjoying himself and doesn’t want anyone to stand on the way.32

EKA MMA: So I’m now standing on his way? One thing he doesn’t know is that as he is having all the time in the world chasing other women, other men are having all the time in the world too chasing me right inside our home. I can’t say one day I won’t be tempted to give in.33

EMMA: I’m a man and I’d tell you don’t! If you see any man coming around to chase you knowing full well you’re in another man’s house, such an individual only comes to check how your terrain lies.34

MAMA SAM: Terrain indeed! [EKA MMA AND MAMA SAM LAUGH.]35

EMMA: I mean it. And as he’s going he’s broadcasting to send other Casanovas your way. Soon as they come soon they would go and not long you’re the hottest item men discuss in palmwine joints. They say men don’t talk. I wonder if women talk half like men. Only men keep their secrets longer than women do.36

EKA MMA: So I must continue like this?37

EMMA: You see that’s why it is not good to offend family members when you’re getting hooked up to someone, especially an unknown quantity.38

EKA MMA: Did I know anything about unknown quantity as young and innocent as I was and he was behaving like a goat which was dying to eat a yam peel from the hand of the peeler?39

TAILOR: Kem Kem had got his yam peel and is himself again. [GENERAL LAUGHTER]40

EMMA: Well, the mistake had been made but you must try and put things right in your home – if not for yourself, then for the children.41

EKA MMA: How?42

EMMA: By bridging the gap between you and your family. Tell your father what you’re going through …43

EKA MMA: He knows.44

EMMA: Then make him intervene on your behalf as maturely as possible – not that he would impose anything on your partner or threaten him but just to advise him. Contact your partner’s parents too and even his older siblings. If you’re not on terms, then try and get across. Then the next other thing would’ve been the church. But churches these days don’t preach Bible principles; they don’t preach against the distasteful things people are doing because they don’t want to lose members …45

EKA MMA: [INTERRUPTING] No, I would disagree with you there because my pastor does!46

MAMA SAM: Ask him when was the last time he went to a church service that he is suddenly becoming a pastor today?47

EMMA: [LAUGHS.] Then you can bring in your pastor or a trusted elder – not one that would be thinking of taking advantage of your situation … console, console – before you know he has entered your soul.48

EKA MMA: God forbid!49

EMMA: If you try all these and they don’t work, please tell him goodbye. Stay alive for your children because as Kem Kem is going around fishing, he is bringing back toads to drop in your spring. You see once it’s over, it’s over. Life has got no remix. [EKA MMA AND MAMA SAM LAUGH.]50

EKA MMA: That’s why I always like doing my hair here honestly. Any time I come here no matter how sad I was when I came I always manage to laugh my worries away. Only today you’ve decided to talk something sensible. Not ‘Eka Mma is looking fresh blah blah blah …’ when I’m actually roasting within. In fact, last week I almost gave in to one of his friends!51

TAILOR: Thank God, you didn’t! I’d stayed in a palmwine joint where your husband boasted you’re the most faithful woman he has ever seen.52

EMMA: You see!53

EKA MMA: [SCREAMS] It’s a lie!54

TAILOR: What do I gain from saying what I’m saying? He’s not my relative or close friend, you know. Those friends coming are only there to see if they can prove him wrong.55

EKA MMA: I swear the guy pushed ten thousand naira cash into my hands …56

EMMA: For buying what? I know a whole lot of women have turned their bodies to supermarkets. A guy you barely know starts pushing large sums of money to you, a married woman, and you don’t ask for how long would this last? Please, my sister, run very far away as you can.57

EKA MMA: Oh, thank you two. I’ll sure miss Emma when he’s finally called up for his national youth service.58

EMMA: But I’d always be back. Let me add this: don’t forget to use your charms. If you don’t know how, ask a God-fearing woman like my mother who is having a happy marriage what are the tricks. Avoid one loophole, that of trying to be ‘equal’ [whatever that means] with your husband in the home. A man and a woman are there for one another where one is inadequate. Stop wagging a finger in his face because you want him to do what you want. By caressing his back, brushing imaginary objects off his hair, sweet-talk and get to know what he likes and give to him, you can tame the wild edges of any man.59

MAMA SAM: If you try all these things and they don’t work …60

EMMA: Leave! I can tell that he is not the right man for you. If he is, as soon as you leave, you would see him come after you to get you back with all remorse.61

EKA MMA: [SCREAMS SUDDENLY] Hmm! Hmm! Hmm! Mama Sam, my scalp – you’re peeling it off!62

MAMA SAM: It’s your hair – it’s still hard. You don’t want me to make so much money from handling your hair and you wouldn’t do it well too on your own.63

EKA MMA: I bought the hair products my money could afford.64

TAILOR: What women won’t women do to please their men?65

EKA MMA: Eh o! Yet men’s eyes keep staying at the backs of their heads!66

~*~*~*~*~*~67

[‘YOU NEED SOMEBODY’, A TRACK BY FAZE PLAYS.]68

THE END.69