Growing My Hair Again by Chica Unigwe What Is the Tone

Source: vowinitiative.org

(Chika Unigwe)--"I am crouching abreast the bed, my palms flat on the deep reddish rug that swallows my sobs. The rug is warm. It is a mother'due south hand. My posture is--I hope--appropriate to the occasion. My mother-in-law is watching me, her eyes militarist-similar even through her ain tears. She sniffs and says, 'You're not crying loud enough. Anyone would retrieve you never loved him. Bee akwa!'

She never approved of me. I had an backlog of everything. Education. Beauty. Relatives. Hair. Certain to bring whatsoever man down. At the thought of my hair, my palms become common cold. Past this fourth dimension tomorrow, it will all be gone. I shall be taken to the backyard by group of widows, probably all of them strangers. One of them, the oldest, will lather my hair with a new tablet of soap (which will be thrown away in one case it'due south been used on me), and then shave all of is off with a razor blade. I shall be bathed in cold water. Strange women splashing h2o on me. Cleansing me to make my husband's passage easy on him: a ritual to make the intermission between us final so that he is not stuck halfway betwixt this world and the next shouting himself hoarse calling for his wife to be at his side when he joins his ancestors.

'You should cry louder. Yous sound like you lot're mourning a family unit pet. You are a widow, nwanyi a! Cry every bit if y'all lost a husband! Bee akwa. Cry!'

In 1 give-and-take, she dribble my life: widow. Even though Okpala has been expressionless for a while--iii months to be precise--I am only officially at present becoming a widow. Three months were needed to organize a befitting burial. To take the invitation cards printed. The moo-cow ordered. The dancers reserved. Three months in which Okpala's body stayed in the only mortuary with a generator in Enugu and I gained a moratorium on widowhood. Just all that is about to change. This evening, I shall be given the bluecoat of laurels: a head so cleanshaven that dominicus rays will bounciness off it. I wonder if she is observing me as I elevator one palm and run it across my pilus, the whole length of the thick mane of shiny black pilus that grazes my shoulders. I suspect that Okpala's female parent has always been jealous of information technology, what with her downy pilus like the feathers on the underside of a chicken and a receding hairline that gets by the solar day. Still, I must non exist too hard on the woman. She did non invent the tradition of shaving widows' pilus, did she?

'Is your hair more important than my son?' Her voice is hoarse.

Every time she cam to visit Okpala and me in Enugu, she complained of the corporeality of time I spent training my hair.

'Nneka, the fashion you lot expect after this your hair, one would call up it was your entrance to heaven.'

She complained so much that Okpala asked me not to become to the salon while she visited. 'When she goes, yous can proceed.' I listened. Opal was not one to be disobeyed.

I spent the final iii months visiting salons on an near daily basis. Changing hairstyles every solar day. Experimenting with different styles. I was a perfect customer: I surrendered my head to the hairdressers and said, 'All your. Exercise with it as y'all wish,' I had shuku done: an intricate basket of braids. I had it plaited with wide black thread and standing up like nails protruding from my scalp. I had it permed and bobbed like a beret. All the fourth dimension painfully aware that soon my choices would be express. In the last iii weeks I endeavour to abound dreads and despaired when my hair refused to knot, resorting to sparse braids that took vii hours to put in. My mother in law watched my irresolute hairstyles, her lips a spout of disapproval that got longer and longer. 'Anyone would recall you did not love him.' I ignored her. I had them taken out yesterday. I poured palm kernel oil on information technology and wrapped it upwards in a scarf. And today, I tugged and combed until information technology was a shiny mass of blackness. I touched information technology again. I hear the old adult female hiss.

I know that if she could, she would have turned me out of the house. And not only this humongous villa in Osumenyi with red and maroon carpeting in every room--Okpala had no sense of decoration--but the duplex in Enugu also. Prime property that. A sprawling large house that my mother-in-law had brought a barefoot prophet to bless the 24-hour interval we moved in. Daba daba da, Jehovah El Shaddai, Jehovah Yahweh, Bless this house of your apprehensive servant, Okpala. Keep him safe from the evil center. Surround his house with spiritual military machine forces. Yaba Dabba Dab. I had walked out mid-prayer--the man's toes distressed me and that angered Okpala.

Opal's anger was always a wild hurricane. It cleared everything in its path: family unit pictures, tables, chairs. Nothing was spared.

This morning, my mother in law caught me in the kitchen. Bored and hungry and sick of sitting on the bedroom floor to be besieged by crying relatives, I had gone to raid the pantry. Zip in it appealed to me. I opened the refrigerator and found the transparent bowl with my Christmas cake raisins soaking in brandy. I started soaking them a few days before Okpala died. Christmas is only a month-and-a-half away now. the raisins called me and I answered. I pulled out the basin, dug my easily in and grabbed a handful. I threw them in my mouth and chewed chop-chop, the raisins exploding ferociously, releasing the brandy trapped inside. I was similar a madwoman. I grabbed some more, a trail of brown liquid seeping through my clenched fist and snaking downwards my hand. i was on my 3rd helping when she walked in.

'And so, this is where you are? The widow's food not enough for yous?'

I wished I could talk dorsum but years of addiction are difficult to pause.

'In some places, the only nutrient a widow is allowed to swallow for a year is yam and palm oil. And yet you retrieve you're too adept for nni nwanyi ajadu.'

I licked my lips, wiped my mouth with the dorsum of my mitt and tried not to think of the food that I take been served since yesterday. Tasteless chow: no salt, no pepper. Just plainly white rice and even plainer love apple stew. For a widow must not be seen to savor nutrient; all her meals for one-year mourning menstruation must be made without whatsoever salt or pepper. And I know I am lucky; it is a lot amend than yam and unspiced palm oil. Plus, I get to eat with a spoon. In some villages, my mother-in-constabulary drummed into me, a mourning widow only eats with ii long sticks. Whatever nutrient she drops belongs to the spirits; it's her married man's share.

'My son should never have married you. Yous're a witch, amosu ka-ibu. You cannot even cry for him.'

I tasted raisin and brandy on my tongue. I ignored her. She has called me worse. 'Murderer.' I killed her son. I was the one who sent the 4 teenager armed robbers to his bazaar on that Friday night while he was stocktaking. The constabulary told us he was shot at shut range, in his heart and in his head. He had probably refused to mitt over the greenbacks and tried to fight them; his table was overturned. All he needed was enough anger.

I married opal direct out of university with a brand new degree in sociology. He was a trader with a boutique in Ogui Road. I had gone there to look for a graduate clothes; he was reputed to have the best at affordable prices. I saw something I liked, a brusque-sleeved dress the colour of a fresh bruise on light pare. It was the virtually gorgeous affair I had e'er seen but the cost tag put it beyond me. Opal convinced me to endeavour it on, his hands tapping on the table backside which he was sitting. He insisted on giving it to me as a present if I invited him to my graduation party. Five weeks subsequently, he had paid my bride toll.

My female parent liked him. She said he had busy easily: hands like his which could never keep however were the sort of hands that kept the devil at bay. The sort of hands than spun money. 'Nneka, he's a proficient man. You're lucky to have snatched him, eziokwu.'

At the wedding, Okpala's hands flailed and waved as he danced. At the high table, reserved for the groom and bride, he played with the spoons and the forks ready out for the fried rice and the dry meat, tap tap tapping on the tabular array like a restless child. My mother, resplendent in her white lace wrapper and blouse--paid for by Okpala--leaned over to me and whispered, 'Busy hands. If yous ally a lazy man, your suffering will be worse than Job's. I ga-atakali Job northward'afufu.'

Even when we had our offset dance, his easily could not go on still. They went around my cervix, effectually my waist, around my buttocks. My female parent danced close to me and winked. 'This man loves you lot very much,' she whispered and danced away, waist shaking, her behind wobbling to the boom bam blindside of Oliver de Coque and the Expo 76 Ogene Super Sounds.

The wedding ceremony tired me. The smiling and the eating and the dancing. A success, anybody said and therefore nobody left until actually tardily. The DJ kept playing music and Okpala and I kept existence asked to dance. Opal loved dancing. Information technology was his passion and then he did non need much encouragement. 'Bia gba egwu nwoke m,' and Okpala would exist there, dragging me with him, my multilayered hymeneals clothes getting heavier by the infinitesimal.

'No, Okpala. I'one thousand tired. No more dancing. Mba,' I tried to protestation simply his hand manacled my wrist and I had to get up, all the while smiling because information technology was my wedding twenty-four hour period and because he was whispering furiously: Smile, grinning, muo amu.

When we finally left and checked into the Imperial Suite of the presidential Hotel he had booked, all I wanted to practise was sleep, wedding dress and all. Opal would have none of it. "My wedding night and you want to sleep?' All the while his hands moved, tapping on the long thin mirror beside the bed, on the huge brown table opposite the bed. And when I said, "Opkala, darling, i am really tired. Whatever you take in mind can expect until I've had some remainder,' his busy manus continued with my face. I saw flashes of lightning as Okpala pummeled me. And when he dragged me naked to bed, all I could see was this huge darkness that had started to consume me.

'I hope that at least, when the guests commencement coming, you'll show a lot more than emotion than now.' She sounded guttural, like a masquerade. I about experience sorry for her. I think of my son. I cannot be like shooting fish in a barrel to lose a child.

Tomorrow, the commencement guests volition begin to arrive. Opal was a rich human, then his funeral should reverberate that: 5 days of receiving mourners. First, my townspeople, Okpala'southward in-laws. They volition come, as is customary, with a dance group and some drinks. The following 24-hour interval is for Okpala'south siblings' in-laws. After that his mother'due south people. Then members of the unlike associations he belonged to. Then the full general public. They will all come with money, wads subconscious in envelopes for me, but I shall meet none of the money. His brothers volition have it and give me what they think I need. But I don't intendance. I take enough money in my bank account, and the boutique is doing well.

In the out-kitchen backside the house, huge pots, osite, are being fix upwardly for cooking. Cassava. Rice. Meat. Four unlike varieties of soup. Truckloads of beer and soft drinks have been arriving for the past two days. There is a huge stock of palm wine. Cartons of wine. The St Stephen's Gospel Band has been hired to provide the music. Opal'due south brother insisted on inscribing drinking glasses and beer mug with Okpala's proper noun and date of decease, souvenirs to hand out to people. He as well had key rings made with Okpala'southward picture. Only he said the key rings were not for anybody. They would exist given only to members of the traders' association to which Okpala belonged. Frankly, I find it all a chip vulgar, this recent trend to memorialize the dead in key rings and plastic trays and wall clocks. But what can I do? I have got no say in the thing. I am merely his widow.

'Tomorrow, y'all'd better not show me up. You'd better cry well.'

I know what I am expected to practise. To scream and hurl angry words at death. Onwu ooo, death why take you taken my Lion? Why have you taken my human? Onwu, you lot are wicked. I joka. To weep, my voice above everybody else's, the loyal wife's. To beg, when he is being put in the ground, to be allowed to go with him. Chi thousand bia welu ndu m ooo, my God take my own life too. I shall struggle with Okpala'south burly brothers who volition try to stop me from crawling into his grave, pleading to be buried with my married man, the best man in the world, my son's male parent. They will tell me to recall most my son. He needs a female parent. He is still a child and has merely lost his father; he does non need to lose his mother too. Think nigh him, they'll say. Jide obi gi aka. concord your heart in your hands firmly, so that it does non slip and splinter.

I recall well-nigh my son. Four years quondam. The reason Okpala's people have not kicked me out yet. Will not kick me out. I am the mother to Okpala's heir. If I had had a daughter, his witch of a female parent would take had me on the streets by now and then what? Who would marry a widow with a immature daughter? But I have a son, so I get to go on the boutique. Afamefuna is my trump card. Too young to sympathise death, he is playing in his room, crashing toy cars and asking Enuma, the househelp, if his daddy was back from his trip. Afamefuna has been asking that question since the night Okpala died and I told him his daddy had gone abroad and saw a lite come on in his eyes.

'V years of wedlock and all you could manage was one kid. I. Expert thing it was a boy. I warned Okpala that college destroys their wombs with all that knowledge. Too much knowledge is not good for a woman. It destroys their wombs. What does she demand all that instruction for eh? He should have married another woman. One that would have given him many more than sons.'

When Afamefuna was one-and-a-one-half years, I became pregnant again. I had by then, become good at avoiding Okpala'southward decorated easily. making certain his food was served on fourth dimension. His wearing apparel clean and ironed. The house tidied and welcoming. Simply in my eight calendar week of pregnancy, I slipped. I burnt his supper: egusi soup with snails he had ordered particularly from Onitsha. The snails, charred, clung to the bottom of the pot, curled upwardly like ears. Opal liked egusi with snail and, as I realized within a calendar week of living with him, it was akin to a mortal sin to serve it up less than perfect; the punishment smarted even after forgiveness had been granted.

So, that evening, when I smelt the soup called-for, I knew what was in stock for me. I tried to recuperate it, to scoop up the snails and with some water dunk the burnt sense of taste. Nothing worked and The Manus descended on me while Afamefuna watched from behind his bedroom door. Opal upturned the bowl of soup, my burnt offering, on my head and the soup ran like tears down my cheeks and soiled the white blouse I had on in readiness for the Legion of Mary coming together at St. Christopher'south.

Of form, I could not go whatsoever more. The pepper in the egusi stung my eyes and the odour of burnt soup plant its manner into my nostrils and nestled there cozily. When I went to the toilet and released clots of claret, I knew that Okpala had martyred my infant, sent it back to its source before I even had the chance to cradle it in my arms. I knew I never wanted to give him some other child, male or female.

The week Okpala was abroad, seeing to new supplies in Lagos, I went to the Riverside Private Hospital and had my tubes tied. The dark he came back and called me to his bed, I touched the tiny scar that only I could run across and felt information technology throbbing warm under my hand and I smiled. When he released his manhood inside me and spoke to his seed, ordering them to give him a son--Opkala wanted another son desperately, to raise his condition amid his peers--I wanted to giggle out loud.

I lift my head and turn towards my mother in law. She is sitting on my bed. I look beyond her and see my new life stretched alee of me: a multi-colored wrapper infused with the scent of fresh possibilities. No Okpala. My future secure in the fact that I have his son. An contained woman with my own bazaar. I shall regrow my hair. Nurture it and delight in its growth. Maybe in a year or two, another relationship. I am in no bustle, though. I shall enjoy my freedom offset. My optics meet those of my mother-in-constabulary and I feel it coming. I do not even want to stop information technology: a laughter that comes from deep inside my belly and takes over my entire body."

Chika Unigwe (2010: 75-81)

In One World: A Global Album of Brusque Stories.

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Source: https://nollyculture.blogspot.com/2015/08/growing-my-hair-again.html