He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, this wrinkled, sticky, squealing, bloody baby. I loved him from that moment. Love flooded and swallowed the numbness, the bitterness, the negativity. I came alive. I had a purpose in life again – to love this baby.
I could not imagine anything more perfect than the peaceful baby who had grown inside me. He slept through the night almost from the first week, a miracle, Mama Nathan told me. He was quiet, rarely cried, and in the first weeks often gave those involuntary smiles that made my heart leap with joy, never mind that they were so short you could not tell if he was teasing or you had imagined them.
From the first day, Mama Nathan and I vied for who could love the baby more, who should name him, change him, pick him up when he cried. I was his mother, but Mama Nathan preferred to forget this. She wanted to call him Nathan, after her son. I could not agree to that – to name him after a man who had no part in his making. We eventually settled on Ezinwa: good, beautiful, perfect child.
Because he slept through the night, Mama Nathan wanted him to sleep in her room, in her bed with her. I said no, but she often crept in to try to take him. I found that I had lost all the diplomacy, all the docility that I had learnt through years of being unloved, through harsh and indifferent treatment, through my years of tending the children of others even when I was still a child myself. I became like one of Mama Nkemdilim’s cats after it had just given birth – protective, fiercely so. I would not let Mama Nathan sleep with my child. I wanted to feed my child myself, pick him up myself when he cried, change his nappy when he made that liquid yellow yet strangely sweet-smelling mess. I wanted to sing him to sleep. I did not want to share him with anyone, even less with Mama Nathan.
We argued about everything. She wanted him baptised; I did not. The God who had stood by while my mother died birthing me, and had taken my father, and then refused to provide me with an escape route when I needed one, did not deserve our belief or devotion. But I gave in, and had Ezinwa baptised in the church, with the catechist standing by and smiling and bowing obsequiously to Father, who had now come back from his holiday.
Mama Nathan wanted me to feed the baby pap as early as three weeks. But I refused. I remembered Mummy saying that it was really best for babies to have milk for four months before anything else was introduced. I was adamant; I won that battle. Mama Nathan and I both kept our ears open for when he cried, and we both made a mad dash to the room to get him. When I got to him first, she would hover over me, waiting for him to finish nursing at my breast so she could snatch him, burp him, and begin singing nonsensical songs to him. Sometimes I caught her calling him ‘Nathan’.
Soon, the kindness that she had shown me in those last weeks of pregnancy disappeared. She had brought me into the family for my baby, and my refusal to let her be his primary guardian did not suit her. She began to send me on errands outside the house, including fetching water from the stream. I went, but with Ezinwa strapped to my back most of the time.
Mama Nathan complained to her friends that I was a bad mother, spoiling the child by holding him too often. He would never learn to walk; I held him so much. This was the son of the house, she said, but I was already teaching him that breath came and went from his lungs only so long as he held on to my wrapper. She grumbled that I spent too much time reading him books that he could not possibly understand, and which, in any event, could not make him a man.
She grumbled unceasingly. She expressed displeasure at my cooking, annoyance at how sluggishly or quickly I carried out my duties, and irritation at my forays out of the house with Ezinwa. When her grumbling failed to make me cry, she stopped talking to me altogether.
As time passed, my life with Mama Nathan became even more uncomfortable. Chores began to bear children and even grandchildren. Mama Nathan was my mother-in-law, Mama Nkemdilim warned me one day, and she was doing me a favour by feeding me and giving me a roof over my head. The child was hers; Ezinwa belonged to the people who had paid good money as my bride price, the people who had given him a name. I rejected this idea vehemently. But I also knew that I had nowhere to turn.
Until the day she pushed me out.
That evening, I returned late from the market, where I went to buy food for us. I had taken Ezinwa, now a winsome though small four-month-old boy, strapping him on my back. Several of the women had crowded around me, staring admiringly at him, as often happened when I went to the market. They exclaimed at how handsome he was. He chuckled when someone sneezed; to me, his chuckle was the sweetest sound on earth, and the women seemed to agree. They laughed, relishing his enjoyment. Someone begged to hold him, and I indulged her. Nothing made me happier than people admiring my son. He was the reason I was now accepted in the village, I thought sometimes, carefully ignoring the fact of my marriage into Mama Nathan’s family.
When I entered the house, Mama Nathan was livid. Her outsized anger was not unusual these days, so I ignored it. I put Ezinwa down – he had been on my back all day. She grabbed him and headed out to the neighbours.
It was a couple of hours before she came home. She returned empty-handed, declaring that she no longer wanted me in her home. At first, I thought her leaving Ezinwa at a neighbour while we argue must be a new form of punishment, a bringing-in-line for her wayward daughter-in-law – or was it wife? I was never sure which. I quickly assured myself that it was a tactic she would not use again, for I would glue my son to my body if necessary. But first I had to find out with which neighbour she had left him. She ignored my calm then annoyed demands for Ezinwa, who must by now be getting hungry. My breasts were filling up, engorging on the milk that I still fed him even though I had started him on solids. But when I stomped out to our neighbours’ homes, Ezinwa was in none of them.
I began to panic. I went back and demanded my son.
Ezinwa was not my son, she said, but Nathan’s. Though her voice was calm, she sounded like she had gone mad. Perhaps she had. Losing my son, as she had hers, would make me mad. Now I understood.
I had enough. I began to scream and stamp my feet; red dust rose like a cloud of confusion. I called out to the neighbours, shouting their names: Mama Josephine, Enenebe, Papa Michael. They all came out of their houses, too quickly it seemed to me in retrospect, bringing their eyes to join their eavesdropping ears to feast upon the unfolding drama. Some asked Mama Nathan where the boy was. In response, Mama Nathan said that I was a witch who in her dreams had threatened to kill her several times. She accused me of stealing from her, and wailed that I was a luxury she could no longer afford; she could not stand to live with me one day longer. I was a witch, she repeated; at last she announced that she had taken the boy to somewhere safe until things were resolved.
I could not understand what she was saying or fathom what was happening. Neither could the neighbours. I might be a witch, Mama Josephine tried to intervene, but that did not mean she could hide a baby from his mother.
It was growing dark, yet Mama Nathan made no move to fetch Ezinwa. By now, my tension had given way to tears. One woman, Mama Chukwuma, held me and consoled me. Some pleaded with Mama Nathan; others shouted abuse at her. She was adamant: I would not sleep in her house that night. She stormed inside and brought out some of my things, already packed in a bag. Clearly, this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision; it had been in the making, growing like a baby in the womb.
In the meantime, the head of the family, Ichie Ucheagu, had been sent for. When the situation was explained to him, he ordered Mama Nathan to bring the baby. She did not budge. I was a witch who ate human flesh and who planned to eat her child.
Leaving the resolution of the problem in the hands of Ichie Ucheagu, the neighbours started to return to their homes when their children began crying and asking for food. Mama Nathan continued to insist that I would not sleep in her house that night. Mama Chukwuma advised that it was best I went home. I had thought this was home, my mind protested. Having nowhere else to go, I went to Mama Nkemdilim’s, where I stayed awake all
night, wailing at the thought that my little boy had not eaten.
The next day, a meeting was called by our umunna and held at the home of Ichie Ucheagu. For once, I could not tell what Mama Nkemdilim thought. But she was not unkind to me. She stayed with me while we waited to hear from the umunna. After two hours, I was summoned. I went, hopeful yet afraid. Mama Nkemdilim came with me.
At the meeting, Mama Nathan was present, but not Ezinwa, which brought tears to my eyes. Ichie Ucheagu asked me to sit and began to speak in the gentle tones one would use for a child who had malaria. Mama Nathan had said that we were not living well together. I began to protest, but he raised his hand and bade me be quiet. Mama Nathan did not want to live with me any longer. This was not a problem, I assured him; my son and I would return to my father’s house.
There was silence.
Mama Nathan put her head down and stared at the floor as the men looked at me, and I could see pity in some of their eyes.
It would not be possible for Ezinwa to go with me, Ichie Ucheagu said. As things were, Mama Nathan and her family had demanded that the bride price be paid back. I would no longer be married to Nathan. The child was theirs now, because they had married me. In our culture, he explained patiently like one would to a young child, a child belonged to the father, not the mother. Ezinwa belonged to his father’s family. He was sure that Mama Nathan would let me see Ezinwa when I visit her house, Ichie Ucheagu tried to soothe me. After all, I was his mother, he said.
But Mama Nathan said no. She was calm in her vehemence. I was not a good mother. I smothered the boy, I refused to feed him solids. The difference in the child’s growth was clear for all to see.
Ichie Ucheagu tried to reason with her, saying that the boy was too young to be taken from his natural mother. At this, Mama Nathan threw herself on the floor and wept loudly and bitterly. The elders asked us to leave the room. When they called us back in, they had reached a temporary decision: Ezinwa would stay with Mama Nathan and I could go see him as often as I wished. They would meet again after two weeks to review the situation.
I let out a pained wail. It was clear that my umunna would not help me in the end. Mama Nkemdilim came and held me. I wept with abandon, not caring that they watched me.
Later, my story would elicit some pity, but no intervention from any quarters. Everyone agreed that, as much as English law had come with the colonial masters, and Christianity had come with the missionaries, these institutions did not interfere with certain accepted and ancient traditions. In the minds of men and women of Nwokenta, as in all of Igbo land, there was no disputing that a child belonged to the father. It did not matter how that came about, whether the woman had committed adultery or not; so long as her bride price had been paid, the child was her husband’s. It did not matter that her husband was violent and she had run away from constant beatings. Her family might come to take their daughter home, but even they knew that the children belonged to her husband. If her family was exceedingly influential and forward-looking and took the children too, everyone reminded them still that the children were the man’s and that, one day, they would return to their father.
The day after the meeting, I went to see my son. I reached for him and he smiled and gurgled. What I feared most was that he would recoil from me as he had begun to do with strangers. I clung to him and would not let go when the time came to leave. Mama Nathan had to pry him from my arms, with her friends watching.
That night my heart bled and my eyes seeped tears. On my second visit, I tried to take Ezinwa away. He was sleeping in my arms, when I stood up and ran. But Mama Nathan and a woman from their clan, whom she had engaged perhaps specifically for this purpose, caught up with me and wrestled him from my grip. That was the last time I saw my son. When I arrived the following morning, I was told that Mama Nathan had gone away to Enugu to visit a friend. He never came home.
CHAPTER NINE
I lived life with an ache in my heart. I knew too that I would die with and perhaps because of that ache. It grew and expanded until I thought my insides would burst. I could speak to no one of this ache because Mama Nkemdilim forbade all talk with the statement that ‘It was God’s will, uche Chukwu.’ Perhaps, she said, I would be fortunate to marry someone else when all was forgotten. I did not remind her that I had not married at all.
Each breath of air that I drew without my son was punishment, each awakening from sleep a reminder that the rest of my life waited without Ezinwa. My inclination was to lie in bed and do nothing, but that was impossible in Mama Nkemdilim’s house. As I went about the chores that had sat and waited for me to return from my sojourn with Mama Nathan, the ache pulled at me, wanting to make me lie in death at the bottom of the stream or in the middle of our farmland.
One morning, I awoke and knew like I had not known before that my son was not coming back. Mama Nathan had not returned. Her people showed no signs of unease at her disappearance. My people carried on as though my son had never existed.
I could not see hope. It had hidden itself from me, but I became determined to seek it out wherever it was. I had to leave the village.
When Mama Nkemdilim and her children had gone to the market, leaving me with a pile of clothes to wash, empty pots of water to fill, and supper to prepare, I packed the few clothes I had and my books of fairy tales. In my bra I had some money that I had stolen from Mama Nkemdilim’s cache the previous day. I did not have a thought-out plan. I only knew that I could not stay – that if I had run away somewhere when I was pregnant, I would still have my son in my arms. I planned to go back to Enugu. Not to see Urenna. I knew now that he was weak, that he was still a boy and he could not help me. But perhaps Chidinma would. She had relatives in Enugu. They might be willing to take me in.
I set out that morning. The lightness of my bag of clothes reminded me that I had little in the world, that I had lost what was most precious to me, and that my life was as light now as a bag of worn-out clothes. The sun was scorching. My heart beat loudly in my ears but I walked resolutely, prepared to run if anyone tried to stop me. I need not have worried; it was a short walk to the main road and no one appeared. They had all gone to the market, to the stream, to the farm, or wherever it was that their hungry stomachs had dictated they should go. I waited for what seemed like a long time before the bus came. In that time, I willed myself not to think for fear that I would lose my resolve. I only knew that I would kick, scream, and punch, should anyone question me or stand in the way of my escape.
When the bus to Enugu came, I jumped in. As we passed the trees, the familiar houses and their tin roofs, the red sand of my village, my heart continued its loud thumping. My fingers held my bag so tightly, I thought, it might be impossible to unglue them when we got to Enugu. But Enugu, that township of electric lights that many people in Nwokenta sought escape to, had never seemed so far away.
The bus moved slowly, with a clanging sound at the back and a passenger stopping it every other minute. I tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong in Enugu. No one there owed me a roof over my head. No one owed me food. The only thing I was relying on was my friendship with Chidinma, herself a housemaid depending on others to give her food, a place to sleep and some education.
It was afternoon when we got to the market at Ogbete. It was the final stop and the few passengers who were left alighted. I got off, breathing in the powerful, familiar scene – food smells, the smell of bodies, the sounds of people buying and selling, the odours of merchandise, and the red dust of Enugu. I stood for a moment in the sun and savoured my relief.
It was not long-lived. A woman walked past me and stood before me, her child strapped to her back. She put a hand behind her, underneath the little boy’s buttocks, for extra support. It was a gesture that was intimately familiar. I had done the same many times after Ezinwa turned three months. The pain seared me, sizzling like onions thrown into a pan of hot oil. I breathed in and out, in and out.
Then a sudden desire seized me: to s
ee the face of the little boy. As I stepped forwards to look into his face, his mother began walking away with quick, short steps. I walked after her. I had to see his face. A young woman, about my age, with a tray of groundnuts on her head, came between us. ‘Buy groundnuts,’ she shouted, obscuring my view of the woman and child. I wanted to hit her. Instead, I sidestepped her just in time to see the woman heaving herself and the little boy onto a bus. ‘Agbani Road,’ the conductor shouted. As the bus moved away, I still had not seen the child’s face. And now I never would. What if it had been Ezinwa?
It took a while before I got myself together. This was not why I had come to Enugu. I did not know where Mama Nathan had taken my son – Enugu, Onitsha, or Kafanchan. But being rational did nothing to ease my pain. I tried to calm down and focused on my plan. It was sketchy at best, but it would have to do.
I began the long trek to Independence Layout. As I neared the place, I prayed that I would not see Urenna, my former employers, or anyone else. I kept my face down as I passed through familiar routes and places. Things had not changed much and this surprised me. My life had undergone so many changes in the past year, I expected that to be reflected in the area I had lived in once.
It was almost five when I got to my destination. I was tired; sweat poured out of me. I stood by the big tree where my friend and I had chatted many times. Peering from a distance, I searched for her. Would she be there? Or at Mrs Okonkwo, the seamstress’s house? Did Urenna’s parents send her to sewing lessons like she had hoped? Or had she perhaps been dismissed? If she was not at Mrs Okonkwo’s house, could I enter our street? Would anyone else come to her gate if I knocked?
While I stood wondering what to do, I saw her small, chubby figure. Two other girls came out of the house with her. She had a small bag, which she clutched under her armpit while she shut Mrs Okonkwo’s gate behind her. I could have cried with relief. I called out to her. She looked about, but did not see me immediately. Then her eyes widened, first with surprise, then with fear. She stepped away from her friends and came towards me. Even though I could see the anxiety in her eyes, she hugged me. It was a close and tight embrace. I soaked it in; it had been so long since I felt any affection.
The Son of the House Page 10
