She sat by the hearth, stirring the wet charcoal, tears running down her chubby cheeks as she hummed rhythmically. She was a girl in pain, a girl without a mother. She turned left to look at the ashen body which had a faded threadbare ankara cloth wrapped around the waist. That ashen body had been called Ekeodu when she was alive. She was her mother.
She stared at her mother’s lifeless body while she screamed in her head, more tears dripping. Lightning streaked across the sky followed by a rumble of thunder. She wiped her tears as she glanced up to the dark sky. The cold from the afternoon rain had taken her mother just few hours ago, and it was back. She wondered if it had come for her too. It seemed fair to her considering there was no one to take care of her.
She knew she had to move her mother away from the rain, she didn’t want her to start smelling…at least not until morning when people start milling around for Ahia Eke. So, with effort, she pulled herself up and shuffled barefooted to her mother’s corpse. The roof was leaking profusely and rainwater pooled around them. Her mother’s ankara wrapper had soaked up some of the rain water, letting off a stench that had little to do with death. With a deep sigh, she bent to her waist, grabbed Ekeodu’s arms and pulled.
She pulled and huffed, but Ekeodu didn’t budge. She had been a heavy woman in life and had gotten heavier in death. Defeated, Ifymariadiaso slipped to the wet floor and wept till exhaustion consumed her and sleep engulfed her.
************************************************************************
Ifymariadiaso wished she had died in the night. The morning brought a cold wind and an unusual bright sky. Sometime in the night, she had rolled away from the tattered and flat mattress, to the hearth. Her clothes and hair were damp, the floor still wet from the rain. Her chattering teeth hurt as she struggled to get to her feet with trembling limbs. She dreaded looking at her mother but she did anyway except that…Ekeodu was not on the mattress.
Ifymariadiaso took a step backward and almost toppled over the hearth stone before she caught herself in time. Her eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Suddenly, she felt hot, very hot and then very cold.
She let loose. She screamed.
Buyers and sellers at the Ogbo Mmanu and Ogbo Ji section in Ahia Eke heard a scream and knew it was Ifymariadiaso. Everyone in the village had heard of Ekeodu’s death from the young man who had alerted the village unofficial pallbearers after he had stumbled upon her corpse. Nobody had cared to ask him what he had been seeking around the uncompleted bus stop at that time of the day, but they all wondered about the future of Ekeodu’s pregnant fourteen years old daughter.
“Ara adighi mma”, was what most concluded as they shook their head.
************************************************************************
Ifymariadiaso was led to Ekeodu’s grave by the young man who had found the corpse when she had been asleep. He took her to the grave through the ‘osisi ndi job’ route, where many of the able young and old men waited to be hired for the day. A lot of “ndo’’ and “chai” were exclaimed. One of the old men even gave her a two hundred Naira note to buy breakfast. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t reject the money.
As she sat on the wet mulch which was now her mother’s new home, Ifymariadiaso contemplated her life. She thought about her father whom she did not know. She thought about the only night her mother had left her alone, that night she had her tongue cut off by those strange evil men. She recalled how her mom had wailed at the sight of her bleeding “tongueless” mouth.
She thought about when she was lured to the empty classroom, after school hours, by the identical twins who offered to help her find her wandering mother. One of the twins had pinned her to the dirty floor while his other twin raped her. She thought about how her mother had cried and cried at the sight of her bleeding vagina. She recalled how she and her mother had been disgraced by everyone when Ekeodu had tried to accost the twins after she had pointed them out to her. Nobody ever took the mad woman and her daughter serious.
She thought about her dream of being a doctor who looked into mad peoples’ head and cured them.
It was also on that wet mulch that it dawned on her that she will never know her mother’s real name.
Ifymariadiaso glanced at her bulging stomach. She could feel the baby kicking – the baby that felt like a hundred babies. She felt her heart clench as she wept anew while trying to soothe the baby by rubbing her stomach.
************************************************************************
That evening, the last woman to close her shed in the market gave her a five hundred Naira note to buy dinner. Ifymariadiaso was very appreciative of the woman’s generosity and assured her that she would buy food and eat.
That evening, she hung herself on a tree close to Ogbo mmanu. She had dragged one of the tables used by the women to the tree; found ropes left behind in Ogbo ji and joined her mother.
Written by Ada Onwudiwe
Leave a reply