Coconut Head
What was it about him that quickened your heart and warmed your insides?
SEPTEMBER 30, 2025
Your stepmother was a woman of little wants. In the beginning, she just wanted to feed your father, and you consequently. When your mother died of breast cancer four years ago, your stepmother visited with the other sympathizers, bringing bowls of jollof rice and tomato stews and soups. Ofe egusi today, ofe ogbono tomorrow. The men also brought crates of beer which they downed with your father in silence as they watched NTA and talked about misfortunates other than your mother’s death. At first, your stepmother’s ceramic bowls of food did not stand out among the different types of dishes people brought. There was so much food that you wryly thought there might be no need to serve guests at the burial; they could simply bring their own, or share what others so kindly provided.
Five days after your mother died and during the condolence visits, one woman lamented that your mother had left you alone with your father, this helpless man too young to be a widower, and who would cook for you? You wanted to slap her mouth that spritzed saliva through her open teeth, and smear the spit all over her face. Why did they reduce your mother's existence to cooking? You needed the visits to stop. And they did. The coolers and bowls of food soon began to trickle away, as did the visits. But Sarah, for that was your stepmother’s name, dropped her bowls faithfully every Friday when the sun was retiring to bed. You began to recognize the flowery patterns on the bowls that must have been bought in sets. You washed them with Mama Lemon dish soap, making sure to get the oil from ofe egusi or ofe akwu or oshikapa jollof that hid in the crevices of the bowl lids, as your mother had taught you. Each time Sarah came to exchange an empty bowl for a full one, she stopped at the verandah, asking after your father and urging you to be a good girl, ya nugo? You nodded dutifully to show you heard and carried the food inside, eager to discover what deliciousness she had prepared this time. Soon, your father began to notice the persistence of her kindness. “This woman is good o,” he would whistle while unwrapping fufu.
Your mother had sold curtains and carpets at Eke market and after she died, your father took over. Before then, he had played draft with the igbe dancers who lived opposite your house. And because of the nature of his new job, he was not at home to meet Sarah on Friday evenings. One Sunday — five Sundays after your mother died — he asked you to dress up for church. He never went to church when your mother was alive. But on this day, he rode his Mitsubishi motorcycle while you clung to him past your church, St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, to a different church in Ashaka. It was a feverish church where the drummer and pianist thrummed their instruments in assent to the pastor’s prayers, bass guitar sounds ricocheting off the walls. An usher in a blue dress shirt and a black scarf tied very tightly across her forehead and over her ears led you to the middle row. When you sat down, a woman seated behind you tapped on your shoulder and pushed a handkerchief into your hand, smiling a stiff smile that said she did not expect to be thanked but would appreciate gratitude nonetheless. You did not think you needed a scarf or head wrap to attend this church — many Pentecostal churches did not mandate it. You stared at the checkered cloth, checking for catarrh stains or signs of filth, any excuse to give it back. Finally, you covered your head with it.
The pastor was dancing. A serious frenzied dance. He instructed the church to do the same. “My family will not mourn over me,” he decreed, and the instrumentalists responded with their drums and guitars, like rockstars. “There shall be no crying, only dancing. Dance for your testimony!” the pastor said peremptorily.
You wondered what your father made of this, you wondered why you were here. His face, impassive, did not tell you anything, but his eyes were scouring the dancing crowd. Soon they found Sarah, standing in the left corner of the church, in the choir area that faced the altar. Her eyes were closed as she jigged to the heated furor in the safety of her corner. Behind her, some ushers were trying to contain a woman who was shaking on the floor.
Slowly, she moved all her stuff in until the only logical thing was for your father to pay her bride price. She asked you to call her Sarah; not Aunty because she was not your Aunty, not “Mummy” because that would be insensitive. You settled on “Stepmother” because that was true.
After the service, you trailed behind your father as he weaved his way through the crowd to talk to Sarah. She was in a group meeting in the choir area with someone who you decided, from the authority with which he spoke and the rapt attention he received, was the choir master. You stood with your father as he waited for her. Sarah soon emerged and when she saw your father, you thought you saw a glint of triumph in her eyes, in the slight flare of her nose as she smiled piously. Your father gushed over her cooking and her face could not contain her smile. She blinked too many times, as if fighting back tears, and it made you worry for her and wonder how long it would take her to learn that your father did not close the toilet door after he used it. Watching her try to win your father over was painful. She brought more food and your father decided she needed a key. She brought her ceramic bowls and a nonstick pan, because aluminum pots were just not good for her pancakes. Pancakes which deflated in bubbled flatness because she used too much baking powder. You wanted to stow the nauseatingly green pan under your bed. Your mother was the OG of pancakes, so fluffy that you fought the urge to enclose them in your palm and see how small they could get when strangled. Still, you let Sarah have the kitchen.
Next, she wanted you to like her. She was excruciatingly persistent with it. She would knock on the door of your room, making exaggerated efforts not to peer, and ask if you wanted to go out for a girl’s evening. “What was that?” you later asked Ifelunwa, your seatmate in school. Ifelunwa shrugged her ignorance. You were sure Sarah made that up. Nobody goes on a “girl’s evening” with the woman who likes her father. Especially not when the woman’s things are beginning to appear in sacred parts of the house. She hung her panties in the bathroom, left her clothes on your father’s dresser and placed her bible on the TV stand. And even though your father was not particularly religious, he humored her. On Sundays, he wore one of his senator outfits and rode her to church on his motorbike. Slowly, she moved all her stuff in until the only logical thing was for your father to pay her bride price. She asked you to call her Sarah; not Aunty because she was not your Aunty, not “Mummy” because that would be insensitive. You settled on “Stepmother” because that was true.
When he came out, you were hanging your clothes on the laundry rope. He said, “Coconut head.” You were taken aback by the comment, so direct and presumptuous, but he smiled so widely that you felt your heart swell in your chest. Your laundry billowed in the light wind and you went inside with your washing bowls and a cheekful of smile.
Then, she wanted a child. She wrote her desire in a prayer book and submitted it to different prayer groups. They patted her shoulder and reminded her of the God that gave her a husband at 37 and would he not finish what he started? So she boiled herbs in every available pot, sipped the tea from her special recliner chair and, with muttered prayers, willed a baby to form in her belly.
✺
Azuka lived in the same compound as you, the only person with a generator in a block of ten identical flats, and the only one living alone. The day he moved in, you were washing your clothes under the coconut tree in the middle of the compound. Your stepmother was screaming at you to come out from under the coconut tree lest a fruit fall on your head. He was hauling a yellow sofa inside with help from the gateman when your eyes met and he smiled at you. When he came out, you were hanging your clothes on the laundry rope. He said, “Coconut head.” You were taken aback by the comment, so direct and presumptuous, but he smiled so widely that you felt your heart swell in your chest. Your laundry billowed in the light wind and you went inside with your washing bowls and a cheekful of smile. The day after your first interaction, he knocked on your door to ask your father for a machete; there was a snake in his bathroom and he did not have anything to fight it with. Your father, usually useless, flung his shirt over his neck and led Azuka to his flat with a shiny machete. They emerged with a tiny black snake flailed, in defeat, on the machete. His eyes found yours, and again, he gave you a small victorious smile that made your heart do cartwheels and the sun yellower, like his sofa.
You collected the little joys of his presence over time. He appeared behind you when you were sitting on the soakaway pit behind the rows of flats, a place you went to avoid being in the same room as your stepmother. “I don't hate her,” you told Azuka. “I just get tired of being alone with her and hearing her pray for a baby all the time. It's weird, right?” He agreed with you. You had only been to his flat once, but you felt like you knew him and that he understood you. So you opened up more. He asked about school and if you had a boyfriend. You said no and he looked surprised. You told him of the pram in your stepmother's room and how her unconceived child already had a name, Jaden. He laughed and it pleased you that he agreed that baby Jadens were becoming a pandemic.
Because he was sitting on the long yellow sofa and you were on the floor closer to the charging extension, he came over to where you were seated and held your chin. His touch was warm, a catalyst for unholy thoughts, the kind that preceded bad decisions and made for cautionary tales.
The day you almost slept over at his place, you did not plan it. You were charging your phone there when heavy rain started. You could have dashed into the storm and into your house in a minute, but you stayed because you assumed no one knew you were there and no one would find out. If you wanted him to touch you, you did not show it. You were in your pajamas and wearing your earpiece, the volume low enough for you to catch your name when he said it.
Oge.
Soft as if caressing it on his tongue; gentle as if he did not want to hurt you; low, like you shared a secret. You paused your music to see him staring at you. You had so many questions for those eyes and that mouth. What was it about him that quickened your heart and warmed your insides? What was it about that smile — and the thought of it — that made you squeeze your thighs together and clench your toes? You had kissed before; one boy from your old school and Fidelis from church, but only perfunctorily, just to cross out firsts.
Because he was sitting on the long yellow sofa and you were on the floor closer to the charging extension, he came over to where you were seated and held your chin. His touch was warm, a catalyst for unholy thoughts, the kind that preceded bad decisions and made for cautionary tales. Your music was turned off now, but Simi’s Love Don’t Care drowned your ears still, as if nudging you, too, not to care.
Azuka.
You tasted his name, rolled it in your tongue and savored it. You only ever said it in your head, on your bed, your hands between your legs. You said it again and again, and then there was hot air between you and him, between yes and please, and suddenly, he was on top of you. Finding and fiddling, pushing and pulling, squeezing and scratching. This was it, you thought. He was finally going to make love to you like you had imagined, slowly peeling your clothes and finding yeses all over you. But he wasn’t asking or slow, he wasn’t even looking at you. So you held your yes under your tongue, like a grudge. You tried to run to the corner of the room, but his hands cuffed your arm. One minute you were holding your phone, the next minute it was by the door, flung over in the heat of something ranker than passion. You backed away from him until your shoulders hit the wall, but the look in his eyes was not sexy or mischievous anymore, it was dangerously feral. He leaned forward from where he was sitting, dropped to all fours, then crawled towards you and tore your buttons. The standing fan rotated to your direction and your nipples responded. He gave you a sinister look before pulling your pants down to a bunch around your knees and pushing inside you. Like the day he first smiled at you, you were too surprised to react. Your throat made an oh? sound. Like a question. Like a “What the fuck is going on?”
Time scratched on the blank sheet of your mind. He was finished before you were done thinking and he said simply, “Sweet girl.” He went into the bathroom to clean up, and you quickly pulled your pants up, unplugged your charger, picked up your phone and ran home. The rain washed your tears but you could feel him in your thighs, could see stains of him on your pajamas, could hear him in your ear. Sweet girl. You lay there in the false safety of the bathtub, scrubbing and crying. You felt dirty and your yellow skin turned red with each scrub. You were going to confront him, you resolved. You were going to do it in the morning and make him apologize, or something. That was the right thing to do. Maybe he was drunk, or high, or out of his mind. Maybe hearing him out could heal you.
When he saw you sweeping the yard in the morning, he smiled that now-filthy smile and said, “Coconut head.” He did not look remorseful or like anything had happened the night before. For a minute, you thought you must have imagined it all. A smile danced on his lips in his usually carefree manner, and in that moment, you knew you would do anything to not see it again.
In the weeks that followed the incident with Azuka, your stepmother’s eyes followed you. You locked yourself in your room as soon as you came back from school. You saw the questions in her furrowed brows, and when her concerns could not remain thoughts anymore, she summoned you into her room, which used to be your mother’s. Some prodding questions and palpating of your breasts later, you told her what Azuka had done. Her face, usually beautiful, contorted into an ugliness you had not thought it capable of. She placed her mug on the dresser, stood up from the bed and sat back down. She gaped at you, at your growing tender breasts, and you were certain that she felt a righteous anger on your behalf.
Your stepmother’s worries sank deeper into the lines on her forehead and it pleased you, for a tiny moment, that she was on your side. But later that evening, when she muttered as she drank more tea on her recliner, you heard her ask God why he rewarded the recklessness of sinners with blessings.
“You’re pregnant,” she said. You jerked. There was a jolt in your belly and you wondered if the thing in your stomach was old enough to move.
“You’re going to keep it.” Her voice was so quiet you thought you imagined it.
“Ma?” Your world imploded in your ear. You could hear your veins during their job.
“You’re going to keep the baby. You need a sibling and God has used you to bless this family.”
Was there alcohol in her tea?
“Ma, it’s not a s-sibling if it’s my ch-child.” Your tongue ensnared your words. You swallowed air. The novelty and bizarreness of it all, you thought, to be pregnant with your sibling.
“Okay,” she said.
Your stepmother’s worries sank deeper into the lines on her forehead and it pleased you, for a tiny moment, that she was on your side. But later that evening, when she muttered as she drank more tea on her recliner, you heard her ask God why he rewarded the recklessness of sinners with blessings. And when she saw Azuka on his way out that evening, she still hailed him “My neighbor!” with a loud voice, still asked about his mother in the village, still mock-begged him to buy bread on his way back from town.
✺
Azuka found you at the front of his door when he returned. His eyes dimmed in an unpleasant surprise. When had you started to repulse him?
“Oge, how are you?” he asked as he dusted his slippers, eager to get into his house and shut you out.
“I’m pregnant,” you said.
“You don’t look it,” he replied. The black of his eyes was shifty, but his voice remained calm. “You don’t look pregnant,” he said again.
You apologized, asked him if you could enter his room with him. You perceived his reluctance; it was in his set shoulders and his uneasy smile, it was in the way he looked at you suspiciously. You smiled and apologized again.
Disdain latched at your throat. You needed to spit it out before it clawed into your stomach. You began to wonder if you imagined the flirting, the twinkle in his eyes, his tongue caressing your name like butter. You told him you wanted to remove “the thing,” that you did not want any of this and did not want to prolong the matter.
He said you were stupid for saying that. “What do you mean?” he asked, as if “the thing” needed to be named.
He was raising his voice now, with the theatrics of market women who beckoned eavesdroppers to witness a squabble. You apologized, asked him if you could enter his room with him. You perceived his reluctance; it was in his set shoulders and his uneasy smile, it was in the way he looked at you suspiciously. You smiled and apologized again.
“I just want to talk,” you said.
In between “I’m sorry for causing a scene” and “I’ve missed you,” he let you in. The room was as you remembered. Blue lights and black curtains that disapproved of sunlight, tall sound speakers, an endless stack of video cassettes and a fat TV set. You thought the TV looked like a pregnant gadget, or a short lady with a fat standing ass. The room suffocated you in its airlessness and crampedness. His flat was like a summary of what a home should be — every room visible from where you sat. Suddenly, you did not remember where it had happened. Was it on the bed, on the sofa or on his faded blue rug carpet? There was clean laundry on his sofa, so you sat on the bed. He offered you a drink. You said no.
“No? How about you join me for a bath?” he asked leeringly, but in a lazy manner, as if he did not want to flirt but could not help himself. You forced a laugh.
He went out to start the generator, and when he returned, he plugged the ring boiler into the bathroom socket and lowered its metal coil into the bathtub to heat the water.
When he came back from the bathroom, he was in a faded brown towel. “So what are you going to do?” he asked as he waited for the water to heat up.
You said you did not know; you had no money and no plans.
“Eish, I don’t have money now o. Can’t you ask one of your boyfriends?”
You stared at him incredulously. You did not have a boyfriend and you told him this.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “This is why it’s good to take care of yourself. I can’t imagine being in your situation.” He rummaged through the pocket of the trouser he wore earlier, and fitted a one thousand naira note in your left palm. “Please manage it.” His water began to boil. Or was that your anger?
“Feel at home, let me take a quick bath,” he said. You did not respond. He turned on the speakers, which began to play Osondi Onwedi in a low volume, before going into the bathroom. He didn’t close the bathroom door; the short passage and its curtains already kept him out of sight. You counted to ten in stillness. What were you doing here?
Ten. You pulled the curtains apart but he did not see you. His head was turned to the wall as he soaked in the bath. The ring boiler was still plugged in, its hot coil left carelessly on the edge of the tub. All you had to do was tip it back into the water. You gave in to the thought and stepped back. Azuka screamed as the current ripped through the bath. His body convulsed, his hands clamped to the edge of the tub, and he could not let go. He jerked again, his head snapping back against the porcelain in a dull thud. When he went still, you scurried out. Behind you, the bathwater rippled where the current surged strongest.
✺
You were sleeping when your stepmother tapped you awake. “They found Azuka dead in his bathroom,” she said. Her eyes were unfocused. You arranged your face into what you hoped conveyed shock, perhaps not quickly enough because your stepmother’s eyes narrowed. There were questions in her eyes, questions that resembled accusations. You looked away.
Outside, the neighbors were gathered under the coconut tree. A low cloud of murmur hung above them. Children peeped from behind closed gates, because it was taboo for the young ones to see a dead body or join such conversations. A coconut fruit fell, sending the crowd skittering like startled ants. When they came back together again, they said the spirit of the deceased was in their midst. Ifeanyi the drunkard, your neighbor who nursed his ogogoro until the whole neighborhood was asleep, said he knew why the coconut fell, then smiled in your direction. Your heart hoicked. He said he saw you creeping out of Azuka’s house last night and that you must have had a hand in what happened. You saw your stepmother straighten up. Your father looked at you in a quick surprise and said in your defense: “Rubbish talk! We all know Ifeanyi is definitely drunk right now,” but he was too late and his movements were glitchy with confusion.
Everything happened so quickly. Someone grabbed your arm and shook you, as if the truth would fall from your body if they shook you hard enough. “What happened? What did you do?” You were mute. The person threatened to call the police.
Your stepmother was caressing her belly and asking them to handle you carefully. “This is the devil's handiwork,” she said and you didn't know what she meant and how she meant it.
Your father was staring at Azuka’s door. Ifeanyi was shaking his head and cradling his empty bottle between his thighs. Passersby stopped to asked “ke ne me?” and you wished you could tell them what was going on, that you had killed your rapist and would now pay for it. One person said the word “death” and soon, chants of “Murderer!” blocked your ears. Someone called for a tire and your father screamed Blood of Jesus! You thought of the seed in your belly and wondered if it would boil as they roasted you alive. At the back of your head, you could hear Azuka saying “Sweet girl.”
✺ Published in The Dial
