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Father’s Rage

Okechukwu Otukwu

     ‘I think Emeka will have canvas shoes for his birthday,’ Father said as he prepared to go to the university where he worked as security man.
    ‘No, he will have sandals,’ Mother countered. ‘The sandals he wears to school are now worn-out and need to be replaced.’
    Father sighed. Standing in the doorway that connected the two rooms that we occupied, waiting for Mother to give the word so Emeka and I would go to school, I sighed with him. It had always been this way with my parents. Father would say one thing and Mother would immediately counter him with a different opinion. If Father said that it was morning Mother would be sure to maintain it was night instead. I could not understand it. It was as if every opinion of Father’s was faulty in some way and needed to be amended by Mother’s superior intelligence.
    This might be so, for Father never raised a word of objection once countered by Mother. People said that he was afraid of her; and there might be some truth in that, too. But it was not a thing to wonder at; everyone I knew feared Mother—our neighbours, her friends and her fellow teachers in the primary school where she taught (which was also the school that Emeka and I attended). Even I feared Mother sometimes even though she doted on Emeka and me when the fancy caught her. But she had a quick temper which seemed constantly to be on edge; and when she was angry, her huge frame looming large like a volcanic mountain, even a child who knew he was loved would be seized by instant fright. Emeka and I lived in constant fear of such moments.
    So it was not a thing of wonder that Father who was smallish and wiry and submissive in nature should be afraid of Mother too. He had always accepted Mother’s domineering attitude without question and it was not likely that that was going to end now; and so it was agreed that Emeka would have sandals for his birthday, a few weeks away. When he heard it, Emeka was very disappointed that he was not going to have shoes.
    But even the sandals were not later bought because the birthday never took place; a week before it, Emeka had taken ill. The illness came as a fever in the early hours of the evening and, as their custom, Father and Mother had expressed contrary views concerning it. While Father feared the fever was a sign of malaria, Mother laughed at him and said it was an ordinary high temperature brought on by Emeka’s excessive play, that it would go before nightfall.
    ‘I don’t think this is an ordinary fever, Mama Ebuka,’ Father said, feeling Emeka’s temperature. ‘This is malaria. You don’t have to wait until it manifests fully before you know it. Ebuka,’ he said to me, ‘feel your brother. What do you think?’
    He was trying to enlist my support but I was only thirteen then and had not acquired the boldness to take part in their war of opinions and counter opinions. So I merely felt Emeka’s temperature which was pretty high and said nothing. Father, who was on night duty that week, would soon leave and I would be left alone with Mother for the rest of the night. I was not such a fool as not to know how I was better off.
    ‘You worry yourself unnecessarily, Papa Ebuka,’ Mother said. ‘I tell you this is nothing more than an ordinary high temperature. You don’t expect children to play the way Ebuka and Emeka do the whole time and not come down with a high temperature. That is why I always quarrel with them over their excessive play but you will tell me to leave them alone, that boys will be boys. Anyway, I will rub udeaku over his body; it will take care of the high temperature.’
    Udeaku, or palm kernel cream, was oil extracted from roasted palm kernel, and it was claimed to cure all feverish conditions. Ever since I could remember, it was what Mother always used on us whenever we had a bout of fever. So far it had worked ... until today. Some hours after Mother rubbed the oil all over Emeka’s body, he did not appear to get any better; the fever persisted.
    ‘You must take this boy to the hospital,’ Father said as he left for work, his voice scarcely concealing his anger. He left some money on a table in the parlour. ‘Here is five thousand naira. Use it to take him to the hospital. This is no ordinary fever.’
    ‘I will do that, Doctor Ignatius Mbaelu,’ Mother replied in derision. ‘This is a fine thing to waste money on. But when the time comes to pay their school fees you will say you don’t have money.’
    Father said nothing more and left.
    As soon as Father was out the door, Mother began to act in a manner that I found quite strange. Locking the door of the parlour as if to prevent any intruder, she took Emeka into the bedroom and laid him on the bed that she shared with Father. Then from under the bed, she pulled out a box from which she took out a wooden crucifix, two red candles, a small white container and something wrapped in a little cellophane bag.
    She placed a low table at one end of the room, covered it with a white cloth, then she placed the cross in the centre of the table, the red candles on either side of it. Untying the cellophane bag, she took out something that looked like small pieces of wood and put them on a saucer which she then placed on top of the table, behind the cross. Then she set fire to the candles and the pieces of wood. Suddenly, the room was covered in a mist of grey, strong-smelling smoke. I stared in amazement at Mother, realizing only then that she was burning incense at home, but she took no notice of me. At that moment she was possessed by a strange spirit and she looked like a priestess performing a ritual.
    When the candles and the incense were burning, she poured a little water from the white container that she had taken from the box into a bowl. With a white handkerchief which was also taken from the box, she began to wipe Emeka’s body from head to toes. As she did this, she muttered some words that sounded like a chant to me.
    After this ablution, she laid Emeka back on the bed; her face looked somewhat relaxed. Emeka on his part appeared to be recovering fast. At least, his body no longer trembled uncontrollably as it did in the evening.
    Mother let the candles and the incense burn for a little while longer before she blew out the candles and poured away the incense. She told me that Emeka was all right now.
    ‘That was what your Father wanted to spend five thousand naira on, as if he could afford the money. Ask him now to bring money for food, he will tell you how the university has been owing them for months. But he has money to donate to doctors. I will not let him.’

    I said nothing, not knowing what to say anyway. But her pronouncement that Emeka was healed proved to be false. Whatever power was contained in the ritual that she had performed must have been calculated to last only a few hours, for Emeka’s illness returned in the midnight with a renewed vigour that left him shaking and jerking like a victim of convulsions. Great beads of sweat stood on his body like bumps.
    For the first time in my life I saw Mother frightened. Even though the night was cold, her face glistened with sweat, and a wild lost look came into her eyes. She repeated the ritual of the evening but to effect; the power seemed to have deserted her. When she had done everything she could think of, she sat with Emeka on her laps, and we waited for the dawn. I thought that maybe then she would take Emeka to the hospital as Father had instructed. But I was mistaken. She told me that when the day broke we would take Emeka to Apostle Jonah’s Temple of Divinity, a prayer house for which she had abandoned our Catholic faith a few months before, and which, like everything else, had been a subject of intense controversy between her and Father. The ritual she had performed in the evening in a bid to heal Emeka had come from her association with the Temple of Divinity.
    As soon as the hour struck five Mother lit a hurricane lamp, put it in my hand and, strapping Emeka to her back, she led the way into the breaking dawn.
    We should have left the lamp at home; it was useless against the thick fog that was customary in Nsukka in the harmattan season. Furious gusts of cold wind broke out every now and then from the rocky hills that bounded the town like sporadic outbursts of laughter from a lunatic, twisting tree branches with a painful howl. I felt the blood in my veins freeze with the cold but Mother hardly took any notice of my condition. She walked in agitated urgency in front of me, throwing only occasional glances behind at me.
    Soon we were in the Temple of Divinity, tucked under a three-storey building on Ogurugu Road. It was a small airless room with a dais at one end to serve as the altar. On top of the dais stood a table covered with a red cloth; two red candles were burning on it. A wide red curtain with the inscription: Jehovah Jireh liveth! Hallelujah! hung behind the altar. The strange redness of the altar with its burning red candles and the red curtain behind it struck a chill into me.
    About five people were kneeling at the altar praying; some unknown number were lying in various parts of the room sleeping. Mother unstrapped Emeka from her back and laid him before the altar. The other worshippers crowded round him. They gasped sharply when they saw his condition. Someone shouted to another to go and call Apostle Jonah. The person dashed off behind the red curtain.
    Apostle Jonah appeared almost immediately in a red cassock; he held a bible to his chest and a bell in the other hand. His face hid behind a mass of face hair and his bloodshot eyes gleamed with an unnatural light.
    He ordered people to move away from Emeka, then he began to pray. He jangled the bell he held at intervals as if to ring home his prayer. The congregation shouted ‘Amen!’ or ‘Hallelujah!’ in response.
    Midway into the prayer, he paused and, taking hold of a bowl on the altar, he sprinkled water on Emeka, shouting in an unnatural, eerie tone. Emeka was jerking and twisting and moaning on the floor.
    ‘Come out him!’ Apostle Jonah screamed. ‘I command you with the power of the Most High to come out of him at once, you spirit of destruction! Begone! Begone! Begone!...’
    Jonah’s voice shook round the small space in the room with a frightening echo. Meanwhile he continued pouring water on Emeka and shouting at the same time. He prayed in this manner for more than an hour, then he stopped abruptly. He was sweating profusely, but there was a look of contentment on his face.
    ‘I saw a demon with the head of a lion and the body of a hawk come out of that boy and fly away through the open door,’ he intoned. ‘It is all over now. Woman, here is your son. Son, here is your Mother. Our Jehovah has upheld his judgment against the devil.’
    The congregation greeted this with a thunderous ‘hallelujah!’ that made the walls reverberate.
    Emeka lay completely still on the floor, as if in sleep. Someone went to him, touched him and stiffened. Then he straightened and whispered something to Apostle Jonah. A look of astonishment and then of fear spread over Apostle Jonah’s face. He exchanged some words with the man and then disappeared behind the red curtain. The others started leaving one after another until only Mother and Emeka and I were left in the temple.
    Looking confused, Mother went to carry Emeka. I saw her stiffen. She nudged him lightly but there was no response. She shook him violently, still no response. She placed a hand on his chest, and then she uttered a high-pitched, bloodcurdling scream that sounded as if the roof were coming down.
    Mother and I were still in the temple with Emeka’s body when the police arrived an hour later. I had no idea who had contacted them but they acted as if they knew what had happened. They ransacked the whole place but it was a wasted effort. There was no sign of Apostle Jonah or any of his worshippers. Finally they took the body and Mother to the station to explain her role in the whole affair.
    Father, who had been contacted by the police, arrived in the station with a man from his office. After much argument, the police released the corpse to Father, and Mother was allowed to go home. Before evening, Emeka’s body was taken to one of the cemeteries in town and buried.
    There was an air of utter mystery about Father that I found disconcerting. He did not cry throughout the day, not even when Emeka’s body was taken out for burial, yet I knew how deeply he had loved him. He walked around in a kind of haze, like a person under a spell. His attitude frightened me.
    For a long time after this incident, my parents did not speak to each other. It looked as if the period of trading words forth and back was over for them. Then in the middle of one night, about two weeks after, I was woken by the noise of a fight from the bedroom where they slept. Frightened, I crept to the door and peered in; and my heart stopped at the sight that met my eyes.
    Mother lay in a pool of blood on the floor, screaming and writhing in agony. Father stood over her with a horsewhip which he brought down on her with a maniacal savagery. Even from where I stood, I could see large weals on Mother’s body where the whip had cut her.
    I ran out screaming for neighbours. They awoke from sleep and came into our room and dragged Father away to the palour, holding him down to a chair so that he could not break free and return to Mother. Some of the neighbours took Mother to the hospital that night to treat her wounds.
    Mother spent three weeks in the hospital before she was discharged. When she came back she was a changed person. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, as a snail does when it suddenly encounters an obstacle; and never once did she counter Father’s opinion again. But if this was the much-desired truce between them, it came rather late and at a great cost to the family. Even now, some twenty years later, I still recall the event of Emeka’s death with something of shame at both my parents’ foolishness.

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