Promises are broken when someone dies. Whether it was his fault or not, all I knew was that he had promised and failed me.

“Bartholomew has promised and failed me. We will be together forever you said. I trusted you and now I hear that you have left us? How can you even breath your last when I am not there to share that breathe with you? You must be mad for leaving me so I am mad too. Do you hear me? Bartholomew! Bartholomew you are mad!”
His friends are everywhere shaking their heads, some are his fellow lecturers, some are his writing colleagues and some are his jolly fellows. Look at my son Bestman. Emeka his father’s closest friend is holding him, trying to nurse him out of reality. I should have been the person who lost her father at a very tender age not my own son. “I should have lost my father o, where is my son’s father?” Our house bulged of sympathy and agony and supplications billowed above. How sudden my husband’s demise came. He had also promised my son that he will be at his graduation to JSS1.

Amina alone joined me first to my husband’s village; she was a Muslim but not a zealot. My other friends and doting neighbours arrived a day to the burial. We had done most of the crying and tears sharing in our home in Port Harcourt so I appeared stable and indifferent as more people trooped into our home in the village for condolences and that appeared incongruous to them. I held unto my son, it has been two weeks and we were doing just fine. There were so much cooking and eating even as we cried. The dead had long buried the dead. We performed some rites by serving various maternal and paternal groups yesterday. Tonight will be his wake-keeping and tomorrow at noon, my husband’s flesh shall be reposed into the earth. I accepted that his soul was still with me. That was indeed the promise he had made, that our souls will be together forever not our bodies that are interim.

My friend, Joy came and whispered to my ear that my husband’s people want to see me. I wanted to go with my son but she insisted on letting the little boy have some play with her own kids in his room. When I got there, it was a sitting of old and elderly men and few women. Not one could fall low to my age and they appeared to me like parents.
Professor Nathan Ojike, my husband’s uncle was also present. His short-lived smile reassured me. I was in a blue blouse and had a wrapper around my waist. The long Peruvian hair sewn on top my own weaved natural hair was packed to abandonment. I had refused to comb it since the bad news and had refused anyone from touching it. Everything exhausted me. Nothing I wore was black in colour but I knew that after his burial the next day, I would cry a lot and begin to wear dark funereal clothes and also pour ashes on myself while living this ineluctable injury. Some of the elders smirked at death, some shook their heads and few snapped their pinky as they scoured me. The oldest man who broke the silence, starred at me for what I thought too long before he uttered something.

“Rukayi anumeka o-my fellow men I greet you all.” The men echoed, “Iiyaah!”

“Rukayi anumeka o-my fellow men I greet you all.”

“Iiyaah!”

“Eleriya osagiriri o- women I hail you all.”

“Ehei!” The women echoed too softly.

He said, “Our daughter you are such a good and wonderful woman to have carried yourself dutifully and comfortably.”

Comfortably is an inflection of comfort and Comfort is my…. Wait a minute, was this why I was born? To be the young woman who loses her beloved husband, then have to comfort herself because her name says so?

At once, my soul bounced into a retrospect of myself, remembering and over remembering how I had planned my happiness, his happiness. The people were talking, their lips were moving yet I hear them not. I should be allowed to enjoy some reverie and what more could a widow give but tears. The water of sorrow drooled profusely from my soar eyes, splashing over my face and even on theirs’. We were mourning.

“…and then after we bury him tomorrow, in the evening the women will shave your hair as our customs require.”

“But my husband loves my hair!” It came out of my mouth bold and explicit. I said that in the midst of people who gazed at me like I had vomited a new custom that will require them to bury me alongside my husband.

Joy was straddling me and carefully eradicating the long weave-on on my hair. Amina was there too, Timi, Boma, Patience. They surrounded me like the game of onye elela anya nazu-nobody should look back the Princess is passing. They had formed that cordial circle for me to have some respite in yet I could not relax inside of it instead I was afar, abroad, moping and searching the nation for my Man.

Aunty Ngo strolled in, “Bestman is fast asleep and my sister called. She is on her way with your father.” She announced and sat with us in the living room.

“So what will you do? Joy is almost done with loosening your hair. Will you let them shine it?” She continued.

“I don’t mind going bald for him Aunty but I won’t”

“Why don’t you want to? I kind of like the custom. It is a good way of expressing respect for the dead you know?” Patience was my wacko friend who outbursts everything.

Joy countered, “I thought you are a Christian Patience or are you now a pagan? Because even a Muslim cannot fancy this hair shaving of a thing?” Everyone turned to Amina who smiled and said nothing as usual. Amina, my meek friend.

I had to kill the noise. “Girls! Bartholomew loves my large hair. Yes he loves it not loved it so how will he feel if he sees me bald? You should say I grease his coffin while crying tomorrow with my hair.” My hair that took at least one hour before it is properly combed. My large, brown, kinky, full and extravagant hair that caressed Bartholomew’s chest every night. He must run his hand through it every time he thrusts me. Sometimes, he furrowed when I fixed something artificial on it.

Later, my parents came in with my siblings, Anyanna and Confidence and we had a dirgeful embrace. Family was always hard by, they had come to make me cry some more. That their daughter got married and now her husband is dead was what they were trying to comprehend as I hanged in their middle, the biological shield of family. My mother took me to the room and calmed my heaving shoulders while I held unto her waist sobbing my strength away. She glanced at my sleeping child and wept till I swallowed her tears.

During the wake-keeping, rumundah, rumuriya, age grades and youths will cluster in their various canopies. The church people will also come. They will sing praise and worship, dance and clap and voice threnodies that say they are helping me search for my husband. To that I appreciate.

“They said they will not eat whatever we cook tomorrow, that I will not have anything to do with the family I married into if I don’t shave my hair.” I told Mummy and reduced my consciousness to sleep.

Our compound was big and it appeared they built more canopies, they said more people will come for the burial-will come for the burial to lick my tears. Aunty Ngo showered me and changed my clothes. I blankly rebuffed her trial to comb my hair but she packed it up like shuku anyway and wrapped it with a black head dress. There I sat on the tiled floor, resting my body on a couch, emitting tears and receiving condolences. When the body of the dead person arrived, I didn’t go. I didn’t go out to wail and drag the coffin with the pallbearers. It was not someone I knew that had died, my husband was with me.

In the evening as I refused to shave my hair, the village people....
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