It had rained heavily, and the stomach-turning smell of earth hung in the air, wafting from the windows into our sitting room on that Tuesday morning that my sister came home with the news that she had been awarded a scholarship. I hadn’t been so concerned about her scholarship, but knew it was to a university in the United Kingdom. I could still remember how Dad’s eyes narrowed in what I guessed was disdain when Clara announced to us that she was going to study Sociology in England. She knew, or so it seemed to me, that Dad wouldn’t be happy with her studying Sociology, but had thought that the fact that she wouldn’t have to pay school fees would soften things.
I hadn’t forgotten how she turned to our mother and said in a tone that suggested she was soliciting support, “Sociology. It’s a good course, okwia? Is it not?”
I could tell that for the period during which Mum kept quiet, she was thinking about how to support Clara without heightening Dad’s annoyance.
“O maka. It’s so nice,” Mum said at last. And then, lowering her voice as if that would make Dad, who was sitting just beside her not hear her words, she added, “At least, Ochiedike’s wife will stop making mouth with her child abroad. I’ll have my own there too.”
Dad gave Mum a hot, stern look that seemed to ask whether that was the only reason she said she loved Sociology — so that Clara could travel to England, so that she would be entitled to the vain pride of women who had their children abroad.
Mum was the type who got Dad’s unspoken questions, especially when we had domestic workers around. I guess she wanted to reduce whatever effect that her earlier reference to Ochiedike’s wife may have had, so she said, “But Sociology is a good course, and England will teach it well…”
Dad cut her short. “Do you mean Nigeria won’t teach it well?”
There was something about the way Dad asked this question that would remind anyone of an elder sibling trying selfishly to counter the points of a younger one and make him realise his foolishness, or a husband keen on making his wife notice his superiority over her.
“Sorry,” Mum apologised.
She would rather apologise than argue whenever Dad was vexed, even if she was right. She would say that that was what it meant to be an African wife, and, in reply, Clara would tell her that she would never be that kind of African wife who would say sorry when she was right.
“But, I know my daughter,” Mum continued. “She’ll graduate as the best in that school, and, who knows, better things will follow.”
It was typical of Mum to begin a sentence with “But” whenever she was talking to an angry version of Dad. That was her subtle way of letting him know she was only saying her opinion, not opposing him.
Calmly, ignoring Mum, Dad said, “With all your intelligence, eh? You want to read Sociology, Kamharida?”
That had been Dad’s problem with the whole thing. He had wanted Clara to study something more prestigious. I couldn’t disagree with Dad when he said my sister’s brain was made for higher things. She had what people called a first-class brain, with a very high intelligence quotient, and we were certain she would become a great person someday.
My parents had been disappointed when she went for art class in the last two years of her secondary education. But I wasn’t because we were close and I had seen it coming a year or so earlier when she would go into Dad’s study and pick a novel in the afternoons. In the evenings, after dinner, she would come to my room and tell me about the people in the novel she had read or was still reading. She sometimes urged me to read them myself.
I didn’t like reading novels, no matter how small they looked, but I enjoyed the stories as Clara narrated them. But it was different with Clara, who could settle down and read a whole novel whose length I could compare to my Biology textbook. It was through her that I knew the names of authors like Asare Konadu, Kola Onadipe, Zaynab Alkali, Chinua Achebe, Flora Nwapa, and Wole Soyinka.
Once, I had tried to read Anthills of the Savannah after Clara told me the story of Christopher Oriko. I fell into a deep sleep before I could finish the first two chapters.
When she ventured into social sciences and arts in secondary school, we all thought she would go on to read law at the university. But, now… Sociology.
“Kamharida, do you want your brain to waste? Tell me!” Dad barked at her.
He rarely called us by our English names. So, for Dad, Clara was Kamharida, which translated to “May I not fail.”
“Wetuo obi. Calm down.” Mum tried to placate him. “It’s a scholarship. Let’s rejoice with her.”
“The course is good, but not for her!” Dad retorted. “Let her read Law here in Nigeria, I can pay. Even in England, I can sponsor it. My pocket isn’t dry. Let her do Law anywhere in this world. With God’s grace, I can pay.”
There was helplessness in Clara’s eyes as Dad threatened to stop her from accepting the scholarship. I noticed this helplessness when she turned to me and said, “Ify, can’t you say anything?”
There were tears by the edges of her eyes, and I knew they would fall once Dad dismissed the meeting without changing his mind. I looked away so that my eyes wouldn’t meet hers. We knew a fact — Dad’s voice and hard stare suppressed us in matters like this.
I signalled her to come outside with me. We went to the garden in the backyard. This precious little garden of ours. It was in this garden that we planted the flowers given to us by a botanist who once visited our primary school. I had correctly answered a question on the irrigation system, and my sister had explained a term on the drainage system. The botanist, Mrs Adejare, had given us some flowers to plant in our respective homes. She never knew we were sisters.
“Dad wants me to reject the scholarship,” Clara said when we got to the garden, as if I weren’t present when he opposed the scholarship.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, really. I mean, the scholarship,” I replied. I wished I could tell her that I didn’t want her to leave.
“Then, help me convince Dad,” she pressed.
I wanted to reach across and slap her face. Was it not enough that she was planning to leave me and travel to another country? And now she wanted to send me on what could turn out to be a deadly errand. Yes, she somehow felt I was Dad’s sweet one, maybe Dad preferred me to her for some reason that wasn’t obvious. But we both knew it was impossible to persuade Dad in matters like this, where even Mum trod with caution.
The days following that Tuesday were filled with tension, which escalated as hours rolled by. Dad didn’t come out to the sitting room to watch Silverbird TV at 7 p.m. Mum stopped singing in the kitchen when she prepared the meals. Even at the dining table, Dad seemed to find fault with everything. At breakfast, it would be about the bread. At lunch, he would finish his garri and soup, leaving the meats untouched. Mum told me that she suspected that the meat was too tough, and I advised that we overcook it.
Mum took over the cooking entirely from Achalaugo, our cook. But things didn’t get better. He still complained of being fed with unripe plantains at dinner.
One day, it became obvious to us that all wasn’t well. We were all seated for dinner, the nine of us, when my elder sister coughed into her handkerchief.
“Don’t you have manners, eh?” Dad scolded her. “Kamharida, at your age? At seventeen! Is this how you’re going to read your Sociology?”
There had always been a cloud over Dad’s eyes that made me suspect all his recent antagonisms were because of Clara’s scholarship. I knew now that I was right. Things changed the very moment that news came.
“But, Dad, I—”
“Keep quiet,” Mum hushed Clara. “Asala nna gi okwu. Don’t retort to your father.”
“Oh yes! That’s how you trained her.” Dad turned to Mum. “She’ll turn worse when she’s done with this crazy course of hers.”
At this second reference to Sociology, my eyes met Clara’s. It was almost obvious that Dad wouldn’t consent to this England thing.
“Benedicite,” Dad intoned the Latin prayer before meals.
We chanted the prayer in unison, but just as we were about to begin eating, Dad called out to my youngest brother, the last in our family.
“Chizuru, you didn’t join in the prayers?”
My little brother, a boy of four, replied almost in tears, “Daddy, I can’t pray in Latin.”
“And you want to eat? Will you get out of here?!” Dad barked at him. The young boy scurried out of the dining room in tears. Dad turned to Mum immediately, “Let me just see you give him food tonight.”
Dad’s action that night surprised everyone. Chizuru was his favourite, the one he called “Last Card” because he was the last of seven children. Mum defied Dad’s order that night and gave Chizuru slices of bread and a bottle of Mirinda. No mother would leave her child hungry simply because of an order from her husband, especially when the child hadn’t done anything gravely wrong. She was an African wife meant to respect and obey her husband. But she was an African mother too, and her child was her priority.
Achalaugo and I were almost done making the lunch of boiled rice and carrot sauce when Dad returned. He usually returned from work earlier on Saturdays than on other days. I went to meet him at the sitting room, where I was sure he would stay for some minutes before heading to his room.
“Welcome, Dad.” I greeted, just because it was customary for me to do so, not that I expected him to reply. He hadn’t replied to my siblings’ greetings or mine in the past six days, since he had sent Chizuru away from the diner.
“Thanks. How are you doing?” That sounded just like him, just like the Dad I used to know before the scholarship news.
“I’m fine, sir,” I answered.
I took his shoes and his stockings. I would take them up to my room and dust them later. I must return them to him in his room before I go to bed. This had been Clara’s duty before she handed it to me and took up a higher duty, which was the washing of Dad’s clothes. This one came with a little reward. Any money found in Dad’s trouser pockets while wishing it was most likely yours. He would often ask who was washing his clothes to have the money. Well, in a year, I would have to pass my duty of cleaning shoes to my younger sister.
“Ifeyinwa,” Dad called me while I was halfway up the stairs.
I returned down the stairs.
“Kamharida. Is she at home?” he asked.
“She went with Mum to the salon.”
“And your other siblings?”
“Aunty Cecilia took them out.”
“Oh,” he said as if it just occurred to him that my mother’s sister had requested to take my siblings to a show.
I went to my room and kept the shoes. This was the first time in about a week that Dad spoke to me without raising his voice. As I lay on my bed to catch some rest, I heard Achalaugo from the kitchen shout, “Up NEPA!”
Later that same night, while I was in my room listening to P-Square’s ‘Alingo’, Clara knocked on my door. Without waiting for me to get to the door, she told me that our parents wanted to see me and left. I recognised the frustration in her voice, like I could recognise any of her other feelings when she spoke. It was certainly too much for her — being stopped from leaving Nigeria to attend a prestigious UK university.
When I came downstairs and sat on one of the sofas, Clara was reading Americanah, that Chimamanda Adichie’s novel that was flying everywhere in school. One of my classmates said it was about a girl who travelled to America. But if Clara was even going to travel abroad, it was to England, not America.
She closed the novel and placed it on her lap. Soon, I began to wonder what it was that my parents wanted to say. Since half-past six, when Mum returned from her salon, she had been seated here with Dad discussing. Now, Clara and I had been called without being told anything.
“Kamharida,” Dad began.
“Yes, Dad.”
“I know and will always know that you have a brain that can do great things, and you have started proving it already…”
I turned my attention to my sister. I could see her trying to suppress her smile.
“I’m pleased that my children are making efforts to become something in life. The news you brought home days ago is a good one. Yes, it’s good news…”
I wondered who must have spoken to Dad or what must have happened. Clara was smiling by now. I wish Dad wouldn’t allow her to go. For Christ’s sake, I would feel very lonely if Clara left. With five other siblings, but without Clara, I was going to feel lonely. I wasn’t sure when I would see her again if she travelled. Mum was nodding, and for the first time since I became conscious, hatred surged through me — hatred for Mum, whom I knew instinctively must be behind Dad’s change of heart.
But, won’t she miss her daughter? Was this really good news?
I knew Dad was going to give his consent, so I had to pull myself together and accept things as they were.
“…So, I’ve decided to allow you to take up the scholarship…”
Clara leapt up and shouted so loudly that my other siblings ran down to the sitting room. She nearly knocked down the étagère on the centre table.
At this point, blood rushed through my head and turned things upside down. I couldn’t bear the thought that Clara would soon leave the country. I wasn’t jealous. God forbid that I would be that kind of person who would be jealous of her sister, but who then would tell me stories of Efuru and Kehinde and Okonkwo and other characters in all those novels I liked but could never read? Who would help me water our garden? Who would tell me when my slight make-up of powder and lipstick was too much? Who would?
She hugged me tight, and we held on for some time in the long, sisterly embrace. I could feel her heartbeat. I could tell that she wanted to leave, but didn’t want to leave me behind. We couldn’t help it. Progress wasn’t a love script where everything was written to accommodate all the people we loved and all the wishes we had. This was the first significant progress in her life.
We both shed tears. Hers were tears of joy. Mine was the kind of tears one wouldn’t know the reason for. It wasn’t sorrow, hatred, jealousy, not exactly joy or happiness, but a myriad of feelings inside of me.
I wondered how news like this usually travelled to places so far that one wouldn’t imagine it would ever get to. One week before her departure, people trooped in and out of our house to bid her goodbye and wish her well. Most of our extended relatives, whom we hadn’t seen in years, came by. Some who lived in Lagos, like us, had never visited, nor did we visit them. Mum warned Clara not to let any of them touch her head. Who knew if they had some charms in their hands to change the girl’s fortune? She shouldn’t receive gifts directly, either. She should ask them to drop the gifts on the table instead. The heart of man is evil, Mum said.
Mum said that most of these people had come, not to congratulate Clara on her success, but to show their faces so that they would be entitled to a share in the goodies she would return with. They all knew she would return great, Mum said.
Each day, as visitors came, Mum looked forward to seeing Ochiedike’s wife. Who had ever been as proud as that woman since her son went overseas? Everyone knew that all those expensive clothes, jewellery, and cosmetics she started putting on a few weeks after her son left for Spain were bought with her money, but she would claim it was her son who bought them for her. The boy couldn’t have been earning so much in a few weeks to send home the amount of money for those jewellery. And now, did rumour not have it that the boy was doing some illegal business over there in Spain?
Let her come and see Clara now, Mum said. She was going to one of the Nigerian man’s heavens. To an average Nigerian, real abroad was England (the overemphasised London) and America (Nigerian men went wild at the mention of the US). If one left Nigeria for another African country, he was said to be simply outside the country. If one travelled to any country outside the African continent, but not particularly the UK or the US, he was only overseas. To be abroad, you knew it was either England or the States.
I didn’t know exactly how we were related to Ochiedike’s family, but I think Ochiedike’s grandfather and Dad’s grandfather were siblings. When Ochiedike visited without his wife, it seemed to be the confirmation that Mum needed — the woman was jealous of Clara’s success.
Aunty Cecilia stayed with us to help Clara prepare for her travel. Mum and Dad kept saying it was good news, and Aunty Cecilia said she shared the same view with them.
I would later learn that all the first children of Dad’s friends, with whom he played snooker and Chess, were studying medicine, engineering or law. And he had been disappointed because he didn’t know how to tell them that his first child was studying an “unprofessional” course.
August 11th was the day she travelled. Two months after Dad gave his consent. I wrote it down in my diary, the shiny leather-bound book, which had Sapientia written in gold letters on its cover.
We went to the airport in Dad’s car that morning. That was the day I discovered what a great number of friends my sister had. Twelve of her secondary school classmates came, though they graduated the previous year and went their separate ways. Mum had told some of her customers too. So, they came to the airport to wish her well.
I was surprised when Dad pointed to a group of people and said they were our relatives. I never knew we had up to thirteen male relatives residing in Lagos. On a normal day, I might walk past them without knowing them, without greeting them.
Things seemed to happen very fast. Soon, Dad called us for photographs. Clara would snap with immediate family first, then with relatives, parents only, siblings only, classmates only, with only me, and then with everyone.
It was only when we were posing for photographs that I saw Mama Ojiugo, who used to be our cook before one of her sons took her to live with him in Delta State.
Suddenly, Chizuru began to cry. My siblings joined too, only stifling their sobs. I refused to cry. When I saw a pool of tears gathered in Clara’s eyes, I reminded her that she would spoil her Mary Kay powder if she cried.
Mum carried Chizuru and sang him songs until he kept quiet. Clara reached into her handbag and brought out a Fibre biscuit and gave it to him. I wasn’t sure whether he knew what was going on, whether he knew that he might not see Clara again until he was about eight years old, but I was sure he was feeling something.
So, we were there until her flight arrived. Until Dad said, “Kamharida, ngwanu.” Until Clara told me she would call me often once Dad finally bought me a phone. Until she made for the departure lounge and my siblings waved frantically and smiled like morons. Until I felt my hands waving at her flight. Until the plane soared high into the sky with my own Clara on it.
Our garden. Our little Gethsemane. This was the place I had run to on that night that Dad gave his consent. Like Christ, I had prayed that, if it were possible, let the cup pass away, but may God’s will be done. The cup was Clara’s departure, and I had prayed for it not to happen if it were possible. Perhaps, it was God’s will that she would travel, His will that we would be separated. But I knew Clara would be back. I knew I never really lost her.
I thought about this as I worked on the garden three days after her departure.
The first time Clara ever told me that she would go to England someday, we were in our garden planting mimosas. It was during the harmattan, and I doubted the possibility of the flowers not withering in a few days, but Clara had said, with all optimism, as though she were God, that with the right and timely watering, they would grow.
Then, she said, “When I go to England, I’ll learn how they tend to those flowers they plant inside pots and keep at their doorposts.”
I would have laughed at what she said, but there was a calculated vehemence to her words. Using England, instead of the general abroad, made her words seem less vague, as though she had the form of her dreams in her palms and was only waiting for the right time to breathe life into it.
That was four years ago, when she had only sat for the junior school certificate exams, and all I could ask her was how she planned to go to England, and her “I don’t know” didn’t convince me that she didn’t know. But, somehow, I had let it go and forgotten that day at the garden, only to recall it in the days after she left, as I worked on the garden each evening after school.
…
We began to spend longer time on calls when my parents bought me a phone, and our conversations began to last longer than the few minutes my mother granted me each time Clara phoned her, which, if I exceeded, my mother would gently nudge me to say that my other siblings wanted to speak to Clara as well.
So, lying on my bed that night, we spoke into the night. We spoke about things we dared not say to another person — little exclusive, maybe, funny secrets. We spoke about England and Nigeria. I told her that our neighbour, who had dreadlocks and often played loud Ebenezer Obey’s music, had been arrested by the police, that a girl had been found dead in his room. I told her that Miss Simisola, Mum’s customer at the salon, had “finally” gotten herself a husband. Clara made a funny sound at the news, and we both laughed. Miss Simisola had once joked that she would join the convent if she couldn’t find a husband before she turned forty. She was thirty-seven then.
On one of the calls, Clara told me about the snow and how it made her now walk around perpetually in sweaters. As she spoke, I imagined a city whose streets were covered in white, how beautiful it would look. I asked her what it would look like to ride a bicycle on a street covered in snow. She laughed, and I was happy that something I said had made her laugh.
When she said goodnight and hung up the call, I regretted not remembering to tell her that I had just finished reading a novel two days ago, a significant victory for me, at least.
We spoke to each other almost every day, laughing at everything and at nothing. Sometimes, she would make a joke about her lecturers’ accent. Other times, she would tell me how she was the only truly black person in her class, the other black girl identified as African American. She would tell me about a woman in graduate school who took a bank loan to fund the treatment of her dog. Stories like this made me doubt the sanity of some English women. But, at least, it made me understand why most of my friends in veterinary science always spoke of travelling abroad where they claimed animals were valued than in Africa.
By the time I got into the university to study Nursing, I had begun to read a few novels so that we would have things to discuss. I was astonished by the depth of Clara’s knowledge of the sciences, Nursing in particular. So, I felt it would be reciprocal to be interested in the things that interested her too.
It was on the night we were discussing a newly published novel over the phone that she stopped between her arguments that it wasn’t the prophecy that disintegrated the brotherhood of the boys in The Fishermen, and the next thing I heard was, “Ify, I’m pregnant. And I’m going for an abortion.”
For a moment, I said nothing because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t ask who got her pregnant. She had told me of a boy in her class with whom she was having an affair. So, I guessed he was the one.
At last, I asked, “Does he know he got you pregnant?”
“Ifeyinwa, I’m pregnant,” she replied.
I caught the implicit correction she passed to me. Clara was the type who hated to believe that someone did something to her. She loved taking responsibility. So, if a child was growing inside her, then she was pregnant, not that Richard had gotten her pregnant, as though she hadn’t consented to it.
“Sorry.” I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to say.
“Pray for me,” she said. “I’ll be going to the hospital with Richard tomorrow.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said, hoping that my words came out with a level of assurance.
“Pray for me, Ify.”
I guessed she was about to cry. I wished I were there with her, to watch the change in her emotions — the weight of the secret placed on my head, something she dared not tell our parents, and which she trusted me not to — and offer comfort in my little way.
I was in our garden the next day. Our garden, our Gethsemane. A garden whose flowers knew our secrets and fears. It would be in this garden, years later, that we would have the most silent period of our lives when Clara finally returned from England with an English man, whom our parents disapproved of, but whom she insisted she would marry. By that time, I would be in my final year in the university and engaged to a lecturer.
Clara would say to me, plucking off nectars from flowers, “You know that Mum and Dad love you more than me. You’re a nurse and about to marry a man they approve of. With a degree they don’t understand, and a man who isn’t from our country, I can’t be their favourite. But you, Ify, if you love me, you can stand by me until they allow me to marry Richard. Yes, if you love me as a sister.”
After her words, a silence would be born, thick enough to strike out all sounds, and we would work without words, the weight of unspoken things on our minds for what seemed like an eternity.
But, now, as I knelt and prayed for a successful abortion for her, I didn’t mind that the act was sinful. All I wanted was for the sin to be successful because it was my sister doing it. It was love that made me kneel there and pray till she called and said she was back from the hospital. ♦
Daniel Echezonachi Maxwell grew up in Aba and is studying English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His works have appeared or are forthcoming on Gemini Magazine, Brittle Paper, Chestnut Review, Isele Magazine, and elsewhere. He was the winner of the 2024 Ikenga Short Story Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize. He’s currently the Associate Prose Editor of The Muse Journal.
