A YEAR IN PARADISE (Second Prize Story in the Cecilia Unaegbu Competition 2011)

As we drove past the Orphanage, I smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, neither sad, simply nostalgic. I could never pass an Orphanage without remembering. The bus driver slowed down for a speed bump and I got a clearer look. Through the metal bars of the gate, I could see children playing. A few boys were playing ‘three-aside soccer’ with a tattered ball; some girls had gathered together, by the look of things they were listening with rapt attention to a girl of about eight, as she gesticulated, no doubt telling them an incredulous story. The others were preoccupied with climbing the mango tree or riding the shiny red bicycle; most probably a recent donation. I shuddered as my heart filled with emotion I didn’t realise I still carried. That feeling of depending on strangers for sustenance was not one I’d wish on anybody. Deep down, I still felt the same fear I’d felt that fateful morning. Tears welled up in my eyes and I feigned tiredness. A quick yawn should dispel anyone’s suspicions. As the bus moved along leaving the orphanage behind it seemed as though the hurt, pain and fear were also being left behind. I took a deep breath as I settled in my seat more comfortably, with the resolve to enjoy the bus ride, as much as anyone can possibly enjoy a commercial one; and for the first time in decades, I cast my mind back to that dreadful morning.

*******

“David, David, wake up!”

I heard my brother’s half-frantic whisper. In my half-sleepy state I was still deciding on whether to give him a knock on the head or a slap when the next words cleared any vestige of sleep from my eyes.

“There are strange men in the house!”

I jerked up immediately, shoving him aside. Part of me was mortified. I was the “man” of the house yet it took my younger brother to let me know we had not just strangers but male strangers in the house. Since I had no Father the onus of defending our family fell on me. Whether my Mother was a divorcee, a widower or an ‘outside wife’ I had no idea. The kind of environment I was born in did not leave room for being inquisitive, most especially about ‘such issues’. I walked to the sitting room of our room-and-parlour apartment and there I saw a sight I would never forget. My mother still in her wrapper and faded t-shirt, on her knees, crying silently as she rubbed her palms together in a manner not unlike African women, begging  the two ‘thugs’ in the room. Transfixed by fear and embarrassment I watched as one by one, the thugs threw our meagre belongings out of our house.

My Mother’s pleading didn’t help, even the tear-stained faces of Ayo and I did nothing to move the thugs. The Landlord’s orders were clear. Our rent was six months overdue and he was tired of hearing ‘tomorrow….tomorrow’. By afternoon Ayo and I had stacked our property in a corner of a sympathetic neighbour’s compound.

“I’ll find a way” Mother said as she got ready to leave in a quest to find a solution. We waited for her for hours, feeling the hostile glares of the gardener and the house-help as they went around their errands. Didn’t they know we weren’t interested in usurping them? They could keep their filthy jobs! By evening, Mother returned looking five years older. Tears filled my eyes. She waved to us and went straight to the main house to see “Oga”. A few minutes later she came out with a weary smile, the best she could muster I was certain. Holding each our hands she said confidently:

“You’re going to Paradise.” She gave us a look that said ‘no questions allowed’ and we followed her obediently, like lambs to the slaughter. Soon enough we were at ‘Paradise’, literally. It was a recently opened orphanage with air-conditioning, toys and even a bus to take the children to school. There was also the option for parents who couldn’t take care of their children to leave them and visit once a week. This, Mother did for a year. It was only years later, when I was graduating from University that she decided to open up as to what she did during that year. She had taken the job I had despised and offered her services to all as a “House help”.
Author:

Desiree Eniola Craig, 
Lagos, Nigeria.

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.