CHAPTER EIGHTEEN- AWAKE.

The unease never leaves. Even when you have lived long enough, especially when the first formative years of your life were shadowed by loss. You live your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for the next shoe to drop. That feeling worsens when you have more to lose; as a mother to a family that has known loss, your stakes are higher. You live with your heart in your mouth, waiting, yet hoping and wondering, yet praying. You sacrifice to the gods more than is normal. You kneel to the goddesses more than is necessary, all the while resenting them, the fear that never goes away. 

The day Oma was born, she came with an added fear; she was the prophecy made to Oge when she had Uche, a child who would return.  

She had lied every day since the birth of Oma to her family, hoping that she, herself, would believe that lie. She had told Oge as wordily as she could manage that she knew that Oma was not Uche, but in her head, every time she rebutted that idea, she had heartily whispered a prayer begging her chi to keep this one.  

Her son’s pain was her own. He would not survive another loss. He had been too young to remember losing half of his family, but he had grown up under the canopy of the unlucky—a child who survived the death that obliterated his family. No child should feel like a curse, and she had tried everything a mother would to shield him all those years. But how do you protect a father from feeling the pain of losing a child? He was not built like their Oge. She does not know it, but she was the stronger of the two. She would break and get back up. Oge was more like her than her son. 

She watched the procession of mourners, with a heart too heavy to allow her eyes tears. If she started now to let herself unravel, even the slightest, she would come completely loose. So, she held herself together. There were no tears in her near blind eyes. 

“When you expect pain, you will eventually see pain.” 

Her mother had once told her. 

“You are too negative, too melancholic. How would sadness not follow you around?” 

Her mother had said to her. Looking at her granddaughter in the arms of Obuzor, she wondered momentarily if her mother had been right. Had her penchant for melancholy opened her and her family up for bad luck? Obuzor’s mother shook her head. The head tie she wore every day, like another appendage, fell to the ground. A neighbour picked it off the ground and handed it back to her, without a glance spared for the young woman holding out the head cloth. Obuzor’s mother gingerly marched towards her son. 

“Put yourself together. You are the man of this family. Your wife is unconscious inside, and your daughter is unconscious in your arms; now is not the time to freeze up. Put the child down.” 

Obuzor stared past his mother, or more correctly, through her. He would not look at the girl on his arm. 

“Obuzor, snap out of it.” 

His mother commanded again, with her voice steely and cold. It roused him. He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. 

“I will hold on to her.” 

He told his mother, and she shook her head. It wouldn’t do. The memory of her children taking their last breath in her arms still haunted her sleep. She would not allow her son the same torturous fate. 

“Do your arms have healing properties? If no, then what is holding her going to do?” 

“Mama, I am not putting my daughter down.” 

His voice sent shivers down the old, wrinkled back of his mother. She eyed him, wondering how to take Oma away from him. He was not crying. He stared with eyes that did not see, could not see. 

“The Debia is with your wife. He will see Oma the moment he is finished with her.” 

She said, finished with an air of finality that she had not intended to induce into the word. Obuzor’s head lolled to the side. He looked ahead of him at a point where there was nothing. She could see that he was also trying not to unravel, holding himself from completely coming apart. 

“Oh, these children that return are so evil. So wicked, how can she punish her family like this? Give her here. I will hold her.” 

One of Obuzor’s many aunts offered. Obuzor angled away from her, ignoring her protest. 

“My child is not wicked or evil.” 

He rebuked her. The anger in his words was evident on his face. The aunt turned to his mother and then raised her eyes to the gathered crowd to cover up her embarrassment at being so publicly rebuked. 

“Ah, Mama Obim, what did I say now? I was only trying to help.” 

She raised her voice to ensure that the gathered crowd, if they had not been paying attention before, were now. 

“It is not I who is calling her wicked. Our tradition knows these things. A child who returns is only here to punish their parents and break their hearts, mm?” 

She nodded as if expecting to receive agreement and support from the gathered mourners. Obuzor looked livid. His mother stepped in before he could speak. 

“This child here is not a child that returns, and even if she were, are there no better times to make that observation of yours?” 

“What did I say now? I was only trying to help. It is not as if I am saying anything everybody here is not already thinking.” 

Pursing her lips, her eyes still imploring the crowd to take her side, she stepped away from Obuzor. The old woman watched her exit, making sure the woman was far enough away from the reach of her son’s rage. Pain can morph into rage, and well-meaning mourners like that could easily help facilitate the transition. 

“If you won’t let someone else hold her, at least take her away from the watchful eyes of these well-meaning people.” 

She motioned to the crowd, telling him. He understood that they were not all here to be helpful or because they felt sorry for the family; some of these well-meaning onlookers were there because it was something to talk about. Not that they intended any malice. But Oma was going to take her last breath, surrounded by love, not by people who thought her dying was interesting. 

Obuzor followed his mother to her hut. The room smelled of incense, smoke, and palm-fruit oil. The Debia, this time wearing his white and red robe, held lemon grass between his pursed lips and was making a guttural, throaty noise. He waved his wands towards the bed, where Oge lay, unmoving, with Ozioma beside her, dabbing a rag soaked in the juice of squeezed herbs over her exposed skin. 

“He wants you to lay her beside Oge.” 

She told her son. Obuzor hesitated for a second, as if the idea of letting go of the daughter he would still not look at was more difficult than it sounded. His mother nodded at him, letting her face wear an expression of encouragement and promises she did not believe. 

“It is only right for a daughter to be with her mother.” 

She told her son. He did not nod; he did not show any more outward signs that he had heard her. He walked to the bed where his wife lay unmoving, and climbed in with her, his daughter now lying between them. Ozioma made to protest his action, but her aunt shook her head to let her know it was fine. 

The Debia never broke in his act. He did not look at the occupants of the room. His unseeing, almost white eyes were for a world that the members of the room could only dare to see when their physical bodies shut down for sleep. 

~ 

Obuzor’s mother watched her son shake in silent sobs. Her heart shedding tears, she stubbornly kept from her eyes. The Debia had lit the shelves of palm-fruit on fire in a small calabash on Oma’s feet. He had left earlier, breaking his silence to tell her to call him the moment there was a slight change in the condition of mother and daughter.  Ozioma was asleep on a mat on the floor, her children and Amara sandwiching her, their gentle snoring adding to the tempo of the room.  

The night wore on, and something caught the old woman’s eyes. It was a rustle in the bed, but it had not come from the corner where Obuzor was sleeping. She quelled her racing heart as she turned her attention to her granddaughter and daughter-in-law. The only thing worse than loss is hope taken away. If she got too excited and only for it to be nothing, she thought, what hell that would be for her already bleeding heart. 

Oge was staring at Oma, her eyes beady as always, was wild with fear. The old woman wanted to jump for joy, but the tears flowing down Oge’s face kept her in place. They had something to celebrate because Oge had returned to them, but Oge didn’t. Her daughter still lay near lifeless, her pulses barely beating. 

Oge’s tears fell all over her daughter’s face and hair, and a stillness came over the room. One born out of living creatures, trying not to move for fear of startling something. Ozioma, like Obu, must be awake, the old woman realised. Like her, they were not trying to reach out to Oge. 

Oge’s tears turned into silent sobs. She kissed her daughter, pleading with her to stay, to forgive her, and return. She begged Oma not to break a poor mother’s heart, to have mercy and spare them this pain. 

Amara stirred at that moment and sat up on the mat. She was the only other creature in the room, exhibiting signs of life beyond breathing. She sat watching her mother for what felt to the old woman like an eternity. As if she had come to her own decision, she got off the mat and made her way to the bed where her family was. She crawled into bed with them. Her father shifted to make room for her. His back jutted out of the mat on the bed. The rest of his huge body was barely on the bed. Still, he held on. Amara threw her arm around her sister and her mother; Oge mirrored this action, raising her head high enough to kiss Amara’s hand. She held her daughters as she wept and pleaded with the gods, her chi, the goddesses, and Oma. 

~ 

They must have all drifted off to sleep, because when she opened her eyes again, she almost screamed in shock. Oma was not in bed with her family. She sat counting her grandmother's warts, a habit the old woman had scolded her many times for, but now wanted to shower her with hugs and kisses for. 

“Oma.” 

She called tentatively, and the child giggled, waking up the rest of the room, who looked as dazed to see Oma out of bed as the old woman. 

“Mama, you have a new wart on your chin.” 

The oblivious Oma chuckled. It was what the room needed to shake them from their daze. They were not dreaming; she was alive. Oma had survived.