God Created a Thing

by Fatima Okhuosami

At the dawn of dusk on the sixth day, God created a thing. Feeble then strong. Buffoon then sage. Finite.

Under the shed beside our former central mosque, motorcycle riders and agberos gather every sundown to drink Mama Hope’s ice-cold Guinness. Alongside beer, she sells ready-to-smoke cannabis loaded into cigarettes. We call her Mama Hope even though she is barren and the only child who lives with her is Itunu, brought from the village to help with chores, in exchange for feeding and housing. I remember asking my mother the story behind her friend’s nickname. She told me something about a traveling pastor’s prophecy, an immaculate conception, a rejected cervical cerclage, and the miscarriage that would have been Hope.

There’s a tree stump carved like a stool in front of the wooden benches in Mama Hope’s stall, near the main road. My brother and I used to perch on it, waiting for the seven o’clock bus to Benin. My brother who has been dead these ten years.

I keep my mother out of Annex C, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Benin, by calling twice daily and sticking to a strict regimen of visiting every six months, sallah holidays included. But this Eid is different from its predecessors. After subh prayers, before our landlord’s goats bleat their good mornings, when I should be peeling yams and boiling the chicken we’d eat while waiting for my uncle to slaughter our ram (his brother being the most yellow-bellied of men), I do a peculiar thing.

Darkness is fading when I step out. Ma, dozing on a prayer mat, has her fingers wrapped tight around a blood-red tasbih. An old flame gifted it to me upon his return from Saudi Arabia three months ago. I take a moment to study the many lines crisscrossing her face like double helixes. Ulcers at the junction of her lips. A second chin drooping like half a cellophane of water. They frighten me just like her white hair and weak knees and sudden intolerance for milk.

The sky is dawn’s most constipated grey. Blasts of cold wind bounce against my calico jilbab as I move. It hisses its disapproval with every step. Mist coats the epidermis of my pink-rimmed prescription glasses for astigmatism. In what is now a drizzle, I find five children near a ditch, playing house. They all have wide jaws, knitted brows, and honey-brown skins signifying a familial relationship. I halt, ready to receive their greetings before sending them home, but the little rascals do not bother to acknowledge my existence. Respect and standards have gone to hell.

I was raised by these narrow red roads. Maroon houses wedded to rusted zinc roofs. Obeche and Tangerine trees doing life in harmony. Three equidistant rivers, each deeper than the next – a neighbour’s kid drowned in one many years ago, but he was not quite right in the head so nobody, not even his parents, cared enough to search. The water spirit vomited him four days later. And we did not tell the adults that it was us who had dared him to jump.

Today, there are no friends to say with jealous smiles, “Welcome back, how is Benin?” Nor enemies to forgive for their slights. Whose are these faces I do not recognise? 

I want to play tinko-tinko again. To laugh over that time I fell from Mr. Braimah’s guava tree and broke both knees. I want it all back. Everything before Benin. That place which swallowed my brother, wrung his neck, and shat his corpse. It is a curse within me. This longing for things I can no longer have.

How we danced when Abdul finally gained admission to study medicine after three failed attempts. My mother must have said one thousand alhamdulillahs. The jumat after we received the good news, she put five hundred naira in the offering bowl – a nine hundred percent increase on her usual subscription. Yet God did not tell us we were celebrating the beginning of his end.

The circumstances surrounding my brother’s misfortune are as staggering as they are bizarre. I will walk you from facts to conjectures. Yes, he was brought in dead to the hospital by two hotel staff who “found him floating lifeless on our pool.” They were forced into a confrontation at the hospital gates by a horde of young men in black and yellow robes, making a ruckus. We made our way inside at about 10 p.m. When they showed him to us, his neck was two times the normal size and a dried stream of blood was visible from the right junction of his lips to the edge of his jaw. The high cheekbones he inherited from my mother sank into his bloated face. Somebody had tied a string around his neck. On it, was a pendant bearing “BID” poorly scrawled in blue ink. We swore an affidavit not to carry out an autopsy before the mob allowed us to move the corpse. It rained the night we put him in the ground. Everybody said this was a good omen.

No, the friends he was with at the end (ranking members of the Buccaneers Association of Nigeria) did not follow his body to the hospital nor attend his funeral. In fact, I did not set eyes on any of them until three weeks after the event when one sought me out in my hostel because he needed to “transfer the movies I downloaded in Abdul’s laptop.”

Piecing together information from diverse sources, this is how I imagine his last moments unfolded:

My brother, his friend, and a young lady are hanging out poolside. The men drink Heineken and their companion, Hollandia strawberry-flavoured yoghurt. There’s chicken kebab on the table. My brother whispers into the girl’s ear. She throws her head back and laughs, her entire frame jerking. He looks proud and somewhat surprised that this stunning creature finds his jokes hilarious. A party of nine guys stroll into the vicinity. The friend, facing the gate, lifts his arm to draw their attention. My brother turns, spots them, and seizes his date’s hand. He tries to escape, but his friend blocks the way. The assailants approach. His friend joins them. The girl slips away. A quarrel ensues and eyewitnesses try to intervene but retreat when the men bare their weapons. The argument continues. They slap him, punch him, kick him. He staggers to his knees and begs for his life. A tear has decimated his lower lip. They push him into the water. He struggles. They wait until his arms cease flaying and the last bubble bursts. Then they turn around and leave.

I am recalled to the present by a boy nigh four feet tall, who, carrying a pressing iron filled with red hot coal, darts past me. He trips on a stone and tumbles to the ground, thankfully centimetres away from the instrument in his keeping. I help him up, dust his bleeding knees, and stare into his eyes. He has Abdul’s mischievous scowl. An overwhelming urge to laugh consumes me. I embrace him and he shrinks a little, tries to free himself from my grip. When I release him, cackling with the full force of liberated madness, he flees.

Approaching a huge locust tree, I pause. Like the rain, my laughter ends abruptly. Clouds above me start to assume an exquisite turquoise. It was right here, on the way home from school, that I received my first real kiss … at thirteen. Followed by a hug so hard, my premature breasts shrank. This from my computer science teacher. Who was also our principal’s brother. Why did he smile that coy smile and whisper, thick lips lightly grazing the hairs on my ear, “See, you like it,” then ask, to my horror, whether my prudishness was an act. If I push a chicken egg inside your vagina right now, will it not enter? I would have given all my pocket money for the ground to open up and swallow me. What imbecilic reasoning made me hide what he did from his friend, my father?

The answer to this question might shock you. I looked forward to his touch and covetously vied for his attention. He made me believe myself beautiful, a bona fide member of an elite syndicate of fair-skinned maidens from which he picked his girlfriends. This was an achievement far greater than ranking top three in class. Fatima did not have to write raging love letters or use S.V.C, the bleaching lotion that was the rave that year, in order to bag a man. And of all men, him.

I must have covered at least a quarter mile because I find myself at a crossroad. One footpath rears its head to the left, just before a kiosk manned by an easterner selling soft drinks. I watch him drop two crates of Coca-Cola, grab the back of his waist, then with visible effort, force himself into an upright position. This “uncle” who, one afternoon, many years ago, seized his girlfriend’s seventy thousand naira, locked her indoors, and beat the poor creature within an inch of her life. Somehow, he managed to convince the entire neighbourhood to show up for his wedding … not long after … to another woman.

There’s a chewing stick in his mouth. “Good morning,” I holla, without stopping. He nods his response, coughs, then spits a giant ball of phlegm. I will patronise him on my way back from the prayer ground.

Here and there, buildings sprout like beanstalks. They have solar panels on corrugated roofing sheets, a testament to new money. I detest them and their occupants with a venomous jealousy that makes the tips of my fingers itch. After seven years labouring for a “professional degree,” followed by job stints across a myriad of private establishments, I am back with barely enough money to buy a new motorcycle for my father. Unlike my mates living it up in America, London, Ontario and Seoul.

My first visit post-employment, I managed to bring along, some secondhand abayas for my mother and a rechargeable lantern. The fellow who sold it to me promised it was the latest design – best in the market. All it needed, he swore, was sunlight for two hours per day. Even when it became obvious that this eleven-by-eleven cuboid monstrosity was more adept at serving as a haven for cockroaches than lighting up our house, my father still pretended to be impressed.

At the end of the lane, Mr. Balogun’s bungalow stands like a scarlet letter, albeit deserted. I am confronted by a congregation of window-length weeds which reign supreme. The yellow paint has peeled off the walls, leaving behind a washed-out sickly green finish. I move towards the gate and push its broken bell. All at once, it is 2004 again and Rotimi Balogun just went into hiding. A foreseeable consequence of lopping off his sister’s thumb with a cutlass. In his defence, Rotimi could not understand the audacity that made her serve him soggy pounded yam. And when questioned, against the rules of self-preservation, she insisted on speaking up for herself. Even threw a few insults his way. He aimed for her neck, but God as always, is merciful.

That Sunday night, the Baloguns brought Sonia to my father, our town’s best nurse. Madam Ruth B. Opia was reporting the most attention-grabbing events of the week on News Line. Abdul and I willed with our little hearts for the hands of the wall clock to speed up to ten o’clock when it’d be time for Papa Ajasco. The sudden appearance of a family bowed down by hysterics at our door, however, spiked our curiosity. This held more potential than Miss Kpekeye’s bare bottom jeans and Boy Alinco’s multilayered, poly-coloured spectacles.

When the commotion settled, I was conferred the honour of manning a torch while my father stitched flap to stump. I wonder if Sonia will recognise her saviour today. Eighteen years have done terrible work on him.

Rotimi’s exile threw his Aye confraternity into its worst leadership crisis, culminating in a month-long bloody war that claimed at least ten souls. Crucial steps were taken to run the rest of the family out of town. Today, over one decade after things fell apart, he is a supervisory councillor in the local government authority.

I cross to the other side of the expressway, stroll past our former apartment (now a poorly patronised guest house) and a giant telecommunications mast. I don’t stop until I am standing opposite the local government council gate. Here, I lock eyes with a tall, slim beauty. She has porcelain skin and wickedly luscious eyes. Something ravenous growls inside of me, but I quiet it. The beauty is selling okpa from a brown sack inside an aluminium basin riddled with rust. There are six customers in line, two of which dawdle, I suspect, for an opportunity to ask her out. This spot used to be Mama Antonia’s bean cake stand. For twelve years, come rain or sunshine, the old woman made a living and fed her two grandsons, my brother’s classmates, those grubs for breakfast. They’d grab three pieces each and rush off with us to school. Now my brother is dead. And Antonia too, of AIDS, a sickness that should not be fatal in big 2022.

The blended tones of Sister Sledge belting out lyrics from their 1985 hit, “Frankie”, blast from my Samsung A71. I pull my gaze from the back side of Jezebel, whisper astaghfirullah, and grab the impertinent device. It is my mother calling. Because causing her worry is bad for our collective sanity, I hurry home the way I came, only to find her resting against a big rock in front of our burglary proof. She neither asks nor do I offer any explanation for my disappearance.

Silence, the familiar yet uncomfortable kind, stretches between us as she measures forty-four cups of rice and I dice carrots. I remove two cockerels from a bucket of hot water and start plucking out feathers. Because I remember when littler, she silenced me with the lie that talking causes more of them to appear, I grin. 

There was a time when sallah mornings meant a kitchen filled with noises. Abdul would place himself on frying duty, then wrap his hands with rags to protect himself from oil spills. We’d joke, laugh, yell, force our mother to retell childhood stories, then tease her for their absurdity, until my father would march into the kitchen and order us to be quiet. Now my mother’s stomach is a yawning abyss and its well of words has dried up. So, we sit in this lamentable stillness, each judging the other, me aware forcing conversation would hurt her. Would her life have been less difficult if I had gone instead of him?

With a profound sigh, I fortify the dam threatening to burst. Tears come to me easy these days. As if I fetch them from a depot, yet however much I take, it replaces itself tenfold. I lower my head over steam from the bucket long enough to overcome successive waves of hypoglycaemia-induced dizziness. In twenty-five hours, I consumed nothing but one cup of black tea and half a slice of bread. When I sit back up, I find my mother watching me, curiosity plastered over her face. Ask me what is wrong, I scream, wordlessly. Talk to me. I am your daughter. You used to enjoy talking to me. My head is filled with the bickering of one thousand angry Fatimas. It occurs to me that I might be a little bit mad.

As has been her habit for ten years, she refuses to attend Eid prayers. I wear a blue mermaid dress, black stilettos and wrap the keffiyeh she inherited from her mother in-law around my head. I hand her my phone to snap pictures which I upload to twitter with trending hashtags. In less than five minutes, I receive two retweets and five likes. But at the prayer ground, half an hour passes without anybody noticing me. In spite of the fact that I spread my mat super close to the main entrance, I am a speck of dust in a sandstorm. When the khutbah begins, I start to put names to some aces in the crowd.

Our late imam’s eldest daughter, bent double from the weight of her many years.

One of the teachers from my madrasa.

The second richest Muslim in our town flanked by his newest wife – presented to him straight out of secondary school, as a gift, by her father.

Then I see him. I cannot look away. He turns and his eyes clock mine. An army of goose pimples invade my skin. I itch in one thousand different places. Every breath seems forced out of my lungs. This man that I loved with the fervent adoration of pubescence for all of three years and maybe more. Time has been kind to him; he is chubbier, but not fat. Handsomer. The thickening of middle age becomes him well. Somewhere inside my brain, I record: soft oval face, taut muscles, skin the colour of burnt sugar. His tailored kaftan and leather shoes indicate a much higher rung in the prosperity ladder of our town. I envision the question on his lips and I have prepared my answer. Each step in my direction saves, then damns me. Twenty. Fifteen. Five. Two. He is so close I can feel his breath caress my nose. My computer science teacher.

“Fati, is this you? The young shall grow o.”  His well-manicured fingers move towards my face, but they stop halfway, from what I imagine must be supernatural self-control.

“Salam alaykum sir.” My eyes are downcast and tone, low-pitched. This is the way he likes his girls.

I learn he’s been married twice, both of which were childless and culminated in divorce. He shows zero emotion when I tell him I am single. As if he does not care when in fact, it is the opposite. He’s back in town he says, for a friend’s wedding. The muezzin calls to prayer and we are caught in limbo. Somehow, I communicate with coquettish disinterestedness, that asking for my number will not be unwelcome. He takes the bait. My lips spread into a shy smile as I type the digits into his iPhone 14.

Although I am ready when his call comes in, fully dressed in pyjamas, under the duvet, earbuds plugged, my poor heart cannot help but thump. As soon as I hear that raspy voice call me “baby,” I drum my feet against the mattress in wanton joy. Throughout the conversation, I barely speak, fully content to drink in his words. Just after we wish each other sweet dreams, he confesses, “Maybe there is a reason my marriages failed. You are the woman God created for me.” For a split second, my brain screams, “abort mission.” But because I am evidently insane, in his confidence, I see stability … and rescue. From crippling loneliness, a sleuth of terrible romances and hopeless talking stages. This man loves me. So, I do what a prey must never do. I giggle. And in that giggle, I seal my fate.

BIO: Fatima Okhuosami has works published with: Isele Magazine, The Kalahari Review, Jalada Africa, Akpata Magazine, Journal of African Youth Literature, etc. She was second runner-up of the 2024 Carnelian Heart Magazine short story contest, first runner-up of 2021 Kendeka Prize for African Literature, and longlisted for 2024 Toyin Falola Prize. She is on Twitter @fatimaOKH. Furthermore, she blogs for Radio France International's "Mondoblog" platform at fatimetu.mondoblog.org