In the first four years of their marriage, they had two daughters. Adaeke came first, and after two years came Onyeoma. These women have long died, but before their deaths at old age, they were each married with children at their various marital homes.
It was three years after Onyeoma was born that a boy, Jideofor was born. Jideofor brought a lot of joy and satisfaction to his father. Mazi Obiefuna was so proud of the boy and favored him over his elder sisters. It was not just because he was a boy, but mainly because of his gentler and more articulate nature. Jideofor was different from his sisters, who seemed to share a lot of their father’s short temper. Ofor, as he was fondly called, was gentle in contrast to his sisters and had more of his mother’s nature.
In admiration as he pictured his beloved wife in their only son, Mazi Obi was so fond of Ofor that his attachment to his son was second only to the one he had for his wife.
But as years went on, Mazi Obi wanted another child, preferably a son. When Nnenna did not conceive again, Mazi Obi married a second wife, Olamma, who gave birth to Dike five years after Ofor had been born. Three years later, Olamma had another boy and named him Onuma.
Before long, Obi marries his third wife. Polygamy was an expected custom at this time, and it would surely be an anomaly if Mazi Obi, as popular and strong as he was, stays married to only one woman, no matter how much he may love and respect her.
Two years after his marriage to his third wife Nkeonyere, she gave birth to a set of twin girls. Olamma, Obi’s second wife. also had another baby girl that same year.
Obi was disappointed because he wanted more boys, life seeds that would bear his name permanently and retain his lineage! This was the general impression about male issues—a popular reason for preferring sons to daughters. Men feel the women will get married someday, only to bear their husbands’ names. Therefore sisters and daughters belong to other men. It is male issues that get the most respect and regard in matters of serious concern, attention, and decision. This usually goes undisputed, almost naturally accepted among the people of this time, because males are considered the ones that will retain their fathers’ names till death. Such is the cultural sentiment, and men of this time are very fond of their culture and painstakingly live by it.
Therefore, as he got older, Obi was not happy because he had only three sons and five daughters. He would surely be happier and wouldn’t mind if he had even seven sons and one daughter, or no daughter at all. It was the days of undisputed female gender displacement as an acceptable cultural norm.
When Nkeonyere finally had another baby after three years, Obi was so elated that he met a diviner to foretell the sex of the baby before he was born. He was overjoyed to hear that the baby was going to be a boy. He even named the boy Onochie long before he was eventually born, believing the baby would replace everything he had lost in past years. He prayed and waited earnestly for another baby boy.
Disappointedly though, Obi was not in good health when the boy finally arrived. He had a fall off one of the palm trees he was tapping wine from, and he fractured his waist.
The boy was born just a week after Obi’s fall. Obi was still very delighted to have the baby boy, even though the bundle of joy came during his father’s ill health. He was still named Onochie in accordance with Obi’s sentiment, and he was reverently believed to have truly replaced his father, having grown up to become a great strength, displayed in Onochie’s gregarious gait and farming skills.
But at the same time, Obi’s life gradually began to reflect a mix of joys and depressions. Being content with what he had, though, he had to endure very painful and regular physiotherapy for a long time to get healed. He now lived the rest of his days without his usual excitement of hunting and farming. Reduced in strength and valor, Obi could no longer carter for his family as he used to. Consequently and quite unfortunately, some of his children grew to become loafers and mischief schemers. Obi was very disappointed, but he could not do much about it.
Nevertheless, one of his children would single himself out—Ofor, his favorite child. The bond between them remained, and Obiefuna still held Nnenna, Ofor’s mother, closest to his heart.
However, when Nnenna died years later, Obiefuna lost the only real friend he ever truly had—she was the only one that knew his heart—a woman that calmed and persistently tamed him and his short temper with her love and gentleness. At this time, Ofor is twenty-eight years old.
The death of his mother now makes it possible for Ofor to finally resign to his long existing and nagging desire to leave the village. He often told his mother of his desires when she was alive, but Nnenna would not let her only son out of her sight.
His father likes Ofor’s bravery and desire, but Obi does not know any need for education or civilization, and hence he does not quite support Ofor fully. But two years later, Ofor finally leaves amid the opposition. It is difficult to understand what motivated his courage, especially to go against the wishes of his weak and dying father, but Ofor left.
That is how Mazi Ofor left the village for the city at the age of thirty—a very rare occurrence of this time. The year is 1931.
Ofor leaves by himself. Not by any slave trade, as is possible now, or by any education, promise, or coercion. He is just brave and dares to swim against the tides of his time. He is one optimistic man out of the rest, with unrivaled temerity.
He is different.
Three
Love should be praised for bringing people together even though they may be worlds apart. Love can bridge the gap between poor and rich, educated and uneducated, lower class and upper class, even the holy and the unholy! True love is rare but is the food of the soul. It is a love that, when felt, leaves the person coming back and asking for more. Love always wants to unite and bind forever with whoever arouses or inspires it. Love and its powers are often beyond one’s understanding.
Such love is the union between Fredrick and Susan, and little does Susan know that she became the envy of everyone, too. Not everybody, especially among her in-laws, is happy with her obvious fortune and happy marriage. Many at the Obi household are not happy with the car she drives around every now and then when they visit in the village or the beautiful and expensive presents they share with people at Christmas.
One may never fully grasp the intricacies of the human mind, or the wicked plans that might be concealed there even beneath a smile. One might never know exactly if what a man thinks is different from or the same as what he says. This is why one usually feels thankful to the heavens and grateful for friends that are open and honest in sharing the true contents of their hearts and minds.
Fredrick and Susan may be people whose hearts bear love and do not conceal wicked plans. Such people one might call good, giving and sharing of themselves and what they have with others. They may have made a paradise of their own world, but the rest of the world has not yet fully become paradise. Some people still afford envy and jealousy at another’s seeming success, and had Fredrick and his wife known this, they would have been more careful—careful enough to have placed their lives in the dependable protection of the gods. But once again, the answer to all human existence and endeavors lies with the gods, the owners of the universe.
Everyone might respond when greeted, but there is wisdom in the saying that salutation is not always love, just like a lack of it does not always mean an absence of love. Fredrick and Susan know that as much as they know that not all friends are truly friends, and not all foes are actually foes.
Though Susan had harsh life experiences of deprivation and denials, she knows from her family upbringing that it is wise to believe that not all that glitters is gold. Yet she doesn’t realize that such admonition could be considered even around one’s own supposed family. By seeing handwriting on the wall and reading in between the lines, she might have been more watchful, lest her “friends” turn to fiends.
Unfo
rtunately, Susan’s blissful marriage and almost perfect world is brutally brought to an end with the death of her husband. It is in the beginning of the month of August 1982, two months to the seventh anniversary of their wedding.
Fredrick had traveled to the village three days earlier to oversee the finishing of their new house. The house was a simple but posh seven-bedroom bungalow, suitable for his class of this time in its own definition of posh. He wanted to make sure that everything was complete and in perfect order before they left for the summer vacation he planned for his family in the UK. Susan had looked forward to the vacation for a long time with joyful anticipation. Fred was supposed to have taken her there two Octobers ago, for a special anniversary treat. But instead she got a car that year as a present on their fifth wedding anniversary. She was pregnant then and was almost due for delivery. Okechukwu was to be born in a couple of weeks, and she was not set to travel in that condition.
This year, 1982, Fredrick had a four-month annual leave plan. He deliberately passed his two months annual leave from last year so he would have this time with his wife and kids. It is properly planned and arranged so that they would leave by the end of this August and return by December for a big Christmas in the village and in the new house. There would also be a house-opening ceremony, parties, and more.
But two days after Fredrick returned from the village, a heart attack struck him. He died right away, even while still being conveyed to the hospital by Susan, with the assistance of a neighbor. He was not revived. It was so sudden and strange.
Nothing much is actually known of his short time in the village on his new house inspection. Susan still recalls that he had returned from the village that day happy and so cheery about the beauty of the house, and especially about the warm anticipation his uncles showed to the proposed opening party the coming Christmas.
Of course, the uncles had offered and shared kola nuts, as expected by custom, when Fred made that last visit. Kola nuts are very symbolic in the land, and “breaking of kola nuts” is a common way of sharing prayers and goodwill.
And Fredrick ate from it.
Susan can tell little about her husband’s demise. Whatever concerns or worry she may have had about it are immediately replaced with new concerns. Soon after Fredrick’s burial, Susan, without any choice of readiness, is greeted with an unanticipated battle with her in-laws, Fred’s uncles.
Susan does not know that her in-laws’ seeming detesting of her is only an extension of the aggression they had for Fredrick, transferred from their own brother, Ofor.
Despite her supplications—which are rather deterred by grave restrictions placed on her by custom, in addition to various personal and entrenched biases of other people in the family—her verbal struggles to retain some of her legitimate possessions, as bequeathed by her husband, prove abortive.
The most superior bias of all is the recurrent assertion of her in-laws that she is a woman and therefore has no right of inheritance. According to them, the right person to inherit property is her son, Okechukwu, who is only two years old now, and therefore he is too young and quite insignificant to inherit. This reason, Susan thinks, only serves to emphasize their self-indulgence and insensitivity.
Left alone, she is without anybody to plead her case or help her out. She has an only brother who could have helped, but he is handicapped at the moment: Nduka is bed-ridden with tuberculosis and dies shortly after the whole saga starts.
Her younger sister, Christy, cannot save her, either. So Susan strides on alone in this forbidden fight with her in-laws, pleading with all her might, soul, and tears, hoping they will consider her children at least. But her efforts are like pouring water on a stone and expecting the stone to soak up the water the way sand would.
She fights them to no avail. Now she finally resigns to her fate. She becomes desolate and poor in the village, with her two kids to care for.
Because of the sudden change of fortune and environment, the village is harsh and unfriendly to them. That aside, her co-wives, by way of the extended family system, do not allow her remaining meager personal comfort to be a reality.
Dike’s wife, Ugomma, is particularly awful to her. Every other reasonable person in the extended family seems irritated even with the sight of her kids.
Two months after her compulsory one-year mourning pact is over, as conditions grow too sore and sour for her to bear, she moves to her maternal home with her kids, two villages away from her marital home. At home finally, she starts life anew.
Within the space of a year, Susan gathers herself up once again through farming and petty trading. From her efforts comes the proceeds to care for her family’s basic needs, as well as restart the schooling of her kids. She relaxes now with the thought that she has finally found succor and is free from her in-laws.
But it is far from the last confrontation.
Her peace and rest is only for a while, because when Okechukwu turns ten, her in-laws return to claim him as a legitimate son of Obi’s household. By their customs, a son is not allowed to grow outside the family home.
Susan cannot both believe and understand the move. In fact, only the gods would tell her what their true intentions are about her boy. This new interest in Okechukwu is very serious, and it remains unfathomable to her. She thinks to herself that there certainly can never be an end to the cravings of greedy men. Could they have the guts to come back to me this way, after all that torture these past years, with the intention of taking my only remaining possession—my children? Then the depth of their hatred for her must be far deeper than what is evident on the surface.
She cannot believe it, and to her it all means danger with warning signs.
By her presumption, she of course will not need anyone to tell her the reason behind their sudden interest in Okechukwu. She tells herself she knows the reason well enough. First they want to devastate her and her heritage completely, and then they will transfer that aggression again, but now from Fredrick to Okechukwu, who is just a boy. They want to ruin his life and whatever bright future he has. They want to tarnish Fred’s legacies forever. Susan has come to realize this over the events of the past few years.
Armed with those facts as she perceives them, her in-laws’ reappearance into her life infuriates her so much that she won’t even allow them a chance for their wanton apology and explanations regarding their callous treatment of her in the past.
But instead of giving up, they insistently continue with their demand, unperturbed. And she remains adamant, too, in her own stance and stern refusal.
They can force Okechukwu from her the way they did with her other possessions if they care to, but this time she is more than ready to fight them tooth and nail. But saving her the anticipated physical combat, her in-laws actually do not want to weave more scandals around themselves, which is why they camouflage their real motive with a peaceful request to support the welfare of their brother’s grandson, who is also an heir of the Obi household. In explanation of their sudden reappearance, they say that they want to ease Susan of her “hard labor” in fending for her children alone. They say they are sorry for past events and are willing to repay her. They actually seem filled with remorse and regret. But no one can really tell what goes on in a man’s mind, and Susan won’t let herself be fooled—it is surely a facade!
They continue in that peaceful facade to pester her for Okechukwu, calling at her maternal home, sending delegates on their behalf, and stopping her on the way to various errands. But the more they come, the more she refuses and the more stubborn she becomes, and her hatred for them surges deeper.
She closed her mind against them long ago and has moved on; in her opinion, nothing in them can change for good. The wounds of the misery she experienced in their hands have not healed. It is rather like a case of once bitten, twice shy as she still vividly recalls all those days of misery, when none of her in-law
s cared to help.
“Who are they trying to fool now?” she asks herself repeatedly. “Who said the devil could ever become a good angel?”
She reasons that with what she knows about Dike’s wickedness, there cannot have been a miracle to say that he is now a changed man. She will not allow herself to entertain such thoughts because surely they will not fool her.
Besides, gone are those days of abject penury when she actually needed help. Not now. Gone are the days when she went calling on Dike, Onuma, and Onochie for assistance, even for a small piece of farmland to start with, and they refused with a fierce fire of wickedness in their eyes. She could not have missed those fires, could she? They were so obvious in their words, actions, and complete rejection of her and her children. They refuse to lease anything of support to them, even out of their bequest, on which they all greedily feasted.
“No way!” she says to herself again and again. She rejects their show of concern, asking where they’ve been the past eight years, especially when she was actually in need. “Is it not Dike that drove me out of Obi’s family?” she asks herself now, and she grimaces in abhorrence as her mind travels back to those days.
Four
All at once in a single reminiscence, Susan is standing motionless in her kitchen with arms akimbo, in this shackling but ruminating moment of time the vivid images return.
She has been in her kitchen preparing dinner. Her kids are in the next compound, visiting with neighbors’ children who are friends and school mates. They help each other with school assignments as well as play till their mamas call.
“How can two cars go missing, and you don’t want to account for them?” Susan asks when she first realizes the cars were no more. She directs the question to Emechebe, Onuma’s twenty-eight-year-old son. He is one of those that used the cars to run errands in preparation for Fred’s burial.
One Love, Many Tears Page 3