We were happy that she recovered and we resumed our farm work. Suddenly, Mother, too, got sick and then our problems doubled. Our thatched house, especially the room where Mother kept and locked all my late father’s and grandfather’s valuable belongings, needed some repairs again. I would have been able to do these repairs alone with the help of few friends and neighbors if Mother’s ill-health had allowed her to carry the other family burdens.
We could not afford much for her drugs and the little we had was used to pay for them. Food became a daily agony and we suffered from hunger while Mother cried and moaned, not for the sickness that had tied her down but for us. All day and night, I waited upon her and hoped she would soon get well enough to provide for us again. During this period, I acted mostly on whatever my instinct tells me to do.
Ukeje had never ceased coming to see Mother. But because Mother would not accept anything he came with, we did not benefit from his visits. We were once nearly tempted to accept his gifts, but restrained ourselves. Usually he went back with his gifts though we needed them. His love for Mother was clear because for all these years after the death of father, he had not married another wife even when his first wife could not give him a child. If Mother had accepted him, he would have made her ‘two bodies’, then he could come for the final formalities that would signal their marriage. ‘Two bodies’ was the name given to anyone who is pregnant, because our parents did not want little children asking questions on how a child comes into the womb of a woman. Such things were deep secrets meant for the adults alone. Of course, we never bothered because we believe that the Almighty Chukwu who lives in heaven or our little chi was responsible for giving children which formed in our mother’s womb.
As for Ukeje, he strongly believe that Mother would accept his hand in marriage, once we all grow up. He believed she would give him male children as Mother had given birth to three male children in succession. Mother’s family had a history of producing male children when men married them and rushed there each time a female child was born to declare an interest to marry or when their women were widowed.
Ukeje was nice to Mother and other women who had lost their mates but he was widely disliked by everyone. I could tell from Mother’s behavior that she had decided not to marry Ukeje. I believed that while most widowed women were guilty of making themselves cheap to men, Mother was different and would never descend so low to another man for marriage nor for money.
After Ukeje’s last visit, I questioned her over Ukeje’s incessant call to our house. I noticed that my mother became irritated and I could not quite understand her anger when she had not told me anything. I was too young to know it, but was expecting a reply.
When she became very ill, her old self disappeared. She looked like a dead wood struggling to sprout again. I prayed to God and to our father’s chi to make her live and stand again. It was purely by inheritance that we had a personal god which guided us while we are alive. However, it was ironic that at death of father, it ceases to provide us with any cover.
Mother worried about what would happen to us and who would take care of us if anything should happen and this made her unhappy. It was better for one couple to survive and live to see the children grow than for the both to die. No guardian would care for children the way their parents would.
Mother needed much attention and I tried my best to help her. At intervals, I felt her temperature and noticed that each blink of an eye and time that passed inched her nearer to death’s path and closer to where she would soon belong. I pretended I was strong by not crying, so Mother through me could find strength to pull through. She looked into my eyes as though she was sending a message to me, that I should be prepared to carry the burden of the family if anything should happen. I feared inside me but could not let it show. It was the same way father looked at me the day he died.
Merely to look at Mother on her sick bed was painful. She had grown so thin, staring at every known direction in the room. She looked at us whenever she opened her eyes and lied quiet like a steady wind. From that moment, I ceased to be a child and to react as one.
I tried to behave like a man, a full-grown man. Old men never cry or let out a tear as a result of frustration. I wanted Mother to be proud of me and my younger ones to depend on me for emotional strength when Mother was no more.