On most mornings the sun shines bright, and the fragrance from the jasmine bush wafts into my kitchen as I ruminate over my spiritual life, third cup of coffee in hand and Bible on the breakfast bar. I feel about twenty-five (never mind the menopausal symptoms), full of hope and excitement like there is so much ahead of me. It is the Gemini in me, eternally restless, perpetually needing something new, getting exhilarated over things otherwise inconsequential, expecting a lot, anticipating delectable surprises around every bend. In my mind I write the ‘Dedication’, and acknowledge indebtedness even before the book gets written. Beginnings and endings are interchanged.
Sometimes though, I wake up clumsy, absent-minded, vacant and careless in my movements. This morning I stumble into the dining room and drop my favourite sugar-bowl, which smashes to bits instantly. It is funny how I don’t feel any regret or sense of loss. A numbness has crept over me. I feel that way about things now that are lost, changed and cannot be had again. That life must evolve, feelings must change and that favourite possessions fall and break is beginning to make sense. Possessions mean little to me these days. That exquisite, hexagonal grey pottery bowl with blue streaks will be replaced by something cheap and functional from the market. And ugly. I get out the dustpan and sweep the pottery pieces into the bin. Everything has its time and place.
I was not consciously dwelling on Comfort’s testimony but something about what she had said the previous evening lingered in my mind with a certain insistence. Karen loved testimonies, and was the coordinator of our group that met on Friday afternoons at her place. Our testimonies were gold medals, awards for outstanding achievement which we sported on special occasions or when we had a visitor in our midst. I hadn’t come prepared for a testimony, cleansed and sanitized, but Karen had turned to me suddenly and said, ‘Can you go first?’
Testimony, a presumptuous word, implied change, that somehow in the scheme of things you had been bad but had now changed and the change had been dramatic. My life didn’t seem to present itself in tidy logbook columns. The good, bad and intolerable in me overlapped in recurring patterns. So I was vague and evasive and talked about new experiences intersecting crucial points in my life. Loretta said she had meaningful scripture verses literally ‘given’ to her. She had opened her scriptures at random one day, only to find them staring at her in Word Perfect Bold. From then on everything had fallen in place and the meaningless mass of her life had acquired a purpose and direction. Jennifer had given up alcohol, parties and plunging necklines for a New Life. Vicky had had prayers answered with such promptness—the lucrative company job had been offered to her on a silver platter, which showed that God cared and wished to make a definite point. It was then Comfort’s turn.
Comfort was a newcomer in our midst. Her husband had been transferred to our little town from Lagos where she had led an active and productive life. She found her way into our group, seemingly out of boredom, and looked so contented, as if Friday afternoons slaked years of thirst she had had for the Word. The rest of us were prone to becoming personal and even volatile every now and then. Comfort neutralized our participation by saying something completely general and noble, or she stared at us out of expressionless eyes buried in her fleshy cheeks. I had expected something suitably evasive from her that afternoon as she adjusted the gelle over her head and assumed the posture of an actress about to make her debut on stage.
But Comfort’s testimony came as a total surprise. ‘I was bad,’ she trembled. ‘I used to sin all the time. But each time God forgave me. My mother would say, what’s wrong with you? You’re sinning all the time.’
She stifled a sob and dabbed a lace handkerchief over her eyes. ‘Then my husband, he made me kneel before the priest and confess all my sins. That is when I knew how bad I was.’ Several of us wept with Comfort. The thought of Comfort sinning made me cry. She looked perpetually doughy and pure, pastry-pure, and totally incapable of being bad. Veronica, yes—although we hadn’t got to her testimony yet. Veronica had a streak of wickedness in her that came through even in her prayers. The way she moved those lusty lips, the way she made her voice sound husky and hoarse in turn, pouting as she did so. The words ‘bad’ and ‘sin’ matched her past and present, but not Comfort, distant and innocuous, and still using the Thees and Thous from the King James Version.
It was at one of these coffee mornings at Aunt Naomi’s that I was drawn into Comfort’s orbit. She sat in her baby-pink buba and wrapper with a bit of a slouch, one leg thrown over the other, exposing her ebony ankle with a silver anklet around it. The coral earrings dangled down on her shoulders and almost touched the gold chain that peeped in and out of the folds of the pink gelle.
‘Have you read Psalm 27?’ she asked, in our general direction. ‘The Lord is your strength and your salvation. That is what the rocks in this town remind me of. The Lord’s strength.’
‘So what did they take?’ asked Aunt Naomi full of concern, picking up the story that had preceded my visit, unable to contain the curiosity in her voice.
‘Everything, sha,’ Comfort replied, doughy faced and without a flicker of emotion.
‘Jewels and everything?’ Aunty Naomi pressed. Her glance riveted from Comfort’s neck to her bare wrists, smooth and rounded, formerly burdened with twelve bangles of 22-karat gold.
‘One man was holding me at the back. The other man took off my earrings. So gently. Both earrings, sha. And then he put his hand on my neck, like this, and removed the chain over my head.’
Aunty Naomi looked visibly disturbed as she pictured Comfort’s shoulders being fondled by the man, his fingers caressing her shell-shaped ears, gently freeing them of the gold screws and clasps.
‘And the bangles,’ Comfort continued. ‘You know he held me like this and tried to take them off but they were too tight. So I took them off myself.’
‘We thank God,’ Aunt Naomi heaved a sigh. ‘We thank God for the strength He gave you.’
‘I didn’t even know what was happening, you know. The children were eating in front of the television. One man had a mask like this. He pointed a gun at me and said, “Where’s the money?” The television was on, you know. Dynasty, my favourite programme …’
‘Did they come in a car?’ Aunt Naomi interrupted.
‘No! Crystal Carrington had just had a miscarriage—no, I think they came over the wall … I didn’t know what they were saying … The programme was so interesting. Psalm 86. That’s my best. The Lord destroys your enemies. I heard them banging my husband’s iron safe. They took his money and the CD player.’
‘You see God’s hand in all situations. What about the wrappers?’
‘They took my Dutch wax, all of them and the George, the lace and the bou-bou from Senegal which I had just got back from the drycleaners … God is wonderful. I’m glad they didn’t ask me to take off the embroidered kaftan I was wearing. They even fired a shot as they went out.’
Comfort was calm and unperturbed. She had a Bible verse for every occasion and plenty of gold left on her person for further visits by armed robbers.
It was Comfort who gave me an acute sense of ‘sin’. Under her influence my mind became a video camera. Everything I said and did got replayed over and over in my waking and sleeping moments as on a giant movie screen, every emotion, every detail. It was frightening as I lived each experience ten times over in my mind. We were on the Scripture trail, sending the children off to school and purging ourselves in devotional groups that differed in tone and colour as the rich brown of the harmattan and the pasture green of the rainy season. Sometimes I walked into a roomful of snuffles, women blowing their noses into handkerchiefs and scented tissue paper. They whispered and implored the Lord to hear their prayers and then thanked Him because they knew He had already heard and answered them. They reasoned with an invisible God—one of them got hysterical from time to time. If it weren’t God she was talking to, she would have stamped her spiritual foot! Another melted at the mention of God’s love and then quickly regained her composure. The third prayed like a headmistress, full of authority. The tone was even, the enunciation perfect. The words came without hesitation, either from divine inspiration or from years of practice. I sat on the edge of my chair, mute in amazement, trying not to miss any part of this hour-long drama. I opened my eyes a tiny slit to see who it was that cried so readily and frequently. They all did, including Comfort. They were moved so easily. What did they do when real trouble was at their doorstep?
There were times when the Devotional Hour became a catalogue of middle-class woes. This woman’s husband had had a heart bypass surgery, the other woman had twisted her ankle on the golf course, the third had a child who was a slow learner, the fourth, a husband who didn’t go to church. Every ailment got advertised and embellished by the community in the process of making it a prayer item. Everyone got burdened with the other’s misery as we wept, drank tea, passed the cake around and wept some more over prayers.
Back in my kitchen, I rolled out the pastry, trying to get a reasonable-looking circle, thinning it out from the middle to the edges as thoughts rushed to my head. Comfort’s tear-stained moon-face and testimony disturbed me. Why had she not given any hint of the spiritual battle raging within her? Her husband was a jolly Father Christmas, taking in strays, giving out cash, gifts and donations to every philanthropic cause. She had a cook, a maid for each of her three children, and a chauffeur who opened the car door for her and carried her shopping in. What was the ‘sinning’ all about?
It was not our day for the devotional routine. I drove over fallen jacaranda blooms into Comfort’s compound at midday. The dogs lay panting in the heat. Everything was still except for Comfort’s voice in the living room, which arrested and stopped me in my tracks as I got out of the car. One of the maids stood against the wall as Comfort shrieked above her, slapping her in turns. I stepped on to the veranda. Father Christmas held a shotgun with which he prodded the maid. ‘I’ll call the police!’ he shouted menacingly. It took me a while to realize that it was something to do with missing plastic buckets and teaspoons. The maid flinched with each slap and repeated her denial. The next moment, the smooth and fair underside of Comfort’s foot landed on the maid’s stomach as Comfort continued to pound her with her fists. The maid tried to support herself but fell in a heap as Comfort picked up a wire fly-swatter and hit her across the ear. The children participated gleefully in this jungle justice.
The human countenance is a marvellous work of art. The satin smooth facial skin covers all conflicts wrenching at the brain. The eyes are two clear, liquid and tranquil pools without ripples. Comfort’s hands were locked together in devotion, gelle draped over her head in pious beatitude. We moulded and shaped our gods in our own likeness, and when we sinned, God understood and forgave us readily. Each of us had our individual reason for being there, each having little to do with God. It soothed us to hear that others sinned too but it did little to stop us from sinning. Our testimonies were cloaks of self-righteousness—if we had been out in the cold before, barbarians untouched by grace, we were now members of the elect, armed with prayers and praises, looking with disdain on the uninitiated. Our world narrowed in dimension as every aspect of it got stripped down to simple good and evil. Devils and demons got landed with the blame for our weaknesses and failings. Occasionally we identified the devils in people around us.
‘I have something very important to say,’ Comfort began. I looked away from her at the bougainvillea in bloom outside the window as I wondered what form this confession was going to take. Would she admit to violence or would it be attributed to machinations of the devil? Would she call it sin or was she merely overcome by emotion? How would the group react to her disclosure?
‘The Lord redeems the soul of his servants,’ she continued, quoting from the Psalms, ‘and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate. You see, some of my kitchenware went missing from our compound on Tuesday. I have been so worried. I hate losing things, it made me feel so helpless. And then … Praise God, they were miraculously recovered yesterday.’
I remained silent as the group joined Comfort in a chorus of praise.