Visible Essence

CHAPTER ONE

One evening during a long break, I sat at the verandah of our house; my temperature was so high because of the hot atmospheric condition. I raised my head that was placed on my hand all these while and looked out through the iron bars, disgusted by what I saw of two young guys fighting each other, I sat back on the chair continuing the thinking, this time on how our lives and family has being.
Mama walked passes the corridor, carrying a basket of dirty cloth, she had gathered to wash.

Her long, ebony black hair was packed rounded at the back with a hair band. Her nose where pointed, long like a Fulani’s. Her eyes beautiful like that an angel, just as the waters of a blue sea. Her fair bold body still beautiful likes a sixteen year old.

Although she had the three of us, she still looked so beautiful and in shape.
Papa had married her at a very young age; a time when once a woman starts to menstruate, the next thing would be marriage, and child bearing; Even if she doesn’t know the man at all. It is believed that you get to know each other well with time and the love would grow. Some get lucky with that while others don’t. Although she had the four of us for Papa, that didn’t make any different, it didn’t make papa love her the more.

It was like the more we came, the more hatred consumed him. Ada came first, and then followed by Obinna, I was the third then followed by chidiogo the last. I could remember when mama was pregnant for chidiogo how papa would beat her everyday he comes back from work, and we dare not intrude or we have our own share of the beating. I was only four years old when I started to understand a thing that really happens at home.

Each time papa comes home drunk at night, it was beating day for mama, and I would only imagine what kind of beating she got when she was pregnant with the rest of us. He would call her to their room and the next thing that we would hear was arguments, and then followed by the thunderous sounds of his hands landing a very harsh slap on mama, then the numerous beatings and blows. mama would cry hard throughout the night like a woman who lost her child to the cold hands of death.

Normally when the beating starts; Ada, would take obinna and I to the parlour, where we would hide at the back of the big parlour couch,   listening to everything in silence. We dear not say any word else papa would hear us and come give us our own beating. But each time we were there we only pray mama doesn’t die from the beating. We were all she had and the best we would do was pray for her because she wouldn’t even fight papa for once. Then I taught mama was weak to fight or maybe she was actually weak or was it that she had her reasons for not fighting back.
Each time papa goes to work; she would call us to the kitchen as she cooks and try talking to us, trying to convince us that it was her fault that papa beats her, always taking blame for everything. She would say that whatever she does was for a reason.

Maybe not fighting for her right in the house was one of them. I would over hear her tell obinna that she had to protect her children each time they talk.
Obinna was given his name by mama because she hoped that when obinna was born, he could make papa heart melt and make him love her, because of the value male children are given in igbo land. It is believed that a man without a male child has no future as there is no one to preserve his last name.

It is believed that having no male child is the same as having no child at all. She gave him that name out of hope for salvation but that salvation never came like she expected at all. Then it was a man’s world and a woman has no right what so ever to fight a man and especially not your husband or you stand the chance of losing everything, both your children.

It was one of the reasons why a man rejects his wife and returns her to her people requesting for her bride price back. In igbo land they call it” igba alukwanyim” and that would bring problems for her daughters, as they would be labeled as irresponsible women. So I guess that’s why mama kept her cool to the injustice that was being done to her.

*igba alukwayim= divorced