Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2023 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Iruoma Chukwuemeka’s “A Good Woman’s Language” is a notable entry. 

Award Founder’s Note: What happens when a girl learns silence as survival? What happens when silence is dubiously touted as a rich inheritance? What does it look like to reclaim your voice in a society invested in your silence? These are the questions tackled in A Good Woman’s Language: an exploration into girlhood and silence, darkness and light, history and power. By unearthing hidden matrilineal histories, the writer shows us how power is sometimes buried deep in our bones and light can unbury us and set us free. 

I was twelve when my great-grandmother died. There was something abysmal with how my parents rejoiced after Uncle Nnanyere called. Before now, to me, she had simply existed, in the realm of old people, where she waited for her meals, was lifted to take a bath, and spoke mostly to herself. Whenever we visited Utuh in the dusty harmattan, the woman usually sat in her barely-lit room, and we, the great-grand kids, never knew what to do with her. She was all bones before I completed primary school. Even when she spoke, her Igbo was alien to my tongue, like a plate of onugbu I was compelled to finish, so there was nothing to offer her in response. In her last days, my mother would narrate dreams of getting pursued and tormented by the aged woman. Then we would arrange midnight prayers for consecutive nights, pushing back every witchcraft influence. Our foreheads were anointed with oil before we headed for the village. My father’s electronics business in Ladipo was not moving at the time, and it became apparent when the tins of Milo stopped coming, and the landlord’s lawyer started tucking letters in our door handle. Even though I thought our ancestor was merely eager to be dead, I kept silent and prayed. This woman died in August of my twelfth year, and my family was set free. 

*

As a child in the two-storey building we lived off Agboyi Road, right opposite Central Mosque, NEPA never gave us light for long. The constant absence of light revealed how dark spaces filled me with dread. When night arrived, and the kerosene lantern was in the parlour, I preferred to stay there, with it. If the lantern moved, I went along. When my siblings left me alone in the dark, my fears quickly saturated the void, so I found a little corner and waited, holding my breath. If I tried to move, to unstiffen my body, to breathe more loudly, the spirits could sniff me out. The staircase in the house seemed too long and eerie, especially when the night dawned. My footsteps increased when I was sent to Raphael’s store, sometimes I ran. Under bed covers, I suffocated, struggled to keep my eyes closed when I heard movement, until I drifted. I did not enter the bathroom after dark, even to pee. Maybe it was not just the darkness that deterred me, but also the knowledge that a terribly stronger force could take advantage of my powerlessness in the dark and attack me. Whatever the reason, I cannot remember. But I remember my fear.

*

In the school on the same road as our house – the one with dusty windows that clouded sunlight every single day –  the boy who couldn’t distinguish fractions from decimals, stroked my thighs. He smiled, as he moved up my legs. I moved towards the edge of our wooden chair, and he drew nearer. His eyes held both a wanting and a warning. Unsure of which to respond to, I simply waited for him to finish. Luck was barely on our side as another classmate ratted us out before his hands quit. As I ran from the head teacher’s office where I was chastised for another’s crimes, I went home in skin that burned all over, like it was pressed with multiple office pins wracked with a deep sadness, and rage for the unfairness I suffered. Why was I being punished when all I did was keep silent?  When my parents found out that I wet the bed or left the water running till it flooded the house, they caned me. A stranger pushed money into my hands and I showed it to them, then I had to kneel and carry the table for hours. With every confession came brutal consequences, and I so learned to be quiet because I believed silence to be  the sole price for salvation. My mother found out about the boy at school but despite her fury, she did not bring it up ever again. 

*

Women do not often discuss their bodies in great detail. A larger part of decency is achieved by shrouding ourselves in mystery, decorum, or clothes. The first time blood flowed, I was at Sunday Service, beating other teenagers at a Bible quiz game. That last day in May, the winds smelled of dust and rain, and I would feel moist suddenly, uneasy, and leave for the bathroom. Later, in a dry bathroom, my sister demonstrated how to wear a sanitary towel, transferring the dos and don’ts of this new life: There is a monthly cycle. There are fertile days. Drink a lot of Fanta and you’ll get cramps. I broke the news to my mother when she returned home, and she quickly informed me that I was now a woman. Woman. The word was thick, like the oha soup she cooked so well. When she didn’t say more, I hoped there was nothing else to know. Silence is a language I internalized as the right response for every possible scenario. It is the proper way to show respect when elders are speaking, to express surrender to people we could not match with verbiage, to dissuade further questioning, to make peace. During compound fights, as children, when we had exhausted all artillery in our word bank, a budding argument could be dismissed with ‘Silence is the best answer for a fool (like you).’ In another way silence is a shield for ignorance; not saying anything is how you say: I don’t really know, but I choose not to press deeper.

*

When I was seventeen years old, a forklift rammed into my father’s hip at Ladipo, and he was bedridden for weeks. I was away at university with my sister when we got the news. Our cramped one-room hostel became ventilated with prayers, because my mother mentioned that my father had nothing going anymore in the market. Each day, my mother called in with fresh prophecies. Sometimes, she dreamed a new dream. The prophecies were clear to everyone, but unsettling to me. I could not reconcile why anyone would want to kill my father. The life he led was already a difficult one. But my mother hushed me, and insisted that my father’s uncles were behind everything. 

“Pray for your father, nne. Pray.”

Whenever my mother called, she carefully left out that he was now drinking until he wore alcohol like perfume. When he started to walk a little, he remained outdoors till the stars disappeared. We came home on holidays, and I would learn things that I’m yet to correlate with the man who trimmed my toenails every Sunday evening. The house became too small for all of us, and my father. Sometimes, the pepper in the soup did not slight his tongue as he hoped, other times the semo was too warm. He grumbled when money he kept disappeared too often, as if he was saving up for an expense she wasn’t privy to. My mother weaved her lips tight whenever he agitated the calmness that was our house. She did not challenge his complaints – she changed his food flasks; she stopped touching his money. She visited more prophets. She fasted without ceasing. Our university allowances dropped, and as I returned to school, I stopped calling home that much.

*

Silence prevails wherever darkness perpetrates a living. If they keep you in the dark, it is to shield you from something powerful; and many times, you only gain power when you find light. In the darkness of silence that shrouded my life, the story of one woman burned like a candle at the edge of twilight. This is the history of Akuakpo, my great-grandmother, who may have died by my Amens. Dara-Okoli, her father, discovered early enough that his sons were wayward so he gathered his umunna and they performed a little ceremony that allowed his only daughter to carry on his name. She would become a male daughter, take seed from a man of her choosing, and bear sons in her father’s house, for her father. Unfortunately, this woman had daughters, my grandmother inclusive. Akuakpo’s daughters put their feet in their mother’s steps, and that’s how my father came to be. More sons flowed and the tradition stayed its hand. All the feminism I had admired in my life, did not prepare me for this knowledge about my great-grandmother and my grandmother: the very soil that instituted my existence was matriarchy. Within a culture that highlighted males as most significant, Ma Akuakpo had ruled. At least, she didn’t have to live in somebody’s house to prove relevance. Her daughters too. There was something liberating and potent about her history, that story, I wish I had known this in her lifetime. She’d selected her partner, raised her children by her own hands alone. In the grand scheme of things, she single-handedly prevented Dara-Okoli’s compound from growing thick bushes. That male daughter of his. Whatever fabric this ancestor wore, I coveted earnestly. Her blood must be in my veins, somewhere.

*

The timing is right when I fall for this man. I am in the penultimate year of my degree and the brightness of my skin is subsumed by the raging sun. Awka is dry and hot in December, and the voice of my ancestor is muffled by my unrelenting desire to be wanted, to be chosen, to be held. Igbo is his first tongue, and he likes to play the piano and tease me when I off-key. The man soon becomes an old couch, unfurling to dilute my tensions after a long day. His tiny room is just enough for both of us to exist without bumping into each other’s lives, and for me to practice the love I could afford: an unselfish donation of my heart that did not leave me bankrupt. I raise my opinion because it is easier with him. We visit his family often. They love me but cannot ignore that my Igbo is not fluent. They keep loading my plates, urging me to replenish those thighs. When the attention zooms in on me, they praise me for sticking with their difficult son. His difficulty I am well acquainted with; one too many sorrys rushing from my pursed lips. As the months pass, his eyes begin to demand honor; his lips hustle possession. My eyes – still dim with desire – do not see anything wrong with his demands, but I cannot afford it. So, we fight all the time. Call each other bad names. I do not quit because I am too terrified of what lays on the other end of dissolution. Loneliness. Guilt. Doubt. Darkness. My silence dissolves into compliance, as with the boy in the classroom, and many others. Silence is not our only obstacle. As my future begins to concretise, and his refuses to, he begins to resemble an ambitious but unfeasible structure; something I cannot build a life on. I do not know how it happens but something unclogs my ears and my ancestor’s voice becomes crystal clear. I, the one descended from women whose hands chose life, how dare I do different? Before a year passes, I call and text and say in as many words as I can: I’m leaving. I’m stepping into light.

*

 On top of an empty white page, my mother wrote: 

I would have left this marriage but for these children. 

She had dated that entry; I can’t remember the figures now. Gripping those creased pages, all my questions withered. Where I come from, silence is the language of a good woman. It is the garment of a pious woman. Apostle Paul proposed that women should not speak in church gatherings. Even the book of Proverbs had a lot to say about the tongue of a brawling woman.

For my mother, silence was her response to the voice of God saying, persist, there is joy at the finish line, until her quietness waxed into an endurance I could barely recognize. Maybe she prayed more, because she believed that someone was at least listening. Maybe she prayed because the presence of God was a place where speaking was allowed. Maybe she prayed because God did not want her to be silent. 

*

In my final year of university, when I quit calling home, when I got tired of voices that threatened to swallow mine, my religion dug into earth, took on tangible roots and sprouted as faith. I began to find the voice of God in books, yanking away the ignorance that masqueraded as silence, or piety. The desire to read led me to inquire deeply about the things I had been taught. When I read Awka:1800-2000; A Survey of the History and Traditions of the Ancient City State by Hezekiah Dike, I started to approach and humanize my ancestry. I started to investigate the Igbo history more deeply through our literature and music. I started to listen more closely to the language I was once ignorant of. I began to be. In an Engineering classroom brimming with men, I offer myself as leader, taking a space they would not readily give to me. My voice is louder, pouring out of my mouth with a confidence seated in my bones.  In this fresh equation of myself, it is easier to show my mother I’m not judging her choices, less difficult to comprehend my father’s attitude toward loss. I buy my mother yards of sequin lace. I discuss her doctor’s appointments. I spread out like a pillow for her tears. I send them money when they mention a need. I listen. When I allow men into my life, it is entirely on my own terms, at my own pace, in my own way. In my becoming, the light of Ma Mary Akuakpo Okoli shines brighter in my heart, like the sun rising to defy every appearance of darkness.

About the Author:

Iruoma Chukwuemeka is a creative writer from Eastern Nigeria. Her works have appeared in Afritondo, Lolwe, Midnight&Indigo, The Shallow Tales Review, and elsewhere. She is an alumnus of the 2021 Creative Writing Cohort with Chigozie Obioma.

*Feature image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay