.Prohibited things and the outcasts
.Continued from last week
Bisi’s high strident voice crashed into a deafening silence with her usual sign off signature tune: girls must know how to possess their vessels in sanctification and honour, at the ACCF Sisters’ meeting. The applause was weak and unenthusiastic. Bro. Francis thought and not for the first time, that she might be too hard on the girls.
It had worried him not a little how she carried herself around like one who would never fall. Since her regime, he had received more complaints from the sisters than in any administration he had presided.
It was true that most of the complaints had come from Bukky and the loudest applauses at meetings had come from Ulari. Francis shook his head, smiling – those three! “What I hate is the raw sexual energy between Ula and J.
It fits into the Prohibited Things,” Bisi had told Francis in a conversation. They sat at a garden table at QSS waiting for their orders: suya left longer on the grill to dry and dead Coke.
Bisi loved Coke chilled to the point of freezing which she called dead Coke. And she took pride in entertaining brothers or male acquaintances: course mates or others in open places in the full glare of other people. One time, Francis had visited her room and she had called him out to stand in the corridor with her. “Let’s go in and sit down,” Francis had suggested, but she stood where she was pretending she didn’t hear him.
Francis remembered the day he delayed her after a certain ACCF Meeting to tell her what thus saith the Lord. It was in December before the Christmas holidays. He had to force himself because he had delayed the information for too long. And the delay had been because of Bisi’s jim jim nature.
That was what they called it, jim jim, meaning the intensity of one’s Christian belief. Bisi could be straight, unbending and stiff. It was difficult talking to her. But, he had to do it. There was no time anymore. He would soon be leaving the school. “Sister Bisi, the Lord spoke to me concerning you.”
“Yes?” She stood a formal distance from him. Her clove-like eyelids hooded over in a narrowed intense gaze. “My company has transferred me to Nairobi. (That wasn’t where he ought to have started but, knowing Bisi he had to hold her interest). So, I wasn’t asking the Lord about some things…”
Bisi kept still, her eyes still narrowed, her piercing pupils scanning his soul. She would know if he added salt and pepper to the story. “The Lord spoke to me about a future with you. I don’t know if He had spoken to you. But, I don’t intend to go to Kenya as a bachelor. As you know, what’s keeping me here now is to defend my thesis.” Okay,” she said. Surprised, he said,
“Okay, what?” “Okay everything.” Her voice was noncommittal. “Are you going to pray about it?” Hope filtered through his voice. “No.” Francis felt irritated. The girl was 22, six whole years younger than him. Whatever made her so pompous? He read as much word of God as she did, or even more. But, Bisi would always present a superior exterior, always bragging about how much word of God she had ingested. “Why?” “Because He told me about it six months ago.”
Her voice was cool, as if they were discussing the weather. “And, you didn’t say anything to me?” He was shocked. “Should I? It’s everyone’s duty to hear God for themselves. He’s always speaking.” Francis didn’t know what to say.
Bisi did not smile nor did she act excited. He laughed and said, “You know I hear God alright. So… well, nothing changes. You’re still in the exco, and I’m still your leader.”
He paused and regarded her. A thought hit him and he surprised himself as he said, “There’s only one reason I can think of why the Lord told you before me, your mind was straying.” He saw her start and knew he had struck a cord. Yes, her mind was straying. She had her eyes on a Pentecostal pastor in her neighbourhood; he was a firebrand, and the Lord told her to take her eyes off him.
He told her where to focus attention. She filed away the info believing that it was still a long time away for its fulfillment. After all, she had graduation, NYSC, Master’s, teaching before graduating to becoming a school owner, etc. Marriage was still far down on her To Do List. But, what she did not figure out was the four letter word; neither did she consider God’s agenda. “I don’t know about your Kenyan plans, but I have personal things on my agenda,” she said with an unsmiling face.
“You know, I think you’re more righteous than Jesus and too stiff to bend,” he said. His voice was a reprimand. “I won’t set foot on Kenyan soil as a bachelor.” He turned and left her standing there. The sisters watching them thought something terrible had happened for Bisi’s usually deadpan face was dour. Another time, in the privacy of her corner, in her room, she was invaded while having conversation with herself. Bro. Francis visited. It was such a wrong time. Not now as she was trying to deal with the errant sisters: Bukky and Ulari. Francis came with more disturbing things. “Shall we go to the buttery?” She stood up.
Francis sat down. “No. I won’t take your time.” Bisi kept standing. Francis went straight to the point or what he thought a good point. “I came to tell you about Catholic priests and nuns.” He paused. She didn’t ask what about them. He had to continue. “God created the feelings, but these ones are on a special call to celibacy.
So, God doesn’t go about showing them who they’ll marry. They’re on celibacy for life. God created the feelings and love. It’s okay to fast the feelings when it isn’t time for the consummation of love. But, godly people must be sensitive to know what time it is. God didn’t create all of us to be celibate forever.
So, if you’re not called to life celibacy, celibacy must be terminated at a certain time. We must know when that time comes .” Bisi’s wandering mind sought escape. “This is the wrong time, Bro Francis. And the wrong place. If someone comes into my room now, they might read us wrongly.”
One of the things that baffles me, Ulari wrote down in a book she would never show anyone, for want of who to confide in, is my reflex responses to the man called J. The way my senses respond of their own will to him. When they see him, they take leave of all that was taught me. I do not understand it.
I was taught Never to allow a man touch me, but Jamin has touched me and kissed me. And I have enjoyed both his touches and his kisses. Oh, I know it’s beyond that kind of touch, that I was warned. Okay, his touches are part of it – you know part of the prohibited things. Another thing that baffles me is how my ambition seems to take a back seat in Jamin’s presence.
Our ambitions have knitted us more tightly together, my friends and me. In my home, marriage is what we do early in life. It’s to stop history from repeating itself; to make sure No One Gets Pregnant. But, seeing my sisters lose their identities in marriage made me take a decision that I will not get pregnant and I will not get married immediately after school. I desire to explore my potentials, to discover who I am and what I can do to contribute my quota to humanity.
I love my family; especially my Grandma Ugorji and I’ve been very obedient. But in this marriage of a thing, I choose to differ. I thank God my friends are of the same mind. Bisi wants to be a lay preacher and a private school proprietress; Bukky is looking forward to a career as a macro economist.
And me? I’m a musician. I come alive at the sound of music. I’ve never told anyone this, but I dream of not returning to Aba again (oh, I know my family would be very much disappointed in me, but I promised God that I won’t break any rules), of living in a big city, a metropolitan city like Lagos. I dream of gathering street children and turning them into great musicians. My friends and I want to affirm ourselves before stepping into a man’s house.
I’ve seen what damages marriage has done to my sisters, and even my mother. My father wouldn’t let her do anything until the last of us left secondary school. That was when she opened a hair dressing salon right in front of our house, like a prisoner on parole who mustn’t go far! All my sisters are married.
They all married early because of a family tragedy my Grandma Ugorji calls a tragic tragedy, for which my older siblings often laughed and told her that there’s nothing like a tragic tragedy. But, Grandma Ugorji always hushed them to be quiet. The poignant memory of what happened wipes smiles off her wrinkled usually smiley face. This tragedy drove Grandma Ugorji to Jesus.
It is for this tragedy my family became Christians. Someone introduced Grandma Ugorji to the God Who forgives wrongs and loves unconditionally. It was at a time she needed love and understanding. She had no one at the time. She was an outcast – she and her son. We are outcasts. Our Grandma Ugorji fell pregnant by a white British Railway officer who was landlord to her father.
Her father was a clerk in the Finance Department of Nigerian British Railway Corporation. And the Chief Accountant gave her father his BQ (Boy’s Quarters) to live in with his family because of her father’s diligence and his attitude to work.
It is an abomination in Igbo land for an unmarried girl to carry pregnancy. Her father threw her out in great anger. And in a great protest against the white man who he had loved, he resigned from the British Railway Corporation Nigeria (I don’t really know what it was called – Nigerian British Railway Corporation or British Railway Corporation, Nigeria. It was in Nigeria after all). But his protest was impotent as Okonkwo’s protest against white invasion in Umuofia: no man stood with him!
The white man who put his only daughter in the family way had been transferred to Tanzania. The authority of the Nigerian British Railway Corporation thought it not worth their while to give attention to Grandma Ugorji’s father.
Such things were not captured in the corporation’s Code of Conduct. So, they dropped his petition in the bin and work continued like the day Icarus fell. I grew up with the knowledge of what made up my secrets. My Grandma Ugorji, my father’s mother, was our teacher. She used to spend time teaching us. I grew up repeating several times a day what my Grandma Ugorji taught me. Every morning after prayer, I stood in front of the mirror and repeated these words: My name is Ulari Ruth Ugorji. I am a child of God.
These are my secret parts. My hands would fly to my flat chest, my bald groin, my (it was later my Grandma Ugorji added my lips and my hands). Let no one touch them (I would repeat twice, then I would repeat) Have you heard? I have heard. I repeated these words until my second year in the university when my friend Bisi who I adore because she knows the way, told me to stop. She made me to understand the ways of Jesus more perfectly.
Under her, I entered into liberty. I made my decision: I will not marry very early like my sisters, yet, I will not fall pregnant. I had no interest in any man at all! I have a great ambition to achieve a name; to become great. It was a great plan until I set eyes on Benjamin.
.Culled from: The girls are not to blame by Lechi Ekeh
.To be continued…
