Kejie looked after the departing back, puzzled. Her aunt had been behaving strange lately. She tried to imagine what could have caused this change. She wondered if perhaps her aunt had gotten tired of her living with them. She didn’t think so.
First, her aunt’s recent brusqueness and momentary harshness was directed at everyone, like the proverbial rain that fell on the just and unjust alike.
Second, her living with them, until she got a place of her own close to the Federal College of Education, Akamkpa, where she had just gained admission made things easier for her aunt’s family. She knew that the money she dropped casually on her aunt’s dresser every Saturday morning like clockwork had become the mainstay of the family.
Her uncle, a lecturer at the same college was not ‘pulling his weight,’ her aunt said, a phrase she had obviously borrowed from somewhere. Her schooling stopped at class four and her vocabulary was meagre, peppered with wrong use of tenses, even if she insisted on speaking with Kejie in English. Kejie would have preferred speaking to her aunt in their native Nsadop, but her aunt was trying to better her English speaking, just as Kejie was trying to brush up her native dialect; they were at cross-purposes. Kejie’s uncle watched amused as they conversed sometimes, she speaking Nsadop and her aunt responding in broken English.
Technically, they were not her aunty and uncle. They were not even related. In fact, Kejie had never heard of them until the week she gained admission. Her mother, worried about how she would cope, a mere fifty minutes from home, had fretted to a friend, who had given her a number to call. “Tell her I sent you,” the friend said.
When Kejie and her mother drove up to the front of the house, her mother sat for a full minute, staring at the two-bedroom house with what used to be lime green paint, peeling off the wall like wet paper, the bottom of the exterior bordered by spirogyra. Without turning to face Kejie, she asked her, “are you sure? Because your father and I don’t have any problem sending the driver to bring you to school everyday. ”
“Mum, it’s either this, or I drive myself to school.”
“On which roads? These deathtraps of highways? Osowo obange.” She said, shaking her head. God forbid. “Come and stay here let’s see how long you can cope.”
When they went inside the house, Monica, who would become ‘Aunty’ to Kejie, had emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her wrapper, effusive in her welcome, struggling to speak English.
“I will took good care of ya daughter. She wouldn’t wants to leave here when the time came,” she said.
Kejie’s mum nodded.
The children were paraded, all three of them – Ganong, a girl of seven who said, “Welcome aunty, welcome small aunty, God bless you,”; Osatiem, a girl, five years old, who eyed them both and refused to say anything – stuck her thumb in her mouth and stared at them unblinking; and Dikpen, the last child, another girl, two and half years old who looked from Kejie to her mother and back to Kejie, then pointed outside and said “moto car.” They were all dressed in neat, going-out clothes and their mother bustled around, eager to please, offering soft drinks, food or just biscuits.
“Five of you in two rooms,” Kejie’s mother exclaimed.
“Ma, gise ge kpa ban’ed,” A house does not cramp people. It was a common saying among the people of Cross River state, that however small a house, it expanded to accommodate.
Kejie’s mum stared stonily at a point over Monica’s head, completely unimpressed with the solemnity of the children, or the exertions of their mother. She fired off questions like an Army General How many rooms are they in this house? Two? Where will my daughter sleep? Where do you cook? Who cleans/ what do you do? What does your husband do? It was not a visit as envisaged, a handing over of Kejie to the care of strangers. It was an ambush, an attack.
As her mother intimidated the woman, who seemed about to cry in defence of her home and ability to be Kejie’s guardian, Kejie looked around at the parlour, the tiny room crammed with furniture, and framed photographs of the family, and a portrait that declared;
Christ is the head of this house
The unseen guest at every meal
The silent listener to every conversation.
She knew that she wanted to live here with all the shortcomings – with all they had, and all they didn’t have. Whatever it took to escape her mother’s critical presence and hovering disapproval was good enough for her.
“Stop it, Mum,” Kejie finally yelled.
“I’m just trying to show you what you will have to contend with. You know the life you are used to—“
“Thank you Mum, I know what I will have to contend with. You have made that very clear. I will like to stay.”
“As you wish,” she snapped and rising, directed Monica in an imperious manner to offload the food items she had brought along with her daughter, like a dowry – asking her to be careful not to scratch the car.
Monica had looked so relieved, been so excited that Kejie would be staying after all (there was something about the contrast between this girl and this woman that made her protective of the girl, and resentful of the woman), that she tripped on a low stool on her way to the car, looking back to see if Kejie’s mum had noticed, and vowing to kill herself on the spot If she so much as nicked the car.
And so Kejie had come to stay with the Osang family.
***
