‘I think my stomach is upset,’ I explained in a placating voice. ‘I have not been able to eat all day. Not even Mama Chibike’s okpa.’ It was not a good thing not to eat something in a house you were visiting for the first time.
‘I told Mr Akanu,’ she said, pointing at the short, roundish man who had come in apparent answer to the bell, ‘to make you some hot, fresh fish pepper soup. Maybe we will put it in a flask for her to take home,’ she said, half talking to me, half talking to the cook.
‘Okay, Madam,’ he said and left.
We sat down in the sitting room. Beautiful, I thought. An imposing painting of a tall man stood in one corner. That must be her husband; he wore his wealth like his isi-agu and red cap, as his due. His mouth was a little too wide for his face, I thought. His eyes looked straight at me and I turned mine elsewhere. They fell on another picture of the boy. He was posing with his parents, outside. Was it a matriculation, or a convocation? Again, that sense of familiarity. Where had I seen the tall young man before?
Mrs Obiechina followed my eyes and smiled. ‘Ah, you are looking at my son, Afam. That was when he graduated from the University of Nigeria. Many years ago now. Did I tell you he was the best student in his class? He studied engineering before he switched to music. His father was livid.’ She said this casually; the memories were obviously not painful. Then she launched into several stories about him. The light in her eyes made her look younger, and it was easy to tell that he was her joy. I knew what that felt like.
I was persuaded to eat the pepper soup. It was spicy, hot, and delicious. Afterwards, because I wanted to get back to the shop and do some work before it was time to go home, I asked if she would look at the clothes I brought.
‘Come this way,’ she said to me, leading me into a bedroom.
She took them out. She noticed right away that I’d changed the sleeves on the blouses. ‘They are different from the ones you sketched,’ she noted.
‘Yes. I changed them. I think these will look better, less heavy, current but not too trendy.’
She nodded and, picking a set, went into the adjoining bathroom. When she came out, I nodded approvingly. The style, a mermaid skirt with a few gathers on the bottom, fit her big body well; the simple blouse sleeves covered the thicker part of her arms and slimmed down her body considerably. She looked stylish but not overdone.
She studied herself in the mirror. ‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘Obiageli did say you are the best seamstress in Enugu.’ She turned around several times, admiring herself.
The other two outfits elicited a similar reaction and I felt proud when I saw the glow on her face.
‘I cannot wait to wear them,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’ She called out for the woman who had let me in and asked her to bring her bag. She asked if I would accept a cheque and I said yes. She made it out in meticulous, flowing cursive and clear spaces, the writing of a teacher. I took it and looked at it. She had added some extra money.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said. ‘My last tailor still has the clothes I gave her seven months ago.’
‘You are welcome, Ma,’ I said. It had been a good day.
‘You are going back to Trans-Ekulu?’ she asked when I eventually told her I needed to get back to the shop. ‘I was going to visit Obiageli after you left, but my driver is not back yet.’ Mrs Obiechina frowned at her watch, a slim gold thing that sank into the folds of her wrist. ‘He says he is in a traffic jam, something about an accident.’ She sounded put out. ‘Perhaps you could drop me at Abakpa, at Obiageli’s place?’
‘That would be no problem, Ma,’ I said, wondering what she would think of my car. It was nice enough, but not a Mercedes 4MATIC.
She was grateful for the lift and reached into her bag for her phone to tell her driver to meet her at Obiageli’s house. Then she got up with difficulty to go and get dressed. I hoped she could get help for her knees, I thought.
Outside, I pushed my passenger seat back so she could sit more comfortably. She smiled her thanks when she had settled in. I got in and drove out. In my side mirror, I saw a black car pull out from the side of the other compound behind us while Mrs Obiechina was complaining about her driver.
‘It’s as if he thinks he can do anything and get away with it,’ she said. ‘When you give him the car for an errand that should not take ten minutes, he stays away for hours. He was Eugene’s driver, and Eugene would not have stood for any nonsense.’ She stopped, then continued, ‘Ehn, every man, high or low, thinks he is bigger than a woman just because he has a penis between his legs.’
I thought of the man who had greeted me respectfully on those occasions when I’d walked Mrs Obiechina to her car. He looked like someone with a family and responsibilities. I hoped he would not be careless and lose a job he must desperately need.
‘I am sure he will be back soon,’ I murmured.
I decided against going through Otigba Junction, where the accident had happened. I took a road that helped us cut out Bisalla Road. It was a quiet street that I’d taken several times before.
It turned out to be the wrong decision. Afterwards, I could not explain the speed at which the two cars, an SUV and a sedan, both black, cut us off; one looked like the car that had pulled out behind us when I left Mrs Obiechina’s house. I could not explain how they brandished their guns in the daylight and bundled two women – one, the tallest woman on her street, the other, possibly the largest woman on her street – into an SUV. I could not explain how the sight of guns and the stern faces of young men could make your vocal cords forget their function. I half expected my long frame to be squeezed into a trunk, like I had heard in stories, but it was into the car that they’d pushed us. One, sitting beside me, deftly and quickly blindfolded and gagged me. I assumed that they were doing the same to Mrs Obiechina. I could hear her struggling. She was a fighter, but you did not fight a man armed with a gun with your bare hands. That was foolishness.
The whole thing took only a few minutes. It was like television: a part of you was watching it in bemusement, but the other part of you knew it was real, and was getting acquainted with the kind of fear it had never known before. I only remember thinking, my children, Ifechi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JULIE
I of course had heard of people being kidnapped – the east was becoming a treasure trove for people who sought to abduct others for money. A man on the next street had been kidnapped. We all said that he was crude and ostentatious, flaunting his money with his convoys of SUVs to match, his mobile policemen, his loud parties that went on into the night. It had taken weeks for him to be released. Although he had lots of money, his wife had access to nothing, and was one of those women whose husbands insisted they could not work. That story reassured me now. It had taken weeks, yet the kidnappers had kept the man alive and eventually let him go. I tried not to think about another man who had been tied up and left in the boot of a car. He was found by his people, hours later, dead.
Before Eugene died, we were given a list of precautions to take during a seminar in the women’s group at church: vet domestic staff; where possible, do your hair or your child’s hair at home; do not discuss financial transactions in public; avoid quiet roads; look around to see if your car is being followed. In short, I remembered thinking then, use your common sense. Eugene’s men’s group had talked about prostate cancer, the risks, screening, PSAs and treatment options. He had asked me later if I thought we should pay for police protection, have policemen drive everywhere with us. I said no. One never had any privacy; adding policemen to our retinue was just giving away money unnecessarily. What that would do, I told Eugene, was draw attention to ourselves, and should that not be avoided when you did not want to be kidnapped? He agreed with me, even though he liked to show off.
Childish as it sounded, I never thought it could happen to me, and in Enugu, where I had lived most of my adult years. Bad luck must seek others, not us.
It was clear that the kidnappers had
targeted me. I had heard one of them ask in the car if they were sure they had the right woman. And the other replied that he was sure it was me. The first one insisted it was not my car. Was I Mrs Obiechina, they wanted to know. I could have lied, but they would have to know who I was to get the ransom. I said yes, hearing the ka-ching of coins, the Obiechina Industries money, drop in their heads. I was a good catch, even I admitted it. I hoped the demands were reasonable and that we could get out soon. How much would such young men want anyway, and what would they do with it – buy cars? I wanted to ask them.
They removed our blindfolds the next morning but not the ropes with which they had tied our hands. Our mouths were free. We were lucky to be old women, the kidnappers said.
For days they kept us in an airless small room painted a sickly yellow. They had taken our phones, our bags, everything we had on us. They had asked for numbers. The head of the gang told us to comply. No harm would come to us, he promised. Our prayer should only be, he said, that our people loved us enough to meet their demands quickly, and we would be out of there soon, even the next day. Otherwise things might get very difficult. He sounded soft, but he’d hit me with his gun when I’d struggled in the car, bruising my shoulder. Though he did not shout nor speak menacingly the way they did in those Nollywood movies, his boys obeyed him without question.
I hoped they would get their money, and soon. I hoped we would be some of those who’d lived to tell the story and dance in thanksgiving in church. In the meantime, I thought, we needed to pass the time, take our minds off our troubles somehow.
‘So, tell me more about yourself,’ I said to Nwabulu. ‘How did you become a fashion designer? Here we are, with plenty of time on our hands.’
She seemed reluctant at first. ‘You tell me yours,’ she said, ‘and I will tell you mine.’
It took me a few seconds to think about where to start. And then I plunged in, starting with my brother, Afam, then circling back to my father and my mother. Sharing my story with Nwabulu made my life seem interesting, fresh again. I was honest about my early life, omitting little of importance.
Her perceptions, which she inserted from time to time, jolted me.
‘Was that not too heavy a burden to place on a child?’ she interjected when I spoke about my father’s desire for me to look after my brother, her forehead wrinkling in a frown.
It sounded unbelievable, but I had never thought about it like that. Even though I don’t believe that it was. But I knew that the seed had been planted and I would worry about it later. If we ever got out of this room alive.
I carried my honesty over into my marriage to Eugene. I told her how we met and the circumstances under which I’d married him. These days I saw single mothers, single women who had not married yet and who might never marry. It was still not a choice many would make; it was still difficult to live like that. Society had not changed that much, but it had changed some from my time.
‘But what about Onyemaechi? Did you not wonder how she would feel? How her children would feel?’
There was no judgement in her face, only curiosity. I tried my best to answer her.
Onyemaechi, I told her, stood no chance at all with Eugene once our son came along.
My honesty could not extend to how I got Afam. So I tactfully took a break. It was night; they would soon be bringing our supper of water and unsliced white bread pulled from the loaf, just as they had pulled us out of our lives.
We would rest, and Nwabulu would tell me her story tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NWABULU
Auntie Julie’s story was engrossing, so very different from what I had imagined it would be. She was warm, warmer than when I first saw her in my shop with her Chanel sunglasses, the beautiful long bubu, and the delicious fragrance preceding her gentle voice. In our confinement, we had gone from Mrs Obiechina to Auntie Julie, at her request, and I was no more just her tailor but her daughter.
She made a movement now. I looked up from my feet, still painful from where they were tied, though more loosely now. She was waiting for me to begin.
Where to start telling one’s story? I gave it some thought and started with my name. ‘My father named me Nwabulu because he said I was gain – his profit, his benefit – even though my mother had died bringing me into the world.’
‘Nwabulu,’ Auntie Julie said, ‘Nwabulu, it is a beautiful name. A child is gain. That is true. A child is truly gain, a joy, and advancement in the world.’
I thought so myself, too. I told her how I wished I knew my mother, how this feeling had grown stronger with each child that I bore; I told her about my father’s death, about my stepmother, about being sent out to Lagos to work.
‘A housemaid,’ Auntie Julie said. I heard the note of surprise, of something that sounded like admiration. It had been many years since I’d given much thought to my early years, and it was interesting to bring that young girl to life again. Perhaps I would see the grand design of which Ifechi spoke: that God was working his purpose out and moved in mysterious ways.
When I told her about getting pregnant, she shook her head. ‘Poor girl – and did they send you home?’ The gentleness of her inquiry made me see even more clearly how time changes everything. No woman of her age would have said the same to me at that time; I could not have said the same to myself.
I told her that they did. I told her about my stepmother’s designs to marry me off to any old man who would take me off her hands. Her eyes of pity followed my face. As I was about to speak about Mama Nathan, we heard voices and the padlock open. The boss – the name Auntie Julie and I had given the young man who was in charge – came in.
‘Your people are tempting me,’ he said, brandishing a gun and waving it around like a toy. ‘Your people are tempting me,’ he repeated. ‘They are trying to tempt me to do what I had not planned to do. And believe me, neither you nor them will like what I do if they push me o.
‘You,’ he said, pointing the gun at me, ‘your husband thinks he is haggling over meat in the market. Is that all you are to him? Meat in the market? He is talking kobo kobo to me when I am speaking of real money.’ He pointed the gun at Auntie Julie. ‘As for you?’ he said insolently. ‘As for you, your friend, Madam Obiageli, or whatever you call her, is tempting me o.’
He pulled out a BlackBerry and dialled a number, putting the phone on speaker. We heard Mrs Nwajei: ‘Hello,’ she said, her voice sounding tremulous, not the happy, high voice I was used to hearing.
The boss poked Auntie Julie.
‘Hello,’ Auntie Julie said.
‘Julie, are you okay?’ We could all hear her anxiety.
‘I am fine, Obiageli, nwanne m nwanyi,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Tell her you will soon not be so fine,’ the boss urged, kicking her leg.
‘Did they hurt you?’ Mrs Nwajei asked, out of breath.
‘Tell her we need the money soon otherwise …’
‘They need the money soon, Obiageli. Can you raise it? Have you spoken to Afam?’
‘I am doing my best,’ I heard Mrs Nwajei say. ‘Afam is coming here tomorrow. He will bring the money. If he does not, Emma says we will.’
Emma, her husband. The miser. Would he bring money to get Auntie Julie out of this place?
‘Are you okay? Are they letting you have your medication? Do you have food, water—’
The boss aimed another hard kick at Auntie Julie, causing her to yelp loudly, before ending the call.
‘She thinks we are running a hotel here, abi? Pray your son brings our money o. Otherwise wahala go dey.’
Thee boss swivelled round, leaving as suddenly as he had come. Auntie Julie was massaging her thigh where he had so callously kicked her. I scooted over on my bottom to massage her leg and wipe her tears.
We sat in silence for a while, our thoughts on the boss’s demands. Would Ifechi be able to raise the money? We each ran a business, but money did not flow like water in our house. Certainly, there was
no room in our budget for kidnap ransoms.
The next day, after a few hours’ sleep, Auntie Julie asked me to continue my story.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘I want to hear what happened, did you marry an old man?’
I did not marry an old man, I told her. A woman whose son had died had come to inspect me and then went to talk to Mama Nkemdilim.
As I began to talk about Mama Nathan, how I had been forced to marry her dead son, I saw Auntie Julie blanch. I saw her cringe.
‘Did you say the woman’s name was Mama Nathan?’
‘Yes. I never knew her real name. In those days, everyone was Mama somebody or other.’
There was silence. Then: ‘And you are from Nwokenta?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘I do not feel well,’ she said, and I saw something like fear enter her face. Her forehead became clammy with sweat, her face wrinkled in pain.
I shouted for our abductors, who stood guard outside our door, coming in from time to time to take us to relieve ourselves. I shouted for what seemed a long time before one of them appeared.
‘Please get her some water. She is not feeling very well.’
He took one look at Auntie Julie and left. I did not hear the click of the padlock. He came back almost immediately with the water, knelt down and gave her some.
She took a couple of gulps quickly.
‘Easy,’ I said. ‘Easy.’
Gone was the freshness that she carried around like a cloak, the freshness that I imagined was the result of money and comfort. Make-up no longer concealed her wrinkles, and her sunken cheeks gave her a pinched look, as though the Rapture had taken place and she was the only one left behind.
‘Tell me the rest of the story,’ she pleaded later that evening, after a long period of silence. Her spirit had come back, but she still looked older, tired.
The Son of the House Page 23
