Aba.
22nd, July, 1998.
Papa burnt down Mama’s farm the day we left. It had rained heavily on the night Mama had finally asked for a divorce.
She had called me the previous evening, her voice shaking over the phone. “Nne, your father threw my things outside again.” She had sobbed, leaving out the part where he had flung his walking stick at her, and had bashed her head to the mud cladded wall. I would later find out about this from my cousin, Oluchi.
“I told him that I am not doing it again. That I want to ask for separation.”
“Where are you now, Mama?” I asked, pacing the length of my bedroom, my heart racing with each breath.
“I am outside with my load. I will sleep in the Nchịkọ this night.”
The Nchịkọ was a detached house we used in storing baskets of dried fish, tubers of yams, kegs of palm oil and bunches of plantain. It was no place for her to spend the night.
“You will not do that o, Mama,” I said in a strong voice – to show her I was serious.
“It is better like this. I will manage.”
“Look Mama, I am coming to pick you up first thing tomorrow,” I said. “You will come and live with me and Tayo. Please pack a few things, but not everything. And no matter what Papa says or does, don’t take back your words.” I finished, and for the first time, she did not say, I will not leave my home, or these are the things I must endure.
A sign she had finally come undone.
The next day, before the fog rolled in, Mama was summoned by our umunna. The men, whose skeletons wobbled in their skins; their faces sunken and eyes hollowed, sat on low stools. They flapped their wrappers to swat away the early morning flies and mosquitoes that buzzed annoyingly around their legs.
“Ehem! Our wife. Jidenna has told us that you want to scatter this marriage. Why is that?” Chief Odibo, known for his loud mouth, boomed.
Mama looked around before replying. “I am no longer happy. I haven’t been happy for some time now.”
All the men exchanged graved glances. Her answer seemed to confuse them.
“Happiness, just that?” A shrill voice asked.
“Isn’t that enough reason?” I retorted, locking eyes with the nuisance of a man.
“Keep quiet, Olanna.” Mama tapped me gently on the arm. “Or they will kick you out.”
“She says I don’t treat her right. Can you imagine the nonsense,” Papa chimed in. He was staring at us, with bewilderment dancing in the liquid of his eyes.
“Chelukwa! Didn’t you just buy her a new plantain plantation last September?” A balding man asked. He was the oldest amongst them. “And even set up this amazing farm for her?” He nodded towards the land adjacent to our house.
“There is nothing Akuada has asked that I have not provided.” Papa’s eyes narrowed in slits and his jaw clenched. “But does she appreciate any of it?” He asked, still watching us.
“I am aware of that.” The man smiled, his teeth, yellow stained like someone had rubbed the oil from an overnight okpa on them. He placed a hand on Papa’s shoulder and said, “Jidenna, my brother, you don’t need to explain yourself to anybody here. You are a good man, a good husband to Akuada, and a good father to Olanna.”
“And what about the things I have never asked for?” Mama asked. It was almost a whisper. “The times I pleaded with you to stop, that I was sorry even when I didn’t know what I did wrong?” Her voice cracked, as she fought back the tears pooling in her eyes. “It is now evident that you will never see how you’ve broken my spirit for the past thirty-three years.”
“Which spirit?” Chief Odibo bellowed. The air was thick with tension now. Voices rose and refused to fall. “Akuada, you are the one really saying this? Ah, this is why our fathers warned us not to take ungrateful women for wives.”
The other men joined in supporting Chief Odibo, their voices ringing out from every corner.
Mama slowly got up from her stool in grace. She looked pointedly at Papa’s scrunched up face.
“I’ve watched you take and take and take,” she said to him in a stead voice, amid the noise. “For once, I am finally choosing me. I am choosing my sanity over responsibility, or the tag of being a good wife.”
“Akuada must have swallowed a seed that was making her behave strangely,”
“She must have taken something foreign that was pushing her into destroying her home,”
“She was possessed by an unclean spirit.”
Our Umunna concluded, their faces stern and unforgiving as they condemned Mama.
The meeting, as expected, ended in a tumultuous uproar. The feet of some members of the umunna scuffling away, sounds of chairs scraping the earth, hands waving wildly, fists slapping hard on thighs, filled the air.
*******
The men tried to restrain papa from burning the farm. Mama and I seized the opportunity to escape, fleeing to the waiting vehicle that had brought me to the house that morning. Thank God I had paid the driver to wait behind.
As we sped away, we caught a glimpse of Papa’s figure diminishing into the distance, running, yelling in rage and sprinkling the farm beside the house with kerosene. Some of the elders, the ones whose waists were still fit for running, gave chase, but soon realized that no amount of pleading or threatening could stop Papa from torching the farm.
They fell back, and watched in horror as the yellow-orange fury flames crept into the land, and spread into everything around it, consuming it, owning it.
“That is how he becomes when he starts.” Mama shook her head.
“It’s finally over, Mama. I am so sorry you had to endure all this.”
“Nne, it’s not your fault.”
Mama took my hand in hers and placed it on her chest. “Olanna look, my chest feels lighter. It’s almost as if a knot has come loose.”
I nodded, placing my second hand on her chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breath.
“And it will continue to become lighter and lighter. You’ll never know what it feels like to carry heaviness ever again. I promise you this.”
Behind us, a thick black smoke billowed towards the horizon. It’s smell filling our lungs, and causing our eyes to sting.
Suddenly, the sky grew dark, the clouds seemed to crack open and water poured down in a torrent.
A small smile creased Mama’s face. She gently pressed her forehead against the blury window, and muttered under her breath, “Let my sufferings evaporate with the rains.”
We drove on, leaving chaos behind, burying it in our past, along with every other thing that didn’t need saving.
—
Sarah Ajiri Ikogba holds a B.Tech in Surveying and Geomatics. However, fiction writing is one of the few pursuits that truly resonates with her. She is excited to take her passion to the next level with the upcoming debut of her young adult contemporary novel. Additionally, her short story ‘Homecoming‘ has been published in Brittlepaper magazine.
—
