by Okey Ndibe
That one. That one? “Who’s that one?”
“The servant of Lucifer.”
“Somebody I know?”
“The one who serves a deity.”
“My uncle? Osuakwu?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not to see Papa’s brother?”
“He’s Satan’s biggest agent in these parts.”
Ike shook his head in disbelief. He was certain that his father, were he alive, would have been outraged by the words that tumbled from his wife’s mouth. His father and Osuakwu had always been close. Years ago, when Ike was still in secondary school, he was spiritually torn. He was a devoted mass server but also felt drawn to the shrine of Ngene, a space dominated by his uncle. Daily, he frequented the shrine, keen to observe his uncle at work and to soak up the atmosphere: the divination rituals, the easy banter traded by men gifted with words, the aroma of roasted meats, beer, and spirits. One day, somebody told the catechist that Ike hovered around the shrine. The catechist in turn reported the matter to the parish priest, who summoned Ike and his parents to a meeting.
The priest began to chastise Ike for eating, drinking, and consorting with devil worshippers, when his father interjected.
“My son goes to the shrine, not to eat and drink with idolaters. He goes to see his uncle, my older brother. My son has my permission to visit his uncle as many times as he wishes.”
That had ended the matter.
Ike swallowed hard. “Mama,” he said, then fell silent, grasping for words that slunk away. Finally, he said, “You’re talking about Papa’s mother and Papa’s only brother.”
Her tone was unyielding. “They’re of darkness. Light and darkness don’t mix.”
People of darkness. Darkness. Said in the dark, the words swirled, echoed, in the air. “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear you say that Nne and Osuakwu will harm me.”
She sighed. “You talk like the child that you are.”
“I’m no child.”
“You talk because I’ve prayed and fasted to keep you alive. But for my prayers, where do you think you would be now?”
He didn’t answer.
“Yes, where?” she pursued, sensing victory. “Dead. Yes, you would have been finished. Dead. That was their plan. My fasting and prayers alone thwarted them.” She paused. He waited, too incensed to utter a word. “Yes, I fasted and prayed daily,” she continued. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here to doubt my words.”
“Mama,” he said, then, like a slow, small rebuke.
“You use your mouth to call them Grandmother and Uncle. Yet they both had a hand in your father’s death.”
A sharp ache shot through his head. Her cavalcade of accusing words had turned the air leaden and blue-tinted, toxic. He stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed, which squeaked.
“Ike,” she said, “I carried you nine months in my womb. I can never deceive you.”
“But you’re saying things that don’t make sense.”
“Are you calling me a madwoman?”
“I never mentioned madness, Mama. But you’re saying strange things.”
“Strange only because you see with human eyes.”
“And you, Mama, do you now see with spirit eyes?”
Silence. For a moment, mother and son glared at the darkness that separated them. Then he said, “If anybody told you Nne killed my father, her own son, you should have told that person to go and eat shit. Same with Osuakwu. What did Nne and Osuakwu stand to gain from Papa’s death?”
“You don’t understand occult ways. Is Osuakwu not older than your father?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask yourself a simple question: how come your father died eleven years ago while Osuakwu and Nne are still alive?”
“Mama, you know that death doesn’t come according to age. You know that Papa was sick, that he suffered for many years from diabetes. You know that.”
“How did he get the sickness, eh? Where did his diabetes come from? You who claim to be wiser than your own mother, answer me: who put the disease in your father?”
“Papa’s mother and brother concocted diabetes and used some remote control to put the sickness in him. Isn’t that what you want to believe?”
“It’s what I know. A disease can be caused by spiritual means, don’t you know? Don’t you know that evil people can put yokes of sickness on others?”
His crown itched. Did his father’s death deal such a savage blow to his mother’s psyche, making her susceptible to a trickster garbed in the visor of a religious seer? Or was the blame his? Perhaps she had slipped into a state of utter abandonment known only by true orphans. Her mind, adrift, battered, and distrustful of old truths, had latched on to this poisonous notion.
He couldn’t deal with this confoundedness mixed with guilt. Try as he might, there was no easy way out.
“This is—” he began in a sharp, exasperated tone. He quickly collected himself, determined to draw away from fierce words. Eyes trained on the dark patch between them, he envisioned her in a combative pose, arms folded across her breast. Suddenly, he felt an old tenderness toward her. The feeling was borne of memories of those long-ago days when she was the center of his world, the person who suckled him, bathed him, the one who stooped to dress the many bruises, cuts, and scrapes he brought home from playgrounds, the one who, on fear-filled nights, sang lullabies that gave him the gift of sleep and dreams. He groped about in the chaotic groove where words lived, until his tongue fastened on tamer language. “Mama, I want you to remember one person always. And that is Papa. Remember how sad the words you speak now would have made him. Papa would have been wounded to hear you accuse his mother and brother of playing a part in his death. He loved them, and he knew that they loved him in return. You know that Papa didn’t believe in all this superstition.”
“It’s spiritual vision; it’s not superstition. If your father had been covered with the blood of Jesus, his enemies wouldn’t have been able to get to him. He would be alive today.”
“Please!” he shouted, slapping his hands, tenderness slipping from his grip. “People die when they die. A friend of mine, my age, just died in the US of cancer. Both his parents and grandparents are still alive. Next thing, you’ll tell me that his cancer came from diabolical means.”
She let out a spurt of laughter, as if amazed by his innocence.
“You know what?” he pursued, his patience wearing thin. “All this talk of witches and wizards upsets me. Where is it coming from? Who’s been telling you that Nne and Osuakwu killed Papa?”
She breathed with relief. “That’s the first thing you should have asked. Instead, you started screaming as if I now visit the dirty shrines of a dibia. I’m born again and will never set foot in a dibia’s homestead. Everything I’ve told you came straight from a man of God, Pastor Uka. It’s God who revealed everything to him.”
He sprang up from the bed. “A man of God indeed! He’s more like a man of fraud. Mama, this is—I’m sorry—nonsense.”
In the darkness he heard her gasp. “They have got you!” she cried. “God revealed to Pastor that they were plotting to get you.”
“Your pastor must be deluded.”
“Son, don’t argue with God!”
“So your pastor is now God?”
“He’s a man of God. When you see him you’ll know. Ike, my son, he’s anointed, a real man of God.”
“An anointed liar, that’s who he is. A shameless exploiter of people.”
She exhaled sharply and then followed up with a sigh. “You’ll see him tomorrow. Then everything will be clear to you.”
“I’m not planning to see him. I can’t stand con men.”
“Ike, ask God for forgiveness. Pray that God’s wrath may not be unleashed on you. You call Pastor a liar? You insult a man of God. How many times did I go to the pastor crying about you—and he prayed. He prayed and fasted for your safety. He prayed and fasted for your prosperity. When I dreamed about you and w
ent to him with grief in my heart, he prayed and fasted for your deliverance from the yoke. This man you insult, my son, he has prophetic gifts.” She paused. Her words floated in the silence, permeated the air, and filled the darkness. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial pitch. “Do you know that they’re planning to make you the next chief priest of Ngene?”
His heart skipped a beat, and he sat back down. “They? Who exactly is planning?”
“Pastor Uka will explain everything.”
“I’ve said I’m not seeing him.”
“You’re not worried that they’re plotting to make you chief priest of Ngene? Tell me, is that what you want to do with your life? You’re not worried that when people gather every day at the shrine, your name is mentioned as the next carrier of a false god? You don’t mind losing your salvation?”
“Mama, there’s no morsel of truth in all this nonsense. Nobody can talk about the next chief priest. You seem to forget that Osuakwu hasn’t died. And that there’s no vacancy for chief priest.”
“You call me Mama, Mama, but you throw away my words, Ike. Do you forget that Osuakwu’s time is running short, that he doesn’t have long to live?”
“Is that also direct from God? Has God revealed to you—or the pastor—that Osuakwu is about to drop dead? That my uncle is staring into his grave?” In the darkness, he shook his head sorrowfully.
She began to say something, but her voice got choked up. She coughed to clear her throat.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“They’re trying to choke me, but Satan is a liar.”
“Mama, stop worrying about me. Even if Osuakwu died tonight, there are many people who’re hungry for his job. Nwoye the Hunchback would like to become chief priest. Or has God told you that Nwoye’s death is also pretty close?”
“Don’t mention that name in this house! He’s the devil’s son.”
Ike sat up, provoking the bed to a squeaky whine. “I’m going out,” he said.
“Out? Into this dark night?”
“Yes.”
“Out to where?”
“To see Nne.”
“I told you—” she began.
“I know what you told me,” he interrupted. “I heard all, but no pastor will stop me from seeing my grandmother. If she’s a witch, let her cast her spell over me.”
She swallowed hard. “Ike,” she called.
“If she kills her own, I want her to kill me tonight.”
“Ike, has madness come over you? I said you’re not to see that shriveled witch.”
He pushed past her. She stood still, exuding fear. He groped his way to the door, his steps guided by the flickering light of the wicker lamp Alice had left on in the living room.
“Ike, you have been drinking,” she said, just as he reached the door. “It smells all over this room. Surrender your life to Christ. Submit to the Almighty and be covered by the blood of salvation. Don’t let the devil lead you astray.”
A loathing of the pastor he hadn’t seen, but somehow pictured, welled up inside him. “I’m going to see Nne,” he said stubbornly.
“You have not eaten.”
When he didn’t respond, she gave a resigned gasp.
DARKNESS DOMINATED A STARLESS sky. The generator in the house next door had fallen silent, leaving the house in pitch darkness. He felt wrapped by this endless dark fabric. It was the kind of night he was no longer accustomed to, resident in a city of scintillating lights. Frogs, crickets, and other nocturnal denizens filled the air with their steady din. A goat bleated in sleepy stupor. He heard the faint swell of drums floating in from a far, uncertain distance.
Witches, wizards, and demonic forces—a strange susceptibility overtook him. What if those ineffable forces had taken on flesh, real and menacing? A shudder rocked his spine. He considered returning to the house to fetch a lamp, but a lamp’s paltry light was no match for the darkness. In fact, a lamp’s flicker was likely to awaken ghostly shadows in the night.
He made his way toward his grandmother’s hut, raising and dropping his legs with an awkwardness that, in a blind man, would be regarded as a necessary caution. His mouth open, he tried to mute his breath, but heard his heart pounding. It was only when he figured that he was a few feet away from Nne’s hut that his fear began, gradually, to drain away.
Just then he heard a rustle. His heart leapt and clogged his throat. Some bird flew overhead, twittering, wings whipping the air.
Then he heard Nne’s voice, sharp, riding the air.
“A son braves the night to search out his mother,” she sang. “No darkness is dark enough to bar the son’s path to the hearth.”
His fear uncoiled and seeped away. He hastened toward his grandmother’s voice. He swung his arms with abandon and strode fearlessly, as if he owned the night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ike’s sleep was sweet, deep, and swift. It was not the kind of restless, nasty night he was used to back in New York, nor the night of uneasy sleep he’d had at Stopoff Hotel in Lagos, dreaming of Bimpe cradled in his arm. It was as if he had shut his eyes one moment and, opening them a moment later, had beheld a room bathed with the sun’s radiance. Having enjoyed a night without the burden of dreams, he awoke with none of the fatigue or languor that dreams bequeath. As happened whenever his night was dreamless, his body exuded a sense of vigor he had not felt in years. His mood, touched with the sense of a world in sync, had a generous cast.
Even so, he lounged in bed, his reverie broken by interludes of anxiety—about his mother and about his mission to steal Ngene. He turned and twisted, taking odd delight in the bed’s whiny creaks.
Suddenly he heard the clank of the ogene. The sound was familiar and intimate. He turned his ear as if the gong would transmit a private message to him. Kpom gem, kpom gem, kpom gem sounded the metal gong. The beater was his uncle, Osuakwu, and this was both a ritual of salutation to the war deity and the herald of a new day. The gong clanged twice more with the familiar melody. Then Osuakwu’s voice, transported on the staid air of dawn, rang clear in greeting to Ngene.
Ike’s heart pounded. It was as if his uncle had issued a summons—and then left it up to Ike to choose when to answer. He resolved to make contact as soon as possible—in fact, that day. He recalled the spat with his mother. It had served its purpose; it had established the ground rules; it had served notice that he wasn’t about to let himself be leashed, forbidden contact with his uncle and grandmother. As long as his mother respected those terms, he didn’t foresee any more bickering or rancor during the week he planned to stay in Utonki.
He attributed the glow of generosity he felt to the two hours he’d spent with his grandmother the night before. Nne’s talk and banter always reinvigorated him. When he had walked back home, his steps firmer, more assured in the darkness, he’d been surprised to find his mother curled up on the sofa, waiting.
“The service is at nine A.M. prompt,” she had said, then stood and hurried away to her room. Her haste bespoke fear of a refusal, but he called out that he would be there. After his conversation with Nne, he was ready, even eager, to meet the pastor.
THREE KNOCKS SHOOK THE door. A pause, then Alice peeped in.
“Good morning, Uncle,” she said. “Your breakfast is ready.”
“I’ll take a bath first.”
“Grandma asked me to give you breakfast first. Then I’ll go and boil water for your bath.”
Breakfast consisted of akamu, pap made from fermented corn, and akara, fried bean cakes. As he savored the delicacies, his mother appeared, dressed in a bluish flowered lace wrapper, a white blouse, and a blue head tie. She appeared spirited, her face far from the drab, wilted look he’d expected.
“Church starts at nine prompt,” she said. “We must not be late.”
“There’s a lot of time,” he said. “It’s only seven forty-five. And I’ve never seen anything in Nigeria start at any time prompt.”
“It’s not about Nigeria; it’s about God. You can’t
keep God waiting.” She folded her arms, but her tone was surprisingly mild.
“I think Nigerians will try,” he said. “Yes, if any people will attempt to keep God waiting, it has to be Nigerians. And since God created us that way, he’s likely to show understanding.”
Her face darkened. “If you don’t arrive on time, others might snatch away your anointing.”
“God has more than enough anointing for everybody,” he said. “There won’t be any need to scramble. No reason for anybody to snatch the anointing reserved for somebody else.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Everything to you is logic. Even when you were small enough to fit in the arm, you considered yourself a logician. But remember that God is greater than all our logic. Human wisdom is foolishness to God.”
Ike paused from eating. He regarded her with an expression that hovered between defiance and sadness. “I hope God is not half as angry as you look—otherwise I’m doomed to hell.” He thought he saw the hint of a smile on her face. “Don’t worry, Mama, we’re not going to be late. No way am I going to forfeit the anointing reserved for me.”
THE CHURCH WAS HOUSED in the village’s abandoned kindergarten. Ike still remembered going there as a child. The building had been shut down after the local government awarded an inflated contract to erect another school at a different site. The new school was hardly different from the old one. It was, like the old school, a sloppy, dingy structure of brick and zinc. But since so much money had been squandered on its construction, government officials dubbed it ultramodern.
Ike couldn’t believe the building’s dilapidated state. Its walls were pockmarked, its once-bright aluminum zinc a dirty brown, sun-charred.
This, Ike thought, was the place his mother frequented for her daily dose of divine anointing! The idea struck him as ludicrous. He stopped to read words scrawled on a broad wooden board. The script was uneven, wavy. In bold letters: MAITY DEEDS WORLD INTENATIONAL REDEAMERS CHURCH. Then in smaller print: COME TO BE PROSPARED, RELEACED FROM YOKES AND SATANIC ATTACKS, WUMBS OPENED, MIRACLOUS DELIVARANCE, DEVINE WANDERS!!! IN JESUS MAITY NAME!!!!