THE WORLD IS WHITE AND EMPTY WHEN I TAKE MY first few steps outside the bonesetter’s sore little region. I walk with the help of crutches, my injured right leg heavy as a log, but I am happy to momentarily escape the acute smell of pain and Dettol. The matron steadily sprinkles Dettol disinfectant to kill whatever bacteria or germs are waiting in the shadows to infect wounds. The Dettol also drives away the odour of sores. I take more walks without Usonwa shuffling behind ready to offer her arms. Finally, I am happy to drop the crutches, even if I think the ground unsteady and ready to give way if I march too hard.
The first place I visit as soon as I have the full use of my legs again is the cybercafé at Ogige market, to apply to work there. I am not sure how much money I can make as a cybercafé assistant, but I’d be happy to bring smiles to the faces of people who come to check their results. I will try to save and repay my sister Oyimaja and Nnamdi Adaka. Besides, it sounds impressive to introduce myself as a cybercafé assistant, and Machebe might even treat me with a little respect.
I am also thinking of sitting the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board exam, to try to get into the university to study sociology and anthropology. I began to read even more during my convalescence at the bonesetting clinic: novels, old newspapers the patients used as toilet paper, anything I could lay my hands on. I learned that looking at some people as having less worth is a social construct. I want to access more scholarly views on social segregation to try to overcome my complexes. Perhaps I can even carve out some recognition for myself despite my history and caste.
One day, I take a stroll towards the open country to clear my head. It has been a period of erratic weather, now windy, now sweltering, the trees nutty brown. My father was probably right when he said that our rebellion against Ezenwanyi was part of the problem. I find myself drawn to Ezenwanyi’s shrine and its curiosities more and more. The attama is sitting in the thatch hut as usual, his face, in deep shadow, turned away from me when I walk in.
“Attama.” I bow my greetings and walk in to sit on a bench as the old man indicates with a wave of his staff, the same bench I had sat on with my father to have my ancestral benefactress unveiled.
“A woman came to the shrine to dedicate her baby to Ezenwanyi,” the attama begins to say in his usual chatty way, being a very conversational person. “The woman had come to terms with her infertility, and in order to protect the baby bequeathed her by her co-wife in a world full of evil, she decided to dedicate the child to Ezenwanyi.” He pauses and shakes his head. “Whoever heard of such magnanimity from a co-wife? The child was a girl. She grew into a beautiful woman and got a suitor. Her suitor did not know that she had been dedicated to Ezenwanyi as a baby when he married her. The couple had a baby boy, but not another child came. When the man’s father consulted a dibia to know what had sealed the young woman’s womb, he came to the truth about his daughter-in-law’s background. Having been dedicated to Ezenwanyi as a baby, the young woman had become Ezenwanyi’s bride and possession. It would have cost the husband nothing more than to take her bride price to this shrine and perform a few rituals to put things right and reclaim his bride. But he wanted to be more Christian than the white man who introduced him to that religion. He would not budge even after realizing that the jealous goddess had taken away from them the power of procreation as a couple. And then the woman died. He had her buried at the churchyard. He had a second chance to put things straight when her remains were accidentally exhumed with her head untouched by white ants some years after her burial. He was supposed to rebury her exhumed remains at Ezenwanyi’s grove, but instead he reburied her in a tomb that stands at the entrance to his house. The wrath of the goddess then fell on their only child and struck him down in his prime. What the man has failed to see is that he will be the next victim unless he comes around to perform the atonement rites. The deaths will not stop until his lineage is closed. That’s how jealous and fiercely possessive Ezenwanyi can be.” He pauses again. “These godheads are terrible and unpredictable beings, and people should avoid getting in their way.”
I do not realize why the story of the infertile woman and the baby that became Ezenwanyi’s “dedicate” strikes a note of familiarity until I am in bed and pondering my long dialogue with the attama. Although he had not mentioned names, I realize the young woman in the story must be Ehamehule’s mother. I also learn that the arua staff is rooted in superstition and the few skeptics among the village elite live in dread of the infliction supposedly visited upon anyone who goes against the order of things. The deaths of my aunt Okike and Ehamehule’s mother are two symbolically significant events with the potential to change the course of history. My mother’s tears were, more than for Ehamehule’s tragic end, for the memory of his mother, who, like my aunt Okike, was caught in the crosshairs.
“Good book you’ve got for yourself there.”
When I look up from the book I am buried in at the cybercafé, where I now work, I see that the young man speaking is about my age. He has a husky voice, a finely boned face, and wears a new haircut that starts halfway up the sides and back. The haircut is more fitting than I have seen on anyone else wearing it. He’s a National Youth Service Corps member; I can see that from his crested vest, khaki pants, and jungle boots.
“I am Chikelue.” He extends a nut-coloured hand. His fingers are long slender pencils with strong pink nails.
“I am Dimkpa.” The hand is warm when I stand up and take it in my own palm. He is a head taller as we settle into seats.
The book I am reading is a novel by Toni Morrison. It’s about Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who killed her own daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement. We talk about the book, loudly because we are the only two in the cybercafé. He has read the book twice, and wouldn’t mind reading it a third time. Reflecting on the story and my ancestry, I think if Obochi had had half Margaret Garner’s courage, she would have done the same thing to her child. The intensity of her hate paraphrases the strength of the love he draws from her.
I like Chikelue, for the huskiness of his voice, and the well-formed words that spill from his rounded mouth and pert lips. He is at the cybercafé because he is having trouble with his scanner, which my colleague helps to fix. But he continues to come to the cybercafé to see me afterwards. We exchange novels and talk energetically about them. Eventually, I learn that his mother is from Ohodo, a town not too far from mine, and his father is from Imo state, and they both live in Lagos with his only sister. As a National Youth Service Corps member, he has a primary assignment at the University Secondary School, where he teaches economics. For the first time since Eke’s death, I feel I have made a friend.