CHAPTER ONE
MMA
Lagoon , 2022.
Simdi my daughter asked me to be her bridesmaid in a wedding and I said yes. Twenty-one years ago she’d made similar offer in a mock wedding ceremony and I said no. “I can’t be your bridesmaid,” I said.
“Why, mummy?”
“You said it yourself. I’m your mummy. That’s why.”
“But it’s you I want.”
“Then wait until you’re a grown up. I’m too old to stand behind a toddler as chief bridesmaid.”
“Do you promise to be my chief bridesmaid when I grow up?” she saw that opening and seized it. Simdi is persistent when she wants anything. You just have to let her win. She’d worry you until you commit yourself, until you make her a promise to keep faith, an oath that binds you to her wish! But this time things are different! We still have some two decades ahead of us. Two decades for her to grow up and wiser. So I said yes, knowing full well it’d never happen. I was wrong. I never counted on a change ahead of time, a change that would make me look younger and Simdi older, after two decades! The change didn’t come through magical spell, or a philosopher’s stone, or through a benevolent spirit. This is how it happened!
I was three years old going on four when it dawned on me that I’m not a little girl. I could narrate in full events which took place in the sixties and seventies. Events like the Civil War! We lived in one-room apartment in a crowded yard at Mafuluku, my mum Olamma and me. Olamma also happened to be my daughter, if you would believe it. I think Olamma believed I was possessed of evil spirit. So she’d censor me speaking in the midst of other grown-ups, lest I should speak out of turn and cause her embarrassment. Once she tried to give me a private tutorial, but after two or three attempts she gave up. Although she didn’t complete her secondary school education, she spoke good English with a little mix up in tenses and adverbs. She teaches pre-schoolers in an elementary school. Even so, she was stunned to learn that she was no match for me in basic numerals and letters, and History; and knowledge of Medicine and pharmaceuticals, which as yet I hadn’t revealed to her how proficient I was.
So many things didn’t make sense to me at this stage of my life. Why was I different from other children my age? It wasn’t until the day something pushed me to search Olamma’s aluminium portmanteau and found a picture in her photo album that everything began to make sense to me. It was the 1960s five by seven inch black-and-white photograph. There are patches of smear here and there caused by heat, but the face in the picture was quite intact. It was my photograph. I could still recall the day I went to the local photographer’s studio and had the photo taken. It was one of the items which in my hurry I forgot to pick up the day I ran away from Odogwu’s house leaving a ten-month old baby behind. That was in 1962. Olamma thought she’s misplaced the picture, but I didn’t want to let her know yet that I took it. How she treasured that picture!
I would go back in time trying to remember who I used to be. Through a blurred vision I would see Olamma’s face looking down at me when she carried me in her lap. I would smile and she would smile back. But she never knew what was going on in my little head. She never knew she resembled someone I had met before, someone dear to me! I tried to but couldn’t yet recall where I had known her. All I could remember was that I had sun-flowers growing in a garden and I don’t know why I left them. We used to play in the sweet, enchanting silver light of the full moon—my friends, my flowers and me—and the little Moondogs that crept out of their ringed halo when the night got chilly. We would hear the rumble of thunder and knew what it said. We were free and happy. Whenever it’s raining we would visit the end of the rainbows and bask in its colours. We have name for each dewdrop which hung on blades of grasses in the fields and on spider webs.
Such were our days of joy in that Feel-Happy-Land. Then one day the Ghost-Hunter ship came to the seashore and we were asked to get on board, my friends and I and so many other people I couldn’t recall. Was it our will or some other Will stronger than ours which compelled us to go in that ship? It’s hard to tell, but I recall it was a windy sail on the black sea which flowed backwards. After many starless nights sailing on the sea we were discharged on the green shore where an open-bodied truck waited to pick us up. We perched on the open back taking the form of fireflies and our lights blinked, pulsed steadily in the dark night. There’s no stop for the truck. You only fly away and bid the rest of the travel mates goodbye when you reached your own destination. The Will would guide you to the home you seek, or rather the home you’re sent to, where you would spend time flying around the homestead at nights, around the cold ash-heap of the fireplace, until the path was made open for you to come in and be born!
I didn’t recall at what age I began to see clearly, but sure enough the film in my eyes cleared one day and I began to see the world as it was. Likewise did my memory open the day I had stumbled on my picture in Olamma’s photo album. We had finished having a dinner of corn meal a certain night and sat in the veranda talking. Olamma liked to talk about her life as a child as though it brought her any good memories. Her mother had died when she was hardly a year old leaving her in the care of two jealous step-mothers and a self-willed father who only saw a girl child as puppies which would sooner be farmed out to new owners. As for me all I could relate were things far ahead of Olamma’s time. I told her things people did to survive during the Civil War, and how Caritas volunteers brought relief materials and people queued up on the Central School playground to get their ration of instant milk, canned food and medical supplies. Olamma was speechless during my presentation. Then I concluded with saying that the soldiers who died in that war had all returned to be rewarded in proportion to the selfless sacrifice they’d borne, or punished in proportion to the their treachery and cruelty during the war. Olamma could not speak for a while. And when she did it was only to breathe out air noisily and ask me calmly: “How do you know all this thing, Mma, because I don’t know it myself. And me am your mother?”
“I don’t know how I know them, but I do remember them very well.”
“Do anyone teach you some things in the dream?”
“No, I don’t dream.”
“You don’t dream? How do you know about the soldiers who die in the war?”
“I saw many of them. Some of them were people I used to know?”
I heard Olamma murmur something about reincarnation. I was waiting for her to ask where did you see the soldiers. But she did not. She was quiet for a long while. Then she said it was time to go to bed. Until that day she would read the Bible and say prayers before we turned in, but beginning from that night she would make me read a portion of the Bible and share what I understood. Then I would lead in prayers first before she summarised by binding every familiar spirit and ancestral heritage, all evil covenants and all marine forces that get people initiated into satanic covenants even without their knowing. Together we would say ‘Amen’ and go to bed.
One day I fell sick. I was down with fever, cold, headache, sour throat, and ache all over my body. I couldn’t eat a morsel even with Olamma doing her best to force-feed me. I would sooner throw up whatever food which entered my mouth. Olamma’s chubby face shrank as though she’s the sick one. Her large, bright eyes suddenly sank into their sockets due to nights spent sitting up with me. She would rob Abonike balm or local sheer butter on me when I’m cold and cold water therapy when my temperature rose. She would pop paracetamol tablet when I complained of headache and when it didn’t work she would prepare an herbal brew. She had no money to take me to hospital and I sensed her fear that she might lose me. I couldn’t blame her. I was all that she had. So I did my best to act like I’m getting better. But I was dying slowly.
She had come to Lagoon after her school certificate examination and started life as cleaner in a factory while sharing apartment with a friend. Later she would settle for a teaching engagement, but while at the factory she had met a certain Osondu who later married her and together they had me. Mr Osondu worked with Julius Berger as casual labour, but he had told Olamma that he was on the staff of Julius Berger and had insisted on being called engineer. Young naive ladies easily fall for such bogus claims as working with a multinational like Julius Berger, Unilever, UAC, Shell BP, and so on. She was already pregnant with me when she realised that her lover lived in a one room apartment in the slum of Mafuluku. He had recently been disengaged for nicking the company’s tool to work elsewhere when they were in off peak season. She had moved in with him praying things would get better. It never did. For Mr Osondu took to drink besides being a chronic gambler. Each time he lost money in bets (which was often) he would come home drunk and the slightest complaint from her would make him lose his temper also. He would hit her, kick her, and smack her. Sometimes the assault would bring neighbours running to her rescue. When she got into labour room her blood pressure increased. I was delivered through a caesarean session. Olamma lost so much blood in the process and when the bills came out Mr Osondu panicked and went into hiding. She never saw him again. Someone said he was among the pile of bodies dragged from the canal after the sad incident of bombs going off in the military cantonment. She couldn’t get there in time to identify him before the bodies were buried in a mass grave.
The sickness lingered and Olamma had to take salary advance from the school to rush me to Auntie Nurse’s clinic. Auntie Nurse was dark, tall and huge. Between forty and fifty years of age. Her legs reminded you of yam tubers and her arms were as thick as a crab’s propodus. But unlike the crab Auntie Nurse had the softest grip ever, even when she’s inserting a syringe into your veins. Her wide nose would flare when she’s angry, propodus would tremble, and her breathe would come in quick fiery puffs. That was exactly how she reacted two days later when I took her up on a number of things bordering on her medical practice.
I had woken up in the hospital bed and everything looked strange to me. Olamma was nowhere in sight. Only this huge woman standing over me and gauging the drip hanging from a steel stand over my bed.
“Where am I”
“You’re in my clinic,” said the macho matron. Her smile spread across her cheek and formed double golf-sized balls.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Typhoid and Malaria. But you’re going to be alright.” She narrowed her gaze at me, a gesture which I understood later to mean she was trying to make sure of my age.
“Did you do a test to know it’s Typhoid and Malaria?”
The golf balls went down and in its place formed tight lower lips and knitted brows which glared at me. Her propodus clenched and unclenched, and for some fraction of seconds I feared she would bring it down on my cheek in a smash hit. She did not. I began to breathe freely when I saw her smile return; only this time it had lost its spark.
“You’re such a smart little girl,” she said. “They’re teaching you well at school, I can see that.” Then she added as afterthought, “What’s the name of your school?”
Before I could tell her a patient at the west wing called, “Auntie Nurse, I haven’t messed since yesterday and now I can’t find my two legs. I don’t know if the doctor forgot another something in my stomach?”
Patients and caregivers burst into laughter. That was when I saw that some patients lay on the floor with mats and pillows to prop their heads.
“I was coming to you, Mr I-can’t-mess,” said Auntie Nurse, and the laughter went many notes higher. I feared some of the patients would run into crisis if they didn’t stop laughing, because already some were chocking in fits of laughter-induced cough. “You were given a sedative during yesterday’s procedure to enable us correct a mistake in your first surgery. If you’re feeling numb in your legs it could be the effect of that drug. It happens sometimes. The doctor made an honest mistake by forgetting torchlight in his belly.” Now her address was no longer a direct rebuke to the tactless patient but a general remonstrance to everybody in the ward. “Such mistakes happen to the very best of us even in so-called specialists Hospitals. That’s not enough reason why you people shouldn’t appreciate the good job we’re doing here. We’re among the best in town and our services are almost free of charge. This little girl was brought in two days ago almost lifeless. I laboured to save her life. Now she’s recovered and feeling better she’s asking if I conducted a test to know what’s wrong with her. But I don’t take her case seriously because she’s a child. She’s only exercising her knowledge of Elementary Science which they teach them at school. And I tell you, if she continue like this I have no doubt in my mind that one day she will become a Chief Medical Director.”
I smiled. Applause erupted from the audience, whose hands were free to clap, with a hearty shout of ‘Aaamen!’ Heads turned to me with admiration radiating from their benign smile, which was comforting because, just a moment ago they were all looking daggers at me when Auntie Nurse’s remarks suggested she had been offended by my question. She walked into the dispensary and came out with a card of Strepsil, I believe. She popped two tablets and gave to the patient. “Chew this. I’m sure it’ll make you mess!”
It’s no longer repulsive to hear mention of mess in a public place as though it’s some kind of candy bar. In the slums of Lagoon where there are no pit latrines every family had bowls tucked under beds. They would discharge night time wastes in the bowls and cover them up with whatever came to hand, even a cooking pot cover can do. At cockcrow everyone carried their own mess to the storm drains running into the canals and dumped them in the ever flowing sewer, washed up the bowls and returned them where they lived under beds for another night time business. The storm drains were clogged with dark grimes, discharged plastic pert bottles, nylon bags and other odds and ends, creating a good eco-environment for mosquitoes to breed. Refuse bins were full to overflow. The decaying refuse would rise with sickly stench in the heat of sun and make the rounds into town as far as the warm updraft of breeze could distribute it. The refuse bin in front of Auntie Nurse’s clinic was not only overflowing with refuse but also leaking out dark slimy sewer like oil spill into the gutter. Maggots squirmed from inside the heap of decay after rainfall and gummed back of the bin, until chickens and lizards came along and picked them all off.
Mafuluku slums like many places in the State of Lagoon were never planned. There are run-down streets and houses abutting each other so much so that tenants in some cases would hardly open out their windows. And where two windows lie next to each other it was easy to reach into a neigbour’s window and pick up something. Cholera or diarrhoea epidemic when it happened went round the households fast enough. That way Auntie Nurse’s clinic would always have a spill over of patients on the cold floor.
Olamma once told me that Auntie Nurse used to be an auxiliary nurse apprenticed to a medical doctor in a private hospital. She was smart enough to pick up a smattering of his trade and disengaged to set up her own practice first as patent medicine dispenser which Naija people called ‘chemist.’ Hers was one of those chemist stores where you could get regulated drugs such as Tramadol, Coadine, Refenol and so on. Business boomed for Auntie Nurse just as the demand for Tramadol and Coadine grew among young people. She converted the adjoining living room into a mini hospital and treated every health condition from general medicine to Surgery, Orthopaedic, Gynaecology, and Paediatric. One day I told auntie Nurse that she’s lucky I was not the one in charge of Food and Drug Agency otherwise I would have revoked her licence and seal off her clinic for selling regulated drugs to under aged users. She had nearly dropped the glass cup in her hand, her eyes burned with malice as she fixed me with caustic look half surprise, half indignation. I could hear the sound of her breath wheezing through her flaring nose in puffs. She discharged me at that instant and called Olamma to come and pick me up. Poor Auntie Nurse! I was sure she could tolerate the Chief Medical Director in me, but having a drug regulatory officer in the same person(character) threatening to blacklist her was more than she could endure.
That night we ate in silence, or rather Olamma ate in silence. I had no appetite for beans and corn-pap. I had had Ribena and Shortcake Biscuit in the morning. I was certain that the beans and corn-pap was Olamma’s breakfast, lunch and dinner all rolled into one. Somewhere in her chewing and swallowing absent-mindedly she had paused to address me looking into space.
“Mma!”
“Yes, Mum!”
“I know you’re very sharp as a little girl,” she said, after a silence you could practically lean on, which had followed her calling my name. “I want to beg you one thing, I beg you in the name of God try to be talking like a small girl. Your I-too-know is giving me serious concern. It’s making me to ask myself sometimes, am I the one that born you or are you the one that born me?”
“It’s both ways, Mum,” I said, and at the same time caught Olamma flinch as thought what I had said stung her like scorpion’s tail. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you!”
“You’ve been waiting for the right time to tell me what?” her voice trembled. It’s as well to let every secret in my soul out once and for all.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to let you know that I’m your Mum, or shall I say, I used to be your Mum.”
Up in the ceilings a cat gave hot chase to another cat, or maybe it’s a cat chasing a mouse, or a mouse chasing another mouse. They took off with such suddenness as though they’d been eavesdropping on us and at that instant decided they’d heard enough blasphemy. Soft breeze which until now had been caressing the roof became violent, lashing out with the eaves and rafters groaning. “Grandpa didn’t tell you the whole truth. Your mum didn’t die when you were born. She ran away because she couldn’t stand a forced child marriage. She had a dream to become a great woman. And when a scholarship opportunity came up in Enu-Ugwu she abandoned everything including you to go and get it. She succeeded, but in the line of her service to the nation she was shot dead by an assassin. That was a short story of your mum and your mum is me! I died, but I’m back now. That picture you were looking for was my picture. I saw it and took it. But I chose not to tell you then. I’m sorry I abandoned you but I’m here now!”
I saw the colour drain off Olamma’s face and feared she’s going to pass out on me. But she recovered. She dropped her spoon into the corn-pap, folded her arms around her breasts and stared deeply at me as though she’s discovering me for the first time. Raindrops began to drum slow tapping beats on the roof. Then it came down in torrent and became an orchestra.