1961
1
I am a woman . . . At least biologically I cannot be mistaken for a man. But ask anyone in Agbawka, where being a woman was not because she had breasts, flowed monthly, rolled her buttocks or had the ability to attract men like they were flies, and they would tell you I was not one yet. It is marriage that makes a woman, and that is the absolute definition of womanhood in Agbawka. We do not own lands. Properties are not bequeathed to us. Our children belong to others. If we are unmarried, our fathers claim our offspring; if married, our husbands do. At least with marriage, we can proudly come forward, with our hands on our waists, to challenge anyone who dares say we are not mothers. Instead of passing ourselves as sisters to the very children we pushed out of our wombs. Moreover, who listens to an unmarried woman? But when you’re married, what fool can put her hand over your mouth to stop you from talking? We have some right to the plots owned by our husbands through the sons we have for them in a way we cannot to our fathers'. Therefore, a woman in Agbawka must marry. She simply must if she is Igbo at all. And if she were me, she would be particularly anxious to bolt from under her mother’s thumb.
"Osinachi!" Nne bellowed my name.
Ooooh! This woman has come with her troubles! What does she want now?
“Your mother is calling you,” said the customer standing before me. She was my friend, a former classmate when we were in secondary school. Today, she was the immediate cause of my agony.
I frowned and squinted, my cue to her to lower her voice; did she think I was deaf?
“Don’t mind her,” I whispered, shaking my head as discreetly as I could so that Nne, who was a foot away from us, would not notice it. In the same breath, I said aloud, “Give me two shillings. You know you won’t get red cocoyam as fat as this anywhere in Orie Agbawka for this amount. You can go, price around and come back, if you doubt me.”
“Please, just answer her, to avoid trouble,” she whispered back.
I glared at her. Why did she think Nne was calling me? If she had not opened her big mouth in my mother’s presence, Nne would have continued to ignore me like she had been doing all week. And I would have had my peace. Just a little bit of it, for heaven’s sake.
“Do you want to buy or not? Ah ah!” I snapped, eyeing her.
How could this one be getting married before me? She was hardly pretty, and in her purple ‘shit-packer-in-training’ uniform, she looked hideous. The shapeless gown was enormous, and unflattering. Hia! Was this not the same girl I had labelled Nurse Eliza when she said she was beginning her apprenticeship under Sister Margaret? Had her now-betrothed been waiting for her to register at the mission hospital before he could propose?
“Osinachi!” Once again, my name boomed through the market. I imagined people looked up to the sky to see if God had resorted to the biblical times of speaking. “Are your ears stuffed full with wax that you cannot answer me when I call you?”
Nne’s voice grated on my nerves, and before I could think through what I was doing, I wheeled round and barked, “I’m coming! Let me finish what I’m doing first.”
Agbawka’s famous drummer, Nwafiri, had his trademark closure played every time he entertained in ceremonies. He liked to hit his last beat with all his might, so that the silence that followed resounds in the ears of his audience. My retort to Nne had the same effect. My words were resonating in my ears; it was all I could hear. Suddenly, Orie Agbawka shut off. The traders and their customers continued haggling over wares, but I could not hear a thing . . . The burly men, who usually disposed of the markets refuse, went about their business gleaming with sweat. The stench that accompanied their passage somehow failed to elicit the usual uproar from grumblers who had their hands cupped over their nostrils and mouth, berating them for doing their work at a time the market was teeming with people. Their voices were muted, as was those of the naked little boys a few meters away who were chasing after a grapefruit they used as football. They were spraying those around them with muddy water polluted with rotting food produce. Why were they not being shouted down as usual, curses rained on their lineage? If anyone was, then I just could not hear a thing. Everything happening around me had been turned off . . . until I saw my mother rise from her stool and, holding a pole she detached from the roof her stall, she crossed the few meters between us and whacked me across the cheek. Wham! I doubled up. The second blow landed on my collar-bone. Tai! I threw my arms around my shoulders to protect myself. Another struck my back.
“Adaigwe! Ozu go! It’s enough!” Nne’s friend, who sold fish in the stall beside hers, shouted.
Then the world came alive again, deafening me with the noise that had never been silenced, customers and traders going about their business, the din of activity drowning out my scream of pain.
“Chifuanu, did you hear how this anuofia answered me now? This idiot was not afraid to talk back at me?” Nne raised her hand again, and brought the pole down on my arm with unabated fervour.
I drew in a sharp breath, holding back a cry. My body shook in rebellion. It wanted to expel its anger. To snatch that pole from Nne and hit her; let her experience how it feels to be humiliated in public.
“That’s how all of them are,” said Nne’s most faithful gossip-mate, who was in actual fact her fiercest rival. They sold the same sort of foodstuff: soup thickeners and vegetables. That woman had never ceased an opportunity to redirect Nne’s patrons to her stall should my mother turn away even for a second. “Was it not yesterday I was telling my own daughter that it looks like she’s coming to that age when the knot in her head starts to loosen?”
“Ehen? If it loosens, you tighten it back!” The pole flew up again, and this time it caught my raised hands when it descended, instead of my head where it was aimed.
“Adaigwe!” De Chifuanu stood up from her stool. “I said it’s enough. Don’t beat her here! When you go home, you can do anything you want. Who do you expect to come for her hand in marriage when they see you correcting her in this way? They’ll say she’s still a child and cannot run a home well.”
Nne turned to her friend, took a minute to ponder her words, and then hissed. She tossed her weapon at my feet, missing my big toe by an inch, and returned to her seat.
“I’m not the one keeping her from marrying,” she said to her chorus girls, panting harder than a dog that had just chased off robbers. “Osinachi’s the one holding herself. Ask her! If her madness will allow her say the truth, you’ll see for yourself that she is doing that all by herself. How many fine young men has she turned away? Eh? How many?”
“Are you serious?” De Chifuanu exclaimed, clapping her hands in bewilderment.
“Ah ah! Haven’t I told you to ask her? If she’s not complaining that the man is too tall, she’ll say he’s too short, too fat, too slim, or that he doesn’t look like someone that will take good care of her. Till today, Okwuoma’s son comes to our house every time he’s in Agbawka. Will this anumanu—this animal—even spare him a glance? No!”
“Hewu! Mbanu! That’s bad,” De Chifuanu said, folding her arms on her chest.
“Very bad! Osinachi, why would you do something like that?”
I sniffled, and looked up to see that Nurse Eliza had disappeared. She probably snuck away while I was being clobbered. She would say that she warned me. She should go to hell, please. As if she was the one who excreted the shit that now smells. If she had not come here to announce her engagement to Nne’s hearing, this would not have happened. Why could she not have pulled me aside to tell me that? Had she forgotten who my mother is?
“You see! I told you she won’t answer you. This girl is as useless as they come!”
“Tsk tsk tsk,” De Chifuanu clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “There’s no hope for girls of nowadays,” she bemoaned whilst looking my way.
I resisted glowering at her, to ask her what right she had to an opinion about girls of nowadays. Did she not marry well into her twenties? Was I even twenty yet?
“No hope at all. In our time, a woman must be a virgin till the day she marries. But what is happening these days? Even our young men don’t even care anymore. Why will a girl be afraid of being deflowered, when she knows that it doesn’t stop anything?” the other woman added, maybe using more sentences than De Chifuanu so her position as second-in-command was not threatened. “Even upon that, doesn’t Osinachi know that she should be in her husband's home by now? Occupied with learning the things that please him and managing his money till she’s in the family way?”
“Family way? Who is still talking about family way in this world that has turned upside down? When girls now let a man who hasn’t paid one shilling to her father see her thighs, what else can’t she do? They no longer wait for marriage to be ‘in the family way’. At her age, we had had all our children. In the honourable way! The way that gives a woman pride! See my last child for yourself!” De Chifuanu pushed her chin at her teenage daughter who could have passed for a sculpture for all the emotions she showed.
I sighed. How quickly one forgets their past, I thought and wondered what point De Chifuanu thought she had proved. If she had married when her mates did, the girl should have been her granddaughter.
“So, Adaigwe, anything you can do to marry this one off, do it immediately. You have my full support. Because, the next thing you’ll know, she’ll bring home a pregnancy and complete her disgrace,” continued De Chifuanu. who had utterly outspoken Second-In-Command, evident by the way the woman lowered her head and was giving her the bad eye.
“Bring back what? In the house I’m in? I’ll boil her in oil! She knows she cannot try me in that area.”
“Adaigwe, you talk as if you’ve forgotten that the only thing these children want is to deny you sleep,” said Second-In-Command, who a minute ago had lowered her head and was giving De Chifuanu the bad eye.
“What do I then do, my sisters? I'm tired of talking,” Nne said. Her face fell faster than a lizard, startled out of his sleep, could tumble to the ground. “What excuse will Osinachi say she has, eh? She can’t tell us it’s her older sister she’s waiting for to marry first.”
I stood up from where I crouched. My eyes had dried. The places Nne hit me no longer hurt as much, but I could feel a cut on my cheek. I went to her and knelt down, as I knew she was expecting.
“Nne, I’m sorry.”
Lord knows I would rather bite out my tongue than say this. However, if I did not do it now, my father would force me to do it later, just like he did yesterday. In the privacy of her bedroom, there would no witnesses. Afterwards, Nne could say anything she wanted about me, with enough embellishment to make it sound true. I could not challenge her, and call her out on her lies. A well brought-up girl does not speak in the assembly of her elders unless she is directly addressed. Otherwise, she shames her mother. But being a good girl was harder on some days than others, especially as Nne and I had not spoken to each other since last week all because I had accepted my father's offer to teach at Agbawka Community School where he was headmaster.
Nna did not believe in a woman idly waiting for a husband. He said I would only need to work until my school-cert examination result was released. Then, I would begin studying for university entrance exams. Still, I could tell he was hesitant to make any solid arrangements. Fathers in Agbawka were not expected to educate their daughters beyond secondary school. That was for their husbands to do. If Nna could only read my mind, he would know not to even bother. What more did I need to learn that I did not already know? The only reason I had agreed to teach was because, after my graduation from secondary school, I had to do something with all the time I suddenly had on my hands. My other options were to train as an auxiliary nurse at the Mission hospital or join Nne full-time at her stalls. I hate hospitals, their nauseating odour of blood and sickness. Still, even tending to the smelliest open wound would give me more pleasure than spending an entire day with my mother in the company of her motormouth friends. So, no matter what Nne said of women who teach—how they either did not want to get married (who were they deceiving?) or they had unhappy homes—I stood my ground. One sometimes needed to draw the line, even if it was just once.
For defying her, Nne had forbidden me from running errands for her. She had refused to respond to my greetings, or say a word to me. If she only knew how I loved that ‘punishment.’ I could have given anything to have us live like this. I mean, was I averse to a life free of chores, name-calling, insults, glares, a-hundred-hisses-a-day, endless nagging, and all the other wonderful qualities of my mother? But Nna had wanted the ice thawed, and since he would not beg her himself, I had to. And this morning, I did. It did not solve anything, or ruin it if you were judging it from my own end, but at least my apology was registered. A good daughter must never allow her mother to stay angry with her. She must follow her father’s directions. Total obedience she must fake until she is free. Oh, when will that day come!
“Nne, I’m sorry,” I repeated, making my voice as contrite as possible. “Forgive me. I won’t do it again.”
She shoved me away with her feet. I fell on the floor, and in so doing soiled the gown I wore to school and was going to wear again tomorrow. The dress was of dainty lace fabric, soft to touch. I did not have many dresses that were as lovely as it. If I had known the day would end like this, I would have gone home to change before meeting Nne at the market.
Nne saw the stain, but threw her face away. “I’ve been hearing you say you’re sorry for twenty thousand years, Osinachi. ‘I won’t do it again. I won’t do it again.’ But, I give you ten minutes, only ten minutes, and you’ll do the same thing.”
If I returned to kneel before her, maybe grasp her leg with no intention of releasing it, pledge that I would not annoy her or the rest of my life, Nne might accept my act of contrition. But I had no interest in pretending to care for her forgiveness. Look at the way she scourged me like a common thief! Would any stranger watching us imagine I was her child? Her only child at that!
Instead, I winced and clutched my stomach like one in acute pain. “Nne, please can I go home? My flow has started.”
“Since when?” Nne leaped to her feet and came at me as though she was set to beat me again. “Stomach pains did not stop you from working at your hopeless school. It did not stop you from opening your decaying mouth at me. It did not stop you from driving away that beautiful girl who came to buy cocoyam. It’s now that it’ll stop you from being useful to me.”
“Adaigwe, leave her. Let her go,” Second-In-Command shot, beating De Chifuanu to it.
“Yes, she should go. I can’t remember who I was telling, but girls at this her age have demons pushing them. They do things that you know fear would not have allowed their normal selves to do. I’m sure her own ajunmuo possessed her this afternoon. That’s why she talked to you the way she did. If you force her to stay here, it’ll make her do worse things. Especially this one it has entered her stomach.”
“I’ll kill her first!” Nne glared at me, as though willing the ‘demon’ to dare her by showing his face.
“Just let her take it away from here. It spoils market,” sulked second-in-command.
I waited till Nne nodded her consent—a tense minute during which I could not breathe, in terror that she would say no—before I left them. On my long walk home, I let the tears flow unrestrained. I did not acknowledge those who hailed my name. Someone touched my arm, right at the spot Nne’s stick had left my skin sore, and I walked on without turning to see who it was. I arrived at our compound by memory, went straight into my bedroom and cried myself hoarse.
2
I could have slept after I tired of sobbing, but I would not allow myself be lured into it. Knowing my mother, she would not resist returning home earlier in the hope of meeting an empty house. Every two minutes, I listened for footsteps. Once or twice, I imagined I heard distant sound of someone beating sand off the bottom of their slippers, but I could not be sure it was my mother. Agbawka was often noisier than usual in the late afternoon heat. I could hear De Ozuruonye's goats bleating all the way here, flocks of passing sheep baaing, children testing how strong their lungs were at my half-brother's compound located right behind ours, a baby wailing, the milling machine at Ama Nzeribe which had remained audible, and the deafening drumbeats that had been rolling since yesterday. But when Nne called my name, as if I were in the next village, she drowned out all the other sounds.
"Where is this stupid girl? Osinachi!"
What a disaster it would have been if she had come into my room to meet me as naked as I was. My hands ached from fanning myself, even as they continued to do so. I had closed the window to shut out the dense acrid smell of the rotting melons coming from the heap outside my room. I would harvest the seeds tomorrow, but for now and since the past four days that I brought them back from the farm, the egusi gourds continued to torture me with nausea. I had kept them next to the barn, but Nne made me move them. She insisted I would never remember to attend to them in time if they were not under my nose. If my mother had seen me as I was, she would not consider that she had contributed to my discomfort. She would only see ‘unnecessary nudity’ and idleness.
I peeped through the crack in my bedroom wall and spied the back of my mother’s head. When did she return from the market exactly? That woman was craftier than a tortoise. Why did she not blow her bicycle’s horn at the entrance of our compound like she was in the habit of? She did not want to alert me of her return, perhaps.
"Osinachi! May ala-Agbawka scatter boils all over your body if I have to call you one more time! Erie!" Nne shouted.
I jumped up from my sleeping mat and threw a wrapper around my body. "I’m coming, Nne."
"You see my problem with you, this girl. You heard me calling you all along, but you decided to wait until I cursed you before you answered! Is this not what made me beat you today? You want more? Next time, I’ll try and give you a very big mark where everybody can see. By the time one or two men reject you because of it, you’ll advise yourself to stop being stupid."
I entered the obi, where we entertain guests, rubbing my eyes and feigning a yawn as wide as could be believed.
Nne looked up, regarding me with a pout, and let out a long-drawn hiss. She had seen this display far too often. "You'll tell me now that you were sleeping, a kwa ya? Why didn't you die from there? Anuofia!"
I yawned again, and stretched; I could not drop the act now, could I?
"I didn’t hear you greet me."
"Sorry, Nne. Amam ma."
Nne hissed again and shook her head. "Is your stomach still paining you?" She did not sound too concerned.
"It has reduced."
"So you can go somewhere for me then? Or has another mysterious illness befallen you?"
I shook my head. "Where do you want me to go?"
Nne clapped her hands and showed them to the sky; her way of saying that her palms were clean and my stupidity had nothing to do with her. “This one thinks I was born yesterday. Humph. It’s okay.”
She sat down on the concrete platform we used for seats at the obi. “Chifuanu said that Ozuruonye's son is around. I want him to give your brother and his wife a head of unripe plantain I harvested yesterday morning when he goes back to Enugu."
I raised an eyebrow. In all my nineteen years on earth, not once had Nne sent anything to my father’s second son from his late wife.
"They don't sell unripe plantain in Enugu again?" A chuckle began rising to my throat, but died before it reached my lips. I remembered then that I addressed the wrong audience.
"May the mouth you used to ask me that question twist out of place! Anuofia! Did I ask for your opinion? Did I?"
I lowered my head. "No, Nne." What would I have said? I could not hide behind my father’s back, like I would have done if he was home.
"Concern yourself with your part in this errand. Take your bath, and wear that yellow gown your father bought for you from Aba. The one with a belt that brings out the shape of your waist very well. And why is your hair untidy like this? Are you plaiting it or are you loosening it? Ngwa, come and sit here. Let me plait it for you. I didn't even like the style, to begin with." She spread open her legs and gathered her wrapper between them.
I hesitated to sit in the space Nne created. People my age no longer threaded their hair into the periwinkles that were Nne's favourite hairstyle. My cousin had promised to make my hair tomorrow after Mass. She herself was wearing the latest style of cornrow that was the craze of the moment, and I had asked her to recreate it to suit my face and the forest I had for a hair.
"Osinachi, I said you should sit down! Why are you still standing there like a tree? Will you sit down here!"
I obeyed and spent the next twenty minutes wincing in pain as Nne attempted to uproot every strand of my kinky hair from my scalp. Someone, also-known-as Nne, would tell me now that this preparation was just to give De Zimuzo a bunch of plantain? I hear.
Then again, would it not be so nice if De Zimuzo fancied me. Hia! This girl, your eyes are too big for your head. I tittered at myself, amused by the ludicrousness of wanting something I would not have. I counted out three girls who were devoted to fawning over him. They were all prettier than me. Most of all, they did not have the sort of mother I had. Those girls would never be tagged otonakanne in their lives, I was sure. Nobody would gossip about how stubborn they must be that no man could bear to take them into his home. Or, worse, that their mothers had neglected to instill in them the meekness every properly trained wife must have. If I never marry, everybody would say I had followed the examples set by my ill-mannered mother, only I had been too haughty to hide my true self until I was secure in marriage like all bad wives had done. Nna would not be exempted from blame. Had he control over his household as a man should, he would have beaten the ajunmuo out of me before I became set in my ways.
My brothers too—did they not know that an unmarried sister diminishes their standing in society? It called to question their step-mother’s character and by association theirs also. Although, seeing as Nne had long been found wanting by Agbawka, the blame would rest squarely on her shoulders. Bad wives had bad daughters who then made bad wives. That was the way it worked. And what sane man willingly puts burning charcoal in his mouth? Unless he reasoned like Mbalefo, a great man who surrendered his manhood to the uncouth woman he loved.
Before she got married, Nne had been an established entertainer in Agbawka and its environs: Ogbogwu, Umuachina and Amanze. She had sung and danced, and all the men lusted after her. Short, round, bouncy, with a rump that weighed down the rest of her body, her plain face had also not made her the prettiest female anyone had ever seen. In the words of my father, Nne had only to open her mouth for the other twelve members of her troupe to become invisible. The first time I saw Nne perform was at her father's burial five years ago. I was in awe. Nne rarely sang around the house. Of course when she sang at the market, it was to curry her customer’s favour, and I always thought she was really jeering at them. She did not have to inject as much soul to those shows like she did extolling her late father’s virtues. The crowd even lauded what a wonderful daughter she was. Of course, by the next day, she was back to being that ofogiri who does not know she is married. A woman whose ways obviates the reality that she is someone’s wife and should thus be respectable at all times and in all situations. I have learnt that adoration is fleeting. A young woman who defies the tradition of her time and deliberately draws attention to herself will always be distrusted.
On that day, I almost understood this woman who always puzzles me. My mother was no different from the rebellious girls she pointed out to me: girls rejected by the men of their hometown; girls who had to marry outsiders that had not yet heard of their pasts. I must never be like her. I must correct all her wrongs. I must prove her worthy of the dowry paid on her head. Musts governed my life. Agwa bu nma nwanyi, as far as our traditional ethos go. A woman’s beauty is not measured by her looks, but by her conduct. Agbawka does not care how straight your nose is, your white teeth, or smooth calves, if none of her honourable sons desires you for a wife, you are ugly.
Good Agbawka husbands do not litter the road, waiting for someone to pick them up. If a woman wanted one, she had to be seen and admired. I may not have been what my friends and I termed ‘nma n’ese okwu’—girls so beautiful that men fought over them daily—but I was tall and had well-rounded hips. My complexion, like my father would say, was like the stream at the first drop of moonlight. Was I assessed by appearance alone, I should not have had to worry about being one of Agbawka’s rejected women—girls judged to be of poor character or kpangala girls with flat chests and hips so straight people wondered if an infant would strangle itself squeezing through. They married the leftover men who were weary from struggling for the prime women, or, God forbid, men from Umuachina or the other encircling villages that Agbawka looked down on as cultural inferior and unworthy suitors for a good daughter.
To think I used to believe it did not matter what sort of man I married, so long as I was far away from Nne. After all, a prey caught in the claws of a lion thinks only to flee, not to where it would run to or if it would survive its wounds. Ha! Not in this Agbawka. All married women are not ranked equally here, let no one deceive you. In fact, you can be sure there would always be someone eager to remind you of that should you think yourself more than you are.
"I've finished," Nne said, pushing me out from between her thighs.
I felt my hair. It was worse than I had guessed. Four fat spikes sat on my head, joined together at the centre like a pyramid. Was this hideous hair meant to attract the attention a city man like De Zimuzo? Even if I had a chance before, that had blown out of the door.
"You won't say thank you. Ungrateful child!"
"Thank you, Nne."
"Eh, you've said it on time.” She hissed. “I don't want it again."
Then why did you ask for it?
"I'm sorry, Nne." I muttered, tired of her whining
"This your sorry’s never sound like it's coming from your heart.” She waited for me to deny it as usual, but I kept quiet. “Anyway, go quickly and do what I told you before the sun goes down."
I went to the barn at the backyard, behind the kitchen, where we stored our farm produce before they ended up in Nne’s stalls or our cooking pots. I chose the bunch with the fattest but fewest fingers and went out through the front of the house. Nne was still at the obi, peeling cassava tubers from today’s early morning ingathering.
"Nne, I'm going."
She looked me over. "Wait! Stop. Why are you walking like this? Jagam-jagam, jagam-jagam! Is that what I've been teaching you since I gave birth to you? Walk like a woman! Take short, elegant, steps. Put softness in your heels, gentle dance in your waist. Your wrist is supposed to swing like the breeze. Why is it difficult for you to do anything and do it well?"
Is that so? Yet people said we walked alike.
Anyone who had seen me in my yellow gown would understand the impossible task of being graceful in it when extra kilograms weighed down my arm. It had a full, floor-length skirt that I frequently tripped on, and a bodice made for squashing nipples. If you had flabby stomach like I did, I should tell you now that attempting to hide it in a dress like that would be pointless. All the material wasted on the long sleeves, which flared at the wrist, would have found better use at the waist. How could I carry the plantain in a dress like that? I looked ridiculous. I slowed my pace for the same reason that I wore the gown: Nne’s slippers or a stone would have greeted my head if I did not.
Once outside our ama, I estimated the distance I would have to walk. Six compounds, two uncultivated lands about five metres wide, and the open trail that led to mmiri Agbawka. Too far. If I go through the backyard of the first compound, I would cut my journey in half.
"Go through the main road. If Ozuruonye's son doesn't like you, other people have eyes," Nne called after me.
A barefoot little boy was walking in front of me, carrying a bundle of firewood. His dirtied feet dragged on the ground, doing their damndest to kick up the red dust from the unyielding ground. When Nne shouted, he stopped and turned to look at her, the bundle on his head waving with the motion. The boy must be a pupil at Agbawka Community School, the way he called me ‘Miss’ when he greeted me. What would he whisper to his friends at school when they are on the playground? That De Adaigwe was hawking her daughter? It would not be the worst thing that had been said of me. The last time I advertised myself on another 'errand,' I had received reproachful glances from wives who must have thought I was doing so for their husbands' benefit. Lord, must I marry like this?
It would be useless to tell Nne this. I would have to wait till her eyes were no longer planted on my back to turn off to the bush path travelled by fewer pedestrians. With luck, she would not follow me. If I was caught disobeying, I could say I had not heard her. But I suppose my mother would accept that as a cogent reason only if I was certified stone-deaf.
A good thing I followed the longer route, else I would not have seen De Ozuruonye exit from the house four compounds away from ours.
"De, amam ma," I greeted her. I did not need to curtsy but I did anyway. I liked doing so for her. From her chortle, I could see the tall heavy-set middle-aged woman liked the gesture. She was dressed in white sequined blouse paired with a two-piece nkpuru-oka wrapper and ‘calupi’ head-gear, the uniform of Christian Mothers, a recognised women’s group of St Thomas Catholic Church of Agbawka. While others wore theirs on special church occasions, De Ozuruonye wore the attire as often as she pleased. She had numerous sets of them.
"Oh, nwunye nwa m. Olia. How are you? I dikwa nma?"
De Ozuruonye had been calling me her son's wife since I was eight years old when I used to herd her goats. Each time I came in with the goats, she had given me roasted yam or smoked fish and had joked that she was reserving me for her son. She had not said which of her two sons. I had hoped it was the taller, slimmer and more handsome older one. That was asking for too much certainly.
Still, what had kept her from making good her words? Was it not about time? Look at me, two years past my peak of blossoming. How was it that I had not one Agbawka man for a suitor? That bowlegged man who came to ask for my hand last year did not count. His mother had him after her backdoor affair with an mba-mmiri boy had turned sour, and she had given him to her father. Marrying a man like that was worse than marrying from Umuachina. Who knows the day he might choose to return to his Riverine roots and denounce the heritage he had been raised with. And then our sons would go from being Agbawka men to being Ijaw in one day. Would they be accepted in their new hometown? Mba kwa! I wanted a true-born son of the soil. And a good-looking one like De Zimuzo.
"Adim nma, De." I grinned as though I were the happiest girl on earth. "I was just going to your house, De."
"Ehen? It's good then that I left here when I did. I'm on my way to Ama Nzeribe. One of our little brothers is beginning marriage talks around there. I want to see how it's progressing."
It seemed like everywhere in Agbawka, as though prompted by the blowing of a whistle, men raced to bruise their knuckles against the doors of fathers whose daughters had just come of age. Our son has found a delicate flower in your garden that we have come to pluck, they said. What has kept them from my father's door? Had weed overgrown our compound so that they could not see the entrance?
I was friends with the girl De Ozuruonye's brother intended to marry until she deemed me beneath her the second he proposed. Early this morning, drums had begun rolling at her compound and the drummers have refused to stop even for food. Whoever makes such fuss at the start of marriage processing? Ama Nzeribe was the center of Agbawka, after all. Nothing that ever happened there escaped anyone's attention. It was just like people of Ama Nzeribe to give everybody headache for an event that was quietly taking place at other homes. If they could carve out a clan for themselves, many would have asked to be 'Umu Ama-Nzeribe.' Ridiculous people!
"Is there someone in your house I can deliver my mother's message to?" I asked.
"Eh, I don't think so. It's the masquerade season, you know. Everybody must have gone to watch them. I'll send my youngest daughter to your house for the message later this evening. Okay?"
What could I say? No, it is not okay. I have put on this special dress for your son and he needs to see me in it. "It's okay. Thank you, De."
"You're welcome. Please, greet your mother for me when you get home. Tell her that I'll be seeing her very, very soon." De Ozuruonye winked and chuckled.
She probably meant to see Nne to collect a debt. My mother, who claimed that animal droppings made her sick and for that had refused to rear any livestock, bought all our meat from De Ozuruonye. Even in a village where everyone bought goods on credit, Nne had distinguished herself as a person who always ‘forgets’ to pay for past purchases. Which was why De Ozuruonye’s grin was confusing. Was she happy to be owed?
"I will." I smiled back.
I waited until De Ozuruonye turned to walk away before I frowned. So I would have to carry this load back to our house without accomplishing anything. The bunch of plantain seemed to have increased in weight a hundredfold in a moment. I lifted the bunch and perched it on my shoulder. This reduced the strain on my arms, but set my shoulder on fire. I should leave the plantain here on the road, and coax those children playing at my brother’s compound to carry it home for me. I could easily convince the little ones if I promised them a handful of icheku seeds. They would even skip to Ogbogwu and back. Anyway, I had already come this far without collapsing. Two more compounds and it would be over.
"What happened?" Nne charged at me the instant I stepped into our ama. She was outside the obi and had probably seen me speaking to De Ozuruonye. Her short neck seemed to possess a remarkable ‘giraffy’ ability to stretch very far. "So, Ozuruonye has already rejected you before you even had the chance to showcase yourself to her son? You see what I was talking about when I told you not to work? You see? You see!"
Hia! What kind of trouble is this? I knew I acceded to so many demeaning things Nne did to me, but this was too much. Must all of Agbawka know that I was in active need of a spouse? I turned around to check if a passer-by was within earshot to overhear my mother’s appraisal of me.
"Nne, you're shouting."
"Shut up! If you had listened to me and not gone to teach with your father, you'd have been married by now."
"Nobody rejected me, please." I paused to offload the plantain at the entrance of the obi. "De Ozuruonye was going somewhere. She said the house is empty. Who would I have given your message to? Her goats?"
"Are you mad? Who are you talking to like that?"
Nne looked around for something to hit me with. Neither a broom nor pestle was within her reach. The harmattan had caked the clay soil of Agbawka, so no loose soil was available to shower on me either. A cup sat next the space where she had been sitting. This was she flung at me, biting her lower lip in her fervour.
I dodged the water missile, but I could not prevent a greater portion from splashing on me. The trailing liquid fell on my feet, driving in the chill of the harmattan. The cup hit the floor, clattering on the hard ground as the wind blew it around.
Nne glared at me. I must have glared back, because her face became stonier. I dropped my eyes to my wet feet, and I offered her my shoulder to pound her fist on.
“Another day you open that your stinking mouth and talk back at me, I will slap all your teeth out. Anuofia!”
“Sorry, Nne," I lowered my voice and swallowed my annoyance. Did she really think I would stand there and let her drench my dress? She had already dirtied one gown this afternoon. How many did she want to condemn in one day?
“Now, get me another drinking water quickly. And if you bring it without washing that cup, I’ll make sure I bathe you with it this time around. Anuofia!”
“Yes, Nne.” Agbawka would say that “yes” does not cause fight. I had learnt to spurt automatic yeses whether or not my nostrils were jetting steam. In any case, it was wiser to avoid confrontations with my mother. I never win. I held my breath until I was out of her presence, and returned a minute later with a fresh cup of water.
Nne inspected it, peered at the bottom of the cup, and set it down. “Go back there and check if somebody is in the house.”
“De Ozuruonye said Opuruiche will come this evening to pick the plantain."
"This girl! Hewu, this girl, eh! Is there no remedy for you? If I wanted Opuruiche to come here, would I not have gone to deliver the message myself? I wanted Ozuruonye’s opara to see you. He’s looking for a wife. Do you want him to see the other girls before he sees you?"
So, what does Nne now want me to do? To sit at the house alone and wait for him to return?
"You're not talking, a kwa ya," berated Nne, fishing for faults.
God, please help me not to shout at this woman! "I don't know what to say."
"You won't know what to say now. But if it is to talk to me like I’m your maid, then you will. Fine. Go and cook. That's one thing you are good at. Your mates are either spoken for, married or on their way there. You, you cook. And you teach little, little children who don't know their left from their right. Ngwa nu, continue. I've done everything a mother can do. It's now up to you."
I trudged to my bedroom to change back into my everyday clothes, fighting the tears. This was not the first time my mother had put me down, and it would not be her last. Why did it upset me every time? And why could she not be nice, for Christ’s sake? What mother of an only child treats her the way Nne does me?
I slipped out of the dress and folded it into the bottom of my box. I should not have worn this gown in the first place. The things I let Nne bully me into doing . . . Well, I would not cheapen myself, not even for De Zimuzo. I would not marry this way. Simple! What would De Ozuruonye have thought of me? And her other children? Jesu Christi!
I pulled out the threads Nne had plaited my hair with. If Nne notices that my headscarf was flatter than it should be, I would say she had wound the hair too tight and I had a migraine. Whether she believed me or not, she would be too angry to offer to remake it.
3
Two Orie days later, while I was grinding pepper and crayfish on the millstone, Nne charged into the kitchen.
“Nwata a! You this foolish girl, why didn’t you tell me Ozuruonye gave you a message for me? See now, I’ve no time to prepare anything. What food is in this house? There’s no time to make achicha. No asa fish to make yam pepper-soup. How can people come to knock on your door without good food to follow them home, eh? Ha, Osinachi! If not that a husband is the glory of a woman, I would have said Ozuruonye should go to another family where their girls think straight.”
Nne rushed at the pots, upturning them. She tiptoed up to the shed that hung over the fire where I dried fish. She searched the basket that had the snails I had removed from their shells but had not yet washed. She poured out the contents of plastic container of condiments, checking if it had all the seasonings she needed.
I frowned. “Nne, I don’t understand.”
She came over and pulled me up my feet. “Go and change. Go and change now! Ozuruonye and her husband will soon be here. Is this rag what you’ll wear to greet them?”
I might have been crouching for too long over the fiery vapour from the fried pepper seeds, my mind on thoughts of the snail soup I was about to make, because I could not tell what on earth Nne was yakking about. “What are they coming for?”
Nne grabbed her head. “They are coming to count the beams in your father’s obi. Erie!”
Slowly, my mouth unhinged and dropped to my knees.
“Yes, smile. Finally, somebody serious wants you.”
I laughed. I wanted to run out to the obi and grin to the sun. And maybe dance a little. Despite the things Nne said about me, De Zimuzo wanted me. Me! Hia! I could not be that bad then. And I had not even lobbied for the proposal! Never even flirted with De Zimuzo! On top of it all, Nne had been proven wrong about my teaching. I should point that out to her. Not in words, of course (I did not want swollen lips on this day), but certainly a glance. A day like this does not happen often. Propriety stopped me from skipping out of the house to gloat to those girls who had moved up in social standing and flaunted it. My so-called friends that had cast sly glances at me as if they knew a secret I did not.
"See the man that came for me after all! See him! A man of substance! He's better than the chaffs that made your empty heads swell."
I dashed to my room. Getting fresh clean clothes, I draped over my waist the thick hand-woven fabric Nna bought for me when I graduated from secondary school. It was my best clothe, buried at the bottom of my box, waiting for this special day. Wearing coral beads would be too enthusiastic. I wanted to dazzle De Ozuruonye, not frighten her off. Let her know she made a good choice in picking me for her son.