After commotion swept my family with a broom and I went for consultations, Baba Mogba, the sole Sango custodian, told me that my father had offended the trickster deity who never gave anyone a-one without collecting a-two. Then, he read out to me from the compendium (Ifá) the lyrical lines of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that if fire drives out fire, so pity pity, a metaphor that because my father had failed to perform his monthly rituals, then thunder needed to strike him and asphyxia had to grip his neck like a tightened tie.
_pft_ – my secreted hormone evaporated in an instant! His death sprinkled me with wound and I became a useless woman with grey hairs being regrets and things cannot yet fall like a hoard of money! A week before his death, I had been bethroned to Osoyinka (not the Nobel Laureate) who came to do a moonlight and had won me unconventionally because I could not save both nine and a stitch.
Formal education was brought into our town when my father was alive. And he had interest to send me to school, but I was not ready. I thought those who go to school go to play. I thought the time to look for a black goat was at the night; education was not power, not knowledge and not enlightenment. And no surprise to see why I have become a compulsory teacher having been ruined by indulgence like a tattered Chinaware.
Osoyinka who I had thought would care about me was better off, not to say the least. All the properties left by my father were voraciously garnered by my stand-tall and close-fisted husband. Within a short time, he began to build houses on the lands which his forefathers never prospered with and he put himself in the same trousers. I was one of his bricklayers as he was too selfish to hire bricklayers and later when the house was completed, I was to stay at a room close to the toilet with my many children.
You, you: What is making a prisoner who bought a new wrist watch happy? Was it when those small fires like asterisks from furnace used to enter bottomless my eyes for 25 years and emanated into a perpetual blindness? Was it when one of my husband’s wives planted a metaphysics (ogún) which she would use to kill us but she was late to use it and she died? Was it that day I was collecting rain, my husband got angry and removed the sash(ọja iponmo) I used to back my fifteenth baby because was he was hungry? Suru, the baby, died that day.
Of course, he mated with me that same day. Every year, I gave birth to a new baby. Before and after I finally left his house I had laboured for twenty times. Fifteen of the children died good reasons. And among my children who haven’t left me, you’re one of them. Yes.
I am crying in repentant mood. Don’t pity me! Experience used to teach even the fools. Knowledge maketh a man wise and intelligent. Poverty is no sin. Sweet and then pain is the end result of life if you fail to understand that time flies. It doesn’t wait for no man! No woman! No person! What you actually see is possible to have happened but what you imagined you saw is a reality so to speak. On this spot I pass out faeces, urinate, sleep and then wish for death. But death is merciful for it won’t come until that moment you close your eyes and you could see your dead body as a spirit just like the mystic orientalists would say. Perhaps heaven or hell! You see yourself as a particle among innumerable carnation leaves. Take your life into your hands. And keep it in mind, it is only ENDURANCE that sustains a marriage. Don’t forget!
No comments:
Post a Comment