The increasing pain that bit into Okwubanego’s bones had not subsided even after they had doubled his painkillers, so Oriaku forced him into this visit to the hospital. The hospital walls were a grayish-green from years of poor maintenance.
“They will just prescribe a different type of painkiller, the doctors don’t even know what to do with me anymore,” Okwubanego had protested.
“I don’t want to hear that rubbish this morning. We are going.”
Oriaku’s tone grated with finality, and so they went. The consultant had said he preferred to see Okwubanego alone and frankly, Oriaku didn’t mind, she knew Okwubanego would tell her every word the man said, including how he squeezed his face while saying them.
The waiting room was chilly and everyone spoke in whispers. People filed in and out of the ward mostly in pairs and Oriaku appreciated how everyone looked at each other with kindness in their eyes. It was common knowledge that everyone you saw could be terminally ill or actively dying. She thought of the wall paint and likened it to her husband’s body cells; Once compact and healthy, now blighted with a host of ailments. She didn’t expect the cancer to open them up to a host of other opportunistic infections but once they started chemo, Owubanego’s immune system suffered. The transformation had been drastic. Her husband’s chubby body was pared down to its bones. He appeared so gangly that Oriaku feared he’d break if he got up from the bed too quickly. And even in his sickness he still bore an uncanny resemblance to their daughter Ijeoma. The woman who came to congratulate Oriaku after she birthed Ijeoma had teased her that her husband had deceived her and given all his features to their daughter. She didn’t mind then, but now, as she thought of Okwubanego and Ijeoma, the two halves holding her world in place, she feared how she would stand on only one half.
When Okwubanego emerged, he looked wrung out but smiled as soon as he saw Oriaku. The Consultant wrote a litany of expensive prescriptions like Okwubanego had suspected he would. They got the drugs but the pain didn’t disappear, it just played a reckless game of hide and seek.
*
On some days, like today, five months after they’d visited the hospital and three months after Okwubanego had been declared terminal, the pain would subside to a four out of ten and they would have a chance at a beautiful day. They started the day with Osadebe on the radio. Osadebe’s undying voice reminded Oriaku of the good old days; how they danced at Igba-nkwu and Ofalas when life was much easier. As the sun made its way across the sky, Okwubanego fell into his regular drug-induced sleep, and Oriaku took the chance to prepare Ofe Nsala. When the meal was ready, she set it beside their bed and propped Okwubanego up. To think that Okwubanego was once called an Iroko because he towered over many people—now he looked like a sad, deflated bicycle tire. He winced as his body folded to sit up. She fed him the first spoon of the Nsala soup and dabbed the corners of his mouth with paper towels for the portions that dripped away and Okwubanego smiled at her as they ate.
“What?” She asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Nothing. ” He coughed. “You are just as beautiful as you were when we got married.”
Oriaku tapped him slightly and turned her face away. She loved that after so many years, he could still make her heart skip like she was sixteen again.
“You and this your sweet mouth,” she teased him.
“I am only sweet when I’m talking about you, my wife.”
“Mechionu, this man! You don’t know you are too old to be saying such things?” She let out a loud laugh and Okwubanego joined her.
She was grateful for days like this; when a beam of hope hovered over them. Days when she could search the eyes of the man she called home and find the door open to welcome her. The day ended with Oriaku reading a few chapters of Jagua Nana. In the begining she hated reading the same book over and over again but now, she found beauty in them, but not just beauty, she found comfort too. Sometimes they would spend hours on a chapter they had probably read a hundred times over, arguing the different decisions Jagua could have made.
The next day wasn’t so different. She watched Okwubanego laugh at the breakfast show over the radio. Since he became bedridden, he turned to the radio as a jolly companion and Oriaku was grateful for it. She made Ogbono soup that morning because it was the easiest for him to swallow. She made the semo soft and watery so it could dissolve easily in his mouth.
As they ate, lines of the Ogbono soup dropped on Okwubanego’s open chest. When he was full—after fifteen morsels of semo—she took to the ritual of cleaning him up. She detested cleaning him because it reminded her just how much he was rotting. She let her mind settle on the different parts of his body as she cleaned them, wiping them down like the porcelain figurines in their parlour. The hack was to fixate on one part of him and not the whole—if she looked at him whole, at his bed sores and bony chest, she feared she might not be able to take it.
“Do you remember being flogged in secondary school because you were sneaking off to come and see me?” Okwubanego laughed, his ribbed chest rising and falling with urgency.
Oriaku laughed as she remembered how all she felt that day was an intense shame and rage for the students that laughed at her.
“You will not remain still, let me focus on what I’m doing eh?”
“What about Ije?”
“She’s fine, oh. She is still insisting on moving back to Enugu.”
“No, no. Tell her not to worry. I’ll be fine.”
Oriaku saw a familiar kindness flash in his eyes. “I think she feels she’s not doing enough.” Oriaku wiped some sweat off his forehead.
“But she is our Ijeoma. She’s not supposed to be doing anything at all. Let her live her own life, we are fine, are we not?” Okwubanego smiled at her and she noticed tears forming at the back of her eyes.
“Ozugo, you must be strong. Inugo?” He tried to touch her but his hands were too shaky. “We still have a thousand nights more.”
She quickly nodded an amen, and stared at him through her teary eyes. It felt like he wanted to say more, like everything will be alright, like this was just a bump in the road of their life’s journey but inside, she knew the reality of their situation, and so did he.
“Do you remember when you thought we were cursed because we couldn’t have a child after our first miscarriage? You said it was because we swam naked in Etavo River, that the gods had cursed us.”
Oriaku scoffed “I was desperate then. I actually believed it.”
“I know you did.” He coughed a long cough that shook his entire body. “I told you then, our babies will come at their own time. And look, our Ijeoma came in her own time.” He started laughing again.
“I know, but enough, you know this cough is bad for your heart.” She stood up and changed his diapers and PJs.
“Do you remember when we were homeless and scared and alone? And It felt like each day we were alive was a punishment?” The casual laughter and joy vanished from his voice. “It was like the further we moved ahead, the darker it became. That was when I thought we were actually cursed.”
“Ozugo, enough about the past.” She packed his dirty clothes and wiped a tea stain from the bed stand. Okwubanego smiled and mouthed her a thank you.
Inside the kitchen, she dropped the piles of dirty clothes on the floor and broke into a silent cry. She had promised herself that she would not break down in front of him, she would not cry in front of him and today she broke that promise. In the last few months, she had been feeling the urge to scream at the world, at God, at everything. With each passing day the urge grew stronger but today they threatened to burst her into pieces. She stared at the dirty clothes on the floor and at the used diapers and a deep wail escaped her throat. She collapsed to the floor, atop the clothes and tried to contain her scream but they were stronger than her, everything was stronger than her, and she felt so small and alone.
She sometimes detested Okwubanego. Why was he abandoning her here? Why couldn’t they be sick together? She hoped they’d go through everything together; They both struggled to build their first tissue factory in Enugu—from Okwubanego working as a storekeeper and manager in one of the existing factories and her applying her math skills as an accountant. It didn’t make sense that one person would be in pain and the other would not but alas.
Oriaku gathered herself, like a mad woman who suddenly came to her senses in the middle of the market. She picked up the clothes and dumped them in the washer and went back to Okwubanego to set the fan the way he liked it in the afternoon. The sun had started heating up the earth and Okwubanego sweated a lot. She switched the radio to his favourite afternoon channel, then adjusted his pillows. His drugs usually made him sleepy at this time but he woke to Oriaku’s presence and he smiled weakly at her. She decided to make unripe plantain with vegetables and fish. She told him lunch would soon be ready and he nodded. Oriaku noticed something strange in his eyes, like shame and she guessed he heard her crying in the kitchen earlier. She blinked back hot tears and went back to the kitchen.
While she cooked, she took some time to call Ije and they spoke for a while. She offered, as always, to move back home, just to be closer to you guys, I’ll even get my own place, she protested but Oriaku laughed and shut her down as always. “When we need help, we will tell you.” They talked about Ije’s work and she urged her to be careful and to take good care of herself.
Oriaku returned to their room with a tray of food. She placed them carefully on the bed stand and slightly opened the curtains to let in some light. She retrieved their worn-out copy of Jagua Nana, a third edition print Okwubanego had bought on his first trip to London in the early 2000s. As she returned with the book, she noticed he was not awake yet . She tried waking him up, but his eyes wouldn’t open. She pressed her ear to his chest for a heartbeat but she only heard the deafening sound of silence. She called out his name and got no response. She screamed his name with all her strength, maybe he was in a deep sleep, maybe he just needed to hear her voice, maybe, just maybe. She screamed his name over and over again until she heard her own voice crack. She couldn’t believe it. As much as she tried to make sense of it, it was unbelievable. Okwubanego had died and worse, he had died alone.
In the early days, Oriaku promised herself that no matter what, she would be by his side, through thick and thin, through laughter and worry, until his dying breath. It was a promise she held stronger than her own will to live, it was a force that turned the wheel, and now, now the wheel was broken.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She whispered as she hugged him. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone. I was just in the kitchen. I was just here, Okwu. I was just here,” she wailed.
A strange impulse overtook her. She raced across the room and locked all the windows and doors, as if trying to stop Okwubanego’s soul from leaving the room. If Okwubanego’s spirit had nowhere else to go, maybe it would come back to his body. Maybe he could come alive again. She jumped on top of him on the bed and started administering CPR. She pinched his nose together and blew air into his mouth while simultaneously pumping his chest. She didn’t know where the idea came from; she just found herself heaving and drawing in air as she pushed against his chest. She was sweating and crying now but her tears meant nothing. She meant nothing and Okwubanego meant everything.
She sat up after a while and searched for her voice but it was buried somewhere she couldn’t reach. All she was left with was hot tears that streaked down her face like a leaking drum of water.
She gave up when the sun began to set and Okwubanego was still lying there, unmoving. She had been sitting on the bed and time seemed to have either diminished or stopped. Her chest couldn’t stop rising and falling and her hands kept moving all over her body as chills washed over her. She finally called her neighbor, Mama Abuchi and together they made arrangements. An ambulance came from a private hospital close to their house and they wheeled Okwubanego into the back while she rode in Mama Abuchi’s car, not taking her eyes off of the ambulance.
Okwubanego had died alone and she wasn’t there to say goodbye. She wasn’t there to hand him over to his late elders, as her mother had done with her father, as tradition also demanded. When her father died, her mother was by his side. She repeated her father’s last words at every opportunity. It was like a warm blanket she and her mother clung onto for comfort. Now, she had no last words from Okwubanego— just a long, dark silence and the horror that he died thinking about her pain.
Did he journey to the other side alone or was he escorted by someone?
Her mother said her father’s dead brother came to escort him when he died.
“Your father called his name and looked above the ceiling with a smile! That’s how I knew he went to heaven.” Her mother told her once.
Did Okwubanego smile? Did anyone come to take his hand? Did he go to heaven?
*
The first day after his death, she tried scrubbing their house but the sponge turned to dust in her hand, everything turned to nothing when she touched them. Her daughter was on her way back and neighbors and friends and people she knew from church and from elsewhere kept trooping in and out of their flat. She thought she would hate how their footwears littered over the entrance and how their feet left prints on the tiles. She thought she would hate their politeness and their concern and how their sympathy flowed too easily out of their mouths. She thought she would hate their encouraging words about how Okwubanego was in a better place, or how everyone would tell the stories of their favourite memories with Okwubanego but she found herself grateful for their company. They streamed into the living room and she didn’t mind that their feet were dirty, at least she will have something to clean after they’re gone. She didn’t mind that you could stumble on their shoes and fall. She appreciated their little anecdotes about death, how each of their lives have been marked by grief. She believed they understood some of the pains of death; how it feels like a cold breeze blowing on a naked body. She was grateful their stories served as a warm blanket, no matter how temporary. She slowly began to dread the day they would all go back to their busy lives and abandon her to her grief.
She began to dread how to walk in the world with her new found grief. She imagined it would be like she was a child learning to ride a bicycle without training wheels. She wondered if grief was something one becomes better at; if this absence could become a presence of its own, a hovering cloud that chooses to darken your day at will. But no matter how much she tried to think of it, it didn’t make sense. Nothing about grief makes sense.
About the Author:
Nnaemeka Nnam is a Nigerian writer, bookstagramer, and literary podcast host. His work explores the intersection between love and grief. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Nnọkọ Stories, W&S UK, and Isele Magazine. He is an alum of SprinNG writer’s fellowship 2023 and the 2023 Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop.
Isele Magazine 