As a child, she’d planned to marry Ikenna, intricately plotting the details, calculating their ages and estimating the dates, until my grandmother had informed her that she could not marry her own uncle. But she could marry my father, and that was exactly what she did within a year of their meeting.
Fate. That was what connected them, the air alive with it that day. My mother’s friends – my best friends’ mothers, Aunty Ada and Aunty Chinelo – had forced her to attend church service by threatening to report her as a heathen to my grandmother, and there was no one my mother feared in this world more than my grandmother.
His voice captivated her, a mellifluous tenor that rang through the church auditorium, and rooted her to her seat as he belted out the lyrics to ‘All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name’, enthralling the entire audience. Let angels prostrate fall, but my mother had an entirely different subject of adulation in mind.
She never understood why my father chose her; of all the women there, he’d singled her out. Like a scene from a romantic movie, he’d asked to speak with her after a service, and as she followed him, dumbstruck, he’d simply said, ‘Sister Uju would you be free on Tuesday after mid-week service? I’d like to take you out.’
Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’ played on their first date, floating from the speakers of the restaurant across from the church, reminding my mother that that moment was indeed one she’d never forget. They bonded over their shared loss – he’d lost both parents to the war, and my mother, her precious uncle. My mother thought he was the most charming man – aside from Uncle Ikenna – she’d ever met, not that she’d met many before him. Whenever she spoke of this time, I tried to imagine my father as she described, to replace the image of the man I knew.
Four months later, under the shade of a frangipani tree at the city park, he asked my mother to marry him.
‘No flowers, nothing! He just asked me to marry him. Can you imagine?’ my mother always complained many years later. Perhaps it was her hesitation that would make him bear a grudge, but my mother wasn’t ready. She was yet to graduate and she had dreams of travelling and breaking free, even if briefly, from her mother’s constricting hold. And so she stared at my father in dazed silence as he lost his patience and asked in frustration, ‘Obianuju, do you want to get married or not?’
My father zoomed off in his tokunbo Volkswagen after dropping my mother at home that evening, and my grandmother, hawkish as ever, immediately knew something was wrong. She pressed relentlessly until my mother confessed about the proposal, thus sealing her fate.
Whenever my mother spoke of Uncle Ikenna, she spoke of Nigeria’s independence; her first memories of that illustrious time in 1960.
INDEPENDENCE: the rippling excitement, feverish anticipation and boundless – almost delusory – hope for the future of a country. Jubilant citizens paraded the streets, resplendent in their traditional garb, waving miniatures of the newly designed national flag as they shouted, ‘God Bless Nigeria’.
‘Biggest African State Nears Freedom’, ‘Hail Free Nigeria’, the newspapers trumpeted in bold black ink. My mother was too young to read but she knew by the way her father held the pages that those indecipherable letters spoke of monumental events.
On October 1st 1960, they gathered around the black-and-white box television in their living room with plates of jollof rice and chicken and bottles of Coca-Cola like it was Christmas. Her father wore his Sunday best, complete with the red cap that denoted him a titled man in his village.
‘Today is Independence Day… This is a wonderful day, and it is all the more wonderful because we have awaited it with increasing impatience,’ the newly minted Prime Minister announced to the crowd and dignitaries – including Princess Alexandra of Kent, the Queen of England’s representative – gathered for the Independence Day ceremony at Tafawa Balewa Square. ‘And so, with the words “God Save Our Queen”, I open a new chapter in the history of Nigeria, and of the Commonwealth, and indeed of the world.’
Two years later, the zestful enthusiasm had waned, but not the hope, never the ardent hope. By 1962, it had become clear that an amalgamation of over 300 ethnic tribes and conflicting interests was never going to go smoothly, independence or not. A national census had already been cancelled, and a political crisis was brewing in the Southwest. But Nigeria was young, and its future was replete with limitless possibilities, and that was why Uncle Ikenna sent a letter to his elder sister – my grandmother – to inform her of his imminent return after years of study in England on a government scholarship.
My grandmother prepared for his return like it was the second coming of Christ – with utmost vigilance and cheerful readiness, even though the letter had arrived several months after it was written and its author never thought to mention a specific date. She kept it tucked in her bra as if the feel of the folded sheet against her skin assured her of the letter’s existence, a promise soon to be fulfilled.
An insistent knock one afternoon alerted them to Uncle Ikenna’s arrival. My grandmother’s splitting scream closely followed, and my mother and her brothers ran out to see what the matter was. They found my grandmother engulfed in the arms of a strange man, weeping. When she finally collected herself, she introduced him to them as her brother, their uncle.
Uncle Ikenna’s easy laugh and ineffable charm were unassuming, attracting without meaning to. My mother and her elder brothers fought like warring wives over him, each planning how to sabotage the other to ensure they got the most of his time. But my mother was the chosen one.
As the last child and only daughter, she was accustomed to being the exception, subject to a different set of rules, but never like this. Uncle Ikenna said her name – Obianuju – like she was royalty, as he handed her sweets and ribbons hidden in his pockets. He encouraged her to be unfettered, to speak her mind regardless of the moment. With him, perfection was never expected.
War came in July of 1967 in the way war usually came – with ominous foreshadowing amidst futile prayers. The independent union was not going well; there had already been several political crises across the country since ’62, including a federal election crisis. And then in ’66, a bloody coup d’état had thrown the country into further upheaval.
‘FIGHTING BEGINS,’ the Daily Times announced in bold font on its front page, as if to say, ‘it has finally happened’. But few had expected the Governor of the Eastern Region to announce the secession of the region from the republic. Before then, Uncle Ikenna and my grandfather argued in the living room about the state of the country.
‘We must do something! We cannot continue to be persecuted in our own country,’ Uncle Ikenna said. It was one of the last times my mother would hear his voice.
No daughter of my grandmother’s was going to throw away a perfectly good proposal, and definitely not her only daughter.
Everyone knew the story because my grandmother never tired of telling it. She’d been married for many years with three sons, Kelechi, Ugochukwu and Ikechukwu. But she’d desperately wanted a daughter, someone she could bond with. And so my grandmother had prayed to both the God of her Christian faith and her ancestral deities, wearing amulets and reciting talismanic incantations, and as punishment for her infidelity to both, they’d sent her my mother.
‘You should be grateful that you have someone like this. He reminds me so much of Ikenna. In fact, that was the first thing I thought the day I met him,’ my grandmother said to my mother that night after my father drove off in ’78, her eyes raw with emotion.
And when my mother said nothing, she barked, ‘Listen to me! Tomorrow you will go and meet Chigozie and accept his offer. And you better pray he hasn’t changed his mind or you won’t have a home to come back to.’
My mother nodded in meek acquiescence, not for the sake of the fledgling love she felt for my father or the spectre of the man she saw reflected in him, but for the irrepressible yearning for her mother’s approval.
At their white wedding, my father held my mother’s hand in a deathly grip, like he was worried she would fly away. But she had no plans to escape. My grandmother’s smile shone brightly at the front of the church, matching the lustre of the gold wrapper set and headtie she wore. In the pictures, she leaned heavily on my mother, pushing her deeper into my father’s shoulders.
3
Love me jeje
My phone screen lit up, startling me from a daydream; wandering desultorily through time. Another Friday in September 2014. It wasn’t yet midday and I was ready for the day to be done. I glanced at the screen:
Hey. Are we still meeting up today?
What restaurants do you like?
Zina had convinced me to join Tinder, a decision I’d already begun to regret.
‘You cannot keep holding on to the past, Nwakaego,’ she’d said.
She meant it in more ways than one.
‘I’m not holding on to the past,’ I said.
‘Okay, if you say so.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘You’re in a country that’s cold, don’t you need someone to hold?’
We laughed. But she was right. I hadn’t dated in a long time – a purposeful decision. Love was an emotion I no longer wanted; vulnerability a risk not worth taking. Yet, Zina was right.
At the office the next day, I googled: ‘How to date in the 21st century.’ The results were endless. I browsed through articles on Cosmopolitan floridly detailing why every woman needed a little black dress and what shades of lipstick went with every sort of dinner date; Psychology Today had a column on signs of doom in a relationship.
‘I can’t do this,’ I told Zina vehemently. ‘There is even talking stage? Talking! I talk enough at work. These people don’t date like we do in Nigeria.’
