by Jowhor Ile
Ajie looked away and scratched his chin.
They took the matter to Paul, who, after listening to Bibi’s detailed explanation, took out a heavy Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and read aloud to them. “ ‘Orphan,’ ” Paul began, “ ‘noun. A child whose parents are dead. Verb (be orphaned) (of a child); be made an orphan.’ ” Paul put away the dictionary. “And Bibi, stop wondering about the death of your parents. It can bring bad luck.”
“I don’t believe in bad luck,” Bibi said, squinting, “and anyway, it wasn’t me who started it.”
Ajie had walked away. That night, in defiance of Bibi’s correctness, he wrote in his notebook: “Bendic is an orphan. He was orphaned in 1978.”
Baptized and renewed by immersion in the murky waters of Idu waterside. The white-robed choir lifted their voices on high, stamping their feet on the muddy bank; their harmonies carried across the swamps. It was a really big thing. Ma said they had spent the whole of the previous day cooking, making preparations to entertain guests. If people threw big parties when they bought secondhand cars, how much more for when they were being accepted into the Beloved, into heaven’s gates?
Ma gave birth to a boy six months later, and they named him Paul. By the time Bibi was born, Bendic had returned to his cool regard of religion, neither approving nor objecting, cherry-picking things he fancied in any faith. When Bibi asked him one day why he didn’t pray before eating, as Ma made everyone else do, he said, “But I’m always praying, Bibi, especially when I’m asleep.” Bendic’s attitude had never stopped Ma from doing his before-food prayers for him. Whether they were eating from the same plate or if Bendic was eating alone, Ma would let her palm hover over the dish and shut her eyes, mumbling a quick “Thank you Lord for this meal. Bless, sanctify, and replenish the source.” Bendic would say, “Amen,” then wash his hands in the side bowl.
When the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on their gate on weekends, Bendic allowed them to sit with him for an hour or more, much to Ma’s disapproval. Ma said the Jehovah’s Witness people twisted Scriptures. Did they not say Jesus Christ was only an angel and was not the Son of God or God incarnate, as true Christians believed? Bendic said he didn’t see the harm in having a nice chat sometimes. There were times he refuted some of their doctrines and arguments because, as he told his children after the Jehovah’s Witnesses were gone, “teachings like that can only have a negative effect on people. And people are what matter, not any religion or idea.”
When the family traveled to Ogibah and the attendants from the Ntite shrine came around to greet Bendic in their long black skirts and eyes charged red from home-brewed gin, Bendic would answer loudly as they called him by his praise names. He would ask for them to be entertained. Ma said it was unnecessary to bring those kinds of people so close, “you can help them from afar.” And Bendic replied, “Just because they believe in a different fairy tale from you doesn’t make them evil.”
“Benedict!” Ma made an angry face. “What I believe in is not a fairy tale.”
Ma sometimes called him a fallen saint, a lapsed Christian, a backslider, but then she would counter herself almost immediately by saying to the children that their father was truly a Christian at heart and that was where it really mattered.
There were also times when she would jokingly tell him it was Ntite, the spirit of his family shrine, that was preventing him from being a serious Christian. “What is that other name they call Ntite? He ajabe okwu. If Ntite only resides in the dark, it’s only natural that he would want to cast some of his shadows on the lighted path before you.”
“Rubbish talk,” Bendic would say.
“It’s the truth.”
Ajie liked it when they argued like this, when there was a tinge of irritation in Bendic’s voice and a cruel ring of laughter in Ma’s. Ajie had no interest in siding with losers, so he would set himself in the center of their argument, ready to join Bendic’s camp if he was trumping Ma; if Ma began to show signs of victory, Ajie would defect to her camp. It did not really matter to him, at least not yet.
—
Their grandfather’s name was Thomas Awari Utu. He took the name Thomas when he began his education in the Native Infant School at Omoku. But he was no infant at the time. This was 1911, and Awari was thirteen years of age. The story of how he began his education had become part of their family legend.
One day a slave in his father’s household had persuaded Awari to join him at the new school that had opened at Ogbo Onosi, on the eastern bank of Omoku River. Slaves were compelled to turn up at school to make up the attendance quota imposed by warrant chiefs. Freeborn, however, were allowed to do as they liked. The trek to Omoku would take roughly one hour if they traveled through the forest. Back then, Bendic informed the children, the British colonial government hadn’t registered as firm a presence in Ali-Ogba as it had in other parts of the region. The swamps were too treacherous. So while Anglican and Catholic missions wrestled each other and schemed for converts, and tax collectors came down heavily on farmers in other parts of the region, Ali-Ogba was pretty much left alone and continued more or less undisturbed in its traditional ways. Now a native court had been set up in Omoku, and a school, which had the same premises as the new Anglican mission.
This was before they carved out the wide road that ran from Ahoada to Omoku; before various Christian missions set up shop and spread through the region with a zeal that put shrines to torch; long, long before the oil explorers appeared in their coveralls, hard hats, and jungle boots, tramping through the forests with government permits in their hands, muddying the clear water of the streams, scattering the fish, displeasing swimmers and fishermen alike. Pipelines did not crisscross the swamp. No huge gas flames flared.
So, here is Awari, thirteen years of age. Ajie imagines him in shorts only, no shirt, on this morning as they beat through the scrub and high forest. He and his slave, sidestepping the ponds and marshland and arriving, wide-eyed and with muddy feet, before the headmaster of the school, a man from Old Calabar named Ebok.
“You look like twins,” Ebok says as he looks up from his books and levels his eyes on the boys. “Didymus,” he pronounces, looking at Awari. “It’s the Latin word for double. Your name will be Thomas. You know the apostle of Christ Thomas Didymus?”
That was how their grandfather Awari got himself a Christian name and eventually an education.
—
When Thomas Awari died, there was a dispute regarding where he should be buried. The Seventh Day Mission, the first church in Ogibah, a church he was instrumental in planting, decided the body of their patriarch belonged to them. The parcel of land that the church sat on was his. Everyone knew he was devout. He was an elder in the church and husband to one wife. He never swore to anything, nor once, since becoming a convert, joined in celebrating the New Yam Festival. The church said his body was rightfully theirs; he should be buried on the church grounds next to the schoolyard, the school he founded that bore his name. But the elders of their onuobdo had their own mind. They didn’t pay attention to the churchmen. Their brother’s body was theirs, naturally, and what they chose to do with it was entirely their own business. They would bury the man in the earth of his former bedroom.
Bendic made it clear to both parties that he intended to bury his father in peace and without much delay. They could choose to cooperate or forget about participating. A compromise was reached: Bendic’s father was buried, after a traditional wake, in his bedroom, as was the custom for a man his age, but a Christian funeral service was held as well. Scriptures were read out loud into the clear morning air, hymns sung in their complete stanzas, but the family did the actual interment of the body. The casket was borne on the shoulders of the young men of their onuobdo, and the Seventh Day pastors trailed meekly behind in the funeral entourage.
From this single episode, Ajie decided, you could read the prognosis of their family’s downfall. He would trace lines, join them in his moments of confusion, and arr
ive at solid conclusions. Their grandfather, who gave his entire adult life to the running of a church and school, could not, in his death, be fully claimed by them. He who rejected, in life, the old ways for the new; in death had his body prepared by men who sipped, gurgled, and spat twice at the shrine of Ntite. Draw yourself a straight line, walk backward on it to erase your footsteps, and you will trip and crack your skull. Straddle the two sides of a stream and you will unhinge your hips. Be unstable as water and you will not excel.
CHAPTER FIVE
So here they all were, sitting at the dining table, feeling satisfied after eating Ma’s delicious pancakes. It was Easter break, and as expected for that time of year, there was a light shower of rain outside. Bendic and Ma looked thoroughly pleased with themselves, and Ajie couldn’t account for the reason why. They looked like they might just get up, link hands, and go for a stroll—if the rain abated—up and down the driveway, after which Bendic might grow thoughtful and unreachable, retreating into his study, or he might be inspired to take an afternoon nap in the bedroom, where Ma would join him and they would be private. Or Ma, being an occasional Bible reader, would search out her King James and make scriptural recommendations to Bendic and the children. She sometimes favored those poetic verses in the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that extolled the virtues of a Good Woman: The virtuous woman commands her household after her in the way of the Lord. Early she rises and by night her lamp still burns, her hands never idle. It was the sort of afternoon when Ma might decide to engage herself in needlework, mending clothes for her family; in fact, she was about to send Bibi to fetch her sewing kit when Paul nearly blew up the house with his angry outburst.
How did his voice get so deep and big and no one noticed? He had only just turned eleven. Ajie was seven and Bibi was somewhere in between.
“I hate my school!” Paul roared. “I will die if I go back there.”
And for no reason at all.
Bendic and Ma snapped back into the new reality unfolding before them. Ajie reclined in his chair, waiting for the action to begin. Bibi didn’t seem moved. She’d had it up to here in the past few days with Paul’s moodiness. Now he was just shamelessly seeking attention.
Any other parent—which was to say any normal parent—would have smacked Paul for such a display of ingratitude (do you not know that there are plenty of children who would give an arm in this country to get a good education?). Any other parent would have narrowed his eyes and issued a simple warning—“Let me not hear that nonsense again”—but Bendic just looked up at Paul and asked: “Why? Why do you hate your school?”
Ma didn’t wait for Paul to respond. “If you are being bullied, I am going straight to your principal on Monday.”
“I don’t want to go to a day school,” Paul began, but the Power Authority interrupted, the bulbs in the parlor lit up, and Bibi shrieked with joy, “NEPA!” She leaped to the TV and radio and turned both on at once, the volume drowning all of their concerns for a few seconds, until Ma snapped, “Turn them off!”
Paul’s outburst was forgotten until the next morning.
The children are all dressed for school and having breakfast. Ma is looking at her watch; she has to drop Paul at his school before she heads to work. Bibi and Ajie will go with Bendic in his car, but right now Paul is in the bedroom, his meal untouched. “Paul, your food is getting cold. I don’t want to be late, please. The traffic on Aba Road is something else these days.”
Paul is in the bathroom. They hear the toilet flush. Twice.
“Paul, are you feeling sick? I thought I saw you go to the bathroom already this morning. I have red-and-yellow capsules to give you, if that is the case.”
No response.
“Paul! Are you still in the bathroom? Are you giving birth or what? What is the meaning of this nonsense this morning? So you won’t be happy until you make me late for school? I am conducting assembly this morning, and I have a staff meeting.”
The toilet door opens. Paul comes out, face long like rope, makes his way into the parlor, passes them at the dining table, where his food sits abandoned, and enters the kitchen. Ma’s impatient heels click-clack after Paul into the kitchen, but when she speaks, her voice is quiet and gentle. “What is the matter?”
“I told you the other day, that I’m tired of being a day goat.”
“Day goat? What kind of talk is that? What’s wrong with being a day student? Is it because your friend Fola is attending a boarding school? Let’s talk about this after school. Please carry your bag and get in the car.”
She packs Paul’s breakfast and pours his tea into a thermos so he can eat on their way to school.
—
During the holidays, Ajie and Bibi learned that Paul would be attending a boarding school from the next term; he would begin class two.
In the weeks that followed, Ajie and Bibi choked in their collective longing. Paul’s grades were excellent, so he would get a coveted place at a federal government college, where students were rarely admitted in second form. Their parents lit up like torches and burned with pride. There was nothing else they talked about that holiday. They took Paul for the four-hour drive to the school, even though it was closed and there was really nothing much they could see. Why hadn’t they thought of this all along? They chided themselves. They should have registered Paul for the common entrance examinations, so he could get a place from form one. Surely Paul would have made it on the merit list to any federal school of his choice in the country. Then Ma cautioned that being very far away was not too good; this one was far enough. Bendic said boarding school helped children develop independence; it got them ready for the world. Ma said the academic standards of the federal schools were much higher than those of the expensive private schools.
Bibi had already found a book with the list of all federal colleges in the country and begun to deliberate about which schools to apply to. The farther away they were, the more desirable they became. “F.G.C. Sokoto is definitely where I’ll be going,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of an all-girls school, or F.G.G.C. Potiskum would have been more like it.” She asked Ma if she could use the phone, then spent over an hour talking to her friend Dawari, asking if she would also choose F.G.C. Azare so they could go together.
“Why up north?” Ma asked. “What happened to the one here in Port Harcourt, or Calabar?”
Bibi was having none of it; she pushed farther, to the desert borders of Chad and Niger Republic. “Do you think Bauchi will be cool?”
But the time for applying to schools hadn’t come, so she just sailed about the house with a special brand of envy that translated into utter selflessness when it came to anything having to do with Paul’s new school. “Ma, look at that bucket. Please buy it for Paul so if his dorm showers aren’t working, he can have a bucket bath instead. Ma, please buy those rubber sandals for Paul, the rainy season is coming, and you don’t want him to destroy his leather ones in the rain. Ma, rain cape. Ma, you haven’t marked Paul’s things with his name. They will steal everything from him! You have no idea what goes on in dormitories.”
Bibi became an expert in boarding school matters. Dawari’s brother attended a school up north and supplied them with the most harrowing stories of his experience. The bullying by senior students, mattresses that disappeared from bunks after night prep, leaving the unfortunate victims no choice but to sleep on the bare springs. In an attempt to teach one junior boy a lesson he would never forget, a senior boy connected a wire from the live socket on the dorm wall and delivered shocks to the junior boys’ genitals. Rather than discouraging Bibi and her friend, these stories terrified and excited them and made them want to go all the more. This was what they wanted: to be persecuted, to suffer some of these horrible things just so they could have the pleasure of telling the stories. Bibi helped Ma with stitching Paul’s initials on the inside collar of his shirts. She told Ma that red oil paint was clearly the best to mark Paul’s buckets and jerricans with, so he would be able to sp
ot them from a mile away. Theft of buckets and jerricans was the order of the day at boarding schools. Bibi knew it all.
Paul was going to a new life. A life of padlocks and keys, cutlasses, sportswear, day wear, and six-spring mattresses. Ajie wished he were going in Paul’s place. Ajie knew Bendic kept the school’s prospectus in the top drawer of his desk, so when no one was about, he sneaked into the study and brought out the sheaf of beige A4 leaves held together by a spiral binding. He ran his fingers over the bold Baskerville font in which the school name was printed, then the coat of arms; he read aloud to himself the motto, which was in Latin, Pro Unitate, below that were address, phone numbers, reference number. Then the letter began: “Dear Parents/Guardians.”
There were several lists: required books, provisions allowed in school, a list of contraband marked with asterisks, and then a footnote warning that the contraband list wasn’t exhaustive. There were pages with drawings of the design of the school uniforms and day wear, and sample clips of the recommended fabrics.
As compensation, or maybe just his way of laying claim to Paul’s future boarding school experience, Ajie set off with reading all the recommended books they had bought for Paul. The integrated science text had glossy picture pages that smelled fresh, like new money. He thumbed through diagrams of the human respiratory system, as well as the skeletal, digestive, and reproductive systems. There were fourteen textbooks in all, excluding the two novels that were required reading for English, and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which had a stiff cover.
One afternoon Bibi saw Ajie curled up on the couch reading Paul’s copy of the novel The Unknown Tomorrow.
“You are not supposed to read that!” Bibi said, wounded.
Feeling guilty and surprised at being caught, Ajie quickly lowered the book and frowned.
