You Can Cry If You Want To
“Francisca, are you not coming with us?”
Zirachi stood at the door to my room wearing a gown sewn from the white lace material we’d bought for mummy’s Thanksgiving burial service. She didn’t meet my eyes when she asked the question. Instead, she shuffled her feet nervously and tried to smoothen the wrinkles on her rumpled dress with her hands, as if doing that would straighten it.
Disgusted, I put down the novel I was reading.
“Why didn’t you iron your dress?” I asked. She flinched at the sternness in my tone, but I kept my gaze steadily on her. The wrinkles on her dress were making me anxious and angry — mostly angry.
She shuffled her feet some more. “I didn’t… I wasn’t. The iron is shocking.” she said.
I hated how annoyingly timid she sounded. A year ago, she was the most outspoken, vivacious nine-year-old. Now she skulked around the house as if she was afraid and hiding from all of us.
“The iron is shocking.” I mimicked mockingly. “You can spend hours watching your dumb cartoons, but you can’t take five minutes to learn how to press a fucking dress. Go and take it off!”
“But we are going to be late.”
“I said go and take off that dress!”
“Dike and Daddy will leave us oh. They are already in the car.”
I threw the novel I was reading at her, and it missed her by a few inches. “GO AND TAKE OFF THAT STUPID DRESS! YOU WANT PEOPLE TO LOOK AT YOU AND THINK YOU DON’T HAVE A MOTHER?!”
Her left hand clenched tightly around the hem of the dress, and she glared at me. And for a second, I saw my sister, the vivacious, outspoken one — the one who would have thrown my novel right back and cursed at me for screaming at her like that. But she disappeared as quickly as she appeared. Her fingers loosened from the dress, and gently she took it off, folded it carefully, and held it out to me.
I felt a desperate need to throw something else at her so my sister would appear again. So she’d scream and cuss and stomp her foot dramatically as she walked away. I missed that sister. I missed her so badly.
Infuriated, I snatched the cloth from her hand and watched her walk to her room in yellow pants and a brown singlet. The sight of that infuriated me even more, couldn’t she have tried to match them? She had tons of matching underwear in that huge box of hers. When did she stop caring about matching her clothes?
I looked at her white dress in my hand and sighed. Of course.
I walked to the pressing board at the side of my room and plugged in the iron, careful not to touch the exposed wire that was shocking. Then I waited sixty seconds for the iron to get hot and began to press the dress.
Mummy died a year ago today, on Mothering Sunday. It had rained the night before, heavily. I’d heard the heavy raindrops beating down on the roof and groaned. The roads were going to be disgusting in the morning, especially the one leading to the fruit seller Mummy bought fruits from after church every Sunday. That morning, we piled ourselves in the car only to walk the remaining ten-minute journey to church because the road was covered in thick, red mud and Daddy didn’t want to risk having his car stuck.
I groaned the entire walk because I knew Mummy was in too much of a good mood to snap at me. She hated whining. But, it was Mothering Sunday, she was in her gorgeous C.W.O attire, we had bought her gifts, and nothing was going to ruin her mood. Mass took longer than usual but I didn’t mind, because I had my phone. But afterward, Mummy stayed back as we prepared to leave.
“We are having Ushers’ meeting,” she informed Daddy.
“You people are having an Ushers’ meeting on Mother’s Day?” he asked. As if the idea was completely ludicrous. “Don’t they give you Ushers a day off?”
“There are no days off in the house of God,” Mummy replied and Dike chuckled. He was fourteen years old, two years younger than me, but you’d never tell from the way he towered over me.
“You know your children bought cake for you?” Daddy said.
“Yes of course,” she said beaming, her entire face lit up as if the clouds had opened to usher the sun into a particularly beautiful, sunny day.
She was happy when we presented the cake to her, jumping, squealing, and crying. She cried even harder when Daddy presented his gift to her: a large box filled with three new pairs of Hollandis wrappers and three pairs of shoes. When she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, he squirmed away shyly and said, “leave me, joor,” as if the sight of her deliriously happy wasn’t filling him up with warmth. He didn’t even like coming to church, he only did because it was Mothering Sunday and Mummy insisted.
Zirachi came up to us then. She had spent the entirety of mass gisting with a bratty friend of hers and now she skipped towards us, her face shining with happiness.
“Mummy, are you ready to go?” She asked
“Not yet, I’ll be back by 6pm.”
“6pm!” Daddy and I echoed. Dike said nothing. He had his head buried in his phone. We might have all been invisible to him.
“Why are you people acting as if this is my first time coming back from church by 6pm?” Mummy queried. “Ah ahn! Go home. I’ll be back home quickly. Share some of the rice with our neighbors.”
“And the cake?” Zirachi asked eagerly. “We should share it? I want to give some to my friend.”
“No, don’t touch my cake. We can share it when I get back”
She hugged Daddy again and gave him another kiss on the cheek. I was jealous of that now. He had gotten to hold her one last time, feel the softness and warmth of her body, smell her fruity perfume, and shyly kiss her back, while the rest of us made do with leftovers in our dreams — while I woke up every night and sat in her wardrobe, sniffing her clothes, desperately trying to smell her fruity perfume.
I realize now I could have hugged her too. She had been so happy that day, giving hugs to everyone. She was a naturally happy person, but that day was different. Her face was radiant, bursting with joy. Everyone who walked past her smiled as if they were taking a little of her happiness for themselves.
I could have hugged her, but I didn’t. Because my friends were a few feet away and I wanted to be cool. Because I got a mean text from my boyfriend, and I needed to rush home and compose the most scathing reply in the comfort of my room. I didn’t hug her. Instead, we went home and waited, but she never came back.
I thought of that cake now, how it sat in the fridge for days before we threw it out and I pressed the iron harder. I pressed it until I smelled the acrid smell of burning cloth. I pulled the iron quickly, yelping as it burned my hand, but it was too late. There was already a burned, brownish triangle at the bottom of Zirachi’s dress.
“Fuck!” I cursed. “Fuck! fuck! Fuccck!”
“Here,” I threw my dress at Zirachi and she caught it reflexively. “The iron burned your dress; you can wear mine.”
She dumped my dress on her bed and looked at me like she was about to convulse. The old Zirachi burst out and I pulled back in displeasure. She had a way of crying hysterically to draw attention to herself. I pursed my lips in disgust. I didn’t miss this side of her.
“You burned my dress?!” she exploded.
“It was a mistake,” I said.
“You burned my dress?!”
“You can wear mine.”
“Who told you to iron it? My dress was fine like that!” She burst into tears, and I clenched my fist, I swear to God, this stupid brat!
“Just wear my dress! It’s the same style for God’s sake!”
“Your dress is too huge for me! It’s too big! It will be flowing everywhere!
Huge? I was not that fat! “It won’t.” I implored, ignoring the implication of her statement. “It won’t. Just wear it please!”
“No!”
“Please!”
Daddy came in then, fuming. He was dressed in his white lace, too, sewn in long trousers and a long shirt, just like Dike who was trailing behind him soberly. He was just as tall as Daddy now. Dike caught my eye but I looked away and clenched my fist tighter. He should better not look at me.
Daddy hadn’t been late for mass in a year. Not since mummy’s burial mass. He went religiously now, 8am every Sunday and 6pm after work on Wednesday. Mummy would have been so proud, that was all she had wanted, for him to go to church. She would be so disappointed that I hadn’t gone in a year.
“What is going on?” he asked. “Zirachi, why aren’t you dressed? Do you want us to be late for your mother’s anniversary mass?”
“Francisca burned my dress!” Zirachi wailed.
The angry vein in my father’s forehead throbbed and he looked at me with a mixture of perplexion and anger. “Why? Why Francesca?”
“It was a mistake. I just wanted to iron it for her.”
“What is wrong with you Francesca?”
I said nothing. He asked me that question a lot now. Why are you coming back at this time Francesca? What is wrong with you? You got an F in math? What is wrong with you? Why are you still lying in bed by 8am? Are you not going to school? What is wrong with you? When did you start cussing with that F word? What is wrong with you?
Dike never got asked any of these questions. He went from a C student to a straight-A student in a year. Joined the football team in school after steadily mocking them for always losing. He had joined the Mass Servers too, something Mummy had begged him to do for years. He looked at his phone less now, sometimes leaving it uncharged for days. He barely talked now too, answering questions in monosyllabic words as if he couldn’t be bothered to give up a whole sentence. I hated that nonsense. Who wanted to talk to him anyway?
“I don’t know how you people are going to do it,” Daddy said, “but I want to be there when they read the mass intentions. Fix it Francesca! You have ten minutes or I’m going without you.”
He would never, but I didn’t say anything.
I went back to my room, grabbed a pair of scissors from my drawer, and began to cut out the burned part of the dress. I finished the first cut, but the burn was still there. I went again, this time cutting off more than I intended. The dress was short now, too short for church. I held back tears in frustration. Zirachi walked in just then and her eyes widened in shock.
“You cut my dress? With scissors?! What is wrong with you? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”
“Wait, I can…” She grabbed the dress and stormed out of the room.
Our church was a spiraling one-storey building with high ceilings and what often felt like countless rows of chairs. The ceilings were decorated with gold chandeliers and angelic wall paintings of chubby baby angels with red lips; who except for the silk cloth covering their privates, were naked. On the wall, just above the purple and milk-themed decorated altar was the painting of the Last Supper and below it, a large bronze cross with a bronze Jesus hung on it. The Priest and the mass servers were also dressed in purple and milk robes. We were in the season of Lent.
I still remember how I gasped in awe the first time I walked into the church. The colors and the space, and the gold chandeliers had stolen my breath. Beside me, Mummy had beamed with pride, as if she built the church with her bare hands.
“It’s very beautiful, shebi?” she asked and I nodded, too stunned to speak.
We got to church five minutes before the lector read the mass intentions and took our seats in the middle of the church, positioned perfectly to see the altar. Mummy used to sit in the back, right next to the exit, so she could direct parishioners to their seats. She used to do it with the most gracious smile.
The Lector cleared her throat and began to read the mass intentions. Ours was the second:
“The family of Mr. Ohaneze, remembering their wife and mother on the first anniversary of her death.”
Zirachi clenched my fingers tightly when they read that, and I pulled them away. She had ended up wearing my dress, and she was right, it was big on her. I looked at Dike and Daddy to see their expressions. Daddy was rubbing his eyes, he did that a lot at Mummy’s funeral, so much that at the end of the day, his eyes were blood red. I’d caught him doing it again a month ago when he picked up Mummy’s photo in the living room, caressing it when he thought nobody was looking. But then I walked in, and he saw me and began to rub his eyes. He rubbed them all the way to his bedroom and closed the door.
But Dike, he sat stoically facing front, his face devoid of expression, and that made me hate him just a little more.
Dike hadn’t cried at Mummy’s burial. Not when complete strangers burst into tears beside me, not when Mummy’s C.W.O women climbed the podium one after the other to talk about how kind she had been. How she never missed a donation for Saint Vincent De Paul, how she was always the first usher to come and the last to leave. One talked about how Mummy had helped raise money for her daughter’s C-section operation, making up the money herself when it wasn’t enough and bringing pepper soup every day after her daughter returned from the hospital. She burst into tears and her C.W.O women came on the podium to console her, many of them crying as they did. Even the Priest had shed a few tears. But not Dike. His eyes had been completely dry. After the wake keep, he had sat in a corner with his friends and even chuckled when one of them clapped him on the back and said,
“It’s your turn now bro.” Like his own mother wasn’t alive and well.
It was also this friend’s dumb sister who asked me if I wouldn’t change my WhatsApp profile picture from my mother’s face because wasn’t it already a year?
It had been ten months and five days. I blocked her after that. It’s not her fault, I hope it’s her turn soon.
Mass was unusually long. Maybe it was because Mummy’s dress felt heavy on my body. I’d picked the dress that held her perfume the most, it was a black silk dress. Daddy had wanted to complain, I saw the rage seething just underneath, but Dike had softly touched his arm and he had taken a deep breath and walked out of the house.
Mass was long. Maybe it was because the Priest excitedly talked about Jesus turning water into wine. And how He had eventually done that because His mother had asked him to. He went on and on, his voice rising in excitement every time he hit a big point. His thirty-minute homily turned into forty-five.
“Mothers are quite powerful,” he said. “And there’s none more powerful than Our Mother Mary. It wasn’t Jesus’ time, but He did it, He did it because His mother asked.” And it made me think of Mummy and how I’d joined the choir because she badgered me. I hated that choir, hated that stupid choirmaster who cared more about dues and penalties than coordinating us to sing us to sing. When I complained, Mummy had asked, “Are you singing for God or your choirmaster?”
But what does God care about me singing anyway? What does He care about anything?”
Mass was long, maybe it was because the announcements ran lengthy and boring. I tuned out and tuned in and the announcer was still droning on. Harvest this, building fund that. Didn’t these people have a social media page or something? Couldn’t they write them there so the people who cared could go read them there?
I sighed in relief when they finally called for Mummy’s Thanksgiving. As we went to the back of the church to line up, dozens of parishioners lined up behind us. The women from C.W.O, the Ushers, some people from the choir, members of St Vincent De Paul, and a couple of Reverend sisters. I wanted to hold Mummy’s picture, but Daddy gave it to Zirachi. It hurt. I wanted to hold Mummy’s picture.
As we walked slowly to the altar with our Thanksgiving gifts, I thought about how obscene it was that we were thanking God because my mother was dead.
After church, people came up to us to shake our hands and pat us on the back.
“Sorry, it is well.” One said.
“She’s in heaven now.” Another added.
“Take heart.” Another one said.
“You know you are the mother to younger ones now?” One woman said to me, and Daddy sighed. It made me want to run to the car and drive away. Or at least sit in it until Daddy finished with the faux pleasantries and came to take us home.
I don’t want to be anyone’s mother. I want my mother back.
The priest came to visit us later that evening. He was out of his priestly uniform now, and he looked… ordinary. On the altar, he had looked divine, but out of his vestments, he had a face you wouldn’t spare a second glance. He was so forgettable. Mummy loved this priest. She used to gush about him in a way that made Daddy’s eyes cloud with jealousy. He was much younger than Mummy, and even I could see she talked about him the way a proud mother gushed about her son, but that made no difference to Daddy. He would roll his eyes and turn up the volume of the TV whenever Mummy began her revere of Father Joshua. It used to make me laugh so hard. Even now, I couldn’t think about it without cracking a smile.
Daddy called all of us into the parlor. Zirachi had changed from my dress into pink shorts and a white frozen-themed T-shirt. Dike sat by her side, looking impassive as always, and something in me tightened even further.
“Welcome, Father Joshua,” Daddy said. He was friendly with the priest now. Mummy would have loved it.
“Thank you,” Father Joshua replied with a sober smile. He fiddled with his watch a little as if he was trying to figure out what to say. I remembered he hadn’t attended Mummy’s funeral and wake because he had been on some church assignment. Mummy would have approved.
“You know I was in Ibadan when Father Vincent called to tell me about your mom. About the accident. I couldn’t believe it. Your mom was…”
“One time,” I interrupted, and Daddy gave me the ‘what is wrong with you’ look. I ignored it and continued. “One time, Mummy threw a plate at me because she was asking me to pass her the ugwu but I was texting on my phone. It cut me,” I pointed to the top of my left shoulder. “Right here.”
Everyone turned to look at me, and Daddy intensified the look.
“Have you ever seen my Mummy angry?” I asked Father Joshua; he shook his head and I laughed.
“It was epic. And she could shout, too. God, she knew how to shout at somebody.”
The night she threw the plate at me, her eyes shone in shock when she saw the blood pouring out of my shoulder. She turned off the cooking gas immediately, took me to the bathroom, and cleaned my wound with spirit while I sobbed. Then later that night, she snuck an extra piece of meat into my soup to apologize. I didn’t bring my phone into the kitchen again after that.
“Do you think Mummy is in heaven?” Zirachi asked.
Father Joshau nodded without missing a beat.
“Because she made God happy?” Zirachi asked again. I could hear the anxiousness in her voice. “Mummy always said you’ll go to heaven if you make God happy.”
Father Joshua smiled and nodded again.
“Aren’t good things supposed to happen to the people who make God happy?” I asked
Father Joshua thought about it, “well, it doesn’t exactly work like that,” he answered.
“Then how does it work?” I asked.
“Francesca…” Daddy started; I ignored him again. “Explain to me how it works.” I continued. “My Mummy spent all her life making God happy. And making God happy is very hard. Very, very hard. I know. I keep failing at it. But nobody did it like my Mummy. She went to church every day and spent hours there. Hours! She gave to the poor, she served, she worked, she fasted every Wednesday. She did everything right and she still fucking died.”
“Francesca!”
“WHAT!”
“DON’T TALK TO THE PRIEST LIKE THAT! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Father Joshua said. “His calm voice contrasted sharply with ours.
“DON’T TELL ME THAT!” I screamed. “IT’S NOT OKAY!”
Zirachi was sobbing now. Her chest heaving under her frozen-themed t-shirt.
“Sometimes,” Father Joshua said sadly, “sometimes God takes the best of us.”
“Did He have to do it like that?” I sobbed. “Like that! Did Father Vincent tell you about the trailer? It climbed… it climbed on her! AND NOBODY, NOBODY helped her. They stole her purse while she and the bike man bled to death. We couldn’t… She didn’t… We couldn’t even recognize her. Her face, it was… It was… Did He have to take her like that?”
I tried to breathe, but my sobs choked me.
Daddy was still, his eyes were blood red again but this time a single tear slid down his right cheek. He moped it quickly with his handkerchief. But Zirachi stood up, went over to him, and hugged him. He hugged her back and the handkerchief fell from his hand as they both dissolved into wracking sobs.
It was the first time I was seeing him cry. It was surreal.
I turned to Dike, and he was crying too, softly, like he didn’t want anyone to hear him. I felt rage well up in me, mixing with my sobs and choking me. Now he cries. Now he cries!
“You are crying?” I asked. “Isn’t it a little too late for that?” Dike looked into my eyes, and I saw pain; raw, suppressed, overwhelming pain, but I plunged ahead.
“You didn’t cry at Mummy’s funeral.” I barked in his face, and he shrank back from me “You laughed when that dumb idiot told you it was your turn. And now you are crying, like some, some stupid baby! Shut your stupid mouth!”
“STOP IT!”
It was Father Joshua. He looked angry. I didn’t think a priest could get angry. Dike got up and ran to his room.
“You are being mean,” he said, gentler now. “Stop it.”
“I’m being mean? Me?! Me?!” I laughed mirthlessly. “God is the mean one!”
“Why don’t you ask God?” he said
“What?”
“You are furious. You are angry, I can see that and I’m so sorry. So why don’t you ask Him? You have so many questions about your mom. Why don’t you ask God?”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t feel Him anymore.” I sobbed. “I used to. Sometimes me and Mummy would pray at night and when I’d go to sleep, I’d feel this gentle, reassuring calm. Like He was there, like He had been there with us praying. But I don’t feel that anymore. Was He ever there? All those nights praying? Why did He let Mummy die?”
“I don’t know. I can’t answer your question. I asked the same thing when my mom died. And the answer I got, well, it’s mine. And you need to get yours. So, you ask Him. Ask Him why he took your mother away. Scream if you need to. Be angry. God can take it.”
He sighed then like he was so very exhausted. “I have Mass in an hour,” he said. “I need to go now.”
Daddy nodded, he looked exhausted too. His tears had stopped as quickly as they began. “Let me see you off,” he said. “I’m sorry about my daughter. She didn’t used to talk like this. She’s just… we are just…”
“I understand,” Father Joshua said with a sad smile. He patted Daddy on the back. “I understand.”
As they both walked out, Father Joshua paused and turned back to me.
“Ask Him,” he said again.
“I don’t want to,” I said back.
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid His answer won’t be good enough.”
I tried to sleep that night, but I couldn’t. Mummy’s face floated in and out of my mind and the Priest’s words echoed in my head. I haven’t prayed since Mummy died. Since the night Daddy came to give us the news. His face had been so stricken, that image is burned in my head forever.
I tossed and turned some more, and then I took a deep breath and got up. I looked at my wall clock, the time was 12:30am. Ask. That’s what Father Joshua said. Ask Him.
So, I got down on my knees and tried to form the words, but they didn’t come. I felt the tears come again. I didn’t know what to say. Mummy always did. Maybe I thought, maybe if I couldn’t speak, perhaps He could understand my thoughts.
I knelt in silence for a few more minutes, then I got up. I felt a stirring. My answer could wait. I made my way to Dike’s room, turned the knob and for the first time in a year, his door was open. I heard it then, his sobs, they sounded painful. Like he was gasping for air, struggling to breathe. I opened the door and there he was, on the bed, crossed-legged, crying. He wiped his eyes when he saw me and tried to arrange his face, but there was no wiping the pain I saw. My heart broke.
“Please leave my room,” he said.
“You can cry if you want,” I said as I approached the bed. “You should cry.”
“Go away, Francesca.”
“I’m sorry.” I sobbed, “You can cry if you want.” I was in front of his bed now, just a few inches away from him.
“GO AWAY!” He screamed.
“I’m sorry! You can cry if you want to,” I said over and over. “You can cry if you want to.”
And he cried, heaving and sobbing, with snort and tears pouring out of his face. I climbed his bed, knelt in front of him, and hugged him. I could feel his body shake with sobs; with all the pain he’d held in for a year. He’d wanted to cry all year. He’d wanted to so badly. He just hadn’t thought he was allowed to.
“I’m sorry,” I said as he cried into my chest, “I’m so sorry.”
I felt some of the weight lift off my shoulders. Mummy was gone. It wasn’t okay.
But maybe someday, it was going to be.
Thank you for reading ♥️
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