Changing Times
We prayed he would return in a good mood but you never knew. It was increasingly rare that he returned with a smile for anyone. Maybe Chichi sometimes, our youngest who he considered a baby as she was only eighteen months old. We would rush to meet him as he parked the car, echoing “Daddy welcome... welcome Daddy...” He would grunt his response then instructions, often to me “Afam, bring in the bag in the boot, be careful with it”. He would quickly survey the living room, the first room anyone stepped into as you came through the double glass doors. A frown, deepening as he noticed something, there was always something no matter how careful we had been. “Nneoma, so you cannot clear those books from that stool, why is this place always upside down? What exactly are you doing all day? Afam, who touched the stereo today? I have warned you children that I will beat anybody who damages this set. That is how you people broke the TV last time.”
He would stride angrily to the bedroom, my mom following with soothing words after asking us to quickly put away whatever offending item was still out there. We were happy most of the time, only upset if we became the object of my father’s anger but such sad feelings didn’t last long. I couldn’t tell you anything about my parents' happiness at that time, they were mom and dad, busy with life and four children...tense discussions were what adults did, lively discussions if there was some family occasion.
Then came the day that my dad lost it all. Bad deals followed by the biggest of them all, a loan from a bank for a shipment of automobile parts from the Netherlands which never arrived.
“This Yoruba man don finish me. Ha egbule m,” that was his declaration to Mr Ofordile, one of the owners of a parts shop that he supplied to. I often heard adults characterise people this way, identifying them by tribe ‘that Igbo man’ ‘that Hausa man’, and if they were from the same tribe, ‘that Mbaise man’. It came up when there was bad news. My father had fallen for a promise of imports at better rates, moved to a new contact introduced to him by an old friend and business mate, and borrowed more than he ever had before in order to make up for past losses through this deal. The stories from the new contact were different everyday – the order was not due yet, the ship must have stopped at Ghana, or maybe it would come through Cotonou – it was many months and nothing arrived. Then the contact seemed to vanish into thin air too.
“How dare you? Are you talking to me like that?” now he was roaring at my mother, “if I say they will not go to school for the whole term, they will not go! They are my children, I can do whatever I want with them.’
My mother was soothing, placating, “Di'm, I’m just saying it will not get to that, God will not let it get to that. My children...our children, stop school? Why? It’s not as if we don’t have food to eat".
“So you want me to wait till we don’t have food to eat before I can plan how to take care of my family?”
“But I can find work, I have a degree...I can get something.”
“There it is, I was wondering how long it would take you before you throw that one in my face. Woman, you are not going anywhere, I can take care of my family and that is final, I don’t want to discuss any of this again.”
And that was the first day I saw my mother cry. I was the only one to see this. All the children had been shushed and driven out of sight when this conversation began while my father ate his dinner. I was the oldest and I lingered by the door leading to the living room from the corridor of bedrooms.
It looked to me like she had used up all her reserve of strength, long practised ways of sidestepping my father’s moods, whims and boisterous control, and there was a sudden realisation that none of it mattered. I felt sorry for her and annoyed with her. My father always made all the most important decisions, it was her fault for challenging him unnecessarily. I knew there was no way my father would stop us from going to school, everybody knew that children had to be in school. I was twelve at this time, in my first term of second year in a private secondary school.
We didn’t miss a day of school but we changed schools. My father decided that all schools were the same after all. They weren’t, my new school was shabby, led by teachers who didn’t expect any of us to amount to anything and populated by students who spent more time in the kiosks and eateries outside the gates than in the classrooms. Things were looking bad for us, yet somehow in the midst of this new normal, my father bagged himself a chieftaincy title.
