MACHEBE HAS BEEN LOOKING AT ME FUNNY. HIS EYES are all over me this morning as I move around the house. His stare unsettles me. Imagine a tiger incarnate with a hard orange-brown stare. I can’t take it anymore, so I walk up to him. “Why are you looking at me like I am prey you are about to pounce on?” I demand.
“That’s exactly what I feel like doing, pouncing on you.” He puts down one of a pair of nice canvas shoes he bought yesterday and has been stroking all morning, carefully placing it on a low stool beside the other waiting its turn to be caressed.
This is one of the many ways Machebe and I are different. I spend the coins I make from load carrying at Ogige market on snacks and soft drinks, on any ice-cold Coke that stares at me from a hawker’s plastic bucket. But Machebe will save up to buy a pair of rainbow-coloured canvas shoes or a good shirt with the profits he makes from basket weaving. He will hold his hunger until food is ready at home, even if it is cocoyam and grey soup. Sometimes he even hands his earnings to my mother and says, “Take this to help with food.” I envy him, because I am not half as thoughtful. I have a weakness for chilled soft drinks.
“Did you think I would not know that you fled from a boy your age?” Machebe says.
So it’s about Ehamehule. I don’t want to argue with him. I don’t want to rouse the tiger. His jaws are clamped tight already, his thews growing turgid. I know those tigerish signs, the huffing and snorting building to full tyrannical rage. I walk away with a hiss, ignoring his mocking laughter. My father always says that sidling is a clever way of dodging a combative bull without appearing cowardly.
Ogbuanya, our village head, dies the next day. A shrunken old man with two wives and many children. He dies in his sleep, after holding his position for almost a decade and half, our longest-serving village head.
“You were a few months old when he was installed,” my mother tells me.
Cannons are fired to announce his death to the village.
“They remind me of the war,” my father would sometimes say when he heard that sound.
“Spare us your gory details,” my mother would cut in.
But my father will not stop talking about the civil war and the history of colonial Nigeria. “Nigeria was taken by the British Empire around the mid-nineteenth century. The colonialists left in 1960 when the country gained its independence. But the enthusiasm that greeted the new republic was cut short by accusations of corruption against the first generation of Nigerian politicians,” my father says. “The first ever coup in the country was mostly executed by young, enthusiastic Igbo military officers from the east. The victims were mainly Hausa and Fulani people, including the prime minister, Tafawa Balewa. But the rebels failed to form a government, and General Aguiyi-Ironsi assumed power. The man was not even one of the coup plotters! He was a big military man—general officer commanding the entire Nigerian Army. But he was an Igboman, so it was easy for the aggrieved northerners to jump and say it was an ‘Igbo coup.’ They plotted a countercoup and brutally killed him. They tied him to a Land Rover and callously dragged him along the road until he died. They didn’t stop there, though; they massacred Igbo people living in the north in the hundreds of thousands, opening up the bellies of pregnant women. Odumegwu Ojukwu was the military governor of the eastern region. He wanted out of the Nigerian Federation because of the pogroms against his people. He called for a brand-new country, Biafra, so the military government led by northerners declared war against Igbo people.”
My father was young and unmarried when the war came. According to him, the drone of warplanes and heavy shelling smoked our people out like rabbits from their warrens. They fled every which way, but they were massacred, children abandoned by their mothers for crying loudly and threatening to give the rest of the family away, starvation feasting on their intestines, and kwashiorkor staring out of high, defined ribs and sunken eye sockets. My father’s family fled to Agu Umabo to hide, a place covered with mangroves, where the sounds of the warplanes were distant. The enemy, deceived by thick expanses of mangrove forests, did not realize that they were thickly peopled.
“I escaped death by the whiskers,” my father says. “Sometime in the middle of the war, as the drone of warplanes thickened and thinned in the distant sky, and as we ran out of food and more people died from kwashiorkor than the shelling, we snuck back into the village to find food, my friend Omeke and I, a trip that ended in tragedy. Omeke was shot at point-blank range after we were captured by enemy soldiers and herded into a hut. I tasted his blood and brains splashed all over me. I haven’t forgotten that grim picture. I still wonder why the bloodthirsty soldier shot Omeke yet spared my life. But I know now that the great Ezenwanyi interceded on my behalf.”
My mother would be an attentive audience to these speeches, nodding, shaking her head, and even shedding tears, but at the mention of Ezenwanyi she’d rise and walk out of the room. My father would then snort and reach for his snuffbox. He always reaches for his snuffbox when he is emotional, and if there’s a story that drives him to the edge of his feelings, it is the Nigerian civil war. He’d take a large pinch in both nostrils, and the next minute, dark-brown emotions would start to trickle out of his nostrils. And then he’d calm again, like when you put out a fire with water.
“I was full of anger at Odumegwu Ojukwu,” he would continue. “The man fled to a distant land to hide his beard. Yes, the man’s beard is thick as a grove. He ran away in the fullness of the war, like a coward. He brought our legs out, exposing and abandoning us to the mercy of the enemy. But now I know better what Odumegwu Ojukwu stood for, seeing the turn of events: how our children can hardly go to school or get jobs, and how our kinsmen are still being manhandled in the north, all because we lost the war.”
I spend a long time thinking of how Ezenwanyi saved my father, the terrible position the war put him in, and how our family’s only hope is for him to become village head. Sometimes I wonder if he blames his failures too much on the war. But none of this matters anymore, because Ogbuanya has passed on, and so my father will be the next Onyishi.
My mother explains this all to us as the cannons fire, a flush brightening on her nose. She pauses to let it sink in, and I can tell she’s excited, too, even if she pretends to be sad about the old man’s death. I do not know how she expects us to react to the news, whether to dance or jump up or start giggling. Or dash off to the neighbourhood to share the news with friends.
“There will be plenty of eating and drinking.” She comes down to the level of the twins.
The prospect of feasting breaks on Ebube’s and Ihebube’s thin faces like a brilliant new dawn. They never let a morsel of food pass by them.
I ponder this shift in power, what my family will gain. My dream of going back to school comes alive. Perhaps I will even go to university and become somebody in life. I will dress in suits and ties, and sit in an air-conditioned office. Even Machebe, who has creative hands, will have enough raffia to make baskets and brooms, which he will sell at Ogige market. Or perhaps he will pursue his dream of becoming a mechanic. This opportunity has come at the right time. My father is no longer able to make bricks since dislocating his hip bone while he was working. My mother feeds the family. She picks things: wild mangoes, oil bean seeds, palm kernels, anything she can lay her hands on, and sells them to support us, but I feel this work is below her. When my father is crowned Onyishi, our patrimony will include arable farmlands and economic trees, enough to keep my mother’s hands busy, and enough to bring wealth to the family. A better life. A fitting tomb for Okike. A future for me.
“The day is going to be ahum in the village,” says my mother. “The deceased village head will be buried for your father to ascend the throne. The handover rite will be done before the burial by village elders and kingmakers from the nearby villages, making your father the official village head. Your sister Oyimaja will receive the arua staff for your father because she is his first daughter. It will be kept in your father’s custody for as long as his reign lasts, until his death, and only then will the patrimony shift to his successor. Your father will be addressed as Edoga whenever he raises a short, crooked staff to speak during his reign.”
It is a nicely sugared chronicle.
My married older sisters, Oyimaja and Ekete, arrive, along with other relatives, hope brightening their faces, laughter on their lips. Their arrival sets the day’s activities in motion. After a long trek their feet are dusty, their foreheads oily. Ekete’s slippers have large holes in their soles. I would not be seen dead wearing slippers with holes. I would rather walk barefoot. My mother has returned from Ogige market, where she went to buy foodstuffs for a large feast. Drawn by loud conversations and laughter, neighbours and friends stroll in to eat and drink with us in merriment as the heavy percussion of Igede dance filters in from the village square.
“Hurry. We can’t afford to keep the kingmakers waiting,” my father says.
He is already dressed in his best, in his ishiagu: a long gown embroidered with a lion’s wild, savage countenance, three rows of coral beads, and a black cap. A wrappa, tied around his waist and twined at his left hip the way it is done when someone dies, sways in rhythm with his uneven steps. I didn’t realize he could still salvage some of his old good looks.
“I wonder what is keeping your brother Onumonu,” he says to my mother. His manner is becoming impatient. “He is supposed to go with us to witness the handover ceremony.”
“I am sure he will be here soon,” my mother says.
I know my mother is not comfortable with my father touching the arua staff, an object she considers heathen. She is not opposed to him becoming village head or her becoming Obloko, but she is afraid of what the parish priest will think of some of the traditions. Afraid of being banned from receiving the Holy Communion. Eke will probably not show up at the village square. His mother will kill him if he gets himself involved. His presence there would make headline news: the son of a church warden enmeshed in idol worship. Not only would his mother be forbidden from receiving the Holy Communion, but she would also be ostracized.
Uncle Onumonu arrives, to my father’s delight.
“Have something to eat and drink,” my father says to him. “We are running late.”
Uncle Onumonu declines the food my mother offers him. It is clear from the look on his square face that something is wrong. “There is a situation.”
The tone of his voice forces my father to take a seat. My mother is half dressed, her face taut with apprehension.
“I came from the village square. I went straight there, believing you were there already for the coronation. I met the kingmakers as they were leaving.” Onumonu scratches his rough beard. “A new village head has already been crowned.”
There is a deathly silence as the news sinks in. My father lets out a deep groan. From the village square Igede music floats in, providing an acoustic background to the booming of more cannons. The deceased village head is being buried, which can only happen after a successor has been crowned. Suddenly my father storms out of the room. I expect him to grab a machete and dash to the village square to confront the kingmakers, but instead he merely stands in the compound with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes are raised to the sky in a hopeless gesture. And then he lets out a long, strangled cry.
My family has never been thrown into such a deep mourning. It is as if someone has died.
“Amuta is the name of the man who was crowned the village head in place of your father,” my mother explains after my sisters and the other relatives have left us alone in our sad, lonely house.
I know him, a man my mother says is several years younger than my father, a thickset man who goes around the village mostly without a shirt on, a machete or other farm tool always in his grip.
“Mother, if the headship of the village is not contestable, if it goes only to the oldest man in the village, then how could this happen?” I ask, wondering if the man took the crown from my father because he is thickset and goes around the village showing off his brawn.
My mother says, “Your father was robbed. The whole thing is a conspiracy, a wicked gang-up by the village against him.” Pausing briefly, my mother appears to be caught in some sort of conflict. It’s fugitive but intense, and I can feel her struggling with her inner self. And then her nerves relax in resolution as relief brightens on her face. “You are not such a child anymore,” she says, almost in a whisper. “This kind of thing has never happened in this village before. It happened because of who we are, because of who your father is.” My mother tries hard to smother a twinge of pain. “I want you to know that you are like any normal child in this village despite what has happened or what anyone may have done or said about you or this family. Because in this world people either like or dislike you. You should be able to identify people who truly like you and those who do not. Being careful how you associate with both, you must be able to manage your friendships and enmities. That’s all I can tell you.”
My hands ball into fists. I want to know more. I have a feeling my father was robbed of his right because he is “ohu ma”: that mysterious phrase that people rarely speak in the village, that is taboo in our house, and that I sense is connected to Ezenwanyi’s shrine. Perhaps it has something to do with my dream, too, with Okike and how she died. I have never heard of anyone else drowning in our village, ever.
But I have to be careful. My mother is touchy at the mention of my father’s beliefs. I don’t want to hurt her. I would rather let go of my curiosity than cause her further pain today.
Night falls with a sky strewn with a patchwork pattern, like a newly ploughed field. The moon is a slice of oiled yam hanging in the sky.
“Mother Nature’s food for her children, because Mother Nature treats people equally. Mother Nature doesn’t rob people of their rights,” my mother sighs, sitting in the moonlight and singing to the twins, Ebube leaning his head on her lap, and Ihebube already asleep on the mat under the umbrella tree.
Her songs resonate with sadness.