Okuko si na ya anaghi eti ka egbe ji ya haa
ya; kama na ya na-eti ka oha nuru olu ya.
The chicken carried away by a hawk says that it is crying not
so that the thing carrying it will let it go, but so that the
public will hear its voice and be witness.
My taste buds had been hearing the smell of my mother’s cooking and my stomach had started talking. Finally, she called out from the kitchen and my siblings rushed in to fetch their meals. Being the opara of the family, I was entitled to certain privileges. As first son, I sat at the dining table and waited. My mother soon appeared carrying a broad plastic tray with an enamel bowl of water, a flat aluminium plate of garri, and a dainty ceramic bowl of egusi soup.
I washed my hands and began to eat slowly. The soup should have been a thick concoction of ukazi leaves, chunks of dried fish and boiled meat, red palm oil, maggi cubes – all boiled together until they formed a juicy paste. But what I had in front me were a midget-sized piece of meat, bits of vegetable, and random specks of egusi, floating around in a thin fluid that looked like a polluted stream.
The piece of meat looked up at me and laughed. I would have laughed back but there was nothing funny about the situation at all. My mother was not a novice in the kitchen. This pitiful presentation was a reflection of the circumstances in our home. Life was hard. Times were bad. Things had not always been like this.
After her Clothing and Textile degree, my mother had travelled to the United Kingdom with my father. They returned armed with Masters degrees. He was posted to the Ministry of Works and Transport in Umuahia; she acquired a sizeable tailoring shop that still stood at the exact same spot where it had been founded all those years ago. My father’s earnings alone had been more than enough, but years of rising inflation without any corresponding increase in civil servant wages had gradually rendered the amount insignificant.
Then came my father’s diagnosis. For a poorly paid civil servant to dabble in an affliction like diabetes was the very height of ambitious misfortune. The expenditure on his tablets and insulin alone was enough for the upkeep of another grown child. And since his special diet banned him from large quantities of the high-carbohydrate staple foods in our part of the world, he was now constrained to healthier, less affordable alternatives. The little income from the tailoring shop plus my father’s pension were what we were now surviving on.
My mother reappeared at the dining table, laden with another tray, which had my father’s melancholic lunch on it. The front of her dress was stained with the sticky, black fluid from the unripe plantains that she had used to make her husband’s porridge. She arranged the tray at the head of the table and sat in her place next to his.
‘Paulinus, come and eat,’ she called out.
My father stood up from his favourite armchair. He shuffled to the dining table, bringing with him the combined odour of medication and illness and age. My siblings joined us. Charity sat between me and my mother on my right; Godfrey and Eugene sat to my left. The noise of tongues sucking, teeth chomping, and throats swallowing soon floated about in the air like ghosts. My father’s voice joined in.
‘Augustina, I need a little bit more salt.’
My mother considered his request for a while. Because he also suffered from high blood pressure, every day she reduced the quantity of salt she added to his food, hoping that he would not notice. Reluctantly, she succumbed.
‘Odinkemmelu,’ she called out.
There was no reply.
Odinkemmelu!’
Silence was the answer.
‘Odinkemmelu! Odinkemmelu!’
‘Yes, Ma!’ a voice responded from the kitchen.
The air in the room was suddenly invaded by the feral stench of pubescent sweat. Odinkemmelu entered wearing a rusty white T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts that had jagged holes in several inappropriate places. He and the other girl, Chikaodinaka, had come from the village to live with us. Neither of them was allowed to sit at the dining table.
‘How come it took you so long to answer?’ my mother asked.
‘Mama Kingsley, sorry, Ma. I am put off the fire for the kerosene stove by the time you call and I doesn’t heard you.’
My mother ran her eyes up and down Odinkemmelu’s body in a way that must have tied knots in his spinal cord. But the boy was not telling a lie; the fumes floated in right on time. We had stopped using the gas cooker because cooking gas was too expensive, and had switched to the kerosene stove that contaminated the air in the house with thick, toxic clouds whenever it was quenched with either a sprinkling of water or the blasts of someone’s breath.
‘Bring me some salt,’ my mother said.
Odinkemmelu took his body odour away to the kitchen and returned with a teaspoon of salt.
‘Godfrey, I don’t want to hear that you forgot to bring the university entrance forms back from school tomorrow,’ my father said to my brother.
Godfrey grunted quietly.
‘For almost a week now, I’ve been reminding you,’ my father continued. ‘You don’t always have to wait till the last minute.’
When it was my turn about seven years ago, I had brought my forms home promptly. My father had sat down with me and we filled them out together. We divided the task equally: he decided that I should study Chemical Engineering, he decided that I should attend the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, and he decided that I must not take the exams more than once. My own part was to fill in his instructions with biro and ink, study for the exams, and make one of the highest Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board exam scores into the university’s Chemical Engineering Department. Godfrey did not appear too keen on any such joint venture.
‘And I hope you’ve been studying,’ my father added. ‘Because any child of mine who decides to be useless and not go to university has his own self to blame for however his life turns out.’
A sudden bout of coughing forced an early conclusion to a speech that could easily have lasted the duration of our meal. To my parents, education was everything. She was the recipe for wealth, the pass to respectability, the ticket to eternal life.
Once, while in primary school, I had ventured to exercise my talents in the football field during break time and returned home with my school shirt badly ripped and stained. When my mother saw me, she stared as if I had huge pus-filled boils all over my body. Then she used a long koboko whip to express herself more vividly on my buttocks. Later that evening, my father called me into his bedroom. He sat on the bed, held my shoulders, and adjusted my posture until I was standing directly in front of him. He stared into my eyes forever. Then in a deep, sententious tone, he changed my life.
‘Kingsley, do you want to be useful to yourself in this world?’ he asked.
I answered in the affirmative.
‘Do you want to make me and your mummy proud?’
Again, my answer was the same.
‘Do you want people to know you and respect you wherever you go?’
I did.
‘Do you want to end up selling pepper and tomatoes in Nkwoegwu market?’
I shuddered. My soul was horrified at the thought of joining the sellers who transported food items from different villages to one of the local markets. Hardly any of them understood what was being said if you did not speak Igbo. Most of them looked wretched.
My father amplified his voice.
‘Do you?’
No, I did not.
‘Then you must stop wasting your time on silly things. You must read your books… focus on your studies and on the future you have ahead of you. A good education is what you need to survive in this world. Do you hear me?’
I heard him too loud and very clear. Still, he continued.
He explained that without education, man is as though in a closed room; with education, he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards the outside world. He said that education makes a man a right thinker; it tells him how to make decisions. He said that finishing school and finishing well was an asset that opened up a thousand more opportunities for people.
My tender triceps started grumbling. He continued.
He said that education is the only way of putting one’s potential to maximum use, that you could safely say that a human being is not in his correct senses until he is educated.
‘Even the Bible says it,’ he concluded. ‘ “Wisdom is better than gold, understanding better than choice silver.” Do you hear me?’
Not only did I hear him, I believed him completely. I was brainwashed. I became an instant disciple. Thereafter, as I watched other little boys squandering their time and energy in football fields, I simply believed that they did not know what I knew. Like the Spiderman, I was privy to some esoteric experience that made me superhuman. And the more my scores skyrocketed in the classroom, the more I kept away from my friend Alozie, who could still not tell the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’, and our neighbour’s son Kachi, who was finding it difficult to learn the seven-times table. I continued to outdistance my classmates in academic performance. I had never once looked behind.
My mother reached out and patted her husband’s back softly until his coughing ceased. Then she changed the topic.
‘Kingsley, when is the next interview?’ she asked.
‘The letter just said I passed. They’ll send another one to let me know. It’s going to be a one-on-one meeting with one of the big bosses in their head office. This time, each person’s date is different.’
‘You’re going to Port Harcourt again?’ Eugene asked.
‘It’s probably just a formality,’ my father said. ‘The first three interviews were the most important.’
‘So if you go and work in Shell now,’ Charity asked, ‘will you move to Port Harcourt?’
There was panic in her voice. I smiled fondly at her.
‘It doesn’t matter where I live,’ I replied. ‘I’ll come home often and you can also come and be visiting me.’
She did not look comforted. My father must have noticed.
‘Charity, bring your plate,’ he said.
Charity pushed her enamel bowl of soup across the table, past my mother, and towards him. My father stuck his fork into the piece of meat in his plate and put it into his mouth. He bit some off with his incisors and deposited the remaining half into my sister’s bowl. Unlike mine, his was a veritable chunk of cow.
‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she said, while dragging the bowl back.
I remembered when Charity was born about eight weeks before my mother’s expected date of delivery. Though we were all pleased that it was a girl at last, she looked like a withered skeleton, tiny enough to make seasoned doctors squirm. Going to hospital almost every day and watching her suffer must have been when each of us developed a special fondness for her. All of us except Eugene, who was a year younger than Godfrey and a year older than Charity. He was a thorn in her flesh and made her a regular target for his silly jokes.
‘Ah!’ Eugene exclaimed now. ‘Look at your armpit! It looks like a gorilla’s thighs!’
Everybody turned towards Charity. She clutched her arms close to her sides and looked about to press the control buttons of a time machine and disappear. My mother’s eyes swelled with shock.
‘Why can’t you shave your armpits regularly?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you know you’re now a big girl?’
A cloud fell upon Charity’s face. At fifteen and a half, she was still very much a baby. She had wept when Princess Diana died, sobbed when we watched a documentary about people whose body parts were enlarged because of elephantiasis. While other Nigerians poured into the streets and celebrated General Sani Abacha’s sudden death, Charity stayed indoors and shed tears.
‘Is there any law that says she must shave?’ Godfrey intervened. ‘Even if there is, who makes all those laws? Whose business is it if she decides to grow a forest under her arms?’
Charity rubbed her eyes.
‘It looks dirty,’ my mother said. ‘People will think she’s untidy.’
‘Why can’t people mind their own business?’ Godfrey replied. ‘Why should they go about inspecting other people’s armpits? After all, those hairs must have been put there for a reason.’
Charity sniffed.
‘Actually, you’re right,’ I added. Not that I agreed that any girl should go about with a timberland under her arms, but for the sole purpose of coming to my darling sister’s aid in this her hour of need. ‘Scientists say that the hairs there are meant to transmit pheromones.’
‘What are pheromones?’ Eugene asked.
‘They are secretions that men and women have without being aware of it,’ my father explained. ‘They play a part in the attraction between men and women.’
That was one thing that sickness and poverty had not been able to snatch from him. My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician. He knew every theory of science and every city in the atlas; he knew every word in the dictionary and every scripture in the Holy Bible. It was such a pity that all the things he knew were not able to put money in his pocket.
‘No wonder,’ Eugene said seriously. ‘Like that houseboy on the third floor who’s always staring at her whenever she’s walking back from school. I guess it’s not really her fault the sort of people her own pheromones attract.’
He laughed and choked at his own joke while the rest of us stifled our amusement for the sake of solidarity with Charity. All of us but one. My father transmitted an icy frown that froze the dancing muscles on Eugene ’s face. We all looked back to our plates. I realised that mine was empty. It was little episodes like this that made it easier for me to forget just how much like sawdust our meals tasted.
Being careful not to disturb Godfrey slumbering beside me, I crawled out of bed and changed into a pair of trousers and T-shirt. Breath stale and hair as dishevelled as a cheap barrister’s wig, I made my way out to the kitchen, which served as the route for most of the traffic in and out of our house. The front door was reserved for special visitors. People like my father’s sisters and my secondary school principal.
‘Bro. Kingsley, good morning,’ Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka said.
They always woke early to begin their chores.
‘Bro. Kingsley, are you go far away or should we kept your breakfast for you by the time you came back?’ Odinkemmelu asked.
It was not the boy’s fault that his tenses were firing bullets all over the place. Before he came to live with us about two years ago, Odinkemmelu had never set foot outside the village and the only English he knew was ‘I want eat.’ Over time, his vocabulary had improved. But when it came to tenses, he was never quite sure whether he was standing in the present or dwelling in the past.
Although his position on the family tree could not be described in anything less than seven sentences, Odinkemmelu was introduced to us as our cousin. Chikaodinaka was a more clearly identified relative. She was my father’s cousin’s niece. Both Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka offered their services without pay. Their reward was in kind. Leaving the village and coming to stay with relatives in town was the only opportunity they might ever get to learn English, watch television, live in a house with electricity, use a toilet that had a water system, or learn a trade.
‘I’m just going to the post office,’ I replied. ‘I’ll eat when I get back.’
I stepped out into the young morning and walked briskly with my heart playing sweet music. This could be the day that changed my life. For the first few minutes, the only sound that disrupted the early morning calm was the dance steps of dry leaves and debris in the Harmattan breeze. Gradually, a new sound joined in.
‘Come and receive divine intervention! For nothing is impossible with God!’
Ring! Ring!
‘Come and receive a touch from God! Our God is a God of miracles!’
Ring! Ring!
Soon, I bumped into a group of young men and women dressed in white T-shirts and black bottoms. Their T-shirts were imprinted with some verse of scripture or the other; they were clapping and dancing and chanting Christian choruses. Most of them jangled tambourines. One blared into a loudspeaker.
‘Come and receive a touch from God!’ he announced. ‘Your life will never remain the same again!’
I was familiar with this sort of ‘Morning Cry’ from my university days. Early in the morning, before others had woken up, some students would take strategic positions along hostel corridors from where they would shout out the gospel of Jesus Christ. Often, groggy students yelled angry abuses at them.
‘Get out of that place and allow us sleep!’
‘God punish all of you preachers!’
‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh! You people should leave us alone! Please! Please! Please!’
Once, one of my roommates had gone as far as opening the door and throwing a cup of water into the face of a self-employed evangelist. The bearer-of-good-news merely turned the other cheek and continued with his ‘Morning Cry’. Now an ardent man moved in my direction to hand me a colourful flyer. I sidestepped him deftly and continued on my journey. The last thing I needed was to be harassed by religious fanatics.
The post office compound was as deserted as a school play-ground on Christmas Day. I walked straight to box 329 and inserted the key. There was a manila envelope with my name printed neatly on the surface. The butterflies in my stomach began a vigorous gyration. I dragged out the thin, white sheet of paper and unfolded it with the panache of one who had performed this same action several times before. Right there and then, my heart stopped beating.
Dear Mr Kingsley O. Ibe,
RE: INTERVIEW FOR THE POSITION OF CHEMICAL ENGINEER (SHP06/06/9904)
We are sorry to inform you that you did not meet the requirements for-
There was no need to read further. I crumpled the offensive letter in my hand and shut my eyes tight. The wind ignored my grief and continued sucking the moisture from my skin as she hurried past on her journey from the Sahara to the Gulf of Guinea. I am not sure how long I stood there. Eventually, I regained consciousness and locked the box. I wanted to weep, to run, to hide away somewhere, never to see anyone again. Anyone except Ola. I wanted to see Ola at once.
Ola was the sugar in my tea. Sitting across from her in the faculty library more than four years ago, it occurred to me that I was in my third year at university and not in any serious relationship. In between attending lectures and burying my head in my books, I had somehow put the issue aside.
That day, I had rushed into the library to snatch some minutes of study before attending my next class. It was not difficult to notice the group of girls in a corner; they were giggling in fifty different sharps and flats. Other library users cast exasperated glances in their direction, yet their banter continued without pause. All evidence pointed to the fact that they were ‘Jambites’. Prim appearance, surplus excitement – it was never hard to distinguish a freshman.
Ola caught my attention. Her black hair was swept back in a ponytail and her large brown eyes stood out defiantly in a narrow face. Unlike most girls who had developed a penchant for bleached skin, hers glowed flawless ebony. She also looked innocent. I did not need to be an expert on women matters to know which girls had dabbled in more than their fair share of promiscuity and which were vampires – female Draculas on a mission to drain your bank balance dry. It was as if these girls gave off some peculiar pheromones. Perhaps Nature, knowing that man would someday need it for self-preservation, had implanted this sixth sense so that common folks like me could identify them.
Their noise eventually smoked the library attendant out of his cubicle. He strode to their table with a frown as thick as hail.
‘Oya, all of you should get up and leave the library,’ he ordered, his voice loud enough for everyone to know that someone who had power was in the process of exercising it.
‘Must you shout like that?’ one of the girls asked.
‘Just pack your things and leave!’
‘You should even be happy we came,’ another girl hissed. ‘After all, if we didn’t come, you wouldn’t have anything to do all day.’
They laughed while gathering their books and dainty handbags. I continued staring at Ola as they sniggered their way out of the library. Her back view was as satisfying as her front.
Ola returned the next day, this time on her own. My heart somersaulted twice when she walked in. She sat about five tables away and spread out her books. My supersonic brain ceased functioning. The words on the pages in front of me started wriggling about like enchanted snakes. I suddenly remembered that I needed a haircut. And that my white shirt was not starched. Ola studied for a full one hour before she got up and left.
She was back again the next day, and the next, and the next. I marvelled at how such a pretty girl could actually make out time to study. Other visitors to the library also seemed to have taken note of this shooting star.
‘Hello,’ the man whose lenses were as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle would say.
‘Hello,’ the man who was about four feet tall would add.
‘Hello,’ the man who wore the same purple pair of trousers every day would concur.
Ola always smiled and waved at them. Having her in the library was such a delicious change from the usual dreary girls.
Even my roommates noticed that something was happening to me. On my way home from school one day, I stopped at the hostel shop and spent considerable time selecting what appeared to be an affordable, musky, macho fragrance. While getting ready for school the next morning, I sprayed the bottle lavishly from head to toe.
‘Graveyard, what’s wrong with you?’ Enyi, one of my roommates, asked.
This nickname had been bestowed on me by another roommate who complained that I hardly ever spoke whenever I was reading, which was almost always. I never responded to it when I was in a bad mood. Today, I was feeling particularly high.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Ah, ah. I have never, ever, ever seen you spray perfume before. Never.’ He called the attention of the rest, who were also preparing for school. ‘Make una come see o, Graveyard don begin dey use perfume.’
The one who had initiated the nickname poked his nose into the air and took in an unnecessarily deep breath.
‘You call this one perfume?’ he asked. ‘This one be like say na insecticide.’
I left them laughing and set off for the faculty with a spring in my steps. All their mockery was not enough to still the drumbeats of ecstasy in my heart.
That day, Ola did not show up at the library.
I did not set eyes on her until about a week later. While walking along the faculty main corridor, I saw her standing and chatting with a group of girls. My feet stopped beside her. The girls quit talking and looked at me. My larynx turned to stone.
‘Is everything OK?’ Ola asked, her face crumpling with concern.
Silence was my answer.
‘Would you like me to help you in any way?’
Her voice sounded like a beautiful flower. I could have composed several cantatas and penned unending epics merely by listening to her speak.
‘No, everything is OK,’ I replied at last. ‘I was just wondering… I haven’t seen you in the library for a while.’
She smiled. To think that she had created that smile especially for me.
‘Oh, everything is fine. Just that I was down with a bout of malaria and decided to take things easy. I hope you people haven’t taken my space in the library o.’
I chortled and assured her that ‘her space’ was still available. Not knowing what else to say, I remained clutching my folder to my chest and smiling like a portrait. It must be true what somebody once remarked, that shy men and ugly women have the hardest time of all in this world.
Eventually, she spoke.
‘Thanks for your concern, eh. See you some other time.’
That was my cue to vamoose. Deflated, I walked away with the sound of hushed giggling bruising my ears. For the first time in my life, I suspected that I was well and truly an idiot.
The next day, I had my face glued to my books when I heard the grating voice of the man with the Coke bottle lenses.
‘Hello,’ he said.
I looked up. Four Feet and Purple Trousers chanted along. Ola returned their greetings. She smiled as soon as our eyes met.
‘How are you?’ she asked, when she was close by.
Then she placed her pile of books on my very same table and sat down beside me. The exact same thing happened again the next day. And the next, and the next, and the next. Soon we arrived at affectionate looks and spontaneous giggles, and all the other little actions that precede the grand knotting of two hearts.
Ola was a Laboratory Technology student whose family also lived in Umuahia. She was two years younger than I, enthusiastic about academia and knew exactly where she was headed in life. Her fingernails and toenails were always clean. Her hair never stank, even when she wore braids for over two weeks. She always wore her make-up light and natural and she still had some hair remaining from her eyebrows.
When I was with Ola, my personality changed. Thoughts and feelings that I had never previously paid attention to suddenly found their way from my cerebrum to my lips. She was the only person who told me that I was hilarious. She did not talk much but she always listened attentively when I spoke. Apart from my family and my books, finally something else occupied my mind. At some point, I even started worrying that I might be tipping on the verge of insanity. The flames of our love continued to burn for the remaining years of my stay in school. She was now in her final year at university, while I had been out of school for two years.
Ola was 100 percent wife material. We had already started making plans for our future. She wanted all her four sisters and an additional six cousins on the bridal train; I wanted three sons and two daughters, preferably the boys first.
As much as I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as opara and help my family, I also wanted to get a job because of Ola. Marrying an Igbo girl entailed much more than fairy-tale romance and good intentions. The list of items presented to the groom as a prerequisite for the traditional marriage ceremony was enough to make a grown man shudder. And that was even before you considered the gift items for family members, the clothing for the girl and her mother, and the actual feast itself. Several couples had been known to garner all their financial forces together in the process of organising their marriage ceremony. Afterwards, they could sit back in their new home and gradually transmute to skeletons. At least then they would be married and could die penniless – but happy – in each other’s arms.
Still drenched in these thoughts, on the way back home, I did not notice when one of the tambourine-jangling zealots stepped into pace beside me and extended one of his flyers.
‘Good morning, my brother,’ he said in greeting.
The man sounded as if he had slept on a bed of roses, woken from a scrumptious slumber that morning, and placed his foot right onto the ninth cloud.
‘I would like to invite you to fellowship with us on Sunday,’ he continued. ‘It promises to be a marvellous time. Come and be blessed, for there’s nothing impossible with God.’
On any other day, I would have called the man a bumbling buffoon and walked on. But like a well-oiled robot, I automatically stretched out my hand and collected the flyer.
Chikaodinaka and Odinkemmelu stopped chattering and resumed servile postures as soon as I entered the kitchen.
‘Bro. Kingsley, welcome.’
I grunted and walked past.
I paused at the dining table and exchanged ‘good mornings’ with my mother and siblings. Breakfast was over but they were sitting and chatting.
‘Should I bring your food for you?’ my mother asked.
‘Not now,’ I replied.
Across the room, my father was snoozing in his favourite armchair with his head tilted to one side. A rattling sound rose in his throat like water gurgling in a disused tap that had just been turned on. My mother flipped her head in her husband’s direction.
‘Reduce your voices,’ she said. Despite the fact that we all knew from experience that even the blast of Angel Michael’s trumpet was not loud enough to awaken my father from these post-breakfast slumbers.
‘Did the letter arrive?’ Eugene asked.
I mumbled something. As intended, everybody mistook it for a no. There was no point in ruining everyone’s morning.
Pretending that life was still normal proved a bit too difficult, so I went on to the children’s bedroom and sat on the bed. Someone knocked on the door. I ignored it. The person knocked again.
‘Yes?’
‘Kings.’
It was my mother. I did not look up. She sat beside me, put her arm around my shoulders and pushed my head against her neck. We sat in silence for a while. Without asking any embarrassing questions, my mother knew that her first son was still a component of Nigeria ’s rising unemployment statistics.
‘It’s OK,’ she said.
She stroked my cheeks.
‘Kings, it’s OK… ehn? It’s OK.’
I removed my head from her body and sighed.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Your own will eventually come. Let’s believe that there’s something better waiting for you. Just don’t let all these disappointments get to you.’
‘Honestly, Mummy, I’m just tired. What is it I’m doing wrong? I always pass the tests and then they don’t want me. I’m really perplexed.’
Perplexed and stupefied and woebegone. As if I was stuck in a maze and each time I found an exit, lightning would strike right across my path. This particular rejection letter was exceedingly painful because I had defied all the odds by getting as far as the last interview. But the way things worked in our society these days, besides paper qualifications and a high intelligence quotient, you usually needed to have ‘long-leg’. You needed to know someone, or someone who knew someone, before you could access the most basic things. Still, as I progressed from one stage of the interview to the other, we had all assumed that this time would be different. Someone had identified that I had graduated as best student in my Chemical Engineering class. Surely, they could see that I was an outstanding brain.
‘Kings, it’s OK. I’m sure things will work out eventually.’
I bent my head.
My parents had been excited when I received my admission letter into university, but the whole experience put an additional strain on the family finances. Tuition fees, books, accommodation away from home – it all needed funding. When my father’s illness poured fuel on the flames, my parents were forced to sell our old, grey Peugeot 505 for some extra cash.
At last, Graduation Day arrived. As first son, as soon as I started earning an income, I would automatically inherit the responsibility of training my younger ones and ensuring that my parents spent the rest of their retirement years in financial peace. My family were looking up to me. I was their light, their messiah, their only hope.
My mother held me tighter and rubbed my back.
‘Kingsley, I’ve told you… everybody has their own dry season but the rain will always come. You’ll see. And you’ll remember that I said so.’
She spoke with so much conviction that I almost believed her. In the past, these words would have been tonic enough to brighten my face, push out my chest, and lift my gaze to a more auspicious future. But I had heard this same speech, on this same spot, in this same snug proximity, at least three times in the past year. It was like some sort of déjà vu.
We remained silent for a while.
‘Why don’t you go and have something to eat?’ my mother said. ‘There’s some powdered milk left in the tin but if it’s not enough, I can send Chikaodinaka out to buy some more.’
I stood up.
‘I don’t want to eat anything. I want to go and see Ola.’
‘Why don’t you-?’
‘No, I’m not eating,’ I replied, pulling off my T-shirt.
She left. I started polishing my dedicated pair of black shoes. They were my only pair. Moments later, my mother knocked and came back in.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take this and add to your transport money.’
Some naira notes were scrunched up in her palm. I shook my head.
‘No, thank you. I have enough for my transport.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Still take it.’
‘Mummy, no thank you.’
‘OK, at least use it to buy something for Ola.’
‘Mummy, don’t worry. I can manage till Daddy gives me my next pocket money.’
‘Kings, look. I know it’s just for a brief period and that things will work out for you soon. Take the money.’
Disgraceful that a twenty-five-year-old was still depending on his parents, but she smiled and looked tremendously pleased when I took the notes. Right there and then, I decided that the first thing I would do when I got a job was to buy my mother a brand new car.
The 504 station wagon had a handwritten sign on the roof – UMUAHIA to OWERRI via MBAISE. The vehicle had originally been designed to carry the driver and one passenger in the front seat, three people in the middle row, two at the back. But an ingenious rascal had come up with a more lucrative agenda. Now two people were sitting beside the driver in front, four in the middle row, and three at the back. Being last to arrive, I had to squeeze myself into the back middle seat, the tightest, most unbearable position in the entire vehicle.
Wedged on my right was an abundantly bottomed lady who chomped her pungent breakfast of boiled eggs and bread with noisy gusto. On my left was a man whose eye sockets were empty, with a boy of about eight years old perched on his lap. From the ruggedness of the man’s clothes, his random chants and subservient manner, I could tell that he was a professional beggar. The boy was acting as his eyes and would not have to pay extra since, technically, they shared the same space. So we were four in the back row, sitting in a place prepared for three, which had originally been meant for two.
The combined stench of the beggar’s rags and the woman’s egg almost made my intestines jump past my teeth and onto the floor. I was eager for take-off, and hoped that as the car increased velocity, the pressure would force fresh breeze to diffuse the gas chamber at the back.
‘Bring your money!’ the driver hollered, stretching a cracked palm into the car.
I brought out my wallet from my trouser pocket. I shifted the naira notes aside and gazed at the photograph that I carried wherever I went. It was one of Ola and me with our arms completely wrapped around each other at Mr Bigg’s on Valentine’s Day two years ago. The photograph had been shot by one of those pesky, hawker photographers who hung around restaurants and occasions. At first, I was adamant about not paying, even after the photographer had stood begging for about ten minutes. But when I noticed how much Ola appeared to like the picture, I dipped into what I had reserved for cake and ice cream, and paid for the photographs instead.
Another of Ola’s favourites was one that my father had taken when I was three. Ola had asked my mother for the photo during one of her visits.
‘I love the way you look in it,’ she had said. ‘Like a miniature Albert Einstein. Anybody seeing this photograph can tell that you were destined to be a nerd.’
Ola was funny sometimes.
Her third favourite was the one of me holding my rolled up university certificate, wearing my convocation gown and grinning as if I were about to conquer the world. All three photographs were displayed in pretty frames on top of the wooden cupboard beside her bed.
We handed our fares to the driver, who then waited for the little boy to finish unwrapping the diminutive notes and coins which the blind man had extracted from somewhere within the inner regions of his trousers. The boy counted aloud.
‘Five naira… ten naira… ten naira fifty kobo… eleven naira… sixteen naira… twenty naira… twenty naira fifty kobo…’
More than a minute later, he was still several kilometres away from the expected amount. The chomping woman lost her patience.
‘Take this and add to it,’ she said, handing the driver some of her own money to complete their fare.
‘Thank you,’ the boy said.
‘God bless you,’ the beggar added. ‘Your husband and children are blessed.’
‘Amen,’ the woman replied.
‘You people will never lack anything.’
‘Amen,’ the woman replied.
‘You will never find yourself in this same condition I find myself.’
‘Amen.’ This time, it was louder.
‘All the enemies who come against you and your children will come in one way and scatter in seven different directions.’
‘Amen!’ several passengers chanted in an attempt to usurp this most essential blessing for these perilous times.
I wondered why the beggar’s magic words had not yet worked for the beggar himself.
Whenever she knew that I was coming, Ola would dress up and wait on one of the concrete benches in front of her hostel. As soon as she sighted me, she would run to give me a bear hug. If I had surprised her by my visit, as I would today, her face would light up in delight. Then she would yelp and leap and almost overthrow my lean frame with her embrace. Then she would place her face against my cheeks and hold onto me for several seconds. At that moment, I could turn back and go home fully satisfied. The whole trip would have been worth it.
An hour and a half later, the vehicle arrived at the motor park in Owerri. I stopped a little girl who was carrying a tray of imported red apples on her head and bought five of the fattest. Then, I boarded a shuttle bus straight to the university gates and joined the long queue waiting for okada. These commercial motorbikes were the most convenient way to get around, flying at suicidal speed on roads where buses and cars feared to tread, depositing passengers at their very doorsteps. The okada driver that rode me to Ola’s hostel had certainly not been engaged in any form of personal hygiene recently. I held my breath and bore the ride stoically.
Inside Ola’s hostel, I knocked four times, rapidly, like a rent collector. Three female voices chirped in unison.
‘Come in.’
Ola was sitting with some girls in her corner of the room. The girls greeted me, got up, and left. I stood at the door for a while before going to sit beside Ola on the bed. She did not get up. Where were my yelps and my hugs? With bottomless anxiety, I placed the back of my hand on her forehead. Her temperature felt normal.
‘Sweetheart, are you OK?’
She wriggled away from my touch.
‘I’m fine,’ she replied stiffly.
Something must be wrong.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? You look a bit dull.’
‘Kingsley, I said I’m fine.’
I hesitated. Her eyes were blank beneath long, pretty lashes that fluttered like butterfly wings. Her rich cleavage was visible from the top of her camisole, and her bare neck was covered with small beads of perspiration. Suddenly, I wanted to lick her skin. I put my lips to her ear and tickled her lobe with my tongue.
‘Sweetheart, what is bothering you?’ I murmured.
She gave me a light smack in the face and shifted away. With exasperation, she flung her hand in my direction as if swatting a fly.
‘Kingsley, you’re getting on my nerves with all these questions. Can’t you understand simple English? I’m just tired.’
Her words whizzed past my ears like bullets. My eyes were transfixed by her hand. The red-strapped wristwatch was brand new. Dolce & Gabbana. She noticed me staring and dragged her feet under the bed in one swift movement. The action drew my attention to an equally new pair of slippers. Despite my blurred appreciation of the things of this world, I recognised the huge metal design across each foot. Gucci.
Head up, eyes open, I asked, ‘Ola, who gave you these things?’
She turned her eyes to the floor.
‘They were a gift from one of my friends who travelled abroad,’ she replied in a wobbly voice.
I felt strange. Something was different. It was not just her bizarre attitude. Something else was amiss.
‘Who’s the friend?’ I asked.
‘I’ve told you to please stop asking me questions. I’m really not in the mood.’
We remained sitting like that for a while. I wanted to tell her about the letter from Shell Petroleum and about how heartbroken I was. I wanted to tell her how much I was dreading applying for other engineering jobs. But she maintained such a hard look that my voice evaporated. Then I remembered the apples.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘I got this for you.’
From the corners of her eyes, she inspected my outstretched hand.
‘Leave it there,’ she replied.
‘On the floor?’
‘Yes.’
I dropped the polythene bag.
‘Actually I need to rest,’ she said, still without looking at me. ‘I’ve had a very busy week and the week ahead is going to be even busier. You know I’m working on my project.’
I nodded slowly and stood. She accompanied me outside, maintaining a pace or two behind me. When I slowed down for her to catch up, she slowed down. When I stopped and looked back, she stopped and looked askance. Outside the hostel, she halted. I stood with arms akimbo like an angry school headmaster and walked back to where she was standing. The girl needed a severe talking-to.
‘Now listen to me,’ I began. ‘I can tell everything is not all right. If there’s something you need to get off your chest, why not just let it out? There’s never been anything we couldn’t talk about with-’
‘Kingsley, I really don’t think you should come and see me again.’
My mouth fell wide open. I completely forgot that I had been in the middle of a speech that was designed to bring about world peace.
She hesitated and looked away.
‘Right now I just need to focus. I’m really under pressure.’
I sighed. Of course. Her schoolwork was bothering her. Sometimes, project supervisors could drive you up the wall and right into the concrete. Ola was so engrossed in her work, she did not want to be distracted by romance. I looked at her with awe; she had just inspired me with fresh admiration.
‘Ola,’ I said in the most understanding of tones. ‘Take it easy, OK? Just let me know when you’ve finished your project and I’ll come and visit you. OK?’
‘Kingsley…’ she began fiercely.
From her face, I could tell that she was composing a different sentence.
‘You’d better know that my mother is very unhappy with you,’ she said eventually.
‘Unhappy with me? Why?’
She averted her eyes.
‘Kingsley, I have to go. Have a safe trip.’
With that, she turned and disappeared inside.
Back at the motor park, I located the vehicle going to Umuahia. The station wagon had almost filled up, when a haggard woman approached. Her bony body was outlined under an oversized blouse that was drawn in at the waist. A grey skirt fell to the middle of her legs, her feet were clad in rugged bathroom slippers. She poked her thin face into my window and informed us that her husband was in very poor health.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ she pleaded, ‘I have nine children and hunger is threatening to kill us. My husband has been very sick for over a year and we have no money for the operation.’
She said that we – those of us in that vehicle – were their only hope of survival. If we would only chip in some funds.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ she begged, ‘please nothing is too small.’
Around her neck hung a cloth rope attached to a photograph of her husband. In it, the sick man was lying on a raffia mat on the cement floor. He was stark naked and his ribs were gleaming through his skin. There was a growth the size of two adult heads, shooting out from between his bony legs. The faded photograph dangled on her flat chest as she stretched a metal container into the car and jangled the coins that were inside.
As soon as I saw the photograph, it hit me.
I realised what had been missing from Ola’s room, what it was that had been nagging at me all the while I was there. All my photographs – all three of them – had vanished from her room.
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.
As a child, I had gone to church regularly with my parents. So regularly, in fact, that I had perfected the art of sleeping at the precise moment when Rev. Father Benedict permitted us to sit, and waking at the exact point when he chanted for us to stand. On entering university, however, it occurred to me that I did not have to go to church any more. There was nobody to take me, nobody to remind me, no point in going. So I stopped.
This particular Sunday, my parents had left for Mass before I got ready to receive my portion of divine intervention. Agreed, we were not under any particular restriction not to go anywhere apart from ‘The One True Church’; still, I knew enough to keep quiet about where I was going. Everybody agreed that the Pentecostals were weird.
But these were dire times. Dire times required drastic measures. Take my Aunty Dimma, my mother’s cousin and very close friend. A few years ago, she had boarded a local flight from Lagos to Port Harcourt, and the turbulent voyage had ended with the plane crash-landing on the tarmac. Shortly after that, one of the tyres on her Toyota Carina had burst on the highway. Then a branch had fallen from the tree under which she parked her car and smashed the windscreen, the very same tree under which she had parked for the past five years. All these incidents occurred within the space of six weeks. Aunty Dimma did not need a soothsayer to explain that death was after her life. Somebody invited her to a church where she was assured that all her enemies would flee and all her troubles cease. Believe it or not, my very own Aunty Dimma – the height of elegance and the essence of vanity – had actually succumbed. Today, she was a bona fide Bible-quoting, hallelujah-chanting, tongue-talking Pentecostal Christian.
I lifted the flyer from the dressing table and headed out.
There must have been at least twenty different churches all holding services on the same street, at the same time, on this Sunday morning. Some were in garages, some were in flats, some were under tents erected at the side of buildings. Some even had loudspeakers positioned outside to bellow their live services into the air. I commiserated with every single resident of that street.
My destination turned out to be a three-storey building at the end of the road. A fiery young man was leading the congregation in prayers when I arrived, pacing briskly across the stage with a microphone in his hand and a free flow of mysterious tongues from his lips. Some of the congregation were seated, some were standing, some were pacing about. But every single mouth was moving in varying degrees of celestial conversation. A homely lady, who was smiling a perfect, wide smile approached me.
‘Welcome,’ she said in greeting.
I returned a smaller smile. She pointed her hand and jerked her head gracefully in the same direction. I took my place beside a pregnant lady who removed a huge, black carrier bag from the bench to make room for me to sit. Almost immediately, a prim young man came and occupied the space at my other side. In a twinkling of an eye, our row was full.
The fiery young man in front clapped his hands slowly and all noise died down.
‘Praise the Lord,’ he said.
‘Hallelujah,’ the congregation chanted.
‘Praise the Lord.’
‘Hallelujah.’
‘Next, brethren, we’re going to pray for the government of our country, Nigeria.’
He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows.
‘Brethren,’ he continued, striding to the right side of the stage, ‘the Bible says that intercessions be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority.’ He strode to the left. ‘Brethren, let us pray for our government, that God will guide our leaders to make the right decisions.’ He strode to the right. ‘That every demon of corruption will be uprooted and that we will have people in authority who will favour the cause of righteousness in Nigeria.’ He strode to the left. ‘Let us pray!’
The celestial conversations resumed with even louder fervour. An elderly woman knelt on the floor and started groaning. Some people who required more space to throttle the demons of corruption moved to the back of the hall and started their vigorous striding about. I closed my eyes and waged my own silent warfare. Then I became curious and opened one eye.
The choir was seated somewhere towards the right of the hall. They looked exceedingly bright in their red satin tops and black bottoms. None of the ladies had her skirt above the ankles; none of the men had his hair barbered to any particular style.
Soon, the man deemed all demons of corruption uprooted. He stopped pacing and clapped his hands. This time, he asked us to pray against the demons of violence – for peace in the land, especially in Kano State, where there had been recent stirrings of yet another Islamic riot. The congregation grabbed the demons of violence by their throats and resumed mortal combat.
By and by, one of the choristers seated towards the edge of the group left her seat, advanced towards the man leading the prayers, and stood calmly by his side with her hands folded behind her and her head bent slightly towards the floor. I assumed this to be some sort of handover cue, because the man immediately stopped striding about and started clapping his hands slowly.
‘Father, we thank You,’ he began when the hall was quiet.
He spent a few minutes thanking God for answered prayers. Then he handed the microphone over to the lady.
The keyboard and the drum and the guitar went into action. The female minstrel asked us to clap our hands.
‘I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea,’ she sang.
The congregation clapped and sang along while she led us from one praise chorus to the other. With each new song, the atmosphere sizzled and several people started wailing and flailing their hands in the air. The young man beside me had tears running down his cheeks. The pregnant woman beside me waddled to her feet. By the time the singing had gone on for over thirty minutes, the atmosphere became as charged as an electric field, and I desperately wanted to sing along as well. But being unfamiliar with most of the sacred lyrics, I was constrained to simply hum and clap instead. Then, a gentleman who had the composure of a seasoned surgeon stood up from the front row. As soon as the lead singer saw him, she ended her song and returned to her place at the edge of the shining squad. I was sad to see her go just when I was beginning to warm up.
The pregnant woman beside me dipped her hand into the black carrier bag and brought out a handkerchief and a plastic fan. She wiped her forehead and fanned herself briskly.
The preacher opened his Bible and stared intently at the congregation. From the concentrated focus of his eyeballs, I got the impression that he was seeing something that we did not and could not ever see. He tapped the microphone twice to make sure it was working. When he opened his mouth, the voice that proceeded was deep, his language was clear, his tone was godly.
‘Welcome to service this morning,’ he began. ‘Please turn round to the person beside you and say to them, “You’re here to have a great time this morning.”
We obeyed. The pregnant woman beside me stretched out a chubby paw and clamped my hand cheerfully. The prim lad overdid it with a mini shoulder embrace. All over the hall, men and women, boys and girls, were engrossed in cheerful handshakes and happy hugs and merry verbal exchanges. The bustle soon died down and the hall became quiet again.
The pregnant woman beside me dipped her hand into her carrier bag and extracted a huge meat pie. She opened her Bible with one hand and fed herself eagerly with the other. Her chewing made soft, mushy sounds like footsteps on a soggy carpet.
The preacher boomed out the hallowed text from the book of Luke.
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
He leaned towards us with his hands firmly grasping the wooden lectern. He asked us to take a few moments to imagine. He asked us to imagine how Lazarus had stood at The Rich Man’s gate begging for alms. He asked us to imagine how The Rich Man must have felt like a philanthropist because he was feeding a poor man with the crumbs from under his table. I imagined obediently. I was excited at the choice of sermon. Today of all days, they were preaching about poverty and wealth. Just what I needed to hear.
The pregnant woman beside me dug out a boiled egg from her bag. She shelled it skilfully and pushed the whole white mass inside her jaws.
The preacher looked back into his book and continued reading.
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said…
The preacher switched to a shrill voice.
… Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
He raised his right hand high up in the air, and changed to a deeper voice that ended in an echo.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
The preacher stepped away from the pulpit. Using wild gesticulations of the arms and legs, he retold the story of how the two men had ended up in eternity – one in heaven and the other in hell. He asked us to imagine how The Rich Man must have felt, seeing the very same man he had fed crumbs to, relaxing in Abraham’s bosom. He asked us to imagine the joy Lazarus must have felt about seeing his personal fortunes change so sharply. He paused for some seconds to allow us time to visualise. I looked round at the congregation. From the mischievous, gleeful expressions on their faces, I suspected that several of them, rather than imagining Lazarus enjoying a better world, were imagining The Rich Man burning in hell.
I wondered why The Rich Man had gone to hell. Was it because he was a bad man or because he was rich? Had the poor man gone to Abraham’s bosom because he was poor or because he was good? The preacher did not say. My father was poor. And like Lazarus, he was likely to be the one found in Abraham’s bosom.
‘It’s all stolen money,’ he often said with a voice stuffed full of pride, whenever he saw yet another person who had built a house or bought a new car. ‘How could he possibly afford that on a civil servant’s salary? At least ‘I’ll always be remembered for my honesty. Nobody can say I stole a farthing.’
I did not think anybody would have been blind enough to accuse my father of stealing public funds. Anybody could see that he did not have any farthings. Uncle Boniface, on the other hand, was foul-smelling rich. Popular gist held that he was a 419er, living large off funds he scammed from unsuspecting foreigners who believed the yarns he spun through emails and faxes. Each time his name was mentioned, my father would go into a tirade.
‘I don’t know why you people even mention his name,’ he would say to my mother. ‘You people need to realise that such a person is a disgrace to have in one’s family.’
The pregnant woman beside me brought out a small bottle of water from her bag. She sipped in small, hushed gulps.
The preacher returned to Luke and to the deep voice. To further illustrate The Rich Man’s sorrow, he knelt down on the cement floor, placed one of his palms upwards in the other, and switched to a high-pitched voice. He mimicked how The Rich Man had begged Papa Abraham to allow Lazarus to fetch him a drop of water and how the patriarch had declined. He described how The Rich Man had requested that Lazarus should go on an errand to warn his family of this place. For one split second, I assumed that he had been there while it all happened.
Suddenly, the preacher’s voice evaporated. The electric fans stopped swishing, the lights stopped shining, and the hall became still as death. One of the omnipresent hitches with the National Electric Power Authority supply had struck. In keeping with their more popular acronym – Never Expect Power Always – power had been cut. Some of the men seated in the front row rushed out while the preacher attempted to continue his sermon undeterred. I heard the men pulling the generator starting cord somewhere outside the building. The engine whirred and then died almost immediately. They tried it again, and again, and again. Each time it fired up, each time it was quenched. Had they run out of fuel? Had the engine gone kaput? The men returned to the church hall. One of them approached the preacher and whispered. At that, he stepped away from the pulpit and continued his sermon – without the assistance of any amplifier.
The pregnant woman beside me brought out some white tissue paper from her bag and wiped her lips and her hands, making sure to work the tissue into the cranny between each of her fingers. She resumed fanning herself with the plastic fan.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ the preacher beseeched us, throwing his arms out in front of him like the antlers of a mighty stag, and shaking his head slowly from side to side, ‘verily, I say unto you: In this world, all that really matters is Jesus. Forget about money, forget about fame, forget about all that this world has to offer. All you need is to focus on making heaven. Nothing else is important.’
Despite myself, I laughed. Did this holy man really know what he was talking about? My family was almost destitute, my mother-in-law-to-be had run out of patience with me, my father was wearing an expensive illness. Yet here he was telling me to forget about money and the world. Was this man joking?
The pregnant woman beside me poked a podgy, egg-white-perfumed finger into my shoulder.
‘Let me pass,’ she said. ‘I want to use the toilet.’
I looked at her protruding belly, which was positioned threateningly close to my face, and struggled with the urge to ask her why she did not simply dip into her carrier bag and extract a potty? Grudgingly, I muffled my inner imp and moved my knees aside to allow her past. Her stout thighs got stuck in front of me. Eventually, I had to stand for her to go through.
I did not hear the rest of what the good man said, and not just because the preacher was not using a microphone. Each time there was a pause, I assumed that the sermon was over. Still, he continued. It was when the congregation raised its voice in communal prayer that I realised that, finally, he was finished. He returned to his seat in the front row just as the pregnant woman returned to her seat. The offering basket was going round now, and again, I had to stand to let her through. When the raffia basket arrived in front of us, she dipped into the very same black carrier bag and brought out a green naira note. She mangled it into a tight ball in the palm of her right hand before tossing it into the basket. I watched the container sail past. I had nothing to give.
Towards the end of the service, another man stood up and took the place of the preacher at the front.
‘Are there any people worshipping with us for the first time?’ he asked. ‘Please indicate by raising your hands.’
Some hands in the congregation shot up in the air.
‘Please can you take an extra step by standing up for us to recognise you?’
The congregation was asked to make the visitors – those of them who had stood up – welcome. They did so by walking up to them and shaking their hands, as if congratulating them. The young man beside me sabotaged my plan to ignore the ceremony. I had neither raised my hand nor stood up, but he turned to me and shook my hand almost as soon as the call was given. By some mysterious means, he had identified that today was my first time.
‘Welcome, brother,’ he said.
In total, there were about thirteen of us who had been identified. A lady – the same one who had welcomed me into the church that morning – ushered us all into an adjacent room where a man with an even thicker Bible than the one the preacher had used, came and stood in front of us.
‘I’d like to thank you all for honouring our invitation to join us for such a special time this Sunday morning,’ he began. ‘We’re so glad to have you with us at Revival Now or Never Ministries. We are-’
I got sidetracked by the sleeves of his white shirt. They were grimy, almost as black as the corners of his fingernails. His trousers were frayed at the hems, and some threads dangled from two buttons on his shirt.
Somebody handed out some forms for us to fill out our addresses and phone numbers, so that they could keep in touch with us during the week. We did not have a telephone at home. I lied about my house address. This was clearly not the place where my problems would be solved.
‘Please don’t forget that you’re invited to fellowship with us anytime you want,’ he concluded. ‘You’re always welcome. Please consider this place as your home and us as your brothers and sisters.’
On my way back home, I pulled the flyer out of my pocket and crumpled it into a tight ball. I flung it into a nearby bin and shook my head in consternation. The bin was pasted with the bogus smile of a newly declared presidential aspirant.
Going to my mother’s shop used to be a lot of fun. She would pick us up from school when she still had her Volkswagen Beetle, and sometimes, we would stop at the roadside where a woman was frying things in a great pan of oil.
‘Give me puffpuff,’ she would say.
With noses flattened against the car windows, we would watch the woman use the hugest spoon in the whole world to remove fried balls from the hot oil and wrap them in old newspapers. My mother would hand the woman some coins and place the wrapped puffpuff on the dashboard. The delicious aroma would saturate the car, causing our nostrils to dilate, our mouths to water, and our jaws to contract painfully. But no one was allowed even a bite – not until we got to the shop.
Business had been good then. But over the years, the complicated machines had been to the repairers and back so often that the machines had started shedding tears. Now most of them had packed up. Now the trickling of customers who remained came simply out of loyalty, from having patronised her for so long. Others came only when they needed a tailor to render an expedited service. Now there was hardly any reason for me to stop by, except that at this time of day, the only place where I could have the sort of private conversation I had in mind was in here.
My mother looked up from the buttons she was sewing onto a blue check fabric.
‘Ah, Kings!’
Surprise made her dig the needle into her thumb. She locked the tip of the thumb into her mouth and sucked.
‘Mummy, good afternoon.’
I sat on her customers’ bench.
‘How has your day been?’
‘Oh, it’s been fine,’ she replied. ‘It’s been quite fine.’
She resumed her work with a degree of concentration that showed she was aware that I had something important I wanted to talk about.
‘Mummy, there’s something I want to ask your opinion about,’ I began.
She stopped pretending to concentrate on her work and transferred her full attention to my face.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I continued.
Yes, I had. Since the solutions to my problems were clearly not going to be divine, I had racked my brain until I struck upon a man-made idea.
‘I’ve been thinking of moving away from home. I’ll stand a better chance of getting a job if I went away from Umuahia.’
‘Ah, ah? But is it not the same newspapers that you’ll have to apply through to get a job whether you’re in Umuahia or not? All the oil companies put their vacancies in the national newspapers.’
‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should start applying elsewhere apart from the oil companies.’
‘Elsewhere like where?’
I understood her apprehension. Her first son was a chemical engineer, and that was what she wanted him to remain. But now I was ready to lower my standards. Most of the New Generation banks were willing to hire anybody who could pass their aptitude tests. They did not seem to mind whether your degree was in Carpentry or Fisheries or Hairdressing. All they wanted was someone who could speak English, who could add, subtract, and multiply.
‘I’m thinking of maybe a bank.’
‘Are there not banks here?’
‘There are more opportunities outside here,’ I replied.
After all was said and done, Umuahia was still one of the Third World towns in Nigeria. The same bank that would have just one branch in Umuahia, for example, could have thirty in bustling cities like Lagos. Plus, larger cities presented more diverse opportunities for work even if it meant that I would have to trudge the streets and seek employment in any other field.
My mother considered this.
‘But where are you planning to stay? You can’t afford a place of your own and you can’t be sure how long you’ll be looking for work.’ She paused. ‘The only person I can think of is Dimma. Which is good because then you’ll be closer to the oil companies when they invite you for interviews.’
I knew that Aunty Dimma would be very pleased to have me at her place in Port Harcourt for however long I chose to stay, but I had other ideas.
‘How about Uncle Boniface?’ I asked.
My mother laughed and looked at me as if I was trying to convince her that G is for Jesus.
‘Mummy, seriously. I think Lagos is the best option. I’m sure I’ll get a job quickly. I hear people like Arthur Andersen will give you an interview once they see that you made an exceptional result.’
Uncle Boniface lived not too far away from us, in Aba, but he owned a house in faraway FESTAC Town, Lagos, where his wife and children lived. He probably would not mind my lodging with them, especially since he owed my family a social debt. The youngest of my mother’s siblings, Uncle Boniface was the illegitimate son that my late grandfather had fathered by some non-Igbo floozy from Rivers State. Out of anger, my mother’s family had refused to acknowledge Uncle Boniface as part of them. And with his failing health, my grandfather had found it difficult to cope. The family made a communal decision. Uncle Boniface moved in with us. Over the years, we had several of these relatives coming and going, but Uncle Boniface’s stay was particularly memorable.
A few weeks after he moved in and started attending a nearby secondary school, he drew me aside into the kitchen and whispered into my ears.
‘Kings,’ he said, ‘I’ve noticed that you have a very good handwriting.’
I accepted the compliment with a smile. He looked over his shoulders and lowered his voice some more.
‘Do you know how to write letters?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, with the confidence of the best English student in his class.
My uncle nodded with satisfaction.
‘Kings, I need you to do me a favour. I want you to help me write a letter.’
Such a task was mere bread to me.
Later that night, after the whole family had gone to bed, he summoned me from the children’s bedroom. We sneaked into the kitchen, and he turned on the light and started whispering.
‘Look,’ he said, pulling out a scrunched-up sheet from the pocket of his shorts and unfolding it hurriedly, ‘copy this for me in your handwriting.’
I recognised the ugly, bulbous squiggles that were the signature handwriting of the rural classes and the poorly educated. With some slight alterations, this could have been the handwriting of any one of the different people who had come to live with us from the village. I read the first few sentences. None of it made any sense.
‘Look at you,’ he jeered, planting a biro in my hands. ‘Mind you, the person I copied this from is the best student in our class. He wrote it for his own girlfriend.’
My face did not change.
‘These are big boy matters. Don’t worry, one day you’ll understand. Just copy it for me.’
He tore out a fresh sheet from the exercise book he was holding and gave it to me. I placed the paper on one of the kitchen worktops and went to work.
My dearest, sweetest, most magnificent, paragon of beauty a.k.a. Ijeoma,
I hope this letter finds you in a current state of sound body and mind. My principal reason for writing this epistle is to gravitate your mind towards an issue that has been troubling my soul. Even as I put pen to paper, my adrenalin is ascending on the Richter scale, my temperature is rising, the mirror in my eyes have only your divine reflection, the wind vane of my mind is pointing North, South and East at the same time. Indeed, when I sleep, you are the only thought in my medulla oblongata and I dream about you. I was in a trance where I went out to sea and saw you surrounded by H 2 O. In your majesty, you rose from the abdomen of the deep. The spectacle took my breath away.
I want to rise at dawn and see only your face. I want you to be the only sugar in my tea, the only fly in my ointment, the butter on my bread, the grey matter of my brain, the planet of my universe, the conveyor belt of my soul. I pray that you will realise the gargantuan nature of my predicament. If you decline my noble advances, my life will be like salt that has lost its flavour.
I am this day knocking at the door of your heart. My prayer is that thou shall open so that thy servant may enter. The mark at the bottom of the page is a kiss from me.
I remain your darling, dedicated, devotee,
Boniface a.k.a. It’s a Matter of Cash
In the following days, he asked me to recopy the same letter to Okwudili, to Ugochi, to Stella, to Ngozi, to Rebecca, and to Ifeoma.
Late one afternoon, we were sitting and watching television when Uncle Boniface returned from school and handed a sealed note to my mother. It was from his class mistress. My mother turned away from the screen and tore the note open.
‘How can she say you don’t have enough exercise books?’ she asked. ‘Is it not just three weeks ago that I bought some new ones for you?’
She awaited an answer from the scrawny lad standing beside her.
‘What happened to all your exercise books?’ she demanded.
Uncle Boniface looked at the floor and remained quiet. My father stood up and walked away to his bedroom. He never made any input when she was scolding the helps.
‘What have you done with all your exercise books?’ she asked again, snatching the bag that was hanging across his shoulder.
Uncle Boniface’s face darkened with dread.
My mother opened the bag and brought out his books. Three loose sheets fell out. She picked them up and started reading. With each passing moment, her eyes grew wider.
‘What is this?’
She looked up at Uncle Boniface and down at the sheets again. Then she turned to me.
‘Kings, what is this?’
I was in the last phase of demolishing a meat pie. My teeth froze when I recognised the exhibit in her hand. My mother dropped the schoolbag on the floor and flung the sheets of paper on the centre table. A chunky piece of pastry got stuck in my throat.
‘Kings, when did you start writing love letters?! Tell me. When? How? What is this?!’
I could understand her shock. My mother was not the most devoted of Roman Catholics, but she tried her best. She put her hands over my eyes whenever a man and woman were kissing on television; she asked me to go into my room as soon as she perceived that they were on their way to having sex; she once asked me to shut up and stop talking rubbish when I told her about a girl in my class who was so pretty. I could easily imagine the terrible thoughts that were plaguing her mind about where I picked up the lyrics and the inclination to write a full-fledged love letter.
‘Who taught you how to write love letters?’ she asked. ‘Boniface, what are you doing to my son? Tell me, what is this?’
With each question, she swung her head towards the person to whom it was directed. When neither I nor Uncle Boniface agreed to speak, my mother returned a verdict.
‘Kingsley, go and kneel down facing the wall and raise your two hands in the air.’
Eager to show repentance, I rushed to start my punishment.
‘Make sure that I don’t see your two hands touching,’ she shouted after me.
I knelt down by the dining table and obeyed her instructions to the letter. Then I heard her hand slam against Uncle Boniface’s head.
‘Yeeeee!’
‘Oh, you want to start teaching my son how to be useless, eh?’
I heard another slam.
‘Arggggh!’
‘You want him to be useless like you.’
Another slam. And another and another. Knowing my mother’s usual style when dealing with undisciplined house helps, by now she must have had the front of his shirt firmly in her grip.
‘Mama Kingsley, pleeeeese!’
‘Don’t worry,’ she replied calmly, but out of breath. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll have a scar on your body that will remind you never to try spoiling my son again.’
He must have torn himself away from her grip and fled for dear life. She chased him into the kitchen and back out again. I turned briefly and saw that she had upgraded her weapon to a broom. With the dazzling agility of a decathlete, she chased him round the living room and cornered him between the television and my father’s chair. She continued trouncing him until my father came out of the bedroom.
‘Augustina, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t wear yourself out because of this nincompoop. Leave him alone.’
She abandoned the howling prey by the wall and went into the bedroom with my father. Shortly after, he came out.
‘Kingsley,’ he called, ‘come here.’
I followed. I knew that my mother had narrated the little she knew, and that he was now about to ask me to pack my bags and leave his house. Inside the bedroom, my mother was sitting on the bed, looking as if someone had died.
‘How did you end up writing a love letter for Boniface?’ my father asked.
I narrated my very minor part in the fiasco. With each new detail, my father’s face became more ferocious and my mother’s eyes spread wider and wider.
‘Pull down your shorts,’ my father said as soon as I finished.
I did. In my mind, I calculated the best place for me to spend the night after my father asked me to pack up. Perhaps I could go to the beautiful grotto in the Saint Finbarr’s Church and share the huge shelter with the Blessed Virgin Mary’s statue. They had told us in catechism classes that she was the friend of all little children.
My father held my two hands in front of me with his one hand and used my mother’s koboko to lash me with his other. I wriggled and screamed. After ten strokes that left me unable to sit upright for days, I was banned from communicating with Uncle Boniface whenever my parents were not around.
All these years later, my father still considered Uncle Boniface a pot of poo. So I could understand my mother’s reluctance to broach this subject with him. Still, I persisted.
‘Just talk to him about it and see what he says.’
‘OK,’ she replied. ‘I can’t promise that it’ll be today, though. I’ll have to wait for the right time. You know how your daddy is.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. I did.
It was not just one of those days when everything seemed to go awry. That day, the devil must have ridden his Cadillac right across our courtyard and parked in front of our house. While brushing my teeth in the morning, I felt some foreign bodies in my mouth and spat out quickly.
‘Kings,’ my mother called from behind the bathroom door.
‘Yes, Mummy?’
‘When you finish, your daddy wants to speak with you.’
‘OK.’
‘Hurry up. He’s getting ready to go out.’
I stared into the sink and observed some bristles from my toothbrush drowning in the white foam. I would have to buy a new toothbrush from my next pocket money.
My father was dressed in grey suit and tie, and sitting straight on their bed. My mother was more relaxed on a pillow behind him. Ever since his retirement, apart from going to the clinic for checkups, he rarely left the house on a weekday morning. But last week, the announcement had been broadcast over and over again on the radio. There was going to be a verification exercise for pensioners.
The government was worried about several ghosts collecting pensions. People who left this world more than twenty years ago were still having monthly funds paid into their accounts, and the government was determined to certify how many people on their books were still breathing. Having the pensioners turn up in person and verified one by one seemed like the best method of confirmation, yet this was the second such exercise the government had conducted in the past fourteen months. Normally, my mother should have been at her shop by now, but whenever my father was going out, she waited so that they could leave the house together.
‘Yes, Daddy?’ I said.
‘Your mummy was telling me that you want to leave Umuahia,’ he began.
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘What are your reasons?’
I explained in detail. Exactly what I had told my mother, plus some.
‘ Lagos is out of the question,’ he said when I finished. ‘Definitely out of the question.’
He went into a bout of coughing. My mother leaned over and rubbed his back.
‘Isn’t it possible for you to tell them that you’re not feeling well?’ she asked. ‘The way you’re breathing, I think maybe you should stay at home.’
‘Hmm. Have you forgotten Osakwe?’
The recollection caused a faint breeze of fright to blow through my pores and right into my marrow. Osakwe was my father’s former colleague who had been bedridden with some unknown ailment for several years. During the last verification exercise, his children had asked for an exemption, but the people at the pension office insisted that all pensioners – no exception – must appear in person. So the children hired a taxi, lifted their father from his sickbed for the first time in years, and carried him all the way there. They left the door of the taxi open and went inside to call the pension officers who came out and confirmed that Osakwe was still alive and pension-worthy. Shortly after the taxi began the homeward journey, the children discovered that their father had left this world.
‘As for looking for other kinds of jobs,’ my father continued, ‘I understand why you’ve decided to take this step. But we must never make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances. Whatever job you might get… I don’t mind as long as you realise that it’s just temporary. You are still a chemical engineer.’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘When do you plan to leave?’
‘As soon as possible. I was just waiting to hear what you would say.’
He paused and thought.
‘You can go ahead and let Dimma know you’re coming.’
‘Thank you, Daddy,’ I said with a smile.
‘Why don’t you hurry so that we can all leave the house together? ’ my mother suggested.
With excitement, I went and had a quick bath. They were waiting in the living room when I finished dressing up. At the junction where our street met the main road, we stopped and waited. I looked at my mother with her man standing erect beside her and saw the pride radiating from her face. Even though his clothes showed too much flesh at the wrist and ankle, anybody would know immediately that he was distinguished. My father always looked like a university professor.
‘Ah!’ my mother exclaimed suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘I forgot! Mr Nwude’s wife said she wanted to give me some dresses to mend for her. I promised her that I’d send Chikaodinaka up to their flat to pick up the clothes before I left the house.’
‘You should stop taking these sorts of jobs from people,’ my father replied. ‘If any of them needs someone to mend their clothes, they can stop any one of these tailors who parade the streets with machines on their heads.’
‘It’s difficult to refuse our neighbours,’ my mother said.
‘It doesn’t matter whether the person is a neighbour or not. You’re a fashion designer, not an obioma.’
My father appeared quite upset. I recognised that Utopian tone of voice.
‘ Nigeria is a land flowing with milk and honey,’ he had said to one of his colleagues who was relocating to greener pastures in Canada and who had tried to convince him to join ship. ‘Just that the milk is in bottles and the honey is in jars. Our country needs people like us to show them how to get it out.’
With that belief, my father had given the very best years of his life to serving his country in the civil service. Today, retired and wasted, he had nothing to show for it. Except our rented, two-bedroom, ground-floor flat in Umuahia town. And the four-bedroom, uncompleted bungalow in the village. It was every Igbo man’s dream to own a house in his homeland – a place where he could retire from the hustle and bustle of city life in the twilight of his years; a place where he could host guests for his daughters’ traditional wedding ceremonies; a place where his family could entertain the well-wishers who came to attend his funeral. But that dream of owning a home had been relegated to the realms of ancient history when I gained admission to university.
Eventually, I saw a taxi and flagged it down. When the smoky vehicle braked, the people at the back shifted to make space. I held the door open while my father climbed inside.
‘Pensions Office,’ I said to the driver.
‘Bye,’ my mother said as I banged the door shut.
He waved. I waved back. My mother kept waving until the car was out of sight.
She continued in the opposite direction while I walked three streets to the closest business centre. I was the ninth person in the queue for the telephone. Things might have moved a bit quicker if not for the young man three places ahead of me who was trying to convince his brother in Germany of the rigours they were going through to clear the Mercedes-Benz V-Boot he had sent to them three months ago via the Apapa Port. The agents were demanding more and more clearing fees. Apparently, his brother thought he was lying.
When it eventually got to my turn, I wrote my number on a slip of paper and handed it to the telephone operator. The attendant got through to Aunty Dimma’s line after five dials.
‘That’s wonderful!’ Aunty Dimma sang. ‘Having you around will be good for Ogechi. She hasn’t been doing well in her maths.’
From there, I went to the newspaper stand round the corner. I had been buying newspapers from this same girl almost every week for about a year. Whenever my budget was tight, she turned away her vigilant eyes and allowed me to carry on as I pleased. Ola had once joked that the old girl had eyes for me. I selected a copy of This Day and saw that, in addition to Mobil and Chevron, a few insignificant companies were also hiring. I copied the relevant details before returning the newspaper to the stand.
Yes, Ola had asked me not to visit her in Owerri again, but now that I was aware of the source of her trouble – that her mother was bothered about my insecure economic status – I knew that an update would go a long way in allaying her fears. Ola might worry about my move to Port Harcourt, but in the long run, it would benefit our relationship.
Besides, women are from Venus. Like tying up shoelaces, they are full of twists, turns and roundabouts. They say something when what they really mean is another thing. For all I knew, right now, Ola was hoping that I would pay her a visit and wishing that she had not been so harsh on me the last time.
I confirmed that I had just enough money left over in my wallet and set off on another impromptu trip to Owerri.
Ola was not inside her room. My photographs were still missing. And instead of the wooden locker, there was a brand new refrigerator standing by the wall. Two girls were looking through some clothes piled on Ola’s bed. I recognised one of them as an occupant of the room.
‘Please, where’s Ola?’ I asked.
‘She’s not around,’ the roommate replied.
She would either be in the library or in the faculty lecture theatre.
‘If she comes in while I’m gone, could you please ask her to wait for me? I’m going to the faculty to look for her.’
The roommate was about to say something. The other girl hijacked her turn.
‘Ola isn’t in school,’ she said. ‘She travelled to Umuahia about two days ago.’
‘She went home?’
‘Yes,’ the girl replied.
How could Ola be in Umuahia and not let me know?
‘When is she due back?’ I asked.
There was an awkward silence. The girl looked at the roommate. The roommate did not return the look.
‘She didn’t say,’ the roommate replied.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and shut the door behind me.
It was late when I returned home. Godfrey and Eugene were huddled in front of the television while Charity was lying on the three-sitter sofa.
‘Where are Daddy and Mummy?’ I asked.
‘They’ve gone in,’ Godfrey replied.
‘It’s not been long since they went,’ Eugene added.
‘Daddy said he was having a headache and wanted to go in and rest, so Mummy went in with him,’ Charity expatiated.
Their answers came one after the other, as if they were reciting a stanza of poetry and had rehearsed their lines to perform for me when I returned.
I went into the children’s bedroom and changed into more casual clothes, returned to the living room and relaxed in a chair.
My mind was moving like an egg whisk. My brain cells were running helter-skelter. How could Ola have come into town without letting me know? What else had her mother been saying behind my back? Poor girl. I would visit her first thing tomorrow morning to allay her fears. Fixing my gaze on the screen, I tried my best to be entertained.
It was difficult. In the movie, a charcoal-skinned father and a charcoal-skinned mother had been cast as parents of an undeniably mixed-race daughter. This was not the only gaffe. Another woman had been cast with a teenage daughter who, based on her appearance, could very easily have passed for the mother’s elder sister. Plus, whoever was in charge of that aspect of things had forgotten to replace the large, framed photograph of the family on the wall of the opulent living room with one of the family of actors who had borrowed the house to shoot the scene.
The lead actress had just discovered that the man she was about to marry was her long-lost father, when I heard the first scream. I assumed the noise came from the television. But when Godfrey lowered the television volume, we knew it was there in the house with us. We rushed to our parents’ bedroom.
My father was sprawled like a dead chicken by their bathroom door. My mother was crouched over him with her hands on his shoulders and her head close to his chest. She was shaking him, listening for his heartbeat, and screaming.
‘Hewu Chineke m o!’ she cried. ‘You people should see me o! Hewu!’
Her face was wet with tears. We threw ourselves to the floor and gathered around my father’s still form. Charity burst into tears. Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka, having heard the commotion from the kitchen, also rushed in. I pushed everyone aside and listened for a heartbeat. With relief, I confirmed that my father’s life was not yet finished.
‘Mummy, what happened?’ I asked.
‘Hewu God help me o… God help me o… hewu!’
I pulled myself together and recovered some of that level of thinking that sets man apart from the beasts of the field.
‘Godfrey… quick! Go upstairs and ask Mr Nwude if he can come and help us drive Daddy to the hospital in his car. Hurry… hurry…!’
I turned to the rest. ‘All of you go out… just go out. He needs air.’
I shooed everybody away and closed the door. My mother was still crying. I checked my father’s pulse again and again. Godfrey returned from his errand.
‘Mr Nwude said we should start bringing him out. He’ll meet us downstairs.’
I turned to my mother.
‘Mummy, please wear something.’
From the wardrobe, she dragged a boubou, which had black stains from unripe plantains covering most of the stomach area, and pulled it over her nightdress. I bent down and held onto my father’s arms beneath his shoulders while Godfrey held his legs. We lifted his body from the floor. With his head balanced carefully on my belly, we carried him out. A quick thinker had already opened the front door wide – the main entrance to the house that we reserved for special visitors. That exit would be closer to Mr Nwude’s sky blue Volkswagen Beetle.
Mr Nwude rushed out, dressed in an outfit that he ordinarily should have been ashamed of. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and bathroom slippers, with his short-sleeved shirt buttoned halfway up. His wife stood beside my mother while we arranged my father into the backseat. I and my mother squeezed into the front passenger seat and forced the door shut. The old car sped off as best as it could, leaving the members of our household staring in distress.
‘What of your card?’ the nurse asked.
We were at the Government Hospital Accident and Emergency Unit.
‘What card?’ I asked back.
‘The one they gave you when you made your deposit.’
‘We didn’t make any deposit.’
‘OK, hurry up so I can arrange for a doctor to see him soon.’ She pointed her chin at my father, who was lying on a wooden bench with my mother standing beside him. ‘Go and pay then come back and fill out the forms.’
What was she talking about?
‘Just walk down the hall,’ she explained. ‘Turn right and walk to the end of the corridor, then turn left, and you’ll see a blue door. Three doors from the blue door, you’ll see another door that is wide open. Go inside, then look to your left. You’ll see where other people are queuing up. That’s the cashier. Pay your deposit and bring the receipt back here.’
Deposit? I looked at Mr Nwude. He looked at the nurse.
‘Madam, please, this is an emergency,’ Mr Nwude said. ‘Let the doctor have a look at him now and we’ll bring the money by morning.’
She almost laughed.
‘Madam,’ I begged, ‘please, first thing tomorrow morning, we’ll bring the money.’
She folded her arms and looked back at me. I wondered if the feminine of brute was brutess.
‘Nurse, please…’
She patted a pile of forms on all four sides until every single sheet was perfectly aligned. We pleaded and beseeched. She strolled to the other end of her work space and started attending to other matters. We beckoned my mother. Reluctantly, she left her husband’s side and leaned on the counter.
‘Please, my daughter,’ she said in a mournful, motherly voice. ‘My husband is very ill and we need to get him some medical attention as soon as possible. As my son was telling you, by tomorrow, we’ll bring the money. I can’t lie to you.’
Pity clouded the nurse’s face.
‘Madam…’
‘Please… please,’ my mother begged, shedding some tears for emphasis.
‘Madam, please. It’s not as if the doctors and nurses here are heartless. We’ve just learnt to be realistic that’s all.’
She explained that after a patient was admitted, it became almost impossible to discontinue treatment if it turned out that the patient could not pay. The doctors and nurses were now tired of contributing from their own pockets towards the welfare of strange patients.
We rushed back to my father’s side and held a quick consultation. My father did not conceal an emergency stash inside his mattress. All the banks were closed. There was nobody we knew in Umuahia who could afford to loan cash readily.
‘What do we do now?’ my mother asked. Her face was drenched with worry.
We carried my father back to the car and went searching. The Ndukaego Hospital told us that they were very sorry. The King George Hospital promised us that we were wasting our time. The Saints of Mount Calvary Hospital assured us that there was nothing they could do under the current circumstances. My mother lost her mind.
‘Hewu! God, please help me! My husband is dying o! My husband is dying!’
‘Mummy, please.’ For the billionth time, I confirmed that my father still had a pulse. ‘Mummy, please calm down.’
She continued babbling to God.
‘Let’s try another hospital,’ I said to Mr Nwude.
A light bulb flashed above his head.
‘My wife’s brother has an in-law whose aunty’s husband is a senior consultant in the Government Hospital,’ Mr Nwude said. ‘Maybe we can go and ask if they can help.’
We sped to the wife’s brother’s house. He gave us directions to the in-law’s house. At the in-law’s house, my mother flung herself against the floor and uttered a cry that shook the louvers. The in-law got dressed and accompanied us to the aunty’s house. At times like this, I had no grudges at all about Umuahia being such a pocket-sized town.
After assuring us that the hospital would have no qualms about shoving my father out the next day if we did not produce the cash, Senior Consultant Uncle gave us a signed note addressed to the hospital emergency ward. We sped back to the Government Hospital, flung the note across the desk to the nurse, and got my father attended to pronto. Thank God for ‘long-leg’.
‘He’s had a stroke,’ the doctor declared.
He said that my father’s blood pressure was too high, that he was in a coma. He could not give any definite prognosis, but gave instructions for my father to be admitted.
The hospital lift was not working, so I and Mr Nwude carried my father up via the staircase to the medical ward on the third floor. After every few steps, we would lean on the wall and pant before continuing.
At the ward, some junior nurses took my father from us, while a militant senior informed us that we could not go in. Visiting time was over.
‘You can sleep in the car park if you want to spend the night,’ she insisted. ‘This is not a hotel.’
Mr Nwude dashed back downstairs, retrieved the senior consultant’s note from the nurse at reception, and brought it to the ward. The militant nurse changed her mind.
‘You can spend the night, but it would have to be a private room.’
A more expensive alternative, but we did not mind.
My father’s room reeked of disinfectant. The walls were stained, the bed frame was rusty, and the lumpy mattress had a broad depression right in the middle. There was neither bedsheet nor pillow.
‘You’re supposed to bring you own bedding,’ the nurse chastised.
After my father was secure in bed, oxygen mask clamped over his face, blood samples drawn from his veins, tubes inserted through his nostril and wrist, catheter through his penis, Mr Nwude was ready to leave.
‘Thank you very much for all your help,’ my mother said to him. ‘We really appreciate it.’
‘My pleasure, madam,’ he replied. ‘I’ll come again tomorrow to find out how he’s doing.’
‘Mummy, why don’t you go home with Mr Nwude and let me stay the night with Daddy?’
My mother took a seat at her husband’s bedside and shook her head firmly. The resolve on her face was as solid as Gibraltar.
I saw Mr Nwude off to the car park. It was not until he drove off that I noticed. Lo and behold, there were people covered in wrappers and lying on mats in many corners. The nurse was not being sarcastic when she suggested that we could sleep there.
All through the night, the mosquitoes came riding in on horseback. The males hummed shrill love songs into our ears, the females sucked blood from our exposed arms and feet. Tired of swatting the air and scratching her limbs, my mother shut the windows against them. Minutes later, we were almost at the point of asphyxiation. She opened them again. The mosquitoes were clearly the landlords. But at some point, we must have set aside our troubles and fallen asleep. A young nurse shook us awake in the morning. I rubbed my eyes and scratched at a red swelling on the back of my hand.
‘You should bring a mosquito net for your father,’ the nurse suggested. ‘And bring a fan for yourselves. Even if NEPA takes the light, as long as there is fuel, the hospital generator is on from midnight till 4 a.m…’
‘The doctor who is supposed to see him,’ my mother asked, ‘what time is he coming this morning?’
‘He can come in anytime.’
The nurse handed me a sheet of paper. I studied the handwritten list. The items included a pack of cotton wool, bottle of Izal disinfectant, pack of needles, pack of syringes, roll of plaster, disposable catheter bags, bleach, gloves…
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Those are the things we need for your father’s care,’ she replied. ‘Any item you don’t find at the hospital pharmacy, you’ll have to go out and buy it from somewhere else.’
The list even included intravenous fluids!
‘Does the hospital not provide these items? Are they not part of the bill?’
‘Every patient is expected to buy their own.’
‘Let me see,’ my mother said.
I gave the list to her.
‘So what would have happened if he didn’t have any relatives here with him?’ I asked. ‘Who would have had to buy these things?’
‘We never admit any patient who is not accompanied by relatives.’
Irritation had assumed full control of her voice. The last thing I wanted was for someone whom I had entrusted with my father’s life to be angry with me over such a minor issue. My mother also seemed to share this thought. She handed back the list and surreptitiously poked my thigh. That was my cue to shut up.
The nurse tugged at some wires and peeked under my father’s clothes before exiting the room. As soon as the door clacked shut, my mother turned to me.
‘Kings, please hurry up and go to the house and get the cheque booklet for our joint account. It’s in my trunk box. Bring it immediately so that I can sign some cheques for you to take to the bank and withdraw some money.’
‘I’d like to wait and see the doctor before I go.’
‘Please, go now. You know they admitted us on trust.’
On my way out, I walked past a nurse who was pushing a squeaking wheelchair. The wheelchair was stacked with green case files.
The queue at the bank went all the way out the front door and round the back of the building. If only my parents would stop being conservative and transfer their accounts to one of the more efficient New Generation banks. Thereafter, I went straight to Ola’s house. Apart from all the questions I was eager to ask her, she needed to know that my father was ill. Plus, Ola’s hugs were like medicine, and every muscle in my body was sore.
As usual, Ezinne was pleased to see me. She unlocked the glass door and hugged me warmly. I waited in the living room while she went inside to inform her sister about my presence. Seconds later, she returned.
‘Brother Kings, Ola is not at home.’
I peered at her.
She stood there, pulling at her neatly woven cornrows and twisting her foot from side to side with her eyes fixed on the floor.
‘Ezinne, go back inside and tell Ola that I want to see her.’
She obeyed.
Ten minutes later, Ola came out dressed in an adire boubou and with an expression on her face like an irritated queen’s. She was accompanied by one of her friends from school. The girl bore some coquettish-sounding name which I had forgotten. Either Thelma… or Sandra… or one of those sorts of names. They greeted me and sat in the chairs opposite.
‘My father was admitted into hospital last night,’ I said. ‘He had a stroke.’
‘Stroke? How come? How is he?’
‘I’m on my way back to the hospital. I just wanted to see you first. How are you?’
I thought she might offer to come along with me. Suddenly, she became icy.
‘I’m fine,’ she replied in a voice that was well below zero.
‘I was surprised when I went to your school yesterday and they told me that you were in Umuahia.’
‘Yes, I am.’
Her answer sounded a bit off point. Nevertheless, I accepted it. She was wearing the same Dolce & Gabbana wristwatch of the other day. The former red strap had been swapped for a brown one that matched her Fendi slippers. Ola looked glum and rigid, like a pillar of salt.
‘Ola, are you OK?’
Her companion flicked some dirt – noisily – from one of her red acrylic talons. Ola took a deep breath.
‘Kingsley, I think we should both go our separate ways,’ she said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, there’s no future in this relationship.’
She spoke so fast, with her words bumping into each other. Yes, I heard the individual words, but I genuinely could not make out any meaning from what she had said.
‘Ola, what are you saying?’ I asked.
The other girl hijacked the conversation.
‘What essatly do you not understand? She has told you her mind and it’s your business whether you assept it or not.’
This tattling termagant, like many of her compatriots from Edo in the Mid-West region of Nigeria, had a mother tongue induced speech deficiency that prevented her from putting the required velar emphasis on her X sounds. They always came out sounding like an S. I ignored the idiot.
‘Ola, please let’s go somewhere private and talk… please.’
Ola tilted slightly forward as if she were about to stand.
‘Abeg no follow am go anywhere, jare,’ the termagant restrained her in her more typical Pidgin English. ‘Abi him hol’ your life?’
Ola sat ramrod straight again.
The termagant appeared to be the commandant of this mission. Abruptly, she stood up and nudged Ola. Their task was complete. They had dropped the atomic bomb. Ola stood. I wondered why she was allowing this Neanderthal to control her like this.
‘Kingsley, I need to go out now.’
I bent my knees towards the floor and reached out for her hand. ‘Ola, please… at least let’s go into the room and talk…’
I thought I saw a twinge of pain in her eyes, but it passed by so quickly that I may have been mistaken. She turned and walked quickly from the living room. Shortly after, she came out dressed in a brown dress, with the termagant following behind her. The scent of their combined perfumes invaded the atmosphere. Each molecule stank of good money. Without looking at me, they walked straight out of the house. I followed like an ass.
‘Ola…’ I called. ‘Ola.’
She did not even look my way. Any passerby could have easily mistaken me for a schizophrenic conversing with invisible KGB agents.
‘Ola, please just give me a bit more time.’
With me lurking at her side, they stood by the main road and hailed a passing okada.
‘Empire Hotel!’ the termagant shouted.
The daredevil driver did a maniacal U-turn and stopped with his engine still running. Ola climbed on as close to the driver as was physically possible, leaving just enough space for the termagant. When the driver had perceived that they had settled as comfortably as the laws of space would allow, he revved his engine and zoomed off.
It could have been the sorrowful eyes that she saw.
It could have been the gloomy aura that she perceived.
Whatever it was, as soon as I walked into the hospital with my father’s provisions, my mother knew that darkness had befallen her opara.
‘Kings… Kings…’ she whispered anxiously and jumped up. ‘What happened? What’s the matter?’
It felt as if a gallon of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane had been pumped into my heart and set alight with a stick of match.
‘Ola… Ola…’
When I was a child, we had watched a documentary on television about an East African tribe who spoke with clicks and gargles instead of real words. I used to imitate their chatter to amuse Godfrey and Eugene. Now I appeared to be talking the same language, the only difference being that I was not doing it to amuse anybody.
‘Kings, it’s OK,’ my mother interrupted. ‘Calm down, calm down.’
She led me to the second chair and held me against her chest. I closed my eyes and wept – softly, at first, then louder, with my head and shoulders quaking.
‘Kings,’ she said gently, after she had allowed me to cry for a while.
I sniffled.
‘Kings, look up.’
I wiped my eyes and obeyed. I did not look her directly in the face.
‘Kings, what happened with Ola?’
I narrated everything. I mentioned the trip to her school and the visit to her mother, not forgetting the termagant and the Dolce &
Gabbana wristwatch. From time to time, my mother glanced in my father’s direction, probably to check if my voice was bothering him.
‘Mummy, I don’t know what to do.’
I looked at her. She did not say anything. Pain was scrawled all over her face.
‘I don’t think I can live without Ola.’
‘Kings. Kings, if she doesn’t want you because you’re going through hard times, then she doesn’t deserve you. Any girl that-’
‘Mummy, what can I do?’ I cut in. I was not interested in grammar and grand philosophy.
‘Kings, I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but I don’t think you deserve the way she’s just treated you. If she can do this now, then-’
‘I think I should go and talk to her mother again. This is not like Ola at all. I’m sure-’
‘Kings… Kings…’
‘If I can just convince-’
‘Kings,’ she said firmly, ‘I don’t think you should bother. That stupid woman already treated you like a scrap of paper.’
My mother’s advice was definitely biased. She was not a fan of Ola’s mother. She claimed that the woman had seen her in the market one time and pretended as if she did not know her.
‘It doesn’t bother me,’ she had said of the incident. ‘I’m just telling you for the sake of telling you, that’s all.’
Yet she had narrated the same story to my father later that evening and to Aunty Dimma several weeks later.
‘But how do you know she saw you?’ Aunty Dimma asked.
That was the same question I had asked.
‘She saw me,’ my mother insisted. ‘I even called out to her and she just gave me a cold smile and kept going.’
That was the same answer my mother had given me.
‘How do you know she recognised you?’
‘Is it not the same woman who came to this house on Kings’s graduation day to eat rice and chicken with us?’
‘Tell me not!’ responded Aunty Dimma, the queen of drama.
My mother got fired up.
‘God knows that if not for Kings, there’s no place where that woman would see me to insult me. As far as I’m concerned, she’s nothing more than a hanging towel. I’m not even sure she went to school.’
‘I’ll go and see her again,’ I insisted now. ‘Maybe she didn’t think I was serious the last time I went to see her.’
‘Kings, I don’t think you-’
‘In fact, I’ll go today.’
‘Why not-’
The nurse walked in.
‘Have you brought the things on the list I gave you?’ she asked.
I suspended my grief and searched around. The carrier bag with the items I had purchased on my way to the hospital was lying beside a deceased cockroach by the door.
Straight from the hospital, I went to the pepper-soup joint. Ola’s mother was busy attending to customers. She scowled when she spotted me, but said I could wait until she was free. If I wanted to.
As was usual for that time of evening, most of the white plastic chairs, clustered around white plastic tables, were fully occupied. The place was bustling with the sort of men who liked places like this and the sort of women who liked the company of men who liked places like this. There were giggling twosomes and jolly foursomes, there were debauched young girls and lecherous old men, with a variety of lagers and soft drinks, and cow and chicken and goat pepper soups served on wooden dishes or in china bowls. I recognised one of my father’s former colleagues. I wondered if the man had told his wife where he would be hanging out tonight.
My father never ate out. No respectable Igbo married man would leave his house and go outside to buy a meal to eat. It was irresponsible, the ultimate indictment on any wife – ‘di ya na-eri hotel’. Take my Aunty Dimma, for example. Long before she separated from her husband, moved to Port Harcourt, and subsequently became a religious fanatic, she was considered as one of the most incompetent wives to have ever been sent forth from my mother’s whole extended family. Generally, she was a lovely woman. She was kind, helpful, always the first to turn up and support us, even if we were simply mourning a wilted plant. But my father once commented to my mother that it was a miracle for anyone to remain married to her and not lose control of themselves.
Where could a husband start in recording matrimonial complaints against her?
She always left home in the morning before her husband and did not return before him.
She had wanted to employ a cook even when he had made it quite clear that he wanted to eat only meals she herself cooked.
She was always arguing with him about what was appropriate for her to wear and what was not. Once, she even insisted on wearing a pair of trousers to accompany him to a meeting of his townspeople.
Aunty Dimma had also been known to openly slight her husband and despise his role as head of the family. Like the time when she had gone ahead and bought herself a car even after her husband had insisted that she should continue using public transport until he was able to afford to buy the car for her by himself.
Despite all this, the most obvious sign that the marriage was in trouble was when the embittered man started eating out. Matters degenerated from that point onwards. Once or twice, my parents and relatives collectively reprimanded him for raising his hand to strike her. But behind closed doors, they all marvelled that he could stop at one or two slaps.
Sixty-five minutes later, Ola’s mother was still too busy to see me. Choosing to believe that she had forgotten, I walked up to where she was giving one of her girls an instruction by the counter and gently tapped her.
‘Mama…’
She looked at me and scowled.
‘You can see that I’m busy, eh?’
‘Mama, I promise it won’t take long.’
She glanced at her silver-strapped wristwatch. It looked brand new. And the stones looked valid, too. She was also wearing a narrow, glitzy bracelet with a matching necklace and pendant.
‘Oya, go on and say whatever you want to say.’
I wanted to ask for a more private meeting place. Her glare dared me to make any further requests. I stood there – within hearing of any of her girls, any of her customers who cared to extend an ear – and told her that Ola had informed me that our relationship had no future. I pleaded with her to give me some more time; I was planning to move to Port Harcourt and find a quick job.
She kept looking at me with that curious expression that people have when they are trying hard to understand others who are speaking a foreign language. Then she shrugged an exaggerated shrug.
‘Well, me I’ve decided to remove my mouth. Whatever happens between you and Ola is entirely up to both of you. As far as I’m concerned you people should just go ahead and do what you people like.’
‘But Mama-’
‘I told you that I’m busy and you said I should listen to you. Now I’ve listened and told you what I have to say. I have to go back to work now.’
With that, she turned and disappeared into the smoky kitchen, from where all sorts of tongue-tickling scents were proceeding like an advancing army.
As news of my father’s ill health spread, his bedside became a parade of friends and relatives and well-wishers. Every day, somebody new came to express best wishes, to let us know that we were in their prayers. Sometimes I felt like keeping away until all these people had left. But as opara, it was my duty to receive them, to share the burden of my mother’s faithful vigil at her husband’s side. She went home only once a day – to wash and to change and to visit her shop. She always looked drawn. And when she did not have her skull wrapped up in a scarf, her beautiful hair looked as if it had converted completely to grey overnight.
Aunty Dimma had turned up with a flask of ukwa and fried plantain, which my mother had barely touched. When I walked in, Aunty stood and unfastened thick, crimson lips in one of her sensational smiles.
‘Kings, Kings,’ she crooned in C minor. ‘Opara nne ya! My charming young darling, how are you?’
She trapped me in a backbreaking hug that lasted quite long. I felt a gooey substance on my right ear and hoped that it was simply some stray hair gel from her red-streaked pompadour. She tickled my cheeks with her fingers. Aunty Dimma had always been one for histrionics, but this extra zing told me that she had learned that I had been dumped.
My mother heaved a sigh. Aunty Dimma released me and turned to her.
‘Are you doubting?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you believe God heals?’
Probably because she was a liberated woman, Aunty Dimma usually spoke in a loud, red-hot voice, even when she was not angry. She also had an opinion about everything – from the second-class status of women in Igbo Land to the status quo in Outer Mongolia. And she always made sure that her voice put the final full stop to every conversation. The only factor hindering Aunty Dimma’s complete metamorphosis from liberated woman to full-fledged man was that she had not yet grown a beard.
‘Of course I know God heals,’ my mother replied softly. ‘But I believe that sometimes, God allows sickness to teach us a lesson.’
‘If that’s the case,’ Aunty Dimma said with a smirk, ‘why are you even bothering coming to hospital?’
I dived in.
‘Mummy, what are we going to do about money? Is there anybody else we can borrow from?’
Both women crash-landed to matters arising. So far, we had borrowed once from Mr Nwude’s elder brother while Aunty Dimma had made two medium-sized cash donations that were commensurate with her pocket. All my mother’s jewellery and expensive wrappers had already been sold to provide for children’s school fees in crises past. Crumbs were left in the bank. Very soon, even if the doctors grabbed each of us by our two legs, turned us upside down with our heads facing the ground, and shook us violently, not a penny would drop.
Aunty Dimma’s voice ended the long silence.
‘What about your brother?’ she asked.
‘Which one?’ my mother replied.
‘Which other one do you think? Boniface is there in Aba spending money on foolish girls and buying new cars every day. Why not tell him that Paulinus is in hospital?’
Terrified, I shot a glance at my father, wondering if he had heard. If he had, he would want nothing more than to rise from the bed and empty his catheter bag into my aunt’s mouth. Everybody knew how much he detested Uncle Boniface. I was surprised that my mother did not immediately forbid Aunty Dimma from raising the matter again. Instead, she kept quiet.
I held my breath and watched. She actually appeared to be considering it.
‘After all, what’s the big deal?’ Aunty Dimma continued. ‘Other rich people build houses for their relatives and train their siblings’ children. One of my friends-’
‘Reduce your voice,’ my mother whispered.
‘One of my friends, her elder brother is paying for her daughter to do a Masters degree in London… almost ten thousand pounds. How can you people have a brother who’s so rich and you’re struggling like this?’
My mother pondered some more.
‘These nouveau riche, money-miss-road people,’ she responded at last, ‘they have a way of getting on someone’s nerves. Look at Boniface who lived with us just yesterday. All of a sudden, small money has turned his head upside down. At Papa’s burial, didn’t you see how he was moving up and down with security guards as if he’s the head of state? The boy didn’t even finish secondary school.’
Aunty Dimma looked at my mother and laughed. She finished laughing, looked at my mother again, and began another round of laughter.
‘Point of correction,’ she said, ‘his money is not small at all. The cost of his cars alone can pay off all of Nigeria ’s international debts. You can go on calling him big names like “nouveau riche”. You own the big grammar, he owns the big money.’
She laughed some more.
‘So what are you suggesting?’ my mother asked now, her voice still well below normal speaking range.
‘Ozoemena, humble yourself. We’re talking about Paulinus’s life here. I have his cellular number, but I think it’s best to talk to him face-to-face. You don’t have to go yourself.’ She nodded at me. ‘Send Kings.’
‘To Aba or to Lagos?’ my mother asked.
‘He’s mostly in Aba. Only his wife and children stay in the Lagos house. I hear she doesn’t like Aba.’ Aunty Dimma snorted. ‘It’s probably too backward for her.’
‘What kind of marriage is that? How can they live so far apart?’
‘Marriage? Hmm. The girl was a professional mistress before she finally settled down. What do you expect? She just generally eats his money and takes care of his children.’
‘So do you people think I should go and ask him for the money?’ I interrupted, trying to corner them back into action.
‘I think so,’ Aunty Dimma replied. ‘This money that is causing you people sleepless nights is ordinary chewing gum money to some other people. At the end of the day, he’s your flesh and blood.’
She gave me more details about where to find Uncle Boniface’s office in Aba.
‘Just ask anybody,’ she said. ‘Tell them you’re looking for Cash Daddy.’
The streets of Aba were flooded with refuse. The stinky dirt encroached on the roads and caused motorists to struggle through narrow strips of tar. Touts screamed at the tops of their voices and bullied commercial drivers into stopping so that they could extort small denominations from them towards bogus levies. A stark naked schizophrenic with a bundle of dirty rags on her head, danced merrily in the middle of a T-junction. As the okada snaked through the logjam of vehicles towards Unity Road, I nearly fell off the saddle when we rode past two charred human remains sitting upright by the main road.
‘Why are you behaving like a woman?’ the okada driver laughed.
Next to Onitsha, Aba was the hometown of jungle justice. The people of Aba did not want to depend on their government for everything. They had taken the nobleman’s advice literally and asked themselves what they could do for their government instead of what their government could do for them. They had chosen to assist her with the execution of justice. Therefore, when a thief was caught red-handed – whether for picking a pocket or napping a kid – people in the streets would pursue him, overtake him, arrest him, strip him naked, secure him in an upright position, place an old tyre round his neck, saturate his body with fuel, and light a match. The tyre would ensure that the flames continued until all that remained of the felon was charcoal.
My aunty had not been wrong; the okada driver had known exactly where I could find Uncle Boniface.
‘Oh, you mean Cash Daddy?’ he asked. ‘Is it his office or his hotel or his house that you want?’
‘I’m going to the office,’ I replied.
Being something of a celebrity in this part of the country, I knew more about my uncle from the grapevine and from tittle-tattle than I knew from his being my relative. It was still difficult to correlate the stories of immense wealth with the ne’er-do-well lad that lived with us all those years ago. But then, it was not today that Uncle Boniface started making grubby bucks.
Back in the day, my mother had come up with a novel idea. Tired of sending her girls out to buy drinks on behalf of thirsty customers while they waited to have their measurements taken, or to pick up ready clothes that were having finishing touches put on them, she bought a freezer for her shop so she could make soft drinks available for sale whenever her customers wanted. That idea turned into a major source of income since more and more people who lived on the street soon sought her out as their provider of cold drinks. My father then suggested that Uncle Boniface could go down to the shop after school, to help manage these extra customers.
Secretly, the boy soon perfected the art of opening the cloudy-green ginger ale bottles without distorting the metal corks. After selling the real contents to customers, Uncle Boniface preserved the corks and refilled the empty bottles with an ingenious brew of water and sugar and salt. Then he replaced the metal corks and sold the repackaged water. Sales from the improvised soft drinks naturally ended up in his pocket. Whenever the bottles were being served to those who wanted to drink right there in the shop, he yanked the corks with the opener and made a hissing sound from the corner of his lips at the same time.
My mother watched her customers’ faces convert to confusion when they took a sip from their drinks. She listened as more and more people started complaining and tried to figure out the mystery. Then, in a moment of passion and infatuation, Uncle Boniface boasted about his exploits to one of the shop girls. This amorous Belle felt scorned when her beloved Beau diverted his attentions to another girl. In a bout of feminine fury, she squealed.
My mother returned home on the day of the shocking discovery and narrated the incident to my father.
‘Are you sure this boy is a human being?’ he asked with horror. ‘Are you sure he’s normal?’
‘I flogged him in front of everybody in the shop,’ my mother said. ‘I’m sure he has learnt his lesson.’
‘Flogging? Is it flogging that you use to cure evilness?’
‘I think it’s his age,’ my mother excused her brother. ‘Young people tend to play a lot of silly pranks.’
‘The boy is wicked,’ my father said with certainty. ‘This is pure, undiluted Satanism. I’m very uncomfortable about him being around our children.’
To this day, the blame for the demise of that aspect of my mother’s business had been piled totally on Uncle Boniface’s head.
The okada stopped in front of an unassuming bungalow that was visible behind a high, wrought-iron gate.
‘This is his office,’ the driver said.
I dismounted and paid.
Seven men and two women were waiting in front. A security man in an army green uniform was leaning on the wrought-iron bars, with his back towards them. Inside the compound was a line up of five jeeps with uniformed men sitting in the drivers’ seats. There were two Honda CR-Vs at each end and a Toyota Land Cruiser in the centre.
One of the waiting women walked closer to the gate and stood directly behind the security man.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please, I came all the way from Orlu. I can’t go back without seeing him.’
The security man ignored her.
‘I won’t spend long at all,’ one of the men begged. ‘Just five minutes. I and Cash Daddy were classmates in secondary school. I’m sure he’ll recognise me when he sees my face.’
The security man did not twitch.
‘My brother,’ the second woman beseeched him, stretching her hands within the bars and touching the security man gently on the shoulder. ‘My brother, please, I’ve-’
Abruptly, the security man turned.
‘All of you should get out and stop disturbing me!’ he barked. ‘Cash Daddy cannot see you!’
He was about to turn away when I moved forward.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
‘What is it?’
‘Good afternoon. Please, I’m looking for Mr Boniface Mbamalu.’
The plebeian was clearly relishing his morsel of authority. He wrinkled his nose and screwed up his eyes, as if examining a splodge of mucus on the pavement.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Boniface Mbamalu. I’m his sister’s son.’
‘Cash Daddy?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at me from top to bottom.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No, I don’t. But I’m his si-’
Suddenly, there was commotion. The security man forgot that I was standing there and rushed to unlock the gates. The five jeeps simultaneously growled into action. I turned towards the entrance to the bungalow and identified the reason for the commotion. Uncle Boniface, a.k.a. Cash Daddy, was on his way out.
Like my mother, Uncle Boniface was tall. But now that he bulged everywhere, the distance between his head and his feet appeared shorter. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses that covered almost half of his face. His belly drooped out of the cream linen shirt that he wore inside a distinguished grey jacket. He swaggered, looking straight ahead and swinging his buttocks from one side to the other each time he thrust an alligator skin-clad foot forward. Clearly, fortune had been smiling on him.
Five men in dark suits and dark glasses surrounded him. Two walked ahead, two behind, one beside him. When they were nearing the cars, the man beside him rushed ahead to open the back door of the Land Cruiser. Uncle Boniface heaved his bulkiness through the open door and adjusted himself in the back seat. The same man took his own place in the front passenger seat while the remaining four men hopped into the CR-Vs. The convoy glided through the now wide-open gates. Each car had a personalised number plate. The Land Cruiser bore ‘Cash Daddy 1’, while the first CR-V was ‘Cash Daddy 2’, the second ‘Cash Daddy 3’, and so forth. I watched this display in awestruck wonder.
All of a sudden, as if one driver were controlling all five cars, the convoy stopped just outside the gates. The tinted window of the middle jeep slid down. Uncle Boniface’s head popped out. He looked back towards the gate, pointed at me, and shouted.
‘Security! Allow that boy to go and wait for me inside my office! Right now!’
‘Yes, sir! OK, sir!’ the gateman replied.
The others waiting by the gate rushed towards the car. Cash Daddy’s convoy zoomed on.
Inside the main building, the receptionist was chomping gum with wild movements of her mouth, as if she had three tongues.
‘Please have a seat,’ she said, and opened a gigantic refrigerator. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
I looked at the assortment of drinks stacked into every single compartment.
‘No, thank you,’ I replied. I did not want to give the impression that I was from a home where we did not have access to such goodies.
There were four girls and three men waiting inside, some variety of drink or the other on a stool beside each of them. One man was gulping down a can of Heineken while his eyes were fixed on the wide television screen that covered almost half of the opposite wall. The television was set to MTV. Some men, whom the screen caption described as Outkast, were making a lot of noise. Despite the boulder of gum in her mouth, the receptionist was noising along. Incredibly, she seemed to know all the words.
Soon, a fresh bout of commotion heralded The Return of Cash Daddy. As soon as he stepped into the office, one of the dark-suited men produced a piece of cloth from somewhere and started wiping Cash Daddy’s shoes. Uncle Boniface used the brief pause to look round at those waiting for him. He saw the man drinking the beer and glared.
‘What are you doing here? Haven’t I finished with you?’
The man stood up and approached him. Uncle Boniface turned away and pointed at one of the girls.
‘Come,’ he said.
She rose smugly and stiletto-ed along behind him. My uncle zoomed through a set of doors which led further inside the office. His jacket had ‘Field Marshal’ emblazoned in bold, gold-coloured letters on the back. Without looking back or addressing anybody in particular, he shouted: ‘Get that man out of here. Right now!’
Three of the dark-suited escorts immediately went into action. On his way out, the man remembered to grab his Heineken and bring it along.
Fortunately, it was not a ‘first come, first served’ affair. The receptionist announced that Cash Daddy was ready to see me right after the girl came out grinning. One of the dark-suited men escorted me to the same doors through which my uncle had disappeared. We walked down a narrow corridor and stopped at the last door on the right. Inside, the man who had sat in the Land Cruiser with my uncle stood up from behind a computer screen, tapped lightly on an inner door and pushed me inside.
The office was vast and uncluttered. There was a refrigerator in a corner, a large mahogany shelf filled with books that looked like they had never been read, a wide mahogany cabinet that housed several exotic vases, various awards that extolled my uncle’s financial contributions to different organisations, and a bronze clock. Stealing most of the attention in the room, a large, framed photograph of Uncle Boniface hung centred on the wall. In it, he was wearing a long-sleeved isi-agu traditional outfit and a george wrapper. He had a beaded crown on his head, a horsetail in his right hand, and a leather fan in his left. Most likely, the photograph was taken during the conferment of a chieftaincy title by some traditional ruler or other who wanted to show appreciation for Uncle Boniface’s contributions to his community. Cash Daddy was seated behind the mahogany desk in the centre of the room, which held three telephone sets, a computer, and a Bible.
‘Good afternoon, Uncle Boniface,’ I said.
‘Kings, Kings,’ he beamed. ‘You’re still the same… you haven’t changed at all. I had to rush out like that because a girlfriend of mine is being chased by a student.’
He swivelled his grand leather chair from one 180-degree angle to the other.
‘I heard that he was in her house so I wanted to go and make some noise. Let him know who he’s dealing with. Any child who claims that he knows as many proverbs as his father should be prepared to pay as much tax as his father does. Is that not so?’
He swivelled to the left.
‘Is that not so?’
‘Yes.’
He swivelled to the right.
‘Me, I don’t play games. I went there with my convoy so that the small boy will be afraid and think twice. Me, I don’t believe in film tricks; I believe in real, live action. If he knows what’s good for him, he had better clear off. How are you?’
Before I could answer, he stopped swivelling and screamed.
‘Aaaaargh!’
I was jolted.
‘What is that on your legs?’
Involuntarily, I hopped from one foot to the other and looked downwards. I did not notice anything strange.
‘What’s that you’re wearing on your legs?’
Again, I looked at my feet.
‘Are those shoes?’ He frowned and looked worried. ‘I hope you didn’t tell any of the people outside that you’re my brother? I just hope you didn’t.’
I stared back at him and down at my feet again. The shoes were a gift from Ola for my twenty-second birthday – one of the few items that had come into my possession in a brand new state. As yet, I had never questioned their respectability.
‘Protocol Officer!’ he yelled.
I was jolted again. It sounded as if he were summoning someone from the next street. The man in the outer office appeared.
‘Get this man out of here!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Protocol Officer replied.
My important mission was about to be botched!
‘Uncle Boniface, please,’ I begged. ‘I just came to talk to you about-
‘Get out of my office! Protocol Officer, take this man away.
Make sure he’s wearing new shoes before bringing him back. Go!’
The man led me out and handed me to one of the dark-suited men, who accompanied me into a bright yellow Mercedes-Benz SLK with number plate ‘Cash Daddy 17’. We drove swiftly to a nearby shop that had a diverse stock of men’s shoe brands. After politely declining several of my escort’s recommendations, I finally made my pick. They had one of the lowest price tags of all the shoes in the shop, but they were probably the most civilised. Unostentatious, respectable, gentlemanly. I slipped my feet into the pair of black Russell & Bromley shoes. Honestly, there are shoes and there are shoes. As I tried them on, it felt as if dainty female fingers were massaging my feet. A revolution had taken place.
My dark-suited escort paid for the goods while I cast my old pair into the sleek box from whence the new ones had come. Back at the office, my uncle inspected my latest appearance and nodded his approval.
‘Didn’t you see how your shoes were pointing up as if they were singing the national anthem? Don’t ever come to my office again looking like that. A fart becomes a stench only when there are people around. You can afford to be wearing those types of shoes in other places but you can’t wear them around me. Do you know who I am?’
I apologised profusely and promised that I would never try it again.
‘Have you had something to drink?’
‘No, I’m OK, thank you.’
Suddenly, a strange tune pierced the air. My uncle pulled out a metallic handset from his jacket pocket and looked at the screen before answering.
‘Speak to me!’ he bellowed.
I admired the cellular phone shamelessly. Mere men could not afford any of these satellite devices; they were the exclusive possession of Nigeria ’s rich and prosperous.
‘See you later!’ he yelled and hung up.
He indicated for me to sit in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
‘How are your parents?’
‘My mother is fine,’ I replied. ‘She asked me to greet you. But my father’s in hospital. That’s the main reason why I came to see you.’
His face crumpled with concern.
‘Hospital? What’s wrong with him?’
‘He went into a coma a few weeks ago. He’s been on admission at the Government Hospital.’
His cellular rang again. He cleared his throat violently after looking at the screen, then allowed the phone to ring some more before answering.
‘Hello? Ah! Mr Moore!’ he said with excitement. ‘I’m really glad you called! I was just about to ring you now! I just finished speaking with the minister for petroleum. In fact, I just hung up when my phone rang and it turned out to be you.’
He listened briefly.
‘Calm down, calm down. I understand. But the minister has assured me that you will definitely get that oil licence. He just gave me his word right now on the phone. And one thing about the minister, he might be slow but once he gives his word, that’s it. There’s no going back.’
He listened. My uncle looked totally committed to the conversation. Perhaps it was the minister he had been chatting so familiarly with a short while ago? Perhaps the phone call with the minister had happened when I went out for the shoes?
‘Right now, I’m not too sure when the meeting will hold,’ he continued. ‘You know the president is currently out of the country so a lot of big things are being put on hold.’
It had been in all the newspapers. His Excellency had tripped on the Aso Rock Villa marble staircase, dislocated his ankle, and had to be flown out to Germany for treatment. There had been a time when things like that did not make any sense to me. But with my recent intimate experience of our hospitals, I did not blame anyone who swam across the Atlantic to get treated for a hangover.
‘Tentatively, I would say the sixth,’ my uncle was saying. ‘I’ll go ahead and ask my staff to book your flight and make reservations with the Sheraton.’
He listened. His face showed concern.
‘Mr Moore, I know. But the American Embassy clearly advises that any of its citizens visiting Nigeria should stay in American hotels. It’s for your own safety. You know Nigeria is a dangerous place, especially for a white man. And one thing about me is that I’m a man who never likes to go against the law.’
He listened with deeper concern.
‘I know.’
He listened some more.
‘I know. You said so the last time.’
Suddenly, his face sparkled with a good idea.
‘You know what I can do? I’ll arrange for that same girl you liked very much the last time. How would you like that?’
He smiled. He listened. He laughed.
‘Ah, Mr Moore. That’s one thing I like about you. You know a good thing when you see it. All right, my good friend. We’ll see on the sixth.’
The phone was returned to his pocket.
‘So what are the doctors saying?’ he said to me, as if there had been no international interruption.
‘They said it’s a stroke,’ I replied. ‘They’re still observing him but they said his condition is stable.’
He shook his head and went into an extended speech about how much he hated hospitals; how whenever he was sick, he paid the doctors to come treat him at home instead. How the last time he was in France, he had wanted to do a full medical check-up, but when he was told that they could not carry it out right in his château he had bought in the South of France, he had told the doctors to go and jump into the Atlantic Ocean.
I waited patiently for him to finish. My uncle was a hard man to interrupt.
‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘I might still try and do the check-up during my next trip to America. You know, in America, there’s nothing you can’t get as far as you can afford it.’
‘Uncle Boniface,’ I dived in, ‘I’m really sorry to trouble you but I came to ask if you can help us.’
At this point, I wobbled. Asking for money like this felt disgraceful. Even though we had had several relatives suckling from my parents’ pockets when times were good, my father refused to allow us to go soliciting help when times became tough. Today was my very first attempt. I remembered my father lying in hospital and summoned the courage to continue.
‘Uncle Boniface, my father has been in hospital longer than we expected, and the expenses are rising every day. Right now-’
‘What about your father’s 505?’ he interrupted. ‘Do you people still have it?’
I was thrown completely off balance. Did the 505 have anything to do with the issue at hand?
‘No, they sold it almost four years ago,’ I replied slowly.
‘Ah, I remember that car. I used to dream that one day I’ll have my own 505 just like that and hire a white man to be my personal driver.’
He laughed a brief, staccato laugh.
It occurred to me that this change of topic was merely the show of light-heartedness that rich people tend to exhibit when presented with a problem they know money can easily solve. I decided to go with the flow.
‘And the car was still very strong right until they sold it,’ I added with false passion.
‘You think that car was strong?’ He laughed. ‘Honestly, that shows you don’t know anything about cars. Have you seen my brand new Dodge Viper?’
Of course I had never seen his brand new Dodge Viper. Still, he silently looked upon me as if expecting an answer.
‘No, I haven’t.’
He laughed. The same brief, staccato laugh.
‘If you see that car… turn the key in the ignition, then you’ll know what a car really is.’
Then he told me much, much more about his cars. About the ones he used only twice a year and the ones he used once a week. He told me about his frequent trips abroad and how he planned to buy a private jet; about how he was going to take flying lessons so that he could fly his private jet by himself. I sat there, looking and listening without being allowed to contribute a word. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a man who loved the sound of his own voice.
I stifled a yawn.
The intercom on his desk bleeped. He stopped talking and leaned forward to push a button.
‘Speak to me!’
‘Cash Daddy, World Bank is here.’
The lady’s announcement was punctuated by the bursting open of the office door. Cash Daddy sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.
‘Heeeeeeeeeeee!’ he shouted.
‘Cash Daddy!’ the man who stormed in yelled. ‘It’s just a matter of cash!’
‘Bank! Bank!’ Cash Daddy hailed back. ‘World Bank International! ’
This was obviously one of Cash Daddy’s friends who also suffered from elephantiasis of the pocket. He was wearing a cream suit, a diamond-studded wristwatch, several sparkly chains around his neck, and yellow alligator-skin shoes with white, blue, pink, green, and purple strips across the front. He was holding a gold-plated walking stick and had a unique variety of bowler hat sitting on his head. Both men slapped hands, hugged shoulders, exchanged pleasantries, hailed each other’s nicknames several times. Finally, World Bank perched himself on the edge of Cash Daddy’s desk, with one of his colourful shoes on the seat beside me and the other dangling close to my shin. The navy-blue-suited young man who had accompanied him stood a respectful few paces behind.
‘This is my brother,’ Cash Daddy said, gesturing towards me.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I said.
‘Really! No wonder. He looks like you.’
‘Me?’ Cash Daddy replied with horror. ‘God forbid. How can you say he looks like me? Can’t you see how his neck is hanging like a vulture’s neck?’
Both men laughed.
‘He’s a fine young man, he’s a fine young man,’ World Bank said, ‘just that he’s too thin.’
‘He’s a university graduate,’ Cash Daddy replied.
‘Ah!’
They laughed again. Perhaps it was natural to find all sorts of silly things funny when you had a pocketful of cash.
‘I’ve been meaning to stop by for a long time,’ World Bank said, ‘but somehow, things kept happening to prevent me. My wedding is on the twenty-third of August. I decided to do everything on the same day.’
‘You’re a wicked man!’ Cash Daddy shouted. ‘A very, very wicked man! You have money, yet you don’t want to spend it. Why are you running away from throwing three different parties for us? How much is it? Instead, tell me what it will cost, let me pay for everything.’
World Bank guffawed and almost toppled into my lap.
‘Cash Daddy, you know money is not my problem,’ he said, steadying himself with his walking stick. ‘I’m just trying to be wise. I’ve learnt from my experience with my current wives. I don’t want to repeat my mistakes.’
He explained that his first wife always wanted to attend major functions as his companion since she saw herself as the senior wife. She also insisted on being the one to sleep with him in the master bedroom on some nights, when he preferred to have only the second wife in bed with him.
‘I don’t want any of these ones to come into my house and start giving me trouble about who is the senior wife and who is the junior wife,’ World Bank said. ‘If I marry three of them on the same day, they’ll know from Day One that they are all equals.’
‘That’s very smart,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘That’s really very smart.’
World Bank looked hurt.
‘But Cash Daddy, how can you talk like this? You know I’m a very smart man.’
‘Of course, of course.’
They laughed. I wondered how the names of the three brides, the names of their three sets of parents, the names of their three villages… would all fit into the traditional wedding ceremony invitation card. World Bank’s cellular phone rang. He looked at the screen and hissed.
‘These people won’t let me rest. One of the girls I’m marrying, the other day, her mother told me she wants a camcorder. Almost every day, she calls to ask when I’m bringing it. I didn’t run away when she told me they wanted to renovate their house, I didn’t run away when she told me she wanted to open a nursery school. Why should I start running away simply because of an ordinary camcorder? ’
‘Just be a man and bear it,’ Cash Daddy said to console him. ‘You know that relatives are the cause of hip disease.’
‘Ah. Cash Daddy, you need to see this girl. She’s just sixteen, but if you see her buttocks… rolling! Just give her another two to three years, that body will become something out of this world.’
I coughed. Honestly, a stray particle had found its way down the wrong passage. Cash Daddy misinterpreted.
‘Ah, Kings! That’s true. You’re going back to Umuahia today.’
‘No, no-’
‘Protocol Officer!’
I was jolted. The man reappeared through the door.
‘Yes, Cash Daddy.’
‘Give this man some money.’
He told him how much. My eyes gasped.
‘Cash Daddy, what currency?’ Protocol Officer asked.
My uncle’s phone rang.
‘Give him naira,’ he said, with eyes on the screen.
‘Thank you, Cash Daddy,’ I said. The outrageous nickname had slipped out of my mouth very smoothly.
‘Greet your mummy for me,’ he said and cleared his throat. ‘Hello!’ he said to the person at the other end of the phone. ‘Mr Rumsfeld! I was just about to ring you now!’
In the outer office, I waited by the fax machine near Cash Daddy’s closed door while Protocol Officer whisked out a key from his socks and unlocked a metal cabinet. He withdrew some bundles and started counting. I tried hard not to watch. For solace, my eyes turned to the sheet of paper on the fax machine tray.
Professor Ignatius Soyinka
Astronautics Project Manager
National Space Research and Development Agency
(NASRDA)
Plot 555 Michael Opara Street
Abuja, Nigeria
Dear Sir/Madam,
Urgent Request For Assistance – Strictly Confidential
I am Professor Ignatius Soyinka, a colleague of Nigerian astronaut, Air Vice Marshall Nnamdi Ojukwu. AVM Ojukwu was the first ever African to go into space. Based on his excellent performance, he was also later selected to be on Soviet spaceflight – Soyuz T-16Z – to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. Unfortunately, the mission was aborted when the Soviet Union was dissolved.
While his fellow Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, being a black man from a Third World country, AVM Ojukwu’s place on the flight was taken up by cargo, which the Soviet Union authorities insisted was too valuable to be left behind. Hence, my dear colleague has been stranded up there till today. He is in good spirits, but really misses his wife and children back home in Nigeria.
In the years since he has been at the station, AVM Ojukwu has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $35,000,000 (USD). This is being held in trust at the Lagos National Savings and Trust Association. If we can obtain access to this money-
Protocol Officer was relocking the cabinet. He inserted some cash into a brown envelope and handed it to me.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said, and stuffed the booty into my trouser pocket.
‘Thank God,’ he replied.
Truly, it is natural to find all sorts of silly things funny when you have a pocketful of cash. All through the journey home, I studied my new shoes and giggled endlessly about the Nigerian astronaut stranded in outer space.
When I showed my mother the envelope’s contents, she raised her two hands up to heaven and sang, ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness O Lord.’
The Lord’s faithfulness showed up again. Godfrey returned from the post office one morning and started screaming from the kitchen.
‘I passed! I passed! I passed!’
All of us rushed out. He had just received his admission letter to study Electrical Engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
I became worried.
It was good that Godfrey had written the JAMB and passed, it was good that he had scored enough for admission into one of the best universities in the country. On the other hand, it was not good that a fresh expense had been introduced into our lives when we were still doing battle with the current ones.
I forced myself to see the cup half-full rather than half-empty.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, grabbing his arm and pumping it up and down.
‘Thank you,’ he said and grinned.
Charity and Eugene joined in his jubilations. While he waved the admission letter high above his head like the captain of the Brazilian football team at the World Cup finals, they clapped their hands and stamped their feet and skipped about the living room.
I felt sorry for all of them.
Godfrey accompanied me to the hospital that day.
‘Why don’t you tell your daddy?’ my mother suggested. ‘I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to hear the good news.’
Godfrey rolled his eyes.
‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s awake or not. It would be nice if you told him.’
Surprisingly, Godfrey agreed. Today was probably his day off from rebellion. I could understand my mother’s eagerness for her husband to share in the good news. Like all of us, Godfrey was intelligent, but he constantly seemed to have his focus broken by the lesser cares of life such as girls and parties and rap music.
‘Come and sit on the bed,’ my mother said, indicating a small space at the edge of her husband’s mattress.
Godfrey sat. My mother took his right hand and placed it in my father’s right palm, careful not to disturb the wires and tubes. Then she returned to her chair and watched.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Daddy,’ Godfrey began awkwardly. He looked at me helplessly and back at our father in bed. ‘I just want to tell you that I’ve got my admission letter into Nsukka.’
He looked at my mother. She jerked her head and twisted her eyes in encouragement. Godfrey twisted his eyes and jerked his head questioningly.
‘Tell him that they gave you your first choice,’ she whispered.
‘Daddy, they gave me my first choice. They gave me Electrical Engineering.’
Godfrey looked at my mother again. I chuckled quietly. My mother threw me a frown. My chuckling diminished to a loud smile. Godfrey’s grace expired.
‘Mummy, I need to go,’ he said, and stood. ‘I want to go and barber my hair before it gets late.’
After he left, I turned to my mother.
‘How come you suddenly think he can hear what we say? Does it mean he’s been hearing everything we’ve been saying all this while?’
‘I know it might not make sense to you,’ she replied with cool confidence, like someone who knew what others did not. ‘But I just felt that something like this should not be left to wait.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes, when I have something very important to tell him, I do it when we’re alone in the middle of the night, when everywhere is quiet.’
‘Maybe I should try talking to him as well,’ I said.
My mother looked searchingly at me. She was not sure whether I was teasing or not.
I sat beside my father on the space that Godfrey had just vacated. I lifted his hand and rubbed the emaciated fingers tenderly. He had lost several layers of tissue, lying there these past weeks. I gazed into his face.
‘Daddy, don’t worry,’ I said, almost whispering. ‘We’ll manage somehow, OK?’
I massaged the hand some more and entwined my fingers in between my father’s own. My mother smiled softly and made a sign. She was going outside, probably to give me some privacy.
‘Don’t worry about Godfrey’s school fees,’ I said after she left. ‘I know the money will come somehow. I know I’m going to start work very soon. It shouldn’t be difficult once I move to Port Harcourt.’
My father continued inhaling and exhaling noisily without stirring. Two days ago, my mother claimed that she had seen him move his right leg sometime during the night, but nobody else had witnessed any other movement.
‘Daddy, please hurry up and-’
A nurse walked in.
‘I saw your mother leaving,’ she said.
‘She’s just gone out briefly. Is there anything?’
‘The doctor wants to see you in his office.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s best if you speak with the doctor directly.’
I hurried out.
When I entered the consulting room and saw the well-dressed, middle-aged physician, my heart started pounding like a locomotive. This particular doctor only made cameo appearances on the ward. Doctors like him had little time to spare on Government Hospital patients who were not paying even a fraction of the fees that the patients in their private practices were. Usually, it was the lesser, hungry-looking, shabbily dressed doctors who attended to us.
‘I’m sorry I don’t have very exciting news for you,’ he began as soon as my behind touched the seat in front of his desk. ‘Your father has been here for a while now and we’re starting to have some challenges with keeping him here.’
‘Doctor, we pay our money and buy all the things you-’ I began.
‘Oh, certainly, certainly,’ he reassured me, nodding his head rapidly. ‘I’m glad to say that we haven’t had that kind of problem with you people at all.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
He proceeded to enlighten me. It was a long, sad tale of under-staffing, low government funding, and insufficient facilities. By the time he finished, I felt guilty about us dragging our minor troubles all the way here to compound the hospital management’s own.
‘I’m sorry, but we can no longer manage your father’s care,’ he concluded. ‘I would suggest we transfer him to the Abia State Teaching Hospital, Aba. That’s the only way I can assure you that your father will get the best care he needs at this time. They have better equipment than we do.’
Instinctively, I perceived that this transfer entailed much more than moving my father from one bed to the other.
‘How much is it going to cost?’ I asked.
‘Well, there’s quite an expense involved,’ he sighed. ‘Fuelling the ambulance to transport him to Aba, hiring the specialised personnel to accompany him on the trip, renting whatever equipment they might require on the journey… To cut a long story short, the transfer would cost lot of money.’
He gave me a tentative estimate. The amount nearly shattered my eardrums. I made it clear to the doctor that we could not afford it. He sympathised profusely. Then he assured me that there was no remote possibility of receiving any one of those services on credit.
‘I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ he said. ‘Then let me know what you want us to do. I’ve given you my professional opinion, but at the end of the day, he is your father. It’s your call.’
I sat in front of him for a while, staring at the opposite wall without seeing anything, silently marvelling at the gravity of life in general. Then I thanked him for this update and for his sensitivity in choosing to break the bad news to me – first – without my mother present.
This time around, I paid meticulous attention to my appearance. I slipped my feet into my new pair of Russell & Bromley shoes and rummaged through my shirts. Most of them were dead, had been for a very long time. They only came alive when Ola wore them. She used to look so good in my clothes. Back in school, Ola would take my dirty clothes away on Friday evenings and return them washed and ironed on Sunday evenings. One day, while putting away the freshly laundered clothes, I noticed that a shirt was missing. Assuming that Ola had mistakenly packed it up with her own clothes, I made a mental note to ask her to check. Next day at the faculty, she was wearing the missing item. Seeing my shirt on her gave me such a thrill. Since then, she borrowed my shirts from time to time. In fact, she still had one or two with her.
Finally, I made my choice. It would have to be the shirt I wore for my university graduation ceremony. The blue fabric had been personally selected by my mother. She had sewn the shirt herself.
There were nine men and five women waiting at the office gates. Cash Daddy’s security man recognised me from my previous visit.
‘Cash Daddy has not reached office this morning,’ he said.
He advised me to go and seek him at home.
‘Please, where is his house?’ I asked.
‘There’s nobody who doesn’t know Cash Daddy’s house,’ he replied with scorn.
‘Please, what’s the address?’
He snorted with more scorn. He did not know the house number, but he knew the name of the street.
‘Once you enter Iweka Street, you will just see the house. You can’t miss it.’
I looked doubtful.
‘You can’t miss it,’ he repeated.
I flagged down an okada and took off.
Indeed, I knew it as soon as I saw it.
Two gigantic lion sculptures kept guard by the solid, iron entrance. The gate had strips of electric barbed wire rolled all around the top, which extended throughout the length of the equally high walls. Altitude of gate and walls notwithstanding, the mammoth mansion was visible, complete with three satellite dishes on top.
I pressed the buzzer on the wall. The gateman peeped through a spy-slide in the gate. Before he had a chance to question me, a voice boomed from an invisible mechanical device.
‘Allow that man to come inside my house! Right now!’
I was jolted. The gateman was unperturbed. He unlocked the gates and showed me inside.
The vast living room was a combination of parlour and dining section. There was a winding staircase that escalated from behind the dining table to unknown upper regions of the house. Everything – from the leather sofas, to the humongous television set, to the lush, white rug, to the vases on the bronze mantelpiece, to the ivory centre table, to the electric fireplace, to the high crystal chandeliers, to the dining set – was a tribute to too much wealth. I almost bowed my hands and knees in reverence.
A well-fed man standing by the door asked me to sit. Then he opened a huge refrigerator. Like the one in the office, this one was stacked with all manner of drinks.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I’m fine, thank you.’
There were two framed photographs of Cash Daddy hanging on the wall above the television screen. One was taken, apparently, while he was playing golf. In the other, he was sitting on a magnificent black horse. How on earth had my uncle managed to manoeuvre his super-size onto the narrow saddle?
There were five young, equally well fed men sitting around the dining table. They ate silently, but eagerly, making sloppy, kissing sounds as they licked their fingers.
Shortly after I sat down, Protocol Officer – the very same one of the other day – descended the stairs.
‘Cash Daddy is ready to see you,’ he said, and waited.
I stood up quickly and joined him at the foot of the staircase.
‘Good morning,’ I said to the feeding men as I walked past.
The tantalising aroma of edikainkong and onugbu soups whispered to me from the huge tureens before them. The men grunted nonchalantly.
Protocol Officer led the way. At the third-floor landing, he opened one of the doors and entered a large bedroom. He continued to where two men were standing beside another open door within the room. The men shifted to create space for me in the narrow doorway.
Inside, Cash Daddy was crouched on the toilet seat. Apart from the boxer shorts rolled around his ankles, he was as naked as a skinned banana. Imagining that I had barged in on a most private moment, I muttered an apology and was turning to leave, when his voice flashed like lightning and stopped me in my tracks.
‘Kings, Kings! How are you? How is your daddy doing?’
I ducked my eyes and replied that my father was still in hospital.
‘What of your mummy?’ he continued. ‘I hope you told her that I greeted her.’
‘Yes, I told her. She said I should thank you very much for your gift.’
He ignored me and spoke to the other men, apparently continuing with a discussion that had begun before I arrived.
‘Don’t forget that we’re supposed to see Police Commissioner by Monday. Make sure you don’t forget. When one sees a dog playing with somebody it’s familiar with, it looks as if the dog can’t bite. I don’t want the type of situation we had the last time to happen again.’
I tried taking advantage of this diversion to make my escape – and bumped into Protocol Officer, who was firmly entrenched in the getaway route behind me. I gave up and stood still. Cash Daddy was still speaking.
‘That seven hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars has to be ready before weekend. There are some things I can afford to play with but not things like this. Have you made arrangements with-’
Cash Daddy broke off his speech. He contracted his facial muscles and made a low, grunting noise. He relaxed his face again and took in a deep breath. I heard the dull thud of solid hitting the surface of water. This process was repeated three more times before he was finally satisfied. Then he stood up, yanked some tissue from the roll strapped to the wall, bent slightly forwards, and wiped. Cash Daddy tossed the used tissue into the toilet bowl and flushed. Before continuing with what he was saying. Starting from exactly where he had stopped.
‘… with Sonny and Ikem about the government official we’ll need for the Japan transaction?’
The man on my right confirmed that the arrangements had been made. From the corners of my eyes, I looked at each man standing beside me. None of them appeared to be the least bit discomfited.
The stench had started disorganising my brain cells, when Cash Daddy pulled up his shorts and made his way towards the door. Honestly, it is such a pity that some people just never learn. The number of times my dear mother had berated Uncle Boniface in the past for using the toilet without washing his hands. We parted to let him through and followed into the bedroom.
The bedroom had the exact same personality as the living room. A wide canopy bed, plush sofas, humongous television, huge refrigerator, crystal chandeliers, exotic vases, elegant photographs of him taken in different poses and at different grand events. A closed-circuit television screen that showed coverage of several different parts of the house, in different segments of the large screen, stood directly opposite the bed. Cash Daddy planted himself on the thick mattress, lifted a handset from the bedside stool, pressed a button, and yelled into the mouthpiece.
‘Bring my food! Right now!’
A fat man on one of the CCTV screen segments went into action in what looked like the kitchen. Another one of the screens clearly showed the front gate and everybody coming in or walking past. Aha! Via his CCTV, Cash Daddy must have sighted me coming into the house and then yelled his instruction to the gateman, using this same handset.
Cash Daddy stretched out his chunky legs and slapped a harmonious tempo on his belly with his hands.
‘I’m so hungry,’ he announced. ‘Kings, sit down.’
I sat in the chair directly in front of him, while the other men remained standing by the bed in silence. Suddenly, he stopped the music he was making with his belly and looked as if seeing me for the first time. He frowned.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’
‘What is this you’re wearing?’
I scanned myself in utmost terror. What could it be this time?
‘Kingsley, am I not talking to you? What is this thing you’re wearing?’
My brain was as blank as an empty bottle.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’ I whispered.
‘Are you sure it’s not a carpenter that constructed your shirt? You’d better be careful.’ He raised his index finger and wagged it at me. ‘Be very, very careful. One day you’ll be walking down the street and the police will just arrest you because of the way you dress. It’s only the fly that doesn’t have advisers that ends up in the coffin with the corpse. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
The fat man arrived with a tray of food which he placed on one of the side stools. He readjusted the stool to suit Cash Daddy’s position on the bed.
‘Do you want to eat anything?’ Cash Daddy asked. He did not wait for me to answer. ‘Cook, bring this man some rice, chicken, goat meat, beef… Just bring him everything you have in the stew.’ He turned to me. ‘I want you to eat well. You’re too skinny.’
I did not bother telling him that there was nothing he could do for me in that area; I was destined for perpetual skinniness.
Cash Daddy plunged into his meal.
‘Go,’ he said to the waiting men.
His rice bowl, as large as a bathroom washbasin, was filled to the brim. The rice was served with a bowl of tomato stew, a separate bowl of assorted meat, and a one-litre packet of Just Juice. He held his spoon like a shovel and clanged his teeth against the steel each time he shoved food into his mouth. While he chewed, I could look right into his mouth and watch the entire process of the solid rice granules being crushed. With his free hand, he pushed the pieces of meat to the very back of his mouth and tore them apart with his molars. Then he spat the unconquerable bones straight into the tray with such noise and force that no doubt was left that his upbringing had definitely been lacking.
‘How is your daddy?’ he asked, after a particularly loud belch.
In a few sentences, I told him everything the doctor had said and the reason for my visit.
As I was speaking, my uncle continued giving full concentration to his feeding without looking at me. At some points, I wondered if he was even listening at all.
It turned out that he was, because when I finished, he started relating his comprehensive thoughts about how he was sure the nurses intentionally kept a patient in a coma for longer than necessary so that it would look like they were busy earning their wages. While he was talking rubbish, my eyes strayed to the array of shoes somewhere on the other side of the room. I was mesmerised for just five seconds. Still, he caught me.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
I panicked. Had he realised that I was not really listening to him? How was I going to escape from this latest trouble?
‘Are you looking at my shoes?’
I felt as awkward as a cow on ice. I did not reply.
‘You haven’t even seen anything.’ He laughed. ‘If you go into the next room, every single thing there is just shoes. And not one pair of them costs anything less than a thousand dollars.’
I kept looking at him.
‘Go on. Go out and look. I know you’re hungry, but after looking, you can come back and finish your rice.’
I put down the tray with my half-eaten meal on it and left. My uncle was right. The entire space was covered from wall to wall with racks. Each rack harboured shoes of a different shade and different make. There were green shoes and yellow shoes, and red shoes and turquoise shoes. Every single member of the class Reptilia must have been represented in that collection. I finished looking and returned to the bedroom.
‘Have you finished looking at my shoes?’
‘Yes, I have.’ Then as an afterthought, ‘Thank you.’
He nodded heartily and began another marathon monologue about his footwear. From there, he extended to the topic of his wristwatches and then to his designer clothing.
When his three bowls had nothing left in them but stubborn bones and fingerprints, my uncle lifted the Just Juice packet and poured the liquid directly into his mouth, pausing from time to time to spread his mouth open and belch out a noise that sounded like a frog in heat. I half-expected him to gobble up the empty packet as well. Instead, he flung it onto the tray. Then he shouted for Protocol Officer, who came and doled out some money retrieved, this time, from inside the wardrobe. I received the naira notes thankfully and left.
The next day, my father was transferred to the Abia State Teaching Hospital, Aba. A week later, he awoke.
To think that one person’s waking up from sleep could cause the sun to rise and the stars to shine in so many hearts. I was especially glad for my mother, whose constant night-and-day vigils had paid off. She had been right there when it happened.
Contrary to what soap operas have taught us to believe, a person who wakes up from a coma is first disoriented and confused. So my mother could not say exactly how long it was that my father’s eyes had been open.
‘It was around 11 a.m. or so that I raised my head from a brief nap and saw him staring at the ceiling,’ she said.
Like people who dream without ever expecting their dreams to come true, at first she had dismissed what she saw as the wishful thinking of a desperate wife who had spent the past many nights sleeping on a raffia mat on the floor of her husband’s hospital room.
‘Next thing, his eyes just turned and started looking at me,’ she continued.
Then he opened his mouth and said something in Igbo.
‘Ha abiala? ’
My mother became worried. The only times she heard her husband speak Igbo were when he was dealing with the villagers. He never spoke it to her, he never spoke it to us, he never spoke it in our house. Even the house helps from the village were banned from speaking vernacular. In due course, though, my mother realised that it did not matter what language he was speaking. The fact was, her man was awake and talking.
‘I started jumping about and screaming for the nurses to come,’ she laughed. ‘Honestly, you should have seen me. You would have thought I’d gone mad.’
But she was afraid to touch him. When the nurses came in to investigate, she hovered around the bed and waited with her hands clasped against her chest. Finally, one of them noticed her reticence and assured her that her touch would not push him back into oblivion. My mother then sat beside him on the bed and stroked his hand until I arrived.
The rest of the day, my father stared as if seeing for the very first time. He stared at the ceiling, at the nurses, at me, and at his wife. Apart from one or two insignificant phrases in Igbo, he did not speak and did not acknowledge anyone when he was spoken to. His breathing was also not much different from when his eyes had been closed. The doctor confirmed that his left side was slightly paralysed and that he might not be able to regain his communication skills for some time. He also explained that it was common for patients just waking from a coma to speak languages that had been relegated to the archives of their minds.
‘The most important thing,’ the doctor said, ‘is that there has been some major progress.’
Each day brought some new improvement. The catheter was removed. He could walk to the bathroom while he leaned on my mother’s shoulders, taking one slow step after the other. He was able to eat some solid foods which my mother fed to him with a small plastic spoon as if he were a baby. She never complained. Not even when he spat unwanted food onto her clothes.
Time and time again, my mother said that she owed everything she was in life to my father. Prior to his arrival, tradition had placed her as one of the least important members of her family. But when this most eligible bachelor asked for her hand in marriage, her ranking increased overnight. Her elder brothers even sought her opinion regarding arrangements for their father’s burial. Her union with my father, despite having suffered its own unique variety of roughness, had created a warm, secure environment for her because one thing had remained constant: her husband loved her and she enjoyed loving him in return.
I made quick arrangements for Godfrey, Eugene, and Charity to visit the hospital to welcome their father back to our world. One by one, they walked up to his bed and held his hand.
‘Daddy, how are you?’ Godfrey said.
‘Daddy, we miss you,’ Eugene said.
‘Daddy, when are you coming home?’ Charity said.
As soon as they touched on his daughter, a faint glow seemed to light in our father’s eyes and the right side of his lips appeared to twist slightly upwards. That was when we knew for sure that he was aware of us being there.
Owing to the distance from Umuahia to Aba, my siblings could no longer pop into the hospital as casually and as regularly as before. Neither could my mother come home as often for a change of clothing or to inspect her shop. She packed some personal items and became a permanent resident of the hospital. Depending on the kindness of the nurses on duty, she had her daily shower in one of the hospital bathrooms. Regarding family visits, we agreed on an arrangement where the less significant participants in the hospital drama would sort of take it in turns. That particular morning, it was Charity’s turn and I took her along with me to Aba.
My mother was dozing off on the bedside chair when we arrived. With an excited yelp and a fervent shoulder shake, Charity woke her up. They hugged and kissed and cuddled as if they had not seen each other in months. I observed my mother’s eyes casting their spotlight on Charity’s armpit. The hair had overgrown again. My mother removed her eyes and let the matter pass.
Charity sat beside my father on the bed, holding his hand tenderly, as if she were afraid that it might fall on the bed and crack.
‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘we’ve started reading Macbeth in school and we had a test last week. I made the highest score because I was the only one in class who knew the main significance of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene.’
She paused and smiled. The blank expression on my father’s face did not change.
‘We’ve also started Organic Chemistry,’ Charity went on, ‘but I’m not really enjoying it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to tell which one is a straight chain and which one is a compound chain.’
My sister looked distraught. I was tempted to tell her that I would teach her how to work it out later, but decided that now was not the time. Charity continued chatting – about school, about her test scores, about a documentary on the Nigerian/Biafran civil war which she had watched on television – without bothering that he was not responding. Watching her evoked memories of when I was a child, when my days were never complete until my father had carried me in his lap and told me a folktale.
While Charity was still talking, my mother got up. She gestured discreetly with her eyes, like a crook, indicating for me to follow. I allowed some seconds to pass before leaving.
My mother had stopped somewhere just outside the ward. I walked over and stood beside her.
‘Mummy, is something wrong?’
‘No o, nothing is wrong. Just that Boniface was at the hospital this morning.’
‘Really?’
‘Hmm. I was equally surprised.’
She said that she had been cleaning my father’s teeth when the nurse on duty informed her that a visitor was waiting in reception. Without checking the clock, she knew that visiting time did not begin until about five hours later. Apart from my siblings and me, any other visitor who ventured near the ward before visiting time received a bark and a bite from the nurses. This time, the nurses did not seem to mind.
‘When I came outside, I saw a group of nurses whispering with excitement.’
They kept quiet when they saw her. The nurse who had come to inform her pointed with a significant smile. Uncle Boniface was standing there in the corridor with five men in dark suits and dark glasses.
‘He apologised for not coming earlier,’ she said and smiled.
So many different things had been taking up his time, but he had determined that he must come today. In fact, he was supposed to travel out of the country this morning, but had postponed his foreign business meeting to visit my father instead.
‘I was quite touched,’ she concluded.
‘I hope Daddy didn’t get upset about him coming,’ I said.
‘I don’t think so. At first, I wasn’t sure how your daddy would react to seeing him, but I felt it would be wrong to leave him standing in the reception. He didn’t stay for too long before he left. But while he was there, your daddy didn’t really show any emotions.’
‘On second thoughts,’ I said, ‘maybe it would have been better if he had been upset. That might have been what he needs to finally force him to say something intelligible.’
To my relief, my mother laughed at my morbid joke. These days, her face looked less tired. I had not heard her laugh so heartily in a very long time.
‘The nurses have been treating me differently since Boniface came,’ she continued. ‘He seems to be quite popular here in Aba. They kept telling me that they had no idea he was my brother. Some were asking if he’s my real brother or just a relative. When he was leaving, he even dashed them some dollars for lunch and told them to make sure they took care of his brother-in-law.’ She smiled like a happy child. ‘He wanted to lodge me in his hotel so that I can go there and be spending the night instead of staying here, but I refused.’
I could understand my father’s point of view, but, in truth, I was beginning to appreciate my uncle more and more. He had been so kind, so generous, so helpful. Right now, it did not matter where he got the money from. How would we have made it this far without him?
‘You should have agreed to go to the hotel,’ I said to my mother.
‘No, no, no. I’m fine. I want to be here whenever your daddy needs me.’
If only I had been there when Uncle Boniface made the offer, I would not have minded taking it up for myself. Truth be told, this daily travelling to and from Umuahia was quite debilitating.
‘Anyway,’ my mother continued. ‘He asked me to tell you to come and see him before you go back to Umuahia today.’
‘What does he want to see me about?’
‘He didn’t say. He just said I should tell you to stop at his house before you go.’
‘Maybe he wants to give me some more money.’
‘I thought so too,’ she agreed quickly. ‘He’s really been very kind to us during this difficult period. I only wish his money were not so filthy.’
‘His money might be filthy, but at least it’s being used for a good cause.’
My mother paused and thought.
‘Well, I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed eventually.
‘What about Charity? If I’d known I’d be going to see Uncle Boniface from here, I wouldn’t have come with her today.’
My mother considered.
‘It doesn’t matter. You can take her along. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. After all, we’ll eventually have to tell your daddy where we got most of the money for his treatment from and he would probably want to thank Boniface personally.’
That would be the marvel of all marvels. The word ‘probably’ was the most active part of that sentence.
‘Open my gate now!’ Cash Daddy bellowed.
Charity jolted like a firecracker. By now, I was unperturbed by these outbursts, but as we walked into the mammoth mansion, I worried about my sister’s tender sensibilities. Cash Daddy’s environment was not really the place for a lady.
We sat in the living room, and the well-fed sentry of the other day opened the refrigerator. I declined his offer while Charity threw her mouth open in amazement. Expecting to hear a response from her, the man left the cooling machine open.
‘No, thank you,’ I responded on her behalf. I knew Cash Daddy was likely to offer us food when we went upstairs.
The man had just slammed the refrigerator door shut when Protocol Officer came downstairs.
‘Kingsley, Cash Daddy is ready to see you,’ he said.
I held Charity’s hand and stood.
Upstairs, Cash Daddy was lying spread-eagled on the bed. Two striking ladies with dazzling light skin and ample mammary glands were with him. One was sitting at his feet with her eyes glued to the vast MTV screen, the other was pressing a pimple on his face with her fingers. Thankfully, all three of them were fully clothed. The girls were in short dresses. Their knees and knuckles were black where the bleaching cream had refused to work. Cash Daddy was wearing a white linen suit and a pair of oxblood shoes that looked as if they had been crafted in the Garden of Eden.
Cash Daddy saw Charity and sat up straight. He pushed the pimple-presser away. A smile struggled through the mass of fat on his face and finally shone through.
‘Ah! Is this not Charity?’ He beamed. ‘I didn’t recognise her at first. Look at this little girl of yesterday. You’ve already started growing breasts.’
Charity blushed. He reached out a chunky arm and swept her close to his chest. Suddenly, the smile seeped back into his face.
‘Be careful,’ he said seriously, wagging a chubby finger at her. ‘Be very, very careful. Very soon, all these stupid boys will start chasing you up and down. Make sure you don’t allow them to deceive you. That’s all they know how to do – to deceive small, small girls. Do you hear me?’
She turned her eyes to the floor and nodded coyly. Actually, I had never had cause to worry about my sister going astray. Charity had a good head on her shoulders.
Cash Daddy asked us to sit. He lifted the headset by his bed and shouted for his cook. I asked the man for pounded yam and egusi soup. Charity asked for fried rice and goat meat. The food arrived just as Cash Daddy’s cellular phone rang. He lifted the gadget and shouted into the mouthpiece.
‘Speak to me!’
After several minutes, he concluded his deafening conversation with someone called Long John Dollars. Then he dialled another number. The second phone call, about some money in his Barclays Bank Docklands account, kept him occupied until we finished our meals. Then he leaned over and opened the refrigerator by his bed. He pulled out a packet of McVitie’s milk chocolate biscuits and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream. He dumped the items casually on the stool in front of Charity.
‘Stay here and demolish these goodies,’ he commanded her.
My sister’s face lit up. When we were children, my father usually returned from work with these sorts of imported treats. Gradually, they had gone out of reach of the common man. I could not remember the last time I had eaten any McVities biscuits.
‘We’re going upstairs but we’re coming back now,’ Cash Daddy continued.
He headed out of the room.
‘Kingsley, follow me,’ he said without looking back.
I obeyed.
We went on to the fourth floor. He removed a key from his trouser pocket and opened a door. He stood aside to let me pass, then locked it behind us. It was the first time I had seen him open a door – or perform any other minor task, for that matter – without assistance from his numerous attendants. It was a weird sight, like seeing a United States president, say Bill Clinton, leaning over the bathroom sink and washing his socks.
This room was similar to his office. It had a mahogany desk with a budget of papers on top, and a worktop lined with fax machines, computers, and telephones. I spied a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation letterheaded sheet amongst the pile on the table. There were several other letterheaded sheets that I could not make out.
I sat in front of the desk. Cash Daddy dragged a chair beside mine and sat with his knees massaging my own knees. He looked serious, like a doctor about to inform me that I was in the last stages of colon cancer.
‘I was at the hospital to see your daddy,’ he began. ‘I’m happy that he’s getting better.’
‘Thank you very much, Uncle,’ I replied. ‘We’re really happy, too. And we’re also very grateful for all your financial support. Thank you very much.’
He scrunched up his face as if I had just looked him up and down and called him a blob of fat.
‘Kings, what do you mean by thanking me? What do you mean by that? There’s no need for you to thank me for anything. When the eye weeps, the nose also weeps. After all, you’re my brother. We’re family. Is that not so?’
There was a pause.
‘Is that not so?’
I nodded. There was a longer pause.
‘Kings,’ he said at last, ‘you must be wondering why I asked you to come and see me, is that not so?’
I nodded again. He nodded as well.
‘You see all these boys here… all these boys around me?’
I did.
‘They’re all working for me.’ He thumped his hand on his chest. ‘I put food on their tables, I put clothes on their backs, and I make sure that they’re well sexed. And guess what? None of them, not one single one of them, is related to me in any way. Kings, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided to help you.’
Wow. Perhaps he knew someone who was a top shot in the Petroleum Corporation. Perhaps the person was his very close friend. Perhaps the person had told him that he was looking for suitable employees and had asked him for a personal recommendation. Once again, ‘long-leg’ was about to work in my favour.
Cash Daddy leaned forward.
‘You see, there are two main things people like me have used successfully in business. One is the love of money. The other is a good brain. I can see that you’re the sort of person that will do very well in business. You, you’re a smart young man. I don’t know if you love money but I know… I can see… that you need it. I want you to come and work for me.’
He paused and stared as if expecting me to say something. I decided to tell the truth.
‘Cash Daddy, please, what do you mean? I’m not sure I understand you.’
He threw back his head and laughed.
‘Kings, I know you’re a smart boy, I know you understand me. Tell me, what do you think about what I just said?’
‘What sort of work do you want me to do?’ I asked, rephrasing my thoughts.
‘Oh… different things. At the beginning stage, some minor errands. There are one or two basic things you’ll need to learn. No matter how big some of us look today, all of us started from somewhere. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Money Magnet? He was my godfather in this business. I started by driving him around in his cars before I hit it and decided to launch out on my own.’
He leaned even closer and placed his hand on my shoulder.
‘You see, I have other urgent things to focus on in the near future and I need a smart person who can watch over things for me. Kings, I need you. I’d like you to move into my house as soon as possible and start.’
At that moment, a giant fly could have flown into my mouth, laid her eggs on my tonsils, and I would still not have noticed. The way he was talking so casually, you would have thought that he was simply asking me to run down to the shops and buy a packet of Nasco biscuits.
‘Uncle Boniface, are you actually asking me to join you in 419?’
He laughed.
‘You’re saying it as if I asked you to kill somebody.’ He slapped my thigh playfully. ‘Relax. One doesn’t refuse the food being offered without first opening the pot. I’ve been in this business for many years now and I can tell you there are two things I will never do. I will never take another person’s life and I will never follow another man’s wife. Those two things… never. You can call it whatever name you want, all I’m saying is that you should come and work for me.’
At times like this, I wished I was well versed in the art of using swear words. I remembered my visit to the church – the sermon and the way The Rich Man had spoken to Lazarus. I became angrier. Did Uncle Boniface think that because he gave my family crumbs from his massive fortune, he could think of me in such an insulting manner?
‘Uncle Boniface, I’m sorry,’ I replied, bolder than any man had the right to be in the presence of his benefactor. ‘I’m not cut out for this sort of business. I’m a graduate, and I intend to get a good job and later further my education. I’ve always wanted to study as far as PhD level and that’s what I’m-’
I stopped talking when Cash Daddy upgraded his laughter to a guffaw.
‘Kingsley,’ he asked, struggling to regain his breath, ‘what was it you said you studied in school?’
‘I read Chemical Engineering.’
‘Very, very good. That means you must know a lot of mathematics. ’
I did not dignify him with an answer.
‘Are you good with numbers?’
I continued saying nothing.
‘Go on, tell me. Are you good with numbers?’
‘Yes, I am,’ I answered as a matter of fact. ‘I’m very good with calculations.’
‘Do you know how to write one million naira? Do you know how many noughts it has at the end?’
‘It has six zeroes,’ I rattled off without even thinking.
‘Apart from when you were using a calculator in your classroom, have you ever written down one million naira in any single transaction before? Have you ever calculated money you wanted to spend and it came to a total of one million naira?’
He did not wait for me to respond.
‘So, after all this your education – the one you’ve done so far – what have you gained from it? With all the big, big calculations you did with your calculator in school, has it made you to calculate those same amounts of money in your own pocket? Or in your own bank account? Or in different currencies?’
He hissed. The sound was a fine blend of disdain and amusement.
‘You know something? Me, I don’t have a problem with poverty as far as it’s a choice somebody has made for himself. But look at you. Very soon you’ll be standing by the street with a tin cup in your hand – begging. Mind you, no one gets a mouthful of food by picking in between another person’s teeth. All your book… is that why you were wearing headmaster shoes the other day? Is that why your sister looks like somebody who hasn’t eaten since Christmas Day? Is that why your mother is wearing the cloth that other women were wearing in the sixties?’
He hissed again.
‘Just look at my sister. Today at the hospital, she was looking almost thirty years more than her age. Has all your book put food on your table? How many people are you feeding every month? How many people’s salaries do you pay every month? Eh? Tell me.’ He sneered. ‘See your mouth. You say you don’t eat rats but you just want to taste only the tail. Please don’t close my ears with all this your rubbish talk about education. Me, I don’t believe in film tricks. I believe in real, live action.’
The more he spoke, the more I found myself sitting straighter in the chair. He sounded almost as convincing as the multiplication table.
My father was learned and honest. Yet he could neither feed his family nor clothe his children. My mother was also learned, and her life had not been particularly improved much by education. I thought about my father’s pals, most of whom were riding rickety cars… about most of my university lecturers with their boogiewoogie clothes and desperate attempts to fight off hunger by selling overpriced handouts to students. Yet Uncle Boniface – our saviour in this time of crisis – had not even completed his secondary school education. However, my father’s hallowed words of time past rose up and sounded a piercing siren in my head.
‘Uncle Boniface, you can make all the fun you want, but in the long run, even the Bible says that wisdom is better than silver and gold.’
This time, he guffawed so long that it seemed as if the fat on his face might melt and start dribbling onto the floor. He started choking and struggled to catch his breath.
‘Ah, you think, me, I don’t know Bible myself? Or haven’t you heard the story of the poor wise man?’
I had no idea what he was talking about. Was this part of his infinite repertoire of Igbo proverbs, or was this a story from the Bible? Did he mean the story about The Rich Man and Lazarus? As far as I could remember, it never said anywhere that Lazarus was wise.
He saw the confusion on my face.
‘Ah, ah? I thought you’re the one who went to school. You’re the one who knows everything, including Bible? OK, wait.’
Using my knees as leverage, he pushed himself up. He strode confidently to the bookshelf and pulled out a leather-bound Bible. He returned to his seat and dropped the holy book in my lap.
‘Open Ecclesiastes,’ he instructed.
I did.
‘Turn to chapter nine.’
I did.
‘Read from verse fourteen to sixteen.’
I obeyed.
‘There-’
‘No, no, no. You don’t need to read it out. Read it to yourself.
Me, I already know it. It’s you with all your book that needs to hear it.’
I closed my mouth and read with my eyes only.
There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
Unimpressed, I finished at verse sixteen. Was it not Shakespeare who said that even the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose?
‘People like you can go to school and finish your brains on book, but it’s still people like us who have the money that feed your families.’
He laughed. His laughter was beginning to gnaw at my nerves.
‘Uncle Boniface, please. My father would never approve.’
‘Kings, we’re talking about money,’ he said with irritation. ‘Let’s leave poor men out of this conversation.’
With that, Uncle Boniface had exceeded the speed limit in his derogatory comments. He had no right to talk about my father in that manner.
‘Uncle Boniface, my father might be poor,’ I said with rising anger, ‘but at least he will always be remembered for his honesty.’
‘Is honesty an achievement? Personality is one thing, achievement is another thing altogether. So what has your father achieved? How much money is he leaving for you when he dies? Or is it his textbooks that you’ll collect and pass on to your own children?’
I sat staring at this braggart in disbelief. My father once said that people who did not go to school were perpetually angry with those who did. This man was a barrel of bile. An authentic devil in disguise. I decided to leave before a thunderbolt would come and strike the building. I rose and tossed the Bible on the executive desk.
‘Uncle Boniface, I’m sorry but if you’ve finished, I’m going.’
He laughed gently, like an apostle who was under persecution by people who understood very little about his life-transforming message.
‘Take your time. Don’t be like the grass cutter who likes eating palm nuts but doesn’t like climbing palm trees. I might be a very rich man, but from time to time, I can also exercise patience.’
I stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind me. I rushed downstairs and into the bedroom where Charity was still chomping on the chocolate biscuits. She had polished off the ice cream.
‘Let’s go!’ I ordered.
Charity opened her eyes like an astonished kitten. Then she must have seen the urgency in my face because she stood up hurriedly, still clutching the remaining biscuits. The other two girls did not remove their eyes from the MTV screen. I grabbed Charity’s arm and fled.
At last, the doctor decided that my father could go home. He said that his condition was stable, that he would regain the use of his muscles and speech gradually, even though it might take as long as two years for him to fully recover. Since we could not afford additional physiotherapy, the hospital educated us on the sort of exercises he could do at home. They also advised us to get him a walking stick.
Two days before he was due back home, my mother called me aside in the hospital.
‘Kings, I don’t think you should bother coming tomorrow.’
I was surprised.
‘Why?’
‘I want you to stay home and make sure everything is ready.’
She proceeded on a long list of microscopic instructions, and the next day I ordered Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka on a cleaning spree. They went about sweeping and scrubbing, dusting and polishing. I gave Charity some money to go to the market. She stocked up on unripe plantains, vegetables, and some other low-carbohydrate foods. From our parents’ bedroom to the living room, Eugene cleared the pathway of obstructing buckets and dusty storage cartons; my father would need as much space as possible to manoeuvre his faulty left limb. Godfrey changed the sheet on their bed and plumped the cushion on my father’s chair. I adjusted the television tripod stand so that it would be easier for him to watch without straining his neck. Then I went to the carpenter whose shop was close to my mother’s and collected the walking stick I had ordered a few days before.
That night, I found it hard to sleep. For the billionth time, I trembled for my life that no longer included Ola in the picture. I felt as if, like my father, I would have to start learning the basic skills of living all over again. But there was still hope. Ola’s mother might allow her to take me back once I moved to Port Harcourt and got a job.
I dug my head under my pillow and forced my mind to be quiet. Tomorrow would be a busy day; I needed all the rest I could get.
When sleep finally came, I dreamt about my father.
I was standing directly in front of him while he was sitting on his hospital bed.
‘Kingsley, do you want to be useful to yourself in this world?’
I answered in the affirmative.
‘Do you want to make me and your mummy proud?’
Again, my answer was the same.
‘Do you want people to know you and respect you wherever you go?’
Yes, I did.
‘Do you want to end up selling pepper and tomatoes in Nkwoegwu market?’
At that point, I woke up sweating.
Sometime in the early hours of that morning, my father died.
When I walked into the hospital ward in the morning, that strange instinct that tells a young man that he no longer has a father took over. I knew what had happened without being told. Right from the reception area, the nurses stared at me in a strange way, as if I had strapped a bomb to my abdomen and mistakenly left my shirt unbuttoned. Then I heard my mother.
‘Hewu o!’ she screamed. ‘You people should leave me, let me die!’ The sound of her voice seemed to be coming from her intestines instead of from her throat. She was engaged in physical combat with some of the nurses. Whenever she managed to break free from their hold, she flung herself to the floor or bashed her head against the cement wall. She was writhing and gnashing her teeth like someone burning in hell. I stood in silence for a while, watching this apparition. Then I walked past them and opened the door to my father’s room. Two male nurses walked in with me and stood within arm’s length.
Someone had covered him from head to toe with a white sheet that had a huge circle of ancient brown dirt right in the middle. Interesting that they had sheets for the dead but none for the living. I shifted the cloth aside. I lifted his hand and squeezed his fingers in my palm. They felt cold and stiff. I placed my ear against his chest and listened. I checked for a pulse. Lastly, I lifted his eyelids and stared. My father stared back.
When I finally understood that I would never again hear the shuffling of my father’s feet as he came to the dining table, I sat down heavily beside the bed. I gripped my head. The two nurses came closer and stood beside me like sentinels. Then, as with a person in the very last moments of death by drowning, several scenes from my life flashed before me. They came one after another, awakened from the dormitories of my mind like a parade of supernatural characters in a Shakespearean drama.
In the first scene, I was sitting on my father’s lap, while my mother was lighting a kerosene lamp. NEPA had taken the light.
‘Kings,’ my father said suddenly, ‘do you know how the tortoise broke his back?’
I had seen the tortoise several times on television. His shell was in patches, as if several pieces had been glued together to make the one. I shook my head. I did not know.
‘Once upon a time,’ he began, ‘there was a famine in the land of the animals.’
The animals decided that they would each kill their mothers and share the meat. They started with Squirrel, and went on to Fox, then Elephant, Antelope, Tiger… Finally, it got to Tortoise’s turn.
‘But Tortoise was very tricky,’ my father said.
He decided to hide his own mother. He made a very long rope, used it to climb up into the sky with her, then came back down and hid the rope. Afterwards, he started weeping and wailing. When the animals asked what the matter was, Tortoise told them that his mother had died.
My father mimicked each animal saying ‘sorry’ to Tortoise.
Every day, Tortoise would bring out the rope from where he had hidden it, and climb up to the sky to give his mother some food to eat. One day, Fox noticed that Tortoise was always going out with some food. He became suspicious and followed sneakily behind him. He watched Tortoise climbing up to the sky.
When Tortoise finished feeding his mother, on his way down, he saw the other animals gathered at the bottom of the rope, waiting for him. In panic, he started climbing back up. The animals noticed that he was trying to escape and started pulling the rope. They pulled so hard that the rope broke and Tortoise crashed to the ground.
‘Tortoise landed on his back,’ my father concluded. ‘Till today, his shell is still cracked in several places.’
The scene faded. Another took its place.
I was having breakfast with my parents. My father went to check who was thumping our front door so loudly on a Saturday morning, like a landlord being owed a year’s rent. Five of his sisters poured in, each of whom aspired to a higher standard of obesity than the previous one. As soon as they were seated and all the pleasantries over, the eldest sister began.
‘Pauly, we’re very unhappy with the way things are. How can we come into our eldest brother’s house, and instead of the noise of children running about the place, everywhere is so quiet?’
My father did not respond. The second eldest sister took over.
‘Like Ada was saying, we’re very worried. You’re not getting any younger. You don’t have to wait until all your hairs have turned grey and all your teeth have fallen out before you decide to do something about the situation.’
She handed the baton back to Aunty Ada.
‘Pauly, we understand that you’re busy with your job at the Ministry. You might not have the time to sort things out for yourself, so we’ve decided to help. We’ve found two girls in the village that you can choose from. They are chubby and have very strong bodies. We want you to come down to the village with us and have a look at them so that you can decide which one to choose.’
My mother received the pronunciamento with silence. A woman who could not produce children deserved whatever treatment she received from her in-laws. So far, her only saving grace had been that my father was standing firmly by her. My father, on the other hand, reacted with ferocity. He slammed a fist on his knee, sprang up from his chair, and clenched his teeth till the two white rows almost merged into one thin, white line.
‘I’ve heard what you people have to say,’ he said. ‘Now would you please get up and leave my house.’
He spoke in a low voice that still managed to startle everybody. But Aunty Ada recovered quickly. She jumped out of her chair, stationed her hands on her waist, and poked her face into his nose.
‘Paulinus!’ she barked. ‘It’s not today you started allowing this, your education, to confuse you. No matter what, every man needs children to carry his name. Every man! God forbid, but what if something was to happen to Kingsley? That means your name vanish forever. Is that what you want?’
My father roared like King Kong.
‘Leave my house right now! All of you… get up and leave! Get up and leave! Now!’
Another scene.
I had accompanied my father to inspect the work-in-progress on our village house. The workmen were laying the foundation. Towards evening, he took me on a stroll down the dusty village path. It was the same route he had trekked daily to the mission primary school as a child – barefooted because, back then, children were not allowed to wear shoes.
‘This tree is called Orji,’ he said, pointing at a tall one with a mighty trunk. ‘That’s from where we get our kola nuts. This one is Ahaba. It makes the best firewood. This one is called Udara.’ He smiled. ‘Whenever it was udara season, I and my friends used to wake up much earlier than usual so that we could pick the ripe fruits that had fallen to the ground at night, on our way to school. We always had to wait for the fruits to fall by themselves because they are never sweet when you pluck them.’
Soon, it was time for us to go home. I was disappointed.
‘Don’t worry,’ my father said. ‘When our house is completed, we’ll come and spend a whole week here so that I can show you the river and the farms and the forests.’
Several other images came and went.
My graduation day. My father was smiling and watching me pose for a photograph. He raised his hand and asked the cameraman to wait. Then he walked up to me and adjusted the tassel on my cap.
‘This is a picture you’re going to show your children and your grandchildren,’ he said. ‘You have to make sure that everything looks perfect.’
How was I going to tell Godfrey and Eugene and Charity that their father would never be coming home, that he would never switch off the television abruptly and order them to study? Their father would never witness their matriculation ceremonies into university, tell them what courses to choose or what schools to fill into their forms? I wished I had died instead.
My mother let out another sharp scream. Then I remembered Ola, and that she was not there to hold me. I crumbled into tiny pieces.
Our house was brimming with condolers. Some I recognised, others I did not. Some came in the morning, some came in the evening. Some brought food items, some cooked what others had brought. We borrowed chairs from our neighbours to accommodate the rising numbers. Those who still did not have places to sit either squatted on the linoleum floor or stood behind the circle of variegated chairs. Each night, there were bodies snoring on the floors and limbs dangling over chairs in the living room.
Every morning, my mother dressed in her dark-coloured wrappers and sat in the living room to accept condolences. Her eyes were always wet and swollen. With each new person that came, she retold the story.
‘I usually don’t wake up at that time of morning,’ she would begin, ‘but for some reason, I woke up around four-thirty that day. Then, I noticed that I was feeling a bit cold.’
Her first thought was that her husband would probably feel the chill. She rose from her raffia mat and turned off the table fan. Then she returned to the floor and almost fell back into sleep, but something was nagging. The silence was unusual. At last, it dawned on her. Her husband’s respiratory orchestra had stopped playing. There was no rattling, no laboured breathing. My mother sprang up from the floor and crawled towards his bed. She leaned on the edge and tore at the mosquito net.
‘I started calling his name and shaking his shoulders.’
Those listening struggled to hold back their tears.
When he did not stir, she repeated his name and shook him again – more violently – hoping that he might even yelp. When he still refused to respond, she flicked on the light and saw the open mouth and half-shut eyes.
‘I didn’t even know when I started screaming.’
Those listening started crying and wailing.
After my mother narrated this story to my father’s sisters, his brothers, her brothers, her sisters, our neighbours… Aunty Dimma instructed that it was enough.
‘You can’t use all your energy to keep telling that story,’ she said.
‘When another person asks you how it happened, just tell them that you can’t talk now.’
Almost all the people who came proceeded on an undeclared competition to see who could wail longer and more bitterly than the other.
‘Hewu o!’ one woman chanted. ‘Onwu, chei! Elee ihe anyi mere gi o?!’
A man staggered into the living room and let out a fearsome yelp.
‘Paulinus!’ he called. ‘Paulinus!’ he called again.
The man shook his head and sat while a wrinkled man took his place and launched into the milestones of my father’s lifetime.
‘Do you remember the day he first came back from London? How his face lit up when he sighted us waiting for him on the dock?’
‘Are you telling me?’ resumed another male voice. ‘How about the day he came to tell us that his wife had had their first son? Do you remember the big smile that was covering his face?’
‘Where is the opara?’ the elderly man asked.
They all turned and looked at me.
‘Hewu!’ the man cried. ‘He looks exactly like his father. In fact, carbon copy.’
He was lying. I had my father’s hairline and my father’s eyebrows, but everything else belonged completely to my mother. Except nobody was sure where I got my small nose from.
‘Paulinus was the most intelligent man in our class,’ another man said. ‘He used to take first position all the time.’
‘Do you remember how he used to ask questions about everything as soon as the teacher finished teaching?’
‘And he never stopped reading; he always had a book in his hands. Truly, I’ve never met a more intelligent man in my life.’
The eulogy continued. Ola walked in.
The sun broke through the clouds. For the first time in these series of grievous occurrences, I began to feel that God was truly in His heaven and that all was right with the world. She came over to me.
‘Kings.’
I stood.
Two big tears fell from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her pretty lips. I reached out and held her hand. She squeezed it. Suddenly, grief tasted different, as if some saccharine had been stirred in to make it less bitter.
‘Let me greet your mummy.’
She knelt on the floor in front of my mother and whispered into her ears. My mother nodded as she had been nodding to everyone else who had been whispering into her ears. From there, Ola went to Godfrey and Eugene and Charity, who were seated around the dining table with a flock of relatives surrounding them. Then she came over to where I was waiting by the kitchen door.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine. How are you, how are you doing?’
A surge of love overwhelmed my grief. I felt as if everything was almost all right now that she was here. Indeed, it must be true what someone said about love being the cure for everything. Everything except poverty and toothache.
‘It’s all been quite a shock,’ I replied. ‘I had no idea he was going to die.’
I retold my mother’s story word for word. She cried in all the right places while I squeezed her hand.
‘What of plans for the burial?’ she asked.
I sighed.
It was vital for every Igbo man to be buried ‘well’. The amount required to give my father the sort of send-off that would be deemed suitable for a man of his untitled status would total ten times more than what we had expended on bills for the duration of his hospital stay. Apart from the entertainment of guests for the wake-keeping and funeral, there was a certain amount of livestock and liquor that tradition required us to present to each of the different age grades in our village. There were the expenses for the obituary, the mortuary, the embalmment, the grave, the coffin, and the welfare of guests that would come from far and near. To make matters worse, our house in the village was not yet complete. It was extremely embarrassing for our guests to see my father being buried in a compound with a building that was mere carcass.
‘We’re waiting to see how much our relatives can contribute,’ I replied. ‘But whatever the case, the burial has to be very soon because we don’t want to spend too much on mortuary fees.’
‘Won’t there be-’
An elderly woman stepped in and broke into a glum song about how dead bones shall rise again. As she sang, she swayed from side to side and cried. Most of the other mourners joined in with the singing.
‘Okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo…’
I wished they would all just shut up and allow us to mourn in peace. Besides, the competition was settled. No one would ever outdo my father’s sisters in drama and intensity of mourning.
‘I need to go,’ Ola said.
‘No, stay a little bit longer. I really need you now.’
‘I really need to go. I can’t stay too long.’
I followed her outside. We walked round to the front of the house. I dragged her into the vestibule that led up to the other three floors of our building. The place was quiet.
‘Ola, you probably don’t know how glad I am to see you. I’ve not stopped thinking about you for one single day.’
She threw her eyes to the floor. I touched her cheek with my hand and told her how much I loved her. I told her I understood the pressure she must be under from her mother. I told her that I was moving to Port Harcourt, that I was definitely getting a job soon even though it might not be with an oil company. I told her that she would certainly not regret her decision to wait a little bit longer for me. She may have been listening, she may not.
‘Kings, it’s too late,’ she said when I finished.
‘What do you mean “too late”?’
She looked up, she looked sad, she looked afraid.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Sorry for what?’
‘Kings, I’m getting married.’
Consternation struck me dumb.
‘I’m getting married to someone else. Everything has been fixed.’ She paused. ‘I’m really sorry.’
At what point would Ola smile and confess that this was all part of some expensive joke? Perhaps another side effect of her being a citizen of Venus. Then I stared into her eyes and knew it was no joke. I felt as if I had been stabbed in the back, punched in the eye, struck on the head with a pestle, and bitten in the ankle, at the same time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘What do you mean “everything”? Do you mean the wedding?’
She nodded.
‘They’ve taken wine to my father and he’s given them a date.’
I was quiet and kept quiet and continued keeping quiet. But, sooner or later, the ugliness of life loses its power to shock. I became ready to hear the rest.
‘So how long have you known this man?’
She sighed, as if she was relieved that we had finally scaled the highest hurdle.
‘I met him a while ago,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t until recently that things became serious.’
Aha! The Dolce & Gabbana wristwatch and the Gucci slippers and the Fendi handbag. The man was clearly very serious.
‘Who is he?’
‘There’s no need-,’
‘Just tell me… Who is he?’
‘What are you doing with that information? Are you going to plant a bomb in his car?’
Aha. The man even had a car. All my feelings rolled up into one tight ball of anger.
‘I’m just curious. What’s the point keeping it secret? After all, it’s not as if you’re going to have a secret wedding.’
She shrugged.
‘I guess you’re right. His name is Udenna. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Ude Maximum Ventures. He’s the one that owns it.’
Of course I had heard of UdeMax. His logo was branded on several buses that carried passengers from Eastern Nigeria to Northern Nigeria and back again. His logo was on several of the gwongworos that transported palm oil and tomatoes and onions. Suddenly, my mind stubbed against a rocky thought.
‘Ola, did he go to school?’
She refused to answer. I panicked. Most Igbo entrepreneurs of his kind never completed any formal education.
‘Wait! You’re planning to get married to somebody who didn’t even go to school? Ola, what’s the matter with you?’
‘You know what, Kingsley? I have to leave now. I need to go before it gets dark.’
I was about to bark something else when she pressed something into the palm of my hand. I looked. It was a wad of naira notes.
Haha.
Back in school, Ola often shared whatever little pocket money she had with me whenever I was broke, which was almost always. The difference was that then, the money was not from Udenna’s pocket. I pushed the wad back into her hand.
‘Please take it,’ she insisted.
I shook my head vigorously. Never.
‘Kings, please…’
I continued shaking my head. She forced the notes back into my palm. I flung them away. She looked hurt. She abandoned the notes on the ground and started walking away.
‘Olachi, take that money away!’
She was jolted and stopped in her tracks. She picked up the notes and hurried off. I stared into her back as piercingly as I could without committing homicide.
Two days later, the familiar sounds of grief in our living room were dispelled by the sudden din of commotion outside. Through the open louvers, I saw that a throng of neighbours and passers-by had gathered to watch. It was not often that a convoy of Land Cruisers and CR-Vs blared horns and rumbled engines on Ojike Street.
With Protocol Officer’s help, an aqua green shoe protruded into view. Cash Daddy poured out of the car.
I was ashamed to sense how relieved I felt to set my eyes on him.
My father was buried in grand style.
A few days before the funeral ceremony, Cash Daddy took out full-page obituary announcements in three of the most widely read national newspapers. At the bottom of each page, it was mentioned in bold print that he was the sponsor of the announcement. My father’s photograph took up three-quarters of the page. Uncle Boniface’s mug shot was inserted in a corner, just beneath my father’s own.
‘When people see my photograph with your father’s own,’ he said, ‘it’ll catch their attention immediately and they’ll want to read the whole thing. When they find out that I’m related to your father, they’ll make sure they attend.’
He also paid for obituary announcements on radio and television. Each one ended with the announcer declaring: ‘This burial announcement was signed by Chief Boniface Mbamalu a.k.a. Cash Daddy, on behalf of the Ibe family.’
There were cloth banners hung in strategic places from our village all the way to the express road, and large obituary fliers posted on walls and trees. We hired a fifty-eight-sitter commercial bus to transport my mother’s relatives all the way from Isiukwuato to Umuahia. Food and drink were very plenty, more than enough for the villagers to scuffle over and for the opportunistic to smuggle away in their inner garments.
During the funeral Mass, when I saw how smart my father looked in the brand new Italian suit my mother and his younger brother had dressed him up in, I could not help the tiny smile that crawled out onto my lips. My father had always preferred Western fashions to traditional African clothes. He said they were less cumbersome. Quite unlike most men of his generation, my father had no quarrel with the white man. He also preferred his climate; he said that the more temperate weather conditions made it easier to think creatively. And he preferred his diet; he said their food did not contain too much spice, which made it easier to enjoy the original taste of the ingredients. Several people mockingly referred to my father as onye ocha nna ya di ojii, the white man whose father is black, but he never cared.
From church, we accompanied the coffin back to our compound, where four of my father’s male relatives heaved it into the open grave that had been dug a few inches from our brand new building. After more than eleven years of the structure being a monument to our hardscrabbling, in just a few months the village house had been roofed, painted, and furnished in time for the burial ceremony.
The priest sprinkled some holy water over the grave and began the committal rites in an unhurried and solemn voice.
‘Our brother, Paulinus Akobudike Ibe has gone to his rest in the peace of Christ, may the Lord now welcome him to the table of God’s children in heaven.’
I stared into the grave and tried not to think that my father was lying in there, about to be concealed from me, from all of us, forever. My mother tottered beside me. Her relatives gathered closer around her. They all wore dark blue ankara fabric. My father’s relatives wore the same design, but in dark green. The younger men in the immediate extended family wore white T-shirts with my father’s photograph printed on the front. My mother, my siblings, and I wore outfits made from expensive white lace. Every category of cloth had been provided free of charge for the various groups of people.
‘Because God has chosen to call our brother Paulinus Akobudike Ibe from this life to Himself, we commit his body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.’
My mother fell to the ground and had to be dragged up by two of her sisters and Aunty Dimma. Cash Daddy sniffed very loudly. He was dressed in the same ankara fabric as my mother’s other relatives, but there was just something about having money. Cash Daddy stood out from all of them.
‘Merciful Lord,’ the priest continued, ‘You know the anguish of the sorrowful, You are attentive to the prayers of the humble. Hear
Your people who cry out to You in their need, and strengthen their hope in Your lasting goodness. We ask this through Christ our Lord.’
‘Amen.’
Aunty Dimma held on tightly to prevent my mother from rocking into the six-foot hole. My mother looked like a ghost, like a dead person mourning another person who was dead. The only signs that she was alive were that her eyes were red and flooded, and her face was dripping and contorted. Godfrey and Eugene stood beside me on the other side, both weeping like three-yearolds who had received a severe spanking. Godfrey was holding Charity’s two hands tight. She was wailing at the top of her voice and struggling to jump into the grave.
Because I was the opara, after my mother shook a handful of soil into the open grave, it was my turn. I bent and grabbed a handful of the freshly dug-up soil. As I rose and looked into the grave again, I felt the tears welling up. Trying to be a man, I blinked and looked straight ahead while the dust crumbled from my fingers. My eyes landed on my young cousin’s chest, and on the photograph of my father printed on his white T-shirt. My father had posed for the shot during his graduation from Imperial College, London, probably hoping that he would show it to his children and to his grandchildren. The tassel from his cap was hanging over his right eye. And he was grinning with the confidence of one who knew that he was about to conquer the world. Ha.
I took my eyes away from the photograph and dislodged the last crumbs of sand into my father’s grave. My mother swooned and passed out.
Afterwards, my father’s female relatives were ready to perform the next phase of the bereavement rites. It was time to shave my mother’s hair. Knowing how much my father loved my mother’s long hair and how strongly he detested backward customs, I vehemently opposed it. Even when Aunty Ada scolded me for hindering my father’s smooth passage to the spirit world, I refused to budge. It was my duty to honour my father and to protect my mother. I was the opara.
In the end, it was my mother who told me to step out of the way.
‘What’s the point?’ she asked. ‘The person for whom I’ve been wearing the hair is no more, so what do I care?’
Right there and then, a switch flipped inside my head. Indeed, my father was no more. And it was my responsibility to start caring for the people who were still here. There was nothing stopping me now.
By the time the women finished their task, my father could have looked down from the spirit world and seen his reflection gleaming on his beloved wife’s skull.