JEFF UNAEGBU: MAMA (Third Prize Story) by Yeku Babatunde James

You could hear the rain drizzling in mournful trickles at the Nne graveyard that Friday. All was silent but for the raging voice of the preacher. Not even the umbrellas lifted to the heavens could do much as to stop us from getting wet. The throng, in their dark goggles and dresses, stood by, watching with hands folded on thumping chests, shaking their heads slowly at the loss of their Mother Theresa. I looked around, and I saw friends and colleagues from the office, staring at the lifeless body in the opened casket. They would have thought I had deliberately made up my mind to honour mama with my muffled moaning and tearful smiles. Emeka, my husband noticed my wandering eyes and drew me to himself. I rested my head on his shoulder as my thoughts drifted to that day I first spoke to mama about him…

“I know love when I see one”, mama had said to me.

It had been another special sundown that day. The large orangery ball on the sky’s gentle face was gradually been swallowed up by the clouds; and the evening breeze was caressing my skin as I lay between mama’s feet while she plaited the long shuck on my head. Mama’s words had painted strokes of sparkles on my tender heart, and so I have never forgotten that day…

Look my daughter, she continued, “When your heart misses it beat at the sight of that special man; when you wish you should worship in the shrine of his spirit; when he himself would do all to see you reach to the sky and pluck off the moon; now that is love.”

“That is love my child”, Mama repeated again, as if I had not heard the first time.

That was during my high days at Aba Government College. It was the season girls around my age, flaunting budding buttocks, and mango-sized breasts started to ask about why boys from the neighboring schools would not stop staring at them. It was a time some of us also had begun to desire some of the scented roses of male affections we saw in Hollywood films. It was a time to seek the priceless purple of innocent lavenders. It was the season of questions. And more questions we asked. Some of my friends had not been too lucky to have parents who listened to the curious but softened clattering of hearts at that verge of personal discovery. I remember Moyo especially. The boys said she looked astonishing; and they all craved her presence. Poor Moyo! She was rusticated from school when the school matron discovered she had been pregnant.

To thank God that Mama was there for me would mean reminding him of all her outpour of sweetened memories. She seemed to have an answer for every matter raised. Maybe it was because she had been trained as a counselor at the big Ibadan University every girl in my school always talked excitedly about. Mama was also a good listener. She nodded her head when she was not saying anything, and being with her was like entering her womb again to be carried in that round and wet calabash behind her dress. I still recall, sometimes with moistened eyes, how she would tell me stories that lured me to sleep.

There was one topic mama however did not like talking about. My father. Not that I delighted in reminding her of a topic that brought tears to her eyes, but I had been curious about why I did not have, like other girls, someone to hold me in those muscular arms my friends talk about. Nkem, the one everyone called daddy’s girl, would even bring pictures of her heavily bearded father to school. I always withdrew at such points, fighting hard not to burst out crying. When Mama finally told me how my father had died in the Biafran war, I understood for the first time why she decided not to allow another man on the bed he had shared with only her precious Ebuka.

It was the Catholic Father’s voice, presiding at the burial mass that called my attention back to mama’s graveside.

“Dust for Dust”. I heard the preacher say. This time, I could not hold back the tears.

“It is time to go”, Emeka whispered into my ears.

AUTHOR: