My sister screams. She grabs Tunde’s collar, latching on to him with childlike tenacity. It is one of his favorite T. M. Lewin shirts, but he looks at her with eyes filled with pity.
“Why? For what?” she screams. “The old house? That old woman who would have died soon anyway?”
I swallow the angry words rising from my belly. I am looking at Tunde and he still isn’t angry. Even when she begins dragging him toward the flight of stairs leading to the back entrance.
“Get out of my house.” She is weeping and hiccupping now. “I never want to see you here again. Do you hear me? Get out.”
She comes so close to pushing him down the stairs, and still he does not resist. I get up and run between them.
“Stop that,” I say. “You are hurting him.”
“Get out, the two of you, take your bastard daughter, leave my house,” she replies.
I do not realize I have smacked her until I hear the sound of my hand across her face.
“Shut up your stupid mouth,” I say.
It is Tunde who restrains me. My sister runs down the stairs, calling for her security. Tunde and I go into the guest bedroom. Our daughter is awake but quiet in the crib, staring at her mobile with bright shiny eyes. I pick her up. Tunde picks up the baby bag.
As we go down the stairs, my sister comes back in, and she has three young men with her. They wear blue shirts over black trousers. One of them has a black beret and a policeman’s baton in his hand.
“Take a good look at these people,” my sister says to her staff. “Anyone who ever lets them in here again will be fired. Not just fired: arrested, sent to prison. Do you all understand me?”
“Yes,” they respond, a subdued chorus.
The man with the baton looks at me, then my sister, then back at me. He takes off his beret with the batonless hand, wipes his face with it, then puts it back on.
“Hurry up, you heard Madam, leave,” he says to us. He strikes the baton against the steel column of the staircase as he speaks.
“We are leaving already,” I say to the security man.
We walk right by my sister. My baby reaches out to touch her nose, but she moves away. The cheek I slapped is bright red and swollen. It looks a lot worse than it really is. It will be much better in a few hours, all she needs is to run cold water over it several times. We have the exact same skin, pretty but tough. We had chicken pox for the first time as adults. The first spots showed up a few days after we turned nineteen. There must have been a thousand spots on my back alone, and we scratched with everything we could find, combs, ladles, garden hoses. Yet not one of those spots left a scar, no, not one.
BLACK SUNDAY
ARIYIKE
2015
I AM SITTING by myself in the women’s ministry office. It is the Saturday before Mother’s Day and the women’s choir is practicing in the auditorium. They are incompetent, noisy, and restive. It is going to be a terrible service; they are doubtlessly going to embarrass us all.
I borrowed Tola, the bishop’s logistics assistant, a few hours ago, but even he could not help with bringing some order to the chaos. He just sat in the seat on the other side of the table looking at me with judgment-filled eyes and saying over and over, “Just let the regular worship leader lead them. Everyone respects him.”
My friend Rosetta, who is leading the women’s choir, is a state governor’s wife who tithes in the millions and gifts me Balenciaga and Givenchy. She is a mile and a stretch more important to the ministry than all these talentless women combined. Her husband, the state governor, is the reason the church has two private jets. The church is the reason the state governor and his family never again have to fly commercial. This is not the only reason I let Rosetta lead the women’s choir. She is good for church membership growth. The younger girls adore her, the older women envy her. When she is present, all the women of this church coalesce around her like the edges of a wound.
The clank of triangles and drums and voices failing to harmonize sounds like a rowdy party in the distance. The women are succeeding in having fun, I can tell from the laughter traveling through the hallway to my little office in the corner of the building. I can tell Rosetta is being her brightest and most inspirational.
Every so often, after a new family joins our church, the wife finds her way to one of our Anointed Daughters meetings. Rosetta is there, the wife of the state governor serving, cleaning, and holding court. She draws people, makes even the most introverted make an effort to connect. Churches are built around personalities. It’s hard to admit, of course, because the goal is to lift Jesus up, but it is true. Rosetta, with her ease and calm, makes people feel like they have known her all their lives. We, Pastor David and I, call Rosetta our little lighthouse.
The television in my office sits on a steel cabinet in a corner. My weekly teaching program is on air and I am watching myself. It is a recap of last year’s Mother’s Day service. Our network has been playing my old messages throughout the week; yesterday, it was the message I preached on the last Resurrection Sunday. All the reports from last year and the year before that are laid out on my office table. It is a pitiful pile. We are expecting fewer people for Mother’s Day this year, even though we spent three times last year’s budget in advertising.
There isn’t much a church can do when its popularity begins to decline. Nigerian Christians are like little children. The women mostly, you’d find them with the newest, most interesting thing. These days, the most interesting thing is the prophetic, direct messages from God delivered with stunning peculiarity. Pastor David has never been that way; he is not a prophet, he is just a gifted teacher of the Word. Sadly, that counts for little these days.
Now all our programs, regardless of what we let people believe, go toward the strengthening and pampering of our loyal, committed members.
Therefore, I let Rosetta lead the choir. Even though she is tone-deaf and terrible at coordinating.
The door opens, and I am no longer sitting by myself watching myself on TV. My assistant walks in, looking more harried than usual.
“Good afternoon, Pastor Ma,” my assistant says.
“Bless you, darling,” I say.
“There is a young woman outside I think you should see,” she says. She says “young woman” quickly, like it’s a bad word, so I know this will be interesting. “Should I tell her to come back some other time, Pastor Ma?” my assistant asks as I hesitate.
“No. I will meet her in the visitors’ lounge.”
I have a small space next to my office, used for counseling. It’s standard practice for all pastors in our ministry to have a semi-open space with doors that cannot lock from the inside to protect our ministers from false accusations and temptations—mostly temptations to tell the truth.
The young girl has angry eyes. She is young, too young for the deep frown lines spread over her forehead like ridges on a yam farm. She has a tiny baby in her hands. At first, I look at her with a smile, but she does not smile back. I understand why she is so angry. It’s difficult being a young mother in Lagos. It’s a thousand times worse when you are a single mother. We have a welfare program, but we only help married women. We cannot, as a church, support fornicators and adulterers with tithes and offerings. Jesus says not to cast pearls before swine. I have personally, out of my own purse, helped many single mothers. My own twin sister has two children by a man she refuses to marry, even though they carry on like the Couple of the Year, so I’m not prejudiced or unreasonable.
“Good afternoon, Pastor,” she says to me.
“Good afternoon, my dear, the Lord bless you, sweetheart, you and your little—” I ask.
“Boy. It’s a boy, his name is Pamilerin,” she tells me.
“That’s a beautiful name, God will cause you to laugh indeed just like his name says, my dear,” I say.
“Amen,” she answers, and now she relaxes a little. Her frown lines disappear.
I REALIZE, WITH mild shock, that I know who this is.
She is one of the music ministers, a worship leader in our University of Lagos campus church. I haven’t seen her in a few months, but no one said anything about a baby. I had assumed she graduated and left the state. I am used to young girls with talent for ministry disappearing from the church. We do not do a good job of retaining females in the ministry. First of all, the leadership of the church does not think females should ascend in ministry from position to position like men do. No, our access is always tied to the men in our lives, the husbands and fathers. Second, Christian practice is very masculine. It’s a religion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, after all. Our God is a man, His Son is a man. Therefore, all the sent are men. It is just the way things are.
“I am hoping you can help me,” she says.
“Of course I will,” I say. “How have you been? Are you still at the university?”
“I graduated three months ago,” she says.
“Glory to God.” My praise is a little louder than necessary, but it’s sincere. I am so glad she got her degree regardless. As a young mother, things will be harder for her—that degree is a palliative.
“I know you can speak to Pastor David on my behalf, Ma, so he can talk to his friend. He needs to take care of Pamilerin, time is running out.”
“My dear, I will talk to my husband, but I sense you are assuming I know more about this situation than I do,” I say, interrupting her. “Who do you need Pastor David to speak to on your behalf?”
“Teddy,” she says.
“Teddy?” I shout.
She says his name just like that. Like it is nothing for her, this little slip of a girl. She calls the state governor by his first name like just another one of her playmates.
“It’s been almost a year, I thought everyone knew about it,” she says.
“Knew about what?” I scream again, but she doesn’t flinch. She is used to this, I realize, adults losing their cool around her.
“We met here in church. Pastor David introduced us after last Youth Conference, then Teddy invited me over for a tour of the government house,” she says.
The last youth conference was in February. She must mean the conference the year before. We organize big meetings around Valentine’s to keep our youth occupied. I know the governor typically speaks at these events. He is such an inspiration, he grew up poor, he is a brilliant banker-turned-politician. He is a king our young people delight to honor.
“So, what does all this have to do with me? Why haven’t you gotten in touch with Teddy, as you call him?” I ask her.
She says the last time she heard from him, he gave her half a million naira for an abortion. She says she was going to go through with the abortion but then she heard the voice of the Lord loud and clear as she was sitting in the doctor’s office. She says the Lord said, “Alex, you can trust me with him.”
She says that’s how she knew to expect a son. She says that’s why she left Lagos immediately after graduating, why she now lives with her old father in Kwara. He is a retired police officer, she says; he is not rich, but they are comfortable. She has no plans to cause any trouble. She is only here because her son is sick.
“Pamilerin needs heart surgery, he has a hole in his heart, the surgery is very expensive. I have tried to contact Teddy since the week he was born but he has been ignoring all my messages,” she says.
“All you little girls who think you know everything, you heard God tell you not to have an abortion. Why did you not hear God and refuse to have sex with my friend’s husband? Do you have any idea what parenting is? You thought it was just getting pregnant and pushing it out. Now look at you, your first crisis, you have fallen apart. You think this is a movie? You think this is a storybook? This is real life.” I do not recognize the person yelling at this girl. I do not understand this girl, why she is staring me down instead of shaking before me like a leaf in the wind. I want to hug her, but I hate her. All I see as I look at her is someone to hate. I hate what this means for Rosetta and for our church. I hate that she makes me wish she’d had an abortion even though they are illegal in Lagos and the church is very opposed to them.
“I am sorry, I am so sorry.” She is crying now. All that confidence has evaporated like boiling water. I forgot for a few seconds how young she is; her initial confidence threw me. She is still barely a teenager, after all, and she is crying like one. Her makeup is melting. She drags a wipe out of her baby bag. She cleans her face with it.
I move as close to her as I can. I clasp her hands in mine. I say many soothing words. When she is composed, she apologizes for crying. She says she is sure I can understand, her son is sick and in pain, her heart is breaking, she is going crazy.
“My dear daughter,” I say in the softest voice I can manage, “the Bible says the Lord killeth, the Lord maketh alive. If your child was born to live, he will. Do not be like David, crying in vain for a child of sin.”
I KNOW WHAT I am doing, using Scripture for my own ends. It is impossible to spend so much time reading and teaching the Bible and be unskilled in using it as a weapon. Does not the Bible in the book of Hebrews refer to its content as a two-edged sword, cutting and dividing?
She is just a girl. She has no idea that mothering is a lifelong entanglement to families, she does not know that she does not want this lifelong connection to Rosetta or to Teddy.
The girl looks at me with angry red eyes. I can tell I have surprised her. I can tell I have upset her.
“All we need is five million, the operation can be done here in Lagos. We have a doctor in the college teaching hospital, please just help me,” she begs.
Now she surprises me with this pleading.
“This is a very personal matter, my dear,” I reply. “It is also very sensitive. I cannot get involved. I do not even know if this is the governor’s baby. You girls in the university get up to all sorts.”
“I came to church to grow, to get better. I trusted all of you. I did not know that it was all a lie.” She is angrier now.
She looks like the type of girl who has always been everybody’s favorite, pretty, clever, tall but not tall enough to intimidate men. She seems unaccustomed to suffering. She may have been raised middle class or lower, but she has not known real tragedy. I can tell by the way she looks now, like a balloon filled with water ready to burst.
In the glass door of the counseling room, I look at our reflection. We look like any other counseling session. It is funny how little you can tell by watching bodies move. Beyond the sliding door is my private library. After that is my assistant’s cubicle. She shares a space with the youth minister. I get an idea. I suggest the youth minister to her. I tell her I am too closely involved with this thing to give godly counsel. I apologize for my words and actions. I tell her to wait for me to send for the youth pastor.
“Sometimes the godliest thing to do is to wait, my dear,” I say.
“He knows,” she says interrupting me. “The youth pastor knows, Pastor David knows, everyone knows. Do you think I am the first choir girl Pastor David has handed over to his politician friends? Do you think I am even the first to get pregnant? I am just the stupid girl who decided to keep it.”
She must have thought she’d hit a jackpot, didn’t she? She must have dreamed of all the child support, the lifestyle of ease and glamour, didn’t she? She isn’t sorry about what she did, about the pain she caused, she is just sad because her little meal ticket is sick.
I know what it feels like to find a way out and hold on to him. I remember what desperate feels like. I remember the intoxicating combination of fear, anger, and ambition. I can sympathize with her situation except that she’s crossed the line with the “God told me to keep my baby” talk. The kind of girl to fuck a married man is the kind of girl who gets a compulsory abortion. This is Lagos, not El Dorado. There is no happily-ever-after for her here.
“You are the head of the women’s ministry, you say you are here for me. For us all,” she is saying to me. “Yet when Pastor David is using the cho
ir as an escort agency for his friends, you do nothing. You did nothing, you know we went everywhere in the ministry buses, I have even been on the Life Jet.”
“You seem ready to blame everyone but yourself, Alex,” I reply. “You want me to feel guilt for something my husband does, something he conceals and hides from me, but you will not take responsibility for the part you played. You did not have to say yes to Teddy, you were not raped or kidnapped, little girl. You made this bed. Now lie in it.”
She is stunned and silent. She is not ready for the bluntness of my words.
There is an old story Yoruba mothers tell their daughters. It begins with three men, all friends, moaning their misfortunes in marriage. The first believes he is the most unfortunate because his wife is lazy and a bad cook. The second friend says he has it worse, his wife is a day-and-night bed wetter, her condition both chronic and incurable. The third laughs at them both, insisting he would gladly trade places with either of his friends. His fate is the worst of the lot, he says, for he married a woman who lives entirely without shame.
No mother ever tells her daughter what perverse deviance the third friend’s wife performs brazenly to the consternation of her husband. No mother explains to her daughter who these men are, or why they deserve better than the wives they have married. This is the power of the old story: every girl who hears it is shamed for all the things she otherwise feels no shame for. Shame is female, just as merit is male.
“You are right, Pastor Ma, I am so sorry,” Alex says. The balloon bursts and it is an avalanche of tears. She is crying and wiping her nose.
She tells me she blames herself. She says all she feels is guilt. Guilt has driven her crazy. She has stopped eating, or even sleeping. She asked God to kill her instead of punishing this little innocent baby for her foolishness. She is overwhelmed.
Black Sunday Page 19
