It’s mid-afternoon but the sky is an absurd pale grey resembling the day Chiasoka got married. She is back in this house that contains nothing but keepsakes once furnished with love. In her hands is her wedding gown coated with dust that gives it a sepia hue. The room she sits in has open bags and boxes carrying folded clothes and other memory-invoking items. She sniffs the gown and presses it closer to her chest. The gust of emotions it brings adds more cracks to her already trodden heart.
She married Emenike in 1994. The overcast sky was heavy with rain, ready to pour. But the burgeoning happiness in her heart emitted shafts of light that seemed to illuminate the atmosphere. She’d always dreamed of how illustrious her wedding day would be. A dream she nursed and wrapped in her core ever since Emenike bent the knee, opened the small red box to reveal a gold-plated ring, and said, “Chiasoka, please be my wife.”
She had met Emenike at the university in 1989, when Nigeria was under the unruly system of the military government. He was a lanky architecture student and she was an accounting student. He was the president of their hometown’s student association at the university. It was the way he spoke that allured her when she first attended the association’s meeting—he stood tall with a soft, silky voice that surprisingly moved high and low with the dramatic flair of a fine actor. She was smitten. After the meeting, they talked and exchanged compliments, smiles, and contacts.
Getting into the wedding gown on her wedding morning was an upshot of her and Joy’s efforts, with the aid of the mirror they stood before. Emenike had given her five thousand naira to get a wedding gown. When her eyes latched on this gown in the boutique, she couldn’t let it go. She admired its careful details, its shimmering nettings, its fitted bodice, and its dramatically flared skirt evoking fairytale magic. It was what she wanted.
The mirror spoke of her splendour, of how perfectly symmetric her face was, and of how the gown swallowed her hip and turned her into a sparkling ball. “Big Sis, you too fine. Chineke!” Joy said, hugging her from behind.
“Nne, thank you, oh. It’s not easy to be somebody’s wife,” she jested as she hugged Joy again, and the sisters’ throaty mirth reached the heavens. Their glee was swelling. The day was going to be all she dreamed of.
Chiasoka had insisted it was her mother, Helen, that would walk her down the aisle and not Uncle Ikem. Uncle Ikem was her father’s eldest brother who had a paunch filled with greed, but the greed didn’t stand a chance in a duel with Helen’s obstinacy. Helen was the bright-eyed lawyer whose deeds made people dub her Ada eji eje mba in their community. She was the one who defended the widow whose in-laws wanted to leave penniless, she was the one who defended the woman who was barred from inheriting her father’s property because she was, well, a woman. She was prominent for her feminist activism and her pervasive movement of liberation for all people. She was light-skinned and short, but her commanding aura made up for whatever inadequacy she had. Joy looked more like her, both physically and in character, while Chiasoka took more from her father.
This wedding was not just a dream Chiasoka has had but also a fulfilled expectation for Helen. Her being alive to witness the marriage of her first daughter was a boon; a blessing she wished graced her husband’s eyes too. Chiasoka’s father had died to the bullets of robbers on his way back from work one night. His bloodied body was seen lying on the road close to their house. He was rushed to the hospital when they found him, but his last breath was a whisper as the car rolled through the hospital gate. His death quieted some parts of Helen’s spirit.
With Chiasoka’s hands entwined into her mother’s and with slow steps that nodded to the tempo of the song that serenaded the church, they got to where Emenike stood. His smile was stretched to its limits when he received her from Helen. They sat, and the wedding charge was given by the priest whose underarm was marked by sweat. His voice was in its highest decibel as he talked about how marriage was instituted by God, about how Chiasoka should submit to her husband, and about how Emenike should love her, his wife, as Christ loves the church. He kept talking until people started shuffling their feet. Then he stopped and called her and Emenike up to the altar for the exchange of vows, the exchange of rings, the I do, I do, the by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife, and the you may kiss the bride.
Emenike held her tight as they shuffled through the happy crowd in the church. They were taking pictures outside when the rains finally began to fall. It came down hard. They ran into the blue Peugeot 504 that would take them to the reception, laughing and kissing. “The rain is a blessing, good things are coming,” one was saying and the other was nodding. But no one told them. No one told them that forecasting was a treacherous illusion, a fragile thing that should never be trusted.
***
Chiasoka blinks to clear her vision blurred by tears. Around her is a silence that allows her to feel a festering pain that cuts her deep. The air smells of loneliness. She sighs as she folds the wedding gown into a puffed square and places it in a box. She needs to leave this house quickly. This house, a small bungalow she once called home. But she has long realised that home is not a place but a people, and once those people leave, like a passing breeze that does not return, the warmth of home bids you goodbye and in its wake lies a frigidity that makes your bones shudder.
She opens Emenike’s wardrobe, which has been locked up for years now, and the sight of his clothes causes her muscles to flex. His clothes reek of camphor. Slowly, she takes out his cobalt-blue shirt that hung on the worn hanger. She spreads it out on the bed and stares at it for a while before searing a harrowing scream into it. Her voice is laden with a sorrow too heavy for her to carry; it’s like a bloodied cross crushing her shoulders. Her scream is at an even pitch till her voice becomes the sound of a broken whistle, faint and unrecognisable. An unpleasant hum is ringing in her head and her throat is singeing. She wipes her tears with the back of her hands, picks up the shirt, and puts it on. The shirt swallows her—her slight body is nothing compared to Emenike’s huge frame.
Emenike had a mammoth chest and muscled arms that did not match his lax voice. His voice was so soft it could make you wonder if he breathed at all. He was one of those men who could win you over more by their comely gestures than by looks. You won’t say God blessed him with the beauty men his height usually had. He was tall—tall enough to bend his head when going through a door. But he had a hook nose that from the side made him resemble a bird, a large head with a crown of afro that had a narrow slit in front, and a rough, pimple-infested forehead, as rough as sandpaper. And when he laughed, his laughter came from every part of his being. He stuffed happiness in every corner of Chiasoka’s heart, and his gentle presence filled her with a daily assurance that this marriage was the best decision she’d made. They were both introverts, but Chiasoka was a bit more expressive than he was; her face was usually a slideshow of different emotions, while his was always blank and tender. The thing about their love was that it accommodated both their good and bad and all they could muster, in lush rooms. Their love was steady, a love that carried peace as much as emblems of hope and gratitude. They complemented each other the way different colours come together to form something as beautiful as the rainbow.
Emenike loved his job as an architect. It sustained their moderate lifestyle, coupled with Chiasoka’s accounting job in the Students’ Affairs department of the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. The dining table, where he kept his white drawing board, T-square, felt tip pens, French curves, trace papers, and the likes, was his haven. It was more like a sanctuary where his time was sacrificed on the altar of his work. Therefore, it only seemed right for this dining table to also be the altar on which their marriage was consummated.
***
Chiasoka is still wearing Emenike’s shirt as she folds his other clothes into a box. She’s placing them gently as if the clothes were Emenike himself, and she’s careful not to hurt him. Time stretches itself into an hour when she places the last of Emenike’s clothes into the box. Beside Emenike’s wardrobe is a small Ghana-must-go bag; she has forgotten what it contains. She drags it out, making the thick green veins in her hands to bulge. She wipes off the dust on the bag with a towel and opens it. Its content waters her eyes again and fills up her nose. She dips her hands and brings out baby clothes. They were for Ekene, the one who opened her womb. She can still remember wrapping Ekene in stringy napkins and wearing him one of these rompers.
Her pregnancy was a laborious journey. The indigestion, heartburn, and leg cramps were some of the changes she had difficulty getting used to in her first trimester. Her mother had to move in with them for some months to help Chiasoka. She’d cook up healthy concoctions that had a sour taste on Chiasoka’s tongue and monitor her intake of the prescribed vitamins. You will take two this morning and two at night. I’ll set an alarm so you won’t forget, she’d always say. The pregnancy later became unduly problematic for Chiasoka. Her breathing became fast and, sometimes, difficult, the headaches came with a blurred vision, vaginal bleedings also became regular. Helen would read out the Bible for her every morning and night to let her know how the Israelite women were vigorous and gave birth before the midwives arrived. She’d then lead her to make confessions like I’m vigorous in Jesus’ name, I’ll give birth like the Israelite women, the devil will not have his way in this pregnancy, everything is working for my good. Exhausted, Chiasoka would make these confessions because how could she say no to her mother’s insistence? She was rather grateful that she had people who were willing to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with her. For this, she feared no evil. The devil will not have his way in this pregnancy; everything will work out for my good.
It was the 16th day of January, 1995. The harmattan breeze was still strong, carrying dust into people’s nostrils. Meanwhile, the military head of state was still marching over Nigeria, trampling on all liberties. Helen, being the proactive lawyer and activist she was, used to churn out articles into newspapers, against the government, but she began to swallow some of her words when she learnt she was about to be a grandmother. All she then did during Chiasoka’s pregnancy was give anonymous interviews. That morning, Emenike was on the dining table building a house on paper. He was nodding his head to the jazz that was pouring out of the cassette player beside him when Chiasoka, supported by Helen and Joy, walked into the living room from the bedroom, her face rearranged in pain. Emenike jumped to his feet when he saw them.
“The baby is coming oo,” Joy said with a guarded felicity on her face.
“Don’t worry, we can carry her. Go and start the car,” Helen said to him when he came to help. He took the car key from the dining table and scurried off to the car. His shirt was unbuttoned and his trouser unzipped, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Ekene was tiny and pretty, as pretty as his mother and as light-skinned as his grandmother. They named him Ekenedirichukwu—all praise be to God, and their happiness was as living and breathing as he was.
***
Chiasoka pushes the Ghana-must-go bag with baby clothes back to its abode; she’d decide what to do with it later. She’s now at the shelf filled with books and papers stringed together by green ropes and those robed in brown envelopes and white files. Most of these papers are Emenike’s drawings and job contracts. Hospital reports and test results are also packed in there. She’d seen the insides of a hospital as much as she’d seen the insides of a church. These were the two places her feet got familiar with when her life started falling apart, brick by brick. The gates of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital were used to the spoor of sadness that followed her into the hospital. The floors of the hospital were acquainted with her teardrops.
Ekene’s seventh month was fraught with a sickness that washed pain all over him. He always yelped in ache whenever Chiasoka bathed him. This illness, which the paediatrician they visited explained away as “the early baby illness that always happens,” and gave them syrups to help ease, went away after a while. But it returned again when Ekene turned two years old. His skin and the white of his eyes began to yellow, his nose sometimes became stuffy and other times, runny. Rounds of medicine were prescribed for this. But on a temperate day in January 1997, Ekene wouldn’t open his eyes. His hands and feet were swollen and even in his unconscious state, he’d flinch if his joints were touched. Emenike’s hands were shivering as he hurriedly carried Ekene to the car with Chiasoka closely behind him, heaving frantic sighs. “Chi m oh! Chi m oh! Is he still breathing? Did you check his pulse? Chineke biko oh. God please.”
“Nne, calm down and get into the car. Let’s go to the hospital first.” Emenike’s voice had become one with panic.
In the hospital, the doctor ran a series of blood tests after injecting analgesics into Ekene. The hospital’s metallic chair was beginning to hurt Chiasoka’s buttocks when a full-bodied nurse walked up to them. “Sorry ma, the result is ready and the doctor will see you now,” she said. Her grave tone, the way she said sorry ma, like she was trying to cushion the effect of whatever the doctor was going to tell them, discomfited Chiasoka.
“Doctor, please what’s wrong with my son?” she asked before she warmed the seat the doctor offered them. Emenike seemed calm, but there was this covert uneasiness that folded his rough forehead.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ndukwe, the test shows that your son is a sickler.” The doctor was curt, almost rude. “He has sickle cell disease.”
“What do you mean? It’s not possible.” Chiasoka found her voice after processing how weighty the doctor’s statement was.
“Doctor, what you’re saying isn’t possible. My wife is AS and I am AA. We got tested before we got married. In fact, we did the test in two different hospitals and got the same result.” Emenike leaned forward into a pitiful stance. His voice was a thin wheeze.
The doctor sighed dismissively, like this was an overplayed scene by different patients. “Well, we ran the test twice just to be sure and the results were the same.” A dramatic pause, then, “We’ll have to test both of you to be extra sure of your genotype.” They agreed, and the doctor concluded with, “Please just meet the nurse that brought you in here. She’ll tell you what to do. Thank you.”
After a week of pain, Ekene got better and was discharged from the hospital. Chiasoka never left his side throughout the week. Emenike stayed through some days and went home at night. But she was there massaging his bones with hot towels and catching his silent tears as they dropped from his eyes. At night, she’d break into sobs that rattled her body. And in the unnerving silence, she’d ask God to please put the boy’s pain on her. She’d switch places with him, without a thought. He is just two years old, God please.
***
Chiasoka and Emenike swallowed everything they could about sickle cell malady; read every pamphlet they could get in the hospital and carefully followed the doctor’s instructions. They called the doctor when there was any sudden change in Ekene’s vision, they called when the seizures came, when his speech slurred, when the pain wasn’t getting better with medicine, when his stomach started swelling, when he had trouble moving any part of his body. They gave him lots of liquid, both the ones Helen sent to them and the ones prescribed. They also fed him food that had extra folic acid. In the cold weather, they put layers and layers of clothes on him. They didn’t let him play with the other children in the compound, didn’t let him do any strenuous activity. But all these precautions didn’t stop Ekene from dying in his sleep in 2000, beside his three-year-old brother, Sochi.
Chiasoka found his cold body lying beside his brother who was asleep when she came into their room by 2 a.m. for her usual checks. She first touched Sochi and tucked his hands into the blanket before going to the other side of the bed to check on Ekene. His body was cold, so she just covered him properly with the blanket and made to leave the room but something was amiss. Her boy was not alright, she felt it. She came back to Ekene and put her right fingers beneath his nostrils but felt no air. Her heartbeat became a bizarre thud. She put a hand on his wrist, no pulse—nothing. “Ekene!!!” She screamed into the night, her voice packed the strength of a thousand men, drilling holes in the air. And in that moment, she knew her life had shifted into a new reality.
Now, with raging disarray, she’s throwing the books and papers on the shelf into a large bag. Some books fall into the bag, others land on the floor. She doesn’t care. She keeps throwing them till her eyes catch an ash-coloured photo album in a corner of the shelf. She picks it up, blows off the dust on it, and opens it. In it lies pictures that remind her of times when her life was painted in happiness, vitality. In the first page, she’s smiling in a pale-yellow dress, with Emenike’s arms around her neck. There’s also a picture of her in front of a cake. She remembers that day. it was her twenty-fifth birthday, the year of her first pregnancy. In the picture, her teeth glimmered. She can almost hear the laughter trapped in the picture. In the next page lies a picture of Sochi, flashing a toothless smile with a toy car in his hands. She smiles, a smile that ushers tears. Sochi, her boy. He was beautiful. He inherited her eyes—almond, piercing, with impressively thick brows—and had Emenike’s hook nose. His smile was a shade of blue—warm and appealing. After Ekene died, she left her room with Emenike and moved into Sochi’s room. She couldn’t bear what happened to Ekene happening to Sochi. The doctor said that Ekene died from the pneumococcal disease which had plagued him for a while. But as is the way with sickle cell which never seems to have enough of the human body, the pneumococcal disease later led to a lung infection.
She blamed herself for Ekene’s death. She felt if she had been more attentive, he would still be with her. She let these squalls of guilt cut deep through her heart. Emenike was not any better. His moods were shifting, his temperament became volatile. But he always caught himself from slipping, always picked himself off the floor; he needed to be her pillar, her mainstay, and he couldn’t do that while slipping. The burial was a small and quick one in Uturu, their ancestral home. There was no ceremony. Those present were just Ekene’s parents, Chiasoka’s family, Emenike’s family, and the priest that said some words before Ekene was lowered into the grave.
While pregnant with Sochi, Chiasoka had a nine-month long and silent prayer on her lips. God, please this one should be different. But he was not. So, in resignation, she threw her hands in the air and named him Sochikamara—God knows best. At night, she’d cry and cry while Emenike would massage her shoulders and rub hope into her sockets. “It’ll be fine,” he’d always say. His calmness and optimistic disposition to everything often infuriated her. Why are you calm? she sometimes wanted to scream at him. Can’t you see the bleak darkness we’re in? Can’t you see we have a monster in the bodies of our children? Can’t you see? Why are you so calm? But the calmness sometimes soothed her, the way chilled water soothes a parched throat. So, she let him lull her and give her hope.
Sochi’s episodes of mild pain started when he was a year old. Ekene was three years old at that time. They later became severe after he turned seven. He was admitted into the hospital more times than Chiasoka can now remember. One time in the hospital, while Sochi’s thin arm enclosed a needle that connected a bag of blood, he turned to his mother sitting beside him and said, “Mummy.” His voice was as soft as his father’s.
“My sweetheart,” Chiasoka answered and tilted closer to him.
His eyes glistened with tears that refused to fall. “Will this pain stop if I die?”
His words pushed her back and puckered her face. “You’ll not die! You—” She caught her voice when she realised she was shouting, and softened it, “Sochim, the pain will stop and you’ll not die, inugo?”
He nodded.
She then hurried out of the room and let out the acrid tears that burned her eyes. The cracks in her heart kept widening.
Crying was an exercise her eyes were accustomed to: she cried in church, she cried in the hospital, she cried at work, she cried whenever she remembered the death of Ekene and the struggles of Sochi. If only those tears could be used to put out the fire in her.
She was crying and praying alone in church one day, her tears washing down her eye liner and her lips blabbing things only God could understand, when a bony woman with sunken eyes walked up to her. “Sister Chiasoka, good evening oh.”
She recognized the voice. She wiped her tears and looked up. “Sister Phoebe, good evening.” She feigned a smile. Phoebe smiled back at her—she had a smile Chiasoka found irritating. Phoebe was the church gossip. It was said that she once sat at a spot for more than eight hours, gossiping. When she finished, she couldn’t stand. That was how she developed the waist pain that gave her a limping gait.
“Nne, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” Chiasoka’s voice was cracked.
Phoebe sighed and said, “Nne don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
Chiasoka nodded.
Phoebe came close to her and sat, her voice turned into a whisper. “Nne eh, I know a place where you can get solution for your son’s ailment.” She leaned closer and went on. “There’s this Man of God in Lagos. He’s very strong. If you see how he cures illnesses eh. My brother’s wife was childless for years, two weeks after she went there, gbam, she just took in. I would like you to take Sochi there. I’m very sure this man will heal him.” She spoke so fast, her words melded into each other, forming a long sharp line that punctured Chiasoka’s ears. She immediately put her hands in her bag and out came a pen and a piece of paper. She wrote the man’s address in Lagos and handed it to her. Chiasoka took it reluctantly and muttered a thank you.
Phoebe patted her back and limped away.
Chiasoka told Emenike about what Phoebe had said and they decided not to go anywhere. But after an episode that left Sochi in the hospital for three weeks, they took him and boarded an early bus to Lagos.
***
The bus in which Chiasoka, her husband and son were journeying in was rickety, trembling at any slight pothole. Chiasoka was sitting in the middle of the bus while Emenike and Sochi were sleeping beside her. She was wondering what they were doing, running to a man they knew nothing about, hanging hopes of their son’s wellness on the words of Sister Phoebe. Who trusts the words of Sister Phoebe? She felt they were not meant to be doing this, going to Lagos. But she’d run to the depths of hell and back if it meant her son being well. If a trip to Lagos was going to hand her the gift of her son’s healing, a gift she’d since longed for, then nothing else mattered. She was still in her thoughts when she heard a loud bang that made her float in the bus.
Helen and Joy were peering at her when she woke up in the hospital two days after the accident. “Sochi,” was the first word she uttered. Her mother and sister passed an awkward look between each other and said nothing. Joy was pregnant with her second child at this time. Helen seemed shorter and age sagged her skin.
Her tear-ridden face is in her hands now, her ring finger still carrying that gold-plated ring Emenike gave her in 1994. Emenike. His name still rolls through her thoughts with the sweetness of shared memories and the dread of his exit. She remembers how Helen held her hands as she told her that Emenike and Sochi had died in the accident. The tears didn’t come when she heard this. She simply pursed her lips and turned away from her mother. When she was discharged from the hospital, she moved in with Helen. She didn’t go back to the house she’d shared with her husband. Just went directly from the hospital to her mother’s place. Helen kept asking, “Are you okay?” To which she’d always nod.
She didn’t cry the next day, or the day after; the tears simply wouldn’t come. She just went back to work, back to her doleful life. But the day Joy gave birth to her second child, after Chiasoka held the baby, she started laughing, a hysterical laughter that segued to an uncontrollable wail. She felt a knot loosen in her, letting out a rush that poured through her eyes in billows. Helen asked that they let her cry. After all, even elastic hearts had their limits.
***
She’s still wearing Emenike’s shirt over her purple blouse and pleated skirt. Her greying hair is packed into a bun. She stares at the bags she has packed and looks at the room that is almost empty; in these memories, she’ll meet Emenike and her boys tonight. She’ll meet them tonight and she’ll tell them that she has finally cleared the house, that she has taken the remaining pieces of them and sewn them to her skin.
