If only the sun can take its sizzling eyes off Ujuamara and go bother someone else. Vehicles and motorcycles, wheelbarrow pushers and trekkers parade the street, raising dust, selling this, selling that, laughing (how dare they?). But in Ujuamara’s world, the Sun’s sleeping behind a thick quilt of dark clouds.
That poster on Primary School wall shines the words again…and again…and again. Before, it was the gist, social media rambling. Ujuamara is here to see for herself. And right there, in front of her, is the first sign that it is true.
Aged: [92]
Ekeocha Janet Ezeuche (Nee Ezemelie)
May God Rest Her Soul
Wicked tears foam in her eyes. She sucks on air coated in fine particles of dust. She does not sneeze. Let the dust stay there. Let it kill her too. Let her soul also rest. If it is true… if. it. is. true, God should please… you know… rest two merry gentlewomen let nothing they dismay. She tucks her black leather purse under her armpit, folds her hands, and counts her steps—no jokes, she numbers her steps: if she does not, she can fall. A local James-Bond on a rusty blue Suzuki zooms by, covering Ujuamara in a haze of dust. It does not matter. Her body is gone anyway.
She’s never been to Achina, but she knows Aunty Ekeocha’s compound has to be the one from where the music blared. Her mind stays alive, stays on Aunty Ekeocha alive. Her mind conjures images of Aunty Ekeocha on a dark stage, red background, TEDX whatever-it-was standing behind her. Aunty Ekeocha’s skin shone like buttered moon. Her smile resembled Madonna’s. The universe must have stuffed Aunty Ekeocha through radio waves and into Ujuamara’s curved plasma TV on a day Ujuamara was set to take her life.
You are a human being too. Do not accept to be treated as less.
That day, Ujuamara and the razor, her chosen weapon of suicide, sat in her immaculate white house, both of them watching a channel she lucked into. Memories of the genesis soaked her eyes and streamed down. Frank was kneeling above her, holding her two hands hostage, pressing her to the bed. His eyes were two hot coals. He was saying something she was not hearing because she was shouting leave me alone, leave me alone. BOOM! Yes, thunder, but the facial one, not the heavenly one. It came with darkness and vibration. Her eyes tore open to whiteness, abi did the trumpet sound? But there was no Jesus. There was that lone, linear, red stain on the white wall. Then there was the vibration on a spot between her right ear and right eye, sliding up and down her cheek. No more menacing red eyes in front of her. She moved her hands, they moved. She lifted herself. She moved. That was when she saw Frank, his fingers vibrating, his eyes deadpanned. Understanding emerged in her brain, belief scampered. The spot where the thunder fired her cheek still vibrated. She shuddered, sprang up, bolted. Close sounds pounded like pestle and mortar behind her. She did not look back. Her mind flushed with relief when she reached the door, held the knob, opened the door, felt the outside breeze. Her breasts slammed on the floor. She dug her teeth in her lower lip and “Ummmmm!” But there was no time for pain. Outside was there, holding a blanket of safety. Outside was moving away, faster, faster! She reached, stretched, no way. There was this stiffness around her ankle. If she could free her leg, she could reach outside before Frank caught up with her. She reached for her ankle but touched a muscular wrist. Frank hauled her back to the room, flung her on the bed, and locked her inside. Banging; in vain. Crying; in vain. Window; burglary proofed. What else could she do? Sit down and cry. She did.
PUURRRR! A loud honk makes her tremble. The cloud of dust finally gets her to sneeze. The honking driver’s lips flutter, his forehead corrugate, his index finger strikes his temple. She jumps the gutter and lands under the shade of the banana tree whose trunk is on the other side of the high brown fence. Music wafts from the compound. She is afraid to enter. What if she sees a coffin? Her breathing is laboured. She squeezes her arms tighter across her chest as if she’s squeezing water from cloth. She holds the black gate for support and steps in. No coffin = no proof of death = no death. Whew! Everywhere is scanty and strikingly, very powerfully, familiar. Mr. DJ leans beside the building’s wall, in front of his tools, his headphones hang on his neck, his head nods to the music. The guts! The right corner of the house is covered with a banner of Aunty Ekeocha’s smiling face. She looks so alive. She looks nothing close to ninety-two, but then what do numbers resemble really? The door opposite the gate leads to a room decorated in white icicle lights leaning on white clothes. It is empty save for a table covered in white linens. White unlit candles stay positioned at the base of the table. She recognises it as the ụnọ ọgọdọ, the house of cloth, where the corpse (if any) will lie-in-state. The chairs and tables under the canopies are draped in white cotton. She sits at the back, under one of the canopies by the right side of the compound. A woman wearing a black round-necked shirt and black jeans swashes past. On her shirt is Aunty Ekeocha’s picture, name, and rest in what is that again?
But this woman’s weight reminds Ujuamara of Nkechi, her sister-in-law, who came banging at her gate the second time it happened, which was one year after the first.
Frank unlocked the door the morning after the first, crying, begging, promising it would never happen again. How could she not forgive a man, a whole man, who had humbled himself, submitted himself so low, so low, as to cry in front of a woman? His tears wiped the grim of his sins away from her heart, revealed her glistering love. To show his willingness to leave the past behind, he moved them out of the house with the lone red stain on the wall to a new one with unstained, immaculate white walls: the house where it happened the second time, where Nkechi banged on the gate. Ujuamara unlocked the gate, feigning pleasantness. Nkechi’s smile was stiff. Nkechi did not call her Electric Umuagbala as they fondly did. In fact, Nkechi called her nothing.
Water? No. Wine? No. Juice? Sit down I came to talk with you.
Ujuamara sat, her eyes buried on the blue throw pillow. The space beside her deflated, something moist lifted her palm. Nkechi’s eyes were now misty.
“Nnem, gbahara, biko.”
Ujuamara had been strong. After Frank stormed on her, and out of the house, she wiped her tears and focused on healing the bruises in her mind, on her face, stomach, arms. Two days later, he had not come home; she did not cry; she did not call him. And there she was, thinking Nkechi would bang judgment on her, but Nkechi asked her to Nnem, forgive, please. Ujuamara had been strong, but Ujuamara dissolved in tears. Nkechi pulled Ujuamara’s head to her chest. Ujuamara did not fight. She rested on Nkechi’s chest. Both their tears slid down Ujuamara’s cheeks. She saw herself again, wearing her pink nightgown, under Frank’s strangling grip. Her life flashed before her and flashed finish. Her breath ceased. Her eyes stayed on Frank, before her sight would freeze, hoping to reach their love, hoping to reach those days when they eloped to God-knows-where to just enjoy each other’s company. But that Frank was not in the eyes of her assailant. Her tongue shot out of her mouth in a desperate attempt to get air into her brain. Then blackness. Then. AIR! AIR! The air was as intense as winding down the window of a speeding car. She inhaled noisily as if she was having an asthmatic attack. Coolness circled in her head. Whiteness was her sight, then her immaculate white walls, then BOOM! Uncle Thunder fired her again. Pestle and mortar pounded again. The door banged shut.
But she forgave because Nkechi asked her to. Frank came back that night looking aged. Greybeards sprouted all over his face. When did he turn grey? How old was he again? She would know when she added eight to her thirty-nine, but the math was not forthcoming. The little that would have come fled when her legs clamped together. Frank was on his knees, painting her legs with snot, wailing. Beside him, on the white tile, was a bouquet. How come she didn’t notice those lovelies? An ant crawled into the flower. Frank was her man, the only man she’s ever loved, her first, the father of her three teenagers. He was her Frank. Nkechi was right. It was the devil. Someone must have sent a bad spirit into him the last time he visited the village else would someone please tell Nkechi and Ujuamara how Frank suddenly started hitting his wife of seventeen married years after a visit to the village to lay the foundation of his new house.
The time Frank bought her the Swatch, she called Nkechi. Nkechi fumed like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s burning furnace, “How dare he hit you again? He promised me!”
When Frank bought the Gucci shoes, Nkechi sighed in utter resignation and asked Ujuamara to pray Frank out. After that call, Ujuamara sat on her makeup desk, brought out a razor, a red pen, a jotter, and titled its first page: Obituary. She did not put a name yet: could not. She looked in the mirror. The gaunt woman with dry pale skin, not shiny like buttered moon, was not her. She smiled, but she looked like a smiling skull. She shut her mouth, her eyes. She took a deep breath. Picking up her razor, she went to watch TV one last time. Then she lucked into the arms of Ekeocha whose voice violined sense. YouTube became her P.A. She downloaded every video she found of Ekeocha Ezeuche for keep’s sake. She mentally composed countless letters to Dear Aunty Ekeocha. Only Aunty Ekeocha would understand. Only Aunty Ekeocha would not ask her to “pray him out.” Only Aunty Ekeocha would tell her she was equally a human being. Who else would Ujuamara talk to? Her mother whose blood pressure competed with an elevator? Or her father whom she was sure would do absolutely nothing. Her children? No. She did not want them to see their father in that light. Who else could she talk to? Ekeocha. Aunty Ekeocha, her sister-in-complexion, Electric Umuagbala.
At bedtime, Ujuamara spoke to Aunty Ekeocha.
While others wished Jesus a good morning, her own wishes went to…
Aunty Ekeocha.
When she was not speaking to
Aunty Ekeocha
she was listening to…
Aunty Ekeocha.
When she drove, it was…
Aunty Ekeocha.
When she swept, mopped, moped, washed, cooked…
Aunty Ekeocha.
How about that summer when Ujuamara’s appetite travelled to America?
Aunty Ekeocha.
Okay, what of that time Ujuamara turned to mosquito because the food she pushed down her mouth melted its way to (and through) her colon and out?
Aunty Ekeocha.
Then Ujuamara decided to stroll or run every morning and night to keep the body alive, enjoy the breeze, and spend time with?
Aunty Ekeocha.
So, you mean all those times her children came back from boarding school she did not tell them?
No.
Who did she then tell…?
Aunty Ekeocha.
Wait o…
Wait.
Frank beat her again?
Who: did: she: tell?
Aunty Ekeocha.
You mean the beating got worse? Wuuaaat! No way! But she told who?
Aunty Ekeocha.
And she mentally talked to…?
Aunty Ekeocha!
Aunty Ekeocha!!
Aunty Ekeocha!!!
A sharp pain jabs her toes, drawing Ujuamara back to the “funeral.”
“Ah! Nne, sorry o! Ewoo, oyibo, sorry! Sorry!” The girl, wearing a black T-shirt with Aunty Ekeocha’s picture, bends to dust Ujuamara’s foot.
Ujuamara collects her foot. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Hei, sorry o! It’s a mistake! Sorry, oyibo!”
Her voice is as loud as a gong. Ujuamara’s eyes dart around. Heads are beginning to turn, heads she did not know when they rolled in.
“Hey! What was I thinking o!”
“It’s okay,” Ujuamara says between clenched teeth. She squeezes her mouth to join the clenched teeth. “You’re causing a damn scene. I said it’s okay, for goodness sake.”
Only the screamer’s head lowers, only her eyes clog with resignation, shame, only she walks away. Ujuamara closes her eyes and sighs, waiting for the heads to roll away. When she opens them, everyone has faced their fronts—women-in-black, all of them, discussing and laughing as if they are in the marketplace. Their raised voices try to outshout the music. When did they gather? And where are the men? One middle-aged man sits by the corner, pressing his phone. His Ankara attire is colourful. It calls her mind to the fact that she too is dressed in a (silk) black gown like the women. She thinks about going to the other side of the compound brewing with colourfully-dressed, moody-looking men, discussing in low tones. But before she wills herself to move, the siren bellows. The wails follow. Half of the women in front of her jumps and relocate their hands to their heads. Ujuamara, on instinct, wants to rush to the women and console them, but her butt refuses to leave the chair. Maybe it is the site of the car reversing slowly into the compound. Her heart starts to boom-boom! The crying women gather around the now-stopped car, that’s right, crying. The criers know to cry from a distance. Four men in white suits, wearing pilot caps, alight from the car and open the trunk. Ujuamara’s palms rush to cover her chest and push it back in case it has plans of falling out. The men slowly pull out a white, gold-rimmed coffin. All hell let loose! Some of the criers fall on the ground, melodramatising. The men carry the coffin into the ụnọ ọgọdọ, followed closely by Aunty Ekeocha’s two sons and one daughter. The remaining persons in the same white lace as Aunty Ekeocha’s children stay outside, children included. It is beginning to seem true, all these. Yet Ujuamara remains an ostrich. A coffin is not proof of anything. It’s the corpse that’s the proof. If it is Aunty Ekeocha in reality inside that coffin, dead, as in not moving, then it is true.
Her sack of courage is punctured by doubt and fear slowly sips out. The fear is not from all the frenzy; it is from déjà vu, the first time Aunty Ekeocha came to her. It happened on a morning, on a cracked tar road, while Ujuamara walked home after a long stroll, her ears plugged with headphones. Aunty Ekeocha’s voice walked in her brain and its environs. She walked with Aunty Ekeocha into a big sandy compound with an opened black gate, brown fence, funeral banner, a duplex, a white ụnọ ọgọdọ. Aunty Ekeocha was with her: with: her. Ujuamara stopped walking. Aunty Ekeocha beckoned to her. It was the same Aunty Ekeocha whose smiling face graced the large funeral banner hanging by the right side of the house. Aunty Ekeocha kept beckoning to her to enter the ụnọ ọgọdọ. Ujuamara willed herself to move because it was Aunty Ekeocha asking. There was a white, gold-rimmed coffin on the white table. Aunty Ekeocha stood by the door, moving her fingers back and forth. Ujuamara trembled closer, closer, to the unlidded coffin and looked at the body. Obi ya welụ wa! cracking, her heart, sounding, shattering like an exploding wine bottle. Aunty Ekeocha, by the door, shrugged. Ujuamara’s mind snapped out of that strange place. She’d been on the cracked tar road all along and was now close to home. She stopped walking, started stamping her foot, nodding her head, snapping her fingers, binding and casting, tying and throwing death into the bottomless pit where they were to stay until Jesus comes.
She ran home, rushed for a glass of water, gulped it down, shoved the cup under the running tap, gulped it down again. Life came back to her. She staggered to her sofa and dropped like a bag of cocoyam. When her breathing steadied, she unclicked her phone from airplane mode and clicked on the bluebird.
Trends for you
Trending in Nigeria
#Buhari
#Rip
#Ekeocha Ezeuche
#tinkakurupan
Her heart took off. She clicked. Sweat rained on Ujuamara. She shook her head, rubbed her wet fingers on her pants, and went to ask Google. Google cried news about Ekeocha’s death after a brief illness. Ujuamara waited for her heart to come back from where it ran to. Then she went to her room, snuck out that jotter, and opened it. Obituary was faintly there, no thanks to fading ink. She wanted to write Ekeocha. She could not bring herself to do that. Write Ujuamara. No. Kedu maka Frank? No. She closed the jotter and hid it away. Standing there, before her wardrobe, she promised herself that she would go to Achina during the “burial.” She would be the one to knock these Twitter oblivions to reality with the news that Ekeocha was not dead abeg.
“Testing the microphone!” the MC bellows, attempting to outdo the music. “Others! Miscellaneous! Bịa nu kita ọ bụrụ na ị choro ị hụ ozu mama anyị nnukwu!”
Ujuamara knows she falls under those now termed “miscellaneous.” It is their turn to go say goodbye to Mama. She tucks her purse under her armpit.
“Why are you crying! Why are you crying! Ọ bụ nnukwu ozu. A naghi ebere nnukwu ozu akwa!”
Ujuamara looks at the speaker and the spoken-to. Why did the speaker refer to the corpse, whoever is in there, as Big Corpse? Who told her they don’t cry for Big Corpse? Big in what sense really? Big as in fat, elderly, or moneyed? It strikes her that Aunty Ekeocha ticks all three boxes. Can it be that Aunty Ekeocha is dead? No, God forbid! She unzips her purse, takes out her phone, zips it back, and tucks it under her armpit. She will take a snapshot of the fake corpse and show the world. This family must confess where they hid Aunty Ekeocha.
“Anybody caught taking pictures will be arrested!” The MC announces.
He must be addressing his late grandfather because she must take pictures. Enough of this nonsense already! She turns on her camera and hides her phone in the pocket of her gown. Her steps are quick until she gets to the door of ụnọ ọgọdọ. It is celestial: the icicle lights, the drooling white cloth, the lighted candles: beautiful. Some men, wearing the same black T-shirt with Aunty Ekeocha’s face on it, stand like trees, monitoring. Ujuamara has been here before: the opened white coffin, its gold rims. But this coffin has a glass covering, sealing whoever is in there. Her heart will not let her hear word. Her gait is a snail’s. The corpse is light-skinned. She peeps when she reached its head.
Aunty Ekeocha.
She freezes.
Her eyes stay with Aunty Ekeocha. Maybe Aunty Ekeocha will shake. The glass covering pressed down on Aunty Ekeocha’s nose as if she is stuffed into a small-sized coffin. There is no way anyone can breathe like that. Except such a person cannot breathe = such a person is dead = Aunty Ekeocha is dead? Aunty Ekeocha is truly dead. Chai! Oluwaaaaa! Gooooorrrrrd!
Someone taps her. She jumps. It is one of the trees, showing her the door. She steadies herself the best she can and walks out. But it cannot be. It cannot be. What then will she do now? What? No, tell her what she will now do now that Aunty Ekeocha is inside that coffin?
All I have is what you gave me
And who I am is what you made me
Absolutely nothing without you
Absolutely nothing without you
…is the only song the DJ’s common sense (or lack thereof) asks him to play? The lyrics drip into Ujuamara’s ears. It’s true—she is absolutely nothing without Aunty Ekeocha. Dunsin Oyekan can be absolutely nothing without the Lord all he wants, but she, Ujuamara, she; she is absolutely nothing (nothing!) without Aunty Ekeocha. If only the sizzling sun will leave Ujuamara’s face alone and go bother someone else. Maybe this glutton here gulping beer, or those children outside the compound chasing after each other and laughing.
But no, the sun stuck with her, just as it did her house the day she mopped the floors, wincing from the pain of last night’s pummelling, listening to Aunty Ekeocha. When the world gives you a bowl of bull shit, refuse to eat it because humans don’t eat shit. She nodded and squeezed her mop. Throw the bowl of shit at whoever gave it to you. If only she had the power to throw the shit back at Frank’s face. But there she was mopping the floor, yellow smelly bullshit peeking out the gates of her teeth. She dipped her mop inside water. Because guess what, the shit would only make YOU sick, not them. Ujuamara heard her own voice screaming, saw Frank’s fists taking their turn on her, saw Frank’s singlet soaked in sweat. You are all you have. Act like it! She squeezed the mop and winced. Her phone slipped from her pocket. She reached for it. It fell. She fell. The bucket fell. Ujuamara sat there in the puddle, pressed her hands to her mouth, and shrieked. The tears her eyes produced that day were as thick as engine oil, bearing the full weight of all the suffering Frank’s fists put her through.
The sun shines brighter, brighter, Ujuamara looks up. She is not in her house; there is no mop anywhere. But Aunty Ekeocha is standing right there, in a dusty compound filled with canopies, Absolutely Nothing blares from the speakers. An open grave is beside the foot of the banana tree by the edge of the brown fence. Aunty Ekeocha stands before her, smiling. Her misty eyes bristle with compassion, so full of compassion. Ujuamara smiles back.
“Aunty Ekeocha!” Ujuamara cries, but her lips do not move. Who cares? She opens her arms and rushes toward Aunty Ekeocha. But Aunty Ekeocha scrunches up her face and steps back. Ujuamara stops. She steps forward. Aunty Ekeocha steps back again, her forehead furrows, her eyes thin. She seems to be frowning at something behind Ujuamara. Ujuamara turns to see what it is. People are gathered right in front of the ụnọ ọgọdọ. How has she missed the commotion? She turns front again to Aunty Ekeocha but she is no longer there. She glances around: no Aunty Ekeocha. The noise behind her gets louder. She needs to have this gist handy for Aunty Ekeocha. She rushes back to them, hoping to get this over with before chasing after Aunty Ekeocha. She sees through their bodies. How? Not her business, please. But what she sees is damn right her business. She sees Ujuamara dressed in a black silk gown. She looks at her gown; it is the exact one. But she’s standing here, so why is that Ujuamara sleeping in front of ụnọ ọgọdọ? What the…
Whiteness.
No sign of life.
No sign of death.
No sign of in-between.
No sign.
No.
Kasimma is from Igboland (obodo ndị dike). She’s the author of All Shades of Iberibe. She is the 2022 Nikky Finney Fellow at the University of Kentucky and the Humanities Graduate Fellow at the University of Utah. Her short stories, essays, poems, and scripts appear in Solarpunk, LitHub, Magonprism, The Saltbush Review, Afreecan Read, Native Skin, Meet Cute, and many other online journals and print anthologies. Kasimma is an alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie’s creative writing workshop, Wole Soyinka Foundation writers’ residency, and other residencies across four continents. You can read more of her pieces at https://kasimma.com/read-
