One Love, Many Tears

by Gertrude U. Uzoh

  At the mortuary, her stiffened body is further straightened out by the mortician at her embalmment.

  The day finally comes for the burial of Susan. Her body rested three weeks at the mortuary. For those three weeks, Okechukwu and Cynthia were in distress. Christy, their aunty, already exhausted most of her tears at the death of her only sister, who was her only remaining family; their elder brother died some years back.

  It has always been poverty and calamity in their family. No doubt their parents gave up on them and on the hardship of life when they died one after the other within a space of three years. Their mother died first, then their father, which was a pity even though he was a loafing palm wine tapper. The minimum education they had, which was consequently forestalled by her death, had been majorly sponsored by their mother’s hard work. She made it possible for them to have a decent enough meal and to go to the affordable local school, until her demise. Their mother was the stronger breadwinner of their family, through her large-scale and intensive trade on local consumer goods, fruits, and vegetables.

  Christy, had a marriage that didn’t quite last a year. She married four years after Susan did to a commercial truck driver who trooped the routes of various towns on a daily basis, conveying goods to their owners. However, her husband died before Susan’s in a road accident on one such trips, leaving Christy to the painful fate of widowhood.

  Since the death of her husband, she has not remarried. Whether Susan was luckier than her in the fact that she married Fred, a well-off man and one who loved her quite obviously, Christy can no longer tell, because the subsequent death of Fred also brought Susan to join Christy in the unlucky path of early widowhood.

  It was really a welcome shoulder to lean on for Susan, when Christy offered her full support at Fred’s funeral. Having survived the stroke of early demise of a beloved, her own husband, and having passed through the traditional misery of widowhood herself, Christy gave Susan every support within her reach. They were always close, but the death of Susan’s husband brought them even closer.

  With all those incidents, troubles from Susan’s in-laws, and their loneliness, they grew to be another family because they knew that all they had left was just themselves. Together they were both father and mother to Cynthia and Okechukwu. Christy remains both a distant aunt and a second mother to the children.

  The funeral ceremony, scheduled for 10:00 a.m., begins with a service.

  Though Susan spent most part of her widowhood at her maternal home, her body would be interred in her marital home, where she rightly belongs; this is a tradition.

  The day before, her body was brought from the mortuary all the way from her maternal village to Obi’s compound. That night she laid in state to the view of everybody that gathered, among whom were friends, colleagues, and some villagers. She laid in state all through the night, in the customary wake-keep rite.

  During this wake-keep, Okechukwu is lost in his own world of grief, and Cynthia keeps crying endlessly and more unbearably, as she never did throughout the last three weeks she had been indoors tearing her heart with sorrow.

  Cynthia blames anything and anybody that could have caused her mother’s death. She knows within herself and by all evidence of the blood and the vomit that her mother died of food poisoning, which she strongly feels was in that meal she saw beside Susan’s body. She therefore thinks that somebody must have been very determined, to have come and killed her in her own home! But there is nothing she can do about that conviction, even with all her available proof, or with the suspicions Susan’s death readily aroused.

  As much as she tries not to, Cynthia cannot seem to stop thinking of the possibility of her mother’s death being by their Uncle Dike, who is particularly of a not-so-beckoning repute. She knows that recently Uncles Dike, Onuma, and Onochie have been coming to their mother, and always they end up arguing. Sometimes she saw their mother ask them to go home and leave her and her children alone. They always argued bitterly and exchanged words in voices loud enough for Cynthia to hear. But their mother, unlike her usual manner of telling them virtually everything, did not tell her children exactly what the problem was.

  Cynthia can’t be sure, but the thoughts keep coming to her mind every now and then. In fact, her mind keeps straying out of her control to lean accusingly on her uncles. Every time this happens, she begins to cry afresh. She thinks of how wicked and heartless people can be, and she even wonders, in her own understanding, why her uncles—or anyone at all—would want her mother dead. She believes that her mom was a good person and has no enemies, and therefore she deserved not to die. But that is often what everyone seems to think of loved ones.

  Cynthia’s suspicion that her mother died of food poisoning baffles her, because she never knew her mother had deadly enemies, and she doesn’t know who they are. Her young mind is worried with questions that might be too big for her to crack, and all she can see is hopelessness and abandonment for her and her dear brother. “What about us?” she keeps asking and sobbing.

  Standing now at the foot of the bed where her mother’s body is laid, Cynthia watches helplessly. Then she turns away her tearful eyes and focuses her gaze beseechingly on her aunt, who is now her only parent, and who all through this grieving time had remained at her sides.

  “Aunty, what about Okechukwu and I? What will happen to us? Who will take care of us?” she asks with a resigned calm now. The calm results only from the tiredness of her brain and heart. She is now over-stressed with worries and seems to have lost all her hysteria during her agonies of the past three weeks.

  Even though Cynthia has resigned to their fate, the thought that lying in state now is only a corpse, the mere dead body of their mother, whom they have been with all their lives, makes it more mysterious. She wonders at the mystery of death and the thought that her mother is lying there lifeless and probably cannot hear or see Cynthia’s misery. This makes Cynthia abashed as she suddenly realizes her pains and tears are useless. Still, she continues to bemoan the dead.

  “Oh Mummy, why? Why did you leave us this way? So, this is why you took your time that morning to have a last talk with us, eh? Mummy, if you knew you would die, then how could you not have told us or at least spend more time with us? Why did you agree to die? How could you have left us? How do you want us to go on without you, as orphans?” She groans at the thought.

  She had said all that countless times before, from the moment she was resuscitated from the faint she sustained that fateful day. “Oh no! So we are now orphans, eh? We are now orphans…” Her voice breaks off at this point.

  “No! Who did this to you, Mama, and who did this to us? Who are you, where are you, how could you be so inconsiderate?” She screams aloud. Christy and some other woman now rush at her to hush her.

  That they are now orphans quickly takes her mind back to the love of a father they never really got to know. Always keeping Fred in loving memory, it had been very difficult for Susan to keep Fred actually dead in their lives. He was alive with many beautiful memories of her own, and Susan often shared the stories with her children. Cynthia and Okechukwu have grown to be intimately aware of a father they never really grew to meet, and they will always love him.

  Now, being an orphan reminds Cynthia that she is now nothing but a girl without a father or a mother. She loathes the thought, so she cries on and on into the night.

  That was how Cynthia found herself the morning of the funeral. With swollen eyes, she still muffles sobs during the service. Aunty Christy is sitting beside her, calming away her upheaval with gentle pats and words of comfort. “It’s okay, Cynthia. You have cried enough. God, who is the giver of life, knows why he allowed your mother to die now,” she tells her again, as she has been doing so often these days.

  Christy is able to mutter such comforting words even amid the grief in her own heart. Okechukwu is sitting just by her left. He appears to be t
aking it more peacefully than Cynthia, although he still has grief reserved in his heart as well; it seems he has cried enough and cannot cry anymore. But with Cynthia, the tears seem endless no matter how hard she tries to avert them.

  Christy stays near them all through the burial service. They are flanked by other members of Obi’s extended family, all who wear mournful looks and are adorned in mourner’s outfits. Dike, Onuma, and Onochie are very much present, looking very bereaved of course. Quite a number of villagers turn out, too.

  At the end of other procedures, the moment finally comes for the internment of Susan’s body beside Fred’s grave. People are now filing toward the six-feet-deep crevice created on the parched earth that is now to be Susan’s grave. It is dug wide enough to lodge the casket forever.

  Cynthia and Okechukwu’s schoolmates and friends are here, too, to sympathize with them. The school vice principal, with Cynthia and Okechukwu’s respective class teachers, are compulsorily here. Also in accompaniment are Mrs. Okoro and two other teachers. Paying condolence visits to bereaved students is one of the school’s age-long obligations. The grieving moment is usually a time to see many people, including ones considered enemies. And sometimes, some others considered friends at times might be absent.

  Emotions are high in this moment of procession. Men and women alike are prone to tears, as well as children and the students, among whom are Chinaka, Emeka, and others who initially would have thought they were enemies with Cynthia.

  Now at the grave side, all converge for the last tributes and throwing of sand. Different people pay Susan different tributes, expressing statements of farewell, sympathy, empathy, surprise, and regret; all are various forms of condolence as they query death.

  It is one brief but eternal moment for Okechukwu and Cynthia, a moment to finally seal their fate in an agreement that their mother is truly dead and gone. Then there is the throwing of sand, which means a last good-bye.

  Before the wooden casket lowered into the crevice gets covered with sand, Cynthia and Okechukwu have moments now to express their thoughts or feelings as expected.

  Okechukwu is the first to go. “Mummy, though you were poisoned to die, nobody actually has a power over your soul, because it is in God’s hands”

  “Poisoned to die”? What does Okechukwu know? Nothing known in certainty for a boy of twelve, except that he has a very attentive mind and ears, which have been picking through the many silent whispers of the past three weeks.

  He continues. “May God, whom it pleases that your life be taken, always be with us to direct us, as the father and the mother we will never see again…” He breaks off at this point. Choked with sobs, he cannot speak further except to finally add,

  “Mummy, may your soul rest in peace. Amen!”

  The crowd echoes his amen, and like a coordinated, long-awaited rendition, there is an unequalled avalanche of groans and screams from people, mostly women, who are either Susan’s colleagues from church or the market, her co-farmers, and more. Like a tournament, the women eagerly display various skills in grief with a variety of moans in various pitches, pathos, and tremulous songs. All come tumbling out at once, evoking a gnawing, emotionally charged atmosphere that can make a marble statue want to weep. It is indeed a ceremony of tears.

  The cries of those women tear at Cynthia’s heart. But with the help of Christy, she calms herself a little to say, “How could someone ever want to kill you? Mummy, you did nothing wrong to anybody except to be and to take care of us all. You always tried to be on good terms with everybody, and you are kind hearted. But someone still decided to kill you despite your goodness.” She pauses to think a little. “Mummy, I know you would be resting right now, after so much toil to keep us up when Daddy died. May God in his mercy take care of your soul, and may he punish whoever did this to us abundantly. Rest in peace, Mummy. Adieu.” She finishes and weakly throws her sand over the casket. Then, turning away briefly, she brings her head down to lean on Christy’s provided shoulder. Christy holds her steady, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and crying, too.

  Still shaking in her own tears, Christy also has her own moment of good-bye to her only sister. She can’t say much and merely shovels a mound of sand over the casket and says, “Good-bye, my dear sister. We will see each other again. It is well; go in peace! We know that God is watching, and he surely knows about this.” She finishes and steps back now, sniffing away her tears. Absently, she pulls out the edge of her loose waist wrapper, rubbing it all over her face to damp off the stream of tears.

  Some others from the Obi family, as well as from among friends and colleagues, also threw sand as a farewell. Next, the grave is filled with mounds of sand. Cynthia and Okechukwu are helplessly standing still and watching, numbly transfixed, as the casket gradually disappears beneath the sands, sealing their eternal fate.

  Christy now takes them away from the sight, having marked the unforgettable site for them all. The rest is a stream of continued condolences from various friends and people in their neighborhood, far and near.

  Seven

  A day later and in the quiet of the night, while every other person in the household is supposedly asleep, Okechukwu wakes from a troubled sleep. He sits up on the bed and looks to his left at the far end of it, near the wall where Cynthia is curled in sleep beside Aunty Christy, who is also asleep. They are all in the same room.

  His aunt Christy had talked about returning with them to her home at the break of dawn, but she told them that she knows it’s going to be a hard time convincing their mother’s difficult in-laws of that. Christy discussed with Okechukwu and Cynthia, thinking about it deep into the night and finally, they all fell asleep on the resolution that Christy would try as much as she could to appeal to their consideration of the fact that she is their mother’s sister and is closest to the children.

  Okechukwu climbs out of the bed now to stand idly for a while, watching Cynthia and his aunt sleep. Suddenly, he feels a spontaneous urge to visit his mother’s grave outside. It is extreme and strange, especially at this time of the night, but Okechukwu is an unpredictable boy with strange impulses. He does not really know any implication of that, or has any reason at all to think about it. He is just a boy answering nature’s kind call, and in his childishness, he told himself that he is going to creep out of this room now. He is helplessly overwhelmed by a sudden, burdensome need for his mother.

  The time now is 1:30 in the morning.

  Slowly he opens the door of the room, careful not to disturb the silence or wake the sleeping people in the house. The night is dead and the silence deafening. The door opens with a faint crackle into a dark corridor. He walks silently on tiptoe through the long hallway and heads toward the frontage. The frontage is a spacious verandah, and two poles away from it is his mother’s grave.

  Still on tiptoe, he reaches the entrance of the verandah he must pass through, but suddenly he stops as he hears a faint sound. He listens again and now moves toward the sound, which turns out to be hushed voices coming from the far end of the verandah. Placing himself against the wall, he tilts his head slightly in the darkness. Peeping from behind that wall, he can now see who owns the voices. It is three men—Dike, Onuma, and Onochie. He can only see their backs from this view, because their heads are close together over a keg of palm wine.

  From behind the wall, his inquisitive mind wonders at the men, who are repeatedly nodding their heads as they talk mutedly in the cold silence of the night. In all simple curiosity and innocence, Okechukwu creeps closer to the wall and is now within indiscreet earshot. He is being careful not to be noticed, but his heart suddenly skips one huge beat, and he all at once begins to sweat from his forehead—he just heard his name!

  A deeper curiosity pushes him closer to full earshot. His heart is beating real fast in fright this time, and he swallows his breath in his mouth. He had come out just in time to hear the last par
t of their discussions.

  “Yes!” whispers Onuma in agreement. “The way she spoke yesterday, I am sure there is something she knows. That type of girl, if allowed to live, would be a greater trouble than her mother.”

  “What I need more is the boy. I need his hands on my farm. He must learn to farm like a true son of Obi, and not school, school, school!” says Dike.

  “But you know that woman Christy must interfere. See how she has been with them all this time,” Onochie complains.

  “Leave that one to me,” says Dike. “If she becomes difficult,

  I will deal with her the way I dealt with her sister. What is important is the boy Okechukwu. Remember he is the first reason, long before his mother died.” They all nodded in agreement to that. And Dike continues. “So, at the break of dawn, I will personally go to see Onwukansi for another Ngaze. Before the next market day, that girl will be ‘taken’ mysteriously, and nobody can explain it or have a cause to question us. Onwukansi knows his job very well. As for that woman, just leave her to me.”

  “Dike! Dike!” Onuma hails him as they all nod in agreement to Dike’s strategy.

  Okechukwu thinks hard about what he heard: Onwukansi is a notorious herbalist in the village, and Ngaze is a local name for his charms.

  The next ten minutes is now spent in another round of drinking. They drink the wine to their fill, and finally into a stupor.

  Every other person in the compound is asleep except them—and Okechukwu of course, who is still rooted behind the wall. By now, his eyeballs are wide with horror, and every hair in his body is standing. He is terrified, and the pulse of his heartbeat at this moment has never been this similar to a blazing volcano. Even as young as he is, he understands the men in their riddles and slogans, and he knows they don’t mean well. Didn’t he just hear what they are planning to do to him, his sister, and his aunty?