by Okey Ndibe
Cruel, too, though Sheri could not have known it, was her use of the phrase “good genes.” Genes. That word has haunted me ever since the day I overheard my father use it in a conversation that had to do with me.
I was the favorite target of my four younger siblings—two brothers and two sisters—whenever they hungered for a fight, which was too often. They picked on me because, as the oldest, I had to show restraint in my response. If I lost my temper and manhandled any of them my mother would reproach me for being a bully, for bloodying the nose of a mere child. Sometimes I complained to my parents of the advantage my brothers and sisters took of my tied hands. In fairness to our mother, she always asked them to leave me alone, though to no avail. Our father, whom we all dreaded, chose to make light of my protests. “You can’t handle this small fart of a challenger?” he would ask me, grinning. “You were born with two strong fists. If anybody is looking for your trouble, you should know what to do.”
I knew what to do—only too well! But I also knew the unwritten rule which unfairly required me not to do it. Inevitably, the day came when I snapped.
A couple was visiting our parents from England—a barrister who had been my father’s best friend in secondary school and who later studied law in England, and his wife, an Indian-born English woman. They were in Madia for four weeks and stayed in our house for the first three days before setting out to see the rest of the country. In anticipation of their visit our parents had drilled us on the rules of good comportment. We were not to stare at the visitors. We were not to raise our voices during their stay. And, yes, fights were also outlawed. My father warned that any breach would be severely punished.
On the first day of the couple’s visit, while they and our parents sipped tea and reminisced, my youngest brother sneaked up behind me where I sat reading a book and dealt me a sharp blow to the back of the head. My first impulse was to make a small bundle of him and smash him against the wall. I overcame that temptation. I had little time to weigh the consequences of the next option before I got up and started on my way.
My parents and their visitors were laughing over some joke when I appeared in the doorway. Stopping sharply, I faced them, determined. For some time they continued to laugh, hardly seeming to take in my presence. Then they gradually wound down and focused their eyes on my face.
“I will kill Soochi if you don’t stop him annoying me!”
“He will do what?” asked the lawyer as I made off through the door that led to the porch.
“Kill Soochi, I think he said,” his wife replied.
“But why?” asked the lawyer. “Don’t the other kids accommodate him well enough? “
“Of course, of course,” I heard my father say. “But I warned Margaret early on that genes can be a most troublesome thing.”
“John, please!” my mother rebuked him. “This is no time!”
I had made no sense then of the exasperation in my mother’s voice. Genes had sounded in my ears as jeans, and I had been wearing a pair of jeans at the time. I sat outside the door sulking like an orphan, wondering what jeans had to do with it. Then my perplexity was replaced by a dread of the punishment that lay ahead for me—in two days, after the visitors had gone.
For the next two days I said little to anybody. I merely grunted in salutation whenever I encountered the adults. My parents accepted my terms; they grunted in return.
My father averted his eyes whenever our paths crossed, his lower lip clenched between his teeth, a man trying hard to contain his anger. The lawyer, too, was pretty taciturn, absorbed in his eternal tea-sipping. His wife, however, seemed to take my silent withdrawal as a personal challenge. One night, she drew me into an unexpected hug as I muttered a grudging good night. The following morning I made sure this time to keep my distance from her, wanting no repetition of her stifling hug.
One week after the visitors departed, the same heavy silence still pervaded the house. I was neither spanked nor scolded. My parents’ faces wore a terrible scowl that seemed a cross between a grimace and a grin. In the tenseness of the silence I walked about the house with the guile of a cockroach, keeping to dark corners.
One morning my father called me as he got ready to go off to his clinic. With slightly shaky legs I entered the living room where he stood waiting.
“Good morning, Daddy.”
“Morning, Femi. I was wondering if my small man would help me carry my briefcase to the car?”
It was like the old, wonderful days once again! Carrying his briefcase to the car was an honor bestowed on me as the first child. Before getting into his car my father hugged me, then lightly kissed my forehead. He had done it countless times before, but that day it seemed to contain a special meaning. Tears of relief streaked down my face and my lips quivered with joy. I turned and walked back to the house. My mother stood in the center of the entrance hall, a wide smile spread across her face.
“The praying mantis!” she said. Praying mantis—the playful name she called me whenever I was in a petulant mood. Smiling through my tears, I ran to her for an embrace. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life. I did not suspect that my saddest day lay not far ahead.
On 4 May 1978 I had a bloody fight with my immediate younger sister, Eda. That fight keeled my life over and took away everything that had kept me safe and stable.
Eda, who is a year and a half younger than I, had a diabolical hunger for fights. She would goad me at every opportunity until I obliged her with one. At last, the day came when I ran out of patience with her. Give her one real fight, I told myself, and she would learn her lesson. The fight started with her favorite joke—to call me “elephant ears.” After that she improvised a song about my large ears and sang it in her high unmelodic voice. I let her carry on for a while, but her long tuneless singing finally frayed my nerves. I responded with my own stock insult: “Your mouth is wide enough for a rickety molue bus to drive in.”
She stopped singing and charged at me, landing me two punches on the chin. The pain spread all over my face. Enraged, I unleashed blows of my own. At first she was shocked and puzzled. Then a demented smile lit her face and she flung herself at me, missing most of her punches. The ferocity of my blows soon overwhelmed her, and in spiteful frustration she shouted, “Bastard!” I heard the curse only faintly, still hitting. Defenseless against my knuckles, she cried again, “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” Eventually her cries jolted me out of my possessed state. Her battered face horrified me. Her upper lip was split open, her right eye swollen shut. A slow stream of blood flowed from her nose. A terrible fright shook my whole body. What would our parents do when they came home that evening and saw the wreckage I had made of my sister?
Eda touched her face and, in horror, inspected her blood-stained finger. As if she had seen the very picture of her own death, she squawked, then let out a fresh torrent of curses. “Bastard! Son of the gutter! Wait till my parents come home. Today is today. You have to go back to the goatshed where you were born! Bastard picked up from the latrine! Evil child who entered his mother’s womb through the back door! Today, you’ll be returned to the gutter where you belong!”
That evening, our mother burst into tears as I recounted what had happened. She and our father had listened wearily as I described the trivial events that led to the fight, but when I told how my sister had called me a child of the gutter she began to cry. Confused, I looked at our father, but his face bore an expression of stony distance. I glanced at Eda. Her head was bowed. I knew she was avoiding our parents’ eyes.
Then the meaning of this incident began to take a shape in my mind. Slowly at first, then at a shattering speed. The rush of knowledge became unbearable. I felt myself swooning. The room swirled out of focus. Then my legs disappeared from under me.
Why had I never noticed the differences between my siblings and me? It was not only the fact that I was lightskinned while they had a darkness o
f complexion obviously inherited from our mother. Or that they were rotund, while I was tall and skinny. Or that my eyes were deeper and more intense—and my ears larger. It was something else: our parents’ odd counsel at family pep talks, their unfailing admonition to us, their children, to remember that we were equal in their eyes, none of us loved less than the others. That need to spell out something that should be obvious, why had I not been struck by the awkwardness of it? Why had I waited until this moment to be told by my mother’s tears, my father’s brooding muteness?
For the next few weeks I tried in many silent ways to get my parents to explain my past to me. My eyes held questions seeking answers. My parents saw them, but chose to respond with a stolid silence. Far from diminishing, my need to know increased, grew into an obsession. One day, alone with my mother, I decided to broach the taboo subject explicitly.
“Mother,” I said, for the first time feeling the word heavy in my mouth. “Who are my real parents?”
She looked at me sharply. Then she gave me a nervous, uneasy smile. “Don’t you feel loved in this house? Are we now strangers to you?”
“Please!” I cried. “I feel at home here. But I now know that you’re not the mother who gave birth to me. I want to know the rest of the story.”
“You have been hurt,” she said. “But love will heal your pain.” She came up and tried to cuddle me.
I pushed her away. “If you love me, tell me what I ask.”
“Do you doubt that I love you?” she asked, stung by my words.
“No!”
“Because if you do, you mustn’t. I love you.”
“A little thing is all I ask of you,” I pleaded.
“I don’t have the information you want.”
“Tell me what you know. I’ll go to Father for the rest.”
“He knows even less.”
Despite my disappointment I decided to approach my father. Early the next morning, while he was listening to the news, I joined him.
“Good morning, Dad.”
He turned, surprised. “Morning, Femi. You’re up early. How are you?”
“Bad.”
“Bad?” He fixed me with a perplexed look. “What is the matter?”
“Who are my real parents?”
He swiftly turned off the radio. Then he regarded me with a cold, pained stare. At any other time those eyes set on me in that fashion would have taken away my courage, but not that day.
“I see,” he said finally, throwing his head upward. “I see that we’re no longer real enough for you. Your mother and I are now fake, eh?”
“I want to know who gave birth to me. Just to know.” I hated the shy sound of my voice.
“Listen, Femi. This is your home. We’re your parents. We love you. Very much, if you need reminding. We’ll support all your healthy pursuits. But searching for what is better left alone is not a healthy pursuit.”
The finality of his tone did not deter me. In the months that followed I pestered them with more questions, all of which met silence. Whenever they went out I pried through their papers. In vain. I went searching for the Langa Orphanage, but learned it was long closed. I wrote letters to several newspapers, but no responses came. The few clues I ever got were from my mother, tidbits that were of little value, tiny specks of light in the vast night of my ignorance.
As time passed I became resigned to not knowing. With other interests to occupy me in the present, the desire to dig around in my past fell dormant. I was ill-prepared when it flared up again at the beginning of my second year at Madia University.
I met Sheri in poetry class and fell in love, first with her poems, then with her eyes and the lilting voice that gave a seductive melody to her speech. She returned my interest with a charm and enthusiasm that flattered me. On our first date she led me to a wooded area behind her hall of residence. It was there, while we cuddled and kissed, that I told her about myself. Motivated by a desire to hide nothing, I related the story of how I found out that I was adopted and the pain of my fruitless search for my biological parents.
She assured me that none of this need be an obstacle to our relationship. Relieved, I let myself fall deeper and deeper in love.
I became worried when Sheri went home several times without discussing me with her parents. But she promised to talk to them as soon as we were sure about the direction of our relationship. In December 1986 I told her of my desire to marry her. She went to spend the holiday with her parents. From there she sent me a Christmas card and a letter with words that tore my heart out.
Two days after receiving Sheri’s letter I travelled to Jesha, a small dusty town forty miles outside Langa, to meet a famous sorceress. A friend of mine had sworn that this woman had the power to commune with the past and the future.
Her appearance was more bewildering than anything I had imagined, the most striking thing about her being her mammoth size. She sat on a wide wooden chair, her face lit with an expression of eternal patience. She could have been sitting there, on that one spot, since the beginning of time.
She watched with dark eyes as I stooped through the low wooden door and entered her shrine. The shrine was simple, clean and uncluttered, far from the jumble of roots, herbs, beads and animal hides my mind had pictured. The air was perfumed with incense and scented candles. The white garment worn by the sorceress gave her a chaste, holy look.
“Son,” she said without seeming to stir her body. “You have come with a heavy load. Sit down.” With her eyes she indicated where. I sat down, wishing I had not come, hastily rehearsing how to make my excuses and flee.
“Son, your trouble is strong, but you have come to the wrong place. It is not for me to answer your questions.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the answer you seek is small.”
“It isn’t small to me,” I said. “I wish to know who my natural parents are.”
“The ancestors who are wiser than all of us said a long time ago that a basket cannot cover a pregnancy. They spoke the truth for yesterday, today and tomorrow. If your trouble were as big as a pregnancy I would see the answer. But the answer you seek is like a pebble thrown into the belly of the big sea. I don’t have the magic to recover such a pebble. None but the gods who inhabit the depths of the sea can do so. The gods have marked you out for great things, but they have also withheld the small things from your knowledge.”
“Why is that?” I asked in a vexed tone.
“Son, I am not privy to the decisions of gods.”
“But why can’t you give me some light yourself? Why must my past be overcast?”
“Son, I have only this light to shed: don’t let your spirit collapse over the small things. If you live long you’ll be a great man and the small things won’t matter anymore. A great plan is laid out for you. None but yourself can derail it.”
I rose to leave, my face clouded with disappointment.
She motioned me to sit back down.
“I speak to you now as one who could have been your grandmother if the gods had not decided that my womb would bear no children. Don’t wrestle with fate, my son. To know is sometimes good, but to have the wisdom to accept what you cannot know is better.”
“You’re saying that I’ll never know about this? Never?”
“Who am I to say that? I am just a poor childless widow who fetches firewood for the gods. I am less than the fart from their rumps. Not even the gods speak the language of never. They only set the price for the choices we make.”
“If the answer to my past can be bought at any price, I am ready to pay it.”
“You speak with the voice of the young. You will grow to learn that knowledge is sometimes a weight to be borne. That’s why a palmwine tapper never tells everything he sees from the high branches. He takes some of it to his grave. Go home, son.”
That is my s
tory. I am a man searching for his lost pebble. I am a stream cut off from its source. Tell me, if you know: where does such a stream go?
Handing the sheets of paper back to me, Bukuru avoided my eyes. A fit of anger stirred inside me.
“What kind of man would abandon his child?”
He coughed lightly, but did not speak. We stood in silence. Then, feeling myself reeling, I spoke again.
“You’re certain Iyese’s son was removed to the Langa Orphanage?”
“Yes,” he answered. His voice was husky, like a man fighting a lump in his throat. “That’s what Violet told me.”
“I was adopted from that orphanage,” I said, as if he could have overlooked this detail in my account!
He made a nasal sound, but kept a wary silence.
“Isn’t Ogugua an Igbo name?” I queried.
He grunted his affirmation. “Why do you ask?”
“My adoptive mother said I had an Igbo name when they adopted me. That’s one of the few things she told me. She didn’t say what the name was.”
“What are you suggesting?” His tone, to my shock, was less a question than a rebuke.
“If my mother was a prostitute, that might be a reason my adoptive parents would withhold information from me.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“If they knew my mother was murdered, then perhaps they wouldn’t want to tell me.”
“This is mere guesswork. There’s no evidence at all. The connections are not there.”
“You wrote about a gash in the baby’s right leg. I carry the scar of such a wound.”
“A coincidence,” he said, still evading me.
Exasperated with this dodging and weaving, I began to soliloquize, addressing myself in a detached, disinterested voice. “Your mother was a prostitute. You may never know your father because your mother slept with many men. She was raped and then she was murdered. You were found lying on top of her, a blood-spattered baby. You were taken to an orphanage from where you were adopted. You became Femi, a child forbidden to visit his past because it was full of terrors. You were warned, but you persisted. You wanted to find out what it was in your history that nobody would talk about. Now you know.” Pausing, I forced Bukuru to look me in the eye. “Could you be my father?”
