Once the bus pulled into the terminal, Nnamdi spotted his mother. She was parked right in front of the park, and as the bus barreled in, the driver accelerating hard and honking three times to signal they had finally arrived, Nnamdi looked back and saw her slowly making her way towards the bus.
“Praaaaiiiiise the Lord,” a passenger shouted, and a reverberant, collective gasp of halleluyah came ringing through. It was the woman who had prayed and preached loudly from Ajah to Ijebu-Ode, who had said everyone had to open their mouths and cast the devil out of the bus else they would all die. Nnamdi had rolled his eyes at the woman and stuck his earphones into his ears, sinking into the cacophonous sound of Jola and FK yappering away on I Said What I Said. He knew her type, the woman. She was clearly one of those ones for whom faith was a gigantic notice-me signboard. Without others to witness her faith, or those to whom she felt a compulsive derision, her faith was essentially non-existent. Nnamdi understood the contours of that strand of religiosity, had worked most of his life to rid himself of it, so he had paid the woman no mind throughout the trip, and even now that he felt a surge of gratitude for journey mercies, he still did not care at all for her exuberance.
Outside the bus, the sun came down with an almost violent force that caused Nnamdi to go blind momentarily. It was almost 5PM, yet Nnamdi had to raise a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and then he heard his mother shouting “Nnam!”, before throwing the full weight of her body around him. “Nwam,” she said, “Nwam nwoke,” and Nnamdi felt a tenderness swell inside him.
For a while, he did not say anything, and when she finally let go and pulled away from him so she could take him in, Nnamdi looked at her and said, “Mummy,” calling her in the childlike way he always did, in a singsong that was almost a question, the first syllable of the word dragged out to create an affectionate cadence. “Muuuuummyyy.” She hugged him again and again, and asked if he had any luggage. The driver and some boys in the park were already unloading suitcases and bags of food from behind the bus and under the seats. “That’s my bag,” Nnamdi said, pointing to a blue traveling bag the driver was hauling out from under a seat.
On their way home, she talked endlessly about the ineptitude of the government. She had almost never talked convincingly about politics before. “Willie is working,” she said now, reading one of the billboards at UNIZIK junction. “If he really is working, why the need to mount giant signposts to tell us precisely that? The problem with this government is too much cho-cho-cho.” Nnamdi looked out of the window and felt a sharp longing for a past that was no longer within his reach. He had not been back since he moved to Lagos seven years ago, and now, looking around, home felt both unchanged and changed. There was a smallness to the town that he now felt. A slowness. People crossed the middle of the express leisurely, without care. Hawkers ambled by without a sprint in their spirits. Even the houses looked sleepy. Hotels that had once seemed beatific now washed out and dull.
“This road feels wide. Was this express always this wide?” he asked.
“No ooo.” His mother turned to look briefly at him. “Isn’t that part of what he’s claiming he did? Meanwhile, it was Obi’s project. The only thing they know is to stand in front of a microphone and say they did this one and that one. Everything that comes out of this government’s mouth is a lie.”
Instinctively, Nnamdi reached for his phone. Still no message from Akin. He texted Obum. “I’m in Awka. Just got here.”
And then he put his phone back into his pocket and looked away.
At home, Nnamdi walked around the compound feeling discombobulated. First, he went to the garden behind his room, which still had mounds of vegetables and cocoyam. Nnamdi saw cassava too, remembered his mother digging into the soil on Saturday mornings and pulling out weeds and tubers of yam. The house was now a teeny-tiny island in the compound, the previously shiny creamy color on the walls now a dull, faded white. He had grown up in this house. Some of his clothes were still in a box in his bedroom. His books were stacked on the shelf his mother had had a carpenter make in his second year in UNIZIK, after he turned 19 and wouldn’t stop buying second-hand books.
Darkness came too quickly, and his mother came out to turn on the generator. “Nnaa,” she called, and he followed her into the tiny shed that was the generator house, where with her torchlight flicked at a gallon of fuel, Nnamdi lifted and poured fuel into the generator tank while she held a funnel. “I can’t believe how ridiculously expensive fuel is these days,” she said. “It’s pure wickedness.” Nnamdi’s eyes were trained on the tank, so he did not see her face, but he thought how his mother, now chatty and indulgent, seemed almost unrecognizable to him.
He pulled the cord a few times and the Yamaha generator groaned at first and then roared. Then he followed his mother into the kitchen where she dished plates of onugbu soup and semo. “So, tell me,” she said, once they settled in at the dining table, Nnamdi sucking soup off his fingers, “what did your mother do to deserve being treated like this?” She said this with a smile on her face, almost like she was taunting him, but Nnamdi knew how deep that question ran. He had seen the question coming, had known his mother would certainly broach the subject, but now the question seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
“Mummy, please can we eat this food in peace?”
“I did not say we should eat the food in distress. I’m asking a simple question. What happened?”
There was something about his mother’s insistence that made Nnamdi realize he was not going to offer an explanation that would satisfy her. And so, he did not offer any explanation at all, did not say he was busy or did not have money, which was perhaps what his mother was waiting to hear so she would table her rebuttal. He kept quiet instead and trained his eyes on the food, remembering how in the weeks after leaving home for a job in Lagos he had been finally able to see himself, to be himself.
When he did not offer an explanation, she waved it aside and started talking about their neighbors, the Egeonus, whose first daughter recently got married to a businessman from Onitsha. “Nya, her husband na azu afia na main market,” she said, almost derisively. Their son had dropped out of UNIPORT, or was expelled, she said, and was now back home living with his parents. She talked also about her sisters and her friends at St. Anthony’s and the new reverend father who was so full of himself.
“You’ll come with me to morning mass tomorrow,” she said, casting her gaze on Nnamdi, and Nnamdi nodded reluctantly.
He had not had onugbu in a long time. In fact, he had not had any appetite at all for days after Akin left. Akin had done most of the cooking, pots of fried rice and chicken that tasted better than Mega Chicken rice, seafood okra that reminded Nnamdi of Jevinik, Sundays spent in Nnamdi’s kitchen, Akin chopping vegetables, Nnamdi tasting the food, and afterwards a leisurely walk around the estate where Nnamdi lived.
“Nnam, o gini?” his mother asked now. “Is the food not good?”
He shook his head and adjusted himself in the chair, plucking a morsel of semo from the plate and scooping a chunk of fish and some soup.
Throughout the forty-five minutes the morning mass lasted that Thursday, Nnamdi felt many times the urge to cry. He sat beside his mother in one of the front pews, and was surprised to see many faces he recognized. They waved at him and he waved back, feeling a trepidation about being surrounded after mass, former co-lectors and co-choristers gathering to ask how things were going with him. His father had once been a knight in this church, before he stopped believing and was estranged from Nnamdi’s mother, before he died. As the catechist called out the mass intentions before the opening hymn, Nnamdi thought of him, said a little prayer for him.
The mass was in Igbo, the reverend father a small roundish man with a dry sense of humor. Nnamdi didn’t find him funny, but the congregation laughed in unison, and then sang when he intoned a hymn. “Chukwu nw’uwa, Onye nwe uwa nine,” the priest started, and the congregation joined in, a grave solemnity descending on the church. The Father talked about original sin and God’s mercy and said Catholics had been blessed with the gift of confession. “You don’t know what you have. If you know, you will run to me every day and beg me to hear your confession.” He was standing on the pulpit with his green chasuble floating about him, a wry, taunting smile crossing his face. In the pew, Nnamdi shifted and rolled his eyes. He had heard a version of this sermon every day as a child, and had felt himself being followed, being watched. Even now as an adult, he could not entirely shake off that feeling of being perpetually chastised.
“I don’t know, I can’t help you. You need to go to therapy,” Akin had said. “Why do you keep reacting like that when I touch you?”
To which Nnamdi had responded, “How do I react?”
“The other day,” Akin said, taking a deep breath, “in the bathroom, you were brushing, I came up behind you and touched you and you jumped, almost as if you were repulsed by me.”
It stung when it was said like that. It was almost as if Akin was talking about an entirely different person. But it was true. Sometimes, Nnamdi felt an aching desire to touch Akin, or be touched by him, yet when Akin reached for him, when Akin opened his mouth to take the fullness of him in, or when they both lay naked in bed, their hearts pounding so fast, Nnamdi found himself unable to yield, felt his body tighten and lock up.
His mother smiled at him when the sermon ended and the choristers started singing the offertory hymns. She looked pleased that he had accompanied her to mass, triumphant, but during communion when he moved his legs so she and other congregants on the pew could go to the altar, she kept a straight face and did not look at him. Later, after the final blessing, as they made their way to the front of the sacristy so they could greet Father and receive his blessings, his mother said, “I still can’t believe you stopped going to mass. I can’t believe it,” and Nnamdi did not say a word.
A handful of people had gathered in front of the sacristy, some holding bottles of water and religious items to be blessed. “Good morning, Father,” everyone chorused when he emerged, and he returned the greeting and started giving his blessing. He looked around every so often and smiled at no one in particular. When it got to their turn, Nnamdi and his mother walked up to the steps of the sacristy. His mother pointed at him and said, “This is my son Nnamdi,” and Nnamdi gave a faint smile of acknowledgement. The Father looked rather displeased. He took Nnamdi in with one big swoop and extended his right hand for a handshake. “Always good to see young people following in the way of God,” he said.
He asked what Nnamdi did in Lagos and said “Arize Chukwu” when Nnamdi said he worked at an advertising firm. “You should come home more often,” he said. “Don’t leave your mother all by herself like that,” and Nnamdi nodded. After some time, Nnamdi’s mother said she had to run home and prepare for school. “Let me bless you,” the priest said, and Nnamdi’s mother knelt, Nnamdi following suit.
A scene came to Nnamdi then, of Akin performing one of his poems, “Blessings,” in front of a small crowd at Freedom Park. It was one of Nnamdi’s favorite poems of Akin.
With your precious, calloused hands bless me
With your youthful lips and dutiful eyes bless me
Bless me with your word, your scars, and your bones
With all your being please please bless me
It was one of those unforgettable moments when Nnamdi witnessed Akin at his grandest. Akin was dressed simply, in baggy blue jeans and a white t-shirt, but the words that came out of his mouth felt holy and sanctified. For many days afterwards, Nnamdi returned to that scene, to Akin on stage, eyes closed, face transformed, and to the crowd that flocked around him afterwards, telling him his poem had enraptured them and made them hungry for the word.
They had texted a bit the night before, so when Obum pulled up in front of the house and Nnamdi came out to meet him, he was surprised at how different Obum looked. He now kept a beard and looked a bit fat, his stomach bulging out in front of him. Nnamdi was almost repulsed by this. Back when Nnamdi was in his third year, and Obum was finishing his part-time program in Banking and Finance while working as a teller in a bank on campus, Obum had looked formidable. He had a cleanly shaven face, though what Nnamdi had liked most was his dark skin tone, the way his face glistened in the sun and sharply contrasted with everything around it. Obum had chased and chased him, followed him out of the bank one day after Nnamdi had gone to deposit money and asked for his phone number. When Obum wouldn’t let up, he gave in. He let Obum call him every evening after work. He allowed Obum to take him to Nwanyi Nnewi’s bar. When Obum finally said “Come and see my place, Bobo,” Nnamdi obliged.
Now, Obum was standing in front of the car, smelling of coconut, and Nnamdi felt something stir in him. He wanted to kiss Obum right there in front of the house, in full view of the entire world.
“Nnaa, it’s so good to see you,” Obum said. “Otegokwa.” And Nnamdi smiled. After Obum had texted to say he was getting married, Nnamdi had been heartbroken and then enraged and then he stopped talking to Obum entirely. What was the use? What else did Obum want from him? Obum got married in a beautiful traditional ceremony, with him and his wife wearing to-match wine-red lace, and then a white wedding in which Obum wore a white suit and his wife glittered in her wedding gown. She was a pretty woman, and in the videos Obum sent of the wedding ceremonies, Nnamdi saw her innocent-looking face and felt a protectiveness toward her. When their daughter was born almost one year later, Obum sent pictures. Her name was Grace. She had a band on her head and wore an adorable pink dress. Nnamdi stared at those pictures, came back to them again and again days after, and eventually deleted them. Obum messaged when his daughter turned one, and then eventually asked one day, “When are you coming back?” which Nnamdi read and deleted right away.
And now, here he was.
They drove around town, aimlessly at first, from Ifite to Aroma to Eke Awka to UNIZIK Junction. And then Nnamdi said, “Please take me to school.” So, they drove to Perm Site, driving past Government House and Immigration Junction. Obum had connected his phone to the car and was blasting songs from a playlist. When Assurance came on, he sang along, looking at Nnamdi and singing the lyrics loudly. “Assurance, assurance, I give my baby assurance, I give my baby lifetime insurance.” He did that years ago, sang trending songs to him as though those were his own words. Then Nnamdi would cry tears of joy, of being seen and wanted, but now it was as though the songs rolled past him. He heard the lyrics, but they did not really enter him.
They drove into UNIZIK, to Garuba Square where Nnamdi had studied at night with his coursemates, and to Management where he took most of his classes. The buildings seemed smaller and older. He remembered standing on the balcony of Management with Obum, looking out into the thick bushes nearby while crowds of students jostled around in the hallways, and thinking, “We are invisible. They can’t see us.”
It was almost 8PM when Obum brought Nnamdi back to the house. The generator was on and Nnamdi could see the lights in the house through the curtains. Obum asked if they could see each other again before he left for Lagos. “I want you to meet my family,” he said, and Nnamdi turned sharply and said, “And why would I do that?” He felt doubly repulsed now, angry even at himself. What had he thought was going to happen? Why had he texted Obum?
They sat there in silence, Nnamdi thinking about how in the days after Akin left, after Akin packed up his bags and moved back in with his parents, a pain so totalizing, so harrowing had engulfed him. It was like someone had lodged a cement block in his chest and he couldn’t quite breathe. Akin ignored his messages, his calls, a cruelty so alien and final that it horrified Nnamdi. He lost his appetite, ran to the bathroom every hour to cry, and eventually had to take time away from work. But what hurt the most was how invisible it all felt, how the entire world trudged on without even a glance at his misery. One week later, on a Sunday afternoon, Nnamdi found the strength to call his mother. Then he texted Obum. And on Wednesday night he was home.
What had he thought he would find here?
Finally, he got out of the car. Obum came around to hug him and say goodbye. “We’ll see tomorrow?”
“I’ll text you,” Nnamdi said, but even as he said this he understood on some level that it was not going to happen.
Later that night, after he’d had dinner with his mother and said goodnight, he lay restless on the bed. Scrolling to Obum’s contact information on his phone, he hesitated a bit, and then, taking a deep breath, he tapped “Block.”
His mother finally asked the question the night before Nnamdi left. They were sitting in the living room after eating coconut rice and goat meat, watching the 9PM news. Nnamdi was packed and ready. His bus would leave at 6AM the next day, and the plan was that his mother would drive him to the park and then go directly to mass. Nnamdi occasionally glanced at his phone, half hoping Akin would respond, though he had been left on read all week.
“Nnaa, what is the problem?” his mother asked.
Without a doubt, he knew what she was asking even before she said anything else.
“You’re thirty-one,” she said now. “You’re not getting any younger. Are you not thinking about marriage? Is that not in your plan? Every time I ask, you’re always dodging. What is wrong, my son?”
Nnamdi’s chest tightened, he could hardly breathe, and he wanted to fold his hands across his chest but then dropped them back into his lap. This was the conversation. The conversation he had tiptoed around all those years. The easy part was moving to Lagos, away from his mother, and accepting who he was. The harder part, the part that chipped away at his resolve, was holding his mother at bay and then, finally, as he was doing now, facing her. He wished the ground would open up and swallow him.
“Mummy,” he started. “First, I’m not going to get married.”
His mother’s face was stony.
“What do you mean you’re not going to get married? What does that even mean? Inwero girlfriend? Is that what you’re trying to say? Have you never had one?”
And Nnamdi nodded.
“Well, I know a few good girls. In fact, what am I saying, I know a very beautiful girl, God-fearing, you probably know her. That tall, beautiful girl from the Chikezie family.”
Nnamdi knew exactly who she was talking about, had been friends with her when they were in the choir. She had a velvety voice and sang the responsorial psalm on Sundays.
“Mummy,” he said, “I can’t do that.”
After a while he added, “I’m sorry.”
She looked around the living room, opened her mouth and closed it, and then sat back in her seat. Nnamdi heard her take a deep breath. The TV was on but Nnamdi felt a wall of silence wedged between them. She obviously had more questions, probably already knew, but did not push for fear of what lurked behind the unopened door. If she asked, he would say the word, he would tell her, but he realized he wouldn’t of his own accord volunteer that information, knowing who she was.
Not long after, they said their goodnights. His mother staggered to her room with a heaviness in her gait and back in his room Nnamdi lay awake, unable to sleep.
Finally, the new day arrived.
Before the morning got covered in that golden light, before churchgoers ambled to church in exquisite outfits, mother and son drove in the silence of the car to the park. The rosary dangling from the rearview mirror had been there for years, and in the darkness of the early morning it was especially luminous. It brought back memories of Nnamdi and his mother walking to mass together while saying decades of the rosary, joined along the way by parishioners who began their days in the house of God.
At the park, his mother turned off the ignition and came around to hug him. Nnamdi smelled the mustiness of her wrapper and scarf, and was poked by the tiny beads embroidered on her blouse.
“You have a home,” she said, before she let go. “Don’t be walking around the world as if you don’t have a home.”
Nnamdi smiled and walked to the bus. He dropped his bag at the back where some boys were already arranging luggage in the trunk and under the seat, as they had done on his way here. A few minutes before 6, they started boarding, and this time, Nnamdi’s seat was in front, a young man nestled between him and the driver. For a while, Nnamdi watched the morning come to life outside the bus. A woman hawked okpa and ukwa, a sleeping child strapped behind her back. A man pressed pirated motivational books into the bus, cajoling passengers to buy two for the price of one. Out there on the horizon, streaks of golden light traversed the sky and heralded a blissful day.
It wasn’t until the bus honked, snaking its way out of the park, that the tears finally came.
