Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

With every day that passed, Ikenna became more distant from us. I hardly saw him in those days. His existence was reduced to these minimal movements around the house, the noise of his often exaggerated coughing and of the transistor radio whose volume he’d often raise so high Mother would ask him to turn it down if she was at home. Sometimes I saw him briefly leave the house, in haste mostly, not once seeing his face. I saw him again later that same week when he came out to see a football match on television. David had taken ill the previous night and vomited his dinner. Mother did not go to her store at the town bazaar that day, but sat at home to nurse David. After school, while Mother looked after David in her room, my brothers and I watched the match. Ikenna — who could not resist seeing the match, but also could not send the rest of us out of the room because Mother was there — sat aloft at the dining table as mute as a deer. It was almost at the end of the half-time when Mother came into the sitting room with a ten-naira bill in her hand and said: “I want both of you to go and get David some medicine.” Although she did not mention names, she’d apparently addressed Ikenna and Boja; they ran errands outside the house because they were older. For a moment after Mother spoke, none of them moved an inch. This staggered Mother.

“Mama, am I your only child?” Ikenna replied rubbing his chin where Obembe had told me he’d seen some beard earlier. Although I had not noticed it at the time, I did not dispute it. Ikenna had just turned fifteen, and to my eyes, he was now a full adult able to grow beards. Yet, the thought that he was old came with the strong fear that once he grew into an adult, he would disconnect from us, go to higher college or just leave home. That thought never fully formed at the time though. It hung in my mind like a television acrobat, who, having just made a prodigious leap remained — after a click of the pause button — in mid-air, unable to complete the jump.

“What?” Mother asked.

“Can’t you send someone else? Must it always be me? I’m tired and don’t want to go anywhere.”

“You and Boja will go and get it whether you like it or not. Inugo —Do you hear?”

Ikenna dropped his eyes, in a moment of wild contemplation and then, shaking his head, said: “Okay, if you insist it must be me, I will go, but I must go alone.”

He stood and made forward to take the money, but Mother retracted the bill into her fist, concealing it. This shocked Ikenna. He stepped back, aghast. “Won’t you give me the money and let me go?” he asked.

“Wait, let me ask you. What has your brother done to you? I really want to know, really .”

“Nothing!” Ikenna cried. “Nothing, Mama, I’m okay. Just give me the money and let me go.”

“I’m not talking about you but about your relationship with your brother. Look at Boja’s lip.” She pointed to Boja’s injury that was now almost fully healed. “Look at what you did to him; what you did to your blood brother—”

“Just give me the money and let me go!” Ikenna bellowed and stretched out his hand.

But Mother, unruffled, continued while he was speaking, so that they competed for the same moment, giving way to a rush of words that came out from both of them as: “ Nwanne gi ye mu n hulu ego nwa anra ih nhulu ka mu ga ba —Your brother give me who suckled the money the same breasts and let me as you did go !”

“Give it to me and let me go!” Ikenna cried now, louder, as if enraged even more by every word Mother had said that’d climbed on his own words, but Mother responded with soft tsks and monotonous shaking of her head.

“Just give me the money, I want to go alone,” Ikenna said in a more restrained voice. “I beg you; please, just give me the money.”

“May thunder strike your mouth, Ikenna! Chinekem eh! My God! When did you start challenging me, eh, Ikenna?”

“What did I do to you now?” Ikenna shouted and began stamping mad on the floor in protest. “What is this? Why are you always nit-picking on me? What have I done to you, this woman? Why don’t you let me alone?”

Seated there, we all — like Mother — were shocked by Ikenna’s address of Mother, our mother , as “this woman.”

“Ikenna, is that you?” she asked in a subdued voice, pointing her forefinger at him. “Is that you, a duck that flutters its wings like a cock does? Is that you?” But as she was speaking, Ikenna made for the door. Mother watched as he opened it, then snapping her fingers, raised her voice after him, “Just wait until your father calls, I’ll tell him what you have become. Don’t worry, just let him return.”

Ikenna hissed and then — in a show of brazen defiance unprecedented in our house — stormed out of the house, forcefully slamming the door behind him. As if to enunciate what had just happened, a car honked insanely for a length of time, and when it finally stopped, it left the din to echo in my head, thickening the enormity of Ikenna’s defiance. Mother settled into one of the lounges, shock and anger tightening their grip around her heart, as she mumbled despairingly to herself, her hands clutched around her bosom.

“He has grown, Ikenna has grown horns.”

I was moved to see her in such despair. It seemed a part of her body, which she had got accustomed to touching, had suddenly sprouted thorns and every effort made to touch that part merely resulted in bleeding.

“Mama,” Obembe called to her.

“Eh, Nnam — my father,” she replied.

“Give me the money,” Obembe said. “I could go to get the medicine, and Ben could come with me. I’m not afraid.”

She looked up at him and nodded, her eyes lightening up with a smile.

“Thank you, Obe,” she said. “But it is dark, so Boja will go with you. You both should be careful.”

“I will go too,” I said, rising to get my clothes.

“No, Ben,” Mother said. “Stay here with me. Two is enough.”

In the state of mind I have come to develop after the breakdown of our lives, I often remember that phrase, “Two is enough,” as a foreboding of the things that would befall our family a few weeks after that day. I sat down beside Mother and Obembe and pondered about how much Ikenna had changed. I’d never seen him act rude to Mother; for he loved her greatly. Of all of us, he looked the most like her. He took her colour of the tropical anthills. In this part of Africa, married women often went by the name of their first child. Hence, Mother was commonly known as Mama Ike or Adaku. Ikenna enjoyed most of the earliest cares that she ever gave her kids. It was in his cot we all laid years later. We all inherited his baskets of medicines and baby-care things. He had stood on Mother’s side against anyone in the past — even Father. Sometimes when we disobeyed Mother, he punished us before she took any action. Their partnership was what gave Father the satisfaction that we could be well reared, even in his absence. The small depression on the fourth finger of Father’s right hand was a scar from Ikenna’s bite. Years before I was born, Father hit Mother in a fit of rage. Ikenna swooped in on him and bit him on his finger, naturally ending the fight.

THE METAMORPHOSIS

Ikenna was undergoing a metamorphosis:

A life-changing experience that continued with each passing day. He closed himself off from the rest of us. But though he was no longer accessible, he began to leave shattering traces of himself around the house in actions that left lasting impacts on our lives. One such incident occurred at the beginning of the week following that altercation with Mother. It was a parents-teacher day, so school let out early. Ikenna remained alone in his room, while Boja, Obembe and I sat in our room playing a game of cards. It was a particularly hot day and we were all naked to the waist, seated on the carpet. Our wooden shutter was wide open, wedged with a small stone to let in air. Upon hearing the door of his room open and close, Boja said: “That is Ike going out.”