We Are Still Waiting
My sisters and I will never get married. That was what Elder Joe said. Before he uttered the words, the fact of it hovered over our lives. There was my eldest sister, Nkoli, who had been with Ike for twelve years. They’d lived together for four. She’d aborted three babies. And one time, when they were both without work, they squatted in our flat for eight months. Still, early last year, Ike went and paid the bride price of a small University girl. They say she was twenty-two, and that he did it because Nkoli, now thirty-six, had killed too many babies to still be able to have her own.
When Elder Joe made this pronouncement, we were seated at the dining table, breathing in the smell of Mama’s hot Onugbu soup as she quietly dished out the garri. Papa sat opposite Elder Joe at the other end of the table, close enough to the kitchen door where he could scream at Cheta to bring him water to wash his hands, or to get him a glass cup, or whatever thing that suited him.
“Joe,” Papa said, “I hope you did not meet that ugly traffic on your way here. It has become so bad these days.”
“Mmmm.” Elder Joe’s brows creased together like he was trying to conjure the traffic. “I suppose it was not completely terrible today,” he said, and dipped his hand into the bowl of soup.
“Eh heh, elections are just around the corner. These people think they will do in four months what they failed to accomplish in four years.” Then Papa burst into big, uncontainable laughter, as though he’d said something remarkably smart and funny, as though waiting for Elder Joe’s announcement did not cause our intestines to twist inside our bellies.
I knew Elder Joe had had another vision because he came dressed in his white sutanna, with the big wooden cross that rested on his chest. The thing is, the last time Elder Joe had a vision, he said the family would experience a major disappointment. Two months later, Ike went and married that other girl. So now, even though we lowered our gaze to the table and picked gently at our garri, and even though Papa made chirpy comments about roads being constructed by the state government, we were heavy with questions. In matters like this, we all agreed that Elder Joe should be taken seriously. When he had a vision, we put away our religious differences: me with my Pentecostalism, Nkoli with her indifference, Mama and Papa with their half-Catholicism and occasional visits to the shrine, depending on what problem needed to be solved.
“Chief. Hmm, this is a difficult thing for me to say, o. I have been deep with grief all afternoon, tossing the matter over in my head. But there is no other way. Ehn, Chief.”
Papa pushed his plate away and sat straight, as if the presence of food would sour the words of Elder Joe.
“The prophecy—it is very clear,” Elder Joe continued. “Your daughters will never get married. Unless…unless.” Elder Joe stopped to sip from his glass of Small Stout. Then he continued, “No, it doesn’t matter, the vision was clear. These girls will be single all their lives.”
The last few words fell from his mouth hurriedly, like he was spitting out hot food. I did not hear Papa’s response or get up when Mama walked off to the kitchen. My head was busy with images of my boyfriend, Itopa, and the last fight we had. We’d barely started going steady after months of eyeing and wanting each other in choir practice. His hands kept crawling up my thighs when I visited him in his apartment the day before. At first, I acted like I did not notice. But I clamped my legs together when his fingers grew more confident. I asked Itopa what he was doing. Instead of understanding, he erupted with loud anger, asking me if I was sure I wanted to be in a relationship.
I don’t know why my head filled with that incident when Elder Joe made the announcement. It’s not as if Itopa had proper work or ticked off the items on my list of qualities of a good husband. It was not even as if I really liked him. But we made a good team: he was a drum master in the choir, and I was senior chorister. Also, I had seen his face in a dream after I prayed about my future husband. I wondered if the prophecy would find a way to tear Itopa and I apart, or if Itopa would be willing to fast and pray with me to clear away this ugliness.
Papa and Elder Joe first met at the Apapa Wharf where Papa was a customs agent. A friend of a friend had told Papa about a man of God whose eyes were so clear that he could see the future like one looking through a mirror. The friend of a friend had invited Papa for prayers, and because Papa was eager to know why he had been passed over three times for a promotion, he went along. Papa got his promotion. Then twice, when it was certain that Papa would be transferred out of state, he went to Elder Joe for prayers and the transfers were averted. Before long, Papa brought Elder Joe home to conduct family prayers and for dinner, especially when Mother made Onugbu.
Elder Joe had left and the night fully settled in. Mama and Papa argued in their room. It had been a long while since their words had been tangled and nasty. When we were little, Papa would go red with anger. His roar would shake the house and Mama would hold him around the waist and they would wrestle each other, their bodies falling against the table and the bed rest and the bathroom mirror. These days, however, their quarrel was mostly with words, with the things they said to each other and the ones they held back. There seemed to be always something Papa was aggrieved about, or something Mama was accusing him of.
“If you were not so stubborn and wicked, would I not have had a son by now? Would we not have had a man to extend the family name?” Papa yelled.
“How does having a son change the prophecy,” Mama said. “Sometimes you talk as if you left your head in the backyard.”
In the end, they always settled. Mama saw to it. When she was not trying to make peace or hold the family together, she would often be in my bedroom telling me about a faraway life. Mama said she was never meant to marry Papa. Her stories always began with the time in ’78 when she was studying French at the University of Port Harcourt. She had been engaged to another man—a tall and quiet Amandi from Aba. They were both struggling students from poor backgrounds but at least they had each other. Then Papa entered the picture and turned everything to ash. She always said this part quietly, God forbid Papa overheard her.
This is how they met. Mama was in Lagos staying with her aunt during the holidays. Papa had come to their flat at Ilasa to visit his friends. It was a hot Sunday afternoon. Mama was called on to serve cold beer. Papa pointed and asked, “Who is she?” During that long month in Lagos, Papa noticed the way Mama threw her gaze away at every eye contact, and the way she served the cold beer, gently placing the glass cup on the tray, almost in reverence. A quiet, dutiful, marriageable kind of woman. Then the pressure began. As well as gifts.
It wasn’t so much that Papa was appealing. At thirty, his stomach was already rounded from too much beer and too much late-night eating. Another thing is, he’d already been married. His first wife left on their wedding day. In Mama’s mind, there was no way she was going to fall for the man with a bad attitude. She was only accepting the gifts and the money for flight tickets and to help support her boyfriend’s photography studio. Then she became pregnant and everything changed.
Marrying Papa was not the only mistake Mama made. She somehow went and had four girls. If that was not enough, she had all four of us through surgery. Before I arrived, the doctors told her the next pregnancy would kill her. They warned her to space out the children. Or to stop altogether. But how could she? When there was no boy still. So, she took in anyway, hoping I was a boy and that I would come out the natural way. Papa asked Mama to go for cleansing—he had already consulted a Dibia. Mama refused. She would not dance naked on the beach while some young Dibia sponged her with leaves, cleansing away her bad luck. Instead, she went for her prenatal care and did everything the doctor said, but I did not budge. I sat in her stomach until she was cut open and I was gently pried out—another girl.
My other sister, the one after Nkoli, is Maggie. She went to Catholic boarding school and decided she would marry Jesus and join the convent. But that did not count as a real marriage. Everybody knew that. It was a shame, also, because Sister Maggie had the kind of backside that wobbled when she walked. Whenever we went to the market, the men would reach out and flirt with her, and even after we passed their shops they would continue to look, their eyes peering at her behind. She is the only one who inherited Mama’s gap-toothed smile. Whenever she laughs, the space in her teeth pops out—such a delightful sight. If not for the convent, I really think Sister Maggie would have been first to get hitched. But she says she is using her beauty to serve God. Sometimes I wonder if God could not have given that smile to someone who would make proper use of it.
We tried to act normal after Elder Joe’s pronouncement, but things were not really the same. Mama was antsy and crying all the time and Papa tried to trivialize the situation. He made jokes during dinner, but they were not funny at all.
“Do you mean to finish all that? Don’t you think you are fat enough? Ah. See your ears like Nkoli. You will end up old and unmarried like her.” Papa accompanied his comments with loud laughter, as one would dance around a trap to show the village that one was not afraid.
He sent for Sister Maggie the weekend after Elder Joe’s announcement. She and I were in the kitchen that Saturday making breakfast when she began picking at old wounds. Sister Maggie said that that Mama should have tried again for a boy. I knew she had been talking to Papa. She always listened to him, always took his side, and in return he conferred her with the honor of being his favorite child.
“You know that if Mama had used the oils and gone for the bath with the Dibia, you would have come out a boy just like God intended, I’m sure. Or maybe Mama would have had a fifth child. Her womb would not be closed, and we would have had a little brother,” Sister Maggie said, looking up from the frying pan.
Usually, this was not the kind of talk I liked, but she was hardly around, and her eyes grew big and sure, so I nodded and asked her to taste the sauce I was stirring. If Nkoli had been there, she and Maggie would have begun an argument. Nkoli always jumped to Mama’s defense and stopped going to mass when she turned twenty-three and said she believed in family planning. According to Sister Maggie, God hated abortion and, therefore, God hated Nkoli. Our other sister, the one who made us four, Jacintha, had crossed the Atlantic with her American boyfriend. She is the throw-away child of our family. She does not believe in Dibias or God or anything.
It was only after Elder Joe said there was a cleansing we could do that the air around the house felt clean again. He came to dinner one evening, all smiles, and told us there was good news.
“Ah chief, it seems something can be done. I consulted with the chief prophetess and the situation is not hopeless. But chief, hmm, there is a price. It will cost you, o—and your daughters will have to be involved this time,” Elder Joe said.
I always wondered why he spoke directly to Papa when he had such announcements, never looking at us. Mama said it’s because, as a man of God, you cannot be too close to the people, otherwise they will see your flaws and despise the God you carry. I wanted to tell her I already despised God for showing Elder Joe we would not marry, but I did not. I swallowed my words.
Papa was unusually quiet on the day of the cleansing. He squatted at the open doorway of the uncompleted building on the beach, stripped down to his singlet and boxers. I heard the ocean crashing onto the sand. It was night and a wall of rocks secluded us from the rest of the beach. I could not tell if Papa was squatting because he was cold or because he did not want to squeeze onto the wooden bench where we were seated. Also, there was a woman in the room with us. She was draped in a red cloth, with white chalk marks smeared across her skin. She walked around us in circles, not saying anything, not looking at us, but her presence seemed important, so we tried to stay quiet and sober.
Elder Joe left first with Nkoli, the oldest of all of us, with the most critical situation. Young marriageable men wanted their women to have fresh blood, to be ripe and soft. Nkoli was thirty-seven now, so being cursed was double, double jeopardy. I raised my hand to my head and chest, making the sign of cross and wishing her well in my mind. The rest of us waited in the cold. Sister Maggie was not really interested in marriage, but she came for the cleansing. She said she did it so she could serve Jesus freely, without any encumbrance.
In the room next to us, a woman was screaming a man’s name into the night. The woman draped in red stopped her incantation long enough to tell us that the screaming woman’s suitor had changed his mind about marrying her on the day of their ikuaka. His people refused to go ahead with the family introduction, and this was the second time such an incident was happening to her. She had to stay on the beach and scream out his name if there was a chance of remedying their love. She screamed until her voice was thinned and raspy and dying. But even then she did not stop. My head was already beginning to ache, but I knew that I would scream even louder if it would save Itopa’s love for me. My voice would rise and fill up the night if that was what it took.
There was another woman on the prayer ground. She had a basket of fruits on her head and hopped about while a man in dreadlocks chased her with a cane. She was singing but I could not make out her words. Every time she opened her mouth a wind from the ocean swallowed them.
I thought of Itopa. After our last quarrel he’d been acting funny. We still spoke during rehearsals and I’d gone to his flat two more times, but something was off. I still called him and still carried my legs to his room on Sunday after church even though I’d seen him with Chioma from the choir. I knew that after the cleanse everything would return to normal.
It was nearly three in the morning by the time Elder Joe came for me. He held my hand and we walked together to the small hut where the prophetess was making her prayers. When we reached the entrance, a plump woman asked me to take off the white cloth tied around my chest.
“You mean I should remove my wrapper?” I said.
“No. I mean your earrings,” she answered, sounding offended.
From the open doorway, I could see three men talking softly. Mama and Sister Maggie and Nkoli were kneeling, facing the wall. Papa was sitting on the floor, his knees pulled to his chest, his small shoulders hunched as if weighed down by all the prayers in the room.
I did not understand why I was asked to take off my wrapper. I was not wearing any underwear. I reminded Elder Joe of this situation; it was he who’d given us the guidelines three days ago when he came to get the money for the cleansing. Three hundred thousand naira in cash—and only because of his influence, he said. There were families that paid up to five hundred thousand. He’d also given us a list: one white cloth to be draped around each person; scent leaves, cucumber and lime, to be sprinkled in the bathwater; and then, no underwear. He’d specifically asked us to come that way. The cloth was to be our only covering.
I wished Mama would turn around and look at me. I wanted to ask her what to do. Did they also ask her to take off her cloth? It seemed like the sort of thing she would heavily refuse. I thought about Nkoli, who’d lost Ike, and wondered if she had wrestled with this demand.
“Elder Joe,” I whispered. “Can you explain to this woman that I can’t take off the cloth?”
“Young lady, your father paid a lot of money for this cleansing. If you want to be stubborn, there is nothing I can do. But I suggest you do as she has said,” he told me.
I thought about Itopa and the way he’d stared straight past me at choir rehearsal. I knew it was not his fault. I had to remedy things quickly. I closed my eyes and loosened the knot and the wrapper fell onto the sand.
“Good,” the woman said, her eyes scanning me. “Now go inside and lie down.”
So I did. I lay on the mat that they spread out for me and watched Papa turn away. Then the men began their prayers. They walked around me and occasionally bowed their heads in a circle, their eyes closed, their faces creased in a frown like there was something they were trying to concentrate on. Something I could not see.
Papa remained quiet on the drive home. He did not address Nkoli’s snoring from the back seat. He did not complain when Cheta took fifteen minutes to open the gate for us. He did not respond when Mama asked if she should make him a cup of tea. He walked into his room and shut the door. He stayed there all day and through the next morning until Mama, not knowing what to do with his unexplained absence, went into his room to force a reaction out of him. She came out with the untouched tray of food.
In the weeks that followed, sister Maggie called three times from the convent. She wanted to know how Papa was doing, how things were going in Mama’s shop, how I was preparing for my final exams at University. Her loud, thin voice railed into the phone, “Any good news?”
Mama and I filled her in with the usual details, though I knew that what she really wanted was a verdict, a way to appraise whether the prayers had worked, if we were now shiny and clean, acceptable to marry like good Christian women.
We did not talk about it, as if by discussing sales and profit from Mama’s shop we could expunge the incident from our minds. I wanted to ask Mama if she’d taken off her cloth, also. If she’d lain on the thin mat spread atop the cold concrete, if the praying men had stooped low and pressed their hands on her woman parts like they’d done to me. I wanted to ask if she’d closed her eyes and tightened the walls of her stomach. I wanted to know if Papa had turned away from her when it happened, like he had with me. But I did not.
Eventually Papa came out of his self-imposed bed rest. He sits at the dining table, reads the papers, goes back into his room. We have not seen Elder Joe since, making this his longest absence from our lives. I have been too busy with final exams to think about Itopa. When Nkoli comes to visit, Mama teases her—is there a new man in her life? Nkoli laughs a big laugh and says, “No Mama, still waiting.” Her words fill our small kitchen and shape it with the answers to the questions we refuse to ask. We are still waiting.