Unwholesome Past

AUTHOR

DEDICATION

For

Victoria and Precious Onaah,

And

For Daniel Iji and his cute kids too.

BUT I WEPT ANYWAY

It was not enough to weep

It would have been just right

If other options were available

But they weren’t

On the first night

I begged God

To make the future

Better than today

But on the second night

It was just too much to bear,

To ask,

To beg.

And so, grave and ugly decisions

Were made

Or maybe dey weren’t so grave

Or so ugly anyway

Cos anybody would have done just that

And I’d already told God

I was going to do dem

I wish I hadn’t

But I wept anyway

And

It was not just worth it!

Homes are hurting,

People have forgotten how to cry...

Our family is slowly tearing apart.

PRUDENCE

PROLOGUE

‘So how much will you take?’

‘A thousand naira per subject. No more, no less.’

‘But that’s too much! How much do you think we are given?’ We have to register these candidates, book them and all.’

‘Do you agree with my terms or not?’

"Please, manage eight hundred naira plus transport fare.’

It was during the rainy season in a West African country called Nigeria. The place was Ilaro situated in the South West geopolitical zone of the country. In the depth of this city lay a barely developed school. The roads which led to the school were muddy and harboured a number of estuaries.

Mabel, a girl in her mid-teens sat facing the administrator of the school as they made bargains. She had actually been waiting for an opportunity like this. An opportunity to make some money. But she had never imagined it would turn out to be of this sort. During her school days, she had represented her school in a competition where she had performed excellently. It was there that she first met this man she was now facing. Some days after the competition, he surprising showed up at her school at Iyana Ipaja and requested an interview which he was granted. It was no longer a surprise then that when she applied to join his writing club, he willingly admitted her. Life as it used to be changed for her barely months ago after her certificate examination. She suddenly realised she needed so many things. For a girl her age, it was rather difficult for her to cope with the fact that she had few clothes. To think of how embarrassed she was to find that she was the only one putting on the school uniform to the Saturday lesson organised by Jide, an ex-student. And why was that? Obviously, there was no suitable cloth for the occasion. She had had to pretend she didn’t know they were supposed to be on ‘mufti’. And that pretense too was so obvious! She had felt even more out of place when she saw Selina and Bose whispering to each other. When she asked Selina about it on their way home, Selina had said they were discussing how very unsure Jide was about what he was teaching. Nobody had had to tell her for her to know that that was a hastily framed lie. The kind of lies people called white because you could see through them. For God’s sake, Jide was even more confident than the President himself! Well, she just shrugged. She didn’t say anything. As everyone would expect, she forgot the incident almost immediately. Or maybe her mind was preoccupied by thoughts of the forthcoming examination. Ironically, after the final exams, when she was thinking about it all, the incident had come to the forefront of her mind. ‘I need to get clothes,’ she told herself quietly as she looked through the window into the dirty street one evening. How she was going to get them became a problem because she was from a poor family. Her family was too poor. Weeks rolled into months and she decided that the only way she could get them was to work. Working was one thing she could not do at her age. She was too young and nobody would even employ her. All the same, she needed to make some money. The answer came two days ago when this man called her to tell her that he had been searching for her everywhere. At that statement, she had felt a glow of pride spread through her. A whole principal searching for her? She didn’t say anything and he went on to tell her that he needed her to help him write an examination for a candidate that won’t be coming to the examination hall. Sensing the opportunity she had been waiting for, she promised to be in his office in two days’ time. She was so excited that her mother did not stop her.

This morning, she had taken her bath hastily, had had a cursory breakfast and had made the journey down here.

GOD pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.

Henry Beecher

PART ONE

Some wounds cut so deep we forget

Where the pain comes from; we itch

To run from congealed blood

From lakes into rivers

Deltas into brimless sea

... We forget how to flow

CHAPTER ONE

As Mabel drove through the streets of Lagos, she felt very exhausted. All she wanted was to get home and have a shower. She had been very busy at work today. Imagine, she had attended to three hectic cases in a single day! The three courts where each case was heard were by no means close to one another. She had had to drive from one part of Lagos to the other. The Ajibola case was the most difficult for her to handle. It reminded her of her own childhood and even though she was defending Mr. Ajibola, she felt sorry for his wife and children and secretly hoped they won the case.

Years ago, she had suffered the pains of lack of paternal care. Her father, an irresponsible man had lost his job just before she started secondary school. He was lazy and had never really searched for another job. He had relied solely on her mother’s business and as a result, her mom had had to use all she earned in taking care of the family. She had had to feed them, clothe them and pay their school fees. Because her mother never invested back into her business, it collapsed. Things became even worse. Mabel and her immediate younger sister who were by then in secondary school suffered a lot of embarrassment. They were sent back home on several occasions, disgraced at exam times before mercifully allowed writing the examination. At the end of each school term, they never received results and knew that they had been promoted just because they were brilliant. The principal had even asked Mabel once, ‘how did you know you were promoted to this class?’ She had remained awkwardly silent and had regretted it afterwards. She wished she was so stubborn that she could have replied back. As stubborn as Eunice.

When Mabel got to her final year, she was appointed the Senior Prefect and since she was very skillful, the school gained immensely from her efforts. Nonetheless, things remained as they were. She remained the well-known debtor at school and her father remained the lazy man that he was. He still hadn’t got a job. When it was time for her mock examination, she turned out to be the only one yet to pay her fees. The school principal, as he had put it then, ‘had sent her away against his will’. She could vividly remember that day. It was one of those ugly days. Sorry, one of those ugly nights when she wept even though it wasn’t worth it. Ugly nights. Ugly tears. She was having Economics the next day but God knew she couldn’t read a word. She held on to the book but instead of reading, her eyes were awashed with tears. Her mother had pleaded, had done all she could to appease her but she wouldn’t stop and her younger sister could not but join in. The next day, her mother had followed her to the school with the little amount of money she had and had pleaded on her behalf. As was expected, she was allowed into the examination hall but had already missed her Mathematics paper. In her little Lagos home then, quarrels were the order of the day. Her mother was always quarreling with her dad. It was only now that Mabel realised how naïve her mother had been. The poor woman thought that quarrelling would make him act. Mabel could not help remembering how her mother’s nagging only made the contrary happen. Instead of acting as she wanted him to, her father would wake up every morning, clad in his dirt-infested wrapper, and walk up to the living room to start another round of slumber. Sometimes, Martha would come back from her business place to find him still sleeping on the sofa. She would plead with him to go and sleep in the bedroom or better still, go and take his bath but he wouldn’t listen.

Mabel burst into tears as she remembered her childhood experience. She uncontrollably allowed the warm liquid to drop on the steering wheel. She wanted to get it all off her chest, but the tears only reminded her of more. Of the tears she had shed each day of her final exams. Of how she had almost never registered for that examination. Of how she was admitted into the higher institution and almost never went. She instinctively picked up a handkerchief and wiped off the tears. She wished she never picked up the Ajibola case. She wished she could turn against him now. She felt an urgent desire surge through her. A desire that the law should deal with all such fathers. Fathers that would abandon their children in another man’s house. Fathers that wished their children bad luck - wanted their future destroyed. Fathers that passed the buck to their wives. Damn it! In those her childhood years, she had harboured the thought that it was not really necessary to get married. ‘Why do people ever get married?’ she usually asked herself. ‘Is it to be humiliated and left to suffer?’ She made a resolution never to get married. She didn’t want what she watched her mother pass through to befall her.

As she drove into her mansion and alighted from the car, she thought of what she could do to get distracted.

‘I want the job perfectly done.’ Selina said as Nesta started to put on his jeans.

‘I want her destroyed.