by E. C. Osondu
Ijeoma and her mother-in-law were given round plastic numbered disks and sat on white plastic chairs awaiting their turn. The inside of the church smelled of burning incense, candles, and unwashed bodies.
After a while, a female usher called their number, took them in to the presence of the prophet, and commanded them to kneel. The prophet laid a moist warm palm on Ijeoma’s head and began to intone in a voice that had the raspiness of an angry night masquerade.
“You have traveled far, woman; you have crossed many waters to come to me. Ah, you have many powerful enemies, and their wish is to make your life akin to that of a barren she-goat, cursed to be always wandering and never finding rest. They locked your womb with a padlock, melted the key, and threw it into the bottom of the ocean; their one wish is that your womb will never be unlocked. But you have a powerful prayer warrior in the person of your mother-in-law here. We shall find that key and unlock your womb, and you shall be a mother not just once but seven times, yes, seven times you shall be a mother.”
The prophet began to twirl around and move jerkily on his feet, his face and white soutane quickly becoming damp with sweat. He began to scream in a strange language that was an admixture of French, Greek, and his native Egun language. When he stopped, he took Ijeoma by the hand and led her to a pond behind the church. The water on the pond was clear and tinged with a touch of light blue; the sight made Ijeoma feel a bit cooler. Ijeoma could see many small fish swimming in the water. Pointing at the fish in the pond, the prophet spoke to Ijeoma.
“These are all children; these are all babies waiting to be born. Look closely, and tell me the one that you like.”
Ijeoma was confused for a moment; all she could see were fish swimming in the clear water. Her mother-in-law nudged her, and she bent her neck and peered closely at the fishpond. She saw a tiny white fish with a little black stripe on its side. She pointed at it. The prophet smiled.
“You have chosen very well; that is a beautiful baby girl that you have picked.”
He took them back inside. Ijeoma was already beginning to feel dizzy from the sun, the heat, the smell of incense, and peering at the clear water of the pond.
“We cannot thank you enough, man of God; so what can we give you as offering?” Ijeoma’s mother-in-law asked.
“Some people choose to buy me cars—I have more cars than I can count, I have even given out many to my assistants. Some people build me houses, but I can only sleep in one house at a time. An important man that I prayed for even wanted to pull down this church and promised to build a new one in its place within seven days, but I told him not to worry, for it is not the size of the building that matters but the power of the anointing. So what I am saying is that it is up to you to give whatever you want to as a love offering—yes, that is what it is, a love offering, because you cannot buy or pay for the anointing. I see that you have crossed many seas to come here, so give us whatever it is that you people eat in that part of the world that you live in,” the prophet said, rubbing his sweaty palms together.
Ijeoma dipped her hand in her bag and brought out five hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills. The prophet took it, looked at it, and smiled.
“This is very good money. I like its color and the way it smells; it has traveled far to come and meet me, and I thank you for it. I demand nothing, only that you bring your baby here when you deliver so I can anoint her with holy water and olive oil to protect her from the eyes of the wicked, that is all I ask,” he said, smiling. He rang a bell, and an usher came and led them out back to their waiting taxi.
On the ride back, Ijeoma began to think of asking her mother-in-law questions about what had happened at the prophet’s. She was tired and weary, and something inside her had recoiled at the prophet’s reference to the little fishes in the pond as children. She knew that this was probably the last time she would be coming to Nigeria in search of a solution to her childlessness to please her mother-in-law. She loved her mother-in-law and did not want to hurt her, but had decided that she would convince Juwah to bring her over to come and live with them in New York. But she had also heard that there were Nigerian white-garment churches and babalawos in parts of Brooklyn. She wondered whether her mother-in-law would go searching for them, but also realized that her mother-in-law might not be able to navigate the confusing subway system in New York City.
The traffic began to crawl; they had been caught up in a “go-slow,” a typical Lagos traffic jam. All around them were vendors selling iced water in plastic bags, DVDs, videotapes, and all kinds of imported Chinese plastic toys.
A woman whose shriveled breasts were exposed, and who carried a very young baby with kohl-lined eyes, knocked on the window of the cab. She gestured with her hand to her mouth, apparently asking for money to feed herself and the baby. Ijeoma began fumbling with her purse, searching for loose change, but her mother-in-law stopped her.
“Don’t give her anything—they are all tricksters. The baby is not hers. She hired the baby from the real mother. She knows that with a baby in her arms she’s likely to get more sympathy and receive more alms. Whatever she gets at the end of the day, she’ll share with the child’s real mother.”
“You mean a woman would loan out her baby to be used for begging in the hot sun?”
“Of course—they do it all the time. The real mother of the baby probably has more than ten children and not enough money to feed them. As our people say, ‘A headless man often owns many caps.’”
As the traffic began to ease up, Ijeoma threw a few notes out of the window to the beggar woman, who picked up the notes, touched them to her face, and began to pray for Ijeoma. As they drove away, Ijeoma waved at the woman, and her mother-in-law hissed.
“If you give money to all the beggars on the roads of Lagos, you’ll become a beggar soon yourself,” she said to Ijeoma.
“I was thinking you’ll come and live with us in America. Juwah will be very happy to have you live with us,” Ijeoma said to her mother-in-law, trying to change the subject.
“Me live in America—God forbid. I have heard all sorts of things about the place. I don’t think it is a place for people of my age. I think the cold will kill me, and besides, how can I live in a place where I hear some people will have dogs rather than children?”
“Haba, Mama, people also have children in America. Those who want children go to great lengths to have children—there are fertility clinics where people go for treatment. People even donate eggs and sperm so those who do not have can receive them and get pregnant.”
“Tufiakwa, that is not the will of God; the best thing is to beg God for children. I am glad that you chose to listen to me and come back home to find a homegrown solution to your problem and not go to those fertility clinics,” Ijeoma’s mother-in-law said.
“But Mama, promise you’ll at least come to visit us. You may find out you like the place.”
“When you have your baby, I will definitely come to help you bathe and carry the baby. It will be worth the trip, and I look forward to that,” her mother-in-law replied.
Shortly after Ijeoma got back to the United States, she discovered she was pregnant. At first she didn’t believe it, but after two further tests, the result was the same. She was indeed pregnant. Juwah was excited and began to spend time away from the computer screen. Ijeoma would sometimes tell him to touch her stomach and feel the baby’s movement. He would touch and squeal in delight like a child. They soon had a sonogram and found out it was going to be a baby girl. Both were delighted. They agreed that the baby’s name would be Nnneka—“Mother Is Supreme.”
When the baby was born, she was very fair, and a black birthmark almost covered one side of her rib cage. Ijeoma’s mind went back to the little white fish with the black stripe. The doctor reassured her that the birthmark might fade away within a short time. The day after the baby was born, her color began to change to ink blue. She was having difficulty breathing. They hooked her up to an oxygen machine, but the baby did not get
better, and later that night she died. An autopsy showed that the baby had been born with very underdeveloped, weak lungs.
Ijeoma called her mother-in-law and narrated the story of the death of Nnneka—Juwah’s name for the baby, meaning “Mother Is Supreme”—all the while sobbing, with snot running down her nose. Her mother-in-law’s response surprised her.
“Don’t worry, at least the world now knows that you are not barren. You’ll come home again. We shall return to the prophet’s place. This time you’ll pick a strong black fish, it’ll be a boy, his lungs will be strong….”
Ijeoma dropped the phone.
Stars in My Mother’s Eyes, Stripes on My Back
You are too slow; the pastor’s wife has been waiting outside for close to ten minutes, we are going to be late for church.”
“Don’t tell me I’m too slow. I have been the one doing all the work, making breakfast and getting your son ready, and all you’ve done is lie around, only for you now to tell me I’m too slow, don’t use that word again.”
“Don’t tell me what word to use and what word not to use. So now I’m supposed to start cooking and bathing the child because we are living in America, you stupid woman?”
“It is you who is stupid, not me; if you aren’t stupid, you will not call me stupid.”
“It is your parents that are stupid, you useless and stupid good-for-nothing woman. If you are not careful, we will not go to church this morning. We’ll stay home and dig it out, and by the time I’m done with you, you will regret all the things coming out of your mouth.”
“Let’s not go to church, I don’t care. The only thing I regret in my life was ever meeting and marrying you, and my worst mistake was coming with you to America. Just look at me, what kind of life is this that I’m living, is this life?”
At this point my father stomped outside and with a tight smile on his face went and told the pastor’s wife, who was waiting to give us a ride to church, that we were not coming. I heard the woman wave to him and drive away in her tomato red Ford truck. My heartbeat accelerated. Now they were truly going to have it out—if church was canceled for this quarrel, then they were going to have a go at it big-time. My heart sank.
“Open that dirty mouth of yours and talk to me again,” Father said as he came back in, banging the door, the tight smile that had been on his face a few moments ago now gone.
“And what will you do if I open my mouth?”
“I will give you a dirty slap that you will never forget,” Father said.
“Slap me, slap me,” Mother screamed again and again, walking toward Father, her face contorted and dark. A gray-brown hue seemed to be floating in the whites of her eyes. And then he slapped her, not once, not twice, but three times, as viciously as I had seen him swat at a mosquito that had perched on him once at a picnic.
“You slapped me, now you have to kill me—you must kill me today and take my dead body back to my parents,” Mother said, and began to wail aloud. But the slap soon began to take effect like a slow-acting drug, and she seemed to wilt and began to quake with heavy sobs.
“Get me the phone,” she said to me.
As I walked toward the phone, Father’s voice cut through to me. “Leave that phone alone.”
“I said bring me the phone, or are you deaf?” Mother screamed at me.
I hated to be caught in the middle this way; I hesitated and began to walk toward the phone.
“If you invite the cops and for any reason I am deported from this country, you will spend the remaining part of your stupid life in misery—in short, that is when you will really regret ever meeting me,” Father said.
Mother went into the bathroom, lay down in the bathtub, and curled up like an infant in the womb.
Silence descended upon the days that followed, as it usually did. I became the go-between.
“Go and ask your father if he wants dinner,” Mother would say to me, even though they were within hearing distance of each other.
“Tell your father that I need quarters to do the laundry.”
“Tell your father that he has a phone call.”
Father’s response to these was never more than a grunt, and if the message involved money, with which to do the laundry for instance, he never gave any but cursed and asked aloud if Mother no longer had hands with which to wash the clothes. I went to school and came back each day hoping I would see them talking to each other, but this did not happen. This was unusual, because before now they usually made up within a few days.
One Friday evening, Uncle Boateng came to visit. Father fondly called him Boat and looked up to him in many ways. He was not really an uncle—he was Ghanaian, and we were Nigerian—but father insisted I call him Uncle. Though he had lived in America for over ten years, Uncle Boateng still spoke with a strong Ghanaian accent and wore kente-cloth shirts and a traditional woven African cap. He was a graduate student of physics and had been for ten years; he worked illegally as a distributor of the Post-Standard newspaper. He told stories about his job that made it sound like some glamorous occupation.
“The dogs in DeWitt and Fayetteville are the most wicked dogs in this country,” he would say, laughing uproariously. “Ah, those dogs, they hide on the porch and the moment you come out of the car to drop off the paper in the box, they have reached you in one bound, and you know the worst part, they go straight for either your prick or your jugular, and the owners are right there behind the blinds, watching and smiling. As an illegal worker you are not covered by insurance, and if anything happens to you, you are on your own.” He would then take Father to his old beat-up maroon Ford Taurus and show him the scratch marks made by dogs on the car’s fading paintwork. Father took every word that came out of Uncle Boateng’s mouth as the word of life.
“American boy,” he called me as he entered the house with a bottle of vodka wrapped in a brown paper bag. He smiled at me, showing an expanse of pinkish red gums. It was a Sunday, and I was watching football on ABC; the picture quality was poor and the rabbit ears atop the television hung at a precarious angle.
“You should be watching real football, soccer as they call it here—you know, real African football, I mean by African superstars like Roger Milla of the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, Jay Jay Okocha of the Nigerian Green Eagles, and Abedi Pele of the Black Stars of Ghana. And look, let me tell you something, the Americans are soon going to discover soccer, and then it will become big, and even now if you play well you can win a scholarship to Le Moyne.”
Father came out of the study and greeted him. He stepped back and looked at Father, gave him a once-over, and bellowed with laughter.
“You this man, look at how much weight you have lost because you had a minor quarrel with your wife, oh, so if you don’t eat that thing for one month, you will die.” He laughed again.
“And where is your wife? The woman that has made you lose all this weight, where is she, or can she tell me she did not hear my voice?” Mother came out of the room and genuflected in greeting. They all went into Father’s study, and I returned to my football game. I could not concentrate on my game and soon went to take my accustomed position by the door. Uncle Boateng was talking to Mother.
“I know that it is tough for you, our women in this country. Staying at home all day, not working because of immigration rules, doing all the chores alone while the man is off to school, this useless school that we are attending at our old age. I know back home you’ll have lots of people to help you with chores, but still you have to suffer now so that you can enjoy tomorrow.”
“That is what I have been telling her all these years, but she would not listen,” Father interjected.
“You, don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking, I will soon get to you—or do you think you can bribe me not to speak the truth?” Uncle Boateng said to Father.
“Now, listen to me, woman, it is not for nothing that in Africa where we come from, the wife refers to her husband as ‘the owner of my head.’ We are in America, but still w
e are Africans, and you should not talk back to your husband, even more so in the presence of his first son.”
“And as for you,” he said, turning to my father, “you have to start changing; you cannot go through America without America going through you. Even me, I’m changing; last Valentine’s Day I took my wife out to a restaurant to eat just like Americans, I even bought her roses on her birthday. The rhythm of the drum has changed, and we the dancers have to change our dance steps. Now apologize to your husband. I do not want to come here to settle quarrels, I want to come here to celebrate the birth of a new baby.”
I heard both Mother and Father laughing, and the sound of Mother’s knees hitting the floorboards as she knelt down in apology. The door opened, Mother came out, and I ran back to my football game on television. I had missed a touchdown, and the commentators were still talking about it. The Orange men were getting back in the game.
Father came out to get the wine opener and saw Mother cutting up chicken to prepare pepper soup. Father looked at her and teasingly called her “stubborn woman.”