YOUR MOTHER’S WOE by Destiny Okoduwa

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I

It is you, watching the sun through the broken glass window—as it transcends from a yellow globe of piercing light to a golden orange one. You would stare on, until dusk slowly fogs the atmosphere. The air that blows in through the gape in the window starts to prick your skin. It is so chilly that Nne is forced to pull down the curtains, nudging you aside with her elbow as she does so.

When you move away from there, your eyes fall on Gozie’s lanky body. Sprawled across the floor. His hands clutch the bed sheets you washed just this morning. Gozie understands the look of fire and brimstone in your almond-shaped eyes, and that’s why he cowers. Shifting his gaze to Nne, he says: “Nne, I’m feeling cold.”

You grind your teeth to muffle the hiss that involuntarily tries to escape your mouth. You’re not sure what irritates you more; the grammatical blunder, or the manner with which he punctuates his statement with an exaggerated gesture of ducking under the sheets, hacking make-believe coughs and sneezes.

As expected, Nne puts up a fit of panic, loosening and retying her wrapper. Which is now a dull shade of green—faded from too much washing with strong soaps.

“Nonye, go and get him a drug at Kizito’s,” she says to you, unwrapping some crumpled notes from the folded edge of her wrapper and handing them over to you. She turns to Gozie, walking over to pat his back, and then whispers in his ears, “Be strong, inu?”

You scrunch up your nose at the way he drawls out his reply like one who is struggling to hold on to the last string of his life; like he would drop dead if he forces out another word. You pout your lips, then ask, a dry grudge lacing your voice: “Which one will you buy now?”

“Anyone, go ósisó,” Nne snaps.

Your mother, Nne, topples over the edge like this whenever Gozie makes a demand in an indisposed state, like he is her only child, and you and Nedu—your elder brother—are just statues that make up for the scanty and grumpy interior décor that disfigures rather than grace the parlour. Nedu says it’s because Gozie is Nne’s last born child. “Last borns are always over-pampered. Leave Gozie and Nne alone,” he would always stress.

Now you wish he hadn’t gone with Papa to the sawmill; his presence always has a way of toning down Nne’s over-pampering of Gozie.

You can recall the night Gozie was born. You were just six as at then, but you already could sense the choking tension that hovered in the air as a result of the oddity in the length of Nne’s labour. Lingering fear of the unknown, Papa’s frequent grunts spoke, as he shook his legs while seated on the long bench in the local health centre, his hands clasped tightly between his thighs.

As little as you were, you could still remember that Mama Dele, the next-door neighbour’s labour did not take as long. She had knocked lightly on the door that sunny Saturday afternoon, her breaths audibly laboured. “Mama Nedu, you want to get something down the road. Dele dey inside, I no go tey,” she had said.

“Ok,” Nne had replied, beaming forth a smile, a knowing smile.

You remember vividly that Mama Dele came back two hours later that day, in the company of her husband and a relative. The bump in her stomach region suddenly gone. Deflated. You still have the vivid picture in your head, of the relative rocking a baby wrapped in an off-white shawl. It had come as a shock to you then, and your little mind had wondered why it wasn’t so with Nne.

You remember how you sucked in your breath and let out a short scream when Nedu, eleven at that time, told you that the Ceasarian Operation that Papa and the doctor were talking about was that Nne’s tummy would be cut open to bring out the baby that has vehemently refused to come out on its own. “Nne is very weak,” Nedu had said in a shaky voice.

It comes as a bewilderment to you now, that a child that had given Nne such terrible birth complications would succeed in carving out a permanent spot in her heart. It reminds you of a line in one of your fellowship songs: I’m the apple of his eyes. Nne is ever ready to unleash the beast in her if anyone at all metes the tiniest scratch on Gozie. Do you have a problem with that? Certainly not. But you fear your teacher’s common phrase would one day play out—Too much familiarity breeds contempt.

“Buy any cough syrup.” Gozie’s voice distorts your thoughts, stopping you in your tracks. You keep a long stare at him wondering why he would ask that you buy a syrup of all drugs. Since Papa became the stranger that he is now, no one takes syrups because of the price. Tablets are way cheaper.

“We need to cut down on excessive spending to spare enough money for at least Oporoko in our soups. You know how this man behaves now,” Nne would say. But it boggles your mind always, how she still finds the voice to instruct you to serve him some food on the days he remembers home. On those days, you grit your teeth and painstakingly hold yourself from overturning the plate of soup on his head as you take out Nne’s orders.

You prepare to protest against Gozie’s request, clearing your throat to aid the smooth flow of the curse words that would fly out of your mouth soon. Does he not know how much a cough syrup cost? Your open your mouth. Then pause, leaving your lips in a circular shape, when Nne’s now stern voice jolts you, “Are you still there?”

You saunter off.

Gozie’s choice of drug drops a pin in your heart, and you’re left to wade through your fleet of thoughts in search of this pin as you trudge to the medicine store. You have seen two signs so far—the empty carton of cigarettes in Gozie’s bag, and a tablet of tramadol lying in between the only settee in the parlour. Now this? You smell something fishy.

II

Your suspicions about Gozie hikes when he starts returning home unusually late from school. When Nedu probes him for this, he stays aloof and rants about how one teacher kept him in school because he had erred in some way or the other. When this happens, you note how he takes a step back should anyone get too close to him.

You know why he does this. You have a very functional nose. You can perceive a scent, an aroma or an odour from as far as two miles away. And what Gozie reeks of, surpasses the odour of stale sweat and a body not properly washed.

You do not tell Nedu your observations. You can perceive from his actions that he’s suspicious too. Mama wouldn’t even hear of it. You do not want to get into Mama’s bad books; she would buzz all day like a Culex mosquito.

Sometimes you prefer the lashes of her cane to lashes from her tongue. To her, her dearest child doesn’t even know what a hard drug is let alone know how to use one. You can almost imagine the way her lips would contract and retract as she says, “He’s just fifteen. What does he know?”

Then the day finally comes. The day you get the frigging shocker. The misfortune begins with a car splashing muddy water on your dress as you head to church for choir practice. You hurl curses at the driver, who prolly doesn’t know what he has done or has just chosen to ignore.

You snap your fingers and grit your teeth, staring down at the now-terribly soiled dress—a knee-length cape gown with beautiful embroideries—you intend to show off to the girls in the choir. You have already envisaged how the girls would shimmer with admiration. Their eyes would sparkle with brittle envy, and you would flash a beautiful smile and say, “I got it for 2000 naira.”

“Oh! It’s so cheap,” they would say, oblivious of the fact that it’s even lower in price. Mama had picked it in the ‘bend down select’ section of the market.

It’s just a splash, you reminisce. It won’t hinder them from seeing the cape, the embroidery and the beautiful patterns on the dress. You trod on, this time with half-drooped shoulders.

It is the eyes at first; they almost cause you to trip over as you walk past a group of women standing by the roadside on your way home from choir practice. They beam on you like the front lights of a train. You can see them whispering incoherent words to one another. One of them shrugs and snaps her fingers to the ground. You cannot hear her, but you know she must have said, “Tufiakwa!”

As you get closer to home, you hear the noises first, of sobs and wails. Then a particular voice rises high to the cloudy skies. “Chai!”

You recognize the voice, it’s Papa John’s. You quicken your steps, increasing the length of your strides with each step. Your head goes light as you catch a glimpse of it. It numbs your limbs. It is your first time of seeing a corpse. Stuck right at the side of its stomach is a knife—your mother’s kitchen knife.

Nedu’s head is bent, he lifts it when you move closer to him. His eyes are almost crimson, you can tell they see the question in your eyes. He cranes his neck and points his thumb backwards—an answer to the unasked question dancing in your eyes. Your eyes follow the thumb, and then you behold him, your kid brother, held by four muscled guys.

You try to take it in the situation, to fix the puzzled pieces together. Then you find an empty bottle of cough syrup lying on the floor and blue tablets scattered on the ground. You would later learn that the blue tablets are not just tablets; they explain why Gozie’s bottle of Coke did not foam when it spilled on the floor at Aunty Odili’s daughter’s naming ceremony.

A car screeches to a stop at the front of the yard. Three men alight. Their faces can be likened to those belonging to sculptures of bronze. Two of the men are dressed in black.

“Where is he?” one of them barks. The third man wags his finger at Gozie. You press your lips together tightly to compress the outburst that stands in your lungs, threatening to spew in any moment. It comes out anyway—an earsplitting shrill.

You swallow hard, and dry the tears that has begun to trickle down your cheeks with the hem of your gown. You watch with bleak eyes as the men pull and push Gozie like a Fulani herdsman’s pulls and pushes his cow. His veins strike out visibly in his cuffed hands. An indifferent expression crosses his face as he struggles with the men.

You cannot bear to linger your eyes on him for too long, at his gaunt body and pale skin so white that his eyeballs are almost the colour of an over bleached shirt. You can do nothing, in fact, but restrain yourself from screaming again, or letting thought of biting and yanking off the policemens’ hands on him swirl in your head.

You can watch too, helplessly. You can watch as your mother lays still in the mud in your compound—that has refused to go dry since the last rain two days before—looking like a human-size bar of chocolate. This is what happens to a mother when someone forcefully takes away a child who has become her favorite. As usual, your father, the strange man, is nowhere to be found.

You do not try to stop Nedu as he runs after the men, nudging each one of them, mumbling, “Abeg, na the only brother wey I get be that.” His words bounce back as it seems they are hitting concrete walls. Nedu defies their silent treatment as he toddles after them until a baton collides with his head. He trips and sprawls on the floor.

The scream slips out of your mouth again, resonating with the acrobatic display of the Atilogwu dancers in your head. The atmosphere becomes a symphony of dirge. The smell of death hangs in the air, unmistakable and poignant. Nedu knows. Mama knows. You know.

III.

The night holds its usual hush and serenity, but your head is the hub of a typical Lagos traffic jam—your mother’s wails, screams for her son, ring in your ears like the incessant honks of yellow buses and private cars, and Nedu’s baritone; now cracked from his yells of “Mummy, don’t do this to us now!” echos like the voices of agberos who toss verbal jabs at each other as they load vehicles at the bus-stop.

Your eyes fall on your mother’s bare chest and you discover she has ripped off the last piece of clothing on her. You cringe at her undignifying gesture but what can you do if it does so much in decreasing the pounding in her head.

She seems calm now but her hands are still grappling at her hair as though she wants to yank them off. You sprint into the room, and appear with a pair of scissors. Tears sting your eyes as you run the scissors through the hair with each strand of braid dropping on the floor.

Time freezes for a second when she holds her head, gasping and letting out puffs. “My head, Isi’m.”

A scream rolls into a bolus and hangs in your throat. You purse your lips, suppressing the urge to scream; to scream calmness into this turbulent waters. This has become your way of easing off emotional tension—screaming your lungs out.

You used to think your mother was invincible—used to think that no situation and sickness whatsoever is capable of holding her down. You admire the manner at which she swallows pain in great gulps, pushing it down with tablets of Panadol.

Tonight is different; not that she has lost her indomitable spirit, for you can see in her compressed lips, the attempt at muffling the shrill cry of pain— it escapes nevertheless. You have never seen her sprawled on the floor like this, legs flung in different directions like a shameless slut, wincing and writhing in petrified paroxysm of pain. Which mother would witness her child’s prosecution and remain in one piece?

You hear deep grunts, and turn to see him standing right behind you. Who? No one but the strange man you’re supposed to call your father. If not for the tinge of sanity hovering above your head, you would draw a long hiss, long enough to remind him of how irrelevant he’s become; of how he’s duty has become filling the space of a father, literally.

Your mother calls out again, drawing your attention away from the strange man. “Pour me water,” she cries. You do not go for the water. Instead, you reach for her phone and dial Aunty Odili’s number. Her voice breaks with sleep on the phone.

“My mother is dying. She is dying!” You bellow into the phone. A yelp pierces your ears and a beep follows. It isn’t up to five minutes before the door slams open. Your aunt’s heavy breaths can be heard amidst your mother’s cries as she bolts in.

You, the strange man, and Nedu watch on as your aunt performs what seems to you, at the moment, sorcery or libations. She pours a bowl of water on your mother’s head, presses her jaw and puts in two tablets in her mouth.

It’s more like Jesus calming the storm with the words, “Peace be still.” Your mother doses off, and you all join her on the journey to oblivion. You sleep off on your feet, Nedu arches his back over the fridge, and the strange man sprawls on the couch. None can tell when Aunty Odili leaves. The room becomes a stereo, emitting snoring beats.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Destiny Okoduwa is a vibrant teenager, and an emerging storyteller. He spends his time joggling between teaching primary school pupils and weaving words into stories. When he’s not doing any of the above, he is weaving hairs into beautiful patterns to alter the appearance of women. His work has appeared in Nnoko stories. Okoduwa writes from Ogun state, Nigeria.

2 thoughts on “YOUR MOTHER’S WOE by Destiny Okoduwa

  1. Elisha Oluyemi says:

    Destiny, your writing is great! I’m pleased you’ve now found your own narrative voice—it reflects in all your works.

    I love this so much. The language, the flow, the simplicity. Everything resonates so well and reminds me of “The Thing around Your Neck”. Besides Chimamanda, your 2nd Person POV narration appeals the most to me of all I’ve read. I’m being sincere.

    Keep writing! You’ll get there soon.

    Reply
  2. Alimatu Azungah says:

    Wow, this is well written. I especially love your use of the second-person point of view.
    Telling is not in this young man’s genes!

    Bravo man, I really enjoyed reading this piece.

    Reply

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