Ogadinma Read online

  The doctor led her to a bedroom and told her to take off her clothes. ‘Lie on the bed after you are done,’ he said, and then he left. The girls appeared by the door, watching her remove her underwear, both of them huddled together. They were actually twins, alike in every way. They giggled and fled just as the doctor came in with two women. She wanted to ask if the girls were his children, why they were roaming freely, peeking in to watch her undress.

  She climbed on the bed and lay on her back. She drew in a breath when the doctor raised her knees and spread her legs open. She shut her eyes when he probed her with his gloved hands. Seconds slowed to forever. Cold metal slithered into her body, into her womb, churning her stomach. Sharp pain travelled down her back, singed her waist, her knees. She was trembling, sweating. Cries came to her throat. The women held her legs in place as the doctor worked metals in her body, swirling objects, and then forcing in a large syringe. Her waist was on fire, her eyes pressed with tears. The doctor and the women did not look at her face.

  ‘She has a retroverted uterus,’ he said, and the women bent over to peep. Then they carried on with their activities. If they noticed her discomfort, they did not acknowledge it, not even when the first cries slipped from her lips.

  She thought of Barrister Chima, mustering all the hate she could. She thought of all the ways she could hurt him if she had the means, and then she wanted to hit herself for being so stupid.

  After the doctor was done, she avoided the women’s eyes as they wiped her clean, even when they slid a Comfit pad between her legs and pulled on her underwear. When she climbed out of the bed, the floor shifted under her feet, but she placed one foot after the other, out of the flat, onto the streets. There were moments when she clenched her stomach, when darkness hovered before her. At home, she climbed into bed and shut her eyes. Her waist burned, and her stomach contracted. She shivered in bed, pulled more sheets to her chest. She did not stop shivering, even by evening, when her father came home and found her in bed, sweating. She said she was menstruating, that the pain was too much. She slipped in and out of consciousness, barely remembering what she said. Her father’s face swam above hers, and she was wondering why he looked so worried and devastated when her eyes drew shut.

  She opened her eyes and knew she was not in her bed. This one felt hard. A fan whirled above her, the ceiling was painted white, the walls blue, and the room smelled of Izal and drugs. She sat up. Her father was standing by the door. A nurse walked into the room. Her face bore judgement. Ogadinma knew then that they had found out, that her father had found her out. She lay back in bed and shut her eyes, and wished for the floor to cave in and swallow her.

  2

  Her father shook her awake at past midnight, when the cries of crickets flitted in from the open window, the room illuminated by the orange flame of a smoky kerosene lantern. He sat on the chair close to her bed, his elbows resting on his knees.

  ‘Papa,’ she said, and tried to make out the look on his face, to prepare her mind for what he wanted to say. It still hurt to move, and her stomach felt as though someone had dug everything out. Still, she sat and said, ‘Good morning, Papa.’

  He stared at her for a long time, his face shielded by dark shadows. The last time they stayed this way was the day after the rioting boys wreaked havoc in Sabon Gari and burned down the church. He brought her home and made their meal, the first time in many years. Later that night, she had woken to find him leaning by her bedside, weeping. He didn’t bother wiping the tears, or to muffle his cries. He said he had feared that something bad would happen to her. He said he had feared for her, not for his own fate. That was the first time she would see him cry. But it was a different look in his eyes this time.

  ‘You went and got pregnant, and then killed the child. Under my roof?’ He always panted whenever he was angry, but now he did not pant. He did not stutter. He waited for her to explain herself, as he always did. Heart-to-heart, he always called it. Although the night was still and cold winds sifted in from the open windows, she felt suffocated. The bed was sucking her in. The room had gotten darker. And she wondered what he would do if she told him everything about Barrister Chima.

  She stared at her clenched hands, because she did not want to look into his eyes and see the anger and disappointment simmering on the surface, and said, ‘I am sorry, Papa.’

  He stared at her. For a long time, he just stared at her and she wondered what he was thinking, if perhaps he had accepted her apology and forgiven her. But then he stood and walked out of the door, his feet padding wearily down the passage. She had almost sighed in relief when his footsteps returned, heavy with purpose. The glare from the extra lantern he had brought brightened the room before he appeared at the door. He was holding a bunch of rattan canes, slim, long sticks bound together at each end with black rope. Her heart lurched painfully in her chest.

  ‘Papa.’ She stood up.

  He set the canes by the door, pointed to the bed and said, ‘Lie flat on the bed,’ his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Your aunty Okwy brought pregnancy from nowhere into my house. And you went and did the same thing? Ụjọ adịrọ gị n’anya, eh, so you have no fear in your eyes?’

  She looked at the canes and searched his face as if trying to find a sign in his eyes, or the crumple of his forehead, that would tell her that this was all a mistake, that he was not about to break his promise to her years ago. ‘Papa, you promised you would never flog me again,’ she said, her voice choked with the beginnings of cries.

  ‘Lie on the bed!’ he shouted, his voice so loud it caused her to jump.

  She climbed into bed and flattened her stomach against the soft mattress, her head turned to the side, so she could see everything he did. This was not happening, she told herself. This was all a bad dream she would soon wake up from. Outside her window, the world was so dark, so still. He grabbed a cane, a long thing that was as thick as her thumb.

  ‘I am very sorry, Papa. I will never do it again.’

  ‘I will give you twenty-four strokes. If you shift and I miss your buttocks, that is a minus, and I will have to start all over again.’

  ‘Papa, biko. Please.’

  ‘Where did you get that pregnancy from?’

  ‘It was a mistake, Papa.’

  He lifted his hand, the cane reaching for the ceiling, before he brought it down with so much might that it zipped through the air, before landing on her buttocks, the force lifting her skirt. She was numbed by the shock, her knees suddenly soft. And then she screamed. A hoarse cry that tore through the night, ringing throughout the compound. Neighbours jerked awake. Worried voices rose. Her father was undaunted.

  ‘Mechie ọnụ, shut your mouth!’

  ‘Biko, biko!’

  The cane landed again with the same force, carrying the same zipping sound. Ogadinma jumped off the bed, screaming. He shoved her back on the bed, yelling threats.

  Her skin broke. Cries surged up her throat. Neighbours pounded on their door, shouted from their windows, asked if he wanted to kill her.

  ‘Ọọ mụ mụlụ ya, she is my child. If she dies, I will bury her body.’

  She slipped into a dark place and when she opened her eyes again, he had finally stopped, and he was speaking to her.

  ‘You will go to Lagos,’ he was saying. ‘I would have sent you to your grandmother in the village, but the shame you have brought will kill that woman if she learns the truth. You will go and stay with my brother Ugonna until I decide what to do with you.’

  Her vision was hazy and her whole body was on fire, but she still said she was sorry for what she had done; she apologized because there was something in the way he hung his head when he walked out of the room, as if a heavy weight was pressing down on his shoulders – a sack of sadness birthed by the shame she had brought.

  She stayed in bed, afraid to move her body or even raise her hands. She was still there when the sounds of night life sifted in: the croaking toads in open drainages, the rustling of cats and rats, the flap of bats, the howls of street dogs. And then her eyes drifted shut and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Neighbours woke her with the usual cacophony of her childhood: pots and spoons banging in out-kitchens, pestles pounding into mortars, small children bathing on the ledge in front of the compound, splashing water all over the floor. As a child, she had bathed outside too. On some days, it was Aunty Okwy who supervised her bath. Ogadinma had hated it. Aunty Okwy would sponge her until she was a frothy mass of white bubbles, before rinsing off the lather with bowls of water, and when soap burned her eyes, Aunty Okwy would smack her over the head, kpa! kpa!, while Ogadinma danced in pain. ‘Who asked you to open your eyes, eh? Don’t you have sense?’ before obliging her with a soothing splash of water. Her father was careful with the sponge when he helped out, and he was easy on the soap. He would scrub her upper body, hand her the sponge and say, ‘Ngwa wash your bom-bom,’ and she would sponge her buttocks and the space between her legs before he poured her bowls of water to rinse off the lather.

  Now she huddled by the window, crouched on all fours because she could not sit yet; her buttocks were riddled with welts and had burned when she washed herself that morning. She wondered if Aunty Okwy had felt the same kind of pain years ago, after she got pregnant. Ogadinma still remembered that night. Aunty Okwy, thin and small and hovering by the door, her belly elevated to a strange roundness that made her look like she’d stuffed a limp ball under her dress. She had told Ogadinma’s father that she didn’t know the man who got her pregnant. Ogadinma remembered how her father had dragged Aunty Okwy into her room and locked the door. She remembered Aunty Okwy’s shrieks, the zipping sounds of the rattan canes. After her father was done, he locked Aunty Okwy inside her room, and shipped her off to their home town the next morning. The last time she saw Aunty Okwy was in Onitsha, after her hasty wedding to an old widower.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Her father’s voice broke into her thoughts.

  She jerked away from the window. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and caught herself. She had never called her father ‘sir’.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, his voice oddly piercing.

  She carried her bag and he followed behind her. She heard the click of the door and the turn of the key. She kept walking, never looking back or slowing her pace, and he stayed behind her too. They did not speak. The previous years, when they travelled to their village in Abagana for Christmas, they would hold hands and he would take the window seat so she could watch the trees and houses blending into each other, flitting past. Those times, she looked forward to travelling, to sitting for twelve hours on the bus with her father. But it was different this time. About the abortion and the punishment he meted out last night, he said nothing. It was as though all of that had never happened.

  At the bus park, she hovered behind as he got the ticket from the counter, then they waited, neither saying anything to the other until her bus was ready to leave.

  ‘You will stop at Jibowu,’ he said. ‘Don’t get down at Berger or anywhere else. I have also told the driver this. Your final destination is Jibowu. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Papa. I will get down at Jibowu.’

  There was a restlessness about him. He quickly pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She rested her head against his chest and wondered if his stomach was knotted with tension as hers was. It was the first time in their lives that she would be travelling without him by her side. He broke the hug and pulled away. ‘Safe journey,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Thank you, Papa,’ she said.

  In the bus, she looked out to catch a last glimpse of him. She did not see him.

  The morning breeze pushed against the blinds when they arrived in Lagos. She woke to the frantic voices outside her window – wheelbarrow-pushers offering to carry luggage, the taxi drivers hounding passengers, young boys in stained clothes begging to lug bags on their heads, hawkers plastering their wares against the windows. Jibowu Park was cramped, the floor stained black as though someone had spilled a tank of grease on it. Her buttocks were satisfyingly numb, but a thousand pins of pain shot up her body when she stood up, the welts coming alive again. She got down from the bus, clutching her Ghana-Must-Go bag. Men grabbed her, boys rounded her up, all of them offering their services. Someone called out her name. She turned and saw Nnanna, Uncle Ugonna’s son. She had last seen him two years ago, when they travelled to the village for Christmas, but he looked slightly different now, taller. ‘Ogadinma, you are here!’

  She still remembered his goofy laugh, how the dimples sank when he laughed. She hastened towards him, even though she felt a throbbing all over her body.

  ‘Nnanna, you haven’t changed one bit!’ She forced brightness into her voice.

  He clasped her in his arms and held her tightly against his bony frame, laughing. He smelled of Imperial Leather soap.

  The hustlers, seeing this was bad market, broke away to hound another passenger. Nnanna said his father was parked across the road. He took her bag in one hand and held her with the other, and they made a dash across the busy road, narrowly missing a taxi that swerved dangerously in front of them.

  Uncle Ugonna’s Peugeot 505 was black and shiny. His face broke into a brilliant smile as he threw his hands open and wrapped them around her, swaying from side to side. ‘Bịa Ogadinma, look how tall you have grown, like yam tendrils during the rains. Neke, neke!’ He pulled away and tilted his neck dramatically up to look at her face. ‘Ị fụkwa obele nwa ụnyaa, now I have to crane to look at her?’ For a moment, she was staring at a happier, shorter version of her father. His face was not stretched thin with worry, and he had eyes that danced with mischief and laughter.

  She grinned and did not say anything else after they got into the car. They drove into dense traffic, squeezed in between yellow buses, fought for space with taxi drivers and rode on pavements to beat hold-ups. She listened as they made small talk about the state of the roads, the corrupt government, how Nigerians were still enduring epileptic power supply. Mostly, Nnanna did the talking and Uncle Ugonna responded in the affirmative. She watched the ease with which they conversed, her chest suddenly tight. She thought of her father and their empty apartment, how the rooms would be silent now, how he would have breakfast and dinner all by himself. Would he still watch NTA News, would he still laugh when New Masquerade came on?

  ‘We are entering Victoria Island,’ Nnanna said later. She pulled away from the window and grinned at him. He frowned, then whispered, ‘Why are you crying?’

  She swiped at her face and felt wetness, then she turned away and mumbled something about being tired. But Uncle Ugonna was already looking back, his gaze darting between her and the road, a knowing look in his eyes, and for a moment she feared her father had told him everything that happened.

  But Uncle Ugonna said, ‘Your father misses you, too. He called ten times this morning, asking if I had already picked you up.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes o! He refused to let me sleep!’ He laughed. Ogadinma laughed too, nervously. Nnanna rubbed her shoulder. Something lifted from her chest. Her father missed her. She wanted to believe it. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine his face, his laughter, but all she remembered was the cold look, how distant he was when they walked to the motor park. Her chest felt tight again, but she took a deep breath and tried to chase the sad thoughts away.

  They reached Victoria Island. The cars here were sleeker. Glassy buildings sprang from among dull ones on dusty streets, reaching for the sky. She knew when people said that Lagos was the New York of Nigeria, they were speaking in the metaphorical sense because the Lagos and New York she saw on the TV did not look alike in any way. But she pressed her face against the window and breathed the air that smelled of dust and sweat, and imagined she had flown out and was now driving down the streets of Manhattan.

  They pulled up in front of an old, wide gate with a signpost that said Bar Beach Barracks. The gates were thrown open by a young boy in a stained kaftan. Nnanna gave her a mini-education on the buildings: the mammy market, the police station spilling over with black-clad officers wielding guns and batons, the apartment blocks with peeling paint and stained balconies. They drove into a quieter section of buildings with wide front yards and manicured lawns and water tanks sitting on raised metal platforms. Each apartment had an outdoor TV antenna perching on the wall. They rolled to a stop in front of a flat and Uncle Ugonna switched off the engine.

  Aunty Ngozi was coming out of the building as they got down. Aunty Ngozi who often brought them chin-chin at Christmas. Two years had passed and she had not changed. Yellow-skinned like an overripe pawpaw, she still had light stubble under her chin. Aunty Ngozi laughed a lot, and she was laughing now as she gathered Ogadinma into her arms.

  ‘Ah, ah, Ogadinma, is this really you?’ She pressed Ogadinma to her soft bosom. She smelled of curry and Maggi. Ogadinma laughed as Aunty Ngozi swayed with her in a small dance. Her hair was gathered in a fuzzy bunch at her head, like a blob of dark cotton wool. She looked genuinely happy to see Ogadinma. What a pleasant welcome, Ogadinma thought, hugging Aunty Ngozi tighter. Relief flooded her chest for the first time since she got off the bus.

  Nnanna carried her bag into the flat. Aunty Ngozi slung a hand around her waist, led her inside the house, down the passage and into a room crammed with bags. The only table in the room was cluttered with books. ‘You must be tired. Make yourself at home, ị nụ? This is also your house. It is so good to see you again.’

  ‘Thank you, Aunty.’

  Aunty Ngozi looked around the room, picked up a lone bra from the floor, the books strewn by the side of the table. ‘This is Ifeoma’s room. That girl is so dirty,’ she said, but her words were drenched in the warmth of a mother who had learned to dismiss her child’s shortcomings.