Titi, whatever the name meant, listened to senior girls in the dormitory as they discussed boys and men. Majority of their experiences were less than salutary which appeared to make the average girl determined to teach boys and men some lessons. For the baby girls in the junior high school classes with shoots on their chests but most without the first experience of blood from their private parts, men are dangerous and tyrannical with incurable polygamist tendencies and every girl with brains should look at them with suspicion.
Things became complicated for Titi after high school when she listened to her mates as to the need to have a taste of the “forbidden fruit”.
Her best friend Nina linked her with a guy and said: “Look, if I were unoccupied no other girl would go near Berry. You have a dream guy given to you with reluctance.”
During their first few meetings Berry proved to be a dream guy – funny, caring, open-handed, name it. On her first visit to his bedsitter he gave his best but made no move towards intimacy. Several visits after, Berry sustained his non-committal attitude till Titi began to worry whether she held no attraction for him. Three girls in the neighborhood flirted with Berry without shame but he kept them at bay and preferred to walk on the street with Titi’s palm in his firm grip.
The fear of the possibility of loss of the ‘priceless’ beau pushed Titi to spin a story to her parents to enable her to spend a night with Berry. The inevitable happened and Titi joined the rank of women which included her mother. If any difference existed between her and her mother, child bearing accounted for it but she knew time would take care of her inclusion in the blessed group.
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Three months after the painful but exciting experience Titi had few pleasurable and memorable moments with Berry. Another month after stories floated like cotton buds and dropped at her feet the way it does when air current which carried the fluffy substance ceased. Berry made two girls in the street pregnant and aware of the possible fallouts left the bedsitter at night. Titi concluded four full days of menstruation and despite her greenness insisted Berry must use the popular protective facility. But her heart sustained bruises like reeds under heavy boots. She stayed indoors for one month to nurse her pain and wonder whether relationships with men should be part of any girl’s development plan.
Nina returned from one of her “offshore” trips and went to find out the reason for Titi’s self-seclusion. The demoralized girl thought her friend would flare up and announce her plan to deal with Berry. But Nina laughed in mockery as if her friend’s story went out of the lips of a village tart.
“We have a day party at Crisp Hotel by 4pm. Join us and come on, drive the fool out of your system. You are in a different class from him.”
The day party fielded men with pot bellies and gray hairs. The Chief Organizer shared the girls to the men and as expected the girls had no say as to who they were to spend time with. Each spent one or two hours in a hotel room and emerged, thanks to the heavens as many of them said, none of the men collapsed during the exercise.
At the end the Chief Organizer gave fat envelopes to each girl and distributed them to their residences after a brief “post-action” ceremony at the basement of the hotel. The ceremony involved oaths taken naked before a panel of two men and two women, one of the females a priestess. They swore to keep the activity secret “in the interest of all parties” as the priestess read out.
Titi spent time with a portly and kindly man and thanks to the heavens the man functioned with protection. She felt butterflies in her stomach at the beginning because the man looked fragile but after the activity Titi offered her contact because she wished to establish a relationship.
When she left the hotel she opened the envelope and felt just fine. The amount boosted her personal economy and the economy of her family for two weeks, fair in her opinion given the disastrous national economy at the time.
But the outing held more than fun and useful cash. An innocent girl became inducted into a sorority she knew nothing about and gave no consent. The sorority she learned bore the name Fold of Females for Freedom with an insignia of three smooth legs and two rough legs back to back to signify supremacy of the female gender became her group without notice.
She heard females are balanced represented by the three legs while men on two legs are unstable. The men at the induction ceremony were present to enable the girls to get over shyness in a world the group saw as being based on war between the sexes. Men must be placed where they should be, which means under women. One of the rules expected girls to reject any attempt to place them under men during intimacy. They used the motto “Women Rule, Men Reign.” In fact, the two men who were there Titi heard were told to be present to enjoy the sight of naked girls.
Titi’s interaction with F3 without doubt generated depth in her world view. She picked and dropped men at the rate of one every quarter. It appeared the men she met were selected and positioned because none of them accepted to reign when they wanted to rule.
Despite the pulls to get her into part-time prostitution Titi stayed straight because of her upbringing. She kept her habit of weekly one day with the Lord by way of fasting and prayers. She requested the Almighty for a young man who would provide her material needs and give her respectability.
Her mind did tell her to review her request and ask for capacity to generate income by herself to meet her needs. In her opinion no true “Folder” as they called themselves should be dependent on a man for economic needs. She raised the issue during one of their meetings but the Generalissimo flared up and told her a true Folder should be a beautiful leach to suck the fools in men’s clothing.
With such a mindset Titi met Mr. Abraham by chance but things went the opposite direction. He arranged and paid for her training as a make-up artist, her dream vocation. He found out details of her Senior Secondary School Certificate result. She earned no credit and in fact recorded three failures. It knocked her off balance and kept her indoors for one week. All along she thought of herself as an A student. Mr. Abraham in his usual style set the process in motion to get her registered to retake the examination but because she dragged her feet the man withdrew.
Nina dragged her out to join the gang for a Christmas Carnival at Calabar. For three days she floated in the train and in the world like a decorated kite and forgot the fall would come either when winds ceased or the flyer lost interest.
Her eyes cleared when Nina arranged for her to spend a night in the residence of a senior girl. When she saw two other girls go naked and begin games with the hostess she gave the impression she wanted to ease herself and stole out of the apartment. Because she felt Nina may be more dangerous than she thought, she boarded a bus on Calabar Road by 7pm and headed for Uyo.
Mr. Abraham sustained his patronage but Titi saw him as a source of blood to be sucked. She manufactured stories to tell him whenever she failed to keep an appointment but continued to demand for money. One day she called to spin a new line but the man refused to take her call. As a Folder she saw it as an affront and promised to deal with the man.
She spent days staring at the phone with the hope it would ring. When it did, either one of her friends with a gossip or one with a problem to narrate called. Mr. Adam refused to call her and when she made an attempt, found he had blocked her line.
She would have shrugged and let things lie but the Fold organized a lecture session with a female Professor as the speaker. Of the several things said in the 45-minute speech two things stuck to her consciousness like a piece of bone between two teeth. The guest speaker said true feminism must recognize men as yoked beings who need freedom the way women do. The silence by the hundreds of men terrorized into muteness by their meek and weak wives sounded louder than the booms of artillery the speaker joked.
The second thing referred to a quote which made Titi laugh and think. The Professor said in the 3rd century BC some women in Rome took over the Capitoline Hill and blocked the entrances to the Roman Forum because Consul Marcus Cato refused to permit a stoppage of laws which limited the use of expensive goods by women. The Professor repeated a quote by Consul Cato which Titi wrote in her notebook, “If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt? As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will become your superiors.” Consul Cato talked to men and in Titi’s opinion the man’s fear has proved to be prophetic. The determined effort of some women to muzzle dissent in their folds makes men’s liberation more persuasive and an imperative.
During question and answer time Titi asked the Professor the reason a wife who determines whether and when her husband would eat as well as whether and when he would make love to her should be said to be of lower status than her husband. The Generalissimo ordered the girl nearest to Titi to give her a ‘solid knock’ to teach her an eternal lesson. Generalissimo called her Tarpeia in reference to the Roman lady who betrayed her people at the Citadel.
As days went by Titi found herself in a tight corner in every aspect of life. She found it difficult to get herself to the place she received training and food reached her by luck. On one fateful night she sat up by midnight, spent one full hour in communion with the cosmos after which she let her mind go wide.
By 5am she summed up the discourse with self to enable her to make a firm decision on the way forward. Two primary school clichés were used for her review and final decision. “As you make your bed so will you lie on it” meant her fate had to be determined by her outside the dictates of a sorority and her parents. With free entry and exit she reserved the option to retain her membership or leave all the more so folks say if your group cannot change you, change your group.
The second cliché, “he who pays the piper dictates the tune” meant true and sincere gender equality cannot work where a man pays the bills. The cliché threw up what she regarded as the parity argument which the Professor mentioned during speech. Where two persons earn the same income or have the capacity to earn equal or near equal income the two should split bills halfway. If two go out for lunch or dinner each person should pay the bill on alternate days. If the floor for housekeeping stands at N100,000 a month the wife and husband should place N50,000 a-piece on the table each month. All other things should be consigned to roles, for instance the wife cooks and the man goes out in the night to refill the gas if it gets exhausted. If the woman keeps the house clean the man should face the enemy at the gate. And who should breastfeed a baby in the family despite the orientation of her mother as a feminist?
By six o’clock she decided to place her sorority on the reserve bench if membership required being sustained. Reality rests on a full stomach and whatever wave women liberation has reached will have meaning if she lives. Mr. Abraham, out of the dozens of men she dated, demonstrated a unique quality – he showed interest in her future. Others used and discarded her like things used to package goods for sale. When the content gets exhausted the package finds itself in the garbage can.
She smiled at her resolution and wondered whether Generalissimo made a mistake when she invited the Professor to be a Guest Speaker. She should have known speakers must reach at least one person in an audience in a positive or negative way.
If and when she meets Mr. Abraham she planned to tell him, “See, I am young and I have behaved the way most boys and girls of my age behave. If you were right every day of your youth, push me out, otherwise take me back and continue where you stopped.”
She left the room and walked into a day which promised to be bright. Her telephone lacked ‘flashing’ credit but she felt determined to reach Mr. Abraham. She collected a handset from a neighbour and dialled Mr. Abraham’s friend to assist her to reestablish the link.
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