I am Still Here
Gerald Ewa
CW: sexual abuse
Today, I will disrupt my brother’s wedding. I’m doing this because I love him. It’s because of the love I have for him—this love that has burned in me like sweet wine since we were children—that propels me to roar at the driver each time the car moves at a snail’s pace. “Madam, no dey shout for me. I no be pikin. No be today I start to drive. I know wetin I dey do,” the driver says, with forced calmness, his face tightening into many lines. He tries to meet my face through the rear-view mirror, but peels his gaze quickly, as though startled by my stern expression. His hands start to quiver around the steering wheel as he navigates the road, in a bid to flee the potholes. I hold my clanging chest. I cannot die now, not in this rickety Volvo that reeks of cheap soap and convulses every chance it gets, leaving a trail of thick smoke.
The car stops jerking when we arrive at Golf estate, still my hands do not leave my chest. Although the road here is smooth like a baby skin, I fear that this is only a temporary respite, before the car swings into its ripples of insanity. For reasons best known to him, the driver hits the pedal, and we start to coast along smooth tarmac. My chest thumps. Bolts of pain shoot down my spine. Arching my back I massage my waist and frantically scan my stomach, as though the fetus growing in me has disappeared. I mumble all the prayers I know in my head, the ones my mother forced me and my brother, Munachim to master by heart during morning devotions. She would loom over us with a whip, each time we fumbled with the words, unbothered by our wailing, the tears streaming down our faces. While our father sat in his favourite sofa, fingering his rosary. He barely said anything, and even when he tried to speak in our defence, his words were gulped by the wide, menacing eyes of our mother.
My mother’s eagle-like face slips into my mind, and I remember her as a witch. An evil woman, who had the effrontery to bind me up in chains. My hands quake with pain as I massage it. I squinch my face. My skin is so fragile that even the sting of an insect can carve a huge welt on it. There are thick red rims on my wrists and ankles—they’re products of my struggle with the cuffs and chains that were forced on me by my mother’s personal bodyguard. Based on a friend’s recommendation, she had contacted him some weeks ago, after winning the local government primaries. I do not realize the sigh that escapes my lips until the driver clears his throat and peeks at me through the mirror. His eyes are laced with shadiness, a desire to blitz me with questions. But I quickly lean towards the window on my side, averting my gaze from him. I don’t know why he bears an uncanny resemblance to the bodyguard I had slammed on the head with a flower vase moments ago. That bodyguard with a large forehead and a nose that sputtered with blood as I dug my teeth into it as if to free it of its flatness. I had lured him to myself with the intention to use the toilet because it was impossible for me to relieve myself in chains. I don’t care if he does not survive the sharp thrust to his head. At this moment, I just want to get to the church and stop this foolish wedding. Munachim cannot get married to Casandra.
I check the time on my phone and let out a deep sigh. It’s 7:30 in the morning. I think the mass will still be on. I look out the window, catching the dull houses and landscape, denuded of greenness, as dry as my vagina. These days, my body fails to respond to the movement of my hands. It doesn’t produce the degree of wetness that comes from moaning Munachim’s name. I don’t know if it’s because there’s so much sadness and pain and resentment in my body that it revolts against Munachim. Without trying my eye lids become weak and tender as they cannot house the tears swimming down my cheeks. I remember the history between Munachim and me. How, after a day’s playtime, we would sneak off to the abandoned pickup at a corner of our wide fenced compound, spurring with luxuriant trees. There, we discovered the wonders of our bodies, the little miracle of being known. But it was Munachim who first showed me what pleasures lay between our thighs. He was twelve and I was a year younger. He said a classmate had taught him how to kiss and touch during break time, behind their toilet. I do not remember what her name was, this classmate of his, but I remember how I had felt when Munachim kissed me. How I had whispered in his ears, small, small, when his fingers travelled in and out of my body. How I had squirmed as he took my tongue in his and swirled a finger in me as if prodding the soil for worms. I remember this feeling deepening as the years lengthened around us and we journeyed into maturity. I remember my brother sneaking into my room whenever our parents were away on a business trip. I remember the day my mother screamed when she saw my breasts. I was sixteen, an age when it was almost difficult finding the right bra to cup my breasts. I was chopping ugu leaves on a wooden board balanced on my thighs, when my mother held her chest and asked why my breasts were so large, her eyes wide with shock. “I don’t know, ma,” I said, scanning my chest, as if noticing them for the first time. Then, she asked if I had a boyfriend. Of course, I said no.
“Then, explain why, at just sixteen, your breasts are this big, eh.” “I…” Before I could explain myself, she said that we were going to see the family doctor. At the hospital, I couldn’t stop laughing as the doctor pressed his gloved hands into my stomach, kneading the fold of flesh around my navel. But when he squeezed my nipples, I almost bit my wrist. Hot tears peppered my eyes.
“She’s not pregnant,” the doctor announced, peeling off the gloves. His eyes were hooded with mischief, and I thought I caught a smile on his face as our eyes met. Then he turned to my mother, who stood with both hands wedged on her waist, her lips pressed into a thin line, as if waiting for her fear to take flesh. “There’s no cause for alarm. She’s just growing fast. And her breasts are also growing symmetrically. It’s not odd. I have seen cases of girls like hers, with such voluminous breasts.” When he said that with time my breasts will settle into the right balance, my mother let out a deep sigh, but I sensed that it was not a relief. Because on our way home, she kept glaring at me through the corner of her eye, while steering the wheels, as if she did not believe the doctor’s report. As if she suspected there was more, perhaps a boy was sucking my breasts. But I couldn’t tell her that Munachim had been sucking my breasts since they started ripening, like he was trying to draw milk from them. How could I explain to her that Munachim was my boyfriend, and the blue bra he bought for me—from a portion of his savings—on my birthday, was his own way of officially consolidating our love?
I am pushed out of my reveries the moment the car starts to gallop. It’s not its usual madness, but I squint as darts of pain shoot through my waist. We’ve just arrived at Osimiri, where the potholes are daggers trying to flip the car over. The driver cusses as he manoeuvres the potholes. He tells me to put his fare together. “How much is your money again?” I ask him, and he shoves me an irritating look. “Madam, ego gi wu five thousand naira. Your money is five thousand naira,” he reiterates in English as if my British accent strips me of my identity. In a different scenario, I’d have lurched at him in a stream of Nsukka dialect, spiked with insults dressed in sarcasm. But the walls of my rage are built for my mother and brother and Cassandra. I am angry because Munachim conceded to my mother’s decision to lock me up in the house, in chains and cuffs, like a prisoner. He could have yelled at our mother and ordered her to unbound me when he walked into the room where I was crumpled on the floor, my face glazed with sweat and tears. Instead, he said, “If only you had listened to me,” shook his head and turned towards the door.
I am deranged with love and grief because I cannot allow Munachim to find happiness in another woman. If he was going to marry another woman, why did he promise that we would be together, forever, unfazed by whoever was against our love? Why did he always burn green with envy each time he saw me with another man, or when I told him about the guys asking me out? He did not tell me to end things with the men that strode into my life, with the promise of marriage. But his envy was wide enough for me to drown in it, to put a lock on my heart only he could unlatch. His envy translated into a poison that blazed through him each time he fucked me sour with a hand wrapped around my throat and slapped me silly until he left welts on my face and neck. Welts that disappeared when I stood in the mirror and buried them under the smudge of heavy makeup. Welts whose ugly faces made me cry until the wailing ceased the moment I heard Munachim’s voice on the phone.
Suddenly, I start to shiver with all the rage my body can conjure, and yell at the driver, once I hand him his fare. My phone says it’s 8:30 and my body is losing every thread of patience. The driver takes a defensive stance, as if trying to repel my voice. But I think he’s trying to make a scene by raising his voice and slamming the glovebox. I think he’s doing this because he has received his money. “Madam, no dey shout for me. I no be pikin. We will soon reach your destination. Allow me to drive before we get in an accident. Biko!”
The thought of an accident, and the possibility of being mangled beyond recognition from a headlong collision with another vehicle, sends shivers down my spine. I remain calm. I’m not ready to join my ancestors and my father in the afterlife. I don’t want to leave this world like he did, without being given the opportunity to enjoy a penny from the small world I had built as a real estate agent: the houses in Abuja and Enugu I had erected in a space of three years. A line of tears stretches down my eyes, as I remember my father, his desire for his children to achieve their dreams. I recall him saying, once, when we returned home from school with our end-of-term report cards, “Ada, you came third this term, Munachim, you second. Well-done, umu oma’m. But the two of them can still do better next term. The people that came first in your classes don’t have two heads. Never stop reaching for the sky. Inugo?” He said this and then patted our heads.
Even now, I wonder if my father would be in support of this marriage. I wonder if he would be in support of anyone or anything knowing that the relationship between my brother and me had transcended the borders of filial love and obligations. I wonder if my father, Chief Omerora Ugwu, would rather remain in the world of the dead than witness his name and legacy coated in mud.
We arrived at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Trans-ekulu. The driver halts in front of the gate and I arrange my face in front of the mirror. I dig into my purse for my small makeup kit and wear my mascara and lipstick in the right proportion to hide the tear lines. The driver taps on the steering, waiting, and I think he’s stifling the urge not to turn around. For the measure of time it takes me to get my face into shape, the man does not look back. And I am grateful he doesn’t. I hop down the car and catwalk to the gate. I hear the strangled cry of the engine before the car picks a speed, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust twirling in the air.
The man-o’-war and gateman cuss in Igbo as they swipe over their faces. I wait for their eyes to meet mine hooded in a dark shade. They greet me and I give a brisk nod and smile dryly. I open the gate and walk in. Pausing in front of the grotto of our lady at a corner, I genuflect—without touching my knees to the cemented ground—and make the sign of the cross. I beg our lady to intercede for me, to allow my plan to go unhampered. I rub my stomach and shudder, when I feel something stir in me. The hem of my boubou gown flutters in the wind. I smile, thinking it’s the baby. I hope it’s a boy, I hope he grows to have Munachim’s full crown of hair and pink lips.
Ahead, I see my uncle, Mr. Uchenna, slip out of the church and rush to a corner of the building. He’s my father’s youngest brother, the only surviving relative from his side. I duck so he doesn’t see me. I wonder if he knows that I am not in Abuja, that I arrived in Enugu two weeks ago. Perhaps my mother told him that I was busy selling lands in Abuja. But who gets busy doing God-knows-what when her sibling is getting married? Which sibling in her right senses gets busy with something else when her world is on fire? When her only brother and lover is about to commit himself to another woman, after putting her in the family way?
“Bless me Lord for I have sinned and I am about to make amends for my sins,” I mutter under my breath as I slide the glasses from my eyes and walk into the church. I release a breath I don’t know I have been holding. I don’t know if the clamminess of my palms and neck is a result of the fear that comes with reaching the cusp of a plan or that the church appears almost scanty with a few people perched on long brown pews. Was my father not known enough by the church, by his works of charity to the poor and needy in the church and society? Where are the men and women he employed in his textile business or the ones he recommended to some of his wealthy friends? Maybe, they are cooling off under the canopies at the venues, waiting for the mass to end. But on the contrary, I am not bothered about their whereabouts. Right now, one thing is paramount to me: to end this stupid marriage and witness my mother’s and brother’s faces melt in shame, as everyone cusses and walks away from the church.
I sit four rows behind my mother, who sits beside her sister, Chinyere. Cassandra’s parents settle on the left side of the stretch of pews. Women and men dressed in colourful Ankara prints sit in front of me. From the APC logo inscribed on the mufflers around their necks, I suspect they are her political allies. I scrunch my face at my mother and her sister, at the dark spots speckled on their backs. I am not surprised that my mother’s sister is here. This was the same woman who suggested that I take out the pregnancy as soon as possible. She even said that I had no say in the matter. “Imagine if you keep this thing,” she’d said in her characteristic smug voice, pointing a finger at my bloated stomach, “Imagine if a word of it gets out in the public. Do you know the damage it would cause, the shame it would bring on this family?” But when I put my foot down and vowed to keep it, my mother fell to her knees, weeping, her wig stinging my feet as she swirled her head around. “Please, nwam, you cannot keep that pregnancy,” she said, her voice firm and her face smeared with tears. Your brother is about to get married and you cannot keep this thing. It is a curse if you do. Do you want to bring a curse on this family?” I pulled away, hugging my body. “Mama… I cannot do what you ask of me. I cannot terminate this pregnancy. I love Munachim and he said he lov….” “Shut up, osiso,” she snapped, rising slowly to her feet. She twisted her face, and I flinched. “What do you know about love? How can you say you love your brother in this way? This is incest and I cannot be alive to watch this happen. Not in my lifetime.” “God forbid! It will never happen,” her sister interjected in Igbo. And just as I turned around to leave the house, my mother dragged my hair and smacked the back of my head with something wooden, knocking me out.
From where I sit, I can see my brother in a grey suit, holding Cassandra’s hands. He smiles with teeth, his beautiful diastema shimmering under the bright chandelier. The white veil partly hides the girl’s face, but not her pink-coloured nails and her knuckles that look like roasted yam. I look away, wondering what he sees in her anyway. Is it because she’s a lawyer like him? Maybe because she’s blessed with a pointed bridge of nose and a full lip. Still, I can’t stand the way he looks at her, like a thing of inexplicable wonder. I don’t know when he stopped looking at me like that, when he stopped reminding me how much he loved me. Maybe it was after the night he slept over at my place—because he was on a business trip in Abuja. For the first time since he began to touch me, I allowed him to slide into me without protection because he insisted. And most especially, because I loved him. Maybe it was after I had called to inform him of my pregnancy, and I didn’t know what to do. Perhaps it was on the days he stopped answering my calls and left my messages unread and I took the first flight to Enugu and showed up at his office. Maybe he stopped looking at me with a kind of helplessness the day Cassandra entered his life. Because I remember that day in his office how he closed the door behind us, held my wrist as though he intended to dislodge my bone until I wrested myself from his grip. I remember his words that came at me like arrows and made me quiver, as if I were a stranger, his face contorted in disgust. “What are you doing here? You should have called me before coming here. I told you I’m not responsible for that thing in your womb. You better go and meet whoever made you pregnant. I won’t be held responsible for whatever happens to you if you don’t leave this place.” He had picked up his phone to call the security, when I glared at him and dared him to try anything stupid. “Try it and see what will happen next. I’ll tell the world what we’ve been doing in secret.” He dropped the phone on the table, slowly, and crumbled on his knees, crying and holding my legs. He promised to take me to the best hospital in the country, so they’d get rid of the pregnancy. He would send me to any country of my choice afterwards.
“Do you love me?” I asked, interrupting his melodrama. He looked at me with tear-streaked face and said nothing. I asked him again, and again, he was silent. At this time, the tears were stinging my throat. Then, I asked if there was someone else. It took a while for him to respond, but he did. He nodded. I felt my chest constrict, all the tears in my body pouring out of my eyes. Still, I steeled myself and managed to say, “how long? For how long, Munachim?”
“A year. I’m sorry, I did not know how to tell you.”
I stifled the urge to scream. “So, you have been seeing someone for a year now and you’ve been fucking me all these times? Gosh! I can’t believe my eyes.” But that was only a mild shock until he said that they had fixed a date for their wedding.
A fly buzzes past my ears, tugging me away from my thoughts. I blink twice and remind myself where I am and what I am here to do. Munachim receives the ring from his best man. He repeats the sacred vows after the priest. My stomach churns with irritation as he takes Cassandra’s palm and moves the ring from one finger to another until he settles it on her ring finger. The church explodes with applause and cheers. Someone from the back shrieks, “Alleluia.” I am surprised that neither my mother nor her sister has turned around. Still, I let out a sigh of relief. It’s best if they don’t meet my gaze. Let the process of shame unfurl gradually.
Now, the priest turns to the congregation and begins the final rite, the most crucial stage in this process. “Dear brothers and sisters, if anyone here knows why this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, let him or her speak now or forever hold their peace.” Excuse me, father, this marriage cannot hold,” I say, springing up. Everyone turns around, including my mother and her sister, Munachim and his bride-to-be, their faces stall in shock. Voices erupt in a murmur. I give a devilish smile when I meet my mother’s eyes. She and her sister share a confused look, as though they cannot believe how I had managed to wriggle out of their chains and fetters. Munachim turns to my mother, and they also share a worried look. Cassandra is dressed in confusion, as she turns around, from Munachim to the priest to her bridesmaid, perhaps waiting for some answers. At that instance, my uncle walks into the church. His face is laced with surprise as he sees me. “Ada… what…” he says, his voice trailing off.
I turn away from him and face the priest and Munachim, who’s already looking around, swiping at his face and neck with a handkerchief. “Father, this marriage is a farce,” I say, and my mother tries to shush me up. She bolts to her feet, her ichafu bounces off her head and lands on the chair. “You cannot be here. Get out of this place.” And turning to the altar, she beckons the priest to continue with the marriage rites. But the priest is generous enough to allow me to speak. I smile, thanking him. “Father, my name is Adaku and I am the groom’s sister. Unfortunately, my brother cannot get married to this woman, because another woman is pregnant for him.” I pause, looking down at my feet. I wince as the ball of saliva rolls downward, scratching the back of my throat. When I look up I catch the fear mixed with a silent plea contorted on Munachim’s face, on my mother’s face, on her sister’s face. My stomach roils with apprehension, with a helpless realization that I don’t have enough courage to push this through. And if I proceed with this truth, I may not only hurt my mother and my brother, but myself. So, I clear my throat, together with the bud of tears and add, “He promised to love this other woman with all his heart but after getting her pregnant, he deserted her. Sincerely, father, is this fair in the eyes of God and man?” The murmurs tighten; people snap their fingers and cuss. Someone heaves his shoulders and says, “Alu.” Another says, “Tufiakwa! Abomination.” This is not how I had imagined everything.
The priest doesn’t answer the question, instead he turns to Munachim, who appears tensed and has started to pull at his tie. “Is this true what this lady has said today?” But my brother’s tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth as he tries to explain himself. Cassandra slumps to the floor, her wedding gown gathering in a pile around her feet. The church descends into commotion. A group of people rushes to the front. Someone draws a scarf and fans Cassandra. The priest shakes his head and walks out of the church through the door at the sanctuary, the altar boys treading behind him. People ooh and aah and snap their fingers. “What did this woman gain today? What did she gain from destroying her brother’s happiness today?” I hear someone say, but I smile and saunter to the exit. Before I step out of the church, I face my mother and her sister and my brother, and struggle to decipher the expression on their faces. Maybe pain or fear or the relief that comes after a storm. But I slip outside, wobbling as I approach the gate, the sun beating down my scalp. I scratch my wig vigorously and fling it from my head. My eyes meet the men at the gate and impaled by a strange force, I laugh and cry, the river of mascara, draining into my mouth. They watch me with suspicion, and I hear them muttering to each other, perhaps trying to ascertain my sanity. One of them says, “Odika, nwanyi a agbawo ara. This woman has gone mad o.” I narrow my eyes at them and they flinch as though poked by the spear of my gaze. At once, something unclasps within me—an invisible load finally heaves from my body. I wipe the smudge of tears and mascara from my eyes. My chest swirls with new, untrammelled energy, a realization that a broken body can still be beautiful and enough. I look down at my stomach carefully, as if staring at my baby’s plump face, and I whisper, “I am still here. Although your father and your grandmother have rejected us, we will not reject ourselves. There’s a storm coming, and we’ll go through it together. I will never leave you. I nugo, nwam?” I smile and bend over to dust my wig off the ground. Tufiakwa! I cannot gift my four hundred thousand Naira bone-straight wig to the earth like that. I place it on my head, fix my sunglasses on my eyes and flick the stray wisp of hair from my face in an exaggerated flip of my hand. Once I turn to meet the confused men and one of them says, “Truly, this woman is mad,” I throw my head back and let the steam of laughter pour out of my mouth, its sound like a bird breaking free from its cage. I laugh and hold my waist, until I feel the quivering in my stomach and I sense the baby is also laughing with me.