FICTION:The Case for and Against Love Potions

By Imbolo Mbue,THE NEW YORKER March 15, 2021 bodies Illustration by Hayley Wall Audio: Imbolo Mbue reads. You love someone. Someone loves you not. What to do, besides find someone else to love, which, by the way, is not easy? Ah, my dear young friend, I’m so glad you came to me for advice. A quagmire of this nature requires the wisest of minds to resolve; clearly, you recognize who the most sagacious man in this part of the country is. As you know, there are a million and three solutions to this problem, virtually none of which have a great success rate. I imagine you tried at least twenty-eight of them before coming to see me today, am I correct? No? You tried only four? It doesn’t matter. You’re here and I have the best advice for you. Love potions. Have you ever heard of them? Oh, what a terrible shame—you’re in the dark about one of mankind’s greatest inventions. Let me enlighten you. No, I’ve never personally used them (never needed to, thank you very much). But I know that every fetish priest in every village sells them. The potions are made according to a recipe passed down from an unidentified ancestor, with a list of ingredients that we mere mortals are not allowed to know. The fetish priests all store their potions in similar-looking white bottles, and charge the same ludicrous fee to those who come to buy them—a goat, a pig, and three hens. But who has that kind of wealth to spare for the sake of love? Do you? I didn’t think so. That is why I’m going to give you invaluable directions on how to obtain a love potion for free and get yourself a romance that will leave your face brighter than the morning sun. Imbolo Mbue on sexism and love potions. This is what you need to do: as soon as an opportune moment presents itself, you must sneak into the hut of the fetish priest in your village while the fetish priest is out administering a ritual. But make sure you do this only after the sun has gone down and before the moon has revealed itself. You want to have enough darkness to conceal you but not so much darkness that the evil spirits that roam the village at night can see you; trust me, you don’t want to know what horror will befall you if they catch you stealing. So, as for the stealing business: when you enter the fetish priest’s hut, hurry up and grab the white bottle, then hide it in your underclothes as you rush to your hut. Keep it in a safe place—if you can, sleep with it under your blanket. Then, on a full-moon night, pour a few drops into the food of the one whose love you are seeking and poof! The next morning you will be so drenched in adoration, so enfolded in bliss and gratification, you will ask yourself what you’ve ever done in this life to deserve such loving. I’m looking at your face now, and you seem incredulous. You want to know what might happen if the love potion doesn’t work? Ha, funny you should ask. Well, the thing is, love potions usually work. But when they don’t, strange things can happen. Crazy, bad, strange things. Let me present my friend Wonja as Exhibit W of what can happen when a love potion goes wrong. Wonja wasn’t a great beauty. Whatever. How many women are great beauties? Though, to be honest, to say she wasn’t a great beauty is one stinky heap of an understatement: her husband, Bulu, actually laughed out loud when his parents first suggested her as a wife. “Me, marry that ugly thing?” he said. “Why don’t you just wed me to a bamboo pole?” And who could blame him for saying that? With her thin legs and flat belly, small buttocks and pointy cheekbones, Wonja was not pretty enough to make any man proud, certainly not a man like her husband, who had the finest mango-shaped head our village had ever seen. “I’ll find a wife for myself when I’m ready,” he insisted to his parents, who apparently didn’t care about his opinion, because two months later he woke up to find them at his door, with Wonja standing between them. VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER A Ninety-two-Year-Old Burlesque Dancer’s Swan Song “We’ve paid the bride-price,” they said as they hurried away. “But Mama, Papa . . . ” he cried. Wonja remained on his doorstep, smiling like someone who had stumbled into a dream in which an everlasting banquet had been prepared for her. And why wouldn’t she be happy? No man had ever knocked on her parents’ door asking to marry her. No one had even given her a chance to prove herself worthy of a husband, and now here she was, with the high honor of being called a wife. You want me to explain why no man had yet chosen Wonja to be his wife? So, my description of her physical deficiencies does not suffice, eh? I applaud you for your cynicism—you’re right. Despite all the jokes we made about Wonja being as pretty as a sun-dried cornstalk, her looks clearly weren’t the sole reason for her suffering. Love is a funny thing, you know. For many people, it’s like a tree. There are trees all around you. You can choose whichever one you fancy, sit in its shade, enjoy its fruits. But for certain people, like my friend Wonja, love is more like a rainbow. The circumstances have to be perfect for it to appear. And if it appears while you’re napping, or you’re out of the village visiting a cousin, you may never see it again, and then you’ll be forced to spend the rest of your life chasing rainbows. Two women take selfies at a party. “If our posts make even one person feel left out, then this party is worth it.” Cartoon by Lila Ash Folks who don’t have my level of intelligence will try to convince you that Wonja’s lack of comeliness was her demise. It wasn’t. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the women I’ve known in my life who had one deficiency or another and still found husbands. Just last month, Timbi, who has teeth like shards of broken rocks, moved into the home of her new husband. And Ifinda, who is more muscular than three hunters combined, has been married and happy for ten years, though, if you ask me, her marriage has lasted this long because her husband looks at those muscular arms and says to himself, “I’d better treat this woman right, or else she’ll beat all the food she just fed me right out of my belly.” And, speaking of food, I just remembered how much Wonja loved food when we were children. I still recall all the times I passed in front of her house as she sat on the veranda, destroying a bowl of pounded yams and soup. Thin as she was back then, everyone was certain she’d grow up to be nice and round. But, for some unknown reason, she just wouldn’t get fat. One after another, her friends were plucked from their parents’ huts as soon as their bodies had fully ripened. By the time Wonja was nineteen, there were only three girls of her age in the entire village who hadn’t yet found a husband. One of them was completely to blame for her misfortune: this girl was an only child and thought she deserved the moon and the stars, because her mother, who was also an only child, had doted on her and made her believe that few men in the world were worthy of her. With her nose in the air, the girl turned down a farmer because his farm was too far out in the forest and she didn’t want to have to wait so long every day for her husband to trek home with food. She turned down a fisherman from a neighboring village because, she said, he smelled like fish. O.K., help me understand this one: the man spends his days with fish—what does she expect him to smell like? Honey and sunflowers? Oh, the hearts of women. If only my friend Wonja had such a problem. Iremember evenings I spent chatting with Wonja, when we were both in our mid-twenties, dissecting the intricacies of our days. While Wonja sat with me on the veranda, I could hear my wife singing a happy song to herself as she cooked in the kitchen. She had no reason to fear that Wonja would try to steal me; none of the young wives in the village felt threatened by Wonja. Some evenings, we’d be joined by other friends, both male and female, everyone married with children, some complaining about one spousal headache or another, and Wonja’s eyes would fill with tears. If only she had someone to have a marital squabble with! Wonja did come close to true love once, when we were twenty-four. In the dry season of that year, she and her mother had travelled to a town on the other side of the country, to visit Wonja’s brother, who was working at a banana plantation. When she returned from that visit, Wonja couldn’t stop talking about a young man she’d met, her brother’s fellow-laborer. She regaled us with stories of this man: how he had smiled at her in a special way every time they encountered each other in the laborers’ camp; how he really did love her—he was just shy and didn’t know how to approach her. We looked at one another in disbelief. Was that even a thing, that a man could be too shy to tell a woman he was interested in her? It was all too dubious even for the most gullible of us. It seemed more likely that, in her desperation, she had seen an interest that wasn’t there. We didn’t want to hurt her, so we told her that we hoped the man would soon get over his shyness and come to see her parents. That man never did, but other men came—for Wonja’s three sisters. ADVERTISEMENT The day the last of her sisters got married, Wonja could not hold it in anymore. Surveying all the guests gathered in her family’s compound to dance and fête her youngest sister and her new husband, Wonja burst into tears. Two of her aunts had to rush her into the hut so she would not disrupt the wedding and bring disgrace to her family with her cries of “Why couldn’t this happen to me, too? Am I the worst thing ever to walk the earth?” She wasn’t. She had her share of attributes. She was a good cook, with a lovely singing voice and a melodious laugh. She wasn’t afraid of hard work—Wonja could go to the farm and work through thunderstorms and lightning, return home, and cook dinner for her family, all without a single complaint. When her father became too old to climb to the roof and patch a hole, she got on a ladder and did it. If there was anyone in the village in need of assistance, she was there to help. Young men seeking trophies with fleshy bottoms may have ignored these qualities, but Bulu’s parents, after years of observing Wonja, knew that their son could find no better wife. Every year after Wonja turned twenty-five, her parents had lowered their standards. First, they told everyone that they were willing to give her away to any man who was able to pay the minimum bride-price. Then they said they’d take half of the minimum bride-price. Finally, they flung their hands in the air and said they’d give her away for eighty per cent off the minimum price, and they wouldn’t require the groom’s family to pay for any sort of wedding. Like prudent parents the world over, they had to do whatever was necessary to get their daughter out of their hut before her womb shrivelled up and became useless. When Bulu’s parents came to see them to discuss taking Wonja off their hands—after doing their own share of waiting for Bulu to find a wife—Wonja’s parents cried for joy. “Our shame has been taken away,” they sang for weeks after the bride-price had been settled. The entire village joined them in celebrating, for none of us wanted to endure for one more day the sight of a woman growing old in her parents’ hut. Aweek after Wonja moved into Bulu’s hut, I saw her as she was walking to the well to fetch water. “Eh, Wonja,” I said to her, excited. “Tell me everything about the life of a happily married woman.” Tears immediately filled her eyes. In that moment, I cursed my fat mouth and wished it had come with a lid. “Oh, Wonja,” I said. “My marriage also makes me want to cry sometimes, but what can one do?” My attempt to make her laugh only made her sadder and she hurried on her way. That was all it took for me to realize that, while we were celebrating her marriage, Wonja was spending her days in misery. There was only one possible reason for this: Bulu could not, would not, love her. News began circling the village about all that Wonja was doing to make Bulu love her. One of our friends told me that, on the day that Wonja arrived in Bulu’s hut—after he had stormed away in anger at his parents’ dumping Wonja on him—she immediately went to work, opening the windows to air out the space, dusting the furniture, sweeping, laundering his clothes, ironing them. She then cooked four different meals for him, and put them in the pretty bowls with which her mother had sent her off to her marital home; wise woman that her mother was, she knew that a meal was only as good as the bowl in which it was placed, and Wonja, with her limited assets, would need all the pretty bowls in the world. And what did Bulu do when he returned home that night? What do you think he said to his new wife, when he saw that she had cleaned his house, laundered and ironed his clothes, and cooked him a lavish dinner? He glared at her sitting in the parlor, said not a word, and went to bed. Weeks later, when I asked Wonja if the account was true, she did not deny it. Nor did she contradict a story another friend told me. According to this friend, Wonja, seeing that Bulu wouldn’t take the initiative to touch her, had gone to bed naked one night while he was out with his friends. She was hoping that, when he returned and got into bed next to a naked body, he would have no choice but to do what a man is wont to do in such a situation. But when he arrived and slipped into bed next to her he immediately jumped up and barked at her to put on her nightclothes. Wonja personally confirmed to me that she had gone to her parents for help, but they had merely asked her to be strong, to take it as a woman, because who knew what the next day might bring? Bulu’s parents, when Wonja went to them, said the same thing. They knew, as did everyone else in our village, that Bulu, in addition to being uninterested in Wonja’s scant physical offering, was struggling to evict from his heart a woman he had once loved, a woman with a perfect gap tooth who lived in the next village. This woman had loved him, too, but their love for each other had been irrelevant to her parents. When it had come time to decide who would marry their daughter, they’d chosen a wealthy hunter, a man who’d promised to bring them fresh bushmeat three times a month. What parents could resist trading their daughter for that? After his beloved married another man, Bulu’s heart had closed up. No one understood such stupidity, that a man would turn into pulp just because he’d lost a woman. His friends poked fun at him for his inability to patch his fractured heart. An old gossip in the village started a rumor that he was afraid of a woman’s nakedness, that he had used his former beloved as a ruse to conceal his weakness, but the theory never caught fire, because none of us believed that there was a man on Earth who did not fantasize about undressing a woman several times a day. Bulu’s parents suggested to him woman after woman. He shook his head at all of them. Frustrated, his parents decided to stage a thing we called “caging” back in the day. That is when the parents of an avowed bachelor go to neighboring villages and invite the loveliest marriageable young women to their hut, where they hide them in a bedroom off the parlor. Then they invite their son over for lunch. After their son has eaten and is relaxed and in a pleasant mood, without prelude they open the door to the bedroom. Out come the young women, fancily dressed, their faces prettily painted, their hair coiffed. They line up in front of the bachelor, and the parents announce that the young man will not be leaving the hut until he picks one of the women as his wife. For Bulu’s caging, his parents had found seven young women. Everyone knew what a great farmer he was, and the young women knew that to marry a great farmer was to never go to bed with a growling stomach, and what could be more important in life? So there they all stood in front of Bulu, flashing smiles that said, Pick me, oh, please pick me! Bulu’s mother later told her friends that, for what seemed like a whole hour, Bulu just sat there, staring past the women into space. It was as if they were children playing a game of dress-up for his entertainment and he couldn’t be bothered. When he finally opened his mouth, it was to tell the women that he was so sorry his parents had wasted their time, and that he hoped they would all have a safe trip back to their villages. He stood up after saying this and walked out of the hut. As far as I know, he is the only man in our area who has ever, as we used to say, broken the cage. Yes, Bulu’s heart was that closed to love. One evening, a year after Bulu had married Wonja, my friend Kotso, who is also friends with Wonja, arrived for a visit as my wife was setting the table for my dinner. Kotso is the kind of man who has to taste every meal his eyes stumble upon. Most respectable men, when they walk into your hut as you’re about to have dinner, will wish you a happy eating and promise to return in an hour or so, after the food has settled in your belly. Not Kotso. It’s nobody’s fault that his wife is a terrible cook, but, being a man of great kindness, I had to let him partake in my meal. Otherwise I was doomed to spend the entirety of my dinner with two bulging eyes trained on every piece of food that slid down my throat. It was while we were eating my wife’s celebrated corn fufu and okra stew with pig feet that Kotso told me he had finally figured out what was going on with Bulu: his former beloved must have given him a love potion as a way of insuring that their love would flow eternally. Thanks to the potion, his heart could never now belong to another woman. I will confess that I had also thought this might be the case, but some things that you think—it’s best not to say them out loud, though it is wonderful to hear someone else say them. Which was why, the evening Kotso said this to me, I immediately told him that we needed to go to Wonja and tell her about our suspicion. Kotso did not think it would be wise to go directly to Wonja and cause her further pain with an unfounded theory. He thought it would be best if we got a group of our friends together to discuss her situation and see what we could do for her. We had to recognize, just as our parents and their parents before them had, that the best solution to a problem was often found when many minds came together. So, on a cool evening, several of us who were born in the same year as Wonja met in the village square to talk about our friend, whose parents were unable to help her, and whose sisters had all married and moved out of the village, leaving her to care for her parents while trying to ingratiate her way into the heart of a man who barely noticed her. Those of us gathered that evening had crawled with Wonja, and toddled with her, and walked with her, and danced naked under the rain with her. Her marriage had brought us joy, and now her marital woes were our collective headache; whenever we saw her, it took all our force to not let her forlorn face drain us of our bliss. We couldn’t let her just lumber through the rest of her life. ADVERTISEMENT We did not wish that she had never married Bulu. We did not wish that she was still in her parents’ house, praying that a man, any man, would come for her before certain body parts began to lose their firmness and wrinkles overwhelmed her face. We merely wished her a measure of satisfaction. And we all agreed that that satisfaction would come only if Bulu was free to love her. By the time of the meeting, there was no doubt in any of our minds that Bulu’s former beloved had given him a love potion. We could find no other explanation for the prison in which he was living. Wonja would have to set him free. The next day, on a similarly cool evening, we met again in the village square. This time we invited Wonja to join us. I spoke for the group. I told her that there could be no rationalization for Bulu’s behavior except that he was in thrall to a love potion. She could accept him as he was, I said, but the whole idea of a marriage was to alter the other person, to make your spouse better for your own good. The rest of our friends nodded as I said this—we’d all spent considerable lengths of time molding our wives and husbands into people who would bring us the utmost amount of happiness and cause us the least amount of pain. I told Wonja that she needed to go and see a fetish priest to make an antidote for the love potion. I assured her that one of us would accompany her. From our barnyards, we would give her the animals she would need to offer to the fetish priest. I told her that we would understand if she refused to follow our advice, the endeavor not being risk-free. But if she refused to heed our counsel she might very well spend the rest of her life regretting that decision, and she wouldn’t want that, would she? She shook her head. Basketball player misses pass. “I meant I was open metaphorically, to new ideas and experiences.” Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz She knew that she had no choice but to go and see a fetish priest and seek out an antidote. Eight days later, one of our friends went with her to see a fetish priest three villages away. The man had come highly recommended because his potions were so powerful that an impotence remedy he once made for a client had caused the client’s wife to have three sets of twins in four years. The fetish priest listened to all that Wonja had to say about Bulu, nodding in understanding at her pain and disappointment. When Wonja was done talking, he told her how sorry he was for her suffering, but he cautioned her against using an antidote to destroy the power of the love potion, if indeed there was a love potion. He said that if the antidote was administered improperly, say on a night when the moon appeared full but wasn’t really full, madness might ensue. The best thing to do now, the priest told her, was to wait and hope that, in due time, her husband would excrete the love potion in his system. But how long could the woman wait? Some say that love potions can stay in a body for years, decades even, and, in a few cases, for a lifetime. Wonja agonized. “I can’t do it,” she said, when I pressed her to get the opinion of another fetish priest. She argued that it was all too risky. “So, you want to spend the rest of your life loveless,” I said. She sighed deeply. Fifteen months into her marriage and she had scored no victory. So she went to see another fetish priest—a fast-talking one four villages away. This time she went alone, not wanting to be influenced by us. I don’t have the full story of what happened with this new fetish priest, but we later found out that the man gave her a love potion, not an antidote. Worse still, he forgot to remind her that the potion should be administered only on a night when the moon was absolutely full. Which was why, in her eagerness, on a night when the moon merely appeared full, Wonja put three drops of the potion into Bulu’s dinner of smoked-bushmeat stew. What do you think happened to her the next day? Madness. Of course. First, she started walking around the village talking to herself. Then, one morning, we found her sleeping under the mango tree. Before long, she had permanently moved out of Bulu’s hut and made the shade of the mango tree her new home. I’ll spare you the details of what she looks like today. Suffice it to say, she now spends her days walking around the village singing, mournfully, “All I wanted was love, all I ever wanted was to know how it feels to be loved.” She sings it softly, she sings it loud, she dances alone. My poor, poor friend. Some days I avoid passing by the mango tree so that I don’t have to see her. It just . . . my heart cannot bear the sight. Well, I hope you don’t blame me for telling you this story. You asked for it. We could have ended the conversation with how to procure a love potion, but you wanted to know the worst that could happen, and now you know it. But take heart, my dear friend. What happened to Wonja was an absolute anomaly. Do you think I would be giving you this advice if I thought you’d become insane? I’d never do such a thing to you. Love potions are the only known panacea for desiring hearts, and broken hearts, and all kinds of hearts in need of healing. If I’m telling you to go and steal a love potion from your village fetish priest, if I’m asking you to risk being caught and given forty lashes of the koboko on your bare buttocks by your village head in your village square, with the entire village watching as you cry out for your mama and your papa and all your ancestors to come to your rescue, it’s because I know, I am wholly convinced, that a love potion is the best solution. Young people today—you don’t know very much, sadly. You walk around and you see married people happy together, sitting on their verandas in the evening and watching their children play as the light starts to fade. You look at such couples and you think, Oh, how lucky for them—they found the right person and everything fell into place beautifully and now they’re enjoying matrimony. Rubbish. Unqualified rubbish. Love comes at a cost to everyone—don’t ever forget that. Yes, there are the lovers for whom fate conspired to bring bliss, but more married people than you can imagine had to steal and lie and claw their way to undying love. Do you know Mama Gita, who lives near the well in your village? Of course you know her, you’re friends with some of her grandchildren. I saw you at the funeral of Mama Gita’s husband, Papa Ikolo, last month. I was sitting with a friend who wouldn’t stop talking about what an exemplary woman Mama Gita was—how she had given her husband eight children and thirty grandchildren, what a wonderful marriage she and Papa Ikolo had had, how Papa Ikolo must truly be resting in peace now because Mama Gita had given him such a good life. I had to sit there and listen with my tongue held down firmly between my teeth, because few people know what I know, that everything Mama Gita has today she got because of a love potion. Oh, you’re shocked to hear that. Well, hold yourself tight, because by the time I’m done telling you this story you won’t know what to think of that sweet old woman anymore. It happened when I was a child. It was such a big story in your village and the surrounding villages that it was all people talked about new moon after new moon. When Gita was about eighteen, she and her cousin Titi went to a wedding. Weddings in those days were quite like they are today—everyone who has any blood relation or acquaintance with any member of the bride’s or the groom’s extended family attends, some because they care about the bride or the groom, but many because they can’t turn down an opportunity to eat a lot and drink a lot and dance all night under the stars. And, of course, is there a better place for young women to display their wares and compete for the attention of young men in search of wives? ADVERTISEMENT So Gita and her cousin, best friends that they were, sat with the multitude at the compound of the bride’s family, cheering and clapping when the two families came to an agreement on the bride-price. The cousins stood up and danced with the other guests when the bride was ushered out of her hut and presented to the groom, who lifted her veil and promised to take her back to his hut and do all that he could to protect her. As Gita and her cousin were dancing in celebration, raising up dust with their feet as the drummers banged harder and the choir sang louder, a fine-looking young man watched them in amusement. Through the merry crowd, Gita saw the man walking toward her and her heart stopped. He was smiling with bright eyes, his whitish teeth exposed, as he neared her. The man kept beaming as he walked right past her, to her cousin Titi. Titi’s back was turned to the stranger, so you can imagine her delightful shock when he appeared in front of her and asked her what her name was. Gita jumped in between them. “You mean my name,” she said to the man, batting her eyelashes, as if a man ever chose one woman over another because of the speed with which she could blink. The man shook his head. “No, I mean this lovely lady right here,” he said, gesturing to Titi. All Gita could do was pray that her cousin would ignore the man, or say something typical of girls who like to play games, something like “What do you want to know my name for?” But Titi didn’t—how many girls would do such a thing to a young man whose arms and legs were as thick as the branches of an iroko tree? Titi giggled and said her name, and the next day the young man was visiting her in her village. He was there the day after, too, and the day after that. Each time, Gita watched from the other side of the family compound as her cousin basked under the adoring gaze of a man who would have been hers if he hadn’t, for whatever senseless reason, walked up to the wrong cousin. Even when I was a teen-ager, women peeling peanuts and gossiping on verandas were still concocting and embellishing stories about the lengths to which Gita had gone to steal from her cousin a man she believed was rightfully hers. Some said that she once trekked to the man’s farm, deep in the forest, and offered to help him weed around his yams and pumpkins, but he merely smiled and told her no, thanks, he would rather do it alone. Others said that she tried to break up her cousin’s relationship by telling Titi that her beloved had at least two other women he was planning to marry. There was even a story about how Gita once stayed in bed for two days with a high fever, a case of lovesickness—but many disputed that rumor, saying that she was indeed sick. What no one disputed was that, as Titi’s wedding date approached, Gita, sensing that she had lost her battle, became the loving and supportive cousin and best friend she’d once been. Five weeks before the wedding date, she went with Titi to the dressmaker and giggled with her cousin about the wondrous day ahead: the chickens and goats and pigs that the menfolk would slaughter on the eve of the wedding; the womenfolk who would gather in the compound before sunrise to sing and dance as they prepared goat stew and fried ripe plantains and grilled pork shoulders; all the choirs that would be hired to sing, one after the other, until the celebrants could dance no more; and all the happiness that awaited Titi on the other side of her wedding day. Except that Titi would have no wedding day. Nine days before the highly anticipated date, Ikolo’s parents went to Titi’s parents to say that they didn’t know how to explain it—this was as difficult for them as it would be for Titi and her family—but there was nothing they could do about it: Ikolo wanted to call off the wedding. He no longer believed that Titi was the right woman for him. How Titi cried. A book titled I Used To Have Bangs A Memoir. Cartoon by Carolita Johnson She and Gita went to Ikolo’s village and Titi flung herself at Ikolo, asking him to look into her eyes and tell her what she had done wrong. A crowd gathered around as Ikolo repeated over and over again that he was sorry, truly sorry, but he couldn’t marry a woman he no longer loved. Why did he no longer love her? Titi wanted to know. Ikolo couldn’t say. “Open your mouth and tell her the truth,” many women in the crowd shouted at Ikolo, women who clearly had also been wronged by men and perhaps hoped that Ikolo’s answer would be a balm for the multiple scars that remained in their hearts. Even Ikolo’s parents joined the crowd to exhort their son to tell Titi the reason for his change of heart. Sensible parents, they hoped that, if they couldn’t get a response from their son, then a bit of public shaming might do the trick. It didn’t work. Titi went back to her village crying, her cousin’s arms wrapped around her in comfort. So how is it that a mere four months later Ikolo’s parents showed up at Gita’s parents’ hut to say that Ikolo wanted to marry Gita? Oh, the pain that Gita caused her extended family for the sake of a man. It hasn’t healed to this day. Titi’s father died without ever again speaking to his brother, Gita’s father. He couldn’t understand why his brother would let Ikolo into the family after he had disgraced the entire extended family by dumping Titi for no reason. But what was Gita’s father to do? He had five daughters to marry off; he couldn’t be too choosy about their potential husbands, lest he wake up one day and find himself with a household of husbandless women. Few people attended Gita’s wedding to Ikolo. I was there with my mother, because my mother was one of those people who could never turn down a chance to party, even if the occasion to do so was one of the most dishonorable in recent history. I recall how much food was left over. Even before the wedding, rumors had begun circulating about how Gita had paid a visit to a fetish priest. I was ten years old when this happened and I still remember asking myself why Gita was so determined to steal a man from her cousin, a cousin with whom she had crawled, learned how to walk, and laughed and cried. I cannot tell you why. All I can suppose is that Gita truly believed that Ikolo had made the worst mistake of his life the day he walked past her and up to Titi. A mistake that Gita convinced herself she had to rectify for the good of all involved. The chatter about Gita’s visit to a fetish priest did not abate after the wedding. No one knew whom she had gone to, but you would have been a fool to argue that a fetish priest wasn’t involved in the drama. A man with his senses unimpaired does not decide to end his engagement for no good reason and then marry another woman in a matter of months. A clearheaded man does not give up his hut and move to his wife’s village, which was what Ikolo did the week after his wedding to Gita. His entire family had tried to stop him from doing that, reminding him that a man marries a woman and not vice versa, meaning that Gita was the one who needed to leave her village, but Ikolo would not listen to reason. ADVERTISEMENT Once he and Gita had moved into a hut that had been left behind by a deceased relative on Gita’s mother’s side of the family, reports began surfacing about how Ikolo could be seen every morning sweeping the hut, an abomination if ever there was one. Apparently, the potion that Gita had given him was so strong that Ikolo laundered Gita’s clothes for her, and ironed them, and even stayed in the kitchen with her to help her as she prepared their dinner. He’d evidently lost such a huge chunk of his brain that he was unable to just relax on his veranda in the evenings, like any respectable man, enjoying a cup of palm wine while his wife did what wives ought to do. Everyone hoped that Ikolo would be free from Gita’s chains by the time the next rainy season came. But the rains came and went, bringing along a healthy firstborn child and leaving their marriage intact. Wherever one turned in the village, there they were—smiling and delighting in each other as much as they had on the day of their sparsely attended wedding. Many evenings, after dinner, passersby could see them sitting on their veranda, often holding hands, or Ikolo minding the baby, doing it so casually that it seemed the most ordinary thing that had ever happened under the sun. A second child arrived for them, and happily they carried on. Years came and went; whatever love potion was in Ikolo’s body stayed put. Soon everyone forgot about what Gita had done to Titi, who married someone else and didn’t utter a good or a bad word about her cousin for the rest of her life. People forgot that a love potion was the foundation of the happiness that flowed from Gita and Ikolo’s hut because, love potion or not, humans are drawn to happiness, and they all wanted a piece of Gita and Ikolo’s joy. So it was that Gita and Ikolo became the most popular couple in the village, folks stopping by at all hours to chat and laugh in the home that a love potion had built. You saw it for yourself, didn’t you? Even after having eight children and multitudes of grandchildren, even after their backs were hunched and their teeth all gone, Gita and Ikolo still held hands as they sat on their veranda, surrounded by their happy clan. So, if I’m advising you to do something uncommon, my dear friend, it’s because I want you to know such uncommon bliss. I’ll say it again—there are many who have found their beloveds without the help of love potions, and I am one of those, but you don’t have the skills I have, because if you did, would you now find yourself in this position of unrequited love? Yes, I’m as exasperated as you are by this game of love. Happy as I am in my own home, I still go to bed some nights thinking about Wonja. I wonder if we were wrong to have steered her toward taking action to win Bulu’s heart. But what else could she have done? How else could she have found love? She could have given Bulu the moon and the stars and he still wouldn’t have loved her. And to think that, less than three months after she went mad, Bulu was healed and promptly found himself a new wife, a woman who was nowhere near as wonderful as Wonja. Now they happily prance around the village with their children, while Wonja wanders with matted hair and raggedy clothes, singing, “All I wanted was love, all I ever wanted was to know how it feels to be loved.” ♦ Published in the print edition of the March 22, 2021, issue. Imbolo Mbue won the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for “Behold the Dreamers.” Her new novel is “How Beautiful We Were.”