‘That’s my boy,’ said my father, approval and love on his stern face.
I would make a better son of the house, I sometimes thought. But what fell to me was not carrying on the family name but ensuring that the one who was to do so succeeded. So, each morning when we were seven, eight, nine years old, I would hold my brother’s hand and we would walk to the school in whichever town my father’s teacher job had taken him – Awka, Nanka, Oyi, Umuleri. I intervened in my brother’s fights. I made sure he did his homework.
And yet, Afam was kind. He would save his lunch to share with his friends whose parents could not afford three meals a day; he fought bullies for his friends, his height even then a great bonus. His patience for explaining schoolwork always made me think that he would make a great teacher. Once, when I told my father this, he said, ‘No, he will not be a teacher. He will be a lawyer. Maybe he will become a judge like Justice Louis Mbanefo. He could even become a politician like the great Zik. You, of course, may be a teacher. But you could also become a nurse. Or even a doctor. I hear that there are doctors among Yoruba women.’
It seemed we would become whatever we wanted. We finished elementary school and got into the best secondary schools. Papa found ways to inject this information into every conversation he had with the people who visited our house for counselling, advice, or to borrow money. Then we both went to university, me to the University of Nigeria to read English, Afam to the University of Lagos to study law, making my father swell with pride so much so that my mother warned him he might burst and end up in hell, for pride was a sin. He would retort that God, who had begun the good work, would let him, the man who loved Him most on earth, see the end of it.
When my mother, after having had three girls after Afam, unexpectedly conceived again and had her last child, my father called the boy Chielotam – ‘God has remembered me.’
And then the war broke out. And everything changed.
…
Papa died of diabetes in 1972, two years after the war ended. He would have lived if not for his stubbornness. He had developed a small sore on his foot that would not heal. Then it grew. The doctor had said it was infected and that his foot would have to be amputated.
I remember standing by Papa’s bedside and hearing him say, ‘Tell that doctor that nobody can cut off my leg, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Papa, but—’
‘You do not say “but” to me, young woman. Nwabueze Ndubuizu can never be a cripple, do you hear me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ehen. Now, Afam,’ his gaze pierced deep into my eyes, ‘you must take care of Afam. He is drifting now. The sooner he settles down, the better. He must marry. As soon as possible. At his age, I was married. You must help him. And Chielotam. You understand what I am saying to you?’
‘Yes, sir. But—’
‘Did I not just say not to say “but”? Your mother is a strong woman, but you must stand by her and help her.’
‘Yes, Papa,’ I whispered, although I wanted to say ‘but’ again: But why do you talk this way? But you cannot leave Mama? But what about me? But I did not want to raise his ire, so I kept my buts to myself.
When I returned to the hospital in the morning to relieve my mother, my father was gone.
I had little time to grieve, or to wonder at the unremitting emptiness Papa’s death left in my heart, because that was when Afam began to drink. I often thanked God that Papa had not lived to see this, that he only had seen his son’s inability to settle down. After drifting for a while, Afam went back to live with Mama in the village. There he drank every second his eyes were open. He stole from my mother. He robbed our neighbours too, selling their goats and chickens to feed his growing habit. He showed no remorse when he was caught, and paid no mind to my mother’s weeping.
His behaviour angered me. He was not the only one who went to war. We all had scars from it. But we carried on. We put away our thoughts like carefully folded wrappers at the bottom of the clothes box and faced the business of living. Those whose houses and property had been confiscated by the government in Lagos and Port Harcourt began to figure out how to build new ones there, or moved to Enugu and Onitsha to start life afresh. Those who had buried kwashiorkor-ridden children had other children, woke from their nightmares each morning, and set off for work to feed their children. Young men held jobs in Enugu and even found time to drink and smoke while listening to new bands like Egwugwu. But Afam was determined to throw his life away.
When I wanted my mother to come live with me in Enugu, Mama reassured me that Afam was a quiet drunk and that he did not bother her or act violent. Besides, she said, we could not leave him all alone, and there were always people around in the village who could help keep an eye on him. She did not say so, but I knew she feared he would kill himself. Not slowly through his drinking, which she hoped would pass, but through suicide.
Even though Afam was not a violent drunk, it was a blow from another drunk at the village drinking spot that had put him in this coma.
The doctors said to wait and pray, so I prayed. I prayed I would be able to do what my father had asked of me as he lay dying.
Breathing in fumes of Izal, I sat there in the hospital room, silently pleading with Afam, willing him to wake up, to smile at me and call me Akpa Akpu.
But Afam died. He was thirty. We buried him. And my mother entered a depression we thought would never end. For weeks, she rejected food and water, would not get out of bed, would not bathe, and suffered delusions in which she called out for my father and my brother. I had lost a father and a brother within five years. I wondered if I was about to lose a mother.
Finally, one morning, after a deep sleep that lasted almost two days, she woke up and asked for food. The next morning she said to me, ‘You have to marry.’ Her tone brooked no argument, she would entertain no excuses.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I sat in my best friend Obiageli’s house, watching her lumber around the kitchen, her pregnant belly leading the way. She had insisted on serving me some food even though I was no guest in her home. Knowing that an argument would only take more time than a gracious concession, I waited for the rice and the nchanwu stew to make its slow and delicious way to the stool before me. The aroma of its scented leaves, stockfish, and dry catfish was already making my mouth water.
In the weeks after Mama recovered, a plan had come to me. A plan sent perhaps from the land of the dead because it was not something I would have conjured in the ordinary course of things. Now that I had failed my father and my brother, it was vital that I did not fail my mother. This thought kept me up at night. It stayed with me like an invisible load on my head through the day, immovable no matter which way I twisted my neck.
I needed to talk to someone about my plan, someone besides my mother, who would never approve, even though the prospect of my continued singleness kept her up at night. It was this plan that I had come to share with my friend.
‘So tell me,’ Obiageli said, when she could see that I was now eating leisurely.
‘Tell you what?’ I asked, stalling. She knew me rather too well, I thought in mild irritation.
She did not respond, merely stared into my face, waiting.
‘I will marry Eugene,’ I announced. Now that it was out in the air, it somehow seemed more real, more feasible.
‘Have you gone mad?’ she asked, a frown on her pretty face.
I was not fazed; I had expected this. Now that I had had the courage to say it, I felt determination like a nut finding its place on a screw.
‘Look, Julie, I know you are worried,’ she said in a conciliatory manner – I was now a child in the middle of a tantrum who needed to be pacified. ‘I know that these past few years have been very hard on you.’ She stopped, and I knew she was thinking of Afam. Grief, she was thinking, had roiled my brains, and was now cooking beans with my best judgement.
Obiageli and I had been friends since our first year at Girls’ High School Aba. We both
were the children of teachers; we had made it there on brains, not because our parents had money – weren’t teachers to wait for their rewards in heaven? – but through the generosity of scholarships. We took care of each other, faced the new world without parents together, challenged and competed with each other. We found each other again in Enugu after the war, and our friendship went on as if the distance of university or the war had not intervened.
‘Nwannem nwanyi,’ we called each other. And indeed, we were sisters. I was closer to her than to my own sisters, who had gone the way of many women – certainly not like the women I thought they would be, being children of my father. They left secondary school, married low-level civil servants, and were content to keep house, one in Enugu, the others in Lagos. They were satisfied to adopt the sensibilities of happily married women focused on their families to the exclusion of anything else. When Afam was drinking himself to death, they kept their eyes fixed on their husbands and children, wringing their hands helplessly but with no intention of coming home. But they came home, eyes rimmed red, shaking and wailing, when our brother was lowered into the red soil of Umuma.
So Obiageli was my sister, my true sister. She was the only one who knew about my affair with Eugene, and she was the only one in whom I confided my plan.
‘Nwanne me nwanyi,’ she called me now, her voice soft and full of reasonableness and understanding. ‘I do not dislike Eugene. You know I do not. But you know the kind of man he is. Tomorrow he could wake up, after he has married you, and go looking for another woman. Men like Eugene use women and throw them aside like used wrappers.’ She did not need to say that he was doing it to his wife now – who was to say he would not do exactly the same to me?
Her face was worried, but I had come prepared. She would warn me that I was playing with fire and that the flames might engulf me. And I knew that I would not budge. I was already in hell, if only she knew.
‘He might,’ I said. I was no fool. But, driven by my mother’s words, could I afford to get too choosy? At thirty-four?
Obiageli thought I was making a serious mistake. She had also thought that the relationship was a mistake from the start. In the past, she had asked if I was certain this relationship was not what prevented single men from approaching me. It was easy for her to say, to speculate on the direct and indirect causes of my singleness; she was married. Already, she had secured her place in her husband’s home by bringing forth two boys, one after the other.
I knew what I was doing, I assured her now.
‘What about his wife?’ she asked, her eyes seeking mine.
‘All will be well,’ I said.
She did not look convinced.
I avoided Obiageli’s worried gaze as I ate her delicious rice. It was simple, I wanted to tell her: I was helping Eugene get what he really wanted by taking what I needed.
Eugene Obiechina – tall, handsome, if you did not mind that his mouth seemed a little too large for his face, his head a little too thick. When he was animated, one could be fooled into thinking that God had given him more good looks than he actually possessed. Owner of a construction business which had, thanks to a friendship he had formed with the governor of the East Central State in circumstances he told me were better kept quiet, picked up profitable contracts in the Eastern Region as it struggled to rebuild after the war.
He carried himself with the authority of one who knew who he was and was assured of a place in the world. Success, which he defined as money, was his chief desire, followed closely by the need to pass that and his family name on to his sons. He told me often, especially when he had downed some of his favourite goat meat pepper soup, washed down with rich, dark Odeku beer, that his father, Okeke Obiechina of blessed memory, was a great man. Okeke Obiechina, who, his son never forgot to add, had never converted to Christianity, was a great farmer who had given them everything a father could give his children, but had left them no money. The obi, the compound of the Obiechinas, would never chie, never end, Eugene would say, pounding his chest for emphasis. Not on his watch. It sounded like a solemn vow. He, Eugene Obiechina, would give his sons not only the name of the great Obiechina, who had been warriors and great farmers and titled men since time immemorial; he would give them money, too. Human heads, barns of yams, large numbers of wives and titles had been good in the past. But now money could provide those indulgences, he would proclaim. Money was what people needed to survive in the twentieth century.
When he made those grandiose statements, which sounded like lyrics from Oliver De Coque’s praise anthems for the Peoples Club of Nigeria, I smiled politely. It was clear that he took himself too seriously. But, after my brother passed, I remembered this sort of pontificating and Eugene’s ramblings about legacy. I remembered and thought that we, he and I, could assist each other to procure what each of us needed.
Eugene’s wife had suffered several miscarriages after their two children, both girls. The last was now eleven years old, and his wife had not conceived at all in eight years. Eugene spoke with deep regret about being unable to father a son. Once, he wondered aloud about the possibility of having a son with me, even if I did not want to marry him. Would I be able to give him a son? he asked earnestly.
In response, I told him about my father and my brother, my father’s first and, for a while, only son. Having a son did not eliminate every problem, I ventured. He looked at me scornfully when I said this. I was just a woman, he said; I did not understand. He told me that his uncles often asked if he was not man enough to produce a son. I heard pain in his voice when he said this, and I knew that I was the sole repository of this information – his wife had no knowledge of the depth of her husband’s feeling of humiliation at his seeming inability to sire a son. I had offered no more words of consolation or encouragement, no pretty little speech that every child was worthy, regardless of gender. Did I not know what it had meant to my father to have Afam and Chielotam, his sons?
At the time of that conversation, it had seemed beyond me – even worried about my single state as I was, desperate as I was to move to the planet of married people – to think of extending our quiet affair into an awkward polygamous marriage. What would my father, he of truly blessed memory, fervent Catholic, think of me? I wondered then.
But that was before Afam died.
My plan was easy and feasible. I would get pregnant and then tell Eugene. He would ask to marry me. And I would agree. It would not be difficult. I knew that it would not be about me. It would be about that son of the Obiechina house that he wanted, like a gambler wanted to win the lottery.
It was not a novel idea, to trap a man with pregnancy. It was even less original when the man in question would be happy to be so trapped. Yet my heart shook. In all the romantic fantasies I had ever had, or the realistic musings of these later years, never had I thought of marriage as a second wife.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After I made my plan, I sought out Eugene, who was happy to continue our dalliance. He had kept away while I had been caring for my mother in my flat. Eugene could come to the flat again now that Mama had had her way and gone back to live in the village, in her own house with her own things around her.
I had nothing to do really except wait and, in a reversal of my ways from the previous three years, do nothing to prevent pregnancy from happening. During the next few weeks I let Eugene complain about his wife. I made love with him as often as he could find the time away from her. I prettied myself as much as my plump face and figure would allow.
When I’d waited for three months and I was still not pregnant, I told myself there was no need to wait. Would I not focus on getting pregnant the minute I became Mrs Obiechina? I had promised my mother that the year would not run out before I brought home a man. And so I went ahead with my plot.
I made Eugene his favourite onugbu soup, loaded it with pungent ogili, azu asa, stockfish, and spicy goat meat, and prepared soft, pounded yam to go with the soup. I could see his mouth water when he came to my
onugbu soup-smelling flat that evening. He ate eagerly, noisily; as he chewed the meat, he patted his belly that had begun to shoot over his belt. A little distaste came over me. You cannot be too choosy, I warned the dying romantic in me.
I waited until we were in bed. Afterwards, I watched him sleep. He was a good lover, even if unfaithful. His face remained handsome, if imperfect in repose, although it was slowly being swallowed up and softened by fat and middle age. His hair was starting to recede, but he still proudly let the remainder grow out in the afro that men favoured these days. He carried a charm, a charisma and smile, that few women could resist, especially in conjunction with his obvious success in life. His construction business was doing very well, and he spent money on me to prove this, buying me gold chains and pendants. He was still young at forty-two, I thought, although his first child was thirteen. I could see he would do even better than he did now; he would climb further up the ladder of success.
Our first meeting had by no means been romantic. Three years ago, he had come to the school where I taught. His wife had been by his side; they were looking to transfer their first daughter, who was having trouble at school. He did not look like the kind of man who went school hunting, but his wife had failed in the first bid, and he thought it important that he accompany her on this one. I had entertained no ideas and, by his own admission later, he had not really taken much notice of me. I had pointed out the principal’s office to them, for which they had thanked me. I dismissed this from my mind, along with all the other insignificant things that occurred in one’s day. Until I met him at Kingsway Stores the following week. His ‘Where have we met?’, my attractive red dress I had worn that day out of fear that no good occasion would ever require its appearance, and my willingness to fling caution into the dustbin for a few minutes had ended in what was now an almost three-year affair.
The Son of the House Page 13