Four
The local 7 o’clock news was usually a harmless
serving of our state governor’s daily activities - where he had
gone, what he had said, whom he had said it to. The national 9
o’clock news was different. It always reported something that
infuriated my father.
‘They’re all illiterates!’ he ranted. ‘That’s the
problem we have in this country. How can we have people ruling us
who didn’t see inside the four walls of a university?’
Two days ago, it was the allegation that one of the
prominent senators had falsified his educational qualifications. He
had lived in Canada for many years, quite all right, but the
University of Toronto had no record of his attendance. Yesterday,
it was the news that the Nigerian government had begun a global
campaign to recover part of the three billion pounds embezzled by
the late General Sani Abacha administration. About $700 million
discovered in Swiss bank accounts had already been frozen. Today,
it was the news that one of the state governor’s convoys had been
involved in a motor accident. This was the fourth time this same
governor’s convoy had been involved in a fatal car crash.
‘And the most annoying thing,’ my mother added, ‘is
that he’s going to go scot-free.’
‘Did anyone die?’ Charity asked.
‘Were you not listening?’ Eugene replied.
‘One woman died,’ Godfrey answered. ‘The other one
is in hospital.’
The governor’s press secretary was careful to add
that the injured woman’s medical bill was being catered for at the
governor’s expense.
‘It’s taxpayer’s money!’ My father exploded from
his chair.
‘But why can’t they investigate what the problem
is?’ my mother asked. ‘Why can’t they ask why this same man has had
four accidents in this period?’
‘Illiterates . . . all of them . . . that’s the
problem.’
Had I been less preoccupied with other matters, I
would have supplied the answer to that question for free. After the
third accident, I had read an interview in which this same
governor’s press secretary had blamed the governor’s enemies,
insinuating that they had used a powerful juju to engineer these
mishaps in order to embarrass the governor.
Before the news ended, my father had had enough. He
stood up and hissed.
‘I’m going in,’ he said.
My mother followed.
Shortly after, Godfrey dived towards the television
and tuned to a channel that was just starting to show a Nollywood
movie. I was not a fan of these locally produced Nigerian movies,
so I also stood and went into the children’s room.
Sleep refused to happen. Three days after my visit
to Ola, my mind was still bustling with worry. What was it that her
mother was unhappy with me about? Perhaps she and Ola were having a
misunderstanding. Perhaps she was angry that I had not been to
visit her as regularly as I should have. But then, the woman was
always busy. Ola’s mother, for the earlier part of her married
life, had been a contented housewife. She was forced to start her
own business only after her husband defected to some other woman.
Now she owned a busy pepper-soup joint somewhere in the middle of
town, which she ran with an almost fanatical zeal.
This mystery was going to torment me forever. There
was no better way to regain my peace of mind than to pay her a
visit tomorrow.
I decided to walk. As I tried my best to avoid the
speeding cars and the gaping gutters, I was amazed to see how much
this obscure town was developing just a few years after Abia State
had been carved out of Imo State, and Umuahia made the capital.
There were several more cars on the roads, and neon signs
announcing new businesses. There were more and more posters
advertising the political intentions of . . . almost everybody. The
scallywags hired to post these bills did not spare any available
space in the pursuit of their endeavours. Faces of candidates were
posted over traffic signs, and faces over the faces of other
contestants. There were even faces posted on dustbins. Did these
people not realise the subconscious message of seeing a candidate’s
hopeful face grinning from a container specially prepared for
garbage? Perhaps most of them did not go to school.
A red car zoomed past and nearly broomed me off the
road.
‘Hei!’ I cried while struggling to keep myself from
tumbling into the gutter.
These parts were largely populated by civil
servants and traders; the most ostentatious they aspired to was a
Mercedes-Benz V-Boot. Anybody riding such an extraterrestrial car
must either be a dealer in human body parts or a 419er - a swindler
of men and women in distant lands, an offender against section 419
of the Nigerian Criminal Code, which addresses fraudulent
schemes.
‘Criminal!’ I hissed after the flashy vehicle. Was
it his dirty money that had constructed the road?
Ola and I had done this journey between her house
and mine several times before. It was best enjoyed in the late
evening - when there were fewer cars on the road, when the
ill-tempered sun was taking its leave, when a fresh breeze was
fanning the skin. Walking with Ola was magical. We would take slow
steps and talk about everything - our dreams, our fears, what
happened to us during the day, how we had spent our time. Usually,
I did most of the serious talking. But once in a while, she raised
some heavy issues.
‘My mother was asking me some things about you
today,’ she said sometime towards the end of my stay in
school.
‘Oh, really? What did she want to know?’
‘She was asking how I was sure that you would still
be interested in marrying me when you finished school and got a
good job in an oil company.’
I laughed. Ola’s laughter was much smaller.
‘She was going on about how she wasted her life
trying to please my father, only for him to leave her for someone
else.’
I stopped laughing. It had been a painful
experience for them. Following the birth of the first two girls,
Ola’s father had made it quite clear to their mother that what he
now wanted was a boy. Three girls later, he began his coalition
with another woman, who agreed to bring forth sons only if he
married her. Without informing his existing family, Ola’s father
paid the woman’s bride price, arranged a traditional marriage
ceremony, and moved in with her. So far, the newer bride had popped
out two bouncing baby girls.
‘How can she think I’m so fickle?’ I asked
indignantly. ‘She obviously doesn’t know how much you mean to
me.’
‘That’s what I told her,’ Ola smiled, and squeezed
my hand.
But there was still something else on her mind. It
came after a few paces of silence.
‘Kings, but how come you haven’t given me a ring?’
she asked.
‘Sweetheart, I don’t have to give you a ring for
you to know I love you,’ I cooed back.
‘I know, but other people might not see it like
that. They might think we’re just fooling around.’
As usual, she had a point.
My next pocket money had been swallowed up by an
engagement ring. Ola wore it until late last year when the metal
turned green. She did not seem too bothered about a ring these
days, but I had promised that when I started working I would buy
her one that sparkled so bright she would have to wear Christian
Dior shades.
Most times while we walked and talked, I would have
my arm around her with my hand inside the back pocket of her jeans.
I never held her openly in Umuahia, though; people would think she
was promiscuous. Ola never wore trousers in the streets of Umuahia
either; girls who wore them were seen as wayward. Men would toss
lecherous comments, women would fling snide remarks, children would
stop and stare. But in school, we could do whatever we wanted.
There were several open fields and bushy gardens. Fortunately, the
university budget did not include streetlights.
At Ola’s house, I knocked. Ezinne peeped through
the transparent glass door, unlocked it hurriedly, and hugged my
waist.
‘Good afternoon, Brother Kings.’
‘My darling little sweetheart, how are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
I pecked her two cheeks.
Ezinne was the youngest of Ola’s five sisters. She
was a miniature version of her elder sister, both in looks and in
personality. And she had taken to me just as naturally, too. We had
a special bond.
‘Didn’t you go to school today?’ I asked.
‘No, Brother. I ate too much pepper soup yesterday
and my tummy was running throughout the night. My mummy said I
should stay at home today so that I won’t be running to the toilet
when I’m in school.’
‘So how’re you feeling now?’
‘I’m feeling better, thank you.’
Ola’s mother was sitting on one of the wooden
chairs in the meagrely furnished living room. The only chair with a
cushion had belonged to the Man of the House. There were some
brightly coloured plastic flowers standing in an aluminium vase on
the centre table. The table legs were leaning at a 120-degree angle
- an extra ten degrees from the last time I was here. I had heard
of men who aspired to marry girls from rich homes, but there was
something gratifying about having a fiancee whose family house was
in a more deplorable state than mine.
All my life, I had heard my mother say things like:
‘If not for your daddy, I would never have attended university’,
‘If not for your daddy, I would still be walking about barefoot in
the village’. I dreamt of a wife who would say similarly enchanting
things about me, a wife who saw me as Deliverer. ‘If not for your
daddy, I would never have lived in a house where we didn’t have to
pay rent’, ‘If not for your daddy, I would never have lived in a
duplex with a high fence and large compound’, ‘If not for your
daddy, I would never have been on a plane, I would never even have
left the shores of Nigeria’.
That last one was particularly essential,
especially for my children. During my school days, the rest of us
had been constantly oppressed by children whose parents could
afford to take them away to England and America on holidays. They
came back several shades lighter in complexion and never stopped
yammering on about their exotic experiences, complete with nasal
accents. They flaunted unusual stationery and attracted more than
their fair share of friends. Teachers treated them with blatant
favouritism. My children would have more than enough to attract the
envy of their peers. I would show Ola the world.
‘Good morning, Mama,’ I greeted.
‘Ezinne, lock that door and go inside,’ she said
without looking in my direction.
Despite the burden of several excess kilograms of
fat, Ola’s mother was usually as beautiful as her daughters. But
today, she was sporting a livid frown. I sat in the chair beside
her, feeling the sort of apprehension that you experience when
visiting the dentist.
She sighed deeply and placed an arm underneath her
chin with the elbow supported by the armrest of her chair. She was
wearing two shiny bracelets that were too big to be gold, and a
sparkly wristwatch with small white stones that were certainly not
diamonds.
‘Mama, is everything alright?’
After some long seconds, she turned abruptly in my
direction.
‘No . . . no! Everything is not alright!’ she said
without lifting her eyes to my face.
Another spell of quiet followed. At last, unable to
take it anymore, I leaned over and patted her hand, hoping to
provide some comfort for whatever was troubling her. Instantly, she
drew her arm away.
‘Don’t touch me . . . you hear? Just don’t touch
me. You’d better make your intentions clear . . . you hear me? Me,
I don’t know what’s happening; I don’t know what you’re doing with
my daughter. This thing has gone on too long. I’ve said my
own.’
So this was what the gloominess was about. Poor
woman. I smiled.
‘Ah, ah, Mama, but you should know by now that I’m
very serious. Ola and I are still very much in love. In fact I saw
her in school a few days ago. There’s no need for you to be
bothering yourself. Ola is my wife.’
‘I’ve been hearing this same thing for how many
years now. Me, I’m tired. Every day, “My wife, my wife, my wife . .
.”, “I love her, I love her, I love her . . .” Is it wife for
mouth? Is it love for mouth? After all, love does not keep the pot
boiling.’
‘Mama, but you know the situation. As soon as I get
a good job . . . once I’m settled down . . . I won’t need anyone to
remind me to come and pay the bride price. That matter is already
settled.’
She looked at me as if I had just told her that O
is for automobile.
‘So how long exactly are we supposed to wait for
you to settle down? Ola needs to move on, don’t you know? She would
have been married and settled down long time ago if not for all
your rubbish.’
She adjusted her wrappers and laughed. There was no
single drop of amusement in the sound.
‘Look, let me just make it clear to you. There are
other men out there who would gladly marry her, but she’s still
holding back because of you. Ola is not getting any younger. I’ve
almost finished training her in university. I expected that by now,
she and her husband would be the ones taking care of us. Me, I’m
getting tired.’
She had a right to be upset. Agreed, Ola’s mother
had always displayed slight traces of sourness which must have had
roots in the many jagged Frisbees life had tossed at her, but every
other parent in her situation would feel this way. I was ransacking
my verbal storehouse for the appropriate words to soothe her when
she hissed. Her eyes were dark and narrowed - focused on me at
last. Terror laid firm hold of my heart.
‘Other men are finding their way,’ she said. ‘Other
men know what and what to do to move ahead. Your own is just
different. Is it certificate that we shall eat? If I say that
you’re useless, it’ll be as if I’m insulting you. But since you
people met, I can’t see anything at all - not one single thing -
that Ola has benefited from you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a
complete disappointment.’
My heart rent in two. Different colours of bright
little stars danced in front of my eyes. I felt as if she had risen
from her chair, balanced one fat foot firmly on the floor, and
kicked in my teeth with the other. For the first time, I wondered
what my family - what Ola - really thought of me. Did they also
feel that, I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, was a
disappointment?
Maybe I had not been as smart as other young men
who were ‘finding their way’. Maybe I had been too carried away by
my academic achievements. After all, my father, with all his
brilliance, was wallowing in poverty. I shuddered at the thought of
ending up like him - full brain, empty pocket.
My thoughts wandered to my mother’s half-brother,
Uncle Boniface. He had lived with us when I was a child. At the
time, he slept on a mattress on the living room floor and ate with
a plastic plate on his knees in the kitchen like Odinkemmelu and
Chikaodinaka. He had repeated several classes more than once, and
eventually left secondary school without a certificate. But Uncle
Boniface knew exactly what he wanted from the future. And he never
kept quiet about it.
‘Kings, sit down and watch me,’ he would say. ‘Let
me show you how rich men behave.’
Then he would puff out his arms and stride around
the living room in slow, unhurried steps. Then he would stop and
frown and dim his eyes, and look up into the air. Then he would sit
in my father’s favourite chair, cross his legs, and shout orders at
invisible servants.
‘Come and take away these plates!’ he would bark at
one.
‘Will you stop wasting my time!’ he would howl at
another. ‘Do you think I pay you so much money for doing
nothing?’
Then he would glare at invisible naira notes in his
hands and chuck them onto the floor.
‘Kings, come and take them and throw them in the
bin,’ he would say. ‘These notes are too dirty to be in my
wallet.’
It used to be a fun game that tickled my fancy no
end. Not any more. Despite his poor academic record, Uncle Boniface
was extremely wealthy. Rumours abounded of his innumerable cars and
real estate and frequent trips abroad. And here I was sitting
beside Ola’s mother, a complete disappointment.
Fear gripped my heart tighter. My
mother-in-law-to-be had clearly run out of patience with me. I
needed to do something quick. As soon as things turned around, she
would become my best friend again. I had seen it happen before.
When I was still the only child after five years of
for-better-for-worse, my father’s family had fallen out of love
with my mother. And like Ola’s mother, they were very open about
their grief.
‘You need to put on more weight,’ one said. ‘How
can your womb function properly inside such a skinny body?’
‘I wonder how you manage the simplest household
chores,’ yet another one said. ‘You look like a dried cornstalk
that would break into two at the slightest push.’
‘I don’t even know what Paulinus found attractive
about you in the first place,’ yet another one said. ‘No breasts,
no buttocks . . . yet you call yourself a woman.’
One afternoon, after my father’s sisters had
visited and left, Oluchi, my mother’s niece who was living with us
at the time, carried me in her arms and patted my mother’s back
until her sobbing subsided.
‘Mama Kingsley,’ she whispered, ‘there’s something
I’ve been wanting to tell you but I wasn’t sure how to say it
before.’
My mother sniffed.
‘The last time I went home, there’s something my
mother and Aunty Amaechi were talking about.’
My mother pricked up her ears.
‘They said that because of all these problems Papa
Kingsley’s people have been having since their father died, that
maybe somebody from their family has padlocked your womb and thrown
away the keys so that you won’t be able to have more
children.’
My paternal grandfather had died shortly after I
was born, leaving behind some few plots of empty land and cassava
farms which his living
nine-sons-and-fifteen-daughters-from-three-wives had fought
vigorously to put inside their pockets. The wrangling had produced
such bile that there were suspicions of some family members
engaging diabolical means to frustrate others into relinquishing
their inheritance. From what Oluchi had said, it appeared that my
mother’s family regarded her infertility as the outcome of one of
such evil machinations.
Oluchi continued.
‘Mama Kingsley, I think you should do something
about it.
There are some native doctors in Ohaozara who I
hear are very good when it comes to unlocking people’s wombs. Maybe
you should speak to Papa Kingsley so that both of you can go there
and see one of them.’
My mother insists that her niece’s advice went in
one ear and out the other. She and my father never consulted any
native doctors. They did not swallow any alligator pepper and
animal blood concoctions, my mother did not dance naked under the
moonlight with a white cock draped around her neck.
‘I just kept crying to God,’ my mother had told me.
‘I knew He would intervene in His own time.’
One look at Godfrey, Eugene, and Charity, and God’s
intervention became clear. That was what I needed now - divine
intervention.
I murmured my appreciation for her concern to Ola’s
mother and hurried home. Then I ransacked my pile of dirty clothes
for the flyer I received from the early morning evangelists of the
other day. My very own special miracle from heaven.