By Obinna Oke
Identifying her by name would be a gross misdeed. Because every Mary and Elizabeth and Veronica aren't the same. It was by her that I woke up every 5am to peer through the black and grey darkness outside my 12-inch window frame full of cold dust, folds of old newspapers, nylons and stones and sleeping lizards, all meant to cover against the beams of the sun and more dust. A helpless act that turned a ritual. It was permeating and goosing and soothing, her voice. A pleasant melody!
I would hear the shrill screech of Martin's bamboo bed across the thin wall between us. He shivered at her hymns too, and her messages. Mine was a Hausa mat, a precious gift from dad. Everyone under our miniature, torn and rusted zinc roof shivered. Mama Ekene and Aunty Ngozi and my prodigal sake, Obinna and Uche who thought he was more handsome than everyone else and wasn't always around. Even the old headmaster who lived in the front room would freeze on his newly caught old and sometimes young sluts to allow her sing past; no thrusting or coughing or spitting of the usually thick and rusty sputum stenching densely of Punch wine and dry Bonga fish. Sometimes too, of smoked mackerel. He lived closest to the road and to our only well coated in alga and mold.
Everyone knew her. To call her a true Christian was to demean her perceived purity and spotless life. Her moody songs of praises and somber precations quivered every soul. She sang them every dawn to and from St Paul's Parish.
And my window saw her lanky shadow every single day for four years that I lived in front of the well.
She wasn't beautiful. She made no efforts to be. Face full of pimples and blackheads. Cracked lips and scaly skin. Bent legs and incongruous arms. Same headscarf. Same slippers. Same blouse. Same long skirts sweeping grasses on the ground. She only applied tanjila on her upper eyelids, and it made her scare every small child. Heaven was her goal, and she drew us closer to it.
Then we heard she was sick. Her tummy had begun to swell. Mama Nkechi had suffered a similar illness. It was rumoured in the village that her former husband afflicted her with it through otumokpo when she divorced him. They said he invoked a growing pumpkin inside her stomach. She never had another child save for Nkechi who she had for the man. It nearly took her life until the health missionaries came. They did surgery on her and brought out the large pumpkin. Everyone saw the white bloody pumpkin. But the stout, bald doctor called it a 'cyst'. Hell did we know what that was.
This must be the same as Mama Nkechi's illness! But why would this befall her? Is God sleeping? Why can't He protect His true servant?... were the questions and wonders on every resident's lips.
But somehow we weren't too worried. She had taught us faith and we knew that God would heal her. It was the least God could do. The least she deserved for her dedication.
Her belly swelled more by the day. And after about a year. I'm sure it was less, we heard another rumour. This one lacked basis. It lacked truth and it wasn't good for the heart. Before it, I hadn't woke up by 5am for five days and I hadn't heard the screeching of Martin's bamboo bed and I had dreamed of the headmaster's thrusts and coughs, at least I thought I did. All because I hadn't heard her prayers, hymns and songs.
Then about this rumour. It wasn't even a rumour. We heard that fateful morning that she was being beaten. I felt almost bereft. And I was curious. I had always been curious. And I've often thought to myself that since my curiosity didn't kill me before I turned twelve, then untimely death wasn't meant for me.
I put on my only polo. It had St Alcuin written on its chest. I'd never read or heard of such a saint anyway. I never bothered. My white short never left my waist. Except on those days when Martin threatened to beat me and said I shouldn't come close to him that I was stinking cockroach or house rat or such other ugly names he used. Then I would draw water from the well and pour over me. But not to wash the short!
I ran off. Why must any sane human touch God's anointed? My heart thundered as I ran in the direction of the hue and cry.
What I saw was stupefying! Some old men and a few women surrounded her. Two had a long cane in their hands. I peered through the thin crowd to see her seated on the ground, holding a crying baby that looked a day or four or five or so.
She sat there without a single tear in her eyes. Her clothes were mud-stained, torn on the left with the nipple of her small left breast staring unblinkingly at me.
'You must tell us who's responsible for this child!' Two voices shouted almost at the same time.
'Never! You will kill me before that happens!' She shouted back.
My heart skipped immediately. I never could believe she had such a hash voice. And that she could sound that cruelly to the elders. Never!
But you people aren't fair to her. You are asking the wrong questions. Didn't you read of the immaculate conception? I had thought to myself.
So I pushed through the crowd, between one old man and another old woman to get close to her. I tried to bend over her when a stroke of the cane meant for her caught my right arm. I shouted of pain. The flogger withdrew a little, and warned me to give space. But I was curious. I bent over her right ear, a little off from the screaming pink baby and whispered: 'Tell me, Sister. Tell them the truth, that God is the one responsible. Isn't He?'
'Which God?' She barked at me, almost at the same time a certain man held me by my tiny arm and flung me away. And as I picked myself up from the corner where I fell and dusting my white short over my bony buttocks, I was then convinced that God was innocent. Always innocent!
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