‘My mother was asking me some things about you today,’ she said sometime towards the end of my stay in school.
‘Oh, really? What did she want to know?’
‘She was asking how I was sure that you would still be interested in marrying me when you finished school and got a good job in an oil company.’
I laughed. Ola’s laughter was much smaller.
‘She was going on about how she wasted her life trying to please my father, only for him to leave her for someone else.’
I stopped laughing. It had been a painful experience for them. Following the birth of the first two girls, Ola’s father had made it quite clear to their mother that what he now wanted was a boy. Three girls later, he began his coalition with another woman, who agreed to bring forth sons only if he married her. Without informing his existing family, Ola’s father paid the woman’s bride price, arranged a traditional marriage ceremony, and moved in with her. So far, the newer bride had popped out two bouncing baby girls.
‘How can she think I’m so fickle?’ I asked indignantly. ‘She obviously doesn’t know how much you mean to me.’
‘That’s what I told her,’ Ola smiled, and squeezed my hand.
But there was still something else on her mind. It came after a few paces of silence.
‘Kings, but how come you haven’t given me a ring?’ she asked.
‘Sweetheart, I don’t have to give you a ring for you to know I love you,’ I cooed back.
‘I know, but other people might not see it like that. They might think we’re just fooling around.’
As usual, she had a point.
My next pocket money had been swallowed up by an engagement ring. Ola wore it until late last year when the metal turned green. She did not seem too bothered about a ring these days, but I had promised that when I started working I would buy her one that sparkled so bright she would have to wear Christian Dior shades.
Most times while we walked and talked, I would have my arm around her with my hand inside the back pocket of her jeans. I never held her openly in Umuahia, though; people would think she was promiscuous. Ola never wore trousers in the streets of Umuahia either; girls who wore them were seen as wayward. Men would toss lecherous comments, women would fling snide remarks, children would stop and stare. But in school, we could do whatever we wanted. There were several open fields and bushy gardens. Fortunately, the university budget did not include streetlights.
At Ola’s house, I knocked. Ezinne peeped through the transparent glass door, unlocked it hurriedly, and hugged my waist.
‘Good afternoon, Brother Kings.’
‘My darling little sweetheart, how are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
I pecked her two cheeks.
Ezinne was the youngest of Ola’s five sisters. She was a miniature version of her elder sister, both in looks and in personality. And she had taken to me just as naturally, too. We had a special bond.
‘Didn’t you go to school today?’ I asked.
‘No, Brother. I ate too much pepper soup yesterday and my tummy was running throughout the night. My mummy said I should stay at home today so that I won’t be running to the toilet when I’m in school.’
‘So how’re you feeling now?’
‘I’m feeling better, thank you.’
Ola’s mother was sitting on one of the wooden chairs in the meagrely furnished living room. The only chair with a cushion had belonged to the Man of the House. There were some brightly coloured plastic flowers standing in an aluminium vase on the centre table. The table legs were leaning at a 120-degree angle - an extra ten degrees from the last time I was here. I had heard of men who aspired to marry girls from rich homes, but there was something gratifying about having a fiancee whose family house was in a more deplorable state than mine.
All my life, I had heard my mother say things like: ‘If not for your daddy, I would never have attended university’, ‘If not for your daddy, I would still be walking about barefoot in the village’. I dreamt of a wife who would say similarly enchanting things about me, a wife who saw me as Deliverer. ‘If not for your daddy, I would never have lived in a house where we didn’t have to pay rent’, ‘If not for your daddy, I would never have lived in a duplex with a high fence and large compound’, ‘If not for your daddy, I would never have been on a plane, I would never even have left the shores of Nigeria’.
That last one was particularly essential, especially for my children. During my school days, the rest of us had been constantly oppressed by children whose parents could afford to take them away to England and America on holidays. They came back several shades lighter in complexion and never stopped yammering on about their exotic experiences, complete with nasal accents. They flaunted unusual stationery and attracted more than their fair share of friends. Teachers treated them with blatant favouritism. My children would have more than enough to attract the envy of their peers. I would show Ola the world.
‘Good morning, Mama,’ I greeted.
‘Ezinne, lock that door and go inside,’ she said without looking in my direction.
Despite the burden of several excess kilograms of fat, Ola’s mother was usually as beautiful as her daughters. But today, she was sporting a livid frown. I sat in the chair beside her, feeling the sort of apprehension that you experience when visiting the dentist.
She sighed deeply and placed an arm underneath her chin with the elbow supported by the armrest of her chair. She was wearing two shiny bracelets that were too big to be gold, and a sparkly wristwatch with small white stones that were certainly not diamonds.
‘Mama, is everything alright?’
After some long seconds, she turned abruptly in my direction.
‘No . . . no! Everything is not alright!’ she said without lifting her eyes to my face.
Another spell of quiet followed. At last, unable to take it anymore, I leaned over and patted her hand, hoping to provide some comfort for whatever was troubling her. Instantly, she drew her arm away.
‘Don’t touch me . . . you hear? Just don’t touch me. You’d better make your intentions clear . . . you hear me? Me, I don’t know what’s happening; I don’t know what you’re doing with my daughter. This thing has gone on too long. I’ve said my own.’
So this was what the gloominess was about. Poor woman. I smiled.
‘Ah, ah, Mama, but you should know by now that I’m very serious. Ola and I are still very much in love. In fact I saw her in school a few days ago. There’s no need for you to be bothering yourself. Ola is my wife.’
‘I’ve been hearing this same thing for how many years now. Me, I’m tired. Every day, “My wife, my wife, my wife . . .”, “I love her, I love her, I love her . . .” Is it wife for mouth? Is it love for mouth? After all, love does not keep the pot boiling.’
‘Mama, but you know the situation. As soon as I get a good job . . . once I’m settled down . . . I won’t need anyone to remind me to come and pay the bride price. That matter is already settled.’
She looked at me as if I had just told her that O is for automobile.
‘So how long exactly are we supposed to wait for you to settle down? Ola needs to move on, don’t you know? She would have been married and settled down long time ago if not for all your rubbish.’
She adjusted her wrappers and laughed. There was no single drop of amusement in the sound.
‘Look, let me just make it clear to you. There are other men out there who would gladly marry her, but she’s still holding back because of you. Ola is not getting any younger. I’ve almost finished training her in university. I expected that by now, she and her husband would be the ones taking care of us. Me, I’m getting tired.’
She had a right to be upset. Agreed, Ola’s mother had always displayed slight traces of sourness which must have had roots in the many jagged Frisbees life had tossed at her, but every other parent in her situation would feel this way. I was ransacking my verbal storehouse for the appropriate word
s to soothe her when she hissed. Her eyes were dark and narrowed - focused on me at last. Terror laid firm hold of my heart.
‘Other men are finding their way,’ she said. ‘Other men know what and what to do to move ahead. Your own is just different. Is it certificate that we shall eat? If I say that you’re useless, it’ll be as if I’m insulting you. But since you people met, I can’t see anything at all - not one single thing - that Ola has benefited from you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a complete disappointment.’
My heart rent in two. Different colours of bright little stars danced in front of my eyes. I felt as if she had risen from her chair, balanced one fat foot firmly on the floor, and kicked in my teeth with the other. For the first time, I wondered what my family - what Ola - really thought of me. Did they also feel that, I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, was a disappointment?
Maybe I had not been as smart as other young men who were ‘finding their way’. Maybe I had been too carried away by my academic achievements. After all, my father, with all his brilliance, was wallowing in poverty. I shuddered at the thought of ending up like him - full brain, empty pocket.
My thoughts wandered to my mother’s half-brother, Uncle Boniface. He had lived with us when I was a child. At the time, he slept on a mattress on the living room floor and ate with a plastic plate on his knees in the kitchen like Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka. He had repeated several classes more than once, and eventually left secondary school without a certificate. But Uncle Boniface knew exactly what he wanted from the future. And he never kept quiet about it.
‘Kings, sit down and watch me,’ he would say. ‘Let me show you how rich men behave.’
Then he would puff out his arms and stride around the living room in slow, unhurried steps. Then he would stop and frown and dim his eyes, and look up into the air. Then he would sit in my father’s favourite chair, cross his legs, and shout orders at invisible servants.
‘Come and take away these plates!’ he would bark at one.
‘Will you stop wasting my time!’ he would howl at another. ‘Do you think I pay you so much money for doing nothing?’
Then he would glare at invisible naira notes in his hands and chuck them onto the floor.
‘Kings, come and take them and throw them in the bin,’ he would say. ‘These notes are too dirty to be in my wallet.’
It used to be a fun game that tickled my fancy no end. Not any more. Despite his poor academic record, Uncle Boniface was extremely wealthy. Rumours abounded of his innumerable cars and real estate and frequent trips abroad. And here I was sitting beside Ola’s mother, a complete disappointment.
Fear gripped my heart tighter. My mother-in-law-to-be had clearly run out of patience with me. I needed to do something quick. As soon as things turned around, she would become my best friend again. I had seen it happen before. When I was still the only child after five years of for-better-for-worse, my father’s family had fallen out of love with my mother. And like Ola’s mother, they were very open about their grief.
‘You need to put on more weight,’ one said. ‘How can your womb function properly inside such a skinny body?’
‘I wonder how you manage the simplest household chores,’ yet another one said. ‘You look like a dried cornstalk that would break into two at the slightest push.’
‘I don’t even know what Paulinus found attractive about you in the first place,’ yet another one said. ‘No breasts, no buttocks . . . yet you call yourself a woman.’
One afternoon, after my father’s sisters had visited and left, Oluchi, my mother’s niece who was living with us at the time, carried me in her arms and patted my mother’s back until her sobbing subsided.
‘Mama Kingsley,’ she whispered, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you but I wasn’t sure how to say it before.’
My mother sniffed.
‘The last time I went home, there’s something my mother and Aunty Amaechi were talking about.’
My mother pricked up her ears.
‘They said that because of all these problems Papa Kingsley’s people have been having since their father died, that maybe somebody from their family has padlocked your womb and thrown away the keys so that you won’t be able to have more children.’
My paternal grandfather had died shortly after I was born, leaving behind some few plots of empty land and cassava farms which his living nine-sons-and-fifteen-daughters-from-three-wives had fought vigorously to put inside their pockets. The wrangling had produced such bile that there were suspicions of some family members engaging diabolical means to frustrate others into relinquishing their inheritance. From what Oluchi had said, it appeared that my mother’s family regarded her infertility as the outcome of one of such evil machinations.
Oluchi continued.
‘Mama Kingsley, I think you should do something about it.
There are some native doctors in Ohaozara who I hear are very good when it comes to unlocking people’s wombs. Maybe you should speak to Papa Kingsley so that both of you can go there and see one of them.’
My mother insists that her niece’s advice went in one ear and out the other. She and my father never consulted any native doctors. They did not swallow any alligator pepper and animal blood concoctions, my mother did not dance naked under the moonlight with a white cock draped around her neck.
‘I just kept crying to God,’ my mother had told me. ‘I knew He would intervene in His own time.’
One look at Godfrey, Eugene, and Charity, and God’s intervention became clear. That was what I needed now - divine intervention.
I murmured my appreciation for her concern to Ola’s mother and hurried home. Then I ransacked my pile of dirty clothes for the flyer I received from the early morning evangelists of the other day. My very own special miracle from heaven.
Five
As a child, I had gone to church regularly with my parents. So regularly, in fact, that I had perfected the art of sleeping at the precise moment when Rev. Father Benedict permitted us to sit, and waking at the exact point when he chanted for us to stand. On entering university, however, it occurred to me that I did not have to go to church any more. There was nobody to take me, nobody to remind me, no point in going. So I stopped.
This particular Sunday, my parents had left for Mass before I got ready to receive my portion of divine intervention. Agreed, we were not under any particular restriction not to go anywhere apart from ‘The One True Church’; still, I knew enough to keep quiet about where I was going. Everybody agreed that the Pentecostals were weird.
But these were dire times. Dire times required drastic measures. Take my Aunty Dimma, my mother’s cousin and very close friend. A few years ago, she had boarded a local flight from Lagos to Port Harcourt, and the turbulent voyage had ended with the plane crash-landing on the tarmac. Shortly after that, one of the tyres on her Toyota Carina had burst on the highway. Then a branch had fallen from the tree under which she parked her car and smashed the windscreen, the very same tree under which she had parked for the past five years. All these incidents occurred within the space of six weeks. Aunty Dimma did not need a soothsayer to explain that death was after her life. Somebody invited her to a church where she was assured that all her enemies would flee and all her troubles cease. Believe it or not, my very own Aunty Dimma - the height of elegance and the essence of vanity - had actually succumbed. Today, she was a bona fide Bible-quoting, hallelujah-chanting, tongue-talking Pentecostal Christian.
I lifted the flyer from the dressing table and headed out.
There must have been at least twenty different churches all holding services on the same street, at the same time, on this Sunday morning. Some were in garages, some were in flats, some were under tents erected at the side of buildings. Some even had loudspeakers positioned outside to bellow their live services into the air. I commiserated with every single resident of that street.
My destination turned out to be a three-storey building at the end of the roa
d. A fiery young man was leading the congregation in prayers when I arrived, pacing briskly across the stage with a microphone in his hand and a free flow of mysterious tongues from his lips. Some of the congregation were seated, some were standing, some were pacing about. But every single mouth was moving in varying degrees of celestial conversation. A homely lady, who was smiling a perfect, wide smile approached me.
‘Welcome,’ she said in greeting.
I returned a smaller smile. She pointed her hand and jerked her head gracefully in the same direction. I took my place beside a pregnant lady who removed a huge, black carrier bag from the bench to make room for me to sit. Almost immediately, a prim young man came and occupied the space at my other side. In a twinkling of an eye, our row was full.
The fiery young man in front clapped his hands slowly and all noise died down.
‘Praise the Lord,’ he said.
‘Hallelujah,’ the congregation chanted.
‘Praise the Lord.’
‘Hallelujah.’
‘Next, brethren, we’re going to pray for the government of our country, Nigeria.’
He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows.
‘Brethren,’ he continued, striding to the right side of the stage, ‘the Bible says that intercessions be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority.’ He strode to the left. ‘Brethren, let us pray for our government, that God will guide our leaders to make the right decisions.’ He strode to the right. ‘That every demon of corruption will be uprooted and that we will have people in authority who will favour the cause of righteousness in Nigeria.’ He strode to the left. ‘Let us pray!’
I Do Not Come to You by Chance Page 5
