SHE clutched the black leather-bound book tightly to her chest and with her right arm raised upwards, let out a flow of words that may have sounded unintelligible to others if the setting was different. Her eyes remained tightly closed, and her bosom shook while her body rocked intermittently to the rhythm of the words that rolled off her tongue. “Yes Lord!”, she echoed. All around her, other young people were contorted into different forms and shapes and rattling off similar seemingly unintelligible words.
The room fell silent when the man in an oversized green suit walked up to the pulpit on the stage. Loud cheers rang out again to welcome him as he stopped abruptly, his face displaying a pensive look. He held a microphone in one hand and kept his other hand on his waist, hiking up his oversized coat. He screamed into the mic, bent over twice and with one leg raised, rolled his shoulders in a series of exaggerated moves, and staggered side to side in a drunken manner. An eager band which was set took over the stage and rolled out another earsplitting number. That was a signal people needed to get out of their seats.
Some fell and rolled on the floor. Others gyrated against the wall on the eastern side of the room, where a photo of a long-haired man hang.
SHE knelt and rocked her body heavily back and forth. All around the room, sweats dripped to the floor around people’s feet and saliva flew to and from the animated men and women.
The green-suited man bellowed into the microphone, “We shall be united with God soon!”, “pick your mansion!”, “reserve your rooms”. He spat into the microphone while he held up the fabric of his trousers with his left hand so he wouldn’t trip on its hem. “Is somebody hearing me?! Claim your heavenly mansion from the devil! Declare that you receive it!!” His crocodile skin shoes shone almost as bright as the tiles he said paved the corridors of the mansion his congregation was going to inhabit in Heaven.
She screamed “Jesus!” Jesus! Take me home. Baba ooo, take me home! Ooh take me!” and fell to the ground, rolling from one end to the other, chanting to a higher being all the problems she was facing that she needed rest from. In her heart, as she rolled, she believed there was a better place than earth and the current circumstances she was destined to be in. It couldn’t be here. No, it couldn’t be this particular earth!
Finally spent and thirsty from all the rolling, shouting and crying, she lay still on the floor and embraced a strange calmness in her heart. “Oh, when I make it to heaven!” she thought, believing it with all her heart, mind and soul.
The frail little boy lay on the worn mattress, its peeling leather breaking through the thin sheets and pricking his back. He lay still, unfeeling, as bigger pain seethed through his body. He winced. It hurt.
His left arm was riddled with small dark spots. He had scars from countless needle pricks and his veins could no longer take the inflow of liquids that his body craved. His right arm was no better. The doctors had barely managed to find two working veins on it and these currently played host to two needles that ushered liquid into him.
The machines around and behind his bed beeped. One would think his was a set of a sci-fi movie. He was lucky to have had access to them as his whole home region only had this set to serve the whole community.
The glass jar which was attached to the wall at the head of his bed bubbled with water, slowly gathered steam at the top and broke into droplets of water. A long transparent tube extended from the jar, draped the side of his face and just above his dry, cracked lips where two short sharp stumps of the tube branched off their separate ways into each of his nostrils.
He winced again. It hurt so bad. It was as if his body was on fire. His insides felt like mash. He could neither lie left nor right. There was simply no comfort to be found.
He was tired. He longed to walk into the light shining ahead. The light had appeared two days prior, only as a flicker at first but he had seen it. It warmed him to stare at it and over the last two days since it appeared, it had only gotten bigger and brighter. It beckoned to him, and he was ready to heed the call.
He heaved as hard as his frail little body would let him. He felt the resistance like something was binding him to the uncomfortable mattress. He gave a second heave; this time slightly stronger than the last, and the ties that held his torso down gave way. Up his shoulders went.
The light shone brighter. It was closer. It was bigger.
He knew with every fibre of his young being that there was peace ahead. The light was home only if he could reach it.
He rested on his elbows and tried to bend his knees.
Left knee first and then right. They came up with little resistance.
The light was almost blinding him now. He had to go home, he thought. This place with all its machines, tubes and needles was certainly not the place to be.
He let his legs drop off the side of the metal hospital bed and shoved his body up. He planted his feet on the ground as firm as he could manage and got up off the bed.
His left foot taking the lead, he took a step towards the light. They were wobbly at first, but he soon found his gait slowly.
He looked back at the bed he had just vacated and saw the frail little boy that lay there. The boy’s breath was almost non-existent. He looked pale and thin and sickly. The glass jar still bubbled, and he saw one tear drop back into the water. The machine had begun beeping rapidly in a frantic cry for attention.
He took a quick glance across the room. His elder sister sat on the blue plastic chair in the corner of the room asleep. She looked so tired. He watched as she abruptly woke up from the high beeping sounds emanating from one of the machines. He watched as she rushed to the frail little boy on the bed calling out his name. He watched as a nurse rushed in towards the metal bed, followed shortly by the fat doctor.
Filled with energy, he walked ever so steadily into the bright light ahead and for the first time in all his 10 years of life, he felt no pain.
Not an ache and not a burn, only absolute peace.
Read – A Prayerful Woman – A Short Story by Cynthia Chukwuma, Nigeria
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