The Son of the House

by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

  THE SON OF THE HOUSE

  The Son of the House

  Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

  Published in 2019 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2019 Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2019

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0373-4 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0403-8 (ePub)

  Cover design by Georgia Demertzis

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  Set in Adobe Garamond Pro

  To my parents,

  Obidinma Isaiah Okoli Onyemelukwe

  and

  Rebecca Chiegonu Onyemelukwe,

  with much love and gratitude

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part One: Nwabulu

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two: Julie

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Three: In the Hold, 2011

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  2011

  We must do something to pass the time, I thought. Two women in a room, hands and feet tied.

  I could not see how we could escape. Both our legs and hands were still tied up in knots that I could not imagine getting free if I had another hundred years. Even if we managed to get free of the knots, there was only one door out of the small room. I heard the click of a padlock every time they came and went. The only window could not fit one of my thighs, let alone my entire body. Nor could I run to save my life; even if I was not so heavy, there was the matter of my bad knees. There would be no breakout like one saw in the movies.

  We did not entertain the idea that the police might save us, guns blazing, as happened in the movies. The police themselves, people said, would sometimes tell the family of kidnapped persons to go pay the ransom so that harm would not come to their loved one. They had neither the resources nor the serious desire to pursue kidnappers. There was even speculation that the police might be complicit in some kidnappings. So our only hope, like many kidnapping victims in this country, was that our people would come up with the money.

  At first, fear had overwhelmed me. I struggled with them in the car as they tried to put a blindfold over my eyes, as they tried to tie those same hands with which I tried to punch. I felt claustrophobic, my ample body squeezed into a space I could not have fit into even as a teenager in secondary school. I was going to die. With a gun dug into my back as the car sped in a direction that I could not determine, I felt certain I was going to die. Afam, my son, his wedding – what would he do?

  I had now gone past that visceral and obvious fear to a quietened and more sensible state. There was nothing the ears had ever heard to make them fall off, or the eyes had seen that would make them weep blood instead of tears. Perhaps we would get out alive, like other people I had heard of. At least they had taken off our blindfolds. My friend Obiageli had told me of a man whose blindfold was left on for eleven days. Imagine, eleven days of darkness and blindness.

  Once they took off our blindfolds and untied our hands, the situation became more bearable. They fed us – white bread in the morning, white bread in the afternoon, white bread at night. At home, I did not eat white bread; I only ate whole-wheat bread on occasion. I needed to watch my blood sugar, the doctor had told me, because I was prediabetic, and, since my father had died of diabetes, I knew that my genes were conspiring against me and it was up to me to stop them from winning. So I complained this morning when they brought some more bread.

  They asked if I thought this was a hotel.

  ‘Mummy, if your people do not come up with the money soon,’ that young boy said in his deceptively soft voice, ‘you might stop eating at all. Where do you think the money to buy this bread is coming from?’ His voice rose in anger. It was the first time he had shown any emotion.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, feeling like a spoilt child who had just been chastised. I knew better now than to add the other things on the list I had made in my head: the room was hot and sticky. People with extra flesh like me tended to sweat a lot. Without a bath, that would make me and the room smell. Could we at least have some time to bathe, clean our teeth? Could our legs be untied? Sitting in one position and lying with tied legs could not be the best thing for two women, especially one already down the old-age road. Also, it was really uncomfortable to hold in your pee, especially for a woman my age, whose insides had shifted and moved from where the Creator originally placed them. Further, it was not right that they should follow so closely when a person wanted to relieve herself. They were nearly young enough to be my grandchildren, if I had had kids at the age some of my mates did. And I kept hearing a cat mew at night and it made goose pimples stand out on my body – could they do something about that? Finally, could you please not call me Mummy? I am not your mother; you would not treat your mother this way. At least, I hoped so.

  I told them, ‘I am hypertensive. I need my medication. Can anything be done about this?’

  ‘Anything like what?’ he asked me. It was a rhetorical question. His voice and face said that I was stepping over invisible bounds. ‘What you should focus on is praying that your people come through with our money.’ With that, he swivelled round and was gone, leaving his lackeys to run after him and lock the door on us.

  I looked at Nwabulu now. Our mouths were free so we could talk, and we needed to pass the time. ‘So tell me more about yourself,’ I said, trying to encourage her. ‘Here we are, with time on our hands.’

  She looked surprised. That was not what she expected to hear in such a place, it seemed. But what else could we do? After spending the first day bemoaning our fate, the wrong decisions that had landed us there, there was really nothing much to say about our kidnapping. ‘We are stuck together here for only God knows how long. And as my friend Obiageli says, there is nothing like a good story to help pass the time.’

  Nwabulu seemed reluctant still. Her stylish scarf had been torn off her head and her weave needed brushing. There was a slight bruise on her arm. Yet she remained pretty, her face serious.

  ‘Ifechi must be worried,’ I said, ‘but I know he will be doing what he can.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we do not have much money. I hope they are not asking for too much money.’

  I hoped so too. I thought about what Afam had said about Nigeria – what brought him back from Canada, where I thought he might settle down to make a life after school. Nigeria was growing, booming, he said. Lots of opportunities, a growing middle class, emerging sectors. Not just the oil and g
as people. Look at the telecommunications industry, the banking sector, the music industry. Nigerian musicians collaborating with Western ones, and making enough money to buy private jets. Internet, even in the villages. People marching on, with or without electricity, with or without good leadership. Making money, changing lives.

  But there was also kidnapping, I wanted to tell him now. And it was an easy way to make money. A few people had been killed. Mostly, however, people were released after stupendous amounts of money had been extorted from their families. Kidnapping used to be like something out of the folklore that we had heard as children – that people were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Some said it was unemployment that was driving the kidnapping trade. If more young people were employed, kidnapping would die a natural death. Some said it was greed. I had never been hungry enough to threaten anyone with a gun; to threaten to take away lives because mine was unbearable. I wondered what that felt like.

  We had no way of knowing if our people were getting the money. Our people, I thought, hearing the boy leader’s voice in my head. Who were my people? My people were Obiageli and Afam. My sisters would wring their hands but they would do nothing. My youngest brother would shrug his shoulders and carry on with whatever petty trade would support his marijuana habit. Obiageli would be terrified, beside herself with worry. But she would pull herself together and get Afam to get the money. And Afam … he had a good head on his shoulders. Between the two of them they would manage something. I tried to imagine their fear, and I thought about the fear that I would have if Afam were kidnapped. I wished we could tell them that we were being treated well, considering.

  ‘I am sure that they are doing what they can,’ I told Nwabulu now.

  ‘I am sorry I took that road,’ she said again.

  I was almost starting to feel guilty that I had asked for that lift. My visit to Obiageli’s could have waited.

  ‘I should have gone through Otigba Junction,’ said Nwabulu. ‘This would never have happened in that busy place.’ She had said so over and over, but here we were; what was the use of going over what-ifs, and should-haves?

  ‘It is not your fault,’ I said. ‘I am the one they wanted. It was just bad luck that you got caught up in it.’

  ‘They should have police on that road. It is lonely. People could be robbed there.’

  ‘Or kidnapped.’ I smiled.

  She did not smile back. She shook her head and looked at her feet.

  ‘What is done is done,’ I said. A truism we had learnt at Girls’ High School, Aba. And then, unable to resist, I added, ‘No use crying over spilt milk.’

  She smiled now, a tentative smile.

  ‘So you were going to tell me how you got into the fashion business? You are really good, you know.’

  ‘It is a long story, Ma.’

  ‘Are you rushing off anywhere?’ I looked around me theatrically.

  She laughed. ‘But, Ma, I am sure your story is more interesting than mine. You have lived an interesting life, I am sure.’ She seemed genuinely interested. ‘Okay. Let us make a deal. You tell me yours and I will tell you mine.’

  She was a businesswoman through and through, I thought.

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed.

  I began my story. Her emotions flitted across her face – puzzlement, agreement, even disapproval.

  But, in the end, it was Nwabulu’s story that ignited the fire.

  PART ONE

  NWABULU

  CHAPTER ONE

  1972

  I had been a housemaid for nearly half my life when I met Urenna.

  My first sojourn as a housemaid began when I was ten. That morning, before it was fully day, I went by myself on a big bus, the kind that went to Lagos. I went to live with Papa Emma and his wife. I would do little chores around the house and I would be sent to school. That was what Mama Nkemdilim told me. I was excited to go, a little apprehensive too, but I knew that anywhere would be better than living with Mama Nkemdilim after my father had died. And Lagos was the biggest city in Nigeria – everyone knew that. Mama Nkemdilim said men who had gone from our village either married Yoruba women and never came back, or they came back smelling of money and comfort.

  It was no surprise that Mama Nkemdilim would send me away at the first opportunity that knocked on our door.

  ‘Amosu,’ she would call me, a witch. ‘Why do you still hold out your hands for food?’ she would ask, squeezing her face in puzzlement when I stood outside the kitchen, waiting for food. ‘Is all that blood you suck from me and my children not enough? Or does it all go to your big head?’ she would wail, referring to my head, which looked huge on my thin body. Other children called me Atinga, giving proper due to my bony slenderness. Mama Nkemdilim did not think that the little food we had in the house should be wasted on putting extra flesh on my bones. Extra flesh would be a drag on the speed needed to run the many errands she sent me on.

  Mama Nkemdilim blamed me for all her misfortunes. And misfortunes had visited often since she came to live with us, coming down like rain in July. When she could not conceive after two years of marriage to my father, she pointed fingers at me. A dibia, she said, had told her that I was responsible for her empty womb. Bad luck, she liked to say, followed me around like the mosquito sought the ear at night; like flies followed faeces. After my father died, she would point out that he had survived the war where he had served as a soldier, had withstood poverty, had held on to life after I came along and killed my mother as I forced myself out into the world. My father had weathered all this. But how, she asked, did one survive a wicked child who had killed her mother?

  ‘You will not kill me too,’ she would cry, conviction ringing like a soprano alongside the alto of disgust. ‘Mbanu, you will not. I am not as foolish as your mother, not as soft as your father. I will kill you before you kill me,’ Mama Nkemdilim would insist, as if I, a mere child, were a monster with seven heads like those spirits in fairy tales.

  ‘I did not kill my mother and father,’ I would say, my head turned away, waiting for her hard knuckles to rap against my almost hairless big head. A loud, painful koi.

  Yet all her blows had not yet driven away the remnants of my defiance. If I could kill, the spirit in me said, Mama Nkemdilim would not be living while my father and mother lay in their almost forgotten graves, now covered by grass in front of my father’s house. When she approached with the cane she hastily broke off from the onugbu plant beside the kitchen, I did not stop for her hand to go up and down my body. I ran out to the road, screaming for my dead father, even though I knew my punishment would wait until I came back to my senses and returned home. When she starved me, I woke up in the night to creep to the kitchen and help myself to some of the soup and dry fish she gave only to her children, to prevent kwashiorkor, she would proclaim.

  When I turned ten, Papa Emma, a distant relative of Mama Nkemdilim’s, came home to the village at Christmas. He said he needed someone to help his wife around the house. Mama Nkemdilim thought that I would be a good choice: it would get rid of me. But she also worried that it might be too much of an opportunity for me.

  ‘Do you not think that this is too good for her?’ she asked her friend, Mama Odinkemma.

  I listened intently from outside the kitchen.

  ‘Hmm,’ Mama Odinkemma said, ‘do you want her living here, sucking your blood, sucking Nkemdilim and her sister’s blood every night, while blowing cool air on all of you like a rat?’

  ‘Eh, that is true talk. Eziokwu. But what if she becomes a big person in Lagos?’

  Mama Odinkemma laughed. It was a genuine laugh. And it went on for long. She could not imagine Nwabulu, the Atinga, becoming a big person anywhere. Not even in Lagos, I heard her say. For once, I did not disagree with Mama Odinkemma, Mama Nkemdilim’s thick-set friend with the pointed mouth that made you wonder how food made it through to her belly. And yet she could often be counted on to be chewing something like a goat chewing cud. I silently agreed with her that it was laughable
that I could become a big person by cleaning, cooking, and doing chores in a house, even if it was in Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria. Even a ten-year-old child, who had not gone to school for two years, knew that this was like the long tales the tortoise told the other animals he had offended by his greed so that they would not throw him down from the sky.

  What sealed my fate was Mama Odinkemma saying, ‘Mama Nkemdilim, send this child away. That child has her mother’s blood. They are all witches in her mother’s family. You do not want her to initiate your children into the cult, or worse still, kill them?’

  After that, Mama Nkemdilim satisfied the necessary obligation of informing my uncle Nnabuzo.

  I wanted to go to Lagos, climb mountains and swim seas, just to get far away from my stepmother. But I did not want to leave my uncle Nnabuzo.

  My uncle did not like the idea of Mama Nkemdilim sending me all the way to Lagos. It should have been his responsibility to determine what happened to me, his brother’s child, but he appeared weak before Mama Nkemdilim’s verbal and emotional onslaughts. Sometimes her barbs were subtle, but more often they were blunt like the stone with which we ground pepper in the small mortar.

  ‘Let me take Nwabulu,’ he said to Mama Nkemdilim. ‘At least we will keep our eyes on her.’ He rested worried eyes on my face, but his tone was gentle, as always.

  ‘Did my husband, your brother, not say that what he would like most was for Nwabulu to go to school?’ she asked. Mama Nkemdilim always knew the right thing to say.

  ‘Yes, it is true,’ Nnabuzo said.

  ‘The people with whom she will live will send her to school. Emma told me himself. I cannot send her to school,’ she moaned. ‘It is all I can do to feed myself and your brother’s children.’

  Nnabuzo knew when he was defeated. My uncle could barely feed his own family with his palm-wine-tapping trade. His wife, Nnedi, had a baby every year. At last count, there were nine of them. Her thin frame was often to be seen with a protruding tummy as she was going about her duties. I had heard Mama Nkemdilim say that her baby-a-year habit was the result of my uncle Nnabuzo’s sickening inability to keep his own penis to himself. Mama Nkemdilim reminded him as often as possible of his neglected duties to his late brother’s family, always implying that, in the face of his failure to do so, she must continue to shoulder a man’s burdens on her frail woman’s shoulders.