CHAPTER FOUR
Olamma
The rain have stop and the outside world is quiet. Mma is sound asleep, like a baby with no worry in this world. I haven’t closed my eye since the time Mma tell me that she is my mama. Imagine such funny play. It no even give me mouth to laugh; it’s not a laughing matter at all. I just sit on the old mahogany back chair watching Mma’s heart rise and fall slow by slow. Only one time she bring up her head and say, “why are you looking me like that? Come to bed and sleep.”
“Sleep is not catching me now,” I said. I’m beginning to see that me and Mma are talking like age mates. She don’t like to call me mama; she like to call me Olamma and I don’t take it as anything. But now the thing is beginning to worry me and there’s nothing I can do to make her stop it. I keep asking myself this question: can it be true that this little girl is my mother who return back to the world for me? Or have they given my child witchcraft to eat? Yes I know there is Ogbanje and reincarnation, but in all the story I have hear and see, not one of them can remember their life in the past. Is only somebody possessed by witchcraft that can remember who they are in the life before, and...
“I bind you, I bind you in the name of Jesus!”
That’s my yard neighbour mama Victory binding and losing. Is she praying or seeing a vision? Or is she rebuking a real demon? I stand up and go to the window to see. The breeze touch my face as I pull the curtain one side, push the inside bolt and opened the wooden window. Mama Victory is standing in front of her block’s verandah looking at something over the fence.
Mama Victory is a firebrand Christian. Many times in the midnight you will hear her voice firing prayer and stamping the devil in the ground. Then early in the morning she will go out for morning cry, preaching from the beginning of Ogunu street to the end coming and going just like that. But Ogunu street is too long and it makes it difficult to hear every message she’s preaching. You’ll hear the beginning but won’t hear the end, so that when she begins to pray you will say amen without hearing everything she have prayed. But since the time she born her baby some moons ago, she don’t go for morning cry again.
“Who’s that?” Her husband have join her in the verandah.
“It’s a cat. A white cat!” she say.
“A cat? What did it do?”
Mama Victory didn’t say anything.
“Where’s it?”
“It followed that way, on top of the fence. There,” she say pointing her hand to the end of the fence top lined with broken bottle as protection in case thieves want to climb the fence.
“Oh, you were binding it and it’s still going on its way? Could it be your binding-wire wasn’t strong enough? Next time use the Hausa twisted rope. It’s strong enough to hold malu—cow!”
“I don’t like the way you talk to me in public and make me look like a stupid person,” mama Victory say and her voice sounded angry.
“I think it’s you who make us look stupid before the people of this yard,” her husband say. “How could you come outside this night and began to bind innocent cat who’s going about its normal business?”
“Innocent cat? It’s only you who doesn’t know that cats are bad omen. Especially the black and white cats. They are not to be allowed to enter compound where babies and growing children are. Cats, bats, owls—they are all agents of witchcraft. They initiate children into the occultic kingdom.”
My head ring like bell when mama Victory talk about initiation of children into the occultic kingdom. I turn my head to look at Mma sleeping in the bed. Now she’s turning like somebody struggling with somebody in the dream. Then she keep quiet and relax again, and her front is facing the wall. I wanted to see her face and know if there’s any sign of witchcraft on it. But how will I know. I’m not a witch!
Mama Victory and her husband have carried their quarrel inside their room. But her voice is still sounding like a low murmuring behind their closed door. I close my window again and return to my chair. I’m still thinking about what mama Victory say. It’s not the first time I’m hearing people saying that cat and owl are evil animals. Witches and wizards can turn to any one of them to go and witch people or go to their witches meeting at night. There’s one old woman the youth want to put tyre on her neck and burn her alife, but the police car was passing that time and quickly stop and saved her life. The youth say she’s a bird flying in the sky that morning before she fall down and turned to a naked old woman. They are saying that everything happened in their koro-koro eye. But mama Victory’s husband, Mr Thomas Ekwe say it’s not true. He said that he’s sure that the woman has mental problem and doesn’t know when she come out on the road that morning without wearing anything. That’s Mr Thomas Ekwe for you. He know how to make a mystery something to look ordinary. He laughed as he was explaining it.
“Those youth have lost their minds,” he say, “to think that a bird could turn to a human being all of a sudden. I can bet my last manila that that woman was either slightly touched in the head or she walked in her dream. They met her there that morning. Period!”
That’s one thing Mr Thomas Ekwe is good at—bet, pool and lotto! He know every betting and lotto company in town. And they are so many these days since everybody in Naija think they can put small money in bet or lotto and get millions of manila in return. Things doesn’t work like that. They keep losing their money and keep betting still while the owners of the bet companies keep getting richer. The worst is this money doubling company called MMM. They tell you to pay them one thousand Manila and in one week they will pay you back in double. Millions of Naija people put their money there and loss everything when it crash.
Mr Ekwe has become a regular customer to bet house ever since he lost his job. Many people in his company was also sacked with him, because the country entered recession and companies are sacking their workers and closing down. The price of food stuff became high and people begin to use their children to exchange for food stuff. There’s one man in the North East who leave his son with a rice seller saying he forget his money at home. He tell his son to stay with the rice seller while he carried a bag of rice home and come back with money. He never come back.
Unlike me I never believe the old woman was a witchcraft. Still yet what mama Victory said that night still trouble my mind. What of if Mma have been initiated into this witchcraft something? See all the thing she know and she’s just four years old. That night I decided to tell our pastor about her so that they can do deliverance for her. But before then I will first of all stop Mma from going to compounds where they have cats, especially Mallam Idi’s provision store across the road. I will also close every hole and opening where cats and rats follow to enter our room and our ceiling.
In the morning I go to buy indomie by myself at Idi’s store. What I have in mind was to see whether there’s any sign of witchcraft in the cats there. Only one cat is around and I think it’s their mother. She’s lying down at the fruit tree looking swollen in the belly, and is busy washing her body with her tongue. If anything is going on around her at that time she doesn’t know and doesn’t care. I doesn’t know that there can ever be any other thing more important to the cat than cleaning herself, because a Fulani man who used to carry fried fish in a tray on his head is just passing. He will hit fork on the tray so that people will know the fish seller is around and call him to sell to them. The cats will also know and come out wherever they are and begin to make meow meow sound so that their master will buy fish head for them. Once the cat hear the sound of fish seller she jumped up and begin to rob her body on Idi’s foot shouting meow meow running about from her master to the fish seller. The fish seller bought water and Fanta and sell some fish to Mr Thomas Ekwe and his friend who have been sitting down on a wooden form in the corner drinking hot drink and talking about hardship in the country. That’s the only thing people who have no job do these days, talking and lamenting about hardship in the land and bad government. All the time the cat keep running and crying meow meow to the fish seller, Mr Ekwe and his friend and to me. I will say she’s complaining and begging at the same time since she see that her master don’t want to buy her fish. Her vampire teeths flash at me when she meow her cry for my help. I think the cat is saying: “Fish master fish, buy fish for me! Oh my God, master don’t care about me again. What’s happening in this country? Why have things changed all of a sudden? We no longer eat fish in this compound again. Will somebody here not buy fish for me. Madam, even you too? Please do something! I want to eat that fish. The head only. I’m so very hungry, and am pregnant too!”
“Mr Idi,” I say, “listen to your cat. She want to eat fish.”
“No mind am,” say Idi, “where e see money?”
I feel for the cat because I know how it feel to want to eat something but you can’t afford it, have no hope of affording it and will never afford it unless somebody decide to show you love and say take this! I have been in that situation so many times. If not that this is a cat I would have used my last change to buy the fish for her. How I wish she’s a dog or a goat. What of if it turns out I am spending my money to feed a witchcraft? Never! My Bible say suffer not a witch to live. I collected my change, bulled my face and walks away with my Indomie and egg for our morning breakfast.
It wasn’t until next week Sunday after church service that I have chance to see pastor Cyril Emordi. He listens to all I have to say, breathed air in and out when I was done talking. Then he smile a big smile.
“I want you to disabuse your mind of that witchcraft initiation nonsense! I don’t subscribe to that,” pastor Emordi say. “Meanwhile we’re going to pray and if there’s any such thing the lord will reveal it and deliver her from it...but, wait a minute! Did you say your daughter told you she has money in the banks, in manila, dollars and pound sterling?”
“That’s what she say, pastor, but I don’t believe such thing.”
“Wrong, sister Olamma, you better start believing such things. You see, this is the trouble with us Africans—too much superstitious beliefs. You were quick to believe your daughter has been bewitched, but you’re finding it hard to believe you’ll soon come out of poverty. What if it’s the Holy Spirit speaking this time through her? Exercise your faith sister, say I believe!”
“I believe!”
“Good! What else did she tell you?”
“She tell me say that she has a house in the Garden City. She say she has a husband and three child with him. She say that she think they’re now living in America because they also buy house there. She say she use to be a big woman and she was the Managing director of FAD or something, the people in charge of fake drug.”
“That’s the Director of FDA then. You’re sure she said that?”
Yes, pastor. She say she was shoot three times in the chest by a hire killer and she died.”
“Hmmm! The matter is becoming interesting,” pastor Emordi say and bend his head thinking and hitting his biro pen on the table. Then he carry up his head and say, “don’t worry sister, we’ll get to the root of the matter. We know about the FDA woman and how she was shot by assassins. Could it be true that...did you ever discuss about the Food And Drug Agency at home?”
“No pastor, we don’t talk about things like that. I don’t even know much about them.”
“Then I will let you go. Expect me in your home any time from this week. I’ll come with a notable journalist who will assist us dig deep into the matter. You will hear from me.”
We didn’t hear from pastor Emordi until Friday night when he called me on the phone and say that we’ll go to Garden City Estate tomorrow being Saturday. I tell Mma what I talk with pastor concerning what she told me and see see see, see what pastor is sayingooo, he say that we’ll go with some people to Garden City and see the house she say she use to live. She did not say anything but sit quiet throughout that day like somebody who have something worrying her mind. But when we prepare to go the following morning Mma begin to smile and feel lively.
The church premises is almost empty when we get there. Two car is parked in the garage. One is pastor Emordi’s car; the other green one belongs to our visitor I think. I don’t know if pastor Emordi know that people call his car Evil Spirit? Why will people call such a beautiful car Evil Spirit? The security man say Daddy is waiting for us so we hurry and reached his office. I can hear people talking inside. I knock and pastor say come in. The man sitting facing pastor Emordi is tall and huge. There’s one yellow-fair woman by his side. All of them turn their head to look at us when we entered. Actually they’re all looking at Mma, even the pastor, and I know immediately that they have been talking about her before we come. Mma is in front of me so I can’t see her face. But it seems she know the huge man and go ahead of me to meet him as the man bring out his thick hand to shake her.
“My name is...”
“Dr. Abimbola Oluwatosin, PHD,” Mma say without allowing the man to land. The man’s face changed immediately and pastor Emordi open his mouth and begin to look at them like somebody who has forget his-self. The fair woman begin to cough and when her cough stops her face look white like say blood have finish in her body. Mma did not shake, even me too, because I’m use to her talking like that. She still address the man with the same calmness of voice.
“It’s nice to see you again Dr. Tosin. After all these years. And lest I forget, where’s the biography you promised to do for me?”