DEJI
Deji pulled up to the school gate just as his 3pm alarm rung. He turned the alarm off before he parked
the car refusing to think about what it meant.
Exiting the car, he took deep breaths. He needed to be calm before he faced his children, needed to not
show his frustration because he believed that whatever happened between their mother and him
should never affect the children. Except that was a lie. Everything affected them. Like how she had failed
to pick them up from school an hour ago. This was the third time in the past two weeks that he had
been called from work because Ivie was unreachable and the kids were still at school.
He approached the school building and made a beeline for the admin office where he knew his children
would be.
“Daddy!” Lola squealed and jumped into his arm as he came in. He grabbed her with one arm and lifted
his two-year-old son in the other. Lara, the older twin, stood aloof, hands folded across her chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Deji said, to the admin officer – a severe looking woman whose skin looked like it had
been rinsed in bleaching cream.
He wanted to give an explanation, something that would soften her stern looks but he knew there was
no point. He had nothing to say except the truth – his wife had drank herself into a state and could
barely drive.
“I’m sorry sweetheart,” he said to Lara. “I’m sorry.”
“Where’s Mummy?” Lara asked, still frowning as they walked out of the office.
“Uh…she’s busy,” he said. “Lola, please take your brother’s water bottle.”
Together, they made their way silently to where the SUV was parked. Tolu, his son was already dozing
off as Deji buckled him into the car seat.
The drive home was mostly quiet apart from the sounds from the radio. If it were any other day, Deji
would have been asking his daughters about their day at school. If it were any other day, they would be
talking off his ears about something or the other or arguing about something absolutely irrelevant. But it
wasn’t a normal day and Deji was in a sour mood. His daughters, even though they were barely five,
were intuitive and could sense when something wasn’t right. It made him feel bad, that he had to lie to
them to cover up their mother’s problems. But he felt even worse that he could not seem to pull himself
out of the funk and be the present, jolly dad that his girls needed.
This was his life. This…being pulled out of work meetings because his stay-at-home wife had forgotten to
pick up their kids from school. This…making excuses for her to their children. How long could he live like
this? How long could he keep up the façade of being the content family man?
At church, people smiled when they saw them together; Ivie holding his hands in a loving gesture, their
children crowding them – the perfect family portrait. What they did not see was that the night before
Ivie had drunk herself to sleep, and her way of penance was being overly affectionate, offering herself to
him like a peace offering and so by morning, when they held hands, it was actually out of guilt and a
craving for connection.
He suddenly missed his mother. Before her demise, he had spoken to her every other day; talking about
everything and nothing. She understood him in a way no other member of his family did, and sometimes
he hated that he was more like her than he was like their father.
Right now, he needed their father’s courage and strength of character to deal with his wife’s problems.
He needed to be firm, to put his foot down and put an end to this once and for all. But what he needed
most of all, he realized, was to get to the root of the matter. He needed to know why. What had made
Ivie this way? What demons was she fighting? He was tired of running away from the possibilities lurking
in her past, tired of turning a blind eye and pretending that all was well. It was ruining his family. It was
ruining him.
“Hey girls,” he said, turning the car off. “We’re home.”
In silence, they disembarked from the car, dragging their backpacks and tired, dirt-stained bodies into
the house. Deji walked behind them, his son sound asleep in his arms.
*
“What are we having for dinner?” he asked.
They were in their bedroom where Deji had found Ivie ‘sick’ in bed, a cool towel on her head. Sick was
her code word for drunk and it was funny because Deji was the one who had started referring to her
episodes as sickness. It was his own way of avoiding hitting the nail on the head, but now it annoyed
him, the way she used the term thereby making a mockery of people with actual sicknesses out there.
“I planned to make pasta,” she replied, “please don’t speak so loud.”
“I’m nearly whispering,” he said. “Your children want to see you. Do you think you can manage that?”
She groaned, turning in bed.
“You left them at school for an hour, Ivie. An hour,’ he kept his voice at a steady level. He wasn’t a yeller,
had never believed that one needed to raise their voice to be heard. He believed that people who yelled
were people who had already lost control of themselves and the situation.
“I was trying to be safe,” she croaked.
Ah, safety. Yes, it was true that there were times before now when she had picked the kids up from
school while smelling of alcohol and he had looked the other way then until she had gotten into an
accident with them one day because she had been drunk. Thankfully it wasn’t a serious accident and the
children had come out unscathed, but that was the first time Deji felt fear so palpable that when he
arrived at the hospital where they were undergoing observation, he had cried in relief at the sight of his
children alive. He had done something out of character then, he grabbed Ivie by the elbow, letting his
fingers dig into her skin as he spoke in a low voice: “never again should you get in a car to drive my
children when you are drunk. Never again, you hear me?”
She had been visibly shaken, had burst into tears, begging for forgiveness, making promises that she
couldn’t keep. And so, here she was five months later, back to old habits but insisting on safety.
“If you want to be safe, how about not drinking at all?” he said. It wasn’t often he spoke to her like this,
scolding her like a child. He respected her, he still respected her even with her problem. Worse, he loved
her, absolutely adored her. She was a brilliant woman when she was sober and sometimes, he admired
her ability to pull herself together when occasion demanded.
“I needed it,” she replied, sitting up. “I’m better now. I can go start dinner.”
“How many?” he asked, taking his shirt off and throwing it in the laundry basket next to the bathroom
door.
She sighed, swinging her legs off the bed. “Does it matter?”
“I’m worried.”
“I’m fine.”
“Give me a number, Ivie. Five, six, seven, what? How many?”
“They’re under the bed if you want to count,” with that she slipped out the bedroom door.
He did. He wanted to count because that was his way of gauging when he needed to call for external
support. In the days before the children were born, she had three or four bottles of wine consumed
before he returned home from work. It hadn’t been such a problem then because she was still
functioning, doing everything she needed to do as a wife.
He knelt beside the bed and reached underneath, feeling for the bottles. One, two, three, four, five.
Deji exhaled. Today had been a bad day but not so bad that he need worry yet. Bad enough that she
couldn’t drive but not so bad that she had forgotten to plan for dinner.
He sighed, took out his phone and swiped till he found what he was looking for.
“You there?” he typed.
The response was swift; “yes. What’s up?”
“Just need to talk.”
“Shoot.”
“She had five bottles today.”
“And…”
“I’m so pathetic I’m grateful it wasn’t more.”
“You’re not pathetic.”
“I hate myself. I hate this.”
“Take it easy. Remember to take it one day at a time.”
Deji nodded, as if the person on the other end could see him. Then he closed his eyes, blinking away the
tears threatening to come.
