ARIYIKE
2015
I AM SITTING by myself in the women’s ministry office. It is the Saturday before Mother’s Day and the women’s choir is practicing in the auditorium. They are incompetent, noisy, and restive. It is going to be a terrible service; they are doubtlessly going to embarrass us all.
I borrowed Tola, the bishop’s logistics assistant, a few hours ago, but even he could not help with bringing some order to the chaos. He just sat in the seat on the other side of the table looking at me with judgment-filled eyes and saying over and over, “Just let the regular worship leader lead them. Everyone respects him.”
My friend Rosetta, who is leading the women’s choir, is a state governor’s wife who tithes in the millions and gifts me Balenciaga and Givenchy. She is a mile and a stretch more important to the ministry than all these talentless women combined. Her husband, the state governor, is the reason the church has two private jets. The church is the reason the state governor and his family never again have to fly commercial. This is not the only reason I let Rosetta lead the women’s choir. She is good for church membership growth. The younger girls adore her, the older women envy her. When she is present, all the women of this church coalesce around her like the edges of a wound.
The clank of triangles and drums and voices failing to harmonize sounds like a rowdy party in the distance. The women are succeeding in having fun, I can tell from the laughter traveling through the hallway to my little office in the corner of the building. I can tell Rosetta is being her brightest and most inspirational.
Every so often, after a new family joins our church, the wife finds her way to one of our Anointed Daughters meetings. Rosetta is there, the wife of the state governor serving, cleaning, and holding court. She draws people, makes even the most introverted make an effort to connect. Churches are built around personalities. It’s hard to admit, of course, because the goal is to lift Jesus up, but it is true. Rosetta, with her ease and calm, makes people feel like they have known her all their lives. We, Pastor David and I, call Rosetta our little lighthouse.
The television in my office sits on a steel cabinet in a corner. My weekly teaching program is on air and I am watching myself. It is a recap of last year’s Mother’s Day service. Our network has been playing my old messages throughout the week; yesterday, it was the message I preached on the last Resurrection Sunday. All the reports from last year and the year before that are laid out on my office table. It is a pitiful pile. We are expecting fewer people for Mother’s Day this year, even though we spent three times last year’s budget in advertising.
There isn’t much a church can do when its popularity begins to decline. Nigerian Christians are like little children. The women mostly, you’d find them with the newest, most interesting thing. These days, the most interesting thing is the prophetic, direct messages from God delivered with stunning peculiarity. Pastor David has never been that way; he is not a prophet, he is just a gifted teacher of the Word. Sadly, that counts for little these days.
Now all our programs, regardless of what we let people believe, go toward the strengthening and pampering of our loyal, committed members.
Therefore, I let Rosetta lead the choir. Even though she is tone-deaf and terrible at coordinating.
The door opens, and I am no longer sitting by myself watching myself on TV. My assistant walks in, looking more harried than usual.
“Good afternoon, Pastor Ma,” my assistant says.
“Bless you, darling,” I say.
“There is a young woman outside I think you should see,” she says. She says “young woman” quickly, like it’s a bad word, so I know this will be interesting. “Should I tell her to come back some other time, Pastor Ma?” my assistant asks as I hesitate.
“No. I will meet her in the visitors’ lounge.”
I have a small space next to my office, used for counseling. It’s standard practice for all pastors in our ministry to have a semi-open space with doors that cannot lock from the inside to protect our ministers from false accusations and temptations—mostly temptations to tell the truth.
The young girl has angry eyes. She is young, too young for the deep frown lines spread over her forehead like ridges on a yam farm. She has a tiny baby in her hands. At first, I look at her with a smile, but she does not smile back. I understand why she is so angry. It’s difficult being a young mother in Lagos. It’s a thousand times worse when you are a single mother. We have a welfare program, but we only help married women. We cannot, as a church, support fornicators and adulterers with tithes and offerings. Jesus says not to cast pearls before swine. I have personally, out of my own purse, helped many single mothers. My own twin sister has two children by a man she refuses to marry, even though they carry on like the Couple of the Year, so I’m not prejudiced or unreasonable.
“Good afternoon, Pastor,” she says to me.
“Good afternoon, my dear, the Lord bless you, sweetheart, you and your little—” I ask.
“Boy. It’s a boy, his name is Pamilerin,” she tells me.
“That’s a beautiful name, God will cause you to laugh indeed just like his name says, my dear,” I say.
“Amen,” she answers, and now she relaxes a little. Her frown lines disappear.
I REALIZE, WITH mild shock, that I know who this is. She is one of the music ministers, a worship leader in our University of Lagos campus church. I haven’t seen her in a few months, but no one said anything about a baby. I had assumed she graduated and left the state. I am used to young girls with talent for ministry disappearing from the church. We do not do a good job of retaining females in the ministry. First of all, the leadership of the church does not think females should ascend in ministry from position to position like men do. No, our access is always tied to the men in our lives, the husbands and fathers. Second, Christian practice is very masculine. It’s a religion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, after all. Our God is a man, His Son is a man. Therefore, all the sent are men. It is just the way things are.
“I am hoping you can help me,” she says.
“Of course I will,” I say. “How have you been? Are you still at the university?”
“I graduated three months ago,” she says.
“Glory to God.” My praise is a little louder than necessary, but it’s sincere. I am so glad she got her degree regardless. As a young mother, things will be harder for her—that degree is a palliative.
“I know you can speak to Pastor David on my behalf, Ma, so he can talk to his friend. He needs to take care of Pamilerin, time is running out.”
“My dear, I will talk to my husband, but I sense you are assuming I know more about this situation than I do,” I say, interrupting her. “Who do you need Pastor David to speak to on your behalf?”
“Teddy,” she says.
“Teddy?” I shout.
She says his name just like that. Like it is nothing for her, this little slip of a girl. She calls the state governor by his first name like just another one of her playmates.
“It’s been almost a year, I thought everyone knew about it,” she says.
“Knew about what?” I scream again, but she doesn’t flinch. She is used to this, I realize, adults losing their cool around her.
“We met here in church. Pastor David introduced us after last Youth Conference, then Teddy invited me over for a tour of the government house,” she says.
The last youth conference was in February. She must mean the conference the year before. We organize big meetings around Valentine’s to keep our youth occupied. I know the governor typically speaks at these events. He is such an inspiration, he grew up poor, he is a brilliant banker-turned-politician. He is a king our young people delight to honor.
“So, what does all this have to do with me? Why haven’t you gotten in touch with Teddy, as you call him?” I ask her.
She says the last time she heard from him, he gave her half a million naira for an abortion. She says she was going to go through with the abortion but then she heard the voice of the Lord loud and clear as she was sitting in the doctor’s office. She says the Lord said, “Alex, you can trust me with him.”
She says that’s how she knew to expect a son. She says that’s why she left Lagos immediately after graduating, why she now lives with her old father in Kwara. He is a retired police officer, she says; he is not rich, but they are comfortable. She has no plans to cause any trouble. She is only here because her son is sick.
“Pamilerin needs heart surgery, he has a hole in his heart, the surgery is very expensive. I have tried to contact Teddy since the week he was born but he has been ignoring all my messages,” she says.
“All you little girls who think you know everything, you heard God tell you not to have an abortion. Why did you not hear God and refuse to have sex with my friend’s husband? Do you have any idea what parenting is? You thought it was just getting pregnant and pushing it out. Now look at you, your first crisis, you have fallen apart. You think this is a movie? You think this is a storybook? This is real life.” I do not recognize the person yelling at this girl. I do not understand this girl, why she is staring me down instead of shaking before me like a leaf in the wind. I want to hug her, but I hate her. All I see as I look at her is someone to hate. I hate what this means for Rosetta and for our church. I hate that she makes me wish she’d had an abortion even though they are illegal in Lagos and the church is very opposed to them.
“I am sorry, I am so sorry.” She is crying now. All that confidence has evaporated like boiling water. I forgot for a few seconds how young she is; her initial confidence threw me. She is still barely a teenager, after all, and she is crying like one. Her makeup is melting. She drags a wipe out of her baby bag. She cleans her face with it.
I move as close to her as I can. I clasp her hands in mine. I say many soothing words. When she is composed, she apologizes for crying. She says she is sure I can understand, her son is sick and in pain, her heart is breaking, she is going crazy.
“My dear daughter,” I say in the softest voice I can manage, “the Bible says the Lord killeth, the Lord maketh alive. If your child was born to live, he will. Do not be like David, crying in vain for a child of sin.”
I KNOW WHAT I am doing, using Scripture for my own ends. It is impossible to spend so much time reading and teaching the Bible and be unskilled in using it as a weapon. Does not the Bible in the book of Hebrews refer to its content as a two-edged sword, cutting and dividing?
She is just a girl. She has no idea that mothering is a lifelong entanglement to families, she does not know that she does not want this lifelong connection to Rosetta or to Teddy.
The girl looks at me with angry red eyes. I can tell I have surprised her. I can tell I have upset her.
“All we need is five million, the operation can be done here in Lagos. We have a doctor in the college teaching hospital, please just help me,” she begs.
Now she surprises me with this pleading.
“This is a very personal matter, my dear,” I reply. “It is also very sensitive. I cannot get involved. I do not even know if this is the governor’s baby. You girls in the university get up to all sorts.”
“I came to church to grow, to get better. I trusted all of you. I did not know that it was all a lie.” She is angrier now.
She looks like the type of girl who has always been everybody’s favorite, pretty, clever, tall but not tall enough to intimidate men. She seems unaccustomed to suffering. She may have been raised middle class or lower, but she has not known real tragedy. I can tell by the way she looks now, like a balloon filled with water ready to burst.
In the glass door of the counseling room, I look at our reflection. We look like any other counseling session. It is funny how little you can tell by watching bodies move. Beyond the sliding door is my private library. After that is my assistant’s cubicle. She shares a space with the youth minister. I get an idea. I suggest the youth minister to her. I tell her I am too closely involved with this thing to give godly counsel. I apologize for my words and actions. I tell her to wait for me to send for the youth pastor.
“Sometimes the godliest thing to do is to wait, my dear,” I say.
“He knows,” she says interrupting me. “The youth pastor knows, Pastor David knows, everyone knows. Do you think I am the first choir girl Pastor David has handed over to his politician friends? Do you think I am even the first to get pregnant? I am just the stupid girl who decided to keep it.”
She must have thought she’d hit a jackpot, didn’t she? She must have dreamed of all the child support, the lifestyle of ease and glamour, didn’t she? She isn’t sorry about what she did, about the pain she caused, she is just sad because her little meal ticket is sick.
I know what it feels like to find a way out and hold on to him. I remember what desperate feels like. I remember the intoxicating combination of fear, anger, and ambition. I can sympathize with her situation except that she’s crossed the line with the “God told me to keep my baby” talk. The kind of girl to fuck a married man is the kind of girl who gets a compulsory abortion. This is Lagos, not El Dorado. There is no happily-ever-after for her here.
“You are the head of the women’s ministry, you say you are here for me. For us all,” she is saying to me. “Yet when Pastor David is using the choir as an escort agency for his friends, you do nothing. You did nothing, you know we went everywhere in the ministry buses, I have even been on the Life Jet.”
“You seem ready to blame everyone but yourself, Alex,” I reply. “You want me to feel guilt for something my husband does, something he conceals and hides from me, but you will not take responsibility for the part you played. You did not have to say yes to Teddy, you were not raped or kidnapped, little girl. You made this bed. Now lie in it.”
She is stunned and silent. She is not ready for the bluntness of my words.
There is an old story Yoruba mothers tell their daughters. It begins with three men, all friends, moaning their misfortunes in marriage. The first believes he is the most unfortunate because his wife is lazy and a bad cook. The second friend says he has it worse, his wife is a day-and-night bed wetter, her condition both chronic and incurable. The third laughs at them both, insisting he would gladly trade places with either of his friends. His fate is the worst of the lot, he says, for he married a woman who lives entirely without shame.
No mother ever tells her daughter what perverse deviance the third friend’s wife performs brazenly to the consternation of her husband. No mother explains to her daughter who these men are, or why they deserve better than the wives they have married. This is the power of the old story: every girl who hears it is shamed for all the things she otherwise feels no shame for. Shame is female, just as merit is male.
“You are right, Pastor Ma, I am so sorry,” Alex says. The balloon bursts and it is an avalanche of tears. She is crying and wiping her nose.
She tells me she blames herself. She says all she feels is guilt. Guilt has driven her crazy. She has stopped eating, or even sleeping. She asked God to kill her instead of punishing this little innocent baby for her foolishness. She is overwhelmed.
Even though I am trying to hide it, I feel guilty. I feel lots of guilt. I used to believe that I was helping people here. I used to tell myself I was making a difference and improving lives. These days, I am more accepting of the fact that I became a Christian to help myself. I am a Christian because I believe I am God’s most important project. This is the foundation of Christianity, it seems to me; to believe that Jesus died to save my soul is to believe that I am important enough, that I am deserving of the highest kind of love and the sacrifice of an innocent.
This is my personal revolution. All my life, I never dared to think of myself as anything special. I think often of something my twin sister said once, about what happens to you when you grow up as deprived as we did. She said we got our brains locked in survival mode and we will be spending our whole adulthood dealing with that. I think she was right. Even with all this money and influence, I am still as self-serving and needy as I was when I hawked water on busy Lagos streets. But I am a Christian, so this makes it okay, God understands me and gives me His grace.
Alex is crying hard. I watch her cry. She reaches into her baby bag, grabs another wet wipe, cleans her face with it. Her cheeks are wet and shiny. She tells me she is so ashamed of the choices she has made. She realizes the fault is mostly hers. She says she just needs help, she did not create this baby alone.
The compiler of Proverbs, chapter 30, says the way of men with maidens is beyond comprehension. Is it really? It is easy to understand the appeal of youth like Alex’s, all that innocence and beauty. The arrogance of power is easily explained as well. If there is any confusion, it lies in why young girls grow into women legitimizing the very systems that shame and vilify our femininity.
When Alex is done, I sit by her. I hold her hand. It is warm and dry. I tell her how sorry I am she is going through this. I tell her all mothers and babies deserve a solid system of support regardless. I apologize for not saying so earlier. I promise that the church will help even if the governor does not. She agrees to come to church for the service tomorrow, acknowledges there is a special opportunity here, its Mother’s Day Sunday, we can raise a special offering for her baby’s medical bills.
I am surprised that she understands. She smiles a little. It is possible, after all, that she is more interested in getting care for her son than scandalizing the church.
When she leaves my counseling lounge, I wait a few minutes. I pray to the Lord for help. I am not sure He is listening. I walk to the auditorium; I need to see Rosetta as soon as possible. I will tell her everything I just learned. I will try to prepare her for what is coming. As I walk away from my office, toward the direction of the disconcerting sound of multiple instruments being mishandled, it occurs to me that there is something very odd about Alex’s baby, Pamilerin. That baby did not move or whimper the entire time we were in the office. He just slept peacefully in his carrier like he was at home. I think about his unusual stillness for a few seconds with a deep inexplicable dread, but I toss those feelings aside to speak with Rosetta.
My friend Rosetta is as always wearing a long dress with a single-button blazer. She is dressed a little too warmly for the Lagos heat, but her ensemble gives her a cultured put-togetherness. I have always suspected that she wears jackets and blazers all the time to hide her arms. I do not think she has anything to hide.
“You look amazing, my love, have I said that already today?” I hug her as I speak.
“Keke. You are too nice to me. What do you think of us?” she asks, gesturing toward the women.
“Beautiful,” I say. “Absolutely beautiful.”
Rosetta gathers the women together. It takes a full five minutes but soon they are together like a real choir. Then the choir begins singing a classic Yoruba hymn, “Enikan Be To Fe Ran Wa.” It is a cappella, so the rowdiness is gone. It is pleasant. Their next song, the main song, is Kim Burrell’s arrangement of “My Faith Looks Up to Thee.” It is a somber song, and I wish they would do away with the drums and triangles, but I say nothing. I know it is more important, for the feeling of community, to give every woman a precise responsibility.
“I need to talk with you, let’s go to my office,” I whisper to Rosetta as the choir sings.
She cocks her head to the side, with a puzzled, amused look, her eyes rolling like she knows what this is about, and she has already had enough of it.
The choir is singing for fun now. One of the women is playing the role of an exuberant conductor. She stands with her leg bent in a near-perfect K. She is swinging her arms back and forth as the choir sings.
I AM DREADING this conversation with Rosetta. We have talked before about her husband’s philandering, and she has always been understandably protective of him. He is a man with his weaknesses like any other, all villages have their idiots, he is a brilliant and kind man who just strays. Now that I think of it, I was not really surprised to hear Alex talk about her relationship with the governor. I was neither surprised nor disappointed about my husband’s role in it. What does that say of me as a woman and church leader? What type of men do we let lead God’s children?
IN CHURCH, WE have many sayings to excuse our poor stewardship. For example, we say God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called. We also say the church is not a place for perfect people but for perfecting people. We repeat this often enough because we hope our members can decipher the caution encoded: Be careful around your brethren, they can be injurious.
Beyond issuing thinly veiled warnings, there is little I can do. As the pastor’s wife, I am rarely at the center of anything outside my women’s ministry domain. I am invited only after the deals are signed, the guests invited, and the meeting schedule drawn. I am here for the photo opportunity and the celebratory dinner. I have become very good at invisibility, even basking in it, enjoying the protection it affords. There is, however, a dangerous dark side to this silence and the things we hide beneath it. Our Lord has promised to shine his light on every dark thing.
This is how I begin my talk with Rosetta as we sit behind closed doors in my office. I pick up my Bible and begin reading from Luke, chapter 8.
“For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.”
“What I have learned from the Word is that Jesus did not say these words as a threat but as a promise. And it is a good promise. The promise is that God is ridding the dark of its ability to deceive His children. The promise of light is a good promise, do you understand what I am saying?”
Rosetta looks up at me puzzled, like my entering into spiritual counselor mode is something too strange for her to comprehend.
“My dear Pastor Mrs.,” Rosetta says, her tone condescending, “I am listening, but I am not sure I understand you.”
I GET TO the point quickly. I tell her Alex’s story. I deemphasize the solicitation to abort and the claim that their meeting in this church was orchestrated by my husband. Instead, I focus on the story’s most important parts: the heartbroken, terrified mother and her unnaturally quiet little baby.
“I cannot believe that crazy girl is back in Lagos,” Rosetta says. “I cannot believe she got you involved with this nonsense.”
Rosetta speaks without any real emotion. I am puzzled by this. She would certainly have reacted with more fear if I had told her she had a housefly sitting on her shoulder. My friend Rosetta is short and lean. She is the kind of woman regularly mistaken for someone much younger. Her body is deceptively fragile. I know from playing tennis with her that she is strong and agile. She tells me her own version of the story. Alex as seductress, a one-night stand that results in a pregnancy.
“Teddy tries to convince her to have an abortion. He pleads, he bribes her. Do you know he bought her a car? You should know that no one told me anything at the beginning,” she says.
“How long have you known about her?” I ask, interrupting her.
“Since last Christmas,” she says. “So, Teddy has no choice but to arrange the abortion himself. He invites her to the guest house for what she thinks is a birthday dinner. But his assistants take her to a hospital, she is knocked out, the abortion is performed.” She is speaking so casually about it. She is showing neither sadness nor remorse.
“Of course, when she comes out of it, she goes crazy,” Rosetta says. “God warned her not to kill her baby, she keeps screaming, crying. They have to restrain her. She is sedated and left in the hospital for a few days.”
“Is this when you learned about it? After the forced abortion?” I ask.
“Of course not,” Rosetta replies with sharpness. She is impatient with me now. “You know these men, they only tell us when the whole thing explodes in their faces. I learned much later, when my friend, editor at Weekly Trust, told me Alex contacted the newspaper to say she had birthed the governor’s child. The story did not run, of course, because she was clearly crazy with no baby.”
“So what did you do then?” I ask.
“I confronted Teddy, and he told me all that had happened. I told him to get the girl some help, and as far as I know, he did.”
It is almost unbearable watching the casualness with which she speaks about it all. I wonder how I missed it, this callousness. It is possible it has always been there, but I can only recognize it now because of what is happening, because Alex reminds me of the girl I used to be.
“Don’t worry about her, I will tell Teddy that she is back again. This time I will make sure she gets the help she needs,” she says.
I rise from my chair and give her a quick hug.
“Don’t worry about that, since we have established it’s mental illness. I will get her help, you have done your best, dear. These young girls and their wahala, may God deliver us,” I say.
We walk out of the office, toward the underground garages. We are talking about service tomorrow. The dress code is red or gold. We joke about all the tacky outfits we expect to see, we agree that Lagos Christian women try too hard to appear classy. Someone needs to teach them that style is effortless, we say.
LATER THAT EVENING at home, I sit in the large nursery Pastor David and I designed the first time I got pregnant. I have been falling asleep in here for months now, and if my husband has noticed I’d rather be here, he says nothing about it. I take off my shoes and sit on the floor. The carpeting is imported, several inches thick. If you accidentally dropped a baby in this room, the only real risk would be carpet burn.
I am praying to God for a sign, for His wisdom in this situation. Do I talk to Pastor David or do I go straight to the governor with this? Who will protect Alex if her governor is angry with her? I want to focus on her recovery, on therapy and treatment. But what about justice? What about all the other girls?
I am not one of those Christians who hears a clear, distinct voice leading them. What I have experienced over and over is indescribable peace during a chaotic situation or inexplicable insight in the middle of confusion. That is how the Lord leads me. Today, I really wish He would talk plainly to me. I’d give anything for a burning bush, or even a still, small voice.
When I told my departed grandmother that I was going to be Pastor David’s wife, she was quiet for a long time.
“Taiwo, ile-oko ile ogun, marriage is a battleground,” she said. “Are you sure about this man?”
I was not sure, but I was determined.
“Yes, I am sure,” I said.
“The goat and the family whose religion requires a sacrifice of goats cannot be serving the same God, do you understand me?” my grandmother asked.
“Yes, I do,” I said. I was lying.
It is easy now, because she is dead, especially because of the manner of her death, to think of my grandmother with fondness, but she was really just a cantankerous, talkative old woman. Nothing was ever good enough for her. Nothing ever made her happy except nagging her grandchildren. She was tolerable only when she was telling us stories.
She told some weird stories. Most of the nightmares I had as a teenager were because of the stories she told of Olokun, goddess of the vast oceans. Olokun was believed to be the most powerful being on earth. It is said that Olokun covered the entire earth with water, trying to prevent Oludumare from creating earth’s people. Oludumare had to trick her into giving permission. Grandmother’s stories were her way to capture our attention and our imaginations. All those stories, all those proverbs, all they did was ingrain her in our minds. She wanted us to think regularly of her words and her wisdom.
It is three a.m. when Pastor David comes home. I am lying on the carpet, showered and shaven and pretending to be asleep. Everything he likes. He comes into the nursery fifteen minutes after I hear him unlock our front doors. He smells like okra soup and palm oil.
The women who worshipped Olokun used to be the richest, most beautiful women in Grandmother’s village in Ondo. Not just Ondo, but all the villages along the Atlantic Ocean had Olokun priestesses. She gave them beauty, wealth, and honor. They were covenant protectors of her waters and life-forms. They did not eat anything from the ocean. They protected her waters from pollution, they did not bury their dead in the sea, they did not allow villagers to eat baby fish.
“Are you ovulating?” Pastor David asks, lying next to me on the carpet.
“No,” I say, “I checked.”
“Well, is there a difference, really?” Pastor David says. He is leaning into my knees and its hurts.
According to my grandmother, Olokun worship declined because of transatlantic slavery. Women were afraid to worship the ocean because she punished her daughters severely for desecrating her. All the mothers in the villages by the ocean wanted to be free to tell their children, “Run into the ocean if you see the white men coming. If they catch you, jump into the sea.” But if you worshipped Olokun, you could not dare do that.
I had many nightmares that I was captive on a slave ship and that people were jumping to my right and left but I would not, I could not. I did not want to offend my mother’s goddess.
Pastor David’s breath is like steam on my neck. I wipe the invisible vapor. He does not notice. He is carrying on. I repent for all the times I wished Pastor David had a girlfriend. I repent for all the times I wished he came home every day spent, and with no interest in me.
“Pass me that little pillow, Mommy,” he says to me. He calls me Mommy in faith. Someday soon, when the Lord wills it, I will get pregnant and carry it to term. I reach out to the cot and pull a little pillow that has HELLO HERO written across in it. He places it under my hips for lift.
It is easy to dismiss the truth contained in stories due to the limits of point of view. How can I accept the stories my grandmother handed down to me? None of my grandmother’s ancestors could tell why captured Yoruba children jumped or didn’t jump. Those stories were lost to them as they are to me, trapped on the other side of the ocean, in the stomachs of their stolen children.
I have read about it, and I have several guesses about the captives who did not jump into the ocean. It is more likely that their chains were heavy and shackled to the ship itself. It is also likely that the ships’ nets were too tall to jump over.
THIS IS WHAT I did when I was younger—approached her stories with logic, inspected them for improbabilities and inaccuracies. It was important for me to be able to logically dismiss them to stop being so afraid.
It is a common mistake, to hear a story about tragedy and disbelieve it because the telling is off. We think to ourselves, how does the storyteller know this? We are asking the wrong question. The right question is, why is the storyteller telling me this story? Because I was a child, I heard this story about a village full of mothers and the great loss they suffered and assumed it was a story about the pain of a child. Now, as a woman, I know the story is not about lost children. Children move from this plane to the next every day. It is a story about unquantifiable loss. It is a story about a lost goddess. What they lost was a god who looked like them. What they lost was the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent female spirit. Now look at this: all of us are condemned to serving these male gods and their rapacious servants.
PASTOR DAVID HAS passion. Of course, he is a minister, an evangelist. Passion is contagious, endearing. Passion does not replace integrity or courage. Passion is not a substitute for compassion.
“Mommy, did you say something?” Pastor David asks me. I must have mumbled.
“Yes,” I say, “I asked if you were finished.”
“Soon. I’d be faster if you keep quiet and just let me focus,” he says.
It is a little funny how a man who can preach stadiums full of people into a screaming frenzy would be, in his home, as tense as a clenched fist. People tell me they leave our Sunday services fired up, excited to take on the week. I wish there was someone I could tell that he leaves me hollow, desperate, angry, and raw.
“Have you finished outlining your sermon for tomorrow, Mommy?” Pastor David asks me. He is finished and sitting up next to me.
“A member of the choir came to see me today. Her name is Alex, she needs our help,” I say instead.
“What does this have to do with the sermon?” he asks.
“Is her story true?” I ask.
“Are you going to tell me what you have prepared for God’s people? Will I have to preach the women’s message myself?” he asks.
“I am teaching about light and darkness, Pastor, the words of Jesus. Everything hidden will be manifested, every secret will come to light,” I say, even though it is not true. I planned to teach on the faith of Ruth, who is a favorite here at the New Church.
“And what do you expect to happen after this message?” my husband asks.
“The Holy Spirit will correct, convict, cleanse,” I say.
“You are just like your father, do you know that?” He gets up off the floor, standing over me like a tree. “When things get rough, you forget you are part of the church. You are looking for a scandal when there is none. You think you can bring me down? This is the church of God. This is going to last forever, do you understand that?”
“The church is only as strong as its weakest link,” I say.
“That is stupid nonsense you have gotten from watching too much TBN. Weakest link? Then the church will be perpetually weak, each day adding new broken people to the fold. The church is the incorruptible bride of the glorified Christ.”
He is doing that preacher thing. That watch me make you look stupid thing. That you are out of your league thing. That dissecting Scripture is for men thing.
“She needs our help, Pastor,” I say when he is done.
“What she needs is a deliverance minister. That girl is possessed with many sexual demons. They have driven her crazy. She has had too many men to count, she is a fractured shell of a person,” he says.
“She also needs an apology, some therapy, something from us,” I say.
“You should focus on your own life, your own family. I am halfway out this door and you’re barely noticing,” he says.
“I’m not blind, Pastor,” I say.
“I think you are forgetting you are a nobody. You have nowhere to go, you are a nobody, you have nothing. What will you do if I leave you? Go and live with your sister and her boyfriend? Or in your brothers’ college dorm rooms?”
In one of my earliest memories, I am running around with no clothes on. I am two or maybe three years old. I watch myself trip, fall, and I begin to cry. I stop crying as soon as I realize that nothing hurts. I can still hear crying, but it is coming from outside me, the body that fell, the body that is crying is outside me. This is the first time I realize that Bibike and I are different people, with separate bodies. I go to her. I push her down as she tries to get up. The more she cries, the harder I laugh.
It is possible that my personality has been framed entirely by that moment, by the joy of being separate. It is possible that all my life, I have continued in this vein, intent on proving that I am different, separate from her. This is how I have convinced myself that I am important, that I am not the bonus child. It is possible that this is the reason I needed to work in entertainment, just like I needed to marry into this money and this hypervisibility.
“I am not a nobody and you are not God. You’re not the one writing my story,” I say to my husband.
“But I am your lord, and you will obey me like Scripture commands,” he says.
I say nothing. He grabs me by the nape of my neck, pulling me up on my feet.
“Preach a great sermon tomorrow, Mommy,” Pastor says. “Don’t stir up trouble. Encourage God’s people and look nice.”
His grip is stiff around my neck, like a steel necklace.
“Yes, Pastor,” I say.
IT IS A cool Sunday morning. It rained for most of Saturday night. Outside smells both fresh and musty, like a murky village river muddied by erosion. The drive to church is quiet and terrifying. Pastor David and I sit in the back of our Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.
Two men, the driver and Pastor David’s assistant, sit in the front of the vehicle. There is gospel music playing. Whenever we drive into a pothole deep enough to rattle us, Pastor David murmurs something about disrespectful Lagos roads. Whenever we drive past young people hanging out by the streets laughing, smoking, doing whatever, Pastor murmurs something about the perilous end of times.
Alex is waiting inside the lounge of Pastor David’s private entrance. Her tiny baby is in one hand, still as stone, In the other hand, she holds a satchel diaper bag. It is white and yellow, pretty like a summer day. There are a few church workers milling around. One man, dressed in the black overalls issued to our camera crew, is pushing a dolly with a large speaker. Another is dragging several feet of cable wrapped around his arm. They are all busy and no one but me seems surprised to see Alex there.
The tightening in my chest is a warning, I know that now.
“Good morning, Pastors,” she says to us. “Can I come with you? Pastor Ma?”
“Alex, I have spoken with Pastor about you. He will give you the answers you need,” I say.
She looks at me with shock, like I just said the most incredulous thing.
“Pastor sir, I will see you in the service.” I say it loud enough for everyone around to hear. “I’m headed to my office.”
I do not look back to see if Alex is walking behind me or going with Pastor David. In my office, I search for the outline for my sermon. I will be teaching the story of Ruth and the dignity of her diligent labor. I find it tucked between books on my desk. I read through it, excited and relieved. The service is saved, normalcy is restored, glory to God.
I read the outline again, and I make more notes. “Ruth is one of the mothers of our faith because she learned to listen to the advice of her mother-in-law. Older Christian women have a responsibility of mentorship and guidance toward the younger girls in the church.” My sermon is not revolutionary, but it is a start. We can start a spark that will someday become a fire.
The auditorium is filling with worshippers. I can hear the regular worship leader and responses:
There is power in the name of Jesus
To break every chain
I wonder where Rosetta is, where her husband is. It is possible they decided to skip church today. I am not surprised. People are predictably selfish, we are born selfish, even little babies; notice how hard they cry when they need something, screaming and demanding to have their needs met immediately. Selfishness is normal, human.
I wonder what happened to Ruth’s sister Orpah.
The phone in my office rings, startling me. My assistant does not work on Sundays. I pick it up. It is Pastor David’s assistant, he has heard some high-pitched screaming in the office. He thinks it’s Pastor screaming. Yes, Alex is still in there. No, they are not in the counseling room. He cannot go in. He refuses to intrude.
“Can you please come here, Ma, take a look, just to make sure everything is okay?”
Pastor David is on the floor in his office, kicking his legs around. His hands are wrapped around a bleeding penis. His pants are down to his knees. The floor is littered with a bunch of bloody face tissues. He is talking to me, but I do not hear him. My eyes are fixed on Alex. She is standing in the corner with her little doll in her hands, rocking back and forth, her eyes closed like she is trying to soothe herself to sleep.
“Have you also come to take away my baby?” Alex asks. Her eyes are still shut, but her voice is calm. “Are you here to take my baby from me?”
“Call my driver to take me to the hospital, this stupid girl attacked me,” Pastor David says.
I am not in a hurry to call for help. I straighten Alex’s shirt. I wipe the sides of her mouth with tissue; there is semen, but no blood. I begin tidying up the room. I am also searching for her weapon of choice. I am picking up the stuff strewn all over—church bulletins, Alex’s hair tie, A4 paper, a button off Alex’s shirt, Scofield’s reference Bible, a bloodied staple gun—there it is—several pens.
THE MORNING I married Pastor David, my mother came to me with information she had received from a “reliable” source.
“We were not the only ones who lost everything because of this church,” she said.
“I know.”
“You know that Pastor David was behind it all? You know that money is how he built this church? Bad money, 419 money?”
“I know.”
I did not know. Of course, like any other reasonable person, I had my suspicions, but nothing had ever been confirmed.
“Please, Ariyike mi, oko mi, olowo ori mi, do not marry this man, please, I beg you, there is still time to change your mind.”
Mother knelt before me, holding on to my legs like she was the child. She was crying, tears were running down her face to my feet. I stood there for many minutes saying nothing, just listening to her cry.
ALEX STAYS STILL in the corner. She is holding on tight to the little doll, like she expects me to try to take it from her. There’s a sprinkle of blood on her hands, on her skirt and shoes.
“He is such a calm little boy, isn’t he?” I ask.
“Yes, he is,” Alex says to me. “I am so blessed.”
The assistant who called me opens the door now, slowly at first, hesitating. He is just checking to see if we are all okay. He screams at the blood, at the pastor writhing on the floor, at the crazy girl in the corner and the calm pastor’s wife.
I told my mother that I was marrying Pastor David as part of a well-planned revenge plot. I was going to get the money he stole from my family, and more than that, I was going to get dignity and prestige. Mother did not believe me even though I tried hard to convince her.
“Just give me five years, I’ll ruin his entire life,” I’d said.
IN MY FAVORITE Yoruba folktale, three children engage in idle boasts. The first one claims he can climb the tallest palm tree in the village. The second one insists he can do better: he can swim across the ocean without getting tired. The third friend boasts of catapulting a pebble all the way up to the heavens, defying the law of gravity. The tortoise, a recurring character in Yoruba stories, overhears their idle boasts and reports them to the king of the land.
The king plans a day of contest. “Now you have the opportunity, do all you have said you can do,” he says to the children.
When the contest day arrives, the climber stops halfway and begs to be carried down the tall tree; the swimmer nearly drowns from exhaustion and must be lifted by boat out of the ocean. The boy with the catapult surprises them: his pebble goes up to the heavens and is never seen again. He wins money from the king and the respect and admiration of his village.
As a child, when I learned of the third child’s secret, his cunning—he switched the pebble with a tiny bird—I was in awe of it. A meddling king bested by a cunning child, what a triumph.
“JESUS CHRIST! PASTOR, what happened in here? What is all this?” Pastor David’s assistant is weeping and shrieking. The assistant squats next to Pastor David and helps pull his pants up. He is weeping as he does this, asking the same pastor what happened over and over like a song stuck on a loop. Pastor David is telling him to keep quiet and take him to the hospital.
Many more people come in. Pastor David has fainted, I hear someone say. Together two or three people surround him like a shield, they lift him up. A different someone screams for the driver to get the Prado. I do not even like that vehicle, but I am irritated that they will get bloodstains all over the back seat and that most of the stains won’t come off.
The truth is I never intended to bring down Pastor David. I married him to better my own lot. Just like I admired the third child in that story, I admire this man, somehow. He has done so many things, influenced so many lives. Even if I could, why would I, having tasted this lifestyle, want to destroy it? There is no larger life than this. This is the Kingdom.
Truth be told, it has cost me more than I imagined I was giving up. For example, it’s been three years since I last spoke with my twin sister. We were once the closest sisters in all of Lagos. She is an herbalist now, having expanded her beauty supply store. Now she mixes healing potions and ori cleansing lotions for Lagos women. I am a pastor’s wife, a television minister. What agreement will light have with darkness? It is for this very reason the Lord Jesus said in the Gospel according to Luke, I have come to turn your families inside out.
THERE ARE MANY versions of the kids-making-playful-boasts story. In one, the swimmer drowns in the ocean, his body floats for days on end, the king commands no one to touch it. In another version, the climber dies of heatstroke ascending a tall tree in the noontime. In yet another, the king has both climber and swimmer executed for failing to achieve their goals.
All versions agree, the trickster wins in the end.
ALREADY, I AM exhausted by the months that are coming. I have my eye on Alex, and she is looking up at me with bright, hopeful eyes. She is shivering and afraid. I move closer to her, wrap my arms around her, and hug her over and over.
“IT IS GOING to be okay, I promise,” I say to her, lying.