by Okey Ndibe
A bellow of laughter stirred inside him. He struggled to hold it back but let out a gush of breath. His mother gave him a severe look.
“Who wrote this?” he asked.
“Our pastor, why?”
“Why? The man’s spelling is terrible. He needs a divine editor.”
She flinched as if he had spoken bawdy words. “God forgive you!” she muttered.
Ike was astounded by the number of congregants crammed inside the building. On seeing Ike, many of them sprang from their long wooden benches and rushed toward him. They wore wide grins and wider eyes.
“Is this your son from America?” one man asked. “Praise the Lord!” exclaimed another man. “Our Lord is in control,” a woman shouted. “Satan is a liar,” somebody declared. “Come and see what the Lord has done.” A woman broke out in song. The rest of the congregation picked it up. A man shouted “Alleluia!” and there was a deafening response of “Amen.” “Does he still speak Igbo?” a woman asked. The question provoked a chorus of laughter. “How can?” another woman replied. “I bet he now speaks through the nose, like oyibo people. He even looks like oyibo!” More laughter. “Look at his skin, shiny like the sun.” “I hope he’s not married,” cried one woman. “Why?” asked a man. “You ask why?” the woman chided. “You have forgotten we have many sisters in Christ praying for a good husband?” There was a burst of laughter. “Look at his teeth,” gushed a brown-skinned, toothy woman. “Clear like water.” “White as milk,” said another woman.
When the excitement abated, Ike’s mother began a round of formal introductions. She prefixed each man’s name with “Brother,” each woman’s with “Sister.” There was gaiety in her carriage; Ike, on the other hand, was pensive and tight.
“This is Sister Theresa,” his mother said, putting her hand lightly on a tall young woman with dimpled cheeks, her hair parted neatly in the middle, the two locks clipped to either side of her head. “Sister Theresa Nma is a teacher.” She paused for a moment, her eyes roving searchingly between her son and Theresa. “She’s also a very, very good Christian girl.”
Theresa held out her hand. Ike took it, surprised by its soft, limp feel. Oddly stirred, he fixed on her finely sculpted face with large, mellow eyes. She turned her head slightly away, as if she couldn’t bear his attention.
“I thank God for your safe journey,” she said, then executed a quick genuflection.
Ike caught his mother looking up at his face, her hand still perched on Theresa’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Ike said. Then conscious that her hand was still in his, sweaty, he let go.
“Sister Vero,” he heard his mother say. “She’s a nurse and a good Christian girl.”
Ike faced another outstretched hand. He found the new face markedly less attractive, or perhaps just less distinguished, than Theresa’s. But this one was more at ease. She grinned and met his gaze, her eyes ardent and expectant.
Suddenly, Ike’s mood soured. Why had he allowed his mother to drag him out to this shabby, ramshackle establishment and to peddle him to a lineup of women driven to insane distraction by dreams of American matrimony and dollars?
He shook the last hand, another good Christian girl, and then walked off to the last row of benches. No sooner had he sat down than a grizzly-haired man who’d been introduced as an elder appeared.
“No, no, sir,” the man protested in a tinny, grating voice. “You must sit in front. It’s not easy to come all the way from America. The front seat belongs to you. You and your mother.”
Ike sat firm. “Here’s okay for me,” he said.
A few more people harangued him. They pointed out that a man who’d traveled from across the big sea should not be consigned to the back of any gathering. If they didn’t offer him the front seat, their pastor would unleash wrath on them. God, too, would be vexed.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
“He who humbles himself shall be exalted. It’s in the Bible,” intoned the elder, baring teeth the color of snuff. “Since you have humbled yourself, God wants us to exalt you.”
Ike shook his head adamantly.
“We’re sitting in front,” his mother snapped.
He was reluctant to defy her openly. The fight in him had to be reserved for the pastor. The congregants clapped and cheered as he followed her to the front pews.
His skin sizzled with the humid heat. The air reeked of a mixture of sweat, scented pomade, and talcum powder. More worshippers trickled in. His mother introduced each arrival—a “brother” or “sister” in Christ.
Each man or woman fussed over him, but Ike quietly chafed. The man he’d come to see was nowhere in sight, and his patience was wearing. After shaking another member’s hand, he glanced at his wristwatch. Nine twenty-two.
He leaned toward his mother. “You said nine prompt.”
Her face betrayed no apologies. “If God tells him to say extra prayers before he leaves his house, he has to obey. He can’t say no to God. We have to be patient. A man of God must do what God commands.”
The sun, stirring from slumber, shot shafts of light into the room. Ike focused on the motes of dust that skittered and tumbled in the ropy beams. The room was sweltering; the heat drilled holes in his skin. He sat steady and tense, his ears picking up bits of the excited chatter.
Three or so young-sounding women giggled, muttered, whispered behind him. They talked in Igbo about his fetching looks. He strained his ears, eavesdropping. “He’s as handsome as a white man,” one extolled. Another asked, “Do you hear his smell? He smells sweeter than the red flower in the mist of dawn.” Another: “Did you see his eyes? Quiet as Lake Utonki, but deeper. A man with such eyes—he can kill with love.” Each woman argued, unabashed, that she was the one he was going to marry. “He’ll take me to the white man’s land,” cooed one. “An illiterate like you, he won’t even bear to give you a second look,” challenged another. “I’m the one for him.” A snicker, then: “You call somebody else illiterate, but I bet you don’t know how white people love. Do you know how a man touches his lips to a woman’s?” “Who hasn’t seen it in cinemas?” said one. “I’ve seen it, and I can do it,” boasted another. “I’ll welcome his lips to mine.”
Ike panned his head to the side, as if he were about to look at the chatterers. They immediately hushed up. He was not quite flattered. He was never good at aimless waiting. It grated on his nerves. He showed his watch to his mother: 9:46.
“He’ll be here soon,” she said. “Be patient.”
Just then he heard the rev of a car and the sharp cut of the engine.
A man clanged a bell. The congregation shook with excitement. They stampeded to meet the pastor at the entrance. “Daddy! Daddy!” they sang, young and old alike. They massed around the man, enveloped him. They bawled, hands upraised, like fans at a soccer game. Some uttered inaudible supplications, speaking with diarrheic rapidity. Others just droned, emitting sounds that were a cross between a quiet wail and a crazed groan.
Ike coldly observed the babble. Had God descended through the clouds and into the shaggy church, the frenzy could scarcely have been more delirious.
For a minute or two, Ike could not see the pastor, nor did the pastor notice him. As the pastor was lost in the crowd, Ike surmised that the man had to be short. His mother was in a state of possessed stupor. Eyes shut, she flailed her arms, stamped her feet, stomped an invisible beast. Her lips trembled all the while, a torrent of undecipherable words tumbling from them. At that moment, a chink opened in the crowd. Through it Pastor Godson Uka spied Ike’s seated form. With a ferocious, two-handed shove the pastor sent the mob reeling. “Yankee man!” he exclaimed, cheeks stretched in a wide smile. He grabbed Ike’s hand and pulled him up. He spread out arms, an avuncular figure inviting a hug. Ike plunged his hands into his pants pockets. His lip tucked between his teeth, he conveyed an expression of demure distance. Recognizing the futility of holding out for a hug, the pastor thrust out a hand. Ike took it, studying the man
before him.
Pastor Uka had a high, arched pate and a boxer’s flattened nose. His eyelids were swollen, the rest of his face ravaged by pimples. A smile decorated his face, but Ike remained tight-lipped, almost placid. They stood, face-to-face, like mismatched wrestlers sizing each other up. Ike towered over the pastor, a short man, no taller than five feet seven inches—even wearing shoes. His eyes glowed from pinched, narrowed slits. They darted about, transmitting a hunger whose exact nature Ike was determined to unmask.
Ike maintained his closed expression for a good minute and then cracked a grin. The pastor’s visage relaxed.
“God has set you aside for great things,” he proclaimed. From the backcloth of worshippers came chimes of “Amen” and “Alleluia.” Ike’s noncommittal nod encouraged the pastor. “He wants to use you in a big way. He wants to bless you. God has given me a mighty message for you.”
Ike’s mother piped up in praise. Ike erased the grin from his face.
Pastor Uka’s eyes twitched. He was a study in gaudiness. He sported a dark jacket over a yellow shirt and a maroon dotted tie. A large gold chain with a wrought-gold crucifix bedecked his neck. All five fingers of his left hand and three of the right were bedeckled with glitzy rings. His hair dropped in slick curls, slaked with oil. Peacock pastor, Ike silently named him.
Yet, for all his dramatic sense of color, it was the pastor’s face that kept Ike riveted. His eyelids blinked constantly. That, combined with a roguish smile, created the impression of a man bemused at the gullibility of the crowd he’d duped, his fleshy round countenance contrasting with gaunt faces that surrounded him, his python-skin shoes were burnished to a glitter.
“Praise God!” Pastor Uka shouted.
“Alleluia!” shouted the rallied congregation.
“Praise God!”
“Alleluia!”
Uka leapt into the air several times, his belly a bobbing, heaving sag, the energy in his short frame parlayed into combustible fuel. As he jumped and spun around, he cried: “Everybody praise God!”
The congregation responded with a series of shrill affirmations.
The pastor spun around, again facing Ike. He stretched his broad lips in a smile. “Fear not, brother,” he entreated in a quiet voice. “God says he’s in control. Powerful anointing is flowing around you.”
Ike’s mother let out a paroxysm of affirmation.
The pastor looked around the room, his body shuddering like one in the throes of malaria. He raised his head, then announced: “God has a spectacular message for his people today. God told me to tell you …” He paused for dramatic effect. An attentive silence swelled in the room. “You can’t imagine the things that God told me to tell his people!”
“Tell us, Pastor!” pleaded the audience.
“I don’t have the mouth to tell it. It’s too awesome.”
More cries of encouragement rent the air.
Pastor Uka began to strut about the room. Circling and circling, he randomly threw punches at the air. His bulgy body quivered, as if some kinetic force had crept into it. The congregants pressed forward, expectant. They formed an ever-tightening circle within which the pastor moved. Boisterous prayers erupted.
Anger welled up inside Ike. What had he gotten himself into? He had begun to perspire, his hands sweaty. Much as he regretted coming, he knew it was too late to escape. The chaos before his eyes was the very substance of the event. It was already in progress. There had been no preamble, no overture, just a swift transition from quietude to tumult. There was no distance between pulpit and pew. Nothing was choreographed. Yet, he conjectured that there was a peculiar brand of logic to this madness.
The pastor suddenly stopped short. “God told me,” he bellowed, “that he has not forgotten the promise he made to Abraham, to give his descendants great increase and prosperity.”
The congregation ramped up its excitement.
“God told me to tell you that, under the new covenant, you’re the descendants of Abraham.”
Cries of exultation.
“Abraham’s increase shall be yours.”
“We claim it!”
“Abraham’s prosperity is your prosperity.”
“Thank God! Alleluia!”
Uka began to speak but paused in midsentence. Removing his jacket, he swung it several times over his head, then sent it sailing. A spry young man jumped and wrested it from the others. He folded it up neatly and draped it over a chair. The pastor’s shirt revealed swaths of sweat that ran from his armpits down to the belt line.
“God told me …” The pastor took a backward step, as if the burden of divine revelation had made him stagger. Something hard to define swept through the crowd. “God woke me up at five thirty-five A.M.,” he continued. “He called me Godson, and I answered. He said, ‘Go and brush your teeth and take your bath because I have a lot to reveal to you today.’ I did what God told me. After bathing, I sat down to listen. God told me to tell his people that his abundant anointing will flow for believers. He told me that this is the week of double portions and triple blessings.”
The congregation exploded in fits of praise.
Maintaining a dramatic silence, the pastor hoisted himself on his toes, then rhythmically rose and fell, swaying from side to side. “The Lord is great!” shouted one man. He began to clap and then the rest of the congregation took it up, as if the pastor had pulled off some amazing feat.
Uka’s routine ceased all of a sudden. His hands cut the air as he spoke. “God told me to tell you that His people who want children will receive them this week.”
“Alleluia!”
“Ah, He told me to tell you that Satan is a liar.”
“Satan is a liar!” echoed the congregation.
“I said, if you’ve been praying for children, God has answered your prayer.”
The congregation sang its cackle of gratitude.
“God said that any believer who is now pregnant with one baby is going to receive twins. Amen?”
“Amen!”
“He asked me to tell those of you looking for a husband that you will receive husbands who count their money in dollars and pounds sterling.”
Several young women rattled out: “I claim it in Jesus’s name!”
Ike felt trapped in the disorienting swirl. Slowly, amazement replaced anger. It’d been a long time, several years at least, since he’d been at a church service. And then it was a Catholic mass, with its solemn air, its sober, near-somber rituals. True, he had sneaked into St. Stephen’s from time to time, but usually when there had been no congregants, his thoughts alone providing the sensation of communion. The idea of clapping and stamping in church had a ring of illicitness. In America, he had only ever seen such a holy ruckus on television. It was on TV, too, that he’d first seen bodies freeze and flip backward from a pastor’s touch. It was also on TV that he first heard people make strange utterances in stranger tongues.
Sweat glistened on the pastor’s brow. Tiny streaks of it coursed down the sides of his face. “God told me to tell you that those looking for a job will find it this week. Those who already have jobs will receive double promotion.”
“Praise God!” cried the congregants.
“But God said only those who tithe will be blessed.”
A muted, deflated response.
“Have you been praying for prosperity?” asked the pastor.
“Yeah!” answered the congregation.
“God said you’ll be prospered.”
“Are you trapped by water spirit? God says you’ll be set free.”
“Amen!”
“How about those harassed by witchcraft? God said your deliverance is at hand.”
“Amen!”
The pastor pulled a red handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his sweaty face. He then launched into an esoteric tongue, a staccato succession of sounds. “I’m burning with anointing,” he blared, like a man truly on fire. He swung around, blowing breath at a group of worshippers. Staggeri
ng like drunks, they collapsed on the floor. Uka darted to another cluster. He swept his arm in a dramatic arc. The worshippers’ legs seemed to turn to jelly. They became groggy, then tumbled to the ground. If his mother weren’t part of the madness, if she weren’t on the floor, Ike might have found the scene entertaining. She had spun around for a few seconds before pitching sideways. She was spread-eagled. She tossed and writhed in induced ecstasy. The wantonness of her posture nudged his mind in the direction of ideas he was loathe to visit.
How had she come to this thing? What desperation had driven her to the bosom of an experience at odds with everything she’d been and done in the past? As Ike thought these thoughts, his throat clamped up with bile.
He caught the pastor casting an intense glare at him. He glared back, forcing the pastor to blink and retreat.
“Get up!” the pastor barked. Instantly, the fallen bodies lumbered back to their feet. Uka sought out Ike’s eye and smiled.
For the next half hour, the pastor rambled. He flitted from one anecdote to another, all the while riffing on the theme of prosperity. His voice would rise to the level of a tirade, then fall to a languid pitch. Suddenly he pointed at Ike. “God gave me a special message for Madam Uzondu’s son,” he announced. “And the message is for the gentleman’s ears only.”
He called for a collection to be taken, admonishing the congregation to remember that God blessed the generous giver. Then, for the first time since the service began, he sat down. His eyes latched on to Ike, who waved off the elder who held out the offertory basket before him.
As the worshippers filed out, Ike saw expressions of hope etched on their faces. It was a hope worn thin, Ike surmised, by repeated disappointment. The thought brought him to the edge of feverish anger. The idea of battling Uka suddenly took on greater urgency. It was so intense that, for a fleeting moment, it seemed as if that battle—not the snagging of a deity—was the main reason he’d returned to Nigeria.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“We’re going to my house,” Pastor Uka said in the imperative words of a man afraid of contradiction.