The Son of the House

by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

  It had been more difficult to lie to my mother, to watch her making supplications to the Virgin Mother to open my womb as the first year came, then the second, then the third. I sat by her and held her hand in the same hospital where Afam had died. The prayers she sent out to heaven, the blessings she bestowed in a feeble voice as she lay dying, were for me. For my womb to open up.

  On the day that Dimka shot Murtala Muhammed while everyone, including the nurses at the hospital, wondered why he had done it – whether he acted alone or in concert with others, and whether the Igbos in Lagos now would have to flee again even though it had nothing to do with them – I was sitting with my mother, watching her open yet unseeing eyes, and wondering why the ever-present numbness in my soul was so invisible. Her death left me alone, bereft of comfort, orphaned in heart and soul.

  Eugene became frustrated, then distant. Long gone were the days when he held me and we danced to Bobby Benson’s ‘If You Marry Taxi Driver’, our laughter ringing out at our own silliness. By the time Nelly Uchendu’s sonorous ‘Love Nwantinti’ became the song of the day, love no longer came up in our conversations. Long gone were the days when we went to watch the Rangers play in the stadium. Success, not man or woman, was Eugene’s first love. He threw himself into work, travelling inside and outside Nigeria, pursuing building contracts. Distance meant fewer chances to work towards pregnancy. And when distance did not intrude, lovemaking became work, not pleasure. I could not know if I was truly infertile, as I began to fear. Almost four years after a marriage that had commenced when I’d lied to my lover, now husband, that I was pregnant, I had yet to conceive a child.

  Why was everything difficult for me, I tearfully asked Obiageli. A husband, now a child? She spoke words of comfort, but I was not mollified.

  One Saturday, Eugene’s sisters, all eight of them, came to Enugu with the specific purpose of insulting me and perhaps shaming me out of their brother’s house.

  They crowded our sitting room, each jostling to hurl abuse faster.

  ‘Ashawo. You saw a rich man and you thought you would get your fingers on his money.’ This one came from Adaku, the eldest sister, who had welcomed me with open arms in the beginning.

  ‘Ndakakwa,’ Chinyelu, the feisty middle one, who was said to slap her husband on occasion, called me.

  It was true that I had gained even more weight in recent years, but the name hurt. I might need to squeeze myself into some seats, but there was no way my weight could break a bed.

  ‘You have sent away the one who could at least produce children, even if they were female. And what have you brought in but your fat buttocks that could break a couch? What do you do all day but plot ways in which to spend our brother’s wealth on choice foods?’

  I stood by and let them expend themselves. It would be worse if I responded – eight against one was an uneven match. I did not want to give them an excuse to fall on me and do me physical harm. I could tell that Chinyelu was itching to give me a beating.

  When they were done, they left, promising to come back soon and throw my things out if I did not have the good sense to show myself out of their brother’s house.

  Eugene came back from his business trip and I told him what had transpired. After a little silence, he responded by asking if I did not think I deserved it. Soon, our voices were rising in anger.

  ‘Anuofia.’

  ‘Nwanyi aja.’

  ‘Efulefu.’

  ‘Ashawo.’

  ‘Uregurenshi.’

  The invectives were hurled out into the night, where they must have reached the ears of our neighbours. But we did not care. We shouted ourselves hoarse until he got into his new Mercedes and left.

  The insults hurt. And it was in the hurt that I realised how much I had hoped to convert an inauspicious beginning into a love story, deception into truth. And it was in the depths of that hurt that I came face to face with the knowledge that this was not to be.

  Though we did not quarrel like that often, domestic harmony had become a distant memory, and I began to realise that a single life was better than a life lived within the prison of a loveless marriage. Especially when you had put yourself there willingly. There was a little death in the way we now lived, an emptiness, a nothingness of spirit where something – perhaps not true love but at least a certain kind of friendship – had existed. This death stood side by side with the vexing truth that I had brought this on myself. I was surprised that I could not decide what I wanted: to stay or to go. Resolve, once my strongest virtue, had gone missing, like the old woman who went to the market and forgot her way home.

  As I pondered all this, I did not know that I was about to engage in a bigger lie than the one which had brought me into the marriage.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The opportunity for the lie came late in 1978, amid Lt General Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, his call for Nigerians to tighten their belts to prepare for austerity, and his promises to hand over power immediately to the civilians. The opportunity came in the package of a baby in Obiageli’s small apartment.

  Obiageli had remained my constant friend, wiping the tears that flowed freely and unceasingly after my mother passed. She encouraged me when barrenness rose like a wall of shame around me. I made her laugh when she complained about the difficulty of her marriage to Emma, the man who had a senior position in NEPA, the electricity corporation, but lived like a mason who could not find work. When Obiageli complained about his stingy ways, I would say, ‘Ah ah, Obiageli, nwannem nwanyi, you would not want a man who gives away his money like an aching belly gives away shit. Believe me, I live with one of those.’

  My husband’s generosity was legendary. Once he had given a man the keys of a car he had just alighted from because the man, a taxi driver, had lost his car when it was engulfed by fire and he had no money to pay hospital bills to secure the release of his wife, who had delivered by caesarean section, and his baby, both of whom were detained at the hospital until he could raise the money. At Christmas, Eugene would host a party for the Enugu branch of the Umuma Town Union. Back at the village, where we spent every Christmas, he would buy goats and cows for the people in the village, and on Christmas morning, people trooped into our compound for their portions of rice, onions, tomatoes, and the meat of freshly slaughtered goats. I often worried that he was not saving enough and reminded him that we would have lots of responsibilities throughout the year.

  ‘Orimili agwu agwu. The ocean never runs out of water,’ he would intone in a booming voice.

  ‘But he takes good care of you,’ Obiageli would retort. ‘If Emma would give me a tenth of the gold Eugene has bought you in a lifetime, I would consider myself a queen. My husband does not look after me – even worse, he does not look at me. Whether I wear rags or the most expensive george in the market, it is all the same to him.’

  ‘But you know you are beautiful, Oby nwannem nwanyi,’ I would tell her. ‘Your beauty would make rags the fashion of the week.’ She was in no danger of wearing rags; she had a job and she was learning to hide her money from Emma. Plus, I had given her several of the georges I had bought in that first year when things were good between me and Eugene.

  Obiageli would laugh, appreciatively. She was indeed beautiful. She was one those people whose smile made you smile back automatically, her eyes lighting up her evenly brown and wrinkleless face. She liked to flirt too, and had the eyes of the male teachers in her school glued to her. Even Eugene was susceptible to her charm and made sure to enquire about her health often. I had on occasion heard other people wonder what had drawn her to the short, nondescript Emma.

  ‘Besides,’ I would continue, ‘if money is all that Emma is stingy about, you must be a happy woman.’ At this reference to his sexual prowess we both would laugh helplessly.

  Still, my friend had the one thing a woman needed: I envied her the two boys she had borne for Emma.

  When I complained about Eugene’s lack of attention, his partying, womanising ways, Obiageli wo
uld say that powerful men like my husband needed a few vices, but that the important thing to remember was that he always came home. She did not remind me that she had warned me before I married him. She would say in a soothing tone that, when I had children, I would not mind his occasional misbehaviour. When would that be, I would ask in despair. Soon, she would reply, confident.

  But she, too, had begun to worry. When Obiageli one day told me about an Uwani woman who was said to help women in my predicament, I laughed hard.

  ‘Have you forgotten who I am? Imazikwa m? The daughter of the catechist?’

  But Obiageli was bent on a course. ‘I am telling you. She is good. I have heard lots of good things about her. Very effective.’

  ‘I want a baby, Obiageli. But not enough to see a dibia. I am Catholic.’

  ‘Nwanyi na-acho nwa na-agboto aluru ula,’ she said. A woman who wants a baby goes to bed naked.

  I sighed. She smiled.

  We got into my Peugeot and drove to Uwani to see Eze Nwanyi.

  Number 8 Chiene Street was a block of several flats. We stood outside, wondering which was Eze Nwanyi’s. Obiageli knocked on the first door.

  A young boy, not more than eleven and still in his school uniform, opened the door and greeted us politely. ‘Good afternoon, Mas.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Obiageli responded. ‘We want to see Eze Nwanyi. Do you know which is her flat?’

  ‘It is this,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, that is good.’ Obiageli smiled and glanced at me reassuringly. ‘Can we see her?’

  He nodded. ‘Who shall I tell her wants her?’

  ‘Mrs Nwajei,’ Obiageli said, giving her name. He stepped back and closed the door on us.

  Soon after, a woman opened. She was wearing white jeans and a frilly long-sleeved red shirt. Her hair was a big, big afro, and her mouth coated with red lipstick. She should have looked loud and brash, but she didn’t.

  ‘Good afternoon. Kedunu?’ Her voice was soft.

  ‘We are well. We are here to see Eze Nwanyi,’ Obiageli told her.

  She studied our faces, from one to the other. She must be wondering what brought us on this journey.

  She invited us in. A medium-sized room, with family pictures on the wall and comfortable-looking seats. ‘What do you want with Eze Nwanyi?’

  She looked at us, waiting for us to speak. Obiageli looked at me.

  ‘We would like to see Eze Nwanyi,’ she repeated.

  The woman smiled. ‘I am Eze Nwanyi.’

  I was surprised. I had expected someone different, perhaps wearing white marks on the face and a wrapper across her chest – not this sophisticated-looking lady.

  My tongue was strangely tied, and as I moved it around in my mouth, Obiageli spoke.

  ‘My friend,’ she said, glancing at me and then back to Eze Nwanyi, ‘has had some delay in childbearing.’

  ‘Hmm,’ was all Eze Nwanyi said. She invited us to sit, went to the corner and unrolled what turned out to be the skin of an animal, goat or cow, I could not say. She sat on it, facing us. She asked for two naira, the consultation fee. I fumbled in my bag and brought the money out. She gestured for me to leave it on the floor.

  She took out some beads and, placing them on the carpet, turned them this way and that.

  She studied them.

  ‘It is well. Soon you will have a baby boy. Do not fret. He will come to you soon.’

  Obiageli asked, ‘Is there anything she should do?’

  Eze Nwanyi stared at her. ‘No. When the baby comes, she will come and say thank you with whatever pleases her.’ She stood up. It was a dismissal.

  We thanked her. But I was dissatisfied. Was that it? Not even a fast, a potion? Soon? How soon? I felt deflated, and only then realised how hopeful I had been.

  By October 1977, Obiageli had become pregnant again. She told me, almost apologetically. Her hands were full with her two young boys when her aunt, Mama Nathan, arrived without notice. She brought a little baby boy with her, very young, about four months.

  Obiageli was put out: her aunt’s visit would make relations with Emma more difficult, and she could not fathom why Mama Nathan had come to visit, surprising her. She had not seen her aunt since Mama Obiageli, Mama Nathan’s sister, passed away three years before. As a girl, Obiageli had gone on holiday to Mama Nathan’s when she and her husband lived in Ajakurama. Then, after she started to work in Enugu, both Mama Obiageli and Mama Nathan would come to visit together. But Obiageli had not seen Mama Nathan when she lost her only son, Nathan. She had been ill and unable to attend the burial.

  Mama Nathan called the baby her son, referring to him as Nathan, and would add nothing more. Obiageli speculated that the boy was her grandchild, a child of her late son. But where was his mother, I wanted to know. The boy was entirely too young to be travelling with Mama Nathan, Obiageli said. She had come with wraps of akamu, which she fed the baby on the first day. Obiageli thought this was not the best food for a baby that young, and bought some baby formula which Mama Nathan was all too happy to give the baby. She smiled as she fed the baby from the feeding bottle, calling it nni ndi ocha.

  Emma also wanted to know why Mama Nathan had come to visit, and with a baby, but she gave no satisfactory answer, repeating only that the baby was Nathan come to life again. This made little difference to Emma; he could not understand why he had to spend extra money to feed people he did not know. It was true that he was required to open up his home to his in-law – after all, a man was the chi of his in-laws, ogo bu chi onye. But, as Obiageli often told me, it almost seemed as if he experienced a physical pain when money came out of his pockets.

  It took only a week of Mama Nathan’s visit for Emma to begin to hint that Obiageli’s aunt and the baby had to leave. It was unheard of to send an in-law away, especially one who might now be argued to be one’s wife’s mother. But Mama Nathan was in no position to leave. A few days after she came, she fell sick. Obiageli thought she had malaria because she had a high temperature, complained of a sour mouth, and had no appetite.

  The only truly content person in Obiageli’s home was Tata, the baby. We called him Tata, the name for every newborn baby. His little cheeks filled up to bursting point with laughter whenever I picked him up. It was uncanny, the way I made him laugh.

  While Obiageli juggled her boys and her husband’s irritation at having extra mouths to feed, I helped with the baby. Twice, thrice a day, I stopped by Obiageli’s small flat in Ogui to see and touch the little boy. After a while, I got into a routine. I bought tins of formula for Tata, and fruit for Mama Nathan. I stepped into the room where she lay on the bed to ask how she was doing. I waited for the short time it took her to say her feeble thanks and observe that life was in the hands of God. I then escaped to pick up Tata. I fed him, I burped him, I sang him silly songs, and made funny faces as I walked around with him. Once, when he spurted milk all over me, I wiped it with tissue, asking myself if this was how all mothers felt – this tightening of the chest.

  Obiageli watched my attentions with concern, but she did not stop me. I felt her eyes on me, but ignored the unspoken queries.

  ‘This one must have some kind of magic,’ she finally said one day as I sat down on small kitchen stool, resting from my exertions with the baby. ‘Not even your godson got this much attention from you.’ She looked up from the stove where she was stirring some delicious-smelling ogili- and okporoko-filled onugbu soup. The smile on her face took the sting from her statement.

  I knew what she meant. I had been good with Ife, her first boy, my godson, and Uzoma, the younger one. But my attentions to Tata were extraordinary. He filled an emptiness in my heart. My mother was right; children were the best things in life.

  ‘He is a lovely baby,’ I said to her, smiling.

  Obiageli and I understood each other well, so I knew what she was thinking: that I needed a child of my own; and that coming to feed and play with Tata would not give me what I desired. But brooding at home, mooning after my husban
d, even visiting a dibia had not solved my problem either. So I took care of Tata, and she watched me with anxious eyes.

  Mama Nathan did not get better on the tablets of chloroquine. She was sick for over a week before Obiageli sought help from a doctor. The doctor said she had to be admitted immediately; her blood pressure was very high. Emma murmured that he knew that no good would come out of this visit and that they would be packing their bags to the village, such poverty would this hospital visit bring upon them. He was wrong: two nights later, Mama Nathan died, the victim of two massive strokes.

  Obiageli was distraught; the poor woman, she kept saying, the poor woman. She must have known that she was dying and sought out a relative, Obiageli said through tears. Emma was furious: expenses, from the doctor’s bills, to the mortuary, to transporting the corpse back to Nwokenta, Mama Nathan’s village, to buying milk for the baby.

  Arrangements had to be made for the funeral. A week and a half later, they took her home to the village to bury her.

  I could not go with Obiageli, for Eugene came home unexpectedly, angry about a business deal gone sour. He had been away for a month and fell ill with malaria on his return. He was one of those people who became babies when a touch of fever attacks them. I counted ‘one, two, three, set, go,’ to get him to gulp down his medicine. He expected an ‘ndo’ every time he moaned, which was often. In short, it was not a good time to mention that my friend needed help. Our relationship these days had a fragile quality – a soapy glass that could slip and splinter at any time. I stood to gain nothing if it shattered.