I knelt before my aunt to say I was sorry for her burnt house. She pulled me close to herself and said she didn’t have any grudge against me. I kept feeling guilty,even after she had incessantly assured me that there was no cause for alarm.
When it was time for the court case at the court of appeal, we didn’t have enough cash to pursue it. Our lawyer was demanding too much. My aunty was more than bankrupt, having lost all to the fire accident and my classteacher had too much on her neck already, being the one to cater for both my aunt and I.Aunty Rachael began to get sick; I knew she wasthinking too much about her lost roperty. She didn’t ven come out from there with a pin. She would lean against the wall and shed tears all the time.
Mrs Oyin had tried consoling her to no avail. Something that baffled me was that she didn’t weep when the house just got burnt. Instead, she was speechless for two to three days; now after a week she began to weep.
“Stop weeping Rachael,” my classteacher would say over and over again. “Tears cannot bring back what is lost; only God can do that. Do you want to cry away your eyes on this same issue? Listen and listen good Rachael, what you should be doing right now is to get a drum and dance, because some people had fire accident like this and got burnt in the process.
Look at you still breathing. Don’t you know that there is hope when there is life?”
Aunty told us a short story amidst tears:
“There was this young lady who knew no God at all.
She lived her life in the normal moral way, truthful, gentle, kind and meek and got everything
she wanted–a good husband and a good home. Just then, she began to know God and spoke about God to his husband who also received him…” I shook my head and waited for my aunty to continue the story. She was sniffing, but that wasn’t affecting her speech since it was a voiceless one–the sign language.
“Shortly after this woman and her husband knew God, bad things began to happen to them; the
husband had a plane crash while travelling from Lagos to Abuja. As if that wasn’t all, the woman lost her job because she was bent at holding on to her God at the expense of joining a multitude to do evil in her workplace; she refused to change receipt with them, so they set her
up.” My aunty was coughing. I was weeping for the woman in her story because it sounded like
herself. She was telling us her true life story.
“Her faith towards her God waxed stronger despite all these storms of life,” my aunty continued. “Somebody advised her to insure her building, fire accident insurance policy she called it, but the woman would not listen to her friend. She said God is in charge of the
house. It turned to a great argument and in the end she lost her friend. Eventually, the only thing left–her husband’s house–got burnt. She has nothing right now as we speak…”
My aunt began to weep aloud. My classteacher tried all she could to console her: she wouldn’t listen.
“Is there God?” she asked. I was stunned.Was it not my aunty who added ‘God’ to my poem few days back?Was she not the same woman who was running from church services to miracle crusades some months back? How come she was doubting God now?
“I think there is God,” I answered back.
“What is the proof that there is God?” my aunty challenged me.
“The proof?” I asked. Suddenly, I thought of the piece of paper my poem was done into. Though crumpled, yet powerful because God was in it.
I placed the poem on a table and began to demonstrate the last three stanzas with my hands:
Oh! my idle hands Speaking idle words Brain befuddled,Like a mouldy cake God isn’t an idol And he is for real
He will forever heal
Taller than the heavens
Brighter than the sun
His ways are glaring
Though to us blurry
‘Cos we are human
Seeing a bit afar
Through the twilight
The stars bowed
The rainbow cowed
The gaoler turned the gates
Leading my mother out
Freedom at last!
“Aunty, if there was no God I wouldn’t have won the award. You added God to my poem and I won. So I believe there is God.”
My aunty looked incredibly at me for sometimes. She couldn’t believe it. She was in tears. My
classteacher went close to her and gave her a tight hug; I joined them. We were all weeping.
My aunty and my classteacher suddenly loosened their grip on each other. My teacher made for
the door while my aunty quickly wiped off the tears on her face and sat up.Definitely there was a knock at the door but I couldn’t hear the sound.
My teacher’s mouth went wide when a woman stared into her face at the door. A cruel look
was glommed to her face. She had her arms akimbo like a beauty pageant. The eyelashes on her face were mere marks made with eye pencils, having scraped off her real
eyelashes. She was blinking her eyes intermittently in a belligerent manner. She was Toyosi, my stepmother, or would I say my father’s concubine? What was her mission here?Now I knew I would have to wait for twenty minutes or thereabout in silence because the house was hot in
voice language already. Nobody had the time to interprete. They were in war of words with Toyosi.Toyosi left after her rantings and shoutings. Now I await the interpretation of all the rancour unfolded before my face.
“Why was she here?” I asked.
To be continued
