‘Uncle Akin,’ my mother said, bouncing between her feet. I was reminded of Eriife and her politician boyfriend.
‘Akin. Isn’t that the name of the man Aunty Ada was always quarrelling with Mummy about?’ Nwamaka said later.
‘Not quarrelling really, more like cautioning, that she should stay away, she’s married blah blah blah,’ Nkechinyere corrected.
‘Hmm,’ her twin grunted.
‘They were friends many years ago, before she even met Daddy and he was always sending her letters,’ Nkechi continued, refusing to allow my mother’s name to be besmirched.
‘Well, if Daddy finds out, he’s definitely not signing the divorce papers.’
There was foreshadowing in Nwamaka’s words. It had been months since my father had informed my mother’s lawyer he would sign her request for a divorce and yet he’d done nothing, blaming his dawdling on the Nigerian judicial system.
‘The world might end before he signs,’ I joked.
The frenzy of Y2K had taken over the airwaves, warning of the year computers – whose programs allowed for only two-digit years – would melt down and the world would collapse in an apocalypse. In ’97, we’d heard stories of a religious cult that had committed mass ritual suicide in preparation and I’d wondered what level of fanaticism would cause people to follow someone so dedicatedly. I would soon see it in the way people revered Pastor Kamsi.
I called Zina to inform her classes were to resume soon, but instead of her voice, I heard Chuka’s. After months at an impasse, Zina’s father had changed his mind – he would wait till she graduated to arrange her marriage.
‘She left this morning,’ Chuka said. He sounded neither happy nor relieved, and it struck me that he’d hoped to tie her to him with desperation.
A month before the close of the century, the civilian populace of Odi village in Bayelsa state was wiped out, every building torched to the ground by the Nigerian military as ordered by its Commander-in-Chief, the country’s president. Their crime? An ‘ambush’ attack on policemen by a gang on its outskirts. My mother commented that the demons of tyrannical dictatorship still roamed the presidential villa despite the exorcism.
11
Valentine’s Day
There was an obsession with purity, a single-faceted almost ghoulish obsession. In the home videos we watched, there were two classes of women: the pristine sect, wearing ankle-length clothing and forgetting to do their hair, and the unholies, who had boyfriends, went to parties and wore fitted clothes. The first always ended up with lives full of love, laughter and godly children, and the latter would bask in their indulgence for a while before it all fell apart.
In the hostels, between classes and over languorous weekends, girls congregated in their underwear and nightgowns discussing important subjects like who was dating who, who was pregnant and who was most likely to get married.
‘Did you see the Range Rover that came to pick up Amoke yesterday?’ Chioma asked during one such weekend. The chosen location: Zina’s bedside. Eriife was there, her first visit in a long while, and I was relaxing on my bed, chewing on a Goody Goody caramel bar and staring up at the rotating ceiling fan, wondering how the weather could be so hot.
I knew Amoke, the prettiest girl in the Microbiology department.
‘The windows were tinted, you know,’ Chioma continued.
Chioma was what we called a hustler – she could tell the price of a handbag by looking at it and knew how much it cost to import weaves from China. If there was money to be made, Chioma was at the forefront, selling shoes, bags, soaps, creams, earrings, unwilling to be left out. Most of the time, we admired her.
‘I saw it o. She’s so lucky,’ someone said. I was too fatigued to look. The voice sounded like Hajara, our class representative. Hajara who was consumed by the subject of marriage and ‘settling down,’ Hajara who said God please when she heard another student had gotten engaged.
‘I like how she’s kept herself, doesn’t associate with all these small schoolboys and now she’s with a big fish. I hear the guy is almost forty,’ Chioma said.
‘FORTY?’ I didn’t have to guess who it was this time; I could identify Zina’s voice anywhere.
‘Yes? Is there anything wrong with that? Amoke is mature for her age. He’s rich and has his own business, plus he’s ready to settle down as soon as she’s done with school. Dey there, allow all these small boys to play you instead of finding mature men ready to marry,’ Chioma said.
‘I can imagine their conversations,’ Hajara said, her voice dreamy. ‘So mature, what their home would look like, prayers for their future children, things like that. Not all this nonsense small talk.’
‘Thank you, my sister,’ Chioma concurred.
Eriife disagreed. ‘She’s just nineteen? Max, twenty? That’s just somehow please.’
I was surprised to hear her speak that way, considering her own boyfriend’s age.
‘I heard he sent a big box on her birthday filled with Chanel handbags, perfume, et cetera,’ Chioma continued, ignoring her. ‘Would you believe she has her own car in his compound? And his workers already call her madam!’
‘Hay God! Please do my own,’ Hajara said, and I turned my head in time to see her jump up and clutch her bosom in excited supplication.
Zina hissed. ‘You’re always jumping, Hajara. Do your own what? What exactly is it you’re always wanting God to do?’ Zina shook her head, as if in pity. ‘The both of you are thieves. Would you say all this if Amoke’s boyfriend didn’t have money?’
I chuckled to myself, until their heads turned in my direction and I realised I’d done so out loud, reminding them of my presence.
At church, Pastor Kamsi had insisted Emeka and I start attending special services when he’d found out about our relationship. It wasn’t like we’d gone out of our way to hide it; I’d been attending the church for going on two years, but someone had finally asked Emeka directly instead of whispering behind our backs. Now, every weekend I sat in on a Sisters’ Vigil – a gathering on chastity, a religious study of the art of seduction as depicted by Samson and Delilah.
‘God, we return all the glory untampered to you,’ Sister Charity, the women’s youth leader, said at the beginning of each session. I always wondered where she’d learned such a phrase and how she did not find it funny that it was possible to tamper with such glory.
‘As a woman you must know your place in society,’ she said during these services. ‘Many of us have forgotten our place in society. Every night, I cry to myself, asking, are these our future wives and mothers? Goddddd!’
After the services, I would demonstrate to Emeka, bending over with an imaginary microphone, my voice cracking with practised anguish, ‘Are these our future wives and mothers? Goooddddd,’ and he would laugh till tears ran down the sides of his face.
‘There’s grace in femininity,’ Sister Charity taught. ‘Many of you want to become men by your conduct, it is the new age thing. In the body of Christ, there are different organs and each organ has its function. Imagine if the neck suddenly decided it wanted to be the head? As a woman you must know your place.’
‘Is this what they’re teaching you in your classes?’ I asked Emeka after several weeks of the same thing. ‘Because I’m not sure I can continue listening to this every weekend.’
‘No, it’s not, I’m sorry,’ Emeka said, turning my palm over in his studiously. I’d come to accept he wasn’t talkative.
‘No? What do they teach you then?’ I demanded, affronted.
