Waves Aligning

by Adaora O

  Thursday, March 2012

  Dear Mr Oliseh,

  If you are reading this note, it means I have been away for longer than I planned. Against my common sense and the warnings offered by my farm hands, I entered into a business arrangement with a man called Chief Utah. He is a very wealthy and well-known business man, but his business and wealth alone are not responsible for his fame. He is also known to be involved in unnamed shady dealings.

  He approached me to supply watermelons and cucumbers for his fruit juice factory, telling me he had a passion to encourage young entrepreneurs. I was ecstatic and gave everything to match the demand his factory placed on me. After a lot of hard work, I supplied four tons of watermelon and eight tons of cucumbers over two planting cycles. As is characteristic of Chief Utah as I later learnt, he refused to pay the agreed sum of 1,100,000 Naira to me. My staff is still being owed three months’ salary, but they stayed with me knowing the challenge I have been trying to deal with. All efforts to see Chief Utah met with futility. What broke my back was the news that my father had an emergency and the son of the world-renowned paedophile – a total stranger – paid his bills because they want to take advantage of my family (Yes, word travels fast. I heard even before Mr Oliseh left to visit you). I refused to sit back and watch my only sister being used as a bargaining chip because of penury. This same penury is responsible for eroding what is left of the man in my father, almost causing my mother to evolve into someone I barely recognise and slowly draining the life out of my little sister. I have gone to get my wage because I deserve my hard work’s pay. Please tell my family that I love them and will get them out of this quagmire. I will pull us back on course and no matter how my meeting with Chief Utah goes, this is not the end. I will keep moving, breaking new grounds and forging bigger business relationships. Thank you, Mr Oliseh, for everything. I owe you everything. Thank you.

  Your son and friend,

  Dubem Ona.

  In between sobs, Ama asked her husband and Mr Oliseh what Dubem meant by tons of cucumbers and watermelons. Oliseh explained that Dubem graduated from secondary school almost two years ago with straight ‘As’ but had all the while taken advantage of his free land to cultivate fruits and vegetables for commercial purposes. According to him, he intended to save towards a university education for himself and his sister. Dubem also confided in Oliseh that he planned on etching a significant dent on the house mortgage. Now sobbing louder, Ama asked how his explanation made any sense, putting Dubem’s terrible results into perspective.

  To this, Dede responded in an exhausted voice, “Our son deceived us. He believed that if we could afford to send only one child to school, it had to be his sister. He planned it all, Ama. Our son never had problems with his academics. Those results were forged. Dubem graduated best student in his school and Oliseh kept it all from us on his request. After Dubem stopped being angry at me, he did not want to strip me of what residual self-worth I had left by spraying my flaws on my face. On several occasions, Oliseh persuaded him to end the charade himself because he could not break the fragile trust he had built with our son. Dubem eventually broke his resolve and begged Oliseh to explain everything to us. The actual purpose for his visit the day I returned from the hospital was to put us all in the know. He came with all his original results.” Dede paused. “Hmmm, it is my fault. I drove my son to this. Had I been half the man I meant to be, this would never have happened.”

  Silence reverberated through the room as Ama and Chinny absorbed Dede’s words. A few clock ticks later, Chinny in a calmer voice asked Mr Oliseh, “This Chief Utah, do you know where he lives, sir?” Mr Oliseh knew that the chief lived in a villa in Item town, which was not very far from Udu, but did not know the exact location of the villa. He was also not confident about searching for Dubem by themselves, knowing how dangerous the chief was, and he told them so.

  Ama was having none of that but before she could put her retort into a constructive phrase, Dede raised his arm in a calming gesture. “I think the first step is to find the exact address, make enquiries to be sure he is there and then report to the police.”

  Shaking her head, Ama reminded them of how process-driven the police always proved. “They will tell us to wait for seventy-two hours before we can consider him missing since he is over eighteen years old,” she cried. Chinny moved towards her mother and placed an arm on her neck. Of everyone in the sitting room, Chinny seemed the calmest but her darting eyes betrayed her myriad of thoughts.

  “Nne’m, it is seventy-two hours already. Dubem has been gone since Thursday.” This piece of clarification ushered a fresh stream of tears down Ama’s face.

  The rattle at the door startled Ama, who hurriedly wiped her face with the back of her hands. Dede, his eyes closed in thought, asked in a tired voice, “Who is it?” The ever-lively voice of his favourite niece rang from the other side of the door as though she was their long-awaited parcel.

  “It’s me… Adaiba.” Chinny made to open the door and nodded at her mother’s eye signal to keep the news about Dubem to herself and with a smile pasted on her face, opened the door to her cousin. Adaiba breezed in, carrying a small nylon bag containing her famous home cooked Okpa – the moimoi variant made from Bambara nuts. Adaiba, knowing how much Chinny and her parents loved the meal had as usual saved two for each of them when she made it the night before. It was such a taxing meal to prepare, especially if prepared the traditional way – wrapped and steamed in plantain leaves. “Uncle, good morning, Auntie, good morning.”

  “Nne, good morning,” they chorused in response. She paused, noticing the visitor for the first time.

  “Good morning sir,” she greeted. Mr Oliseh responded to her greeting and resumed brooding. She shoved the bag at Chinny, whose face lit up a fraction when she examined the contents of the bag. Chinny thanked her cousin with a hug.

  “Two each ooo!” Adaiba warned with a knowing smile. The last time she gave them the meal, Chinny ended up eating four of the six wraps. She claimed she misunderstood her father’s instruction to keep his share for him until the following day.

  “Come, I have news,” Adaiba said, pulling Chinny towards her bedroom. Once the door was shut, “We have letters!” Adaiba squealed, shoving a letter into Chinny’s reluctant hand. She continued, “My brother received them in his mail box and brought them yesterday. I have been invited to GCE regional office for an oral interview to defend my results! Open your own!!!”

  “Mmhh? Okay,” came Chinny’s unexcited response to the news as she placed the envelope on her bedside stool.

  Stunned beyond words, Adaiba screeched, “Mmhh? Okay. That is all you can say?!” She playfully jabbed her on the shoulder. “What is wrong with this girl? Open your letter!” Adaiba chided. There was no escaping the boisterous claws of her cousin, so Chinny tore open the envelope and confirmed her interview invite. The outcome would determine if their results would be released to them or not, the letter ended. Chinny still looked aloof, much to Adaiba’s perplexity. She sat down beside Chinny, turned her face to hers and placed her right arm around her shoulder so their noses almost touched. “Chi, have you decided to get married? You are throwing away your dream ehn? You want to leave me in the cold! All the inspiration to go forward is from you. How can—” Chinny was shaking her head as a tear brimmed over her left eye. Chinny regarded her sweet cousin for a bit and threw her mother’s caution out of the window.

  “Ada, Dubem is missing,” she blurted.

  8

  Adaiba put both hands over her mouth as alarm bells began to ring in her head. She cast her eyes around the room as if to draw strength from the walls. Turning to Chinny, she said, “When Chi? How? What happened? Who told you?” As the questions poured in, Chinny tried to keep pace with the answers but buckled halfway, the weight of the pain clutching her young heart too much to bear.

  “It has been three days Ada! We pushed him to it. We pushed him
to it, we pushed him, we pushed him,” Chinny’s voice dripped agony as her tears came gushing in uncontrollable torrents. Adaiba held her cousin in a hug as she, desperate to be the strong one for the first time, tried to gather her own chaotic thoughts. When Chinny’s sobs abated, she walked Adaiba down Dubem’s long and masterful charade. Several moments of complete silence threatened to stretch to infinity but Adaiba’s eyes sparked with memory as she remembered a certain Chief Utah her brother mentioned a few months ago. She hoped he was the same person in question and promised to source the chief’s address.

  “Once I get the address, we will go and find the place. We will find Dubem. You hear?” Adaiba said, her chest heaving as she pulled back the sob threatening to break free. Chinny gazed at her cousin with a redefined perception. For someone who appeared overly flippant and flighty, Adaiba proved to be a sweet and compassionate soul. They were almost at the door when, telling her to keep a normal countenance, Adaiba stopped to wipe the tears off Chinny’s face. In a sudden moment of appreciation and affection, Chinny hugged her cousin, before they joined the others in the living room. Soon after, Mr Oliseh left for home, with a promise to return soon while Ama and Dede left for the police station.

  Once Dede paid the tricycle rider his fare, husband and wife went into the police station to fill a missing person’s complaint form. After they answered a series of questions and narrated the whole account, the police officer’s next words shook Ama and Dede to their toes. “Oga and madam,” the officer began, “You both have to go to the town where your son was last seen and file your complaint there. What you are doing here is like going to Dubai to inform them that someone has gone missing in Kenya. Please go back to Udu town and lodge your complaint there.” The police officer spat. They goggled in horror as the unkind police officer turned the form that Dede had conscientiously filled in into a paper ball and threw it into the waste bin, with the expertise of a seasoned basketball player. They left the station crestfallen and headed home where the news of Chinny’s interview invite put a short-lived light in their pitch-dark sky.

  *

  Exhausted from long hours of prayers, Ama fell asleep on her knees in her bedroom. She woke up with a start to find she was still home alone with Chinny since Dede went to Item town for information regarding Chief Utah. The clock struck four with no sign of Dede and dread wrapped its fingers around Ama’s chest. She peeped into Chinny’s room to find her fast asleep and thinking the girl never slept enough these days, left her alone. Night drew closer; still no Dede. Ama shoved away the fast-forming ideas fighting for a space in her head. She dragged herself to the kitchen to start dinner preparation. A loud rattling of the door interrupted her. Dede! Ama thought as she half-ran to the door.

  “Oh Violet. It’s you.” Ama’s excitement went south. Who else but Violet would rattle a door with a doorbell? She taught her daughter well, she thought as she made to lead Adaiba’s mother into the house. The two women existed in utterly different worlds. Besides Violet’s lack of any formal education, she displayed a complete disinterest in anything that had the remote possibility of causing her any self-improvement. While Ama exhibited a positive and hopeful outlook towards life, her evening visitor often seemed to be in her dovecote only when she complained about how frustrating her marriage, children, neighbours, in-laws and finances were.

  A defining moment in Ama’s relationship with the wife of her husband’s older brother happened just after Dubem’s birth. Violet had come to the hospital to congratulate her with the traditional thin soup for new mothers. In between desperate gulps of water, Ama had asked her sister-in-law if the notion that the tear-inducing spicy soup washed out the remains of the placenta held any truth at all. “I do not know oo! But not long ago, I heard that if the soup has plenty pepper, it can help you have a girl next time,” Violet answered. When an amused Ama asked her visitor why she assumed she wanted a girl the next time, Adaiba’s mother with a truly bewildered look on her face asked, “So how will Dede get bride price money if he does not have a girl to marry off? If there is another way, please tell me so that I can stop trying to have a girl.” Save for the relationship dumped on her by marriage, Ama would have been happy to put a sky-high mountain between herself and this woman’s twisted concepts and negative energy. She usually wondered how Adaiba turned out to be such a joy and hoped life did not change the young lady for the worse.

  Violet declined Ama’s invitation into the house and informed her that she did not come on a casual visit. “Please come outside. Come quick.” Alarmed at the note of urgency in Violet’s voice, Ama dried her wet hands on the wrapper around her waist, closed the door behind her and did her visitor’s bidding, all the while hoping she did not come with bad news about Dede. “Adaiba told me about the business you are doing with some telephone compinis.”

  Ama’s answer was an “Mmhh”. Though annoyed at how much more Chinny may have revealed to her cousin, Ama snickered at how the woman before her still pronounced the word ‘companies’, years after everyone, including Kika her husband, had tried to correct her.

  “Which telephone compinis are they?” Violet probed. In utter shock that the woman did not know when to take her nose out of business that did not concern her, the furrow on Ama’s forehead deepened as she killed an imaginary mosquito. But Violet was not letting her off.

  “Breeze-links, Starlite Mobile and Afrocomms,” came Ama’s gruff reply, hoping the woman’s porous brain maintained its inability to recollect information. When Adaiba’s mother went on to ask if she shared her business intentions with any other person besides her family, Ama thought it was a case of a broken raw egg since her current audience and most likely half the town already knew. But she answered her nonetheless. “No, I only gave the signed documents to my neighbour to submit on my behalf.” Violet became alarmed and showed it by clasping both hands over her head.

  “Chai, chai, chai!!!” her primitive lament rang through the calm evening. Completely ignoring Ama’s puzzled expression, she continued, “I do not know many things oo, but I know what a telephone mast resembles and yesterday, they dug one into that land beside the expressway. The one that belongs to Mr Clarke, your neighbour. Today again, I saw him talking to one man wearing a green shirt with a telephone mast picture on it.”

  Ama began to hyperventilate as she cast glances between Violet and the Clarke’s black gate a few feet away. The shirt Violet just described to her sounded like the Afrocomm’s branded shirt. It all now makes perfect sense. No wonder those companies have not contacted me till now, Ama thought. The fear that her neighbour of over eighteen years and the father of her daughter’s closest friend may have pulled a life-defining opportunity from right under her feet sent blood rushing to her ears. Shoulders drooped, Ama thanked Adaiba’s mother for looking out for her and began walking back to the door. Violet felt nothing but untainted pity for Ama as she watched her co-wife, as she always called her, shut the door behind herself.

  Back in the kitchen, Ama continued with dinner but with a lead-heavy heart and a sense of foreboding. Now awake, Chinny let her father in. There was welcome news. Dede succeeded in locating the chief’s villa and they talked about the best way to find out if Dubem visited the villa or not. Bravely fighting through the rest of the evening, Ama decided to spare her family the pain of her recent discovery until the mystery of Dubem’s whereabouts was resolved. Soon after dinner, all lights went off, but not all eyes were shut in sleep, each one buried in a pool of their own thoughts. Dede wondered at his son’s whereabouts. He beat himself up so hard, fearing he may have driven his son into the waiting arms of predators. Ama wept for her son who was God-knows-where. She wept for her daughter whose life stood the risk of becoming a clone of hers. Her heart broke at the thought of their only hope for a better life, now in the far distance, nothing but a mirage. She wept for the husk of the man she adored once upon a time. Lastly, Ama wept for a budding rose, once full of life and promise, but which
stood no chance against the raging storms, trampling feet and fiercely biting-cold hands of life. The rose flower lay forgotten, withered and torn to irredeemable shreds – for the first time, Ama wept for herself.

  While her parents drowned in tears and despondency, Chinny’s eyes were crisp-dry and lit with promise. She would leave early tomorrow morning for Adaiba’s house, to tell her that they had the address. She believed that even the vilest of men possessed a modicum of kindness and would exhibit this if the right stimuli were applied. She intended to appeal to the chief to release her brother on the grounds of his ill health – schizophrenia. She would tell him that a few years ago, Dubem developed the disease responsible for his many troubles, ranging from being thoroughly beaten up to being locked up in school detention. Chinny planned to beg for the release of her brother to allow him to go for urgent medical attention. Certain of the believability of her well-crafted lie, Chinny anticipated a better life as she smiled at the big one – the land lease to the telecommunications outfits. “We will be fine,” Chinny sighed as she drifted into the floating arms of the night.

  *

  Chinny woke up to the sound of wailing. She rushed to her parents’ room where the cry was coming from and gaped at her father, holding her mother in an embrace. “Nna’m, what happened? What is wrong with her?” Chinny queried looking from Dede to Ama who appeared inconsolable. More agitated, she drew closer to her parents, asking again what the matter was.