Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike

Two nights before Pa dragged me to Izu’s place an ashy thing stole into our parlour and thumped against the TV screen. I jumped in my chair while Ma gasped. The thing lay still; but when it jerked across the carpet, I saw Ma scurry out of her seat. I almost bolted from the parlour, too. But when I saw that Pa didn’t look startled, I managed to stay just as calm. I couldn’t laugh the way he was laughing though, even when he said, ‘It’s only a bloody bat.’

‘Where did it come from? Where did it come from?’ Ma asked, breathless. I thought she was going to bang the door on herself. Instead, she was regarding the bat—her face all puckered—like something to be set on fire.

Pa did not care to answer her. I noticed the slight curl of his lips and wondered if Izu had flung the bat through our window at us. Although he was known to be mischievous and mean, I don’t think Izu would dare do any such thing where my Pa was around because he believed Pa could crush anyone in his palm. Ma started calling the blood of Jesus and snapping her fingers at the bat which, as if provoked by the sounds, shot towards the white ceiling. But it tipped over in midflight, like it had been swatted by an unseen hand. I folded into myself as it crashed down. Ma scrambled down the passage. Despite its earlier attempts, the bat made to fly a third time, but came thumping awkwardly to the floor yet again. Pa was chuckling hard. I suddenly remembered Pa had called Uncle Chidobe a bloody bat because he’d wobbled into the parlour a week ago and tripped over, like a bundle of washing.

‘Chidi,’ Ma whispered from the passage. ‘Get the anointing oil.’

Pa looked over at her. ‘Kasarachi, you want to fry it?’

Disgust came to Ma’s face and left it pinched. She popped her mouth open to speak, but was too stunned to make any sound. Then she spat out, ‘What if it is a witch?’

‘What if it was sent by God?’ Pa sounded so unmoved, like he wouldn’t mind if he found the bat flapping on his head.

‘God doesn’t send witches.’

‘But God created bats.’

Ma glared at him. Meanwhile, the bat had stopped fumbling. I tried to will it to rise and vanish, but Pa told me to get the bloody mop.

‘Sir?’

‘Are you deaf-f-f?’

I felt a sharp squeeze in my lungs. I hoped the bat was dead, so Pa wouldn’t have to harm it.

‘Just kill the witch,’ Ma said.

The bat screeched and began thrashing again, a blind, helpless, wretched thing. Although I was perched safely in my chair, I felt helpless too—as I had felt those times Izu was harming the bee, the millipede, and the frog.    

Pa stamped into the toilet and came back wielding the mop. He wrenched me out of my seat and thrust the mop into my hand. My hair stood on end as I realised that I would be the one to end the bat’s life.

‘Gbuo ya.’  

I shook my head, wishing I’d got a broom instead. With it I might have swept the bat out the room.

‘Kill it!’ Pa said again.

‘Chidi, don’t touch it!’ cried Ma.

They argued until the sound of something clattering on the floor jolted Ma and I noticed the mop had slid out of my grasp.

‘Pick it up.’

‘Please let him be.’

Pa balled his fists. ‘You won’t?’

I wanted to nod my head but Ma said, ‘Wait!’

I caught a glimpse of her fading from the parlour, but I couldn’t look at Pa. He was trying hard to hold himself back from punching me, I could tell. This was the first time I had defied him. Ma came back with a bottle of Goya. Uncapping it fast, she spilled some olive oil on the bat, which made it wave its paper wings madly. Ma broke out giggling in an unkind way.

Pa gripped me by the shoulders. ‘Let me tell you, son. I won’t always be around to teach you how to be a man. Will you pick up the mop, or not?’ he spoke so lightly, but I still made out the razor in his voice.

I wanted to pick the bat up but was afraid it might scratch out my eyes in terror. So I reached for the mop, instead.

‘Finish it off.’

I thought about how Izu would have finished the bat off easily.

‘Look at me, Chidi. What would you do if you were attacked by a dog?’

Pa must have sensed that I wasn’t going to reply, so he yanked the mop from my hand.

It happened so fast, so fast that I did not even see the mop swing upwards. I only heard the cry – short, high-pitched, pained; it knifed through my heart. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the remains. The mop was back in the toilet, and Pa was looking at me from head to toe.

‘But where did it come from?’ Ma asked for the umpteenth time, as if that could revive the bat.

Pa scoffed at her, like he didn’t expect her to pose such a question. ‘Kasarachi, how long will it take you to notice that all your window nettings have been torn for months,’ he said and shoved me out of the way.

While Ma is positioning the tray of food on the table, Uncle Chidobe stumbles in through the front door. The air sours at once. Swinging his arms out, he makes to embrace Ma; she shrinks away, looking befuddled. I don’t know why she hasn’t yet gotten used to his antics because no day has gone by without him returning home merry.

Uncle Chidobe’s head is shaven so clean and gleaming like marble, I long to run my fingers over it. He sees me moping at his head and cracks up, but he hardly smiles well because of the scar that runs up his chin to his right lip. So each time he pulls a smile his mouth stretches the wrong way, as if to spite him.

‘Touch it,’ he says, thrusting his head right under my face. I wonder how he would react if I were to rap my knuckles on it. ‘Touch, touch it.’

I cast a glance at Pa, who is trying too hard to appear unruffled, even with his face drawn stiff. Whenever Uncle Chidobe is not around, you will hear him complaining to Ma about his brother crying like a woman, that he doesn’t know why Uncle Chidobe can’t fight his way out of his loss instead of letting himself get sunk, that his inability to brave it out puts him off. Ma often tells him to stop being hard, to show more sympathy, grief doesn’t care about anyone’s looks or size, and she’s sure he will rise again. Pa usually shakes his head at her, as if she is blind to plain fact.

Uncle Chidobe swipes my hand over his head. It feels so warm, too smooth, I want to close my eyes, but he drops my hand just as suddenly as he grabbed it. ‘You like it?’ he asks me.

I glance down and think of how dry and crackly he looks, like twigs left out in the sun for days. I’d caught him sobbing to himself a few weeks before. But Uncle Chidobe, a man who used to carry himself like a snail, quiet and unobtrusive, has not always been like this. He became miserable, drunk, even disruptive, only after he fled the north for Owerri. I remember hearing Pa speak about terrorists up north, how they were blowing up schools, churches, and motor parks; how a particular group had lined up schoolboys and sprayed bullets into their hearts in front of their blazing dormitories. Pa had been so worried at first that he couldn’t get in touch with his only brother, but he stopped worrying after a while since no one—not even the government—could keep pace with the number of those being killed day after day. Then Uncle Chidobe appeared one drizzly night. We were in the parlour praying when he staggered in, so unexpectedly that Pa forgot his tongue. I can never forget the way Ma cried upon seeing him at our doorstep. For a whole month, Uncle Chidobe didn’t step outside the veranda. He hid himself indoors from dawn to dusk. But one Saturday morning he ventured out to town and came back at night – whooping, like he had his pockets crammed with good news. And since then he does not look like he’s going to quit drinking.  

‘Chidobe,’ Pa says, washing his hands in the bowl of water. ‘Comport yourself.’

Uncle Chidobe swivels round and begins to mumble, po-po-po-po pop pop champagne.

‘O di egwu,’ Ma sighs, pouring some chilled water into the glass. She tried persuading him to church once, but he said he would only go with her if she could tell him where God was when his wife and daughter were being butchered by terrorists. Ma hasn’t made any attempts to coax him since.

Pa slices a bit of fufu, stirs it in the ofe nsala, and drops it down his throat. He takes a gulp from his glass, then burps. ‘Chidobe, how long will it take you to get over it?’

‘Uzoma, don’t tell me that!’

Pa tenses up, gripping the arms of his chair, probably because his younger brother has just called him by his first name—something which I’ve never seen him done before. Dee or brother, Uncle Chidobe always calls him, not Uzoma.

‘You think you’re stronger than me?’ Uncle Chidobe says.

Pa gapes at Ma, as if he cannot believe he’s being put down, but she appears to be equally at a loss herself. I fear Pa will explode, because I don’t think I have seen his younger brother act angry. Sometimes, when Pa has finished watching a wrestling match, you’ll find him jabbing at shadows and dodging invisible blows and puffing, Knock him down, knock him over, to himself, over and again. Whenever I run into him at such moments, I am forced to remember how my friends had pestered me with loads of questions: where does your father keep his machinegun? How many people did he kill during the war? Even my closest friend Izu wished we could swap fathers. I guess their parents must have spoken about Pa, and seeing as he is all muscle it is easy for anyone to assume that he once led a soldier’s life.

‘Chidobe, if you keep going down this way,’ Pa says quietly, ‘you may find yourself wasted.’

Uncle Chidobe laughs as if his throat is full of syrup. ‘I’m tired of all your pep talk, Uzoma,’ he says, jabbing a finger at his chest. ‘So don’t tell me to man up again—or else, I will be doing something we might both regret! Man up…,’ he says as he waves his arms limply over his head, as if to steady himself, as he mimics Pa’s voice, ‘…man up, as if that would stop my pains, or stop me from seeing my wife’s headless body in my sleep, or stop the screaming of my daughter in my head.’

There comes over Pa’s face a glazed look. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at anyone. He just sits there stock-still clutching a ball of fufu while Ma is massaging his shoulders and whispering, Please eat, nkem, eat up. It takes a while before he recovers himself and puts the fufu back in the plate. He washes his hand again and pulls himself out of his chair. Without speaking a word, he heads for his room, banging the door so hard a slight tremor comes shivering through my spine. Ma appears as one who has been harassed by a child as she catches my eye. Suddenly, I think of asking her if Pa has beaten up anyone or shot at enemies, but then I realise my finding out wouldn’t do me any good.

Ma sighs and picks up the tray and walks away. She, too, has lost her appetite. While she is in the kitchen, Uncle Chidobe is wiping his nose with his palm and muttering to himself, ‘Telling me to get over it. Imagine. D-did he know I c-couldn’t bury my wife and daughter?’

Before I can sneak out of the parlour, he breaks down completely. Ma runs out of the kitchen, looking as though she is afraid a fight might have flared. But she stops midway in the parlour and looks at Uncle Chidobe now snivelling with his head in his hands. She glances over at me, and I realise that she cannot make up her mind whether to go over and comfort him. Then she backs away and goes into Pa’s bedroom, leaving me all alone to deal with a tearful adult.

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