“I said I’m not going to church with you today for any cleansing,” Ikenna replied, switching back to Igbo. “I can’t bear to stand in front of that congregation and have people looming over me, trying to cast out some spell.” He stood up briskly from the lounge. “I mean, I just don’t want it. I don’t have any demon; I’m fine.”
“Ikenna, have you lost your mind?” said Mother.
“No, Mama, but I just don’t want to go there.”
“What?” Mother shouted. “Ike-nna?”
“It’s the truth, Mama,” he replied. “I just don’t want”—he shook his head—“I just don’t, Mama, biko—please, I don’t want to go to any church.”
Boja, who had not spoken to Ikenna since their altercation concerning the television programme, rose to his feet and said: “Me neither, Mama. I won’t go for any cleansing. I don’t feel I or anyone needs deliverance from anything. I’m not going there.”
Mother was about to say something, but the words tripped backwards in her throat like a man falling from the top of a ladder. She gazed back and forth between Ikenna and Boja with an expression of shock.
“Ikenna, Bojanonimeokpu, have we taught you nothing? Do you want that madman’s prophecy to come true?” Spittle formed a weak bubble across the ridges of her left-open mouth, and busted when she made to speak again. “Ikenna, look at how you’ve already taken it. What do you think is the cause of all your misbehaviours if not because you believe your brothers will kill you? And now, you stand here, face me, and tell me you don’t need prayers—that you don’t need to be cleansed? Have the many years of training, and efforts by Eme and I taught neither of you nothing? Ehh?”
Mother shouted the last question with her hands thrust histrionically aloft. Yet, with a resolve that could have smashed gates of iron, Ikenna said: “I will not go is all I know,” Boja said. And apparently encouraged by Boja’s support, he walked back to his room. Once he shut his room’s door Boja rose and went in the opposite direction—to the room Obembe and I shared. Mother, wordless, sat back in the lounge and sank beneath the surface of the filled pot of her own thoughts, her arms clasped around her and her mouth moving as if she were saying something that had Ikenna’s name in it, although inaudible. David threw a ball about with clattering steps, laughing aloud as he tried to make the sound of football stadium spectators all by himself. He was shouting when Obembe moved to sit with Mother.
“Mama, Ben and I will go with you,” he said.
Mother looked up at him with eyes clouded with tears.
“Ikenna… and Boja… are strangers now,” she stammered, shaking her head. Obembe drew closer to her and as he patted her shoulder with his thin long arms, she repeated: “Strangers, now.”
For the rest of that day till when we left for the church, I sat thinking about it all, how this vision was the cause of everything Ikenna had done to himself and the rest of us. The encounter with Abulu was something I had forgotten, especially after it happened, when Boja warned that Obembe and I should never mention it to anyone. When I asked Obembe once, why Ikenna no longer loved us, he had said it was because of the whipping Father gave us. And I had believed him, but now, it became very clear to me that I had been wrong.
Later, as I waited for Mother to dress and take us to the church, I cast my eyes on the columned shelf in the sitting room. My eyes then fell on the column that was covered in a quilt of dust, a cobweb strewn to the end of it. These were signs of Father’s absence. When he was at home, we used to take weekly turns at cleaning the shelves. We stopped a few weeks after he left and Mother had not been able to effectively enforce it. In Father’s absence, the perimeters of the house seemed to have magically widened as though invisible builders unclasped the walls, like they would a paper house, and expanded its size. When Father was around, even if his eyes were fastened to the pages of a newspaper or book, his presence alone was enough to enforce the strictest order and we maintained what he often referred to as “decorum” in the house. As I thought of my brothers’ refusal to come with us to church to break what might be a spell, I craved for Father, and wished, strongly, that he would return.
That evening, Obembe and I followed Mother to our church, the Assemblies of God Church situated across the long road that stretched to the post office. Mother held David in one hand and fastened Nkem to her back with a wrappa. To prevent them from sweating and getting skin rashes, she’d powdered their necks so that they shone like masquerades. The church was a big hall with lights that hung in long lines from the four corners of its ceiling. At the pulpit, a young woman in a white gown, who was very much fairer than a typical African of these parts, sang “Amazing Grace” with a foreign accent. We sidled in between two rows of people, most of whom kept locking eyes with me until I got the feeling that we were being watched. My suspicion increased when Mother went up behind the pulpit where the Pastor and his wife and elders were seated, and whispered in the Pastor’s ear. When the singer was done, the Pastor mounted the podium, dressed in a shirt and tie, his trousers strapped with suspenders.
“Men and brethren,” he started in a voice so loud it made the speakers near our row go irrecoverably mute so that we had to pick up his voice from the speaker on the other side of the room. “Before I go ahead with the word of God tonight, let me say that I’ve just been told that the devil, in the form of Abulu, the demon-possessed, self-proclaimed prophet whom all of you know has caused so much damage to people’s lives in this town, has been to the house of our dear brother James Agwu. You all know him, the husband of our dear sister here, sister Paulina Adaku Agwu. Some of you here know that he has many children, who, our sister told us, were caught fishing at the Omi-Ala at Alagbaka Street.”
A faint murmur of surprise rang through the congregation.
“Abulu went to those children and told them lies,” Pastor Collins continued, his voice rising as he spat his words furiously into the microphone. “Brethren, you all know that if a prophecy is not from God, it is of—”
“The devil!” the congregation shouted in unison.
“True. And if it is of the devil, then it has to be refuted.”
“Yes!” they chorused.
“I didn’t hear you,” the Pastor spat into the microphone, shaking his fist. “I said if it is of the devil, then it MUST be—”
“Refuted!” the congregation yelled with so much vigour it seemed like a battle cry. From around the congregation, little children—including Nkem, perhaps frightened by the roar—burst out wailing.
“Are we ready to refute it?”
The congregation roared in agreement, with Mother’s voice resounding above all, and trailing after the rest had stopped. I looked at her and saw that she’d begun to cry again.
“Then stand and refute that prophecy in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The rows lifted as the people jumped to their feet and became caught up in a rapturous session of fierce prayers.
Mother’s efforts to heal her son, Ikenna, were wasted on him. For the prophecy, like an angered beast, had gone berserk and was destroying his mind with the ferocity of madness, pulling down paintings, breaking walls, emptying cupboards, turning tables until all that he knew, all that was him, all that had become him was left in disarray. To my brother, Ikenna, the fear of death as prophesied by Abulu had become palpable, a caged world within which he was irretrievably trapped, and beyond which nothing else existed.
I once heard that when fear takes possession of the heart of a person, it diminishes them. This could be said of my brother, for when the fear took possession of his heart, it robbed him of many things—his peace, his well-being, his relationships, his health, and even his faith.
Ikenna began walking alone to the school he and Boja attended. He’d wake up as early as 7 a.m., skipping breakfast, to avoid going with Boja. He began skipping lunches and dinners when they were either eba or pounded yam, meals that were eaten together from the same bowl as his brothers. As a result, he started to emaciate
until deep incurvatures were carved between his collarbones and his neck, and his cheekbones became visible. Then, in time, the whites of his eyes turned pale yellow.
Mother took notice. She protested, pleaded and threatened, but all to no avail. One morning towards the end of the school term in the first week of July, she locked the door and insisted Ikenna have breakfast before going to school. Ikenna was devastated because he was to have an exam that day. He pleaded with Mother to let him leave—“Is it not my body? What do you care if I eat or not? Leave me, why not let me be?”—he broke down and sobbed. But Mother held on until he finally resigned to eat. As he ate the bread and an omelette, he railed against her and all of us. He said everyone in our family hated him and vowed to leave the house someday soon, never to be seen again.
“You will see,” he threatened, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “All of this will soon end and all of you will be free from me; you will see.”
“But you know this is not true, Ikenna,” Mother replied. “No one hates you; not me, not one of your brothers. You are doing all this to yourself because of your fear, a fear you have tilled and cultivated with your own hands, Ikenna. Ikenna, you have chosen to believe the visions of a madman, a useless fellow, who is not even fit to be called a human being. Not even greater than—what should I compare him to?—the fish, no, the tadpoles you picked from that river? Tadpoles. A man who, just the other day, people in the market were talking about how he found a mallam’s herd grazing in a field and calves suckling their mothers’ udders, joined the cows and started sucking the udder of one of the cows!” Mother made a spitting sound to show disgust at the troubling image of a man sucking a cow. “How can you believe what a man who sucks cows’ breasts says? No Ikenna, you have done this to yourself, eh? You have no one to blame. We’ve prayed for you even if you refused to pray for yourself. Don’t blame anyone for continuing to live in useless fear.”
Ikenna seemed to have listened to Mother, staring blankly at the wall before him. For a second, it appeared as if he’d realized his folly; that Mother’s words had incised his tortured heart, causing the black blood of fear to leak it out. He ate his meal at the dining table for the first time in a long time in silence. And when he was finished, he murmured “Thank you” to Mother, the customary thanks we gave to our parents after every meal, which Ikenna had not said in weeks. He took the utensils to the kitchen and washed them as Mother had taught us to do rather than leave them on the table or in his room as he’d been doing for weeks. Then he left for school.
When he was gone, Boja, who’d just brushed his teeth and was waiting for Obembe to finish using the bathroom, came into the sitting room swaddled in the bath towel he shared with Ikenna.
“I’m afraid he will make good his threat and leave,” he said to Mother.
Mother shook her head, her eyes focused on the fridge, which she’d begun cleaning with a rag. Then bending so that nothing but her legs alone became visible under the door of the refrigerator, she said: “He won’t; where will he go?”
“I don’t know,” Boja replied, “but I fear.”
“He won’t; this fear will not last, it will leave him,” Mother said in a voice that was assured, and I could tell at the time that she’d believed it.
Mother continued to strive to heal him and to protect him. I recall one Sunday afternoon when Iya Iyabo came in while we were eating black-eyed peas marinated in palm-oil sauce. I’d seen the commotion around the compound, but we’d been trained not to go out to watch such gatherings as other children of the town did. Someone could be armed, Father always warned, there could be gunshots, and you could be hit. So we stayed back in our rooms because Mother was at home and would have punished or reported an offender to Father. Boja had two tests the next day—on Social Science and History—two subjects he detested, and had grown prickly, cursing all the historical figures (“dead idiots”) in the book. Not wanting to disturb him or be around him while in such a state of frustration, Obembe and I were in the sitting room with Mother when the woman knocked on the door.
“Ah, Iya Iyabo,” Mother called, rising swiftly from her seat once the woman came in.
“Mama Ike,” the woman, whom I still hated for telling on us, said.
“Come chop, we dey chop,” Mother said.
Nkem threw her hands up from the table and reached for the woman who lifted her off her chair at once.
“What happened?” Mother said.
“Aderonke,” the woman said. “Aderonke killed her husband today.”
“E-woh!” Mother screamed.
“Wo, bi o se, shele ni,” the woman began. She often spoke Yoruba to Mother, who perfectly understood the language, although she never believed herself proficient in it and almost never spoke it otherwise, but would always have us talk with people on her behalf. “Biyi drunk again last night and came home naked,” Iya Iyabo said, switching to Pidgin English. She put her hands on her head and began to squirm plaintively.
“Please, Iya Iyabo, calm and tell me.”
“Her pikin, Onyiladun, dey sick. As her husband come inside, she tell am make im give medicine money, but im start to beat-beat am and im pikin.”
“Chi-neke!” Mother gasped, and covered her mouth with her hands.
“Bee ni—it is so,” Iya Iyabo said. “Aderonke vex say im dey beat the sick pikin, and fear say because of im alcohol, say im go kill am, so she hit im husband with a chair.”
“Eh, eh,” Mother stammered.
“The man die,” Iya Iyabo said. “Im die just like that.”
The woman had sat on the floor, her head resting on the door, rocking and shaking her legs. Mother stood still with shock; seeming frightened, she hugged herself. The food I’d just scooped into my mouth was instantly forgotten at this news of Oga Biyi’s death, for I knew the wasted man. He was like a goat. Although he was not mad, he snarled and plodded when in his usual state of drunkenness. In the mornings, we often saw him on the way to school, walking home, sober, but by evening you’d see him staggering about, drunk again.
“But you know,” Mama Iyabo said, wiping her eyes, “I no think say she do am with clear eyes.”
“Eh, how do you mean?” Mother said.
“Na that madman, Abulu cause am. Im tell Biyi say na the thing wey im treasure most go kill am. Now im wife don kill am.”
Mother was stung. She glanced around at our faces—Boja, Obembe, and I—and took in our stares with her eyes. Someone stood up from a chair somewhere, not in the sitting room, and gently opened a door and appeared in the room. Although I did not look back to see him there, I knew. And it was clear that Mother, and everyone in the room knew, too, that it was Ikenna.
“No, no,” Mother said loudly. “Iya Iyabo, I don’t want you saying this nonsense, this thing here.”
“Ah, what—”
“I said no!” Mother shouted. “How can you believe a mere madman could see the future? Just how?”
“But Mama Ike,” the woman murmured, “Na so they say im be—”
“No,” Mother said. “Where is Aderonke now?”
“Police station.”
Mother shook her head.
“Them arrest her,” Iya Iyabo said.
“Come make we go talk outside,” Mother said.
The woman rose, and together, with Nkem following, they went out. After they left, Ikenna stood there, his eyes lifeless like those of a doll. Then, suddenly clutching his belly, he raced to the bathroom, making choking sounds as he retched into the sink. It was here that his illness began, when the fear robbed him of his health, for it seemed that the account of the man’s death had established in him the unquestionable inescapability of Abulu’s prescient powers, causing smoke to rise from things yet unburned.
A few days after that, a Saturday morning, we were all having breakfast at the dining table, fried yams and corn pap, when Ikenna, who had just taken his food and gone into his room, suddenly rushed out, a hand on his belly, grunting. Before we could make sense o
f what was going on, a cupful of disgorged food landed on the paved floor behind the blue lounge we’d named “Father’s throne.” Ikenna had been heading for the bathroom, but now, inhibited by the force he could only try to contain, he dropped to one knee on the floor, as he retched, partly disappearing behind the chair.
Calling, “Ikenna, Ikenna,” Mother ran to him from the kitchen and tried to lift him, but he protested that he was fine, when in fact he looked pale and sickly.
“What is it, Ikenna? When did this begin?” Mother asked after he stopped, but he did not answer.
“Ikenna, why, why not even answer, why? Eh, why?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Let me go wash now, please.”
Mother let go of his hand, and as he walked to the bathroom, Boja said, “Sorry, Ike.” I said the same. So did Obembe. David did, too. Although Ikenna did not respond to any of these sympathies, he did not bang the door this time. He closed it and bolted it gently.
Once Ikenna was out of sight, Boja ran into the kitchen and returned with a broom—a stack of needle-thin sticks of raffia bound together with a tight cord—and a dustpan. It was the quickness with which Boja had run to clean up the mess that had moved Mother.
“Ikenna, you live in fear that one of your brothers will kill you,” she said aloud so Ikenna could hear her voice over the water, “but come and see—”
“No, no, no, Nne, no; don’t say, please—” Boja pleaded effusively.
“Leave me, let me tell him,” Mother said. “Ikenna come and see them, just come and—” Boja protested that Ikenna will not like to hear he was cleaning the vomit, but Mother was undeterred.
“See those same brothers of yours weeping for you,” she continued. “See them cleaning up your vomit. Come out and see ‘your enemies’ caring for you, even against your wish.”
Perhaps because of this, it took long for Ikenna to come out of the bath that day, but he did, eventually, swaddled in a towel. By that time, Boja had swept clean the spots and even mopped the floor and parts of the wall and the back of the lounge on which his vomit had caked. And Mother had sprinkled Dettol antiseptic everywhere. She would force Ikenna to go with her to the hospital afterwards by threatening that if he refused, she would phone Father. Ikenna knew Father took matters of health very seriously, so he caved.
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