Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2025 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Chisom Benedicta Nsiegbunam’s “A Lineage of Mantles” is a notable entry.
Award Founder’s Note: What happens when you inherit a faith that feels too big for your shoulders to carry? What happens when something sworn in your name even before you excited compels you, even as your shaky feet walk a road that was long marked for you? These questions find their answers in “A Lineage of Mantles”; a collection of letters addressed to matriarchs in the faith even as a young woman wonders what it will take to forge a faith of her own. We see in these words a woman who aches for the divine, whilst also aching for herself.
“I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother [AnnaMary] and your mother, [Benedeth]. And I know that same faith continues strong in you [Benedicta]. This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when [she] laid [her] hands on you.”
- 2 Timothy 1:5-6 NLT
ANNAMARY
Dear Mma Nnukwu,
It is sinful to have forgotten so much of you in just fourteen years. To find traces of you in Mummy m’s ageing features, to fail to remember the sound of your voice. You were the only grandparent I ever knew, the one who loved me with the warmth of four. Now time has bullied you into fragments of fragrance and memory. But Mma m, I have questions Mummy m does not have answers to.
When I think of you, all I remember is laced with dance: my little self bursting with joy when I see your bent, slow figure at the gate. I am not sure what thrilled me most then: the gifts from the bottom of your Ghana Must Go bag; our ludo games behind the sofa; or the way you gathered me into your arms and I inhaled that lingering fragrance of ageing and drugs; your loose, crepey skin against my cheeks and the poking of your sequin blouse. I didn’t know then that such privileges could expire. I think of you now, every time I sniff a semblance of that fragrance.
I remember that one holiday I spent with you in the village, and I hate that I had no questions then. You turned your patio into an evening Block Rosary Crusade centre for the children. It faded with your death but still exists in your lineage. Aunty F revived it in her house. Maybe it is her way of managing the many griefs she has suffered, holding on to the rosary beads. Sometimes, I call her, ask after the children and implore their prayers. My quiet attempt to keep holding on to the rosary beads, hoping their faith will steady mine.
When I asked Mummy m what your faith was like, she simply said hers would be mockery if placed next to yours and I remember thinking whether mine would even qualify as faith. She narrated how you had such great intimacy with God, that you could spend an entire day in your room, speaking to Him. Your devotion in church and Marian societies. I want to ask you how you did it, Mma m, tell me all you know about the realms of prayer. Tell me how I can love an unfathomable God so intimately. Is my heart even capable of such a feat?
When I visited your house for your annual Thanksgiving every first Sunday of the year, it had been renovated. I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t recognize it in all that grandiosity. That it lacked your quiet motherliness and the carefree air of my childhood. Most of all, I hated their audacity to forget you, to pack a car on your grave, to strip your room of all it used to be – the fragrance that once lingered in its air, the perpetual darkness and the familiar clutter of wrappers and odds and ends. I hate even more that I am also guilty of this audacity, this sin.
I remember how we would sit just outside your door and you offered me grapefruits, even onugbu soup. I fed from your hands and you always called me by my full name, Chukwusomaga nwam (Nobody says my name like you, Mma m). Outside that very door, we washed many rosaries in detergent, trying to baptise them anew like the size of our faith was tied to the beads, to their pristineness. Mma m, I still do it. I still wash my rosaries and sacramentals, offering prayers as I scrub and scrub, just as we did, hoping the size of my faith increases.
When I pray the rosary, my mind drifts as I repeat the Hail Marys. Is it madness to get to a point where I question if the rosary is prayer enough? I wonder if it’s some kind of spiritual attack, that I often fall asleep before finishing, and hardly ever go beyond five decades. But there was a time I could pray ten, even twenty decades, a time I had no questions. What name do I give it, this time of struggling, of questioning, of writing about my failure?
I fail in the very prayer you loved and Mummy m loves, a prayer I was taught about its power from infancy. I was a block rosarian as a child. I wore a long blue and white scarf and prayed the rosary publicly every evening, sang its praise every Saturday morning along the streets, and always said the Hail Mary whenever I walked through the dark in fear, whenever I thought to pray. Even in the university, Mma m, I champion this very prayer. I know it by heart, in different languages. Yet, here I am, failing at the least expected thing of your true granddaughter.
***
Mummy m told me that in the days leading up to your death, you often prayed for her and said the Virgin Mary was up on a hill, calling on you. You taught her a particular way of praying the rosary, one you had practised for many years, offering prayers for the deceased and souls in purgatory. She said you told her to keep praying that way to aid your journey up that hill.
She said she struggled with the prayer, especially after you died. She said she tried and failed many times. And it’s hard to picture her failing. But Mma m, can you also imagine how tough it must have been for her to lose her mother to Hail Mary, and still grieve her in Hail Marys.
I do not like to think that someday, I too will have to offer decades for Mummy m. That I will grieve through the repetition of Hail Marys, believing, despite pain, that my prayers matter in the aftermath of losing my mother. But Mma m, will my faith even step up to the task then?
***
Though I was miles away from home when you died, caught up in the bustle of my teenage life in the classroom, you gave me one last gift. In a split second, I saw a version of you not beaten down by stroke, dressed in a white lace blouse and wrapper, standing outside my classroom window, waving at me. I didn’t understand it then; I only felt fear when I returned from school and heard you were dead. But now, in this letter, I want to say thank you for not leaving without a goodbye. Thank you for that last memory of you. Thank you, dearest Mma m, for the gift of your love, your faith. I hope your love can strengthen me.
The one you named blessed,
Benedicta.
“To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.”
- Hebrews 11:1 GNT
BENEDICTA
I was born on a Sunday in the insouciant rainy July. After the doctors confirmed my heart was no longer beating in the blood lake rising in Mummy m’s womb. After Mummy m articulated her pain through repeated Hail Marys and challenges to God. My conception was unplanned, a miracle to her. She didn’t recount being with my father, maybe because children aren’t told that side of the story or it’s a blank I should know to fill. When she tells me the story, she begins like this:
“Njideka nwannem was the one I was praying for to carry her child at that crusade. I stood in for her as a point of contact. Then, one prayer warrior came and touched my head and imagọnu, now touch my belly and carry on. The next thing I know, my body and the crusade ground started scenting like they were pouring baby powder and perfume everywhere. If you see how women were shouting and crying that night ehn! It was as if plenty spiritual babies were there. That day that I know the scent of a miracle.
Piam! Period, no show. From the very beginning of your pregnancy, it was a serious battle. ”
I am her eleventh pregnancy, her eighth living child. The one she makes to lead the Rosary prayers every night, the one she loves to listen to read out Bible passages and summarise Google research on her drugs. The one it pleases her to find whispering through Rosary beads at midnight.
The other part of my birth story is one she tells with a special knowledge of me in her eyes. A knowledge unknown to me but makes me want to morph into a transcendent self and live up to. A knowledge that makes me think that my highest attainment of self-esteem, the closest I can ever get to seeing myself as God sees me, is if I can see myself as Mummy m sees me.
“The devil showed me how he prepared the day I went to the market to plait. I was feeling better, after suffering from one sickness to another. I even joined the Precious Blood of Jesus novena that July. But, will the devil go to war with God and now win?
Out of nowhere, the nwa boyi that was doing offload, imagọnu, from the truck hit one big signboard. The signboard left everywhere it can fall and gbam! on my pregnant belly. The pain was like fire.
When we reached Waterside Hospital, the doctor said I was having internal bleeding and speaking plenty grammar. They check and check for your heartbeat, nothing. No trace of you again, just blood.
While everything was happening, I was just asking God if He is not with me on this journey, o no so oro mu aga?” That is why I named you Chukwusomaga, because if not God, me and you, no return.”
Chukwusomaga means God is with me, walks with me, wherever I go. Mummy m’s faith is one I think of as numinous. A faith that makes me feel wonder. All my life I have watched her go through tough seasons and have heard tales of even tougher seasons with her rosary.
“Three days passed, my body was just getting bigger. They tried to make me go into labour plenty times but nothing. That third day, I dragged myself to the Grotto of the Virgin Mary in the hospital. With my rosary, I was asking Jesus and His mother if my child was truly dead. I was just asking Them questions, my spirit was very angry.
I was still talking there when I heard “Pum!” It was my blood pumping out. The whole place was as if somebody poured buckets of blood. I started screaming, “So this is it, God?” “Are you telling me that the devil will win?”
Two decades later, I returned to the same grotto in Waterside Hospital with Mummy m, we were passing by. I knelt before Mary, dressed in white and blue, carrying Jesus in Her arms. The heat trapped in the tiles scorched my knees, but I didn’t mind; I was finding words to pray. To pray to this Mary who heard Mummy m that July. Who must have run to Her Son like She did at the Wedding at Cana, and said to Him, “There is no heartbeat.” This Mary Mummy m and Mma m trust so much, and yet my trust flickers. I lifted my gaze to Her, attempting to articulate the inadequacy that paralyzed me—the feeling that I fall short, not of God’s grace, but of Mummy m’s expectations.
“The doctor said they will operate to save me first. They brought paper for me to sign. I took it and I told God, me and my child will return from this journey and I sign J-E-S-U-S.
Before I woke up, I had a dream. In it, I met two men wearing white. They told me to adore the Five Holy Wounds of Christ with them. For every Wound, there was a cave on the wall I put my head inside. The very five wounds of the Precious Blood prayer. You see this life, it is very mysterious.”
For many years, my prayer sessions have come to include sitting, staring, and talking to the image of the Precious Blood of Jesus. For unexplainable reasons, I am drawn to the Image. When I stare and meditate, what I see is an overwhelming love despite His bleeding Head crowned in thorns. I find sorrow in His eyes, a longing and desperation of a God who seeks love from mere mortals He molded with His hands. I feel warmth, serenity, and a sense of belonging. But I fear it’s too simple, much too effortless to be called a prayer.
Dear Little Benedicta,
My heart yearns for an intimacy it no longer feels capable of housing. I remember your wonder at the Mass, your obsession with your guardian angel, how you said every Hail Mary amazed at the very words you prayed.
I now lack that sense of wonder. All of your devotion is an experience ever beyond my reach. All I have left of that genuine faith is nostalgia. Truly, I’m not sure how I got here. I do not doubt the trueness of God, but I doubt the trueness of my reverence towards Him. I’m overwhelmed by my unworthiness, convinced that I’m too fake to be associated with this God.
I do not know the day this unraveling began, this unmooring of devotion. Maybe it began with reading Myles Monroe, then running to the priest to know if my lack of tongue speaking at the time truly meant an absence of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it was the many Pentecostal sermons I had willingly submitted my mind to. Maybe it was a lack of spiritual satisfaction or rigidity.
But I first learned how far I had gone when I first questioned the necessity of the sacrament of confession when I could simply, like my Pentecostal friends, ask Him. I would return to the sacrament over and over to ask forgiveness for doubting it. But one day, I didn’t return, didn’t ask, and I stayed with the Pentecostal way.
Filth is also psychological, no matter how many direct pleas to God, I still do not feel clean. This struggle gnaws at the core of my identity. Because I do not know who I am outside this faith Mummy m and Mma m handed to me, named for me, and prayed into my soul.
I crave your intimacy, your devotion so simple, holy and desperately dependent. I want to come back to what you were with Him. I have tried the Blessed Sacrament but I couldn’t even hold His gaze like you effortlessly did. I fought till I slumbered off only to wake with greater acknowledgment of my new despicability.
Our elder brother, Okey once said that sometimes in life the only path back is through the roots. So I have returned to memories of Mma m, to the stories and observations from Mummy m – the very sources of this seed of faith. From here I hope to reach the flames to be fanned, water the seeds consistently till my faith re-emerges deeply rooted. I want it to consume me.
“Turn to me and have mercy on me; strengthen me and save me, because I serve you just as my mother [does]. Show me proof of Your goodness, Lord.”
- Psalm 86:16-17 GNT
BENEDETH
Dear Nne m,
I cannot speak to you about my silly struggles with faith because they would only disappoint the image of me I think you hold in your mind, and far be it from me to consciously disappoint you.
I hear this image when you say, “Every home needs an Elijah,” or “You are not like your sisters; everybody is different.” I hear it when you tell me stories of seasons and battles you won on your knees with the rosary, of your fervency at the altar, of how you prayed twenty to fifty decades daily in your youth and rarely missed a Mass. I have tried to mirror you, to emulate your devotion, and I have failed consistently. I do not know if it is a problem of a different time in history, the demands of life or simply my absolute failure to measure up.
When you make me lead the rosary every night, my distance from the prayer widens. I do not look forward to it, I find myself wanting to escape it. It isn’t because of something you do, not even the prayer itself; it’s the rigidity of the ritual, the staleness of overfamiliarity, and perhaps most of all, my subconscious performative reverence to please you, not God.
Mummy m, I am ever in awe of your devotion, your expression of faith. You see that silver chair you keep beside your altar, the one you say is for the Holy Spirit, your greatest friend. A chair that has always stood there, never sat on by anyone. I often kneel and whisper prayers as I wipe its dust, asking to attain a faith like yours, like Mma m’s.
I love the nights we lie in bed talking endlessly. I love it when, on my bad days, you ask how I am, and I cry into your arms. I love your high spirits every time I call when I’m away and how you call me your love. I love how, when I dress up, you smile and say, ‘Simple and nice’– unspectacular words that mean everything coming from you. I love it, when you tell me the Lord has made me beautiful. I love our tantrums, our mother-daughter dynamics.
I love, too, when you speak tough truths – how you feel your worth and strength wrinkling along with your skin, how your waning fervency at the altar disappoints you, and feel you do not measure up to your mother’s faith. Those moments, Mummy m, when you reveal your vulnerabilities, are the moments I silently try to form words for my own self-grappling – for the many ways I, too, am failing to be my mother’s daughter.
Every night, I go to bed with my rosary folded into my palms. My little way of lingering longer, even asleep, to feel your and Mma m’s warmth from miles away. It is safety for me, the physicality of faith. This faith I asked you to bless me with.
The moment that led me to kneel before you that dawn, on our three-seater brown sofa, the ceiling fan whirring, the bulbs casting shadows, asking for five particular blessings, was simple. I had been on a twenty-four-day meditative novena on the Passion of Christ. I love that prayer because within its pages, I travel, enraptured by the intimacy the saint shared with Christ. On the fourteenth day, I was inspired to write down five blessings; the fifth, said to have been passed to you by Mma m. I wasn’t confident about those words that felt like whispers, but I wrote them anyway. I never considered myself that deep into spiritual things to have such encounters.
But I took my chance days later when I knelt before you and told you exactly what I had been inspired to say, and you stared at me and simply asked, “Who told you?” and gave a subtle laugh with that unknown knowledge of me present in your eyes.
You didn’t wait for an answer I clearly didn’t have before resting your hands on my head. As you prayed, I felt hot fluids pour into me and my body trembling within. Since then, I have borne this incomprehensible yearn to live up to you and Mma’s faith.
I hope one day I can tell my daughter about battles I, too, have won on my knees. About you and Mma m’s faith. I hope to pass the rosary beads to her. But I will not forget to tell her that the leverage of spiritual inheritance does not bypass process – that she must find and know God for herself in her altar, in the way He has designed, and through her own consecrations. I will tell her there will be many struggles, seasons of strengths and failures, but she must lean on the fortitude of the same genuine faith that first filled Mma m, on the knowledge that she comes from a lineage of women who conquered life on their knees.
Your Baby and Love,
Benedicta.
About the Author:
Chisom Nsiegbunam is a Nigerian prose writer, a Pushcart Prize and Best of Net Nominee. She was a fellow at the Ubwali Masterclass (‘25), inaugural Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop(‘24), and SprinNG Writing Fellowship (‘23). Her works have appeared in Art4Life Anthology, Ubwali Literary Magazine, The AprilCentaur Network, Eunoia Review, Afritondo, Brittle Paper, Ma Kẹkẹ, and elsewhere – written between steeping cups of herbal tea.
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