God of Mercy

by Okezie Nwoka

  The congregation nodded while replying in loud yeses.

  “Good, good; let me read it … ‘BUT THE DEAD KNOWETH NOT ANYTHING, NEITHER HAVE THEY ANY MORE A REWARD; FOR THE MEMORY OF THEM IS FORGOTTEN.’ Have you heard it? THE MEMORY OF THEM IS FORGOTTEN! So you people who defy the Living God in the name of culture and tradition, I warn you that peace of mind will not be your portion! You will end up more possessed than the people you have seen today! I have said it before and I will say it again, you must be loyal to Jesus! He alone will answer your prayer! He alone is the true God! He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life! Every other god is a devil! Every other god is waste!”

  Pastor Nwosu fixed the microphone onto its stand, and sat in his seat at the altar while hearing the blasting applause. The service continued by the leadership of church elders and deacons. Tithes and offerings were collected. Testimonies were shared. More hymns were sung, and the service ended with a prayer from an elder.

  “Jesus in heaven. We thank you for giving us another service. We ask that you continue to bless us and grant us our hearts’ desires. I ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us now and forevermore. Surely …”

  “Goodness and mercy shall follow us,” said the congregation, “all the days of our lives, and we shall dwelleth in the house of the Lord forever and ever … Amen.”

  Pastor Nwosu shook the hand of the church elder who had prayed, then walked along the church’s center aisle toward the back of the edifice near the sunlit entrance, where he would wish his congregation a blessed Sunday. He turned, and saw many flocking to meet him—and he greeted them, with handshakes and hugs, laying his hands on many, invoking the fire of the Holy Spirit.

  “Pastor Nwosu! Please come! Something is happening at the Manifestation Quarters!”

  It was John, Pastor Nwosu’s administrative assistant, who was approaching the pastor’s back when the pastor turned to him, abruptly ending the pastor’s blessing on a large woman wearing a large hat.

  “John, what is it? What is happening?” the pastor asked.

  “It is Ikemba, the possessed youth … the one with black skin. He has escaped his cell and now he is causing trouble in the quarters.”

  “What do you mean? How did he—Follow me! Follow me quickly!”

  Pastor Nwosu left the large woman and the rest of his congregation, and marched along the gravel path leading to the Manifestation Quarters—not seeing John following behind him. The young assistant feared the pastor, partially because the pastor was a man of God, but mainly because the pastor employed him. Any mistake, and John was both damned and sacked. He knew he could regain salvation by joining another church, but finding a new job in his native country was nearly impossible. The young assistant did not tell Pastor Nwosu that it was he who was responsible—that it was he who had lost his set of keys by the cells in the Manifestation Quarters, allowing this disturbance to happen. When they arrived at the Manifestation Quarters, John left the pastor, hurrying into a very far corner, avoiding any further interactions with this man of God.

  “What is happening here?” asked Pastor Nwosu, looking about the Manifestation Quarters, seeing that the potted plants had been turned over, leaving dirt scattered across the floor, with papers flying in midair by the thrusts of twirling ceiling fans. He moved farther along, following a noise he had been hearing from the entrance, then saw Ikemba jumping toward the high fans, slamming his feet against the old wood of a table, his black muscles glistening under the fluorescent light, standing half naked with eyes stretched wide like an open palm.

  “It is Ikemba! Pastor, it is Ikemba!” an attendant said.

  “My Lord and my God,” said another attendant with a cane, “he is possessed! My Lord and my God! My Lord and my God … Jesuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssss!”

  “SHUT UP!” said the pastor. “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!”

  “We don’t know,” implored the first attendant, as she slapped her hands atop each other.

  “Give me that cane!” the pastor said, snatching it from the attendant who had screamed, then banging it on the wooden table.

  “Ikemba, I am warning you,” Pastor Nwosu said, “come down from that table right now!”

  Ikemba ignored the pastor, and continued jumping over and again, looking through the black of the pastor’s eyes.

  “Ikemba, I said come down now!”

  “DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH,” Ikemba sang.

  “I will break you to pieces if you don’t come down this instant!”

  “This is my revolt!” Ikemba said. “THIS IS MY REVOLT! You have kept me here in your church for two years … YOU STUPID MAN! IS THIS THE WAY OF YOUR GOD? IS THIS WHAT YOUR BIBLE TELLS YOU TO DO? It is time for me to leave this church by force and by fire! Do you hear me, stupid man … BY FORCE AND BY FIRE!”

  Ikemba heard the pastor banging the cane on the table, but the sound of it only excited him, moving him to jump on the table with more weight and power.

  “If you have a gun,” Ikemba said, “now is the time to shoot it.”

  Pastor Nwosu fell silent, then struck Ikemba on his arm; but the boy of sixteen protested more loudly and jumped harder on the table, putting fear in the attendants, and without warning, began unloosing his corduroy pants and aiming his genitals toward the pastor.

  Urine erupted on Pastor Nwosu’s face, some of it mixing with his mustache, some of it passing through his lips; and it was enough to make the pastor howl, jump onto the table, and bombard the teenager with blows from his cane, enough to make the pastor kill with a strike to the temple, if not for the commandment of the one called his god—which he recalled while sharing the tabletop with the other—one disobeying church authority, one disobeying no law of Amalike, both disregarding the fact that the table could not hold their weight—and when it began collapsing, the pastor landed on his feet, and the child on his right ankle.

  “NOOOOO!” Ikemba screamed, as droplets of blood widened from where the cane had opened his skin, as his ankle began swelling to the size of a garden egg.

  Pastor Nwosu ordered the attendants to pick him up from the floor and return him to the cell in which he was kept. And as they followed his orders, he dropped the cane and went to the staff restroom to wipe his face clean with water and soap. He saw himself in the mirror and saw that the urine had stained his red silk shirt, and he began cleaning the stain with tissues, roughly—roughly, until he saw the composure and authority he expected from his reflection, keeping himself from thinking of things he could name as sin. Then he opened the bathroom door, and moved through the corridor to where the children were kept, yelling, “AAAAAAAAAAAAY!” for their attention.

  “Let this be a WARNING to each of you! If you try and cause trouble in this HOUSE OF GOD, you will have me to answer to! I will make sure that you are SEVERELY DEALT WITH! Possessed or not possessed, INSUBORDINATION will not be tolerated! If you try it like this BASTARD among you, your penalty will be high.”

  Pastor Nwosu marched out of the corridor, as quickly as he had entered it, and did not notice that his assistant had not been following him. John left his hiding place when he saw the pastor leave the quarters, and went toward the cells to look for his missing keys. John kept his eyes low, searching the wet concrete floor for the sparkle of gray metal, avoiding the many children residing in those cells, with their scab-ridden skin and pale faces, with their jaundiced eyes more yellow than their growing teeth. He did not want to see the children of Precious Word Ministries, and stood in the middle of the corridor, flanked by the caged cells, avoiding the children’s skinny arms reaching toward either side of him.

  “Sah, sah … please, we are hungry, give us bread.”

  “Sah … give us bread.”

  “Sah, I want water to drink.”

  “Sah … sah …”

  And John left the cells and ran out of the quarters, abandoning his search for hi
s missing keys. He returned to the second floor of the girdered church edifice—rushing to the pastor’s door—hurrying to fulfill the pastor’s requests.

  Quickly he knocked on the pastor’s door and waited for a response, and when he was told to come in, he entered and saw the pastor by the window, lifting a curtain to let the sunlight in, then watching as the afternoon light spread across the oak desk, spanning the large room, touching the burgundy chairs and a picture frame bearing the pastor and the ones called his wife and four children, touching a mirror that reflected the light onto a painting of the child Jesus teaching the elders of the temple.

  “Would you like to eat your afternoon meal now, sah?” John said.

  “Yes,” said the pastor. “What did the cook prepare?”

  “Rice and stew with goat meat.”

  “That is fine.”

  John set off to the church kitchen and returned with the pastor’s meal set on a ceramic tray; he left the room again and timidly waited by the pastor’s door—tapping his feet and pressing his knuckles, bearing solicitude, thinking of the merits of death over unemployment, and outpacing his own thoughts of the lost metal key—before being ordered inside the office again, to remove the pastor’s plates.

  “Pastor sah …” said John, returning the red-stained plates to the ceramic tray.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “I wanted to inform you of today, your scheduled meetings.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the pastor. “Go ahead.”

  John put down the last plate, then removed from his pocket a notepad filled with names, times, and dates. He turned to the page bearing the day’s agenda and read out the schedule to the pastor.

  “At three o’clock you have a meeting with Mr. Anyaọkụ regarding the Christian Men’s Association. At five you are scheduled to bless the new house that the Nwanka family has built. And I moved your six o’clock meeting with Obi Iroatụ to one thirty p.m., because of your upcoming travels to Nnewi City.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “OK. Take these plates away, let me prepare for my meeting with the king.”

  Pastor Nwosu did not see John leaving when he began stretching over his desk to organize his work area, discarding some papers and arranging his Bible, his office ledger, and the red notebooks he used for drafting sermons. And when he believed his desk was in order, he walked to his window and pulled his curtains farther back, and saw people from his congregation gathered beneath the scaffolding of the church edifice, discussing matters he hoped were for the benefit of his church. He wanted to go to them and give them counsel—but he heard, instead, a knocking coming from his office door.

  “Come in,” Pastor Nwosu said.

  “Pastor! Pastor!” said Obi Iroatụ, as he entered the room, gold hanging from his neck as yards of cloth streamed down his back. He extended his hand to the pastor, and his pastor accepted it with a smile before they both began moving toward their newly imported chairs.

  “Obi Iroatụ, welcome!” said Pastor Nwosu, sitting down.

  “Thank you, my pastor. How has your Sunday been?”

  “To tell you the truth … it has been hectic,” Pastor Nwosu said, bringing his hands to his mustache. “It is just as they say, the work of God’s servant knows no end.”

  “That is very true,” the king said while grinning. “It is very true indeed.”

  “In any case, the great king of Amalike has come to my office. What have we to discuss today?”

  “Pastor, I have come to make another donation to the church. My businesses have been doing well. My profits have been tripling, and it is because of how you tend to this church. The Almighty is working wonders through you and I must thank him!”

  “That is well. That is well indeed,” said the pastor. “You have not forgotten Jesus amid your success. It is a mistake so many others make.”

  “I know. That is why I am gifting fifty million toward the construction of the church.”

  “That is a generous gift!“ Pastor Nwosu said. “It will bring us closer to our goal; but, why so much? You have already taken so many children to London City to study at your brother’s Christian school, and now you are giving me millions to continue building this House of God …”

  “Pastor Nwosu, it was you who told me that when one has faith, a donation to the church is an investment. You invest in God, and God will in turn invest in you. Here … take this check and deposit it when you are ready.”

  The king gave the pastor a blue slip of paper as the pastor remained silent—grinning while morose as he lifted his falling spectacles.

  “Thank you very much Obi. On behalf of Precious Word Ministries, I thank you. We will use this money to continue building this House of God. I was even thinking of purchasing property to expand the church grounds.”

  “Purchasing? Pastor, I am the Obi of Amalike. If you need more land, just tell me, and I will give it to you.”

  “Surely God will bless you, Obi Iroatụ.”

  “Of course, my pastor … yes, yes … my pastor … there is even an important thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “Yes, what is it?” said Pastor Nwosu, after darting his eyes from the unfinished edifice.

  “Today, I did not understand what you said about libations. How did you manage to call offering libations to our ancestors an evil? I couldn’t understand it.”

  “Obi, it is not me calling it an evil. It is the Holy Bible. I read the verse in Ecclesiastes that speaks to such matters. When someone has died, he has died. There is no more life in him. If you pray to him, it is like praying to an idol. That is what makes it an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Pastor, I know, I know, but it is one of our traditions. We have been doing it for centuries.”

  “And it is time that I put an end to those sinful habits. I am the pastor of this church, and I will not allow my flock to engage in acts of Satan in the name of tradition. If they do, they cannot be members of Precious Word Ministries, and they will be condemned to the suffering of eternal hellfire. And if you want those financial blessings to keep flowing by the hand of God, and his servant the pastor, you must abandon those heathen practices yourself. Remember, our God does not like sharing His glory!”

  Obi Iroatụ fell silent, believing the blessed assurance which had come through the pastor’s hands saved him from the gloom of high-risk business choices and protected his investments living within the Manifestation Quarters; and his fear of losing those investments outweighed any desire to pour wine onto the earth—for any ancestor, regardless of their resting place—regardless of their name.

  “You are right, pastor! You are right! If you want, I can even outlaw the practice of libation in Amalike.”

  “In due time, Obi. Let us first work on converting these hearts to Jesus.”

  “If you are speaking of converting the hearts of your congregation, there is something you must know.”

  “What is it?”

  “Many members of the congregation have been traveling to Ichulu in secret.”

  “WHAT! That heathen, backward village! Why are they—I should have wiped that place out with Holy Ghost fire years ago. Nothing good can come from Ichulu. It is caged.”

  “It is true,” the king said, thinking of loyalty, thinking of another investment.

  “I have warned them!” Pastor Nwosu said. “They are not to travel there, not for any reason!”

  “I know,” said Obi Iroatụ, “but they are going anyway. There is a young girl there … Many believe she has been blessed with the gift of flying. They have seen it with their own eyes. They say that the girl has been given this power by the Living God.”

  “What? That is impossible!”

  “That was what I thought, until one of my personal aides, Madụka, confirmed it for me. Pastor Nwosu, this girl can fly.”

  “She must be a witch! That is it! She must be a witch, and now she wants to compromise the faith of my flock. God w
ill not allow it!”

  “He will not,” the king said. “Pastor, let me make a suggestion.”

  The pastor nodded his head.

  “Why not bring this child here to the church and keep her in the Manifestation Quarters. Since she is a witch, her witchcraft must be broken by the blood of Jesus. You must heal her, pastor.”

  “Obi Iroatụ, that is an excellent idea. I must bring this child here—I’ll send my assistant to Ichulu, to escort her to the church. Yes, that is what I must do. John! John!” the pastor said from his office.

  “Yes sah,” said John as he entered.

  “Prepare your bags! You are making a journey to Ichulu.”

  DIARY ENTRY #958 DATE UNKNOWN

  but Chukwu is not a fool i know that Chukwu the Most Supreme Being is not a fool but how Chukwu how could you do this to me please please remove me from this prison you’ve seen me you see that i haven’t eaten. you see that i haven’t slept only pure water i can smell everything sitting in that metal bucket everything that has come out of me but Chukwu is not a fool so take me out of this prison remove me i need to eat. Please. anything give me to eat i’ve been counting with these marks one eight thirteen nothing to eat for these thirteen days where is the time? chukwu where is it? when did prison become home.

  and my father my old father solomtochukwu solomto please solomto you flew like me i flew and sang your songs in my heart tell that god to get me out tell chukwu to get me out chukwu isbut i can never say it. i didn’t say it when they roped me up then beat me like a goat that day i flew in the sanctuary i didn’t say it when they burned my lips chukwu is not a fool not listening to me after every good thing i did all the things please please tell the most supreme remind that god i went up each day up i never cursed when others cursed did i steal when others stole i didn’t lie when they told me lies never never always the truth chukwu remove me, take me up, what have i done, what have i