Bend Down Select

Chapter 3

As soon as I was done with my trips, I had accompanied Ifeyinwa home, carried my water-filled clay pot and returned to my father's compound. Approaching my mother's hut, I could see her pacing about as if she was eagerly expecting someone.

"Nne, this one you're here, is there a problem?" I inquired. The only time my mother paced like that was after a quarrel with my father. She'd do so about fifteen times- I counted- and then go back to my father's obi to apologise. Times like these were very rare. They hardly disagreed on anything.

Hearing my voice, my mother looked up and beamed.

"Ah! My Ada is here. Hurry now. Go and drop that clay pot and take this keg of palmwine to your father," she instructed.

I do not know which was stranger to me: the fact that my mother was smiling at me or the fact that she'd asked me to carry the palmwine to my father. Although my mother always asked me to do things for her as if I were her slave, serving my father his precious palmwine wasn't one of them. She knew that I'd always be the one to end up drunk. It was her whipping that sobered me.

"Oh nne. I will go now." I complied, taking the keg of palmwine and the calabashes she'd kept beside it ever joyfully. Why there were four calabashes and not one with the keg? I didn't ask. It only made things easier for me because one calabash would be for me.

My father's compound was a very large one. His obi stood at the center, while my mother's hut stood by the right. There were three other huts too. My brothers had lived there once, but the huts are now all empty, because the seven of them are married. My father's barn was behind his obi. That was where he spent most of his mornings- inspecting his yams. My mother's kitchen and animal house was also behind her hut. The fowls and the goats that she reared in our compound were the only things that showed that people even lived in our compound. After all my brothers had gotten married, the compound was quiet most of the time.

Getting closer to my father's obi, I could hear a laughter that wasn't his. His laughter was never rough. In fact, unlike most men's voices, my father's voice was not rough. He had a calm voice that always sounded like he was begging to be listened to or believed. Maybe it's only me that say his voice this way, and maybe that was the reason he didn't scare me.

I knocked on the door twice to let him know that I was about to enter. Even if he didn't scare me, I respected him; he is a wise man.

'Come inside,' he shouted.

With the keg of palmwine on one hand and the four calabash staked on the other hand, I walked into my father's obi ready to beg him for a taste of his palmwine. My body was already paining me from my trips to the stream so I'd earlier cancelled my plan of theft. I didn't have the strength to absorb my mother's whipping.

There were four men in the room and only one was my father. The other three men were strangers to me; I have never seen them before. Two of the older ones, held their walking sticks in their hands and smiled at me gently when they'd seen me. While the younger one, who looked like a snake because of his long neck and tiny head, beamed at me as if I were a fine box of snuff.

'Ulinwa, drop the the palmwine and the calabashes here,' my father said, pulling me out of my trance.

Once I had dropped the calabashes on the stool and kept the keg on the floor close to it, I raised my head to greet the visitors.

'Ndeewo nna anyi,' I said with the fakest smiles I could form.

'Oh Ada. Kedu?' One of them asked.

'Adim mu mma'. I answered smiling genuinely this time. The old man looked like he could be trusted.

Turning to the younger man among them, I simply said, 'Ndeewo'.