Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  “But you, you knew he was in that line of business. Why did you marry him?”

  Silent, she cast him a reproachful eye.

  “No, you knew,” he persisted. “Everybody knew, so you must have known.”

  She spoke in a tone of despair. “I pleaded with him to stop. Many times, I did. He’d made a lot of money. I begged him to start a clean business.”

  “You did—so?”

  “The first time I suggested it, he beat me black and blue. He threatened to divorce me.”

  “And you backed off, scared?”

  “Me?” she said with a sneer. “Have you forgotten about my stubbornness? I kept telling him, despite the beatings. One day, instead of beating me, he asked me to sit down. He wanted to talk.”

  “About his drug deals?”

  “Yes. He asked why I wanted him to stop. I told him I was afraid for our young kids—we had two then. What if something happened to their father, how was I to raise them alone? I told him I didn’t want to be widowed at a young age—or to have a husband in jail, which is the same thing.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He laughed for a long time. Then, beating his chest, he said, ‘Me, dead? Me, go to jail? Have no fear; I’m like wind and water. Is the wind ever caught in a trap? Does the basket hold water?’ He told me that he’d secured himself spiritually. I think his words were: ‘I’m protected by three spiritual insurance policies.’ ”

  “What did he mean?”

  “I asked the same question. He explained that, before each trip, he first would go to see a pastor, a malam, and a dibia. He paid the pastor to fast and say powerful prayers for him. Then he paid the malam to chant Koranic verses for his success. From the malam, too, he got a protective amulet.”

  “A protective amulet?”

  “It was supposed to confuse the eyes of anybody in uniform, customs or police.”

  Ike let out a chortle but quickly collected himself.

  “Finally,” she continued, “he told me that his dibia gave him the charm called oti n’anya afu uzo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know what it is,” she said, turning slightly away, a tinge of impatience in her tone. “Have you stopped speaking Igbo? Oti n’anya afu uzo. The charm does what its name says: ‘look all you want, you can’t see a thing.’ ”

  “It was meant to make him invisible?”

  “Yes,” she said with emphasis. She turned, glancing up at him, her eyes dulled with sorrow. “He trusted in these three men. He boasted that they gave him full spiritual protection. He assured me he would never be caught.”

  “And you fell for that?”

  “I cried. I told him that others like him had been caught in America and sent to jail. Or in Indonesia—and beheaded. There was this friend of his—they called him Khaki No Be Leather. An only son, he was caught in Indonesia and beheaded. His old mother went and hanged herself. I reminded my husband of Khaki. ‘Are you wishing me dead?’ he fumed. ‘You want me beheaded so you can carry my money and run to your boyfriend, eh?’ Before I could speak, he slapped thunder into my eyes. Twice. Twap! Twap! Then he shouted, ‘If you’re a witch and you’re planning to kill me, I’ll kill you first.’ I’d never seen him more mad with rage—and more scared.”

  “He did all this and you stayed with him,” Ike said.

  “You speak as if you’re not from these parts, as if you don’t know how difficult it is for a woman to get up and leave her husband. The scandal. The evil eyes cast at you by your own family and others. The rumors that the man must have sent you home because he caught you with a lover. I had to stay.”

  “And you must have stopped haranguing him about drug pushing, I bet.”

  “The day after he slapped me, he brought Pastor Uka to our house.”

  “Uka? Did you say Uka?”

  “Yes, Pastor Uka. He was my husband’s prayer warrior. He now owns a church here in Utonki.”

  “Go on,” Ike prodded. “What happened?”

  “My husband brought Pastor Uka home. Then Uka said God had told him I was possessed.”

  “Possessed?”

  “By the marine spirit. That’s what the pastor said; that I was bonded to the water mermaid. He said God also revealed to him that I would bring bad luck to my husband—unless I was delivered. I saw hell that evening. I was forced to kneel in front of the pastor while he danced all around me and barked sounds that had no meaning. Occasionally, he grabbed my head and pressed hard until I cried out in pain. Whenever I cried, he shouted that it was the marine spirit fleeing out of me. This lasted for three hours.”

  An ache seared his skull, a pain born the moment she mentioned Pastor Uka. A ropy pain, it stretched from his forehead to the nape of his neck. It pulled and tugged at the tense, taut line. He leaned against the wall, eyes shut.

  “So you know all about Pastor Uka.”

  “My husband said the man was next to God. You won’t believe the kind of money Uka made from my husband. And from other drug smugglers.”

  “They just threw money his way?”

  “They believed his prayers could save them from arrest. My husband certainly did.”

  “The first moment I met Uka, I knew he was a bloody charlatan. Your husband must have been—pardon my bluntness—a fool.”

  For a moment, her eyes blazed with belligerence. She folded her arms across her chest. Twice, she opened her mouth but seemed unable to coax words.

  “I didn’t mean to insult him,” he said. “But I don’t know why—forget it.”

  “People believe what they believe,” she said resignedly.

  “But you should have put your foot down. You should have told your husband to quit trafficking drugs or else.”

  “Who told you I didn’t? In fact, despite the beatings, I harassed him so much that he lied to me. He told me he’d stopped anything to do with drugs. For a long time, he didn’t travel abroad. Life became sweet for me again; I stopped waking up at night with terrible dreams about being a widow. Then I had Tochi, my last child. A few days after Tochi’s birth, my husband told me he had to travel to London. He said since Tochi was going to be our last child, we needed to throw a big party. He wanted to buy a few things in London for the big bash. He never mentioned he was first going to Thailand, for then I would have known. I would have known.”

  Ike felt that the story had come full circle.

  “You have to sue,” he said, nodding to drive home the point.

  “Make those British officials pay for their negligence.”

  Silent, she cast a vacant gaze.

  He asked, “How about the man’s assets in Nigeria? He must have left quite a ton of money.”

  “A ton, you say?” She sighed bemusedly. “I don’t know about a ton. Drug dealers make a lot of money, but they throw a lot of it away. It’s the nature of their business. One Christmas, my husband gave five cars—expensive, brand-new cars—as gifts to his hangers-on. He was impulsive in that way. He had lots of girlfriends—here and in other parts of the world. He paid rent for them. Money passed through his hands and went quickly to other hands. I don’t know how much he left in the bank, but I know he owned three buildings.”

  “Uh-uh. Are they not rented?”

  “They are—but his brothers collect the rent and keep all of it. My children and I don’t see a kobo of the money.”

  “Why is that?”

  “When my husband died, even before his corpse was flown home, his brothers came to the house and accused me of being a witch. They said Pastor Uka told them I had used witchcraft to cause the heroin to burst in my husband’s belly. They said both the malam and the dibia had confirmed it. I was confused, didn’t know what to say. To have a newborn baby on my arm and to be dealing with this sort of thing just after my husband’s death—I was just confused. I told them they were talking nonsense. They gave me dirty slaps, worse than any beating I had ever received from my husband. If I denied it, they said, I should go and swear at a deity
’s shrine in Okija. If I was a witch, I’d die within seven days. If I lived, it meant I was innocent.”

  “Preposterous! Did you go?”

  “Am I mad? I knew that the priests at the shrine give oath takers a concoction to drink. It’s meant to test your innocence, but it’s a well-known scam. Somebody who wants to get you just offers a bribe to the priests. The priests then sprinkle a slow-acting poison in your drink. Within seven days, you’re dead. That’s what my brothers-in-law planned for me.”

  “What was their reaction when you refused to go?”

  “Oh,” she gasped, “merciless beating. Right in front of my crying children. It was as if they meant to kill me with blows if I wasn’t going to drink poison. They left bruises all over my body. Then they gave me thirty minutes—only minutes—to take the children and run from our home in Enugu. I was not permitted to take anything, only the dress on my body. Everything else, they took, including a Toyota Camry my husband had given me three months before his death. My children and I were homeless. That’s why we left Enugu and returned to the village.”

  “How did you feed the children?”

  “How else? I turned a professional beggar. Father Nduka at Saint Matthew’s helps us with food and a little money here and there. He pleaded with some women to give me their used clothes.” She shrugged sadly. “If anybody had told me that I, Regina, would one day be wearing secondhand clothing, I would have said, ‘Never!’ But such is life.” She shrugged again.

  Ike seethed. “That can’t be done!”

  “It’s done,” she said in an even, resigned voice. “There are many women like me in this country. A man is not supposed to die before his wife. Often, when a man dies first, his relatives accuse his widow of witchcraft. Then they drive her away and inherit everything the man owned.”

  “Why didn’t you get a lawyer? You ought to fight these bastards in court.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. Then she said, “Ike, this is Nigeria.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Here is not America.”

  “I still don’t get your point.”

  She looked away, gazing into vacancy. It was as if something about him—his innocence? his naïveté?—could no longer be stomached. After a moment, she slowly steered her eyes back to him.

  “If you can help us with something, try,” she said. “God will bless you. The kids can’t sleep at night because their bellies are empty. When they fall asleep, they soon wake up crying for food. But what can I do? Should I cook myself for them?”

  IKE SAT ON THE stool long after Regina had left with her children. His mood was wistful. The rope of ache that split his skull in half had grown, leaving raw nodes of pain all over his head. He placed thumb and two other fingers on the tautest spot. He pressed, then released, pressed and released. He kneaded his neck, varied the pressure, his fingers calming the searing sensation. When he thought his fingers had dissolved the pain, a sudden spasm jabbed at him. It reminded him that the pain’s roots lay in the soul.

  He thought about the paltry sum he’d given Regina. Two thousand naira—less than twenty dollars. It was all he could afford. He still had five days left to his stay in Utonki, and each day was sure to present claims on his wallet. There would be a steady retinue of “greeters.” Each would be armed with rending tales and expect some monetary gift.

  Regina’s eyes had brightened when he’d handed her the money—plus three cheap T-shirts. As he gave her the gifts, her eyes had regained a hint of their once-accustomed sparkle. Her gratitude had gushed in a babble of words. And then, in a flush of euphoria, she’d jumped from the stool and flung herself at him. He’d stiffened at her approach, his body still as a statue as she rounded him in an embrace. Her body lay flat against his, a fleshless, quivering medley of bones. She wafted a sufferer’s stink, an unwashed, sweaty smell. It swelled in his nose. He held his breath, repulsed.

  Jealous of his livelier memory of her, he shut his eyes. He was desperate to expunge her present image from his mind. He wanted to imagine the days when this same body boasted softness and a welcoming fragrance. He tried all he could, but the apparition blocked all paths to a vivacious past. He was relieved when she let go. He began breathing again.

  She had summoned the children and ordered them to take turns saying “Thanks, sir” to him.

  Moments after her departure, he still stood on the spot, his hands folded across his chest, his thoughts entangled and grim. Then he sat down, on the same spot where she’d sat, the stool still warm with her heat.

  His rage poured forth in different directions, unsure of its target. A rogue stream of self-loathing bile flowed toward himself. Why hadn’t he stopped Egoigwe from stealing his girlfriend? And why was he still a struggling man after all these years of living in America? If he’d made a fortune, he would have been able to offer Regina substantive help, not the miserly gift he put in her palm—enough, by the most optimistic calculations, for four meals at the most.

  There—there was a leap in his mind—was another justification to snag Ngene.

  “Do you want to eat now, sah?”

  He turned to Alice. “Not yet,” he said. “Where’s Mama?”

  “She went for evening service at the church.”

  He pictured his mother’s grimaced face as Pastor Uka related his version of their encounter earlier that day. Strangely the image did not move him in any way. Regina’s visit still occupied his thoughts. He wished to take a walk in search of solitude. He needed the right space to begin untangling the clutter that filled his mind.

  He decided to walk to the grove of Uvunu. There was a tinge of nostalgia to the decision, for it was at that shallow stream that Regina and he had had their first trysts.

  “I’m taking a walk,” he told Alice.

  “You didn’t eat lunch, sah,” the girl said in a voice strangely inflected with maternal concern.

  “When I come back.”

  “Then dinner will be cooked. Will you eat your lunch and dinner together?”

  He quickened his steps, ignoring her.

  A sand-colored grasshopper leapt from his path and landed to his right, disappearing in the underbrush. He scuffed his feet at the spot where the grasshopper had taken cover. The insect hopped. With a swift swipe of the hand, he caught it in midair. Slowly unclenching his hand, he stared at the grasshopper’s dark secretion. It brought to mind one of the pastimes of his teenage years. He and his friends would spend afternoons scouring the grass and gathering a variety of grasshoppers. They’d pause as the sun began to sink, then each person would bring his harvest. The result was a great miscellany of insects in different shapes, sizes, and colors. They’d begin their games, pairing different hoppers in a macabre simulation of love and feuding. Afterward, seized by a paroxysm of violence, they’d decapitate the grasshoppers and cast their bodies in open places where chickens would peck at them.

  Accompanied by memories of his grasshopper-hunting days, he arrived at the stream. To his delight, there was nobody in sight. He hoisted himself on a ledge slick from the recent rain. The wetness licked his pants, touching his bottom with a gentle titillation. Shutting his eyes, he breathed deep. He exhaled, opening his eyes, taking in the tangled shrubs, willowy trees that danced to the wind, and the unhurried pool of water.

  A toad jumped frantically from underneath the brush. It jumped and then jumped again, in desperate haste. A slim green snake slithered past, giving chase. But toads made perilous dinner. Ike once saw the carcass of a green snake, its body gashed open just beneath its mouth where a swallowed toad had flexed and swelled itself. A green snake was no match for a toad’s genius for self-inflation. It was a lesson little green snakes learned only too late.

  Uvunu was a sliver of a stream. Its serpentine course ran along a track of soft, clayey bed. Ike watched birds as they glided in the openness overhead. Sometimes two birds would swoop to a collision, belly to belly, their contact enacted with breathtaking harmoniousness. From th
e surrounding thicket other birds twittered and chirped, as if in encouragement of their commingling, amorous siblings. Crickets chirred, perhaps enacting their own love rituals.

  Ike was entranced by birdsong. He sat up and removed his shoes. Unshod, he walked toward the stream, relishing the way his feet sank in the soft, wet earth. For a moment he stood at the edge of the stream and gazed at its liquid sparkle. He admired the tiny silvery fish that darted about with dexterous ease.

  Gingerly, he stepped in with one foot, then the other. A strange weight seeped out of his feet and disappeared in the lazily flowing stream. A calm washed over him. His body became open, hungry.

  He knew it was time to walk home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Alice stood outside the house, hands folded, like a dawdler in the singeing heat. She gave the shy smile of a youngster with an exciting message for an older person.

  “Chair came just after you left,” she said. “He wanted to see you.”

  “Chair?” he asked. “What—who—is Chair?”

  “Chief.”

  “There’s somebody called chief around here? Does he have a real name?”

  “Chief Tony Iba.”

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, surprised.

  He had heard it said at Osuakwu’s shrine that Tony Iba, a classmate of his from many years ago, was now a hotshot in the ruling party and had been elected as chairman of the Oliego Local Government Council. He’d learned that Iba maintained two palatial homes, one in the city of Enugu, where he spent his weekdays, the other in Utonki, his weekend retreat.

  Iba was a good five years older than Ike, but they’d both been classmates in secondary school just after the war. Tony had served as a servant to a Biafran army officer during the war. He had a repertoire of dramatic war stories; he used them to convince his gullible classmates—and even some teachers—that he’d seen action as a soldier. A notorious slacker, he despised homework. But once freed from the rituals and rigors of the classroom, he exuded an ingenious charm that infected teachers and fellow students alike. He wore cologne to school and sometimes sneaked in spreads of nude women he’d torn out of Playboy. He had a superb talent for yarns and gave hilarious impressions of soldiers’ lascivious games. Affable, he spoke a brew of English of his own invention, at once ungrammatical and alluring. He relished scandalizing his more innocent classmates with lewd pranks and salacious stories. His moniker was adopted from a movie star whose mannerisms—lines, facial expressions, and drawl—he could imitate.