Chris Bamidele: Places in my dream- Episode 3 (Y! Fiction)

by Chris Bamidele

 

“I could not understand why grandpa would want to separate me from my Mum, I could not understand what Aunty Àwẹ̀ró meant by Osu caste, I could not understand what brain aneurysm was that killed my Dad, so many questions on my mind……..”

 

READ: Chris Bamidele: Places in my dream- Episode 1 [HERE]

READ: Chris Bamidele: Places in my dream- Episode 2 [HERE]

 

“Àwẹ̀ró, I am not going to repeat this, you are going to take a mattress to that woman today; she has been sleeping on the bare floor for 6 days….”

“No, I will not….” interjected Aunty Àwẹ̀ró, her loud voice drowning grandpa’s soft but seemingly firm instruction. “She will sleep on that bare floor for 21 days, she won’t bathe for that same period of time and she will be in her black cloth for the next one year. That is tradition and we must follow it as passed down to us. Ìyá Àgbà, are you not going to say anything?”

“Àwẹ̀ró, Lower your voice please” the older woman said in a tone that seemed to be pleading with my Aunty. “we all are custodians of this tradition, and I know that you don’t have to go the extreme, let her sleep on a mattress and wear black cloth to mourn her husband for the remaining 33 days making a total of 40 days”

“NO! She will go all the way; I will make her go if she doesn’t want to. I can never be lenient on one useless, strange woman that killed my brother, my only brother”

“Ah! Àwẹ̀ró, fear God oh! You don’t have any proof that this woman killed Akíngbadé, we are all pained by his death and you know if there was any reason to suspect the wife, you will not even be the one to point that out to me, but I will rather err on the side of caution, I have daughters too and they are in their husbands’ houses”

Ìyá Àgbà, Ẹ jọ oh! Please oh! Because I am not in my husband’s house now, I have committed a crime abi? The killer that you are supposed to be talking to is downstairs still breathing and you are here reminding me that I’m not in my husband’s house. Ẹ jọ oh!”

“There is a cane in that corner” Grandpa said sternly “take it and beat Ìyá Àgbà, you hear? You know better than she does, right? You are just a wicked, troublesome and rebellious woman, no wonder no man can live with you….”Aunty Àwẹ̀ró let out a very long hiss. Grandpa continued, “Anyone listening to you now would think you love your brother and care about whatever happened to him, someone you would have killed by yourself if you had the chance. Oh! You don’t know he stopped coming home because of you? You don’t know he was constantly worried that you were going to harm him somehow because of your useless belief that he was the cause of your misfortunes? You were the one that went to bring his corpse from Calabar; his friends told you how he slumped in the office and how he was rushed to the hospital, you were even the one that brought the Doctor’s report stating the cause of death as brain aneurysm. How is it then possible the wife killed him, how?”

“Papa, she has never been his wife” Aunty Àwẹ̀ró retorted  “they were never married,  nobody would marry an outcast, maybe you don’t know much about the Osu caste among the Igbos, maybe you don’t know that the generational curse placed on her was what killed my brother; your son. Yet you stand here attacking me like you don’t feel any grief”

“Àwẹ̀ró, what do you know about grief? Tell me…” tears welled up in my eyes as grandpa asked amidst sobs…”I wanted to crawl under the soil; to crawl under Akíngbadé’s coffin the day he was lowered into the earth, but I was not even allowed to see him, because of tradition. Tradition that does not understand what I am going through; that does not understand that I am now childless, because you Àwẹ̀ró cannot be considered a child. You are a devil in human flesh and I cannot even be sure you came from my loins, so do not speak to me about grief because you know next to nothing about it.……….. Ìyá Àgbà, please ensure that woman observes the normal grieving period and inform her she is free to go back to her people after the completion but she cannot take my grandson away. Akinlabi is all I have now, and no one is taking him away from me, she can always come to see him anytime she wants, but my grandson stays here – with me.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I moved away, I could not understand why grandpa would want to separate me from my Mum, I could not understand what Aunty Àwẹ̀ró meant by Osu caste, I could not understand what brain aneurysm was that killed my Dad, so many questions on my mind but I was sure I wasn’t ready to ask Aunty Àwẹ̀ró or even grandpa. I prayed silently I would be allowed to see my mum soon, I prayed and I kept to myself from that day forward.

************

THIRTY- THREE DAYS AFTER:

I was taken to my mum’s room that evening by Aunty Àwẹ̀ró to see her for the first time after my dad’s burial thirty-nine days ago, mum was looking different, pale and her once shining skin was looking very rough and dull. I held on to her as we both cried, Aunty Àwẹ̀ró stood outside the door that was ajar apparently listening to our conversation. Somehow, she must have mended fences with grandpa after that bitter argument they had a while ago and she had stopped talking about my mum but she still watched her like a hawk though I didn’t know why. She and Ìyá Àgbà were the only people having unfettered access to my Mum and I noticed she had been a little calmer around grandpa.

Mum whispered into my ear amidst sobs, “I am leaving the day after tomorrow”

“I know, but please take me with you; I don’t want to stay here”

“I don’t want to leave you too, but your grandpa would not allow me to take you along”

“Mummy, please don’t go, I will die if you leave me, they will kill me” I said as I cried and held on to her tightly “please mummy take me with you……”

She takes out her wristwatch and strapped it on my left wrist, mum had always been my second teacher; since I was 6, she would ask me to check the wall clock and tell her on which numbers the small hand and big hand were resting, she would then explain to me what time it was. Mum also taught me how to read newspapers. By asking me to read aloud to her and correcting me whenever I made any mistake, and in no time; I could read and understand better than any other pupil in my class.

“Always have this wristwatch on you, and know I will always be with you” she hugged me again as she slid a note into my pocket, I wanted to bring it out and read but she held my hand and whispered “read it later”.

As soon as I was alone later that night, I read the note, it was a very short message. “Akin, wake up tomorrow by 5am and meet me in my room, check the wristwatch. We are leaving this town. Tear the note after reading”

I heard grandpa’s footstep and I quickly hid the note in my short’s pocket, he came in and started telling me things about my Dad, how proud of him he was and how I was taking after him everyday…….

******

I woke up, checked the wristwatch, the hands and numbers glowed in the dark; the short hand was slightly beyond 4 while the long hand was on 6 – “Jesus! It is 4:30am” I thought to myself. I must have slept off while grandpa was talking to me because I didn’t remember removing my shirts or lying down on my small bed, I checked my pocket for the note, it was gone. I looked towards Grandpa’s bed; he was sleeping and snoring as usual.

“Where is the note, who could have taken it off me” I wondered.

I tip-toed down the stairs to my Mum’s room, the door was slightly opened, I entered, adjusted my eyes to the little brightness the lantern provided, I moved closer to her mattress, squinted my eyes to view the image in front of me, stopped dead in my tracks and with all the energy my 8year old frame could muster; I screamed….. Grandpaaaaa!!

To be continued…….. Watch out for Episode 4 (next Monday)

Ìyá Àgbà === Older Woman in a Yoruba family

Ẹ jọ oh   ====   “Please” in Yoruba language

 

———————
Chris Bamidele blogs at www. dgreatest2.wordpress.com


Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

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