And women settle… because of the fear of the unknown. Fear of not meeting desired prospects. Fear of loneliness.

When they first came to you, they started with a simple show of concern. They wanted to know if you would do matchmaking because many people are getting hitched through Alhaji Kobiowo on Fancy F.M. They asked for your opinions on younger men—the younger in this case being 25-26—because you are now old and geriatric at your overripe age of 29. They see your 30th as a foretelling of doom. An absolute mishap. Irredeemable doom.

Then the haranguing and questioning began:

Folake, when will you marry? your mother asked the day you turned 30 because she cannot buy the asoebi for half of the weddings that have held in Ilorin from 199kpirigidimm till date, squat in the trunk of her Sienna as she changes from one asoebi to the other to attend multiple owambes in one day and not have them buy hers as well. She had looked at you with daggers in her eyes when you told her the oni jalabi she was taking you to is going against the commands of Allah. “It is shirk,” you proclaimed. She hissed and asked if you knew it was your father’s third wife who had replaced your face with that of a haggard woman, and that’s why men are scared to approach you. She told you the Alfa, whom you were there to meet, had previously told her so. He made incisions down your back, your chest, your arms and your head and then handed you all sorts of things.

“Drink this in the morning. Bathe with this at night. Dance around on one leg with this at 3 p.m. every noon. Use this perfume. Make sure you don’t wear pant when you are inhaling this one. Walk with your head turning to the left on the seventh day of using this. Laugh from morning till night on the third day of using this. Dance acrobatically whenever you are about to use this one. Tumble thrice after swallowing this one”

“Do you drink alcohol?” the Alfa asked.
“No. It is haram,” you answered simply.
“Ha.” The Alfa said, looking at your mum. He then added, “The last one you were meant to take is to be taken with alcohol, and it is the most potent. It was made with ostrich feathers, and don’t you know an ostrich plumage is very beautiful? So, your medium-ugly face will become beautiful when you take it, and the beauty will intoxicate the men with love, just like alcohol intoxicates.”

You shook your head in disbelief at this juxtaposition.

Your mother had reasons to fear. She had been the one to slight women at the slightest provocation for being unmarried. She would point at actresses on TV and proclaim her dislike for them simply because they were not married.

“An unmarried woman is like food that is not tended to. Do you know what happens to such food? It gets eaten by anybody, anyhow, at any time.”

Folake, when will you marry? your grandmother said out loud as she held your cousin’s asoebi in her arthritic hands. She stared at you through rheumy eyes and begged you to make haste while you were still fresh. She told you how lucky you were that you were not born back in her days.

“They would have used you to do iyawo sara—a free wife,” she said, “and it would have been to an old man who is widowed or any random man who would have you, since you were an unwanted commodity at 31.”

If there were whispers about you being possessed by a jinn or having slight mental health problems, you would automatically be shipped as a reluctant bride to the doorstep of an Alfa or a random baba onisegun instead. They would cure you of the two anomalies that had befallen you—late marriage and mental illness.

Folake, when will you marry? your mother’s friends chorused, half in jest, half in seriousness, as they commented on your weight and size. They said men no longer like buxom women, that lepa shandys are the reigning babes now.

“Those are the women our husbands are now following, now that we are old and fat.”

They told you to go on a keto diet and “enter the gym.” They told you about waist trainers.

Mummy Shadia, your favourite among them, lifted her ankara blouse and asked you to unzip her. She showed you the waist trainer beneath, squashing her insides and making her look extra bloated. Her arms looked massive, giving her the look of a sumo wrestler, but she said she had to persist so her husband would fancy her again.

“He is planning to marry another wife, and that would be over my dead body!”

You pressed your lips tightly together so you wouldn’t erupt into laughter. You wondered if she had still had her white Ihram clothes intact, with the way she was carrying on—drinking only acidic citrus fruits and greens—it was just a matter of time.

Folake, when will you marry? your dad’s sisters asked as they worried about your drastic weight loss. It’s too much for a 32 years old woman!

“See your neck! You must put on weight,” they fussed over you, turning you this way and that, saying you wouldn’t stand out at the parties they intended to take you to, where you could fish for husbands.

“Don’t you know men like their women with some flesh?”

Folake, when will you marry? your mum’s sisters apprehensive, shared stories of women with fibroids and swollen bellies because they refused to marry early and, in so doing, delayed childbirth and now benign tumours has built a house in their wombs.

Folake, when will you marry? your friends trolled in the group chat because now they were married women, too high up to hang out with you anymore.

They told you the problem was your lack of finding a husband to change your status at 33.

“You won’t be able to relate to our superior married-woman problems. Abi, what do you know about the best diapers that won’t cause rashes or the new medication for teething babies?”

Folake, when will you marry? the guy – man? Doctor? Since he was a man, he would be doctor and if he were a woman he would be a nurse – who was to scan your pelvis quipped at your medical check-up.

You had just scaled through the second stage of the interview at a mega firm, and there was a 95% chance you would get it. Actually, you knew it was 100%, but the 5% was for that little voice of doubt in you. Every Nigerian knows enemies from your father’s village can choose to strike at any time.

You had heard about a company that stopped responding to candidates after sending them for medicals, leaving them in limbo.

So, when he implored you to hasten with marriage as he rubbed gel on your pelvis and pressed down to check your uterus, you nodded hastily.

You were trying to will your bladder not let loose after consuming three bottles of Nestlé water.

“It’s not an order, but medical counsel,” he said. “Hope you know women with fibroids are advised to have children on time so they can fulfill their main purpose in life—to be a mother.”

But you already knew you had fibroids before your medicals. You found out about it on your 34th birthday when you went for a full-body check-up for the first time ever but you didn’t mention that.

“From me to me,” you had said as you paid for the tests the year before.

The doctor who analysed your results had told you of your diagnosis, and fear—in its rawest form—ripped through your body.

FIBROIDS.

She handed you your diagnosis in a thin envelope, as though it were a birthday card.

“But how can I have fibroids?” you asked. “No woman in my family has it.”

“It means nobody detected it or had any reason to. Many women live their lives wholly without ever knowing. And yes, they can have babies.”

“But why do I have it?”

“Well, it seems to affect a lot of us black women…”

Folake, when will you marry? your bony cousin asked—the same cousin who had lied about her wedding, keeping the details to herself until the eve of her idupe, the appreciation ceremony where the groom’s family thank the bride’s family for agreeing to the union.

She had told you she kept it from you because she was afraid of oju aye. You had asked if she counted you among the oju aye. She had only said she couldn’t take any chances. As an Ilorin woman, you understood the secrecy around good news, but were you really one of them? Maybe you were the witch an Alfa claimed had tied her to an incubus, dooming her to a life without a husband.

She quickly added that she is over 30—it was already late. So, she had to keep it hush-hush until the deal was sealed, or it could scatter, and she’d be forced to start all over again. Or, worse, end up unmarried and miserable like Asmau. Laye!

Now, she is 37. Married. With a husband and two children she feeds. But she is married! And even if she has to return to the family house for crumbs and grains, at least she is married. That is why she asks about yours. When will you marry? Because she is now your senior, even though you grew up as peers, calling each other by name. Now, she is Aunty Falilah. Or, as she prefers—Mummy Jamiu.

Aunty Folake, when will you marry? your uncle’s wife cautiously said. The same woman you had begged to stop calling you Aunty. You were not comfortable with a woman two decades older addressing you like that. But she insisted—it ws out of respect. You were, after all, her iya oko.

When will you marry, ma? she pressed on. Misturah, my daughter should not marry before you. That would be shameful! Don’t you know it is wrong for the younger ones to go before the elderly? And in this case, the elderly one she is refering to is you—a withering 35-year-old.

Folake, when will you marry? You asked yourself as you mulled over your life at 36. Wondering why everyone was rushing you to settle before time ran out. Even if it meant settling for Waheedi or Kunle—whichever asks you out first.

You didn’t want Waheedi. He had little to no ambition. He had even told you outright that he would stop you from running your flourishing fabric business as soon as you became his wife. “So, what will we eat?” you had asked, since his source of income was vague and he always claims he does one or two things. He had only shrugged in response. But If Waheedi had asked you would have accepted still.

It was Kunle, who eventually pitied you enough to ask you to be his girlfriend—after months of borrowing money from you and never returning it.

Folake, when will you marry? Kunle, your partner, had asked.

You were confused. Why was he asking you that?

He said he just wanted to know because the man that would marry you would be very lucky.

You laughed, told him to stop joking, and continued eating the amala he had bought for you from Iya Moria. But he was serious.

“You’re too good for me,” he said.

You tried to ignore him, but the amala started tasting like cardboard in your mouth. The sour mix of yam flour and savoury abula lost its appeal. The pepper in the stew burned your throat, and you coughed, eyes watering. He handed you a sachet of water.

Then, he said it.

“I and my parents will be going for my idana on the 26th of June. She is a 200-level student at Al-Hikmah. I just think I would be able to handle her better than you. I mean, you have a Masters degree, a successful business, and a car. I only have my ND from Kwara Poly.”

He kept talking, but your ears were on fire. The food burned, not just your tongue, but your ears. What did Iya Moria put in her stew?

You belched, gingerly stood up. He moved away as you approached, but you veered toward the bathroom instead. Washed your hands in the sink.

You stared into the mirror, remembering how he used to wrap his arms around your waist as you stood there, whispering about how he loved your eyes. How they weren’t black like everyone else’s, but a shade of brown that shifted with the light. Like a cat’s, he had said.

You had disagreed. Only green eyes were for cats.

He had insisted—cats’ eyes ranged from yellow to amber, blue to black. You had silenced him with kisses.

Now, you stepped out of the bathroom and saw him whispering furtively into his phone. He dropped the call as soon as he saw you.

“And kode ma wo o, if not for Alhaja that said over her dead body would she let me marry an almost 40 year old woman, I would have married you.”

Alhaja.

You repeated, almost laughing. Alhaja? The same woman who had borrowed, and never returned, your gold necklace and earrings for Maolud Nabbiy, insisting she must look extra gorgeous as Iya Adinni?

Alhaja? The same woman who would call you to the backyard, where a pile of clothes awaited your hands. Your mother had said it was all a marriage test, so you had washed until your hands turned red.

Alhaja? The same woman who would summon you to the kitchen, then slip away to the living room to watch African Magic Yoruba, laughing loudly as she watched Sanyeri bemoan his ill luck?

Alhaja? Who would leave you to tend to the food alone, the imbalance of the stove making it shake, smoke seeping out and clinging to your clothes, making your hair smell like maggi, iru, and smoke?

Alhaja? Who bought voile lace and jacquard from you and never attempted to pay?

The same Alhaja?

You rushed at him, grabbing his trousers as you yelled, threatening to bite off his penis.

People intervened. They berated you. Women of nowadays had become brazen with their disrespect.

When will she marry and stop this arrant nonsense?