“The church is only as strong as its weakest link,” I say.
“That is stupid nonsense you have gotten from watching too much TBN. Weakest link? Then the church will be perpetually weak, each day adding new broken people to the fold. The church is the incorruptible bride of the glorified Christ.”
He is doing that preacher thing. That watch me make you look stupid thing. That you are out of your league thing. That dissecting Scripture is for men thing.
“She needs our help, Pastor,” I say when he is done.
“What she needs is a deliverance minister. That girl is possessed with many sexual demons. They have driven her crazy. She has had too many men to count, she is a fractured shell of a person,” he says.
“She also needs an apology, some therapy, something from us,” I say.
“You should focus on your own life, your own family. I am halfway out this door and you’re barely noticing,” he says.
“I’m not blind, Pastor,” I say.
“I think you are forgetting you are a nobody. You have nowhere to go, you are a nobody, you have nothing. What will you do if I leave you? Go and live with your sister and her boyfriend? Or in your brothers’ college dorm rooms?”
In one of my earliest memories, I am running around with no clothes on. I am two or maybe three years old. I watch myself trip, fall, and I begin to cry. I stop crying as soon as I realize that nothing hurts. I can still hear crying, but it is coming from outside me, the body that fell, the body that is crying is outside me. This is the first time I realize that Bibike and I are different people, with separate bodies. I go to her. I push her down as she tries to get up. The more she cries, the harder I laugh.
It is possible that my personality has been framed entirely by that moment, by the joy of being separate. It is possible that all my life, I have continued in this vein, intent on proving that I am different, separate from her. This is how I have convinced myself that I am important, that I am not the bonus child. It is possible that this is the reason I needed to work in entertainment, just like I needed to marry into this money and this hypervisibility.
“I am not a nobody and you are not God. You’re not the one writing my story,” I say to my husband.
“But I am your lord, and you will obey me like Scripture commands,” he says.
I say nothing. He grabs me by the nape of my neck, pulling me up on my feet.
“Preach a great sermon tomorrow, Mommy,” Pastor says. “Don’t stir up trouble. Encourage God’s people and look nice.”
His grip is stiff around my neck, like a steel necklace.
“Yes, Pastor,” I say.
IT IS A cool Sunday morning. It rained for most of Saturday night. Outside smells both fresh and musty, like a murky village river muddied by erosion. The drive to church is quiet and terrifying. Pastor David and I sit in the back of our Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.
Two men, the driver and Pastor David’s assistant, sit in the front of the vehicle. There is gospel music playing. Whenever we drive into a pothole deep enough to rattle us, Pastor David murmurs something about disrespectful Lagos roads. Whenever we drive past young people hanging out by the streets laughing, smoking, doing whatever, Pastor murmurs something about the perilous end of times.
Alex is waiting inside the lounge of Pastor David’s private entrance. Her tiny baby is in one hand, still as stone, In the other hand, she holds a satchel diaper bag. It is white and yellow, pretty like a summer day. There are a few church workers milling around. One man, dressed in the black overalls issued to our camera crew, is pushing a dolly with a large speaker. Another is dragging several feet of cable wrapped around his arm. They are all busy and no one but me seems surprised to see Alex there.
The tightening in my chest is a warning, I know that now.
“Good morning, Pastors,” she says to us. “Can I come with you? Pastor Ma?”
“Alex, I have spoken with Pastor about you. He will give you the answers you need,” I say.
She looks at me with shock, like I just said the most incredulous thing.
“Pastor sir, I will see you in the service.” I say it loud enough for everyone around to hear. “I’m headed to my office.”
I do not look back to see if Alex is walking behind me or going with Pastor David. In my office, I search for the outline for my sermon. I will be teaching the story of Ruth and the dignity of her diligent labor. I find it tucked between books on my desk. I read through it, excited and relieved. The service is saved, normalcy is restored, glory to God.
I read the outline again, and I make more notes. “Ruth is one of the mothers of our faith because she learned to listen to the advice of her mother-in-law. Older Christian women have a responsibility of mentorship and guidance toward the younger girls in the church.” My sermon is not revolutionary, but it is a start. We can start a spark that will someday become a fire.
The auditorium is filling with worshippers. I can hear the regular worship leader and responses:
There is power in the name of Jesus
To break every chain
I wonder where Rosetta is, where her husband is. It is possible they decided to skip church today. I am not surprised. People are predictably selfish, we are born selfish, even little babies; notice how hard they cry when they need something, screaming and demanding to have their needs met immediately. Selfishness is normal, human.
I wonder what happened to Ruth’s sister Orpah.
The phone in my office rings, startling me. My assistant does not work on Sundays. I pick it up. It is Pastor David’s assistant, he has heard some high-pitched screaming in the office. He thinks it’s Pastor screaming. Yes, Alex is still in there. No, they are not in the counseling room. He cannot go in. He refuses to intrude.
“Can you please come here, Ma, take a look, just to make sure everything is okay?”
Pastor David is on the floor in his office, kicking his legs around. His hands are wrapped around a bleeding penis. His pants are down to his knees. The floor is littered with a bunch of bloody face tissues. He is talking to me, but I do not hear him. My eyes are fixed on Alex. She is standing in the corner with her little doll in her hands, rocking back and forth, her eyes closed like she is trying to soothe herself to sleep.
“Have you also come to take away my baby?” Alex asks. Her eyes are still shut, but her voice is calm. “Are you here to take my baby from me?”
“Call my driver to take me to the hospital, this stupid girl attacked me,” Pastor David says.
I am not in a hurry to call for help. I straighten Alex’s shirt. I wipe the sides of her mouth with tissue; there is semen, but no blood. I begin tidying up the room. I am also searching for her weapon of choice. I am picking up the stuff strewn all over—church bulletins, Alex’s hair tie, A4 paper, a button off Alex’s shirt, Scofield’s reference Bible, a bloodied staple gun—there it is—several pens.
THE MORNING I married Pastor David, my mother came to me with information she had received from a “reliable” source.
“We were not the only ones who lost everything because of this church,” she said.
“I know.”
“You know that Pastor David was behind it all? You know that money is how he built this church? Bad money, 419 money?”
“I know.”
I did not know. Of course, like any other reasonable person, I had my suspicions, but nothing had ever been confirmed.
“Please, Ariyike mi, oko mi, olowo ori mi, do not marry this man, please, I beg you, there is still time to change your mind.”
Mother knelt before me, holding on to my legs like she was the child. She was crying, tears were running down her face to my feet. I stood there for many minutes saying nothing, just listening to her cry.
ALEX STAYS STILL in the corner. She is holding on tight to the little doll, like she expects me to try to take it from her. There’s a sprinkle of blood on her hands, on her skirt and shoes.
“He is such a calm little boy, isn’t he
?” I ask.
“Yes, he is,” Alex says to me. “I am so blessed.”
The assistant who called me opens the door now, slowly at first, hesitating. He is just checking to see if we are all okay. He screams at the blood, at the pastor writhing on the floor, at the crazy girl in the corner and the calm pastor’s wife.
I told my mother that I was marrying Pastor David as part of a well-planned revenge plot. I was going to get the money he stole from my family, and more than that, I was going to get dignity and prestige. Mother did not believe me even though I tried hard to convince her.
“Just give me five years, I’ll ruin his entire life,” I’d said.
IN MY FAVORITE Yoruba folktale, three children engage in idle boasts. The first one claims he can climb the tallest palm tree in the village. The second one insists he can do better: he can swim across the ocean without getting tired. The third friend boasts of catapulting a pebble all the way up to the heavens, defying the law of gravity. The tortoise, a recurring character in Yoruba stories, overhears their idle boasts and reports them to the king of the land.
The king plans a day of contest. “Now you have the opportunity, do all you have said you can do,” he says to the children.
When the contest day arrives, the climber stops halfway and begs to be carried down the tall tree; the swimmer nearly drowns from exhaustion and must be lifted by boat out of the ocean. The boy with the catapult surprises them: his pebble goes up to the heavens and is never seen again. He wins money from the king and the respect and admiration of his village.
As a child, when I learned of the third child’s secret, his cunning—he switched the pebble with a tiny bird—I was in awe of it. A meddling king bested by a cunning child, what a triumph.
“JESUS CHRIST! PASTOR, what happened in here? What is all this?” Pastor David’s assistant is weeping and shrieking. The assistant squats next to Pastor David and helps pull his pants up. He is weeping as he does this, asking the same pastor what happened over and over like a song stuck on a loop. Pastor David is telling him to keep quiet and take him to the hospital.
Many more people come in. Pastor David has fainted, I hear someone say. Together two or three people surround him like a shield, they lift him up. A different someone screams for the driver to get the Prado. I do not even like that vehicle, but I am irritated that they will get bloodstains all over the back seat and that most of the stains won’t come off.
The truth is I never intended to bring down Pastor David. I married him to better my own lot. Just like I admired the third child in that story, I admire this man, somehow. He has done so many things, influenced so many lives. Even if I could, why would I, having tasted this lifestyle, want to destroy it? There is no larger life than this. This is the Kingdom.
Truth be told, it has cost me more than I imagined I was giving up. For example, it’s been three years since I last spoke with my twin sister. We were once the closest sisters in all of Lagos. She is an herbalist now, having expanded her beauty supply store. Now she mixes healing potions and ori cleansing lotions for Lagos women. I am a pastor’s wife, a television minister. What agreement will light have with darkness? It is for this very reason the Lord Jesus said in the Gospel according to Luke, I have come to turn your families inside out.
THERE ARE MANY versions of the kids-making-playful-boasts story. In one, the swimmer drowns in the ocean, his body floats for days on end, the king commands no one to touch it. In another version, the climber dies of heatstroke ascending a tall tree in the noontime. In yet another, the king has both climber and swimmer executed for failing to achieve their goals.
All versions agree, the trickster wins in the end.
ALREADY, I AM exhausted by the months that are coming. I have my eye on Alex, and she is looking up at me with bright, hopeful eyes. She is shivering and afraid. I move closer to her, wrap my arms around her, and hug her over and over.
“IT IS GOING to be okay, I promise,” I say to her, lying.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, a few clarifications. I have taken several liberties with my descriptions of Lagos, Nigeria. All the villages, streets, churches, and neighborhoods depicted here are entirely fictional. These details have only been included to give the novel verisimilitude. I have taken similar liberties with my translation and extrapolation of Yoruba words, proverbs, and myths. Instead of literal translations, I have embraced the more poetic, rhythmic renderings of these ideas.
Writing and publishing a book like this one is impossible without the contributing hard work of so many talented people. My eternal gratitude goes to my editor, Jonathan Lee, and the team at Catapult for being the best advocates for this book.
My very special thanks go to my family; my child, my parents, my siblings. Thank you for being a trusted support system. I love you all so much.
Finally, to the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, particularly Samantha Chang and Kevin Brockmeier, I am grateful for the guidance and fellowship.
© CAROLE CASSIER
TOLA ROTIMI ABRAHAM is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria. She lives in Iowa City and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in journalism. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has taught writing at the University of Iowa. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Catapult, The Des Moines Register, The Nigerian Literary Magazine, and other venues. Black Sunday is her first novel.
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