“Ah-han! Why did she do that?”
“I don’t know, my sister.” He gave her a sharp look to see if there was a reaction to what he had just called her. Then he said, “I don’t know, Mommy.”
Egbunu, although this was all he’d tell her about his sister for the time being, when one pries such a lid open, one sees more than one can account for. There is often no way to stop this. “Why would a child reject her parent?” his father would ask him, and he would say he did not know. To which his father would blink slow-moving tears. His father would shake his head and snap a finger over it. Then he would gnash his teeth tightly, making the sound of ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. “It is beyond me,” his father would say with even more bitterness than before. “Beyond any man at all—dead or alive. Oh, Nkiru, Ada mu oh!”
Because the memory of what he’d recollected weighed heavily on him, he wanted to change the line of conversation. “I will get you something to drink,” he said, and rose to his feet.
“What do you have?” She stood with him.
“No, you sit down, Mommy. You be my visitor. You suppose sit don make I feed you.”
She laughed and he saw her teeth—how tender they looked, lined up almost delicately, like a child’s.
“Okay, but I wan stand,” she said.
He shot a glance at her and arched his brow. “I didn’t know you can speak pidgin,” he said and laughed.
She rolled her eyes and sighed in the manner handed down from the great mothers.
He brought out two bottles of Fanta and handed one to her. He still bought crates of these drinks they call Fanta and Coke, as his father used to do for guests, even though he hardly ever had any guests. He stored some of them in the refrigerator and returned the empty bottles to the crates.
He pointed to the dining table, surrounded by four chairs. A half-burned candle sat on the used lid of a Bournvita tin, reshaped by a waterfall of wax that washed down the tin and formed a coating at its foot like the gnarled roots of an aged tree. He pushed this to the edge of the table by the wall and pulled out a chair for her on the side. He saw that she was looking at the calendar on the wall that had an image of the White Man’s alusi, Jisos Kraist, wearing a crown of thorns around his head. The inscription beside the raised finger of Jisos marched on her lips but did not become audible. He’d opened the drink when she sat down, and as he made to return the opener, she grabbed his hand.
Ijango-ijango, even these many years later, I still cannot fully comprehend all that transpired in that moment. It seemed that by some mysterious means, she had been able to read the intents of his heart, which had all along cast themselves upon his face like a presence. And she had come to understand, by some alchemy, that the smile he’d carried on his face all along was his body’s struggle to manage the solemn intransigence of its volcanic desire. They made love so heartily, so beauteously, for nearly an hour with a rare kind of energy. He was driven by a strange mix of unbelief and relief, and she by some feeling I cannot describe. You know, Chukwu, that you have sent me out many times to dwell in people, to live through them, and to become them. You know that I have seen many people unclothed. But still the ferocity of their encounter alarmed me. It may have been because it was their first time, and they both could tell—for this was indeed his thought—that there was something ineffably deep between them, and indeed I was reminded of her chi’s words: “My host has erected a figurine in the shrine of her heart.” It must be why at the end of it, when both of them were drenched in sweat and he saw tears in her eyes, he lay by her, saying words which—although she, he, and I alone could hear—were also heard in the realm beyond man as thunderous acclamations meant for the ears of man and spirits, the dead and the living, for the moment and forever: “I have found it! I have found it! I have found it!”
5
An Orchestra of Minorities
GAGANAOGWU, the daily life of lovers often begins to share resemblances, so that, in time, each day becomes indistinguishable from the one that came before it. The lovers carry each other’s words in their hearts when apart and when together; they laugh; they talk; they make love; they argue; they eat; they tend to poultry together; they watch television and dream about a future together. This way, time slips and memories accrue until their union becomes the sum of all the words they have said to each other, their laughter, their lovemaking, their arguments, their eating, their work with the poultry, and all the things they have done together. When they are not with each other, night becomes to them an undesirable thing. They despair at the masking of the sun and wait eagerly for the night, this cosmic sheet that has separated them from their beloved, to pass in fervent haste.
By the third month, my host realized that the moments he’d come to value the most were the times when Ndali tended the poultry with him. Although many things about poultry keeping—like the smell of the coop, the way the fowls defecate nearly everywhere, and the killing of the ones sold as meat to restaurants—still bothered her, she enjoyed tending to the flock. Even though she worked with my host without complaint, he remained worried about her perception of the work. He often recalled the university science lecturer at the poultry market in Enugu who had complained bitterly about the habit among poultry keepers of holding the birds by their wings, calling it cruel and insensitive. Although Ndali herself was training to be a pharmacist, sometimes wearing lab coats in some of the photos she showed him, she displayed no such sensitivity. She plucked with ease the overgrown feathers of the fowls. She harvested eggs whenever she visited in the early mornings or stayed over at his house. But even beyond the birds, she took care of him and his house. She poked her hand into the dark and secret places of his life and touched everything in it. And in time, she became the thing his soul had been yearning after for years with tears in its eyes.
In those three months, this woman he’d met on a bridge in a chance encounter, and who is the reason for my premature testimony this night, transformed his life. Without warning, Ndali arrived one afternoon with a new fourteen-inch television and a pressing iron. For weeks before that she’d laughed at him as the only person she knew who did not watch television. He did not tell her that he had had one from his parents’ time till recently, only weeks before he met her again, when in a rage at Motu’s disappearance he smashed it to smithereens. When, later, he realized what he had done, he took it to the neighborhood electronics repairman. After fiddling with it, the repairman told him, with much head shaking, that he should buy a new one. The cost of the bad part that needed replacement was the cost of a new set. He decided to let the TV remain with the repairman, in his small store along the busy highway, surrounded by ziggurats of electronics in different states of dysfunction.
Even beyond bringing the new things, Ndali ensured that his house stayed clean. She mopped the floor of the bathroom constantly, and when a frog leapt in through the drainpipe after a heavy downpour, she brought in a plumber to cover the mouth of the pipe with netting. She scrubbed the white tiles on the walls of the bathroom, which he had not cleaned in many months. She bought him new towels and hung them not on the top of the door—Because that must be dusty!—or on the bent nail on the interior of the door—Because the nail was rusting and now stained them—but on a plastic hanger. As time passed, it seemed she improved something in his life on a daily basis, and even Elochukwu, to whom he now gave little of his attention, attested continually to the enormous change in his life.
Although my host appreciated these things, he did not give deep thoughts to them until the end of the three months, when Ndali traveled with her parents to Britain, the land of the White Man. The reason for this is that people do not see clearly what is positioned before them until they regard it from a distance. A man may hate another because of an offense, but after a significant passage of time, his heart begins to warm towards that individual. It is why the wise fathers say that one hears the message of an udu drum clearer from a distance. I have seen it many times. It was thus in her absence that my host s
aw all she’d done for him more clearly. It was during this time also that all the things she’d told him became more audible, and he noticed all that had changed in his life and how the past before her coming now seemed like a different age from the present. And it was during those days alone, thinking about these things, that the desire came to him with all the bolting powers of a persuasion that he wanted to marry Ndali. He rose to his feet and shouted, “I want to marry you, Ndali!”
Ijango-ijango, I cannot describe the joy I saw in my host that evening. No poetry, no language can fully describe it. I had seen, long before his uncle came and asked him to find a wife, that he had been seeking this—since the day his mother died. I, his chi, was in full support. I had seen this woman, approved of her care for him, and even received the testimony of her chi that she loved him. And I was convinced that a wife would restore the peace he had lost since his mother’s death because the early fathers, in their most gracious wisdom, say that once a man builds a house and a compound, even the spirits expect him to get a wife.
Two days after he made this decision, Ndali returned to Nigeria. She called him once she arrived in Abuja with her family, whispering into the phone. As she was speaking, he heard the sound of a door opening somewhere in the house where she was, and the call ended that instant. He was picking eggs and replacing the floor of the main hennery with sawdust when she called. When she reached Umuahia later that day, it happened again. This time he’d just completed a meal at a restaurant he supplied eggs and chicken meat to, a place where he ate every once in a while. They’d started to talk when she ended the call abruptly at the sound of a door opening.
My host put down the phone and washed his hands in the plastic bowl he’d filled with the bones from the bonga fish served with egusi soup. He paid the daughter of the caterer, whose habit of wearing a scarf that folded into the shape of a bird’s tail often reminded him of Motu. He picked up a toothpick poking out of a plastic vase and walked into the sun. He waved down a peddler, who went about carrying water in small sealed bags, hawking his wares: “Buy Pure Water, buy Pure Water!” Agujiegbe, this buying and the selling of water has always amazed me. The old fathers would never have imagined, even in the time of drought, that water—the most abundant provision of the great earth goddess herself—could be sold the same way hunters sell porcupines! He bought one Pure Water and was tucking the ten-naira change into his pocket when his phone began to ring again. He removed it from his pocket, considered flipping it open to answer the call, but put it back in. He spat the toothpick away and bit open the bag and drank till the bag was empty, then he threw it into the nearby brush.
My host was angry. But anger, in a situation like this, often becomes a multiparous cat who bears litters of offspring, and it had already birthed jealousy and doubt in him. For as he walked back to his van, he kept wondering why he was giving himself to a woman who did not seem to care about him. I flashed the thought in his mind that there was no need to be annoyed with her and suggested that he wait till he’d heard her explanation and the full story.
He did not respond to my suggestion, but simply entered his van and drove past the large pillar along Bende Road, which bore the name of the town, still raging. He came by a rough intersection where a three-wheeled vehicle wedged itself between his van and another car and would have been run into had he not pulled the brakes. The driver of the small vehicle cursed my host as he pulled to the shoulder of the road.
“Devil!” he shouted at the man. “This is how you people die. You dey drive ordinary keke napep, but you dey do laik say na gwongworo you dey drive!”
His phone began ringing as he spoke, but he did not reach for it. He drove past the Mater Dei Cathedral, where he had not been for a long time, and, cutting through a small street, arrived at his farm. He turned off the engine, took the phone, and dialed her number.
“What are you doing?” she shouted into the phone. “What?”
“I don’t…,” he said, and breathed hard into the phone. “I don’t want talk to you by phone.”
“No, you must. What did I do to you?”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and wound down the window.
“I was annoyed that you did it again.”
“What did I do again, er, Nonso?”
“You are ashamed of me. You did not phone because another person was coming into the room.” He could catch his voice rising, starting to turn loud and vehement, a tone she often complained about as harsh. But he could not stop himself. “Tell me, er, who opened that door that time you ended my call?”
“Nonso—”
“Answer me.”
“Okay, my mother.”
“Er-er, you see? You are denying me? You don’t want your family to know about me. You don’t want them to know that I am your guy. You see, you are denying me in front of your people, Ndali.”
She tried to speak, but he pushed on, forcing her into silence. Now he waited for her to speak again, worried even more, not just because of what he’d betrayed in his tone but also because he’d referred to her by her name, something he did only when angry with her.
“Are you there?” he said.
“Yes,” she said after a pause.
“Then, talk naw.”
“Where are you now?” she said.
“My place.”
“Then, I’m coming there now.”
He dropped the phone into his pocket, and a silent joy rose within him. It was obvious that she had not planned to come meet him until after a few days, but he wanted her to come as soon as possible. For he missed her, and it was partly this that angered him. He’d also been annoyed by the anxiety that planted itself in him while she was away and became even more persistent after he developed the idea to marry her. As often happened to him—and to most of mankind—a questionable idea had formed in his mind with the power of a persuasion. At first people believe these ideas, but after a while their gaze becomes sharper and more penetrating so that they begin to see all the deformities of their plans. This was why, hours later, he became aware—as if it had been concealed from him all this while—that he was not rich, not particularly good looking, and not educated beyond secondary school. She, by contrast, was on the cusp of completing university and becoming a doctor (even though, Egbunu, she had told him many times that she was going to be a pharmacist, not a doctor). He needed her to come, to reassure him in some way again that he’d been wrong, that he was not beneath her but in fact her equal. And that she loved him. Although she did not know it, this was what she had done for him by agreeing to come.
He stepped out of the van and walked into the small farm, stopping halfway between the rows of the growing tomato plants to observe the ears of corn on the other side. Perhaps seeing him, a rabbit emerged and began hopping away into the cornfield in rapid, prodigious leaps, its tail swinging as it went. It would go a few steps, then stop, raise its head and glance about, and then run on again. He spotted a singlet—perhaps blown there by the wind from some compound—lying over one of the corn plants, bending it. He took up the singlet. It was covered with dirt, and on it was a black reticulated millipede. He shook off the millipede and was headed to dispose of the singlet in the dump behind the brick fence when Ndali arrived.
EZEUWA, the wise fathers in their cautionary wisdom say that whichever position the dancer takes, the flute will accompany him there. My host that evening had received what he wanted: that she come to him. But he had achieved it by protest and dictated the tune of the flutist. So when he went into the house, she was on her feet, her fingers splayed over her wearied face. She turned away once he came in, and with her eyes cast downward, she said, “I have come not to argue but to talk in a calm way, Nonso.”
Fearing that what she said might require him to focus on her for a long time, he asked to feed his flock first. He hurried out into the yard, wanting to return to her quickly. He opened the coop door, made of wood and netting. The chickens poured out, calling enthusiastically. They made a
sprint with expectation towards the foot of the mango tree, where he’d spread sacks but had not poured feed. Once they began to peck, piping, he walked back into the house and put the main door against a wedge, so that only the net door was closed. He scooped up one last big cup of millet and tied up the nearly empty bag which he kept in one of the cupboards in the kitchen to prevent the birds from devouring it. He returned to the yard and poured the feed on the sack at the foot of the tree. At once the sacks were covered by a gathering of hungry birds.
When he returned to the parlor, Ndali was seated and was looking at the camera she had brought from the White Man’s country, which she called a “Polaroid camera.” Her handbag was still by her side, and her shoes, which she referred to simply as “heels,” were still on, as if she was poised to leave soon. Egbunu, while one can often tell the state of a person’s mind from the expression on their face, it is now difficult to tell with the daughters of the great mothers. This is because they now adorn themselves in ways unlike the mothers. They have shunned uli, the elaborate braiding, the wearing of beads and cowries. And now, a woman can cover her face with colors of all kinds all by herself, with a single paintbrush, and one in misery can wear so much coloring on her face that she might even look happy. And this was how Ndali appeared that day.
“So tell me,” she said once my host sat down. “You want to meet my family?”
He’d settled into the weakest of the sofas so that his body sank low and he could barely see her complete figure, even though he was right in front of her.
Conscious of the anger in her voice, he said, “That is so, if we want to marry—”
“So you want to marry me, Nonso?”
“That is so, Mommy.”
She’d closed her eyes as he spoke, and now she opened them, and they appeared reddish. She adjusted in the sofa so that her legs came forward towards him. “You mean it?”
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