by Okezie Nwoka
Ijeọma remained still; not signing or writing or moving; not knowing if anything were truly happening; not knowing if John had died and this was his ghost; or if she had died and this afterlife was the consequence of working for Pastor Nwosu.
“But I know what to do, Ijeọma, I know what we can do!”
Ijeọma tightened her legs.
“I know of your diary—the green one with many pages. That will be your baby. Three months ago, I told the pastor that I had come to your room and had performed my duties to him, but in those three months I also learned of your diary. Use this rappa … and tie your diary around your stomach, so that people may believe that you are pregnant—so that the pastor and the king may believe that I have done what they have commanded me to do.
“Have you heard?” John said, speaking a soft Igbo, then handing Ijeọma a dark brown rappa. “If you do not do this, they will ship you away to a place much worse than the Manifestation Quarters!”
Ijeọma prayed for death as she took the dark brown rappa from John’s hands. She prayed for Chukwu to end her life as she stood by her bed after John had left, waiting for her chi to suffocate itself, or drown itself under the rivers in her veins. But when dying had not come, she found herself writing her 929th entry, with fury against the Most Supreme burning against her knuckles and wrists—wanting all the betrayal seizing her heart to be exposed and be evidence for Chukwu’s eyes—but keeping those pains within, burying them within, because how dare she write an accusation against the Most Supreme; with what audacity? with what authority?
So she buried those pains as one buries an ambitious dream, praying that their allurements never reappear again; and once her tears had tired her to a sleep, she was awoken to a steady knocking at her door, to a room with no black ocean or moonlit squares, and she waited fearfully atop her bed before permitting her feet to touch the sunlit floor; though the knocking continued as she turned the metal knob to see Phyllipa standing with a food flask and a rainbow-colored bag.
“Ijeọma … how are you?”
Ijeọma quickly nodded four times.
“Do you know,” Phyllipa said, while watching Ijeọma hurrying to her desk, “it is like I am your mom … You can confide in me and tell me if your morning is not well …”
I am fine, ma. I’m faring well.
“Then I will thank my God,” Phyllipa said, turning from the notebook and looking past Ijeọma’s eyes. “How old will you be turning this year?”
I will be nineteen.
“Then surely you have grown since you first arrived at this church … I was exactly your age when I chose to marry the pastor.”
Ijeọma turned her head—lowering her gaze, through and through—as though seeing beyond the floor.
“My husband … Innocent … he has purchased something. I want to give it to you,” she said, while handing Ijeọma the rainbow bag. “It is a Christmas present.”
Ijeọma kept her gaze fixed through the floor, asking again for dying and death.
“Do you know … whether you can believe it or not, Innocent was not always as you see him now. There was a time when his heart was supple and kind. There was a time when he would give his very life to help the neediest people in this town. But the world is a wicked place, Ijeọma. If you are to survive within it, you must never be truly kind or truly generous—but be kind and generous when it seeks to benefit you. Take what is to be taken, and protect your life by any means … Are you hearing me? Now, take what the pastor has purchased.”
Phyllipa maneuvered the handle of the colorful bag into Ijeọma’s closed fists.
“You must understand, Ijeọma, sometimes a person may not have the strength to overcome what has happened in their life, or in the lives of their forefathers … Sometimes the grandchild of an osu might always see himself as an outcast, and might do anything to include himself among the most powerful. Do you understand?”
Ijeọma shook her head, looking at the brown rappa lying on her bed as an angry melancholy passed through her—hoping it would drive Phyllipa to the outside of her room, seeing that Phyllipa was now eyeing the dark brown rappa with moroseness resting beneath her eyes and lips.
“It will be well,” Phyllipa said.
Ijeọma said nothing in return.
“I have brought food for you …”
Ijeọma saw Phyllipa place the black food flask on her desk, and watched her frown as she turned and closed the bedroom door. She opened the rainbow bag—and saw a lavender rappa, with threads of gold webbing outward along its length; then she opened the food flask,and saw a mound of yam porridge, with a written note tucked beneath the food flask’s lid: CALL NO MAN FATHER, NOR WOMAN MOTHER.
And Ijeọma rushed out of her room with a red notebook in her hand—searching the grounds for Ikemba—running out of the living quarters—then searching behind the gray walls of the church sanctuary, and not seeing him—running to the Manifestation Quarters, then searching through its classroom and dining hall—and he was not there; then entering its small chapel, and seeing him in the back pew; watching him pray in deep meditation, his body bent low; though not low enough to conceal from her the division between his hair ending and his neck beginning; knowing that division, knowing his shades of black, and wanting to sob into them, and weep into them—wanting to call his name from the sorrows festering within her gut, but believing she was to be silent—crafted to be silent.
“Ijeọma, what is it,” Ikemba said, after an hour had passed and he turned his head. “Were you watching me pray?”
Ijeọma looked along the hill of his downward-pointing nose, and thought it resembled that of the pastor.
I was waiting for you to finish.
“Well, I am finished now. What has happened …”
My life has ended.
“What do you mean …”
Ijeọma quietly turned her notebook’s page.
John, the assistant to the pastor, came to me last night and said that he was ordered by the pastor to rape me. He gave me a dark brown rappa and told me to tie my diary around it so that others will believe I am pregnant. Then he tol that all of this has happened because the pastor and the king of Amalike want me to give birth to children who can fly so that they can make money.
“It is a lie. John is a liar.”
Are you true?
“I know the pastor. He is a Man of God. He would never do such a thing …”
Bastard
“What?”
Ijeọma wrote nothing back.
“Ijeọma, what do you want me to do? Believe that the person who has brought me to everlasting life is a liar? Are you sure that you heard John properly? And it could be that you were having a nightmare. There are principalities in this world—”
Ijeọma began hurrying away, as she felt a stillness tighten the air around her, making the entire world seem like it was trapped behind glass—to be believed, to be honored, to be alive, of what use was it; to be well, of what consequence—when she was not seen as she saw herself or others; or seen as she saw the world; or seen as Chukwu saw her—but understood no differently than a farmer understands their livestock, or a judge understands their crimes before calling forth a criminal; and if this were the world, and if this were its reality, in what good was she to hope; and if marriage could blind and imprison a woman like Phyllipa, why would one ever marry; that perhaps the time had come to cast away the elders’ proverbs, and the fastening of oneself to power; and to hold, as a singular truth, that in all is dying: in everything is death; and that to hope in another’s understanding is among the greatest foolishness—
She was to be at the front desk of the Manifestation Quarters by three p.m. So she was there, thinking of Ikemba while sitting in a plastic chair, unable to monitor the main entrance as she saw herself beating Ikemba to the ground; then feeling the desire to ask for his forgiveness; but leaning into the thought of brutalizing him alongside the pastor and the king; no longer believing he was ever committ
ed to her; no longer trusting the memory of him once planning their escape or whispering into her ear Igbo proverbs of freedom; it was the foolishness of their past, she thought, no longer wanting to believe that they prayed in ways that hastened the attention of the ones called their gods, or that he truly read her words or desired to wait for her to write as much as she would write before acknowledging her ideas and making his own sounds; it was not love but playful vanity, she thought, foolish, wasteful vanity.
And she pulled herself away from her thoughts; and once it was seven p.m., she led the children out of the cells, thinking of them while escorting them to the chapel for the evening prayers. And when the prayers were finished, she led them to the dining room to eat the evening meal, sitting away from Ikemba, not thinking of Ikemba at all but wondering about the children, watching them eat, then not eating at all, seeing them lick their bowls—too fearful to beg for any more than they were given. And when one smiled at her, she nodded at them, wondering if Chukwu would feed them, wondering if Chineke would give them yam and fill their stomachs with anything more.
And when she finished her own meal, Ijeọma entered her second-story hostel, sitting to the right of the Manifestation Quarters. And when she entered her room, she removed her diary and used the dark brown rappa to tie it around her stomach. She felt the diary move and shift as she lay on her bed; and as she stood up to tighten the rappa around her navel, she began feeling the gloss of the diary’s surface cool the heat seeping through her skin; and she began falling asleep with thoughts of dying—wishing she and death could rest more closely, hoping they would one day share a bed: a more perfect bond—believing it all as she wished her life away; not hearing the whimpering sounds of the children beneath her—praying never to bear children of her own, praying for the one called the Most Supreme not to bring her past tomorrow.
3.
IJEỌMA AWOKE TO THE MORNING light unprepared to receive her blessing. The rays of Anyanwụ were filling her room and she knew to whom Chukwu was calling. So she stood by her window and watched black doves darting through the cloudless sky, recalling the lonesome melancholy of the weeks that had come and gone, the burdens begotten from the unrelenting labor of Christmas Day; the hopelessness that appeared in celebrating the coming year without any resolution of the preceding year’s problems, frowning toward the birds as she returned to the light, feeling its heat against her face, and against the rappa that held her written words, feeling the light touch her legs, then her toes; touching her entire body until she found herself lifted into the air, gazing upon the sky, seeing again a vision to which she grinned, and welcomed; and praying with her chi to greet each person properly; then closing her eyes and reopening them, over and again, to see whether the vision would leave and abandon her.
“Ijeọma, I have come to—What is this! What is this! WITCH! WITCH! WITCH! WITCH!”
Alison, one of the female attendants, with a pink-checkered shirt and a patch of white hair, had entered Ijeọma’s room, and saw her levitating; and as Ijeọma began hearing the frantic tremors in her voice, she turned to Alison’s face and fell to the ground, as the room grew darker, as clouds appeared suddenly to cover the sun.
“COME AND SEE, OH!” Alison cried. “COME AND SEE THE WITCH!”
And Ijeọma’s room was soon filled with attendants wearing their pink-checkered uniforms, whose sweaty bodies prevented her from seeing her clock for the time or her calendar for the date, as the clamoring attendants tried to make sense of the commotion; seeing only the room, and a room’s typical things: a bed, a desk, a mirror, a Bible.
“What is the matter? What is the matter?” they said.
“I saw Ijeọma flying!” Alison whined, pointing her finger at Ijeọma.
“What? Ijeọma, is it true?” said the eldest among them.
“Why are you asking her!” cried Alison. “She is a witch!”
“Are you sure you saw her flying?” said another attendant.
“I saw it with my two eyes. If I am lying, let God come and strike me!”
“Eeeehhhhh!” the attendants cried together.
“We must take her to Pastor Nwosu!” the eldest said.
“That is what we must do,” two other attendants said.
And the others agreed, and they began dragging Ijeọma out of her room, then dragging her down the stairs of their living quarters, then across the gravel path; watching her slip and fall as they pulled on her and spat on her; kicking her to the ground; then dragging her upward against cement stairs to the second floor, shouting prayers in the church edifice to gain protection for Christian blood, as one attendant knocked on the pastor’s door, crying, “Emergency, Pastor! Emergency!”
“Come in,” Pastor Nwosu said.
The band of attendants entered his office, holding Ijeọma out like a captured thief.
“What is this? What is going on here?” said the pastor.
“It is this witch that calls herself a worker of this church!” cried Alison, “I saw her flying in her bedroom! She is a devil! A friend of the dragon of 666! The cause of Y2K!”
Pastor Nwosu remained quiet as he pushed his spectacles along his nose, looking at Ijeọma, seeing the protrusion along her stomach.
“When did you see Ijeọma flying?”
“It happened this very morning, Pastor,” the eldest among them said, “before the morning prayer.”
“I see. Thank you for reporting this. All of you may go and say your morning prayers. I will deal with Ijeọma alone.”
The young women threw Ijeọma onto the floor as they left the pastor’s office, but they stood behind his closed wooden door, waiting to hear him punish their witch.
“Stand up!” they heard him say. “How long have you lived on these grounds? How many years have I spent preaching the Word of God to you? How many times have I laid my hands over you in prayer … and still you will not repent! Are you a fool? Are you? I should curse you naked! You are a wicked girl! An ugly child! After I have clothed you, fed you, given you everything you need to live … still you disobey me and follow the ways of the devil. There is no hope for you! No hope at all! You are a disgrace to this ministry.”
And as he spoke, he heard the clamors of the female attendants still standing behind the door, and so he seized Ijeọma’s arms while pulling off her blue rappa, only to see another one wrapped around her stomach—seeing her closing her eyes, he began seizing the second rappa—not yielding to his conscience nor his cane as he forced his fingers through the rappa’s knot, and suddenly heard the sound of a book falling onto the floor.
“WITCH!” the pastor screamed as he began punching Ijeọma’s lips, then eyes, then open mouth.
“YOU WILL NEVER BRING SHAME TO ME! YOU WILL NEVER BRING SHAME TO THIS HOUSE OF THE LIVING GOD! I KNOW HOW I WILL DEAL WITH YOU! YOU ARE NO LONGER AN ATTENDANT OF THIS CHURCH. FROM NOW ON YOU WILL LIVE IN THE CELLS WITH THE OTHER WITCHES AND WIZARDS. YOU WILL NEVER BE GIVEN FOOD! YOU WILL HAVE NO VISITORS! YOU WILL REMAIN THAT WAY UNTIL GOD HAS TOLD ME TO RELEASE YOU. IF YOU WANT FIRE, I HAVE GIVEN YOU FIRE! JOHN! JOHN!”
“Yes, pastor …” said John as he rushed into the office.
“TAKE THIS WITCH STRAIGHT TO THE SOLITARY CELL AND LOCK HER UP!”
“Yes, pastor.”
“AND BE CAREFUL! SHE IS A DANGEROUS ANIMAL! A LOATHSOME BITCH!”
“Yes, pastor. I’ll be careful.”
John took Ijeọma by the arm—after collecting her pen, rappas, and open diary—then led her out of the office and the church edifice, knowing that the pastor had learned of her flights and false pregnancy; and as he looked upon the zig-zag angles making her plaited hair, he wanted to tell her that she would not be shipped to a foreign country; but remained silent, knowing the empty promise was what he evaded each day he traveled to work; and nearly wept at the many sorrows he saw plaguing her face: her languished eyes, her melancholic lips—as he walked her along the corridor of the Manifestation Quarters with a guilt pulling at the cent
er of his throat; having found the cell farthest from the children; and locking her in it; leaving with an explanation for the two buckets beside her; and the distant whisper, “Y-you … you are brave.”
And Ijeọma watched him leave through small metal bars embedded in the fastened iron door, as she stood in the silence, wishing for someone to return and be with her, praying that someone would reopen the iron door. She could feel the heat again, a stream of light flowing into the cell, and wondered if someone would truly come, raising her thoughts to a dire expectation, ignoring the good word as she raised her head to the window to see if the sun was there; and saw some of its body, muted by the clouds, glowing as an orb behind their gray as she stretched forth her legs to make herself prostrate, praying, as she stretched herself onto the cement floor, praying for Chukwu to remove her from the cell and remove the pain from her swollen eyes and lips, lying on the ground for hours in prayer, waiting for the cell door to be reopened, thanking Chukwu for her life, praising the Most Supreme for all that was given to her, and asking for an open door, as the stream of light became faint then disappeared, as she prayed through unwept tears and a blackened sky, until her desire for an open door had broken for the day, and she closed her eyes to hope in tomorrow’s answer.
