Kaleidoscope

It is in your nature to let your mind wander, to flit from one subject to another without acknowledgment. It happens in a frenzy, this shift, like an insect in a garden, moving, flying, perching, sucking until he no longer can.  He keeps on till his eyes are dizzy enough to make him recollect what an exciting time he has had and now chooses to retire. But your mind has no belly; it is never sated. Your mind remains long enough on a subject only to catch a glimpse before it flutters on to the next subject for answers: always distant answers, a rioting blaze of conjectures.

This state of mental infidelity grips you on most mornings as you perform tasks that do not require much reflection—cooking, cleaning, and dressing. It also comes when you are in motion, on a brisk jog or a bus, as it sways on the bad roads like today. You pay little attention to the life around you—the colicky baby wailing next to you, the mother straining to comfort her child, the bum sitting next to you who speaks in an accent so guttural that you fear he might pull out a gun and shoot at anyone who provokes him. You do not contemplate these things. You are letting yourself dwell on other subjects. These include things like why the window frames on the buses are always cloudy with grime, why bus drivers are often grumpy and overweight, and why your body feels so full yet so light.

Your eyes gain a will of their own, fluttering from the folded paper in your hand to his head, the driver’s. You hear the crinkling of the paper as you crumple it in your palm. You squint and grimace, still focusing on the cap on his head. Why is it so greasy? The peaked thing needs a wash. It has a translucence that only accumulated dust and sweat could give.

Poor thing! How forgotten it must feel, hung on a nail, snatched away on mornings, and returned on evenings, how it must hang there, without air or breath, waiting for its owner to consider giving it a well-deserved wash.

Still, you wonder, why was it so greasy? Maybe he ran out of detergent and forgot to get some. Perhaps it was the lethargy that came from having to use a thing so often that you forgot it needed maintenance. Possibly, his wife had refused to do his cleaning for him. Your father had said women of today had too much sense to do anybody any good. ‘They don’t make women like your mother anymore,’ he usually remarked with a wistful shake of the head.

Often, in the years after her death, he had wished for your mother, Beth, a woman so skinny with more veins than skin on her flesh. The only change birthing five children caused her was a little more belly. You were the only child that chose to stay. She had been an unassuming woman. Silent, by conditioning. Submissive and ready to kneel when your father refused her meals. She danced when he praised her on Mother’s Sunday and screamed in glee at even the smallest gifts from him. Such was her devotion that she, like a martyr, threw herself into polishing her husband and only child till they shone like burnished gold.

Your mother was many different things: confidante, best friend, support, devil, witch, depending on your mood. The first three were for those few sane days on which she accepted you whole without striking or pecking at the parts of you that did not please her. On those days, she let herself be and you loved her.

One Sunday, as you both had prepared vegetable sauce and pepper soup for Dad’s friends, she had muttered, ‘I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made.’ You had been startled. Your mother was not one to regret. She was often too wrapped in her bubble of happiness to bother.

‘Mistake?’ You were tentative as you chopped the carrots, the rapping of the knife on the cutting board filling the silence. Oil sizzled as she put cuts of turkey into the frying pan. Silence, that was her reply. She said nothing, focusing on the cooking, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. It was a long while before she finally spoke, and when she did, her voice was a hoarse whisper.

‘Don’t be like us,’ She winced as a few drops of oil landed on her arm. She adjusted the cooker’s heat and began to cut the cabbage. You were working on the carrots now. The sounds of your knives against the chopping boards, hers, slow and precise; yours, fast and grating, were in accord, like a well-scripted rendition.

‘You people?’ You asked as you tossed a dice into your mouth and savoured the flavour.

‘In our time, we thought all our problems would end when we married. I don’t want you to think that.’

You mulled over this for the rest of the afternoon. You tossed it in your head like a ball, letting it thud against the walls of your mind. You were still in that space in your head as you served your father’s guests. You pondered as you slushed water into basins for cleaning after your father’s friends had left. You began to see and understand later that night as you cradled your copy of Every Woman, a gift from your mother when you turned eighteen. That afternoon, you think, in retrospect, something left your soul. A glass film that had separated you from this woman for so long, a film created by age, time, and a need to respect your elders. That afternoon in May, for the first time in this unsure life of yours, you saw your mother. And years later, you wondered if her choosing to immerse herself in being a wife and mother was not an escape from unfinished dreams.

Devil. Witch.

You screeched this when she reminded you of duties to be done. You mumbled them as she insisted that you steam the meat to the right tenderness and berated you for leaving the okra soup on the cooker too long. Your mother had been determined to raise a daughter who would compete with other girls for the label of textiles that could be cut, fashioned, and worn into the figure, Wife. Wife-material. You spent most of your growing years being groomed for this.

Drown yourself in laziness if you want, but don’t ever tell your husband that I didn’t teach you anything.

I am warning you now: you better learn these things. If not, in the years to come, you will blame yourself.

People will not forgive you for not knowing how to do anything. They will gossip about it behind you.

A man can only tolerate so much from you. You must learn how to cook.

On and on went her litany of horror, of the bleakness that awaited if you failed to live up to the ideals people created for you. You had listened with a ball of fear in your chest. A fear that you would one day fail her by not cooking or cleaning well enough for your husband. A husband whom she had spent most of her life and yours preparing you for. You bore that fear till the day she died.

It had been swift and unexpected, her death. You were in your last year of university. You returned home to find it enveloped in a silence that pierced your eardrums and screeched in your head. She had collapsed in the kitchen while pounding yam. Hypoglycemia, the doctor had said. She had been working too hard.    

A few years later, you got married at your father’s urging. You gave up enrolling for a master’s degree because your father advised, ‘A degree you can get any time and anywhere. A husband, not so easy.’ 

You had agreed with him, a ball tightening in your chest. You feared it, growing into your thirties, living in a big house with only your certificates for company. And so, you married him. You married him, the man who gave you so many gifts, you felt smothered. The man who thinks the idea of you earning is absurd, but he tolerates it because you are yet to be with a child. The gifts began to trickle and finally stopped last year. He had waited for too long.

Waaaa! The infant next to you wails. You are jolted to the present. You glance at him and feel a twinge. You had tried everything to have just one of these little ones. Trips to the gynecologist, prayer sessions, and drinking every elixir you were conned into believing would end the emptiness in your womb. Your father had grunted. Your husband had ignored you, muttering slurs about women who were deserts. The slurs soon morphed into thorns that pierced your heart until you were too weak to bleed anymore, into words of denigration, and finally kicks and slaps so generously delivered, you never doubted your deserving them.

A few months ago, you visited someone, a pastor, a man whose seed was famed to grow in the driest fields. Your field, despite insistent ploughing, was dry and lifeless. You had let him put his hands on you, pray you into such a frenzy that your mind only remembers the motions afterward. Rising. Putting on your clothes and paying him, all the time, your eyes averted. You left with your eyes focused on everything and nothing in particular, like a boxer recovering from a knockout.

A test at the hospital confirmed the thought that wiggled into your head a week ago. You were pregnant. You could now look your husband in the face while speaking. You had placed your feet firmly in his house. You smile at the thought.

The bus grinds to a halt. You hand your fare to the conductor and step into the sunlight. The sun is hot. Its rays burn your skin, but you don’t care. You won’t get an umbrella. You want to feel its heat on your face. You want people to see your joy. You had just resigned from your job. You need every ounce of strength to bear this little bundle of joy and birth it whole. And hopefully, when your husband hears of this, his words, eyes, and slaps won’t hurt so much anymore. You have been made whole.

Pause and take a deep breath. Let the years roll by. Let yourself be caressed by time.

When things are made and given a name, there is this hope and faith that the name is a mirror to the mind of the creators or the beam of light, charting the bearer’s destiny. Sometimes, it is a reflection of both, a coin with two sides that the creator hopes, tells the world her story, and creates paths for this bearer. So, it is with caution and hope that parents name names, thinking of the destiny of the pink, fragile thing in their hands and consecrating this bundle to whom they serve in supplication. 

So, it is in faith that this bundle of yours would be defiant and subversive of any known hope and aspiration that on that hazy December morning when the harmattan was at its peak, two days away from Christmas, you chose a name. It is in that maternity that there was a mix of so many smells that you do not know whether to vomit or spit. You birthed your bundle in this ward with the soot-stained walls and rusting iron spring beds. In this place, without friends or family, you hug the life you created to yourself and mutter without thinking, Chiegentị. Her name was a statement of fact, that the being you spent hours with every day is deaf, that he lacked compassion and had decided to torment you with replicas of you. He gave you babies with weak necks and canvasses to be made into what the painter needed. Your Chi, your God, gave you a girl yet again.

Your husband does not visit until the matron grumbles that there are insufficient bed spaces. When he does, he is brisk. You leave the maternity without a smile. During the ride home, his only attempt at conversation is to ask if you prefer rice or yam porridge for dinner. There is no need to seek his face. You have failed him yet again. And so, it drags on, the empty silence that stretches between you two. The walk on eggshells that is your life, as you hope and pray not to fail again. You care for your little one till she begins to walk. That is when you visit your pastor friend. He welcomes it and is enthusiastic even.

He orders you to confess your sins. Sins, which he says have taken the space for the boy whom you seek. Every prayer session ends with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on you. He ‘overshadows’ you and keeps going for hours. In these long stretches of pain and indifference, you stare from under him at the ceiling. A mole is on the wall, and you notice a red mound. You focus on it every time you visit. You trace the roughness of its surface. You wonder how these insects must have laboured as the days go by, hauling mounds of dirt, rolling and glueing them with their saliva, maybe? When your mind tires, you begin to count. Ones, fifties, hundred. He doesn’t make it past two hundred. You sigh in relief as he shudders and rolls off you. You clean yourself and pay his ‘consultation fee’.

After you leave one wet June afternoon, you never return. You plan to, but life has always handled you like a leaf on its tide. You have no choice. You only move as fast or as slow as the waves dictate. So, when your husband insists you move into a better part of town, you agree. You leave with only one regret: leaving your pastor friend.

In this new place, you make new alliances with young men in the university nearby. You want their virility. They want your money. You meet these new lovers at parties, naming ceremonies, and clubs when you can sneak away from your husband. You choose them carefully. Tall. Burly. Insecure. Eager to learn. Eager to please. The exact shade of chocolate as your husband. You give them what they need: money, money, and more of it. You have a lot of it anyway. Crisp notes are taken from your husband’s safe. Excesses from the inflated prices of foodstuff on your shopping lists and sometimes withdrawals and transfers made when your husband isn’t paying attention. You immerse yourself in this novelty. You let yourself be consumed in this fight to stand tall in his presence till your saviour slips in after over a decade of waiting.

A mist hangs over the house today, permeating and stifling everything and everyone. It is that cloud of joy that comes with a long-awaited gift, heady and pushing to the limits of ecstasy. Strong scents waft from the kitchen to settle on the seats, tables, and scarves of the women gathered, happily chatting.

You are sitting in the bedroom, cradling Obinna. You feel queasy. Pain latches onto your lower belly, daring you to wince. His face gleamed from the olive oil his grandmother smeared on him as she muttered prayers against enemies. Tiny fingers are reaching up to tug lightly at your blouse. He gurgles and smiles. You smile back. You hear the clumping of her steps before she comes in. Your first daughter, the first child to splinter your hearts into bits.

‘Chidimma, what is it?’ Your fingers are tracing the embroidery on his blanket.

‘Mama Nnukwu said you should bring the baby for her.’

You heave a sigh.

‘Why?’

‘She wants to present him to the women in her age-grade group.’

‘Oo’

He smiles again, plays with his fingers, and then reaches out again to claw at the sequins on your blouse.

‘Where are your sisters?’

‘They are eating with Aunty Ifeoma; Mama Nnukwu said they should not leave the house.’

You nod slowly and hold him closer, noting how less shiny your clothes were at their christenings, these girls of yours, how you gave only chin-chin and sachet water to your guests. How your husband had creased his brows and tightened his jaw as he paid the hospital bill after each birth. How he had counted, waiting for you to heal before you tried again for a real baby. And each time, he failed until you took on another lover.

You wanted a child that would tell of you when you were gone, when your body became one with the sand and the dust—a baby with a name, with a tongue to speak and tell its story. You wanted a child that was not like the three girls you had. Girls were canvasses, blank spaces for people to paint and give the desired shapes. They were bodies, without heads or tongues, who wait till another fashion one and blesses them with it. They were water, colourless, till you put in mud or colours or leaves to concoct a drink or potion of your choice.

The gurgling thing in your arms is unlike these girls that scream everywhere they go and litter your house. Ribbons and dolls. Hair clips and satin dresses. Noisy shoes and lipstick for the oldest. Squeaky dolls for the youngest, all part of that breathing mass that they say brings a house alive. With them, your certainty was slippery, like wet soap. So, when Obinna, your son, came, you felt that strength settles in your belly. You now sleep well, knowing this little one is not tricky like his sisters. He is solid. He won’t screech too much. He will stand before the world to answer your name.

You hear soft padding on the floor and raise your head. Your husband enters in the white senator suit. He insisted on ordering a custom-made one for today. He bends over and takes the baby in his arms. ‘Mama is asking if you will not leave him for her.’

‘He is my child, not hers’, you mutter, adjusting your scarf.

He raises a brow and continues rocking the baby. ‘Are you not happy that she will count you among her daughters-in-law now?’

‘Ị sịị gịnị?’ You snort, ‘What did you just say? You don’t know your mother. She will come next year with new Bible verses. One boy can never fill her belly.’ You stand and begin to retie your wrapper.

He chuckles, ‘That’s why she had five of us. No girl’

You scoff at the cocky smirk on his face, ‘It is not me that you people will use. Amụchagokwa m. Four are enough.’

He begins to laugh, his head thrown back in that careless way of his. You think of the years before when he only smiled at you in pictures. Times when you existed in his house and not lived. In those years, you clawed and cried that he might look your way and say a kind word. He never did until you gave him this child.

You take Obinna from him. ‘Please give me my child before you throw him on the floor. I don’t want to start firing enemies that locked my womb at three in the morning all over again.’ You shuffle out of the room with him behind. He doesn’t stop talking, maybe to smoothen the scowl on your face.

‘Achalugo! Obidiya! Osodieme!’ he praises till you wave and silence him.

He is trying to clear the furrows on your forehead. You know and feel warm at this. This acknowledgement that all was not standing well with you and what they had planned. But he cannot clear the heaviness in your chest or the fog in your brain. They get thicker and bind you tighter as the DJ starts a song—the thump of the drums, the wailing of the guitar, and the keyboard jar you. You grip your bottom lip with your teeth and walk to where she is seated with the age-grade women. They are all like her, ladies with skin pampered to shades of yellow and orange by creams and money. Those who could not afford that luxury were the rich brown of cocoa or the dark ebony of icheku.

You turn your back after bowing and greeting. You leave them after smiling until your cheeks ache. When the fog in your head gathers, stifling your brain until it is immobile without thoughts or movement, you shuffle back into the house to look for the girls. You find them in their room. Mama Nnukwu had instructed Chidimma to watch over them and see that their wandering feet did not go outside the house.

‘She said they will carry us if we come outside,’ Chiegenti whines as she greets you. Her gown is badly creased.

‘Who are the they?’ You ask, amused. You squat on the floor to peer into her eyes.

‘Ndị .to’

You gasp in mock surprise and gather her in your arms, creased, greasy clothes. And then you all laugh because Chiege’s attempts at saying kidnappers always come out wrong. It came out too quickly, like the words were suffocated by her mouth, and rushed out for air. She smells of many things: sweat, stew, and bubbly happiness. You sit on their bed and play Whot with the girls, screeching at wins and booing at losses. 

Chidimma calls you an hour later. Mama Nnukwu wants to return Obinna. You head to the canopies outside, smiling and waving to well-wishers. You are silent as you take him from her hands, feeling the adoring gazes stab through the layers of lace and prick your skin.

‘Nne!’ a woman with cheeks the colour of burnt tomato paste calls to you. ‘Chukwu aluka. God has outdone himself.’

‘God has finished giving you all the blessings in the world’, another adds, biting into the chicken lap that you and your husband had argued over getting for this thing. He had wanted to make it grand.

No, you had objected. There were too many fees to pay, and you did not want to play hostess until your feet ached.

‘What is there in cooking and serving guests?’

‘I am not entering the kitchen that day. Let me rest.’

‘It seems giving birth to this boy has made you think you can challenge me.’

‘I need rest. I am not going to kill myself for you and your family. I’ve done enough.’

A long, uneasy silence.

‘Fine, I’ll hire a caterer,’ he had concluded.

If only he knew that you did not want anything to take away the shininess of your girls. Maybe, you thought, if you did not spend so much, they wouldn’t notice. But notice they would, in years to come, because their father proved his virility, calling on friends and acquaintances, strangers and loafers to see that, in truth, a real child was not lacking in his house.

You nod stiffly and force a smile; you remember that Obinna has been on formula, that Mama Nnukwu had said children who do not suck their mother’s breasts do not grow up well. You hope she does not bring it up. Your mother-in-law is that kind of woman. She’d rather scold you in public than in private.

‘Their sense is not always complete,’ she’d snapped last week as she frowned at the tin of baby milk in the kitchen cupboard. It didn’t matter to you. Knowing that you now have him is enough.

You take him and walk into the house. He is asleep. Your husband is chatting loudly and laughing with friends in the parlour, each one guffawing louder than the one before. The tiles you had scrubbed till they shone are streaked and smeared with mud. The air is gaining a dank smell that makes you nauseous.

You enter the nursery and place Obinna in his cot, which your husband’s brother from Lagos sent. He had gone into a frenzy at the birth and spent almost half an hour on the phone chattering about how good a daughter-in-law you were. You stare at your son’s sleeping form and cover him with the blanket. Hopefully, you want more days like this, with music, expensive lace, rich food, and noise. Maybe you’ll try for another child, a solid one like Obinna. And with the rock still lodged in your chest, you slip into your room, crumple on the floor, and shut your eyes.

Winner, Communa short story prize for “The House The People Built”

*Featured image by Mikhail Nilov