I Do Not Come to You by Chance (7 page)

Fear gripped my heart tighter. My mother-in-law-to-be had clearly run out of patience with me. I needed to do something quick. As soon as things turned around, she would become my best friend again. I had seen it happen before. When I was still the only child after five years of for-better-for-worse, my father’s family had fallen out of love with my mother. And like Ola’s mother, they were very open about their grief.

‘You need to put on more weight,’ one said. ‘How can your womb function properly inside such a skinny body?’

‘I wonder how you manage the simplest household chores,’ yet another one said. ‘You look like a dried cornstalk that would break into two at the slightest push.’

‘I don’t even know what Paulinus found attractive about you in the first place,’ yet another one said. ‘No breasts, no buttocks . . . yet you call yourself a woman.’

One afternoon, after my father’s sisters had visited and left, Oluchi, my mother’s niece who was living with us at the time, carried me in her arms and patted my mother’s back until her sobbing subsided.

‘Mama Kingsley,’ she whispered, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you but I wasn’t sure how to say it before.’

My mother sniffed.

‘The last time I went home, there’s something my mother and Aunty Amaechi were talking about.’

My mother pricked up her ears.

‘They said that because of all these problems Papa Kingsley’s people have been having since their father died, that maybe somebody from their family has padlocked your womb and thrown away the keys so that you won’t be able to have more children.’

My paternal grandfather had died shortly after I was born, leaving behind some few plots of empty land and cassava farms which his living nine-sons-and-fifteen-daughters-from-three-wives had fought vigorously to put inside their pockets. The wrangling had produced such bile that there were suspicions of some family members engaging diabolical means to frustrate others into relinquishing their inheritance. From what Oluchi had said, it appeared that my mother’s family regarded her infertility as the outcome of one of such evil machinations.

Oluchi continued.

‘Mama Kingsley, I think you should do something about it.

There are some native doctors in Ohaozara who I hear are very good when it comes to unlocking people’s wombs. Maybe you should speak to Papa Kingsley so that both of you can go there and see one of them.’

My mother insists that her niece’s advice went in one ear and out the other. She and my father never consulted any native doctors. They did not swallow any alligator pepper and animal blood concoctions, my mother did not dance naked under the moonlight with a white cock draped around her neck.

‘I just kept crying to God,’ my mother had told me. ‘I knew He would intervene in His own time.’

One look at Godfrey, Eugene, and Charity, and God’s intervention became clear. That was what I needed now - divine intervention.

I murmured my appreciation for her concern to Ola’s mother and hurried home. Then I ransacked my pile of dirty clothes for the flyer I received from the early morning evangelists of the other day. My very own special miracle from heaven.

As a child, I had gone to church regularly with my parents. So regularly, in fact, that I had perfected the art of sleeping at the precise moment when Rev. Father Benedict permitted us to sit, and waking at the exact point when he chanted for us to stand. On entering university, however, it occurred to me that I did not have to go to church any more. There was nobody to take me, nobody to remind me, no point in going. So I stopped.

This particular Sunday, my parents had left for Mass before I got ready to receive my portion of divine intervention. Agreed, we were not under any particular restriction not to go anywhere apart from ‘The One True Church’; still, I knew enough to keep quiet about where I was going. Everybody agreed that the Pentecostals were weird.

But these were dire times. Dire times required drastic measures. Take my Aunty Dimma, my mother’s cousin and very close friend. A few years ago, she had boarded a local flight from Lagos to Port Harcourt, and the turbulent voyage had ended with the plane crash-landing on the tarmac. Shortly after that, one of the tyres on her Toyota Carina had burst on the highway. Then a branch had fallen from the tree under which she parked her car and smashed the windscreen, the very same tree under which she had parked for the past five years. All these incidents occurred within the space of six weeks. Aunty Dimma did not need a soothsayer to explain that death was after her life. Somebody invited her to a church where she was assured that all her enemies would flee and all her troubles cease. Believe it or not, my very own Aunty Dimma - the height of elegance and the essence of vanity - had actually succumbed. Today, she was a bona fide Bible-quoting, hallelujah-chanting, tongue-talking Pentecostal Christian.

I lifted the flyer from the dressing table and headed out.

There must have been at least twenty different churches all holding services on the same street, at the same time, on this Sunday morning. Some were in garages, some were in flats, some were under tents erected at the side of buildings. Some even had loudspeakers positioned outside to bellow their live services into the air. I commiserated with every single resident of that street.

My destination turned out to be a three-storey building at the end of the road. A fiery young man was leading the congregation in prayers when I arrived, pacing briskly across the stage with a microphone in his hand and a free flow of mysterious tongues from his lips. Some of the congregation were seated, some were standing, some were pacing about. But every single mouth was moving in varying degrees of celestial conversation. A homely lady, who was smiling a perfect, wide smile approached me.

‘Welcome,’ she said in greeting.

I returned a smaller smile. She pointed her hand and jerked her head gracefully in the same direction. I took my place beside a pregnant lady who removed a huge, black carrier bag from the bench to make room for me to sit. Almost immediately, a prim young man came and occupied the space at my other side. In a twinkling of an eye, our row was full.

The fiery young man in front clapped his hands slowly and all noise died down.

‘Praise the Lord,’ he said.

‘Hallelujah,’ the congregation chanted.

‘Praise the Lord.’

‘Hallelujah.’

‘Next, brethren, we’re going to pray for the government of our country, Nigeria.’

He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows.

‘Brethren,’ he continued, striding to the right side of the stage, ‘the Bible says that intercessions be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority.’ He strode to the left. ‘Brethren, let us pray for our government, that God will guide our leaders to make the right decisions.’ He strode to the right. ‘That every demon of corruption will be uprooted and that we will have people in authority who will favour the cause of righteousness in Nigeria.’ He strode to the left. ‘Let us pray!’

The celestial conversations resumed with even louder fervour. An elderly woman knelt on the floor and started groaning. Some people who required more space to throttle the demons of corruption moved to the back of the hall and started their vigorous striding about. I closed my eyes and waged my own silent warfare. Then I became curious and opened one eye.

The choir was seated somewhere towards the right of the hall. They looked exceedingly bright in their red satin tops and black bottoms. None of the ladies had her skirt above the ankles; none of the men had his hair barbered to any particular style.

Soon, the man deemed all demons of corruption uprooted. He stopped pacing and clapped his hands. This time, he asked us to pray against the demons of violence - for peace in the land, especially in Kano State, where there had been recent stirrings of yet another Islamic riot. The congregation grabbed the demons of violence by their throats and resumed mortal combat.

By and by, one of the choristers seated towards the edge of the group left her seat, advanced towards the man leading the prayers, and stood calmly by his side with her hands folded behind her and her head bent slightly towards the floor. I assumed this to be some sort of handover cue, because the man immediately stopped striding about and started clapping his hands slowly.

‘Father, we thank You,’ he began when the hall was quiet.

He spent a few minutes thanking God for answered prayers. Then he handed the microphone over to the lady.

The keyboard and the drum and the guitar went into action. The female minstrel asked us to clap our hands.

‘I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea,’ she sang.

The congregation clapped and sang along while she led us from one praise chorus to the other. With each new song, the atmosphere sizzled and several people started wailing and flailing their hands in the air. The young man beside me had tears running down his cheeks. The pregnant woman beside me waddled to her feet. By the time the singing had gone on for over thirty minutes, the atmosphere became as charged as an electric field, and I desperately wanted to sing along as well. But being unfamiliar with most of the sacred lyrics, I was constrained to simply hum and clap instead. Then, a gentleman who had the composure of a seasoned surgeon stood up from the front row. As soon as the lead singer saw him, she ended her song and returned to her place at the edge of the shining squad. I was sad to see her go just when I was beginning to warm up.

The pregnant woman beside me dipped her hand into the black carrier bag and brought out a handkerchief and a plastic fan. She wiped her forehead and fanned herself briskly.

The preacher opened his Bible and stared intently at the congregation. From the concentrated focus of his eyeballs, I got the impression that he was seeing something that we did not and could not ever see. He tapped the microphone twice to make sure it was working. When he opened his mouth, the voice that proceeded was deep, his language was clear, his tone was godly.

‘Welcome to service this morning,’ he began. ‘Please turn round to the person beside you and say to them, “You’re here to have a great time this morning.”

We obeyed. The pregnant woman beside me stretched out a chubby paw and clamped my hand cheerfully. The prim lad overdid it with a mini shoulder embrace. All over the hall, men and women, boys and girls, were engrossed in cheerful handshakes and happy hugs and merry verbal exchanges. The bustle soon died down and the hall became quiet again.

The pregnant woman beside me dipped her hand into her carrier bag and extracted a huge meat pie. She opened her Bible with one hand and fed herself eagerly with the other. Her chewing made soft, mushy sounds like footsteps on a soggy carpet.

The preacher boomed out the hallowed text from the book of Luke.

He leaned towards us with his hands firmly grasping the wooden lectern. He asked us to take a few moments to imagine. He asked us to imagine how Lazarus had stood at The Rich Man’s gate begging for alms. He asked us to imagine how The Rich Man must have felt like a philanthropist because he was feeding a poor man with the crumbs from under his table. I imagined obediently. I was excited at the choice of sermon. Today of all days, they were preaching about poverty and wealth. Just what I needed to hear.

The pregnant woman beside me dug out a boiled egg from her bag. She shelled it skilfully and pushed the whole white mass inside her jaws.

The preacher looked back into his book and continued reading.

The preacher switched to a shrill voice.

He raised his right hand high up in the air, and changed to a deeper voice that ended in an echo.

The preacher stepped away from the pulpit. Using wild gesticulations of the arms and legs, he retold the story of how the two men had ended up in eternity - one in heaven and the other in hell. He asked us to imagine how The Rich Man must have felt, seeing the very same man he had fed crumbs to, relaxing in Abraham’s bosom. He asked us to imagine the joy Lazarus must have felt about seeing his personal fortunes change so sharply. He paused for some seconds to allow us time to visualise. I looked round at the congregation. From the mischievous, gleeful expressions on their faces, I suspected that several of them, rather than imagining Lazarus enjoying a better world, were imagining The Rich Man burning in hell.

I wondered why The Rich Man had gone to hell. Was it because he was a bad man or because he was rich? Had the poor man gone to Abraham’s bosom because he was poor or because he was good? The preacher did not say. My father was poor. And like Lazarus, he was likely to be the one found in Abraham’s bosom.

‘It’s all stolen money,’ he often said with a voice stuffed full of pride, whenever he saw yet another person who had built a house or bought a new car. ‘How could he possibly afford that on a civil servant’s salary? At least ‘I’ll always be remembered for my honesty. Nobody can say I stole a farthing.’