Girls at War (4 page)

When Nene read through this letter and looked at the mutilated picture her eyes filled with tears, and she began to sob.

“Don’t cry, my darling,” said her husband. “He is essentially good-natured and will one day look more kindly on our marriage.” But years passed and that one day did not come.

For eight years, Okeke would have nothing to do with his son, Nnaemeka. Only three times (when Nnaemeka asked to come home and spend his leave) did he write to him.

“I can’t have you in my house,” he replied on one occasion. “It can be of no interest to me where or how you spend your leave—or your life, for that matter.”

The prejudice against Nnaemeka’s marriage was not confined to his little village. In Lagos, especially among his people who worked there, it showed itself in a different way. Their women, when they met at their village meeting were not hostile to Nene. Rather, they paid her such excessive deference as to make her feel she was not one of them. But as time went on, Nene gradually broke through some of this prejudice and even began to make friends among them. Slowly and grudgingly they began to admit that she kept her home much better than most of them.

The story eventually got to the little village in the heart of the Ibo country that Nnaemeka and his young wife were a most happy couple. But his father was one of the few people who knew nothing about this. He always displayed so much temper whenever his son’s name was mentioned that everyone avoided it in his presence. By a tremendous effort of will he had succeeded in pushing his son to the back of his mind.
The strain had nearly killed him but he had persevered, and won.

Then one day he received a letter from Nene, and in spite of himself he began to glance through it perfunctorily until all of a sudden the expression on his face changed and he began to read more carefully.

The old man at once felt the resolution he had built up over so many years falling in. He was telling himself that he must not give in. He tried to steel his heart against all emotional appeals. It was a re-enactment of that other struggle. He leaned against a window and looked out. The sky was overcast with heavy black clouds and a high wind began to blow filling the air with dust and dry leaves. It was one of those rare occasions when even Nature takes a hand in a human fight. Very soon it began to rain, the first rain in the year. It came down in large sharp drops and was accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season. Okeke was trying hard not to think of his two grandsons. But he knew he was now fighting a losing battle. He tried to hum a favourite hymn but the pattering of large rain drops on the roof broke up the tune. His mind immediately returned to the children. How could he shut his door against
them? By a curious mental process he imagined them standing, sad and forsaken, under the harsh angry weather—shut out from his house.

That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them.

Akueke lay on her sick-bed on one side of the wall of enmity that had suddenly risen between her and her brothers. She heard their muttering with fear. They had not yet told her what must be done, but she knew. She wanted to ask them to take her to their mother’s father in Ezi but so great was the enmity that had so strangely come between them that her pride forbade her to speak. Let them dare. Last night Ofodile who was the eldest had wanted to speak but had only stood and looked at her with tears in his eyes. Who was he crying for? Let him go and eat shit.

In the fitful half-sleep that later visited her Akueke was far away in her grandfather’s compound in Ezi without even the memory of her sickness. She was once again the village beauty.

Akueke had been her mother’s youngest child and only daughter. There were six brothers and their father had died when she was still a little girl. But he had been a man of substance so that even after his
death his family did not know real want, especially as some of his sons already planted their own farms.

Several times every year Akueke’s mother took her children to visit her own kinsmen in Ezi, a whole day’s journey from Umuofia at the younger children’s pace. Sometimes Akueke rode on her mother’s back, sometimes she walked. When the sun came up her mother broke a little cassava twig from the roadside farm to protect her head.

Akueke looked forward to these visits to her mother’s father, a giant of a man with white hair and beard. Sometimes the old man wore his beard as a rope-like plait ending in a fine point from which palm-wine dripped to the ground when he drank. This never ceased to amuse Akueke. The old man knew it and improved the situation for her by gnashing his teeth between gulps of wine.

He was very fond of his granddaughter who, they said, was the image of his own mother. He rarely called Akueke by her name: it was always
Mother.
She was in fact the older woman returned in the cycle of life. During the visits to Ezi, Akueke knew she could get away with anything; her grandfather forbade anyone to rebuke her.

The voices beyond the wall grew louder. Perhaps neighbours were remonstrating with her brothers. So they all knew now. Let them all eat shit. If she could get up she would chase them all out with the old broom lying near her bed. She wished her mother were alive. This would not have happened to her.

Akueke’s mother had died two years ago and was taken to Ezi to be buried with her own people. The old man who had seen many sorrows in his life asked, “Why do they take my children and leave me?” But some days later he told people who came to console
him, “We are God’s chickens. Sometimes He chooses a young chicken to eat and sometimes He chooses an old one.” Akueke remembered these scenes vividly and for once came near to crying. What would the old man do when he heard of her abominable death?

Akueke’s age-grade brought out their first public dance in the dry season that followed her mother’s death. Akueke created a sensation by her dancing, and her suitors increased tenfold. From one market to another some man brought palm-wine to her brothers. But Akueke rejected them all. Her brothers began to be worried. They all loved their only sister, and especially since their mother’s death, they seemed to vie with one another in seeking her happiness.

And now they were worried because she was throwing away chances of a good marriage. Her eldest brother, Ofodile, told her as sternly as he could that proud girls who refused every suitor often came to grief, like Onwuero in the story, who rejected every man but in the end ran after three fishes which had taken the form of handsome young men in order to destroy her.

Akueke did not listen. And now her protective spirit despairing of her had taken a hand in the matter and she was stricken with this disease. At first people pretended not to notice the swelling stomach.

Medicine-men were brought in from far and wide to minister to her. But their herbs and roots had no effect. An
afa
oracle sent Akueke’s brothers in search of a certain palm-tree smothered by a climbing vine. “When you see it,” he said to them, “take a matchete and cut away the strangling climber. The spirits which have bound your sister will then release her.” The brothers searched Umuofia and the neighbouring
villages for three days before they saw such a palm-tree and cut it loose. But their sister was not released; rather she got worse.

At last they took counsel together and decided with heavy hearts that Akueke had been stricken with the swelling disease which was an abomination to the land. Akueke knew the purpose of her brothers’ consultation. As soon as the eldest set foot in her sickroom she began to scream at him, and he fled. This went on for a whole day, and there was a real danger that she might die in the house and bring down the anger of
Ani
on the whole family, if not the entire village. Neighbours came in and warned the brothers of the grave danger to which they were exposing the nine villages of Umuofia.

In the evening they carried her into the bad bush. They had constructed a temporary shelter and a rough bed for her. She was now silent from exhaustion and hate and they left her and went away.

In the morning three of the brothers went again to the bush to see whether she was still alive. To their great shock the shelter was empty. They ran all the way back to report to the others, and they all returned and began a search of the bush. There was no sign of their sister. Obviously she had been eaten by wild animals, which sometimes happened in such cases.

Two or three moons passed and their grandfather sent a messenger to Umuofia to ascertain whether it was true that Akueke was dead. The brothers said “Yes” and the messenger returned to Ezi. A week or two later the old man sent another message commanding all the brothers to come to see him. He was waiting in his
obi
when his grandchildren arrived. After the formalitites of welcome muted by thoughts
of their recent loss he asked them where their sister was. The eldest told him the story of Akueke’s death. The old man listened to the end with his head supported on the palm of his right hand.

“So Akueke is dead,” he said, half question, half statement. “And why did you not send a message to me?” There was silence, then the eldest said they had wanted to complete all the purification rites. The old man gnashed his teeth, and then rose painfully three-quarters erect and tottered towards his sleeping-room, moved back the carved door and the ghost of Akueke stood before them, unsmiling and implacable. Everyone sprang to their feet and one or two were already outside.

“Come back,” said the old man with a sad smile. “Do you know who this young woman is? I want an answer. You Ofodile, you are the eldest, I want you to answer. Who is this?”

“She is our sister Akueke.”

“Your sister Akueke? But you have just told me that she died of the swelling disease. How could she die and then be here?” Silence. “If you don’t know what the swelling disease is why did you not ask those who do?”

“We consulted medicine-men throughout Umuofia and Abame.”

“Why did you not bring her here to me?” Silence.

The old man then said in very few words that he had called them together to tell them from that day Akueke was to become his daughter and her name would become Matefi. She was no longer a daughter of Umuofia but of Ezi. They stared before them in silence.

“When she marries,” the old man concluded, “her bride-price will be mine not yours. As for your purification
rites you may carry on because Akueke is truly dead in Umuofia.”

Without even a word of greeting to her brothers Matefi went back to the room.

Sarah’s last child was a boy, and his birth brought great joy to the house of his father, Amos. The child received three names at his baptism—John, Chike, Obiajulu. The last name means “the mind at last is at rest.” Anyone hearing this name knew at once that its owner was either an only child or an only son. Chike was an only son. His parents had had five daughters before him.

Like his sisters Chike was brought up “in the ways of the white man,” which meant the opposite of traditional. Amos had many years before bought a tiny bell with which he summoned his family to prayers and hymn-singing first thing in the morning and last thing at night. This was one of the ways of the white man. Sarah taught her children not to eat in their neighbours’ houses because “they offered their food to idols.” And thus she set herself against the age-old custom which regarded children as the common responsibility of all so that, no matter what the
relationship between parents, their children played together and shared their food.

One day a neighbour offered a piece of yam to Chike, who was only four years old. The boy shook his head haughtily and said, “We don’t eat heathen food.” The neighbour was full of rage, but she controlled herself and only muttered under her breath that even an
Osu
was full of pride nowadays, thanks to the white man.

And she was right. In the past an
Osu
could not raise his shaggy head in the presence of the free-born. He was a slave to one of the many gods of the clan. He was a thing set apart, not to be venerated but to be despised and almost spat on. He could not marry a free-born, and he could not take any of the titles of his clan. When he died, he was buried by his kind in the Bad Bush.

Now all that had changed, or had begun to change. So that an
Osu
child could even look down his nose at a free-born, and talk about heathen food! The white man had indeed accomplished many things.

Chike’s father was not originally an
Osu
, but had gone and married an
Osu
woman in the name of Christianity. It was unheard of for a man to make himself
Osu
in that way, with his eyes wide open. But then Amos was nothing if not mad. The new religion had gone to his head. It was like palm-wine. Some people drank it and remained sensible. Others lost every sense in their stomach.

The only person who supported Amos in his mad marriage venture was Mr. Brown, the white missionary, who lived in a thatch-roofed, red-earth-walled parsonage and was highly respected by the people, not because of his sermons, but because of a dispensary he ran in one of his rooms. Amos had emerged from
Mr. Brown’s parsonage greatly fortified. A few days later he told his widowed mother, who had recently been converted to Christianity and had taken the name of Elizabeth. The shock nearly killed her. When she recovered, she went down on her knees and begged Amos not to do this thing. But he would not hear; his ears had been nailed up. At last, in desperation, Elizabeth went to consult the diviner.

This diviner was a man of great power and wisdom. As he sat on the floor of his hut beating a tortoise shell, a coating of white chalk round his eyes, he saw not only the present, but also what had been and what was to be. He was called “the man of the four eyes.” As soon as old Elizabeth appeared, he cast his stringed cowries and told her what she had come to see him about. “Your son has joined the white man’s religion. And you too in your old age when you should know better. And do you wonder that he is stricken with insanity? Those who gather ant-infested faggots must be prepared for the visit of lizards.” He cast his cowries a number of times and wrote with a finger on a bowl of sand, and all the while his
nwifulu
, a talking calabash, chatted to itself. “Shut up!” he roared, and it immediately held its peace. The diviner then muttered a few incantations and rattled off a breathless reel of proverbs that followed one another like the cowries in his magic string.