As Papa slowly awakened, Mama went over to her armless chair, folding her arms over her bosom. She had the look of a guard dog awaiting the “attack” order from its master. It was a look that filled my heart with a warm glow. I felt like a child whose big brother was going to thrash the school bully for picking on him. Papa forced his eyes apart, his movements sluggish, confused. A look of annoyance clouded his face as he kissed his teeth in an angry hiss.
“Can’t a man get any rest in his own house?” he grumbled, stretching his hand for his snuffbox by his side table. His mood didn’t lighten any when his eyes settled on me. I could see the dark brown tobacco stain at the tip of his nostrils, just above his lips. Mama nodded at me to speak.
Once again, I could not hold back my tears as I told Papa my tale, showing him the wreck Agu had made of my body. I was angry, shouting my rage as I recounted the litany of abuse Agu and his people had inflicted on my person. It was as if my voice, long buried, had been given a new life; as if my pride, long murdered in Ukari, had been reanimated within the safety of my father’s house.
I wanted vengeance. I wanted Papa to take the tough village boys to Ukari and trash the skin off that midget trader and his obese sisters. I wanted Agu and his family to cry as I had cried, to feel the burning of birch, the pounding of fists, the cutting of flesh, just as I had done. But most of all, I wanted my old room back; that small book-choked room I’d shared with my sister once upon a blissful time, before I was driven from its womb-like warmth to the cold soulless Hades of Agu’s house.
Papa listened to me in total silence, his dark face inscrutable, unyielding. The hard blackness of his eyes told me that he would not save me from my matrimonial hell.
I was not mistaken. Papa looked at Ibe as if to say, “Take good heed of this crucial lesson for when you have troublesome daughters of your own,” before turning back to me. A deep frown creased his forehead as he piled his nostrils with yet more tobacco powder.
“You are your husband’s chattel now,” Papa said, fixing me with a fierce look that would brook no arguments. “Nobody can come between a man and his wife. Whatever food they dish out to you should be eaten with endurance and gratitude. It is bad enough that you have shamed this family with your barrenness without adding the dishonour of a divorce. Where do you expect me to find the money to refund him the dowry he paid on your head should you return, eh? Do you want me to sell my Ọgọdọ, my precious loincloth, to raise money to refund your dowry? Go, return to your husband and cease your whinging and childish behaviour. Kindly remember that you’re the Ada, my first daughter. Your sister looks to you to set a good example. Do not let her down.”
My father waved me away from his presence. I cast a wild look at my mother, unable to comprehend, to accept what my ears had heard. Surely, Mama would not stand by and let this happen to me; surely, she would talk to my father, convince him that I must never return to Ukari under any circumstance…
But my mother shrugged and looked away. My mother would not meet my eyes. The guard-dog look left her face and instead, I saw her lips curl down in that familiar manner I remembered from childhood, that silent message that said, “Your father knows best. You have to do as he says”. But this was no longer some petty quarrel between siblings, some childish ploy for attention. This was a matter of life and death…my life, her daughter’s death! Surely, she would not fold her hands and watch me die. She had to do something, say something to change Papa’s mind. She was my mother, my mother!
“Mama!” My cry bore the weight of my pain, my terror. It forced itself from the depths of my soul, insisting on being heard. But my mother remained silent, a silent partner in her husband’s crime. For in my mind, what they were doing was criminal, heartless, even evil. How could two people who conceived and gave life to me calmly hand me over to my killer for thirty pieces of dowrysilver?’ They were no better than Judas Iscariot.
With weary resignation, I turned away from both my parents and walked out of the parlour, setting my face into the stoic mask of the example-giver, calm, patient and forbearing, just like a pious nun. After a ll, a s my father said, I was the first daughter and my sister expected me to set a good example.
Thankfully, my father was wrong. My sister, Gono, did not expect any such martyr-like example from me. She took one look at my set features and rushed over to me. Her tears re-awakened my own. She clasped my shuddering body in her arms as I poured out my despair to her ears, the only ears that truly heard my pain. My body shuddered with the force of my tears and anger.
“Bastards! Men are all bastards! Useless lumps of pig shit!” Gono raged. “I wish I were a man. By God, I will reincarnate as a man in my next life and then we’ll see who calls the shots. Look at that idiot, Ibe. Already he’s a replica of Papa, an akologholi, a useless little jerk with no brain cells in his big head. He’s not a child anymore, for Christ’s sake. He’s almost seventeen years now, the same age you were when you married that dwarf. If he were a real man, he would go to Ukari and trash the living daylight out of that short bastard that calls himself your husband. But don’t worry sis, don’t cry. Everything will be okay soon, you’ll see.”
I hugged my little sister tightly, unwilling to separate our bond. I was allowed to spend the night under my father’s roof on the proviso that no one found out that I’d done so without my husband’s permission and that I left before the crow of the rooster the next day.
It was with a weary heart that I dressed up at the crack of dawn to make my feet-dragging way back to my husband’s house. Just before I got on the Mami-wagon taking me back to Ukari village, Mama ran out and pushed a piece of paper into my hand before rushing back into the house again, ever fearful of incurring my father’s wrath for encouraging my perceived rebellion. The short note, written in the familiar dear hand of my sister, Gono, contained the address of a famed Spiritualist, Pastor Brother Ezekiel of an Aladura spiritualist church. My sister’s bold calligraphy penned Mama’s wishes for me to visit the powerful pastor without delay, as he was the key to my problems. It was an instruction I was happy to obey. I was at the end of my endurance and ready to dine with Lucifer himself if he would free me from my marital yoke.
✦✦✦
Pastor Brother Ezekiel proved to be everything I had hoped for and more. He identified and broke all my ancestral curses, binding the demons of infertility with chicken and goat sacrifices, a full body wash in consecrated water, mixed with the blood of my monthly curse and a burnt offering of my shaved pubic hair, the pages of the book of Psalms and a newborn’s umbilical cord. I sold my best Ashoke ceremonial gown to raise the money to buy the last item from a private midwife and it was worth every last Naira note in the end.
Pastor Brother Ezekiel was possessed with the spirit of Arch-angel Michael on the night of my spiritual cleansing at his Aladura church. He spoke in tongues, wondrous and mysterious holy words that sent my senses into righteous ecstasy. And when Arch-Angel Michael possessed my trembling body, filling my womb with the holy seeds of fertility, I knew that my sorrows were finally at an end. Queen Ill-fortune had finally met her match in the all-conquering angel of our omnipotent creator, the Arch-Angel Michael himself!
✦✦✦
I gave birth to my son exactly nine months to the date of my holy cleansing and my husband aptly named him Chukwuebuka, meaning, “God is great!” Everyone called him Ebuka, the shortened version of his name. Ebuka’s birth healed the pain of my childless marriage, four years of humiliation, abuse and contempt. My sisters-in-law, overnight, metamorphosed from Lucifer to St. Peter, guarding my well-being and that of my son with the same zeal with which St Peter guarded the gates of heaven. Gone were the harsh words, the accusations, the bitter recriminations, the beatings. Even my husband had not lifted a violent hand on my person since the birth of his heir.
As the months went by and Ebuka grew stronger, Agu became kinder to me. He began addressing me with the endearment, Nkem, meaning, “my own.”
<
br /> I was treated with respect by the villagers and addressed by the proud title, Mama Ebuka. I was now a mother. I had fulfilled my calling as a woman, a daughter and a wife. I had finally earned my place in society and gained acceptance amongst my husband’s people.
I soon grew fat on a diet of contentment and pride. As our people say, a beggar who never dreamt of becoming a king will drown himself in ivory amulets from his heels to his chest so that no one will be in doubt of his importance. I was as crass as that stupid beggar, boasting of the beauty, the strength, the cleverness of my son, Ebuka. My eyes were haughty with pride, my voice loud in confidence, my mien complacent in contentment.
Until the day Queen Ill-fortune paid me an unexpected and devastating visit, wreaking deadly vengeance on me for my contempt of her might; that fatal eve of the New Yam festival, when the house-maid brought in the small lifeless body of my son, Ebuka, his features swollen and distorted by the venom of the evil viper, Echieteka, whose fearsome name meant, “tomorrow is too far to live.”
The clanswomen said that I would not let go of my son’s lifeless body; that I clung to him like a bat to its cave, fighting all that tried to pry him from my arms with the strength of ten mad women. They said that even after I had finally been restrained by the men of the clan, my relentless keening had kept the inhabitants of the surrounding compounds awake for several nights. According to them, the mourning food cooked for me by the village women went uneaten, while my body withered and wasted with the speed of my mind’s deterioration.
I remembered none of it. I remembered nothing beyond the cold, cold body of my beautiful son… and the callus laughter of Queen Ill-fortune ringing in my brain, day and night.
My son was dead. No one would ever again call me “Mami” in that sweet baby voice. Arch-Angel Michael had been roundly defeated by Queen Ill-fortune. I was soul-weary, tired of resisting my fate. Whatever evil I had done in my previous existence had to be paid for in full in my present life. I had now paid my dues. Ebuka was gone. I had lost everything. All I wanted was out, freedom to join my son in the dark, cold embrace of death. I knew there would be peace in the sandy warmth of the grave. At least in my next reincarnation, I would finally return with a good Chi.
✦✦✦
By the time my mind found its way back to the land of the sane, it was too late for me to find my son. Search as I could, ask as I dared, no one would show me where the tiny corpse of my son lay. All I knew was that he was buried in Ajọ-ọfia, the bad bush, a barren and desolate stretch of landscape inhabited by the cursed bodies of the unclean, those who died a cursed death. Their bodies were discarded in the bad bush, unmourned and forgotten—suicides, murderers, witches and wizards, night-flyers, poisoners, victims of lightning, mothers who died giving birth, widows who died while in mourning, children who died before their parents and people who were judged and destroyed by the Tree of Truth.
Nothing grew in Ajọ-ọfia but giant anthills, housing massive termites bloated from gorging on the corpses of the damned. It was no place for my innocent beautiful son, a laughing and happy child once beloved and cherished by all. His little red shoes still lay hidden in my room, buried deep in my Adu, a weaved cloth basket that held my expensive wrappers. My Adu kept the tiny shoes safe from the evil and prying eyes of the clanswomen. They would burn those beautiful shoes with the same speed with which they’d burnt all his clothing, wipe out all traces of his existence with the same cold and ruthless efficiency they had cast away his tiny body in Ajọ-ọfia, his grave unmarked by stone or cross, ensuring his name would be forgotten by mankind for all eternity and his spirit would never find its way back to its home to reincarnate amongst its people.
And for what crime? For dying from a poisonous snake bite? For dying too young before his time, before his parents? What had my innocent baby done to deserve such evil from the entire clan and village? I wanted to find his grave, to visit that accursed bush where his body lay discarded like bat-eaten mangoes, rancid and worthless. But my cowardly woman’s heart feared the vengeful ghosts of the accursed dead that shared the bad bush with my little son. No matter how many Hail Marys I chanted, how many bottles of holy water I drank, how many wooden and metal crucifixes I collected or how many Jigida charmed amulets I wore around my waist to ward off evil spirits, my courage refused to reside in my heart and I could never make the long and fearful journey to my child’s last resting place and mark his unhallowed grave with a mother’s loving touch.
✦✦✦
UKARI FOREST – 2 AM
Agu’s eyes, closed by death, suddenly fly apart, staring their bloody glare into my eyes, eyes stretched to my ears by heart-thumping terror. My limbs melt, my breathing stops, my heart falls to my stomach as I fight to retain my sanity in the midst of the latest horror that has descended upon me in this forest of the damned. As I struggle to revive my feet, to flee from the zombie ghoul on the raffia mat, his right arm, rotting with peeling flesh, shoots up and grabs my throat, squeezing out my life with a strength and malignancy that is beyond the realms of the living.
I scream—yell—as I struggle to escape from the vengeful decaying demon that had once been my husband. But my voice is silent, my cries swallowed by my terror. I see the stinking, bloated carcass slowly rise from the forest floor, the raffia mat clinging to its pus-seeping skin. The stench of decay and rank is overpowering, almost stealing the air from my lungs. That bristly and mottled organ is hard against my thighs, rough and painful. IT demands forceful entrance to my secret place, still bruised and hurting from all its previous assaults. The hands on my throat tighten their grip, squeezing, hurting, till I feel the darkness of death pounding in my brain, seeking entry.
Yet, even as death waits impatiently for my soul, even as I feel the deadly pressure on my throat, something in me refuses to give in, to give up without fighting for the one thing that still belongs to me—my life. As pathetic as it is, it’s still my own to keep or destroy. I know that if I don’t flee, find a way to break through the charmed salt boundary set around me by the witchdoctors, my soul will become entwined with Agu’s for all eternity.
For that is the fate of all murderers. Their lives are destined to be taken by their victim’s ghosts, to be joined to their victims in death, like co-joined twins, condemned to an eternity of vengeful justice at the hands of these earth-bound spirits. Blessed Virgin! I do not want to become a restless dead amongst my other curses and for all eternity, denied the chance of a better reincarnation. I begin to struggle with a desperation born of mind-killing terror, kicking, scratching, screaming, shoving.
My eyes fly awake and I rise to the sound of silence, a graveside stillness that makes me wish for the oblivion of death by its sheer soundless terror. My heart is thudding so loudly I fear I will faint and then truly be damned. With small whimpering cries, I scramble away on bruised knees from Agu’s bloated corpse, pulling myself to the very edge of the salt ring that has me chained to The Tree of Truth, shoulders hunched, my arms clasped tightly around my raised knees.
I stare—peer intently into Agu’s swollen face, searching, looking for any sign of the terrifying animation I’d witnessed in my nightmare. Do his eyes flicker? Do I see his nose twitch? Surely, I hear something that sounds as soft as dandelion pores, a pungent exhalation that blows a sudden chill on my exposed flesh!
I force my eyes to take a brave peep at the jutting monster between his naked thighs, still throbbing in its knobbled evil, the undead tentacle in the lump of fetid rottenness that was my husband. It pulsates with a living strength that defies the rancid body that houses it. Oh Mary Mother of God! Will IT never die? Will IT never wilt? Will IT ever let me go?
Pulling my hair, tangled in filthy clumps on my scalp, I feel like hammering a stone into my skull to punish my brain for its stupidity. How could I have allowed my guard to slip, to give in to sleep, allowing Agu’s vengeful spirit to attempt the possession of my body and chain me to him in eternal servitude? God knows he h
as enough to be vengeful about. My stupidity and desperation had cost him among other things, his life.
If only I hadn’t been so desperate, so frightened. But what mother can hear the pitiful cries of her child and turn a deaf ear? Everything would have been alright if only Ebuka hadn’t died, if Enu hadn’t come into our family, if I had stayed away from that demon, Ogbunigwe. If only I hadn’t been so foolish, so…
✦✦✦
Eight months after the death of my son, Agu took a second wife, Enu. Older than me by several years, she was young enough to provide the male child to replace my late son and ensure the perpetuity of our husband’s bloodline. Enu also had the advantage of being a local woman, born in Ukari of Ukari parentage. I was considered a tall woman but Enu towered over me by several fingers. She was a woman of mammoth proportions. Seeing her together with our husband for the first time was a sight I would never forget. Agu could have easily been mistaken for her son but for that strutting walk of his, peculiar to all pocketsize dictators. I would have burst out in a maniac’s laughter had my situation not been so dire.
As soon as the wretched woman swaggered her way into our house, Agu threw me out of my room and consigned me to the back quarters of the house, the section reserved for the domestic helps. Enu took over ownership of my room and all the privileges of the main wife, from the domestic helps to the shopping and food management. I couldn’t tell which was worse—the scorn of my husband and his sisters or the indifferent pity and contempt of the house-servants, who soon sucked up their way into the new mistress’ favour with tales of my anguish. I would see them gathered, sniggering, whispering into their new mistress’s ears. I was her senior in rank, the first wife, but our husband had stripped me of my rank and the respect that went with it. At best, I was no higher than the house servants now.
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