Mama was the name everyone in the neighbourhood called you. It wasn’t like you were the oldest woman, or even belonged to the age grade of the real matriarchs of the community– women whose bodies fly the proud imprint of age like a cape: wrinkles on their faces, a patina of greyness on their hair, stooping frailty to their frame; women who command respect and provoke attentiveness from the younger generation; women whose eyes spark with ancient wisdom, and whose mouths are revered for the juices of refined knowledge they secrete, juices brewed from many many years of precious experience.
Maybe it was the way you carried yourself about, in uncommon grace and poise. The grace of your carriage, you always knew, was what kept the gossipy busybodies that women of your age grade were, far from your doorsteps. Maybe it was in honour of your distinction, your separation from that idiosyncratic mass, that your neighbourhood honoured you with the badge of “Mama” even though you were only in your late forties.
Another possible explanation could be your piety. In the whole community, you were known for your unwavering faith in God, your devotion to the church, your purposefulness in calling the name of the Lord in that loud, megaphone-like voice of yours, and above all in your reckless giving of alms when you could. Although you were a widow with only one daughter, you tried to be of help to the needy when you could.
But recently, it was you who needed help; you’d become the needy. Your business– selling seafood and other soup ingredients in the community market– was no longer thriving as before. Many other women, whose motivation you well knew to be prime jealousy, the sort of people who are too afraid to try out a thing but when another has mustered the courage to do so and eventually succeed, they flock in to take a piece of the prize, were now competing with you for sales. Also, with the economy growing tougher by the day, people could no longer afford the luxury of garnishing their soups with the seafood and rich ingredients you sold.
So it was that you now found it difficult to cater for yourself and your daughter, who was presently away at the university where she’s been schooling for the past two years. Just last week she’d called you, to say she’d completely run out of cash and needed money for rent and upkeep. The sum she had requested, you didn’t have and had no hope of raising yourself any time soon. You decided the only option you had was to borrow the money.
The first person you called on, was the woman living in the house adjacent to yours, who had the biggest stall in the market. You’d never really had any personal dealings with her before, aside from the normal inevitable prolonged exchange of pleasantries that women, bound by ties of communal proximity as well as ethnicity, were forced to exhibit.
When you called on her, the greeting, as usual, lasted a few minutes longer than a normal greeting should, each of you stretching on the enquiry, “I’m fine, and how are your children?” as though you were competing to see who would first throw in the towel. Well, knowing the purpose of your visit, you yielded, replying just “We thank God” to her umpteenth question about how everything was going for you, and swallowing up the urge to repeat the same question to her in that singsong reverberating manner that local dialects permit.
When you finally got around to stating your request, after skirting back and forth around the subject, she sighed, a rather long and loud release of air, wore a defeated look that only the bereaved should put on, and said in the most pitiable of tones, “Mama, it is everywhere o. This indigence is touching everyone. The economy is really bad, the result of the really bad government. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
Before you left, she added, “But Mama, you see, this is why you must join women’s groups and associations. It is at times like this that you’ll find such associations useful.”
You wanted to ask her if your outright refusal to join the women’s club she chaired, which she’d once invited you to become a member of, was the true reason why she was now refusing to help, but you didn’t because you knew she wouldn’t be honest with you. As you left her house, your shoulders were raised high, a martyr’s pride rushing through you, and you were glad to be suffering this because your pastor had taught you that such clubs served as a culture medium encouraging the growth of sin. Although you hadn’t fully understood the pastor’s teaching on the subject, you had decided to “come out of them and be holy unto your God.”
The next person you called on was your daughter’s uncle, her father’s brother.
“Ngozi, this one you visited me, there must be something special going on,” he gushed, his words mixed with laughter you couldn’t understand.
You weren’t comfortable to be here with him, but it was your only choice. You just couldn’t stand the man, with his big beer belly, and the ever-present stench of alcohol on his breath. But above all, you couldn’t stand his open lechery, the way he would look at your buttocks, smacking his lips. The way he was now ogling you, staring unashamedly at your breasts.
He told you he was going to help after you told him about your daughter’s need. Your heart sang praise to God. You knelt and thanked him. “No, no, stand up, Ngozi. You don’t have to kneel for me.”
When you reluctantly stood up, he said, that unmistakable leer in his voice, “Ngozi, I can take of you; allow me to take care of you”, and then you knew he was only going to help you after you have ‘scratched his back’.
But you were never going to scratch his back, and as you left his house you wondered how you were going to get the money for your daughter. Till today, Sunday, you still haven’t raised the money nor thought of how or where you were going to get it from.
You only just returned from church and were trying to settle down when the news got to you. It was your next-door neighbour who heralded the message of doom to you.
“Mama! Mama!” the woman shrieked, running into your apartment. “Have you heard already?”
You’ll never remember what you felt at that moment. Fear? Panic? A foreboding? “Heard what?” Your voice sounded alien to your hearing.
“It’s your daughter. They say they found her dead in a bush.”
For a full minute, you couldn’t do anything. It was as though your main essence, the vital part of you, had died. You couldn’t think, you couldn’t feel, you couldn’t respond to anything. When you finally broke through the haze, only one word rushed out of you in a thundering blast: Adanna.
You couldn’t understand a word of what the professor was frantically explaining. He was drawing those chemical structures again, those funny rings and chains that always seemed to dangle before you with a teasing frivolity, as though they were daring you to try to fathom them. You never really liked them, but you’ve always accepted their challenge, forcing your mind to grasp them. The pressure you exerted on your mind usually paid off, but today you’d no energy to apply on your mind. It looked like the chemical structures of those biochemical compounds were going to win today’s challenge. You couldn’t care less about it. As your mind receded farther away from the four walls that enshrouded the lecture theatre, the professor’s voice burgeoning into a whirr of discordant sounds, you felt a sickening wave smash upon your heart, rending it into a kaleidoscope of pain and anger. The reality hit you afresh, with an impact not unlike a storm smashing into the earth: you were going to end up a derelict in school.
It was four days already since you informed Mama that your rent was overdue and that you had become penniless, but you were yet to hear from her. You understood that Mama was trying her best and that things weren’t what they used to be anymore. It had always been the two of you against the world, ever since your father died when you were just six. Mama did her best in raising you in godly fear and with the best quality of education she could afford, though she was just a widow and a barely educated one at that. Your life ambition had always been to become a medical doctor, and set up a good life, not first of all for yourself, but for Mama.
So while it broke your heart to be such a burden to her, you found solace in persuading yourself that, rather than disgrace Mama and spit on the morals she’d worked so hard to build into you by joining your roommates in what they euphemistically call “hustling”– which you all knew was plain prostitution– you’d wait until she somehow lay hold of the money and send to you.
But your patience was running out, or perhaps it was more accurate to say time was running out. Just this morning, after bathing and drying your body, you suddenly remembered that you used the last of your body cream only the day before. Salamatu was the most understanding of your three roommates, but you’d already used some of her toothpaste and borrowed some rice from her earlier that morning. Asking her for cream again would seem like taking advantage of her benignity, and you were keen on not creating such an impression. So, you’d turned to Pelumi and asked if she could help you with some of her cream.
Her sudden outburst caught you on the hop. “Ada, my problem isn’t giving you my cream; my problem is how you’re going to raise the money for your part of the rent if you cannot even afford your body cream,” she spat.
Chide looked up from whatever she was doing on her phone and quipped, “After all, according to you, our money is dirty money, olosho money.”
Chide was wont to say this, and whenever she did, none of your roommates were willing to help you anymore, including Salamatu. And so, you’d come to school this morning without rubbing cream on your body, grateful that it wasn’t the Harmattan season where the greyness of your skin would have given you away.
It was a little stir in the class, a sudden hum of argument that ran through the fully packed hall, that recoiled you and brought your mind back to the class. After a brief inquiry, you gathered that the professor had given an assignment, and in a rare act of generosity, had given the class the luxury of choosing when to submit. But it was this which had provoked a disorderly debate, with everyone airing out his own opinion in a grating protest of sounds.
The professor managed to calm the class down, retracted his favour– “Since you guys cannot make a simple decision peacefully, you’re going to submit tomorrow, noon unfailingly,” he said–and dismissed the class.
You didn’t join in the haste, as students pushed against one another trying to squeeze out of the door as if they were afraid that the door would shut itself eternally if they hesitated a moment more. You remained there in your seat, struck with immobility, and not because you were trying to maintain a patience that communicated maturity.
A coursemate of yours materialized in front of you. Grinning, he took the seat beside you.
“I wish to be left alone.”
“Is everything alright? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to discuss it with you.”
“Adanna, why are you always pushing me away? Allow me to care for you. I’ve told you severally that I don’t bite, and I only want the best for you.”
He was a really good-looking guy and he seemed nice, but you were still reluctant to give in to his romantic overtures because you had some doubts about him. Like how was he able to afford the big well-furnished apartment he was living alone in, the very expensive clothes and accessories he was always changing, the extravagant lifestyle of partying and reckless binges? You had asked him this, but he told you he came from a wealthy family and that his father didn’t mind his manner of spending. His explanation sounded plausible, but still…still you had reservations.
Now, he was pestering you with a vexing persistence to tell him what was troubling you. You gave in, just to get him off your back.
“What? And you kept this all to yourself? Haven’t you heard of the phrase: dying in silence?” There was something cute about the earnestness of his words, the concern registered in his voice, that softened and reassured your heart. “Look Adanna, I’m going to help, and please don’t refuse my offer. I’ll send you an address. Meet me there, and I’ll have some cash ready for you.”
“I appreciate. I do, but you don’t have to…”
“I insist. Please don’t refuse.”
“Ok. I don’t know what to say.”
“You can begin by saying ‘thank you.'”
Tears in your eyes, your voice shaky with emotion, you said earnestly, “Thank you, Kunle.”
You couldn’t believe your luck. It was like manna from heaven, a miracle landing directly onto your lap. Baba had said time was running out fast, the time to renew the covenant. A virgin’s blood was the demand this time.
You always knew Adanna was a virgin. Although it wasn’t something that could be read on a person’s face, you could tell with full-fledged certainty. From the exaggerated coyness that manifested in a blush whenever you came too close to her. From the way her breath would accelerate when you began to woo her. You knew that it wasn’t that she was falling for you; these things were uncharted territories, unfamiliar horizons to her. Her innocence was overtly stamped upon her.
So, when four months ago, Baba said you should start preparing for a sacrifice, you had singled her out and began to make plans to use her. But kudos to wherever she picked up her moral instruction from, because she would neither yield to your sweet wooing nor the temptation of your money. Until last Friday, by which time you were becoming increasingly desperate as Baba continued to warn that time was against you.
Your attention had been drawn to how strangely detached and disoriented she had been during the lectures. You could tell something was bothering her. And after the lectures, while every other person was clamouring to leave the lecture hall, she remained put. Walking up to her to check up on her turned out to be a good decision, one that held the promise of your salvation from the consequences of not meeting the demands of the gods within the stipulated time.
You understood the importance of discretion, the necessity of tying all the loose ends so that nothing could be traced back to you. Which was why you asked her to come meet you at the address you sent her. You were simply trying to avoid being the last person she was seen with.
Killing her wasn’t as easy as you had anticipated. It was even tougher than the very first one you pulled, when you were inexperienced, still a blood-fearing sissy and the accusatory voice of your conscience was at its loudest. Although she was the fourth victim, you had misgivings about continuing with it. It was the thought that you’d run mad or suffer a more sinister fate if you didn’t do what you had to do, that decided you.
That was because Adanna was different from the others; she hadn’t been attracted by the money. For the others, greed was their undoing, but Adanna’s was the helplessness of her circumstances. But it didn’t matter now, because you had still killed her. And now your conscience, which you thought you had finally succeeded in silencing, was haunting you restlessly. So, you have to visit the question of what you have become and face the mirror truth of the beast you now are.
At first, it all started with what is now given the posh name “Yahoo”; you were an internet fraudster, stylishly called a “Yahoo boy”. At first, it was just a harmless “hustle” of defrauding Westerners, and you told yourself that these guys deserved it because, after all, they robbed and raped the nation during the colonial era. At first, it was a normal “hustle” because Nigeria was bad, the government was corrupt, the economy was in tatters, and it was the only way to stay afloat.
Then it began to become necessary to include Nigerians too in your list of suckers, and this time you quietened your conscience by explaining to yourself that you were a sort of Robin Hood– you robbed only the rich who were thieves. And when “business” was no longer paying, and cashing out was becoming more difficult, you saw the need to meet Baba and “plus your Yahoo.”
Yahoo Plus– that’s the fancy name it’s now called– but it doesn’t change the fact that you are a cold-blooded murderer, a ritualist in cold terms. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re robbing innocent people of their lives, destinies and the chance to enjoy all the bounties of life. It doesn’t change the fact that you’ve become a butcher, a man butcher.
Maybe if you stopped calling what you do such a fancy name, you’ll stop pretending to yourself and better listen to the voice of your conscience.
John Ebute is a medical student at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. His works have appeared in Arts Lounge Magazine, BUMED journal, Stethoscopes and Pens Anthology and elsewhere. Recently, he emerged winner in the RIEC essay contest, first runner-up in the Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest and his piece was selected best prose in the NIMSA-FAITH Suicide Prevention Campaign.
