MY FATHER IS STILL IN SHOCK WEEKS AFTER HIS PUBLIC humiliation. He seems a broken man. He no longer swallows huge dollops of fufu with a deep noise in his throat like he used to; he now pecks like a bird. No matter how hard my mother presses him, he returns his meals almost untouched—to the pleasure of the twins. I wish he’d fight back, but instead he sits coiled under the umbrella tree, grinding his jaw and tapping his foot on the ground. He has vowed he will no longer go to any village meetings or gatherings, and has sworn never to set foot in the village hall. He drinks until he stinks of ekpetechi, and he tips snuff from his king-size box into his pinched palm, takes his time to dress it into a small black hill, and inhales in one furious and noisy sniff.
My father’s frustration, his reluctance to rise and reclaim his throne, angers me, even more so because my hopes of going back to school have been dashed. The melancholic mood in the house is driving me up a wall. The silence sends me out to the street in search of some comfort. I yearn for Eke’s company and head towards his house. I stop outside the aluminum house with its unforgiving yellow paint and crouch behind the skyscraping coconut tree swaying in a strong wind. I know his mother is home when I see Eke sidling out of the house slyly after I signal him with a whistle.
My father’s shame blows like a strong wind across the community, I know. I see it in Eke’s wide, solicitous face. But we do not speak about it. We are determined to remain friends, content to respect each other’s privacy.
“I am going in search of a sample tomb for Okike,” I say to save the embarrassing silence between Eke and me.
“I know where we can find a good tomb, but it is a long trek from here, in a village near Ohe,” he says.
Eke and I have been to Ohe stream to catch crabs and tadpoles many times. My best catch ever was a guinea fowl, a pretty bird I tried to keep among my mother’s chickens only to wake up one morning to find it gone—like Okike—even before we had a chance to learn about tender care and birdsong, those kinds of loving corners. We had even ventured up to Adada River to try to fish after school. Had my mother known this, she would have not only spoken to me with lemons in her voice but also called a family meeting.
“You should go to Lagos,” Eke says as we walk. “You should tell your father to ask your cousin Beatrice to take you.”
I have never thought of going to Lagos, but now that Eke has suggested it, I see the brilliance in his idea, even though I sense where it is coming from. Eke knows that my father is finished and has nothing left to offer me.
After walking for an hour and half, we find the tomb in a compound with a modest whitewashed house, a row of flowers leading up to its dark brown door. The tomb lies to the right, carpeted with dead leaves. There is no sign of life, but the air is warm. I can smell a bakery nearby. I move closer. The tomb is decorated with attractive bright blue tiles. It is the size of my father’s bamboo bed. The floor around it is covered in costly-looking white stones.
“The owner of the house is a rich trader living in Onitsha. His father lives in the tomb,” Eke says.
For a long time I stare in admiration, knowing I have found the right tomb for my aunt Okike. Moving closer, I catch the smell of old wet bark sharp against the cold morning air. My stomach rumbles, revolting against the familiar stench, reminiscent of a concoction my mother prepares with leaves and barks and forces me to swallow whenever I have a fever.
I don’t understand why people take their dead to Bishop Shanahan Mortuary when all dead bodies will end up in the belly of dead-flesh mites.
“Don’t put me in the fridge for too long when I pass on,” I remember my father saying.
He doesn’t support embalmment because it leaves dead bodies sallow-faced and unrecognizable if they are left too long in the mortuary. My father has a high opinion of himself, thinking the family will let my mother waste what little money she makes sending him to a mortuary.
I wonder if the man lying in the tomb was taken to Bishop Shanahan Mortuary. The coffin is probably gone now with the flesh, down the throats of famished termites. I imagine the white ants gorging themselves on his bulbous eyes, attracted to the delicious smell of death. Leaving two hollows where the eyes used to be, working their way to the ample nose and chunky lips, finally falling on the massive body. By the time they are through with him, nothing is left: only vermin, only the Catholic aura, and a set of teeth grinning at me from a hollow-eyed skull.
I shudder to think of Okike in the same way.
We pass Madam Bridget’s bar on our way home. Eke insists we stop for a drink. He goes to the bar once in a while to grab a mouthful of alcohol and listen to men’s talk. Madam Bridget’s bar is easily the most popular drinking joint in the village. It is a short walk down the road from the village intersection, a wooden shed painted bright blue.
The bar is lively with loud highlife music and voices in animated conversation, accompanied by the wild guffawing of drunken men. The inside is littered with mugs, plates, and spoons. The tables and the floor are wet, covered with a whitish, foul-smelling substance streaked with black. Hanging in the air is the heavy smell of scum. Flies rise in their numbers as customers part the light wind-swayed curtain and walk in. We settle on benches to wait for our drinks.
“Dimkpa,” Eke says, laughing in his crackling-bushfire voice as my bottle of Coke arrives instead of a beer, “when will you stop drinking sugar and drink a man’s drink?”
The drunken men burst into laughter.
“I am not surprised,” says Oko, who spends most of his day begging for drinks at the bar. “Ohu ma are not meant to enjoy things meant for people like us.”
The bar explodes with their guffawing.
“Your father got what he deserved.” Oko’s affront is accompanied by a loud, drunken belch. “I would have my manhood cut off the day he became village head.”
I feel anger rearing inside me like firewater corked in a bottle and vigorously shaken, but Eke taps me to calm me down.
“He is a clown, remember,” he whispers.
Eke is right. It is better to stay clear of Oko’s path if you don’t want to get him permanently on your back.
We walk away.