SEARCH FOR MY FATHER (First Prize Story in the Cecilia Unaegbu Competition 2011)

Uzonna, my fiancé, has set me on a mission to search for my father.

My bride price has to be paid to my father and to no one else. Uzonna, a surgeon at the university teaching hospital, was a man who loved to abide by tradition. When we first met at a medical conference, it was his neat, starched and ironed clothes that drew me to him. His clean shaven chin smelt like overripe pineapples. The first time we kissed, he’d held my thin waist gently as though it would break like a twig if he didn’t. We had agreed not to go beyond mild petting. No premarital sex. We wanted to have a special experience to anticipate in marriage. We were anxious to be married.

Chinenye made her face like someone who was chewing on stale bread when I asked about my father. I sat on the rug and watched her frail hands quivering on the old red cushion she had inherited from her deceased Mother. Chinenye, though thirty-eight, had a face that was lined with wrinkles and scars: they had always been prominent features on her face from the moment I had been alert enough to distinguish details. Sometimes when I traced the scars with my fingers, she would say that it was my father who had etched them. I didn’t care about my father then because, like my Chinenye, I had learned to be contented with the things that I had. It was useless to miss the things I never had.

Sounds of Chinenye’s noisy breath and the whirring fan filled the quiet room. I waited; my weary eyes watched her as she lifted herself from her seat. I rushed to help her up but she raised her hand. I halted, said a silent prayer for her, as she shuffled to the kitchen. She returned with a mug of water. Her quivering hands spilled water on the rug as she slumped into her chair.

“Chinenye, why won’t you let me get you a maid?” I asked.

Everyone found it a bit strange, that I called her by her first name. But Chinenye and I were almost inseparable. Perhaps, this was because she’d had me when she was thirteen; she’d raised me by herself.

“Is that why you’re here?” she retorted. Then, she gulped draughts of water as if her throat was parched.

“No.” I muttered.

Chinenye didn’t trust anyone. She had lived like this, had made me live like this. And because I lived in Lagos, far from the village, and my work as news reporter wouldn’t give me the time to be there as much as I would have loved to, I worried about her.

That moment, I was worried about my future.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I asked.

 “Because he’s a dog!”

I went to the bedroom to clear my head, and ended up taking a nap. Chinenye’s long burnt fingers tapped my shoulder. Nonsense sleep-talk escaped from my lips. I sat up, rubbed my eyes. Her story flowed from her heart.

He was fourteen and adventurous. She was thirteen and infatuated. They were neighbours. Both lived with relatives as housemaids. He was her first. It had felt like the right thing to do –to give herself unconditionally; no, for a bottle of coke.

Chinenye’s vein-flecked eyes met mine, lowered onto the bed. Her hand smoothened the bed sheets. She wept.

“He denied me, you, and everything. Oh I wanted a miracle, a miscarriage. I prayed that you’d melt in me and disappear. My heart broke the moment he said, ‘Don’t know what you’re saying, Chinenye, how? Don’t mind her. Whore! Was I the only one?’ in front of everyone.”

I embraced her, inhaled the scent of Lux soap mingled with sweat behind her ears.

“Chinenye,” I whispered. “Forgive him and move on. This grief, this bitterness… it’ll kill you. You’re dying already.”

She pushed me away and shook her head slowly, then fast like a cock shaking off flies from its comb.

“Can I forgive him? It’s hard.”

“You can. You decide.”

Silence reigned.

“Give me his address Ma. I want to live but not like this.” I looked around.

She sniffed, blew her nose into the edge of her Ankara wrapper, shuffled out to her bed.

At dawn, I found a brown envelop by my pillow. There was a photograph of a smiling teenage boy, in school uniform, wearing an afro. I read out the name and address squiggled behind the photograph, dated 1976.

I exhaled. 

AUTHOR:

Chioma Iwunze

Enugu, Nigeria.