Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

The first time I heard Mother tell this account, I’d felt a gripping fear that I might have received a clearer warning in the dream of the bridge if only I’d known dreams could be warnings. I told my brother the dream after Mother recounted hers, and he said it was a warning. Mother recounted that dream again to the pastor of our church, Pastor Collins, and his wife a week or so after that. Father was not home at the time. He’d gone to buy petrol at the filling station on the outskirts of the town. The government had increased fuel price the week Boja was found from twelve naira to twenty-one naira, sending filling stations to hoard petrol and resulting in long, endless queues at stations all over the country. Father stayed in one of them from afternoon until early evening before returning with his car tank full, a cask full of kerosene in the trunk. Tired, he made straight for one of the lounges, his “throne” one, and sank into it. He was still removing his sweaty shirt when Mother began telling him about all the people that had called that day. Although she sat beside him, she was oblivious of the strong odour of palm wine that had returned with him like flies trailing a cow with a fresh wound. She spoke on for a long time until he cried out “Enough!”

“I said enough!” he repeated, already on his feet, his bare arms bursting with sinews as he stood over Mother, who had stiffened and clasped her hands on her thighs. “What is this rubbish you are even telling me, eh, my friend ? Has my house now become a stray zoo for every kind of living thing in this town? How many people will come to commiserate? The dogs will soon come, then the goats, the frogs, and even the puffy-cheeked cats. Do you not know that some of these people are simply nothing but mourners who cry louder than the bereaved? Will there be no limit?”

Mother did not answer him. She dropped her eyes to her thigh that was covered in a faded wrappa , shaking her head as she stared at it. By the light of the kerosene lantern on the table in front of them, I saw her eyes filling up with tears. I have come to believe that that confrontation was the needle that poked her psychic wound and it started bleeding from that day. She stopped talking, and the silence that would numb her entire world began. From then on, she sat in the house, silent, staring wildly at nothing in particular. Most times when Father spoke to her, she stared merely at him as if she had heard nothing at all. This tongue, which was now frozen, used to produce words as fungi produced spores. When agitated, words often sprang like tigers from her mouth, and poured like leaks from a broken pipe when sober. But from that night onwards, words pooled in her brain but only very little leaked out; they congealed in her mind. But when Father — fretting over the silence — pestered her daily, she broke the regime of silence and complained frequently about a presence she perceived to be that of Boja’s restless spirit. By the last few days of September, the complaints had become a daily nagging that Father could no longer take.

“How can a city woman be this superstitious?” he burst out one morning after Mother had told him she’d felt Boja standing in the kitchen while she was cooking. “Just how, my friend ?”

Mother’s ire was sparked profoundly; she went into a fury. “How dare you tell me this, Eme?” she screamed back at him. “How dare you? Am I not the mother of these kids? Can I not know when their spirits disturb me?”

She wiped her wet hands on her wrappa as Father, grinding his teeth, grabbed the remote control, and amped the volume of the television until the voice of the Yoruba actor’s incantations threatened to drown out Mother’s voice.

“You can pretend you are not listening to me,” she taunted, slapping her hands together. “But you cannot pretend our children died the way they should have. Eme, you and I know they didn’t! Just go out and see. A na eme ye eme —it isn’t the norm, anywhere. Parents should not bury their own kids; it should be the other way around!”

Although the television was still on and a movie effect was blaring like a siren from the screen, Mother’s words wrapped the room with a quilt of silence. Outside, the horizon was covered with a grey mist of heavy clouds. Just as Mother sank into one of the lounges, after she finished speaking, blasts of thunder ripped through the sky, sending a whoosh of rain-soaked wind that slammed the kitchen door shut. Power vanished in an instant, throwing the room into near darkness. Father closed the windows, but left the curtain for the light that still could be got from outside. He returned to his seat, silent, surrounded by legions bred by Mother’s words.

Mother’s space in the room of existence gradually shrank as days passed. She became encircled by ordinary words, common tropes, familiar songs, all of which transformed into fiends whose sole purpose was the obliteration of her being. Nkem’s familiar body, long arms and long plaited hair — all of which she used to adore — suddenly became abhorrent. And once, when Nkem attempted to sit on her lap, she called her “this thing trying to mount my lap,” scaring away the little girl. Father, who was fixed in the world of the Guardian at the time, was alarmed.

“Gracious me! Are you serious, Adaku?” he asked in horror. “Was it Nkem you treated that way?”

Father’s words caused a drastic change in Mother’s countenance. As if she’d been blind and had suddenly regained her sight, she gazed at Nkem with weedy scrutiny, her mouth agape. Then, glancing from Nkem to Father and back again, she mumbled “Nkem” with her tongue darting about in her mouth as if it were unhinged. She looked up again, and said: “This is Nkem, my daughter” in a way that seemed as if she were — all at once — making a statement while asking and suggesting it at the same time.

Father stood there as if both his feet were nailed to the ground. Although his mouth opened, he did not speak.

When Mother again said: “I did not know it was her,” all he did was nod, and, lifting Nkem, who was wailing and sucking her thumb to his chest, quietly walked out of the house.

In reply, Mother began to cry.

“I did not know it was her,” she said.

The next day, Father made breakfast while Mother, dressed in sweaters as if sick with a cold, sobbed on her bed and refused to rise. She lay there all day until nightfall, when she emerged from her room while we were all seated, watching television with Father.

“Eme, do you see the white cow grazing here?” she asked, pointing around the room.

“What, what cow?”

She threw her head backwards and laughed throatily. Her lips were dry and cracked.

“Can’t you see the cow eating the grass there?” she demanded, opening her palm.

“Which cow, my friend ?” She’d said it with so much conviction in her eyes that Father, for a moment, looked around the room as though he expected that a cow might actually be in it.

“Eme, have you gone blind? Is it that you can’t see that shiny white cow?”

She pointed at me seated on a lone chair with its cushion on my lap. I could not believe it. I was so surprised that when she pointed, I’d turned back to see — as if it was possible — if a cow was behind the chair in which I sat; then I realized that Mother had actually pointed at me.

“Look at one there, and one there”—she went on, pointing at Obembe and David—“and one is eating outside while one is in this room — they are grazing everywhere. Eme, why can’t you see them?”

“Will you shut up?” Father roared. “What are you talking about? Good gracious! When did your children become cows grazing in our house?”