I

At home, things became doleful after Adanne’s demise. Her absence had a devastating effect on Ma, who would sometimes morph into a forgetful being. This is to say, Adanne’s sudden demise became a malady that most days chopped away Ma’s memory the way termites chop away the body of wood.

On such days, Ma would stare too long at the portrait of herself and Pa, long gone, that hung in the parlor. The images of those etched on the wooden frame have registered fully in my mind so that I can describe them even in my dreams—the monumental height of Pa whom Ma only prided in reaching his shoulder. The strained face of Ma as she pouted her lips to kiss Pa, who bent to receive the kiss as if being conferred with a meritorious award, his face beaming.

“Did I have a white wedding?” Ma would ask, confusion written all over her face. She has forgotten, but she once told me about their magnificent white wedding. “It was an oyibo who wedded us,” she’d bragged, dragging the oyibo as if the white man was a demigod who’d belittled himself by wedding a black couple.

Not able to remember, Ma burst into tears, crying till her eyes were red and swollen; she used the hem of her wrapper to wipe her snotty nose.

“Where’s my daughter? Where’s Adanne? I want to hold her in my arms. I want to touch her face,” she said, sobbing, her teary eyes fixated on the wooden frame. 

I watched her become more emaciated with each passing day, till her collarbones became visible as if the delicate flesh in them had been suctioned away. I’d curse Adanne for leaving us, especially Ma, who once told me how she’d only had stillborns till Adanne came to stay.

II

Adanne was born at a time when Ma had lost every hope of ever nursing a living baby; she came unexpectedly, a consolation prize after five stillborns. Ma said it was ndi iro, her enemies, who had taken away her innocent babies. It was of no surprise, then, why her faith waxed stronger in the God she met at a local church where the pastor assured her that she would carry a living child, just months before Adanne’s birth.

Ma watched Adanne grow from a toddler that troubled the floor with the pitter-patter of her feet, into an eight-year-old girl that gave way to another living baby. Ma said Adanne opened her womb, that I came eight years after Adanne, and that no other child came after me. She only blamed her chi for denying her a male child who would’ve given her a foot in Pa’s home. 

“Find another wife, Ezeobi. These girls will not inherit your wealth mancha, they will marry and leave your home.” The men had sounded their warnings like a gong into Pa’s ears, pulling their ears to punctuate each word that fell from their mouth with emphasis.

It was of little wonder then why Ma’s disappointment grew wings when Adanne, at twenty-eight, chose to remain single. Adanne’s boyishness made Ma believe that her enemies had changed the gender of the male child her chi had wanted to gift her.

There was something perky about Adanne—a gregariousness and conviviality which attracted friends to her. The only thing eccentric about her was her strong preference for male things, reflected in her choice of wear, coupled with her athletic looks and masculine gait, which scared some men from approaching her. 

Adanne never wore any clothes meant for ladies, she preferred those of her male counterparts—baggy trousers, oversized shirts, denim jackets, hoodies, and suits. You couldn’t enter her room without mistaking it for a boy’s. But Ma had banned me from entering her room; she feared I would contract the disease from regularly visiting a room which she believed had been inhabited by demons. 

She once lured Adanne to the house of our pastor to undergo an exorcism. Adanne loathed the church and the people it harbored. She’d blatantly admitted this on countless occasions, condemning the worshippers of a religion that treated her like a pariah when the originator had clearly implored everyone to come to him as they are.

“My daughter has been possessed, pastor. Please pray for her,” I heard Ma’s words roll out of her mouth, her voice quivering. I watched her sob and recoil like a prodded worm when she made this earnest plea. I watched Adanne contort her face in disappointment at the confession before she suddenly sprang to her feet and left, leaving the pastor’s mouth agape in disbelief.

Adanne’s intransigence bore children with each passing day till it degenerated into her bringing random girls to her room. Their jokes and laughter were often intermingled with moans that permeated our home. Ma would stifle my ears with her fingers against such ungodly sounds. She saw it as an epidemic that could infect me. 

One day, unable to hold her temper, Ma tried to force Adanne’s door open. 

“Who are those goats that wouldn’t let me hear a word?” she asked, disappointed at her inability to open the latched door. “Open this door before I raise an alarm,” she threatened as she exerted more energy, her effort not yielding any fruit. “Adanne, stop desecrating my house before God punishes you,” her sorrow-laden voice made it sound more like an appeal than a threat. 

In compliance, the girls went quiet. The air became still except for Ma’s occasional sobs. I approached and led her into the room as she kept mumbling angry words. I saw the girls sneak out of Adanne’s room, careful not to let their footsteps attract Ma’s attention. I knew Ma saw them, too, but feigned ignorance.

Every night, before we’d lay our tired bodies on the springy bed to rest, we would clog God’s ears with prayers—Ma often taking the lead, her pleas accentuated in Igbo.

“Father Lord,” she would start, clasping her hands, “biko zoputa nwam, please save my daughter,” she would plead, her whispers battling not to escape the roof of the building, for fear of having ndi iro catch her words and use them against her. She would fold me like a mattress to her bosom before imploring me not to follow the ways of my sister. I’d nod in compliance, afraid that any sign of mulishness from me would make Ma suffer a heart attack.

The first time Ma had a heart attack, Adanne had come home with her male friends to smoke shisha in the confines of her room. The smoke from the hookah tangled in circular motions and traversed her room before escaping through every available opening it found, to waft into our nostrils. The smoke, or rather the pains of having such smoke emanate from the ungodly act of her precious daughter, made Ma cough hard, pucker her face, and curse Adanne with bated breath.

“May it not be well with you. You want to kill me before my time okwaya?” she’d asked sardonically, clasping her chest before slumping on the floor. 

Adanne dismissed her friends and  rushed towards Ma, easily lifting her in her arms, which had become muscular like that of a heavyweight champion. I watched Adanne’s hazel eyes fill with tears for the first time in ages, her mouth muttering words that sounded like a prayer, for I heard the name of God in it. I wondered if God would hear too, if he wouldn’t close his ears the way Ma closed mine whenever those girls moaned in Adanne’s room. 

III

Ma’s curse killed Adanne. I know this from the way it followed her like an ant sniffing honey. She died just a few months after the curse.

I knew the men would kill her. Their prying eyes told me. The scathing rumors, and how they condemned her and called her ungodly names. I blamed myself for being a coward, for not being bold or strong enough to protect Adanne. I watched her fall prey to their hands, hands that smolder girls that treat fellow girls as flowers.

The day death took Adanne, she was in her red Moroccan men’s caftan. She held a girl like a tulip, walking hand in hand with her, their faces coated in happiness, down the boulevard. She’d paused across the boulevard, plastering the girl’s caramel-colored cheeks with kisses, not minding the glaring eyes.

“Tufiakwa—God forbids,” those who saw them said. Some  spat out saliva, some whirled their hands over their heads before snapping their fingers against what they called aru, because it’s abnormal for a girl to confess loving a fellow girl, where I come from. They heaved their shoulders in annoyance and asked if Adanne had a scrotum between her thighs. 

I hated my sister for being insensitive and worst, for displaying her stupidity out in the open. I knew that would be her end—I saw tires haloed over her head like a necklace amidst frenzied demands for petrol and matches, with which they would set her ablaze.

She burned. They burned her. They said they’d caught her in the act. I watched her ashes fly up, towards heaven, as if running to table her complaints before God. Her bloodshot eyeballs stared hard at me as if scolding me for not coming to her rescue. 

I ran to hug her ashes. I took them home. I gathered them in a bottle which I hid beneath my bed. I would pull out her ashes every night before I’d go to  sleep, to offer prayers to God on her behalf.

IV

Ma was a loner. She started turning inward for comfort after Adanne’s death. She avoided everybody and took solace in her own company. Sometimes I would find her in Adanne’s room, where she would gather Adanne’s things and commune with them, as if they were her daughter.

“They killed you because they thought you’d spoil their chances of having inlaws, ndi ara,” she would say, hugging Adanne’s clothes and crying her heart out.

Adanne lingered. Ma still banned me from smelling her room. She thought Adanne still inhabited the place and would initiate me at my entrance. 

Some days, she called me Adanne. She asked when I was going to get married and let her come for omugwo, as if coming for postpartum care was all that there was to look forward to now. She would remind me of all the people she knew whose daughters had tied the knot. But once she came to her senses, she would apologize for calling me the name of a dead being.

Fear began to consume my body. It came most days like a spasm, taking over my emotions and causing my heart to thud at the remembrance of my sister. Each memory an open wound that oozed sorrow. I began to see her in my dreams. I wondered if it was just a figment of my imagination, as I would often wake the following day feeling empty and dejected. 

I don’t know if it was the desire to make Ma proud and pull her out of her mental and emotional agony, or my desire to stay out of anything that would draw me closer to Adanne, that made me detest the things she loved while alive—menswear, her strides that lacked feminine elegance, anything that might steal my girlhood and make me loathe living under the same roof with a man. 

V

This morning, I stood before my bedside mirror to admire my twenty-one-year-old sinewy body. Gently, I ran my hands over my cornrows and patted them before reaching for my makeup bag.  I powdered my acne-dotted face, decked my lips with my burgundy lip gloss, and penciled my eyebrows till they assumed the shape of a willow leaf. I stood and swirled a little to inspect my red flowing gown, the feathered embroidery—I must look cultured and genteel before Chinua, he just came back from America.

Chinua and I first met in college where he confessed to loving me before going abroad. Last week, he called to inform me that he was back and invite me over. My heart thudded so much that I feared he must have heard the sound and calculated the number of butterflies that swarmed in my belly.

A gentle knock on the door distracted my attention. I paused, fixed my gaze on the door, the key dangling at its knob, and told whoever was there to come in. 

It was Ma, with hands akimbo—smiles littering her face.

“Nwakaego,” she called, without mistaking me for Adanne. She clutched her smile like a jealous lover. The smile was familiar to me, it was the kind she gave whenever she was in her best mood. “I know you wouldn’t behave like her,” she said, staring lovingly at me before letting tears drop like shrapnel from her eyes.

“Soon, you’ll come for omugwo,” I assured her. 

She ran to me at this utterance and folded me in her arms. 

I peered into her eyes and saw Adanne; I had the strongest feeling that she would find her way back into our lives again. I wanted to tell Ma—there was still a chance of meeting Adanne again, but this time around she wouldn’t be a daughter or sister, I think she will come back as she’d wanted to be. I decided against saying it, afraid of resuscitating a painful memory and because our religion doesn’t believe in reincarnation. Ma felt frail and sweaty but she held me like she would never let me go.

About the Author:

Okoronkwo Chisom is a first-class graduate of English Language and Literature. She is the International Advisor–Nigeria, of the African Writers Summit–Afwrites. She is the winner of the Shuzia “Journey of the Soul” Poetry Competition 2023, the Delyork Creative Academy Writing Contest 2022, a joint winner of the Sound of Unity Spoken Word Poetry Competition 2023, and a consolation prize winner in the Tonqo Publishers Short Story Prize 2022. She has been shortlisted in the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize 2022, African Feminist Writing Contest 2022, YouthHubAfrica FGM contest, September Edition, 2022, BKPW, and Splendours of Dawn Poetry Contest. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in PoetryColumn, Blue Marble Review, Nigerian Review, Icreatives Review, Isele Magazine, World Voices Magazine,  New Man Gospel Magazine, Shuzia, Mukana Anthology of African Writing, BPPC anthology, and elsewhere.

*Feature image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay