Chapter Eight

 

Ife was trying to concentrate as she listened to the other ladies at the meeting of the First Lady’s non-governmental organization. Journalists tended to refer to these organizations as ‘pet projects’ as they only lasted for the duration of their husbands’ tenure in offices. It had become fashionable after the first military president of the country’s wife had started such a project. It had become the thing to do, to be seen as supporting the charitable gestures of the wives of Governors or heads of state. It was probably intended as a good will gesture but Ife always had her own misgivings as she had learned from newspapers that most of the first ladies hardly ever had anything to show for their activities. They used their offices, staff that were on government payroll and more often invited wives of their politicians who happened to be holding public offices.

Ife looked around now and sighed for there didn’t seem to be much of any difference in the same collection of half literate ladies who by accident of marriage were now invited to be part of a pet project.

She had attended two meetings and had not been impressed by the offerings. Ife chaffed at the knowledge that she was stuck with the women. One particular woman, Nike-something, had taken a fancy to her. Ife was not interested in the offered friendship. When she had explained her mistrust to Babatunde, he had smiled and said she had to learn to be more accommodating. Each time the woman leaned over to talk to her, Ife felt dismayed. Mrs. Nike smelled like an abandoned toilet and had hair on her face and chest. Ife had to always struggle not to flinch, stare or show her disgust.

She stole a furtive look at her wristwatch wondering when the torture was going to be over. The outer door opened and refreshments were served. The Personal secretary came in and dropped some envelopes by the side of each lady and Ife sighed. She knew what was in them. It was called per diem, intended as compensation for their attendance at the meeting, and she felt sick. She had mentioned that to Babatunde and he had frowned when she explained that she wanted to return the money. He told her to find out first if that was the norm and to be very careful not to raise any disquieting objections.

“I think I will use them as donations for the Lavender Project I am thinking of, I actually want to call it the Women of Violet but it sounds kind of funny so I opted for the Lavender Project,” she said.

She jerked away from her thoughts when she heard her name being called. She was blank—the First Lady laughed and told the other ladies that Her Highness was probably worrying about her patients in the hospital.

Ife blinked and smiled, apologizing for wool gathering. The First lady smiled in return, and said she was forgiven, and the question was repeated for her benefit.

It was to decide which color they should use as aso-ebi for the next outing. Ife was furious and bit her tongue trying to contain her rage. ‘Aso-ebi’ was the uniform color that traditionally was picked by families to wear at ceremonies. Her father hated the concept and she had learned from him to avoid being part of that practice. Apart from the mandatory uniform while in school, she had made sure she didn’t dress in the same mode as anyone else. She absolutely had no intention of being dressed in the same fashion for the benefit of a project. In the name of the light, what has the dress got to do with the project?

Ife had all eyes turned on her and she swallowed. She apologized and murmured that she felt whatever color was chosen would be okay. She explained further that she really was not into the social graces of clothes and stuff and was generally comfortable in her white garb. The ladies laughed and one tall regal-looking lady gave her a penetrating look observing that Ife wasn’t much into social outing. Ife agreed and sent a silent thanks to the woman.

Much later as the meeting mercifully came to an end, the regal lady came up to her and introduced herself.

“My name is Tiwa, I am sure you will need me to brief you, on that meeting we just had.”

Ife said, “Oh dear, was I that obvious?”

“I watched you, Olori, your eyes and body language was an interesting study in sheer boredom—beautifully covered.”

“Oh boy.”

Tiwa laughed and fell into step beside her as they walked to their cars. Tiwa’s was a black colored beast that seemed to crouch ready to spring and she stood by it with a casualness that impressed Ife. Ife smiled as she went towards the car that Babatunde had sent over to take her around. An SUV with a driver attached. She had protested when he made that surprise gift, but now felt gratitude as she walked towards it. The driver came out respectfully to open the door for her. Tiwa watched her and mouthed a goodbye as she got into her own car and drove out of the government house premises.

On her way out, Ife pondered the day and decided she should find out more about her tall acquaintance for she felt that she had made a friend. Might not be in the same mold as the bearded smelly Nike but at least this one looks like a human being. Her phone rang and it was Babatunde checking how the meeting had progressed. She gave him her news and promised to be at the palace in good time.

Her next phone caller was Josephine and they made a lunch date arrangement for the next day. Josephine was coming over from Enugu in the southeastern part of the country. She had been there for three weeks and Ife was anxious to know if her attempts to appease her rejected fiancé had borne fruit.

Tinu was waiting for her when she got to the hospital and Ife felt normalcy had returned to her life. She soon had a change of heart when she heard why Tinu had come to see her.

“Now that you move in rarefied circles, what can you do for Lucas?”

“Speaking in parables will not get you anywhere; what is wrong with Lucas?”

Tinu gave Ife a considered look and her voice changed as she asked Ife that she had better sit down to receive the news. Ife gave her friend and cousin a speculative frown and shook her head as she checked her files for any urgent case needing her attention. She was unprepared for the bombshell from Tinu.

“Lucas has run away because the police have traced the missing girl to Lucas’ farm. He swears he doesn’t know anything about it and I believe him.”

“Whoa. Hold it will you? What missing girl?”

“Didn’t you hear about the girl that went missing two days ago?”

“Here in town? You mean it was announced on CNN maybe? Or the town crier went around the hospitals?” Ife asked.

Tinu paced.

“Why don’t you simply sit down and tell me the story from scratch so I can make out what happened from the beginning.”

Tinu sat down reluctantly and as she opened her mouth to talk, there was a knock at the door. It opened abruptly to show Lucas and a girl at the door. Lucas was unkempt and appeared distracted.

Ife invited them in as she gave the girl a keen glance. Suddenly she knew what was wrong for she saw the threads of a young boy hanging loosely and close to the girl. The threads didn’t hold firmly and that puzzled her—it actually started fading off as Ife tried to understand. The threads were also around Lucas. Ife’s heart felt heavy as she knew immediately what the issue was going to be about, but she allowed an outward calm to settle on her face.

“Where have you gone?” Tinu screamed at Lucas.

He kept his gaze on Ife and she saw the agony in his eyes—compassion rose in her for him but she said nothing. The girl stood silently by the door not saying anything. It was obvious that she was in the grip of some fear.

Tinu was getting worked up by the silence and demanded to know what was going on. The girl keeled over in a faint as Ife rushed in time to break her fall. She was bleeding. Ife immediately called for help from the hospital and rushed to give the girl first aid and emergency treatment.

The doctors that rushed to help Ife examined the girl; she was not pregnant but someone had raped her and made an incision in her lower abdomen. She also had been drugged as the girl only whimpered could not say anything more. Some dark substance had been rubbed into the incisions and Ife was shocked to see that her abdomen had been swabbed in a faint indigo color.

Ife knew then that the girl had been a near victim of ritual sacrifice, and went cold with concern and anger. How had Lucas become mixed up in this? Tinu was, however, not noticing the near escape of the girl from the hands of her would-be killers, but was staring in jealous horror at Lucas who refused to say anything except ask Ife if the girl was going to be helped.

“Who is this girl, Lucas?”

Lucas shook his head and left her to look at the now sleeping girl in the ward. Ife counseled Tinu to be patient, suggesting that she should wait for Lucas or the girl to be able to talk. Ife reminded her that she had come seeking help for Lucas, and Tinu should make that help available now rather than start an inquisition.

Lucas was persuaded to go to the hospital restaurant and Ife ordered for some food to be given to him. She noticed his badly scratched hands and swabbed them with disinfectant. Lucas accepted the ministrations calmly staring straight ahead.

When he finally was able to focus, Ife saw that he trembled with fear and he dropped his head and allowed his eyes to seek that of Ife. She saw that his eyes were pools of pain and confusion.

“Can I talk to you for a minute in private?” he finally whispered to her.

Ife nodded and invited him to her consulting room locking the door firmly after he had entered.

Lucas’ next action shocked Ife as he suddenly dropped his pants. His groin had been incised as well and swabbed with the same color, and Ife noticed there were slashes across his chest. Ife gulped and sent a very urgent telepathic call to Babatunde before she sat down.

Lucas told her what had happened.

He had gone to his farm as usual only to find the girl wandering around his farm, her eyes blank and she was incoherent. He assumed she was lost and tried to calm her down. She struggled free from his touch. Lucas said he noticed that she shrank from him and just kept pacing his farm in a strange circle. He broke the circle by sprinkling ash from the hut. The girl stopped pacing and stood still seeming to be held in a trance. He was worried about what to do and tried to remember if he had seen the girl before. It was while he was pondering his next action that he heard the crashing inside the forest next to his farm. He dragged the girl into the small hut and tried his best to keep her quiet. The crashing noise got closer and he knew that the men whose voices he could pick faintly must have traced the girl to the hut. Lucas said he was frightened as he listened to the steady incantations going on behind his closed hut but was powerless, as he had no countering incantation he could give as fear steadily rose in him. He could not say how many minutes he lay frozen and crouched by the door; all he knew was that the girl fainted and the door opened.

Four men rushed him. Their faces painted in the colors of indigo and black. When he came round, he was bound with the girl to a big tree that had been cleared in the forest. Some kind of liquid was forced down his throat and that of the girl. He watched as he was stripped and incisions made on his groin. He felt like he was watching a film while he saw himself rape the girl, but at the point of ejaculation he threw up. That seemed to have angered the men as he was beaten silently and methodically. The pair were tied up again, and the men conversed on what they were to do next. A knife was sharpened. Lucas said he felt very calm as he watched what was going to be his imminent murder. He said he felt no sense of fear or trepidation. His mind was just blank and he answered all questions put to him but could not remember his name and each time he tried, the men slapped him until he lost consciousness again. As he came round he heard the roar of a Lion and suddenly felt a sense of the present danger he was in, so he was able to pick one of the logs of fire and with a wild flourish followed the men. For some reason, his recovered senses sent fear into the men and they ran off.

The roar of the Lion got closer making them shiver and then he heard the screams of the men. The screech of spinning tires pulling away and then silence. He had assumed that the Lion had torn him apart and he was dead. When he woke up again, the girl was sitting calmly beside him, still blankly staring, and the thought became urgent in his head for him to seek out the Princess.

Ife was silent when he finished speaking but her heart was in a fever of overlaying thoughts. One soft knock and Babatunde walked in with Babamogba close behind. They did not say anything but led Lucas out of the hospital consulting room.

When Tinu barged in a minute later, she found Ife calmly writing case notes for the girl and there was no sign of Lucas. Tinu stopped abruptly looking round.

“You can check my drawers too, Tinu, Lucas is not here. He said he would like to pick something from outside the hospital gates and asked me to tell you that he needs to be home urgently so he can assure his mother that he is fine. I can drive you home in the next thirty minutes.” Ife’s voice was mild.

Ife watched her friend closely but did not say anything further, sensing that the less said, the easier it will be for Tinu to adjust to a normalcy that Ife herself did not as yet feel. There was residual vibration in the room for her to know that the two men who spirited Lucas away had not come into her consulting room physically. She knew she would have to take a look into that experience later.

Tinu was close to collapsing and Ife briskly offered her a glass of water, and began packing her bag. She promised that they would soon be on her way. She called Dr. Obinna about the anonymous female patient stating that she needed to be home but would be on afternoon shift the next day. She suggested that no one should be allowed to visit the girl under the pretext of being a relative. Ife also called the matron and gave her details of what had happened requesting that no one was to visit the girl and she was to be placed under security surveillance.

Fairly satisfied that she had done the best she could possibly do for the moment, she turned her attention to her cousin and friend and asked the driver to take them home.

~~~

 

Lucas was taken to the palace and became a patient of a sort. Babamogba treated him and Ife had to be patient with the monosyllabic answers she was given. She had a lot to think about anyway. The press either were muzzled or did not know about the previous girl who was murdered, for nothing about it came out in the press. The young girl that had come with Lucas made a very slow recovery. Ife checked if she knew what happened the night of the capture and she still looked blank. That had Ife really puzzled and worried. How could someone be so near death and still not be traumatized by the experience? Josephine told her that the girl was in a deep shock and that was why she viewed everything that had happened so calmly.

Josephine was back with her own issues but that was easy compared to the duties that Ife was now faced with.

“You know, I used to think I will just live through life blithely having answers given to me by my friends, but I am learning different,” she confided in Josephine one evening as they sat in her consulting room, one of the rare evenings that she was not handling an emergency.

“Welcome to the adult world, my dear friend, “Josephine replied.

“Even my sense of humor is tired,“ Ife continued. “If I am not trying to understand one aspect of our tradition, I am learning to be a good liar, which I find very alarming.”

“You just learned the art of being diplomatic, that is all. You were not going to tell that woman who came to visit you that she was not really pregnant after I brought the test results to you, were you?”

Ife shook her head firmly. “I had no choice in that matter; she had phantom pregnancy because she badly wanted to be pregnant for that boyfriend of hers so she could finally get married. That entire story that some witch had tied up her pregnancy was not going to work.”

Josephine said, “It was painful watching her face fill up with disappointment and tears rolling down. I never could handle that emotional part of the job.”

Ife nodded and explained that it was in such situations that she felt the most pain and she had never been able to remove her compassion of seeing a woman desperate to have a child.

Josephine agreed with her and wondered why in the contrary context, a woman would have a child and attempt to abandon the baby, more so when she was grown and mature and perfectly capable of having a child. Ife laughed knowing Josephine was referring to the scandal of a few days back when a woman had attempted to sneak away from the maternity ward. The woman was fairly comfortable, had come in swathed in expensive jewelry. What had been odd was she registered a single name and was very nervous. Ife had assumed that it was the labor pains that were making her nervous. She had asked if she had any baby things with her and the woman had said yes. Ife was expecting to see a bag, but suitcases had been brought in. When the baby finally came, a very beautiful, obvious half-caste, Ife was expecting to see an elated husband, but the woman had attempted to sneak out of hospital in the middle of the night. She had written a check for a million naira for the child she had named Christine.

Ife was the one who had seen what was happening and she took the lady to the Matron. It took the threat of Matron that the police will be called in to make the woman decide to talk. The second surprise for Ife that evening was when Matron leaned over and gave the woman a keen appraisal: “I think I know you, and your last name as well. That child does not belong to your husband and the child did not ask you to give birth to her and then be abandoned.”

The woman collapsed in tears and the story spilled out. She had wanted a child for fifteen years and in desperation when she learned that her husband had made another girl pregnant she had gone to a fertility clinic in Lagos. They had been treating her and the day she was asked to come with her husband so they could complete the process, she learned about the other girl of her husband. He had not only made one girl pregnant but three. According to the woman, her husband had said he was ensuring his seed were viable and also wanted to prove he was not impotent. The woman said she was so upset she went to a hotel, got drunk, and was serviced by a white male. She missed the appointment naturally and they rescheduled for another month. She also missed her period that month. The rest, they say, is history; the woman said she went to England for a while, was too ashamed to ask who was the male she had gotten drunk with that night. Most of the events of that crazy night was hazy in her mind. She asked to be separated from her husband and told him she did not want to have anything to do with him. Being rich in her own right made the separation easy for her, but emissaries had come from the husband, who being not as warm in the pocket as her, did not fancy looking after three pregnant girls and had asked his wife to come back. Then the woman had second thoughts but did not want to return with a pregnancy that was unplanned.

Both Ife and the matron were quiet for a while and then Matron smiled and gave the woman a compassionate smile. “I think you were meant to be a mother and not a wife. You can’t hide a human being forever, you know. What were you planning? That we kill the child for you? Or give her to another woman? How are we to explain she is half and half? You may not know much about motherhood right now but you will not easily wipe a live human, my dear. You are to be discharged tomorrow; how do I tell my CMD? Have you heard of babies being killed for rituals these days? Politics is around the corner and more mad people are turning up on our streets. A young innocent baby is priceless.”

Ife stared in horror as Matron went on, but the woman covered her ears with her hands, bursting into tears. Matron gathered the woman into her arms and winked at Ife giving the thumbs up sign. Ife quietly left the room.

That was two days ago. The woman left with her baby and Ife did not hear of a murdered baby. She prayed the woman would feel love for the child and give her child a home.